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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#171

Post by dragonwriter »

ynniv wrote: post #121
SonicSoul wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS isn't business-level stable amazing how many people here are missing the point. this is not about Windows vs MacOS. Client OS has become a commodity with prices approaching 0 (MacOS no longer charges for upgrades, neither does iOS or Android) and users care less about how they get to Facebook. Think about server/mobile space. if MS tried to hang on to their dominance simply via desktop lock-in (because it wor…

Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.

> Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter.

No, established enterprises (both private and government) are, in the real world, important customers for cloud offerings like Azure, GCP, and AWS.

Re: The End of Windows

#172

Post by Analemma_ »

ynniv wrote: post #121
SonicSoul wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS isn't business-level stable amazing how many people here are missing the point. this is not about Windows vs MacOS. Client OS has become a commodity with prices approaching 0 (MacOS no longer charges for upgrades, neither does iOS or Android) and users care less about how they get to Facebook. Think about server/mobile space. if MS tried to hang on to their dominance simply via desktop lock-in (because it wor…

Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.

Which is why Microsoft has on-prem and hybrid offerings for most of their products. Actually this is one place where they’re way ahead of AWS and GCE.

Re: The End of Windows

#173

Post by extralego »

alkonaut wrote: post #102
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…

They bet the farm on “store”. Why? Because they must have done the math and realized that the enterprise and “creative pro” desktop with classic expensive desktop apps is a dead end. Was that calculation correct? Who knows. But I have to think they did that analysis very carefully.

It was wrong. None of those apps have been replaced. I use them every day and switched to Windows 3 years ago. I was stubborn and should have done it sooner. Maybe MS saw Apple abandoning the pro hardware market and was trying to play along “because Apple”.

A fun result of the whole mess is that after a new Windows 10 install, the first thing I do now is open Store to install Ubuntu WSL.

Re: The End of Windows

#174

Post by weirdwitch »

TheForumTroll wrote: post #128
alkonaut wrote: post #109

You can have my windows when I can game properly somewhere else (and no, no you can’t).

Xbox and PlayStation. The "problem" is that you want to game on your PC, not that there isn't another viable option.

Can you point me to the console version of Dota 2?

Re: The End of Windows

#175

Post by ropeadopepope »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #34
Spooky23 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is really difficult for businesses entrenched in Windows to deal with. The work that you need to do in order to unwind from legacy Windows stuff like fat apps, IE-optimized websites, and legacy Office-based workflows makes it pretty easy to move to an iPad to Google, etc. The only thing that Microsoft has going for them is that every other vendor is also fucking up client computing in different ways.

I know I'm in a minority here, but having used every windows since 3.1, IMO windows 7 was the absolute pinnacle of windows design, and from a ux perspective I think the best desktop os period (could still be improved, there's definitely individual features that are better in other OSes). I really wish they had stuck with the UX/design and mostly just improved performance/added useful stuff rather than throw it all ou…

You're not as big of a minority as you think. Windows 7 is still the most used desktop OS by quite some margin. MacOS hit its pinnacle at about the same time (Snow Leopard, Summer 2009).

Re: The End of Windows

#176

Post by thedoctor79 »

pjmlp wrote: post #18
bigmanwalter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yep, the other day I was also pretty amazed how using VS Code alongside Rust, for writing a Gtk-rs application, managed to hang X forcing me to reboot the whole thing. With the open source AMD drivers.

Tip: when X hangs, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 or F2 to switch to console mode, then Ctrl-Alt-F7 (or F8 on some distros) to go back to X. While in terminal mode you can investigate which process is reponsible for the X issue (high CPU? memory? disk I/O?) If that does not fix it, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace will kill X and every X application and you won't have to reboot.

Re: The End of Windows

#177

Post by MikkoFinell »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #25
holtalanm wrote: post #20

i would have stopped using windows years ago if i could get games to run decently on linux.

There are many games that run well in Linux, including a large portion of the Steam library! If you meant a specific game to run, well then you need to weight your pros and cons and stop whining when you make your decision. Alternatively, dual boot.

Alternatively, grow up and stop playing games.

Re: The End of Windows

#178

Post by Someone1234 »

segmondy wrote: post #54
Someone1234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I still have to open the terminal and edit text files in /etc for essential things like sound, WiFi, accelerated graphics, and so on then it hasn't really evolved in the right ways. Linux on the desktop has always been a niche experience for a niche audience. ChromeOS and Android (both based on Linux) are mainstream desktop experiences, as are MacOS, iOS, and Windows.

If you still have to, except you don't have to.

Except I have in the last month, I was following this article:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProced...

Someone should tell Ubuntu that this is no longer needed.

Re: The End of Windows

#179

Post by dpark »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #44
laumars wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think because there's no career advancement at Microsoft, working on cleaning up existing features. Only by working on new stuff can you get noticed. So, interns work on 'old' stuff (like office apps, Windows, tools). And they always look pretty rough.

Interns don’t do maintenance work in general. They build new stuff, often flashy new stuff that never ships [1], because the intern program is about evaluating potential hires and giving them a great experience so they want to come back. Giving interns tedious unrecognized maintenance work is a great way to convince them to go elsewhere.

Source: Microsoft employee

[1] The goal is still to build features that ship, but because they get new, shiny stuff, sometimes it’s speculative development and the winds shift before it goes out the door.

Re: The End of Windows

#180

Post by TremendousJudge »

PeanutNore wrote: post #114
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.

Sounds like a pretty edgy edge case to me. In a more typical deployment like a laptop with a built in display or a desktop with a single 1080p or 1440p monitor you can pick from a variety of distributions that on firm "it just works" territory.

I have a nice laptop, with a 3k display. I plug it to a normal screen, with a 1080p display. What happens? Well, it works but it looks like ass. Wanna fix it? Sure, just google around for 2 hours until you find a complicated xrandr command that you have to run every time on startup (but the OS will break every time you unplug the screen). Also, high DPI support is still garbage, which means that half the apps will have their text looking too small anyway.

So no, I don't consider it an "edge case" if everyone in the office with a Linux laptop has the same problem

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