5 ms·

For the last 15 years or so i've earned my money doing Linux stuff. Before then I was doing VB/.NET/SQL Server etc. January 2016 I worked at a secure facility

For the last 15 years or so i've earned my money doing Linux stuff. Before then I was doing VB/.NET/SQL Server etc. January 2016 I worked at a secure facility that wanted an entire system doing malware analysis. The bare servers were running Linux, but some of the software used Windows so there were Windows VMs there. Usual KVM stuff. Bear in mind this is a closed system and the Windows VMs were ephemeral, i.e. had to be discarded and reset after each malware run where we did static code analysis etc. So we used the Professional (hah) version, with AutoUnattend.xml or whatever it was to automatically reset them. This worked fine until after a certain point with WSUS - we obviously applied security updates - where the VMs wouldn't boot. Turns out that a point in Windows 10's life they decided you needed a better version of Windows to be able to do the equivalent of a preseed or kickstart. 4 months of work disappeared, plus the additional licence cost; need to run a domain etc etc. Luckily I left soon after but trust me - at any future role I will look at every possibility before Windows. I moved a subsequent client (large international appliance manufacturer that you've heard of) to Linux servers precisely because of this sort of shit. Windows is done, it's just a case of when it disappears. This is exactly why Microsoft are pushing Azure and Office - they know the outcome, they're just squeezing the pips until it happens.

EpicEng 9y ago
>Windows is done Your use case is very niche compared to how MS makes most of its money on Windows licenses. Windows isn't going anywhere until it's no longer pre-loaded on every machine, enterprise customers stop buying it completely, and Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience.
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  How the loving fuck can you expect to change the terms of engagement with your OS after it's released and not expect to lose business? I know for a fact the malware analysis software we used are now planning a Linux version. I've literally persuaded a multinational to not continue using .net and Windows servers because of my argument that it's not sustainable. They alone are tens of thousands of Windows licenses that may go to Red Hat or even Centos or Ubuntu. Windows has already started to go - my son doesn't know how to use it, all he's used is Google Docs or an iPhone / iPad. There is no love for Windows, only halcyon remembrances from the likes of myself who remembered the golden days of MSDN subscriptions. There is literally not a startup on the planet who will decide 'fuck it, we'll use a windows domain and Office instead of o365 or Google Apps.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    >How the loving fuck can you expect to change the terms of engagement with your OS after it's released and not expect to lose business? Lock-in, that's how. The customers they care about don't always have practical solutions, and most aren't able to make a call that will benefit everyone in e.g. 5+ years after spending a massive amount of money. Also, what are you replacing the desktops/laptops with?
  - youseecomrade 9y ago
    Do we have data about Windows adoption rate or decline in the enterprise market? I don't know what are the most trustable sources for such information
- emodendroket 9y ago
  > I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience. Active Directory is really powerful in a way that, as far as I know, alternatives are not.
  - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
    Agreed, it's awesome. I'm saying we didn't need it, and if you are a startup you probably don't need it either.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Yeah, fair enough. I started my career in the world of computers doing Windows desktop administration stuff and I was kind of surprised to learn how primitive the competition seemed to be.
      - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
        But apart from AD the rest of Windows is primitive compared to the competition. Windows usage will decline - Azure will increase - it's all a case of how it works out for Microsoft in the end.
        Amezarak 9y ago
        The NT kernel is very advanced and in many ways "better" than the Linux kernel. Backwards compat on Windows is fantastic compared to competitors. Even Powershell, though niche, can hardly be called primitive relative to the average default Linux shell. This is especially apparent to me, since I work in an old csh all day. :) If anything is primitive, it's passing around strings instead of objects. Saying Windows is "primitive" compared to the competition makes it sound like you're working in a bubble, to be honest. It's different, to be sure, but I'm hard pressed to think of normal desktop or laptop applications where I'd call Windows primitive. On the server side there's many things competitors undeniably do better, but even then I wouldn't call it primitive.
