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> This trend will continue until Linux Desktop people stop underestimating what users actually do with computers. Nothing. They use apps on their Linux phones,

> This trend will continue until Linux Desktop people stop underestimating what users actually do with computers. Nothing. They use apps on their Linux phones, or happily use any OS that runs a browser since everything is web based today. Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline. The only people remaining dependent on desktops (or laptops) will be office workers, and I'm pretty sure they don't care about DirectX so much, so replacing those with Linux seems very doable, it's just the question if companies care enough. Last I checked, even office 365 worked on Linux.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> They use apps on their Linux phones Somehow I doubt Android is what Linux Desktop evangelists imagined. At best this is moving the goal posts significantly. > or happily use any OS that runs a browser since everything is web based today. Apparently that doesn't include Linux, despite it being free, not having invasive telemetry, and not having ads in the application launcher. > Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline. And yet Steam is a ridiculously huge money maker and people are buying more PC games than ever. > The only people remaining dependent on desktops (or laptops) will be office workers Incorrect, but let's entertain your fantasies anyway. > I'm pretty sure they don't care about DirectX so much, so replacing those with Linux seems very doable Then why hasn't it happened? You think companies like paying licensing fees to Microsoft? Consider that there are good reasons people do not use Linux Desktop instead of just assuming they're all idiots.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  > Somehow I doubt Android is what Linux Desktop evangelists imagined. You must be confusing Android with a desktop OS. It's mobile so they don't fall into the desktop category at all. Which was exactly my point: they simply don't need a desktop OS anymore. > Apparently that doesn't include Linux That reads like you're looking at some statistics that show that 0% of desktop users run Linux. Care pointing to it? > And yet Steam is a ridiculously huge money maker and people are buying more PC games than ever. So? It's completely overshadowed by the console market, not even including mobile games here. > Then why hasn't it happened? You think companies like paying licensing fees to Microsoft? You're asking why it hasn't happened yet in reply to me using future tense. But let's put aside that pretty much everything you said was deliberately besides the point. Why it hasn't happened yet is pretty simple. Companies weigh the cost of switching vs. The cost of just keep paying for Windows (so no changes, no initial setup cost, no training, ...). That's gonna be cheaper for quite some time but eventually everything will be in the cloud so there is less and less reason to keep up a huge and complicated windows domain network with software rollout and other brain damage. You might keep a basic AD in place for user management that the web services talk to but that's it. Funnily enough my current and previous employer is still on win 7 because of the frequent messups you read about regarding 10, and how even in a corporate environment it's near impossible to disable all telemetry. I'm curious what they'll do at 7's EOL. As for the average home desktop user, you're not seriously expecting your mom to go ahead and download and install Ubuntu are you? As long as most OEMs still exclusively sell machines with Windows preinstalled, there really shouldn't be anything surprising about the fact that most people use Windows. We already see some of the larger ones offering machines with Linux though, and with the desktop keeping to lose relevance and everything moving to the web I wouldn't be surprised to see this getting more prevalent over the next decade if Microsoft doesn't get their act together regarding Windows. It currently looks like they're cutting costs in that department, normal users seem to get the beta versions now so they could cut down their QA.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Alright, ignoring everything else, here's what you said: > Seems to me that DirectX is the last remaining barrier to finally getting the majority of the Windows user base to migrate to Linux. To which my point was simply "you are very wrong". As far as I can tell, you agree that there are a lot more barriers to moving to Linux from Windows than just DirectX (again, if that were true why haven't office workers moved? Oh yeah, lots of other reasons!). So what exactly is the point you're trying to make?
    - iforgotpassword 7y ago
      The point I'm trying to make is that the desktop will continue to lose relevance, while web based apps become prevalent. To a point where it's not "this doesn't run on Linux" but rather "I'll use whatever is in reach" (since all you need is Chrome), which as of now happens to be Windows mostly. So it's shifting from Linux being unable to serve your needs to it simply not being the default, or not being what people are used to. Which is something that shouldn't be underestimated when trying to predict how things are going to play out in the long run. Obviously there's gonna be special software in certain fields that's going to be around for quite a while, like the pharma example from this other reply, but even there the point was rather that upgrading from the XP version is too expensive.... And ultimately the question is at which point maintaining or even improving Windows becomes economically unfeasible. With Windows 10 being "the final Windows" there was already a big shift in paradigm. Microsoft is very busy expanding in the cloud/SaaS business, so it's not like they don't see how Windows might lose relevance over time. This in turn sends signals to software vendors who still make software that requires desktop machines.