6 ms·

Their users don't need to be allowed to freely evaluate the source, period. When you write software, you control its distribution. What the users are free to

Their users don't need to be allowed to freely evaluate the source, period. When you write software, you control its distribution. What the users are free to do, however, is use an operating system/stack that they CAN evaluate the source of. If linux or any other open source alternative was a better actual product, it would find its way to the top of the market. In fact, it already has, on the server... by far. But linux wasn't made to be easy to use, to be quick and easy to install, to install other software onto, etc... and that has kept it back, and it kept it back long enough for microsoft to establish a de-facto standard on the home desktop market... The closed or open source status of a product has no bearing over its superiority at all. Again, in the world of geeks, it may, but in the world at large, it doesn't, and really, it shouldn't.

beagle3 9y ago
The sentiment of "the better product will win" is understandable, but wrong as you present it. Microsoft managed to gain a monopoly (legally or illegally - doesn't matter) and has used it to illegally keep others out, and network effects now (and for the past 20 years) have been that "goodness" measure - technical mediocrity had been sufficient (although recently they have been doing a lot of excellent technical work since the horrible 2000's) In every single field Microsoft has not been able to leverage their monopoly (e.g. Phones) they are not in a dominant position, even though in some they maintain a competitive one (Xbox one, c#, SQL server)
- csydas 9y ago
  This is very true, since the idea of meritocracy doesn't do a lot to overcome business inertia of being in a Microsoft Environment. If there is a Linux solution that in every way exceeds a Microsoft Solution from a technical and price standpoint, you still need to weigh in the transition costs, employee costs, and the long term effect of changing. It's not always as simple as "X is better than Microsoft's Y, people will use it." There are far more things that get considered, and you can get tied down pretty heavily when your entire workflow and operations rely on a single product or vendor. The longer you've been using a product, the harder it is to get away from it. It's not that Linux isn't good or making a lot of cool progress in all realms, it's that Microsoft does "good enough" and the transition isn't seamless enough for many use cases.
- averagewall 9y ago
  Part of why they succeeded was by being first. Linux was certainly much worse than Windows in the early days when people still used DOS together with Windows. Being first means it was massively better for those people at that time. Plan9 lost out to Linux, perhaps partly by being too late. Do we blame Linux for being horrible?
  - beagle3 9y ago
    As a user of both circa 1994 - no, Linux was definitely not worse. It was about a thousand times more stable, though it lacked e.g. A word processor. When Microsoft produced win 2 and 3, they unfairly (and likely illegally) used their DOS and then Windows monopoly to stop competitors (DR DOS, BeOS, a few lesser known ones); they later used the Windows monopoly to embed IE and kill Netscape. It didn't matter that IE was, in fact, a better browser - everyone wanted Netscape, and it was only with the IE4 merge into the OS that Microsoft took the internet. I was involved with one of the smaller and less famous Microsoft victims at the time, and I can assure you that regardless of technical merits, MS made very significant progress by playing dirty. They paid billions in court for it, but economically it was worth it to them.
shakna 9y ago
> to establish a de-facto standard on the home desktop market... Doesn't this have a lot more to do with pre-installs, and the marketing power that comes with it? Dell's XPS Linux line and the Asus EEE PC were/are both pretty popular with the average person, so far as I'm aware.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Indeed. No one wanted Windows until it came preinstalled.
reitanqild 9y ago
But linux wasn't made to be easy to use, to be quick and easy to install, to install other software onto, etc Just for the record in case someone isn't aware: Modern Linuxes are often easier to install and install software onto (as long as that software isn't written specifically for Windows or Mac OS.)
- flukus 9y ago
  I find they still fail a lot of the time. Some issue's I've come across recently: * no UI scaling for hi res. Sure you can change it manually, but you have to be able to read the login screen to get that far. * Can't change login screen resolution (haven't seen a way to do this on any distro I've tried). * Default is to max resolution available (I'd say 1080p is a more sensible default, especially if there is no automatic scaling). * Secondary drives require manual mounting (or doing it yourself at the command line).
  - voidz 9y ago
    Pure nonsense. Or did you try a distribution from 2002?
    - flukus 9y ago
      Ubuntu 17.04. Is that recent enough for you? I've tried antergos, red hat and a couple of others, all with similar issues. Many I didn't get far with because I simply couldn't read the login screen. Antergos doesn't even have user switching working out of the box but it was the only one that supported my graphics card until very recently. I used the gnome variant of each.
      - bitexploder 9y ago
        Ubuntu 16.04 or Fedora are likely to work better than 17.04. Regardless there is still hardware that does not have the best compatibility. Ubuntu does handle individual high DPI displays well though.
interfixus 9y ago
"But linux wasn't made to be easy to use, to be quick and easy to install, to install other software onto, etc" For what it's worth (which may be not a great deal): I have installed a lot of Windows and Linux over the years, but my Windows experience has been lackin further and further behind these last few years. A short while ago, I had to a rare chance of setting up two identical machines side by side, one with Windows 10, one with Manjaro, an Arch Linux derivative. The Linux install finished sooner and with less need of interference than the Windows one. It also didn't require preparatory messing round with weird licensing codes and what have you, and of course it didn't require one tenth the amount of postprocessing to reach the desired level of functionality - compare the twenty second operation of setting up a LaTeX which worked to the corresponding twenty Windows minutes of setting up one which didn't. Your anecdotal mileage may obviously vary.
- dahauns 9y ago
  You needed twenty minues for choco install latexdistofchoice ? (Yeah, I know, I'm being a bit facetious. I omitted three additional lines of PS to first install chocolatey...)
  - interfixus 9y ago
    I need a lot more than twenty minutes to learn about and ascertain the validity of some third party installation robot, which your choco-thing appears to be. I then need some minutes to get it started. And yes, installation proces itself took something on the scale of ten to twenty minutes. Pacman -Syu (or Pamac if you're in a clicky mood) took care of everything in less time than the BibTeX took to download download.
    - dahauns 9y ago
      > I need a lot more than twenty minutes to learn about and ascertain the validity of some third party installation robot, which your choco-thing appears to be. > Pacman -Syu So it's basically "I know one system much better than the other". And your ignorance is somehow the fault of the OS now?
literallycancer 9y ago
>If linux or any other open source alternative was a better actual product, it would find its way to the top of the market. If only the world worked like this.. You probably won't see it happen today, but in the past, it wasn't uncommon for Microsoft to threaten companies with made-up charges, bribe the police to raid their offices and steal their hardware and data, just because they opted to use a different product.
davidgerard 9y ago
> But linux wasn't made to be easy to use, to be quick and easy to install, to install other software onto, etc... You can only say that in comparison to Windows if you haven't tried installing both any time in the past 15 years.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jmcdiesel 9y ago
  I have installed both multiple times recently... Linus is NOT as easy to install software into, its a different process for different distros... if what you want isnt in the repo of your choice you have to add repos (because politics matter in software apparently)... lets not even talk GPU driver issues... I work on linux and mac, and I play on windows. Im familiar with all 3 environments (including various distros for linux). I'm not ignorant of any of the processes. And while linus is easier for me for the most part (I find OSX to be the simplest "plug and play" OS out there, honestly) - for the average user, its just not...
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    Windows : Not Ready For The Desktop https://andrewhickey.info/2012/04/07/windows-not-ready-for-the-desktop/ https://andrewhickey.info/2012/04/07/windows-not-ready-for-t... Most Windows users never install Windows.
    - jmcdiesel 9y ago
      No, they chose to buy a computer with windows on it... And an article starts with complaining that its not free (money) and not open source - it makes it very clear the level of bias right off the bat.
      - davidgerard 9y ago
        It's a commentary on presumptions. Did you seriously fail to realise this?