- JepZ 9y ago
  > [...] and Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. Actually, I am not sure if Linux is in fact user unfriendly. I mean, my grandpa (78) uses it every day since about a year now and hasn't complained once (email, banking, ebay, news, ...; he used vista before). I mean it's not like you don't have to learn a lot of new stuff if you come from years of windows experience and want to reach the same level of proficiency on a new platform which is totally different. It most certainly doesn't feel good to be novice again just because you booted a different system. But I doubt that it is a usability problem with the Linux desktop as people who have no previous experience with windows tend to have an easier start with Linux. My primary PC has Linux installed and my laptop has a dual boot with Linux and Windows 10. When I use Windows I feel often helpless. Some program tells you that you need to install the newest update but while the updater tells you that its updating, you can't see any progress. After waiting for hours without seeing any progress you conclude that something must be wrong. So you reboot a few times and start searching on the web. Eventually you find a page which tells you how you can reset the update cache and after that it takes only a few reboots to complete the update. I definitely prefer updaters which actually work and tell you straight away when something is wrong. My problems are probably just the result of too much Windows absence, but somehow I don't expect that to become a real problem anytime soon.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- gnulinux 9y ago
  > Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. Linux is much more user friendly than Windows. This is completely arbitrary metric, I am very comfortable using GNOME, KDE, awesomeWM and i3 but whenever someone hands me some Win 7 or Win 10 I just can't figure out anything for a while. Stuff starts jumping around and there are literally ads built into OS which annoys me. Windows may be user friendly for 90% of the population BUT this is only because it is "pre-loaded on every machine" as you put it. That is the only reason people find Windows easier to use.
- orionblastar 9y ago
  Yes the DOJ was supposed to get rid of the Windows tax on every OEM PC sale, but did not. Reactos, Haiku, AROS, OSFree, etc should all be considered as well and money invested in making them better and easier development tools for them to compete with Windows when Linux doesn't always work and a MacOS machine costs too much.
orf 9y ago
Why not just snapshot the vms in a clean, updated state and reset them from there when needed?
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  Good point - didn't work because of clock skew, which I assume was related to activation. Also, we didn't want to cheat the licensing, by whichever measure.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    Did you play around with the different clock timers available to you in your VM' xml template? You may have been able to override the system time.
godzillabrennus 9y ago
I agree that Windows as we have known it is done. Now it is simply a free service to learn more about us consumers to build the Bing product. People don't realize that Bing is growing and becoming a serious contender in the market: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microsoft-turns-bing-from-a-joke-into-an-ad-business https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microso...
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  > People don't realize that Bing is growing and becoming a serious contender in the market Do you have a more recent source for that? Your link is from 2016.
cutler 9y ago
I wish it was true but come on, Linux may be good for many uses but simple things like decent font rendering still aren't up to par with Windows or Mac so forget desktop Linux for the masses.
- frankzinger 9y ago
  How long ago did you check? The font rendering on my Ubuntu installation is way better than "decent" and I prefer it to Windows' fonts.
  - cutler 9y ago
    With standard user interfaces like the shell and file browser Ubuntu font rendering is fine. The trouble with Linux, however, is that apps tend to do their own thing and with font-rendering they tend to do it badly. LibreOffice is a good example. Last time I looked at it I just gave up on Linux ever competing for mainstream desktop adoption.