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        > The point I'm trying to make is that the desktop will continue to lose relevance, while web based apps become prevalent. To a point where it's not "this doesn't run on Linux" but rather "I'll use whatever is in reach" (since all you need is Chrome), which as of now happens to be Windows mostly. So it's shifting from Linux being unable to serve your needs to it simply not being the default, or not being what people are used to. Which is something that shouldn't be underestimated when trying to predict how things are going to play out in the long run. Ok, in this scenario, why would I choose Linux? Linux is literally irrelevant if "all you need is Chrome" (among the more dystopian futures I can imagine for computing, btw). Chrome is the platform then and everything is just a Chromebook. In this scenario no one reaches for Linux, they just buy some horrible proprietary locked down no-user-serviceable-parts thing like they do with phones and personal computing is declared dead. I don't buy that that is true anyway. People have been predicting the death of desktop PCs for a long time too and it still hasn't happened. Cloud is just the latest in the thin-client/fat-client cycle of hyped up computer industry bullshit as far as I'm concerned.
RHSeeger 7y ago
> Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline. You're obviously not a PC gamer. The question of console vs PC is still widely debated, with no clear winner. At least to me, they both have their own uses. There are things that are much better on a console than a PC, and vice versa.
- bduerst 7y ago
  Gaming streaming is going to muddy that further. It won't replace consoles or pcs for gaming, but it will definitely create a third market for people with decent internet connections.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  Yes I see how I worded that wrong. I get how counter strike etc. Won't move to the console for serious e-sports any time soon. :-)
- Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
  > The question of console vs PC is still widely debated, with no clear winner. In terms of graphical computing power, there's no debate. All the current-gen consoles will get absolutely demolished by a 3-year-old mid-grade gaming computer. The only things a console will beat a PC on is the upfront price of the machine (which ends up being meaningless as the console game stores don't have the killer sales Steam is known for) and exclusives. If you prefer a controller over mouse/keyboard, you can use a controller on a PC. If you prefer to game on a 50+ inch TV rather than a monitor, you can either plug your computer into your TV, or use a SteamLink, or get the SteamLink RPi app.
la_barba 7y ago
You are discounting a very very large professional worker segment that relies of domain specific tools. We need more than a netbook with a browser. For e.g. In pharma, we wouldn't get any work done if we didn't use Windows. All of our software requires windows - analysis software, control software, automation software etc, etc. In our labs we're using software made for Windows XP on Windows 10, because it just works, and buying the newer version would cost thousands of dollars. If we were an architecture company we'd buy autocad or whatever, or if we were an accounting firm, we'd buy quickbooks or quicken, etc, etc.
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  I wonder if WINE will ever be enough to cover all these cases. Though the cost of Windows licenses is generally trivial for businesses and they want support. I don't know how good RHEL for Workstations is but maybe that'd get more adoption in business if WINE was perfect and that desktop experience was as good as/better than Win10, or even had a DE made to be as similar as possible to Win10 to make it easier for employees to switch.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    How can WINE ever be as good as Windows when it is forever doomed to play catchup with a vast team of developers and decades of secret compatibility hacks that make Windows behave differently for different applications on purpose? I know that the hacks exist in a special shim layer and Windows has a database of applications that require certain sets of shims enabled. But details like an actual documentation of the individual shims are secret.
    - la_barba 7y ago
      Well the WINE folks have their heart in the right place, but its not really a good idea to re-implement a proprietary API for the purposes of binary compatibility. In any case, it makes sense for Windows Version N+1 to ensure compatibility with buggy applications that worked in Windows Version N. From an end-user standpoint I would hope all operating systems invest resources in ensuring application compatibility.
jimmaswell 7y ago
I bought a used Xbox One for the sole purpose of some exclusives and for multiplayer with a few people I know who use Xboxes. There are a few nice points like it being totally separate from the stuff going on on the PC but I'd have no reason to own it if it weren't for the two primary reasons I mentioned. It doesn't even support my new monitor's 1440p res apparently and there's no way I'm buying a new one just for that. I'm hoping the rumors about Win10 eventually supporting all Xbox games natively are true.
cameronbrown 7y ago
> Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline. PC overtook console gaming in terms of revenue over five years ago. There's a vastly more players on PC nowadays. https://www.pcr-online.biz/2014/04/25/pc-games-have-surpassed-console-games-globally/33849/ https://www.pcr-online.biz/2014/04/25/pc-games-have-surpasse...
- nvrspyx 7y ago
  Except it's almost entirely Dota 2, LoL, and exploitative F2P games that make up those market figures. The only thing this indicates is that the mobile gaming culture is extending to the PC. Personally, I wouldn't really flaunt these numbers as PC being having more revenue for most developers, just the lucky few that have their games run on low-end hardware and/or use exploitative tactics.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

