Let’s face it, Windows comes w/ the computer you purchase. Today’s $300 computer is more than enough to run Windows 8 (assuming you’re not using for gaming or video editing). Most users don’t care about OS, they only use browser 99% of the time. Also, 99% of the school requires to use MS OFFICE. Yes, you can do w/o it using Google Docs or other applications… but it is quite frustrating when end users try to open in MS WORD and it looks slightly different.
Anyways, I use Linux Virtual Machine on top of Windows. I only use Linux for developement or learning purposes.
To put it short, as long as mainstream PC makers keep putting Windows as default OS…it’ll always be the King of OS. If Windows can run a browser already than why install another OS?
Reading about Win10 being “free” for all, including pirates makes me nervous. I’ve been using MS products for a long time. If MS Win10 goes subscription, I’m gone… off in search of the best open source option.
I use both Windows 7 and Linux Mint. And both have pros and cons.
Linux is great for web development because i can set up whole server environment right on my local PC.
And I especially love Nautilus (GNOME file manager) which allows me to open sftp:// connections as regular folders. Virtual desktops and ALT+drag is also great (though you can add these things to Windows with 3rd party utilities). Negative side of Linux for me that I can’t play most of modern games on it and run many useful programs available for Windows only (yep i know about Wine but it’s not the solution often).
Windows wins because of exclusive software. Adobe tools available only for Windows. There is no quality open source alternatives for After Effects or Flash or lot of another great programs. Some of them work quite good in Wine (Adobe Fireworks CS3 works better in Wine than in Windows for me) but most of them are not.
That is what he means, but I highly doubt that’ll ever be the case. Who would do that?
As for me, I keep wanting to switch to Windows, but I’ve finally got my workflow so nailed down with OSX + homebrew that time is really the limiting factor. Trying to find a replacement for all of my particular applications (most of which are OSX-only, OmniFocus in particular) is just not the best use of my time right now.
I never thought about this, but I could see it being possible… though I don’t think they will.
I’d like to see them make their OS free and change their marketing strategy. Surely they see that there isn’t going to be nearly as much money in PCs in the next 10-15yrs as there was in the last 10-15yrs.
There’s already been a very clear announcement that it’ll be free - at least for the immediate future - as an upgrade from 7 or 8. If they went back and instead made it subscription it’d be a PR suicide. I could see them trying it on another version, later… but the rest of this discussion seems to be pretty out there since it’s already public knowledge?
As far as Linux… I’m teh same as everyone else. Try it, go back to Windows, rinse/repeat. My main laptop is a Mac, and I love it. I still occasionally do a little gaming that I need PC for; that and Photoshop are pretty much the only non-starters for me, but even for development I sometimes find myself shifting back to Windows or Mac without much reason… not sure…
I don’t think the discussion is “out there.” And I don’t think that MS will renege on the deal; i.e., offering an OS update for free (for a year,) My questioning little pea brain is just wondering why? Why am I seeing articles that MS will offer their product for free, even to pirates? …when in the past, they appear to have been trying to prevent piracy of their OS.
I understand that they need to earn money to support their development costs. But on the other hand for my home use, I don’t need many of their upgrades. (For example, I keep paying to upgrade Office, but really for what I do in a non-work situation I could easily type 'er up in Word Perfect or some other outdated program.) I understand that “they” need to keep making money to keep their investors happy, but after that year is up and MS (potentially) wants me to buy a subscription service, I’ll have to figure out whether it’s worth it to me. I speculate (obviously) but it better be darn cheap or I won’t want to afford it.
An OS, to me, is like a table that you put other things you actually use on.
It should just work, with as close to zero tinkering as possible.
Windows comes far closer to that that Linux.
Compare if i get a new kitchen-table from IKEA.
I accept putting it together, getting it up and running.
But after that, it better damn well just stand there and do its thing quietly.
If a kitchen-table suddenly stopped working just because i bought a new brand of marmalade, and demanded that i took time of to reconfigure it for that brand before i could have breakfast… I would probably smash it to bits and burn the remains.
If I understand your analogy here, that’s very far from my experience. We bought a new all-in-one printer/scanner for our dual-boot system, and it was a lot less trouble configuring it on Ubuntu than it was on Windows. Similarly, no problem changing the router, using external drives - everything just works.
How many years ago was that? I recall that sort of effort and “recompiling the kernel for each new graphics card/kernel upgrade” back in the early 2000s, but since 2008-ish, that experience has greatly improved. I’ve plugged in multiple graphics cards over the past year with zero issue, same with external drives, scanners, printers, etc. Everything continues to work through kernel upgrades too (a pain I remember all too well).
I think that is probably Linux’s biggest struggle right now. Correcting the misnomers that it is still a very hands on operating system. It really isn’t in that state anymore.
Though I will say, I had to fiddle with getting my Network Adapter to work (as the firmware it required wasn’t readily available in any Linux repository – at least for Debian).
It’s not too far from mine though. Part of it I think, is that the Linux way of doing things is just different enough, that it feels clunky to those of us who were brought up on Windows. I find I have to refer to the manual to do straightforward task, or even find features, with Linux way more than I do on Windows. Windows isn’t perfect, but after all these years, finding things seems far more intuitive.
Awww, but Linux fixed that too (I think). You simply click the Search box at the top of Ubuntu and type what you want, or in KDE press ALT + F2 and type what you want. It goes and finds it! (it is seriously the feature I use most)
I do admit, it took me a good 2 years to get used to Linux in the early 2000s. I nearly gave up, but I had a friend who gave me the best advice then that probably still applies today: “If you give yourself an option to go back to Windows, you will always take it, as it is familiar. If you remove that option and dive into Linux for a good month, you’ll likely stick with it as you’ll be forced to figure things out so you can get your work done.”
And in the early 2000s, it was a LOT of work to get some things done. I recall late night sessions with him trying to figure out how to get Driver X to play nice with Driver Y on Kernel Z. Or having to compile application version A so it didn’t have a god awful bug that caused it to crash easily.
I don’t think everyone should switch to Linux, but I think the effort required now-a-day is far less than what it was 5 to 10 years ago. The one thing I will say for certain is, don’t buy the latest and greatest hardware and expect Linux to just work. If you really want Linux to just work, buy the hardware of last year. That seems to still be a fair statement for Debian, YMMV for Ubuntu.
and run many useful programs available for Windows only (yep i know about Wine but it’s not the solution often).
(it is seriously the feature I use most)