EpicEng 9y ago

>Windows is done Your use case is very niche compared to how MS makes most of its money on Windows licenses. Windows isn't going anywhere until it's no longer pre-loaded on every machine, enterprise customers stop buying it completely, and Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience.

sofaofthedamned 9y ago
How the loving fuck can you expect to change the terms of engagement with your OS after it's released and not expect to lose business? I know for a fact the malware analysis software we used are now planning a Linux version. I've literally persuaded a multinational to not continue using .net and Windows servers because of my argument that it's not sustainable. They alone are tens of thousands of Windows licenses that may go to Red Hat or even Centos or Ubuntu. Windows has already started to go - my son doesn't know how to use it, all he's used is Google Docs or an iPhone / iPad. There is no love for Windows, only halcyon remembrances from the likes of myself who remembered the golden days of MSDN subscriptions. There is literally not a startup on the planet who will decide 'fuck it, we'll use a windows domain and Office instead of o365 or Google Apps.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  >How the loving fuck can you expect to change the terms of engagement with your OS after it's released and not expect to lose business? Lock-in, that's how. The customers they care about don't always have practical solutions, and most aren't able to make a call that will benefit everyone in e.g. 5+ years after spending a massive amount of money. Also, what are you replacing the desktops/laptops with?
- youseecomrade 9y ago
  Do we have data about Windows adoption rate or decline in the enterprise market? I don't know what are the most trustable sources for such information
emodendroket 9y ago
> I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience. Active Directory is really powerful in a way that, as far as I know, alternatives are not.
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  Agreed, it's awesome. I'm saying we didn't need it, and if you are a startup you probably don't need it either.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Yeah, fair enough. I started my career in the world of computers doing Windows desktop administration stuff and I was kind of surprised to learn how primitive the competition seemed to be.
    - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
      But apart from AD the rest of Windows is primitive compared to the competition. Windows usage will decline - Azure will increase - it's all a case of how it works out for Microsoft in the end.
      - Amezarak 9y ago
        The NT kernel is very advanced and in many ways "better" than the Linux kernel. Backwards compat on Windows is fantastic compared to competitors. Even Powershell, though niche, can hardly be called primitive relative to the average default Linux shell. This is especially apparent to me, since I work in an old csh all day. :) If anything is primitive, it's passing around strings instead of objects. Saying Windows is "primitive" compared to the competition makes it sound like you're working in a bubble, to be honest. It's different, to be sure, but I'm hard pressed to think of normal desktop or laptop applications where I'd call Windows primitive. On the server side there's many things competitors undeniably do better, but even then I wouldn't call it primitive.
JepZ 9y ago
> [...] and Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. Actually, I am not sure if Linux is in fact user unfriendly. I mean, my grandpa (78) uses it every day since about a year now and hasn't complained once (email, banking, ebay, news, ...; he used vista before). I mean it's not like you don't have to learn a lot of new stuff if you come from years of windows experience and want to reach the same level of proficiency on a new platform which is totally different. It most certainly doesn't feel good to be novice again just because you booted a different system. But I doubt that it is a usability problem with the Linux desktop as people who have no previous experience with windows tend to have an easier start with Linux. My primary PC has Linux installed and my laptop has a dual boot with Linux and Windows 10. When I use Windows I feel often helpless. Some program tells you that you need to install the newest update but while the updater tells you that its updating, you can't see any progress. After waiting for hours without seeing any progress you conclude that something must be wrong. So you reboot a few times and start searching on the web. Eventually you find a page which tells you how you can reset the update cache and after that it takes only a few reboots to complete the update. I definitely prefer updaters which actually work and tell you straight away when something is wrong. My problems are probably just the result of too much Windows absence, but somehow I don't expect that to become a real problem anytime soon.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
gnulinux 9y ago
> Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. Linux is much more user friendly than Windows. This is completely arbitrary metric, I am very comfortable using GNOME, KDE, awesomeWM and i3 but whenever someone hands me some Win 7 or Win 10 I just can't figure out anything for a while. Stuff starts jumping around and there are literally ads built into OS which annoys me. Windows may be user friendly for 90% of the population BUT this is only because it is "pre-loaded on every machine" as you put it. That is the only reason people find Windows easier to use.
orionblastar 9y ago
Yes the DOJ was supposed to get rid of the Windows tax on every OEM PC sale, but did not. Reactos, Haiku, AROS, OSFree, etc should all be considered as well and money invested in making them better and easier development tools for them to compete with Windows when Linux doesn't always work and a MacOS machine costs too much.

orf 9y ago

Why not just snapshot the vms in a clean, updated state and reset them from there when needed?

sofaofthedamned 9y ago
Good point - didn't work because of clock skew, which I assume was related to activation. Also, we didn't want to cheat the licensing, by whichever measure.
- kakarot 9y ago
  Did you play around with the different clock timers available to you in your VM' xml template? You may have been able to override the system time.

godzillabrennus 9y ago

I agree that Windows as we have known it is done. Now it is simply a free service to learn more about us consumers to build the Bing product. People don't realize that Bing is growing and becoming a serious contender in the market: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microsoft-turns-bing-from-a-joke-into-an-ad-business https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microso...

Slansitartop 9y ago
> People don't realize that Bing is growing and becoming a serious contender in the market Do you have a more recent source for that? Your link is from 2016.

cutler 9y ago

I wish it was true but come on, Linux may be good for many uses but simple things like decent font rendering still aren't up to par with Windows or Mac so forget desktop Linux for the masses.

frankzinger 9y ago
How long ago did you check? The font rendering on my Ubuntu installation is way better than "decent" and I prefer it to Windows' fonts.
- cutler 9y ago
  With standard user interfaces like the shell and file browser Ubuntu font rendering is fine. The trouble with Linux, however, is that apps tend to do their own thing and with font-rendering they tend to do it badly. LibreOffice is a good example. Last time I looked at it I just gave up on Linux ever competing for mainstream desktop adoption.