beagle3 9y ago

The sentiment of "the better product will win" is understandable, but wrong as you present it. Microsoft managed to gain a monopoly (legally or illegally - doesn't matter) and has used it to illegally keep others out, and network effects now (and for the past 20 years) have been that "goodness" measure - technical mediocrity had been sufficient (although recently they have been doing a lot of excellent technical work since the horrible 2000's) In every single field Microsoft has not been able to leverage their monopoly (e.g. Phones) they are not in a dominant position, even though in some they maintain a competitive one (Xbox one, c#, SQL server)

csydas 9y ago
This is very true, since the idea of meritocracy doesn't do a lot to overcome business inertia of being in a Microsoft Environment. If there is a Linux solution that in every way exceeds a Microsoft Solution from a technical and price standpoint, you still need to weigh in the transition costs, employee costs, and the long term effect of changing. It's not always as simple as "X is better than Microsoft's Y, people will use it." There are far more things that get considered, and you can get tied down pretty heavily when your entire workflow and operations rely on a single product or vendor. The longer you've been using a product, the harder it is to get away from it. It's not that Linux isn't good or making a lot of cool progress in all realms, it's that Microsoft does "good enough" and the transition isn't seamless enough for many use cases.
averagewall 9y ago
Part of why they succeeded was by being first. Linux was certainly much worse than Windows in the early days when people still used DOS together with Windows. Being first means it was massively better for those people at that time. Plan9 lost out to Linux, perhaps partly by being too late. Do we blame Linux for being horrible?
- beagle3 9y ago
  As a user of both circa 1994 - no, Linux was definitely not worse. It was about a thousand times more stable, though it lacked e.g. A word processor. When Microsoft produced win 2 and 3, they unfairly (and likely illegally) used their DOS and then Windows monopoly to stop competitors (DR DOS, BeOS, a few lesser known ones); they later used the Windows monopoly to embed IE and kill Netscape. It didn't matter that IE was, in fact, a better browser - everyone wanted Netscape, and it was only with the IE4 merge into the OS that Microsoft took the internet. I was involved with one of the smaller and less famous Microsoft victims at the time, and I can assure you that regardless of technical merits, MS made very significant progress by playing dirty. They paid billions in court for it, but economically it was worth it to them.