> They use apps on their Linux phones Somehow I doubt Android is what Linux Desktop evangelists imagined. At best this is moving the goal posts significantly. > or happily use any OS that runs a browser since everything is web based today. Apparently that doesn't include Linux, despite it being free, not having invasive telemetry, and not having ads in the application launcher. > Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline. And yet Steam is a ridiculously huge money maker and people are buying more PC games than ever. > The only people remaining dependent on desktops (or laptops) will be office workers Incorrect, but let's entertain your fantasies anyway. > I'm pretty sure they don't care about DirectX so much, so replacing those with Linux seems very doable Then why hasn't it happened? You think companies like paying licensing fees to Microsoft? Consider that there are good reasons people do not use Linux Desktop instead of just assuming they're all idiots.

iforgotpassword 7y ago
> Somehow I doubt Android is what Linux Desktop evangelists imagined. You must be confusing Android with a desktop OS. It's mobile so they don't fall into the desktop category at all. Which was exactly my point: they simply don't need a desktop OS anymore. > Apparently that doesn't include Linux That reads like you're looking at some statistics that show that 0% of desktop users run Linux. Care pointing to it? > And yet Steam is a ridiculously huge money maker and people are buying more PC games than ever. So? It's completely overshadowed by the console market, not even including mobile games here. > Then why hasn't it happened? You think companies like paying licensing fees to Microsoft? You're asking why it hasn't happened yet in reply to me using future tense. But let's put aside that pretty much everything you said was deliberately besides the point. Why it hasn't happened yet is pretty simple. Companies weigh the cost of switching vs. The cost of just keep paying for Windows (so no changes, no initial setup cost, no training, ...). That's gonna be cheaper for quite some time but eventually everything will be in the cloud so there is less and less reason to keep up a huge and complicated windows domain network with software rollout and other brain damage. You might keep a basic AD in place for user management that the web services talk to but that's it. Funnily enough my current and previous employer is still on win 7 because of the frequent messups you read about regarding 10, and how even in a corporate environment it's near impossible to disable all telemetry. I'm curious what they'll do at 7's EOL. As for the average home desktop user, you're not seriously expecting your mom to go ahead and download and install Ubuntu are you? As long as most OEMs still exclusively sell machines with Windows preinstalled, there really shouldn't be anything surprising about the fact that most people use Windows. We already see some of the larger ones offering machines with Linux though, and with the desktop keeping to lose relevance and everything moving to the web I wouldn't be surprised to see this getting more prevalent over the next decade if Microsoft doesn't get their act together regarding Windows. It currently looks like they're cutting costs in that department, normal users seem to get the beta versions now so they could cut down their QA.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Alright, ignoring everything else, here's what you said: > Seems to me that DirectX is the last remaining barrier to finally getting the majority of the Windows user base to migrate to Linux. To which my point was simply "you are very wrong". As far as I can tell, you agree that there are a lot more barriers to moving to Linux from Windows than just DirectX (again, if that were true why haven't office workers moved? Oh yeah, lots of other reasons!). So what exactly is the point you're trying to make?
  - iforgotpassword 7y ago
    The point I'm trying to make is that the desktop will continue to lose relevance, while web based apps become prevalent. To a point where it's not "this doesn't run on Linux" but rather "I'll use whatever is in reach" (since all you need is Chrome), which as of now happens to be Windows mostly. So it's shifting from Linux being unable to serve your needs to it simply not being the default, or not being what people are used to. Which is something that shouldn't be underestimated when trying to predict how things are going to play out in the long run. Obviously there's gonna be special software in certain fields that's going to be around for quite a while, like the pharma example from this other reply, but even there the point was rather that upgrading from the XP version is too expensive.... And ultimately the question is at which point maintaining or even improving Windows becomes economically unfeasible. With Windows 10 being "the final Windows" there was already a big shift in paradigm. Microsoft is very busy expanding in the cloud/SaaS business, so it's not like they don't see how Windows might lose relevance over time. This in turn sends signals to software vendors who still make software that requires desktop machines.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      > The point I'm trying to make is that the desktop will continue to lose relevance, while web based apps become prevalent. To a point where it's not "this doesn't run on Linux" but rather "I'll use whatever is in reach" (since all you need is Chrome), which as of now happens to be Windows mostly. So it's shifting from Linux being unable to serve your needs to it simply not being the default, or not being what people are used to. Which is something that shouldn't be underestimated when trying to predict how things are going to play out in the long run. Ok, in this scenario, why would I choose Linux? Linux is literally irrelevant if "all you need is Chrome" (among the more dystopian futures I can imagine for computing, btw). Chrome is the platform then and everything is just a Chromebook. In this scenario no one reaches for Linux, they just buy some horrible proprietary locked down no-user-serviceable-parts thing like they do with phones and personal computing is declared dead. I don't buy that that is true anyway. People have been predicting the death of desktop PCs for a long time too and it still hasn't happened. Cloud is just the latest in the thin-client/fat-client cycle of hyped up computer industry bullshit as far as I'm concerned.

