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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#161

Post by jacquesm »

FractalLP wrote: post #147
jacquesm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QnX did that in ... 1983.

I'm not sure comparing an RTOS to a really old school monolithic kernal is fair. Windows wasn't designed to be like QnX. I really wish QnX was open source though and had a thriving community behind it.

It's perfectly fair. QnX had a fully functional desktop environment and a large chunk of functionality that experimental OS's like Plan9 popularized.

Whether or not Windows as designed to be like QnX is immaterial, the question is what would be the better OS to serve as the engine behind a computer interacting with its users and my vote definitely goes to a real time operating system using a micro kernel. Because in my opinion that's by far the best match for that workload.

Stability, speed of interaction driver isolation and so on are much much better when using something like QnX vs a monolith. And a GUI is a real time affair.

Re: The End of Windows

#162

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #104
ekianjo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with Linux, rather with the publishers who decide not to support Linux or any particular distro at least.

Yeah sure, let's not wonder why maybe developers don't want to develop for your platform or anything.

...because Microsoft is good at marketing, has no ethics, and successfully leveraged its advantages in the 90s to kill all the competition? Is this a trick question?

Re: The End of Windows

#163

Post by mbesto »

ynniv wrote: post #48

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they…

The author didn't characterize his position accurately. He meant "Windows Server", not "Windows Desktop". Similar to how IBM sold off it's laptop business to Lenovo, the strategy is basically saying that "We're a business services company, there's no growth left in the end-user ecosystem anymore, because all of that growth is in mobile, which we suck at, so let's just double down on what we are growing at: cloud services and office productivity services".

That Windows we all know, both desktop and server side, is not dead. The economics on the server side are diminishing (20~30 year outlook) and Microsoft won't be around if they don't do something about it now.

IMHO it's a very smart strategy, people just didn't understand what Ben was saying because he didn't articulate it correctly (which I do find with his content, but it's less often the case)

Re: The End of Windows

#164

Post by pjmlp »

kochandy wrote: post #71
bigmanwalter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux on desktop is pretty amazing. Haven't looked back in 3 years.

Say what you want about bloated Electron apps, but they've improved the Linux desktop experience. Slack, VSCode, Atom, KeeWeb, among others. Also the modern web, PWAs, etc.

Electron apps are by definition packaged web apps, the desktop where they run is irrelevant.

Re: The End of Windows

#165

Post by ropeadopepope »

jsty wrote: post #17
twoquestions wrote: post #2

So are mom and pop businesses using Chromebooks and Ipads to do their accounting now? Last I checked Windows was still pretty dominant in both Enterprise and midsize businesses, though I could see a food truck being run from a phone (theoretically).

Anecdata: most of the SMBs I know are using web/cloud-based accounting products, and like it for varying reasons (not having to manage / upgrade the software, easy to collaborate with their accountant) but a major one is being able to access their accounts from anything with a web browser.

And there's the catch-22: how do you access the web when the desktop OS's are all gone? Tablets and phones don't cut it and there isn't a single stable desktop OS that hasn't been getting progressively worse for the last 5 years.

Re: The End of Windows

#166

Post by cptskippy »

asveikau wrote: post #33

I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle. One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. Even though Win10 attempted correctiv…

> One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store.

With Windows 8 they tried to do too much too quickly and not well, however their motivations and intention were spot on in my opinion. Security has always been a pain point for Windows and it's only been getting worse, the Store introduced a sandbox like that found on iOS and Android. ARM, iOS, and Android showed that modern hardware and software can produce power efficiencies that put x86 and Windows to shame. UWP introduced hardware independence and a modern development framework that would put Windows Apps on a level playing field with iOS and Android.

The problem was that Microsoft thought that merely by virtue of their existence, developers would adopt UWP/Store despite the path forward being a huge pain in the ass. We see how that played out. With Windows 10 we've seen a course correction and a change in strategy. You can have traditional Applications sandboxed in the Store, and you can have UWP Apps outside the Store. Microsoft bought Xamarin and is folding it into UWP, the intent is to not just have hardware independence with UWP but also OS independence.

Re: The End of Windows

#167

Post by snerbles »

mmjaa wrote: post #101
Philipp__ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gotta be kidding me. Good luck using multiple HiDPI monitors. The only reasonable way to use Linux is tiling wm with as less graphical interface as possible, in my case only xterm and emacs. Which is crazy, since it’s 2018. and I am using modern computer with modern OS like how computers were used before I was even born.

I'm not having any problems running two monitors in HiDPI with my Ubuntu Studio workstation .. everything just works and I enjoy it immensely. Curious what your issues are...

To be fair, some applications on some distros have HiDPI issues. LibreOffice [0], icons in GTK2 apps, anything that uses Java Swing, etc. Particularly galling is the oft-suggested fix of temporarily reducing desktop resolution and fowling up all the other apps that are supporting the proper DPI.

[0] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/showdependencytree.cgi?i...

Re: The End of Windows

#168

Post by ams6110 »

laumars wrote: post #37
eric_b wrote: post #6

I'll be interested to see how this bifurcation of the Windows team plays out. Windows 10 has been a mixed bag - some nice new features but also a lot of half baked buggy stuff. The evergreen nature of Windows 10 feels like the right move, but I'm worried they're going to let the OS stagnate. There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't. I'm not a huge fan of using my tabl…

> There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't. In all honesty that's been my impression of Windows since its inception. The only time I can recall ever feeling like Windows was deserved market leader was with Windows 2000: Linux wasn't mature on the desktop, OS X wasn't yet released or literally only just released and OS 9 was god awful (worse than the Win 95 in my opini…

Am I remembering the timing wrong? XP came after 2000 and before Vista, right?

Re: The End of Windows

#169

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

agumonkey wrote: post #70
bigmanwalter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux on desktop is pretty amazing. Haven't looked back in 3 years.

A tiny linux/windows story: For the last year I ran a x200 (c2d p8400, passmark 1458) + below average ssd. Win10, almost no cruft, some cortana disabled etc. It's ok but became worse and worse (regular pointer lag for a minute, pointer lag is very very sad and indicates very low level perf issues) I don't use full fledged linux Desktops, if at all. I run a bare i3wm + emacs + $browser + mpv setup. Last week I booted…

> I have to run that archlinux/i3wm setup on the x200 to get more data.

Well, it's Linux; unless you're running Gentoo, you can probably just swap the hard drive :-) Unless of course the SSD is an important part of this test.

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