shakna 9y ago

> to establish a de-facto standard on the home desktop market... Doesn't this have a lot more to do with pre-installs, and the marketing power that comes with it? Dell's XPS Linux line and the Asus EEE PC were/are both pretty popular with the average person, so far as I'm aware.

bitwize 9y ago
Indeed. No one wanted Windows until it came preinstalled.

reitanqild 9y ago

But linux wasn't made to be easy to use, to be quick and easy to install, to install other software onto, etc Just for the record in case someone isn't aware: Modern Linuxes are often easier to install and install software onto (as long as that software isn't written specifically for Windows or Mac OS.)

flukus 9y ago
I find they still fail a lot of the time. Some issue's I've come across recently: * no UI scaling for hi res. Sure you can change it manually, but you have to be able to read the login screen to get that far. * Can't change login screen resolution (haven't seen a way to do this on any distro I've tried). * Default is to max resolution available (I'd say 1080p is a more sensible default, especially if there is no automatic scaling). * Secondary drives require manual mounting (or doing it yourself at the command line).
- voidz 9y ago
  Pure nonsense. Or did you try a distribution from 2002?
  - flukus 9y ago
    Ubuntu 17.04. Is that recent enough for you? I've tried antergos, red hat and a couple of others, all with similar issues. Many I didn't get far with because I simply couldn't read the login screen. Antergos doesn't even have user switching working out of the box but it was the only one that supported my graphics card until very recently. I used the gnome variant of each.
    - bitexploder 9y ago
      Ubuntu 16.04 or Fedora are likely to work better than 17.04. Regardless there is still hardware that does not have the best compatibility. Ubuntu does handle individual high DPI displays well though.

interfixus 9y ago

"But linux wasn't made to be easy to use, to be quick and easy to install, to install other software onto, etc" For what it's worth (which may be not a great deal): I have installed a lot of Windows and Linux over the years, but my Windows experience has been lackin further and further behind these last few years. A short while ago, I had to a rare chance of setting up two identical machines side by side, one with Windows 10, one with Manjaro, an Arch Linux derivative. The Linux install finished sooner and with less need of interference than the Windows one. It also didn't require preparatory messing round with weird licensing codes and what have you, and of course it didn't require one tenth the amount of postprocessing to reach the desired level of functionality - compare the twenty second operation of setting up a LaTeX which worked to the corresponding twenty Windows minutes of setting up one which didn't. Your anecdotal mileage may obviously vary.

dahauns 9y ago
You needed twenty minues for choco install latexdistofchoice ? (Yeah, I know, I'm being a bit facetious. I omitted three additional lines of PS to first install chocolatey...)
- interfixus 9y ago
  I need a lot more than twenty minutes to learn about and ascertain the validity of some third party installation robot, which your choco-thing appears to be. I then need some minutes to get it started. And yes, installation proces itself took something on the scale of ten to twenty minutes. Pacman -Syu (or Pamac if you're in a clicky mood) took care of everything in less time than the BibTeX took to download download.
  - dahauns 9y ago
    > I need a lot more than twenty minutes to learn about and ascertain the validity of some third party installation robot, which your choco-thing appears to be. > Pacman -Syu So it's basically "I know one system much better than the other". And your ignorance is somehow the fault of the OS now?

literallycancer 9y ago

>If linux or any other open source alternative was a better actual product, it would find its way to the top of the market. If only the world worked like this.. You probably won't see it happen today, but in the past, it wasn't uncommon for Microsoft to threaten companies with made-up charges, bribe the police to raid their offices and steal their hardware and data, just because they opted to use a different product.

davidgerard 9y ago

> But linux wasn't made to be easy to use, to be quick and easy to install, to install other software onto, etc... You can only say that in comparison to Windows if you haven't tried installing both any time in the past 15 years.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jmcdiesel 9y ago
I have installed both multiple times recently... Linus is NOT as easy to install software into, its a different process for different distros... if what you want isnt in the repo of your choice you have to add repos (because politics matter in software apparently)... lets not even talk GPU driver issues... I work on linux and mac, and I play on windows. Im familiar with all 3 environments (including various distros for linux). I'm not ignorant of any of the processes. And while linus is easier for me for the most part (I find OSX to be the simplest "plug and play" OS out there, honestly) - for the average user, its just not...
- davidgerard 9y ago
  Windows : Not Ready For The Desktop https://andrewhickey.info/2012/04/07/windows-not-ready-for-the-desktop/ https://andrewhickey.info/2012/04/07/windows-not-ready-for-t... Most Windows users never install Windows.
  - jmcdiesel 9y ago
    No, they chose to buy a computer with windows on it... And an article starts with complaining that its not free (money) and not open source - it makes it very clear the level of bias right off the bat.
    - davidgerard 9y ago
      It's a commentary on presumptions. Did you seriously fail to realise this?