RHSeeger 7y ago

> Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline. You're obviously not a PC gamer. The question of console vs PC is still widely debated, with no clear winner. At least to me, they both have their own uses. There are things that are much better on a console than a PC, and vice versa.

bduerst 7y ago
Gaming streaming is going to muddy that further. It won't replace consoles or pcs for gaming, but it will definitely create a third market for people with decent internet connections.
iforgotpassword 7y ago
Yes I see how I worded that wrong. I get how counter strike etc. Won't move to the console for serious e-sports any time soon. :-)
Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
> The question of console vs PC is still widely debated, with no clear winner. In terms of graphical computing power, there's no debate. All the current-gen consoles will get absolutely demolished by a 3-year-old mid-grade gaming computer. The only things a console will beat a PC on is the upfront price of the machine (which ends up being meaningless as the console game stores don't have the killer sales Steam is known for) and exclusives. If you prefer a controller over mouse/keyboard, you can use a controller on a PC. If you prefer to game on a 50+ inch TV rather than a monitor, you can either plug your computer into your TV, or use a SteamLink, or get the SteamLink RPi app.

la_barba 7y ago

You are discounting a very very large professional worker segment that relies of domain specific tools. We need more than a netbook with a browser. For e.g. In pharma, we wouldn't get any work done if we didn't use Windows. All of our software requires windows - analysis software, control software, automation software etc, etc. In our labs we're using software made for Windows XP on Windows 10, because it just works, and buying the newer version would cost thousands of dollars. If we were an architecture company we'd buy autocad or whatever, or if we were an accounting firm, we'd buy quickbooks or quicken, etc, etc.

jimmaswell 7y ago
I wonder if WINE will ever be enough to cover all these cases. Though the cost of Windows licenses is generally trivial for businesses and they want support. I don't know how good RHEL for Workstations is but maybe that'd get more adoption in business if WINE was perfect and that desktop experience was as good as/better than Win10, or even had a DE made to be as similar as possible to Win10 to make it easier for employees to switch.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  How can WINE ever be as good as Windows when it is forever doomed to play catchup with a vast team of developers and decades of secret compatibility hacks that make Windows behave differently for different applications on purpose? I know that the hacks exist in a special shim layer and Windows has a database of applications that require certain sets of shims enabled. But details like an actual documentation of the individual shims are secret.
  - la_barba 7y ago
    Well the WINE folks have their heart in the right place, but its not really a good idea to re-implement a proprietary API for the purposes of binary compatibility. In any case, it makes sense for Windows Version N+1 to ensure compatibility with buggy applications that worked in Windows Version N. From an end-user standpoint I would hope all operating systems invest resources in ensuring application compatibility.

jimmaswell 7y ago

I bought a used Xbox One for the sole purpose of some exclusives and for multiplayer with a few people I know who use Xboxes. There are a few nice points like it being totally separate from the stuff going on on the PC but I'd have no reason to own it if it weren't for the two primary reasons I mentioned. It doesn't even support my new monitor's 1440p res apparently and there's no way I'm buying a new one just for that. I'm hoping the rumors about Win10 eventually supporting all Xbox games natively are true.

cameronbrown 7y ago

> Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline. PC overtook console gaming in terms of revenue over five years ago. There's a vastly more players on PC nowadays. https://www.pcr-online.biz/2014/04/25/pc-games-have-surpassed-console-games-globally/33849/ https://www.pcr-online.biz/2014/04/25/pc-games-have-surpasse...

nvrspyx 7y ago
Except it's almost entirely Dota 2, LoL, and exploitative F2P games that make up those market figures. The only thing this indicates is that the mobile gaming culture is extending to the PC. Personally, I wouldn't really flaunt these numbers as PC being having more revenue for most developers, just the lucky few that have their games run on low-end hardware and/or use exploitative tactics.