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Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

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Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was developing C# winforms applications 15 years ago, I just created a fat signed .exe that was then distributed. Installers and click once stuff was a big turn off for users. On startup, if not already there, it automagically copied itself to the installation directory, created an autostart directory link and started it from the new location and got killed with a named pipe command. It contained and extracted…

I would have hated that, it looks like one thing (a standalone exe) but it is doing something else (installer like).

Non technical users don‘t understand any of this.

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet none of those "outsiders" have figured out a way to economically renumerate developers for their work. Flathub had a initiative a few years ago to add payments to help developers fund their projects, but I haven't seen anything come out of it.

Most linux distros require that software they distribute is open source, and link to the home pages of applications, so effectively donations are the only way to pay for those. There are paid distros (which are almost always about support, there was a paid GNUStep distro though many years ago). On the other hand, Steam et al are app stores where developers can get paid.

Open source doesn't mean free.

> On the other hand, Steam et al are app stores where developers can get paid.

Yes, this is exactly my point. App stores have a reason to exist. They provide discoverability and a streamlined way to monetise your app, something that is sorely lacking in open source projects. A case in point for example is Krita, which is published as a paid app on the Microsoft Store. The revenue generated by the sales goes to fund the development of the project. Linux needs an equivalent.

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#63
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet none of those "outsiders" have figured out a way to economically renumerate developers for their work. Flathub had a initiative a few years ago to add payments to help developers fund their projects, but I haven't seen anything come out of it.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I can download Blender from almost any package manager, and the devs of Blender are paid.

This works for Blender because they're a big fish and receive money from big corporations. The vast majority of good open source projects are underfunded or unpaid. Linux distros need a way to streamline payments to open source apps. As I mentioned above, Flathub [0] had an initiative in this direction, but not sure what happened to that.

[0] https://itsfoss.com/news/flathub-paid-apps

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#64

If Microsoft won’t eat their own dogfood, why should they expect anyone else to? This is why no one jumps onboard with new stuff Microsoft wants to push. They don’t stick to anything. A dev can constantly chase after Microsoft’s latest pet projects, or they can simply ignore all of it, knowing it will eventually fall out of fashion and save themselves (and their users) a lot of trouble.

Office was already slowly adopting UWP, some of the new WinUI 2.0 components came from them, in a spirit similar to how Ribbon went from Office into Windows.

Then came Project Reunion, with the whole reboot, that five years later still hasn't reached feature parity, seems most of the team is gone, and they are even open sourcing it, with hopes that the community fixes the bugs that a $4 trillion valued company doesn't care about.

Of course only people on the Windows team care about this, because their salaries depend on it.

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there's Gentoo just smuggly accepting fate and always rebuilding everything rather than trying to force compatibility with libraries.

Honestly it really has been nice down here in Gentoo, now they have bin packages it even use it on laptops. I even use flatpaks for the stuff I don't want to build, everything just works most of the time. there are only two versions of libc mine and the one you brought with you.

This kinda sounds like hell for low memory machines. RIP shared memory optimizations.

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#66
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Use Fedora for half a year and tell me what you prefer. I prefer good high-dpi support, Wifi and Bluetooth that works, usability, developers getting rewarded for their hard work, etc.

I'm legitimately not sure what you're saying. Are you saying Linux, Windows, or MacOS? Because as far as Bt and Wifi go, usability, rewarding developers, that applies to Linux and MacOS and ... not Windows whatsoever. I'm not sure about High DPI support, probably sucks on X11, maybe on Wayland, so I'm guessing you mean Windows? FYI I develop software for Linux in my free time, I don't get paid and I feel pretty rewar…

> probably sucks on X11

Xrandr works just fine and has been for decades.

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#67
post #49

I always assumed the Microsoft Store was just windows' attempt at grabbing some of the app store money that apple and Google are making...

I assumed it was a combination of a relic of the plans to have unified Phone/Desktop back in Win8 days and part of a goal of eventually locking things down as much as Apple has.

Unfortunately, there's a lot more random apps on Windows than macOS, so that was never going to be a good sell...

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#68
post #24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, yesterday I launched the Windows sandbox to investigate some files and noticed that notepad.exe was not available. A quick research revealed that this is because notepad.exe was replaced by the modern variant with Colipot and shit, which is an AppX package (Windows Store file format). And since the store was ripped out of the sandbox, there's no Notepad in it. I'm not sure I would say Microsoft forgot ab…

rumour has it the next version of windows will be called Microsoft 365 Azure for Desktop XBOX Edition so that each of the executives in the money making sections gets their piece.

You forgot to shoehorn Copilot in there. They renamed Office to something like that, not even kidding.

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#69
post #68
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rumour has it the next version of windows will be called Microsoft 365 Azure for Desktop XBOX Edition so that each of the executives in the money making sections gets their piece.

You forgot to shoehorn Copilot in there. They renamed Office to something like that, not even kidding.

yeah i just heard, i'm changing my prediction to Microsoft 365 Copilot Xbox Edition

Re: Why Microsoft Store Discontinued Support for Office Apps

#70

Seriously who needs a Store App on a desktop OS? The process should be as simple as visiting app’s website, optionally paying, and installing. No middle man, hence less point of breakage.

Steam exists, and provides features desired by both users and developers. I'm not sure getting software directly from developers is less likely to break than getting it through a store. The store may do QA to ensure that broken apps cannot be uploaded, developers may vanish and hence absent someone else being able to maintain it the app will eventually break, and how are security issues handled?

If Steam decides to suspend your account, you have 0 game in your hand.

But I agree, sometimes central place to get your software might be more reliable.

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