4 ms·

are they trying to get more people to use linux? because that's how you get more people to use linux

by ptah 7y ago

bogwog 7y ago
I don't understand why anyone would even want to use Windows. You're taking on a huge risk for very little to no benefit. It's not like there's a shortage of engineers familiar with Linux in the world.
- abarringer 7y ago
  Just because you run windows doesn't mean you like it. SQL Server, vendor app requirements etc. A windowless world is about as likely as a paperless bathroom and for the same reasons. Also, not sure what huge risk you are talking about here besides licensing pricing?
  - bogwog 7y ago
    > Also, not sure what huge risk you are talking about here besides licensing pricing? The many business risks of being 100% tied down to a single provider (Microsoft). Licensing is one, but also what would happen if Microsoft decided to kill off a service that your product depends on? You'd have to invest in finding an alternative and rewriting your software. Or what if Microsoft sells that service to another company which is actually directly competing with you, and then decides to stop providing third party access, or looks at your usage metrics/data to gain a competitive advantage over you. Or maybe Microsoft gets an incompetent CEO which drives the company to bankruptcy, and Windows and all their services you depend on are sold to hundreds of different companies which you now need to deal with. Building your software on Linux or BSD means you don't have to worry about any of that since you own everything. It's like you're getting vertical integration for free. It's a no-brainer.
    - abarringer 7y ago
      Both replies to me earlier comment mentioned vendor lock in. Is there any greater vendor lock-in then integrating AWS thousand and one services? Is it really riskier to trust MS to not kill a product then Google? Is the answer really to write everything yourself from the OS up? I don't disagree that MS could do any of what you mentioned but I'm not sure AWS/GCP etc wouldn't be as likely to as well.
      - bogwog 7y ago
        I think you misread my comment. I was talking about Windows, not Azure. As far as I know, Azure lets you run Linux on their machines, so there's no point in using Windows and locking yourself in.
    - ldiracdelta 7y ago
      You are vastly more likely to have a long, dependable platform when you use Microsoft than almost anything else. They worship backwards compatibility. Being stranded and all-alone on an open source dependency is very possible. You're vastly more likely to be stranded after using a Google open source product. I say all this having used the linux stack for my entire professional career. I prefer linux by a long shot, but Microsoft backwards compatibility is exemplary compared to almost anyone else, including open source.
      - bogwog 7y ago
        Now that's some grade-A FUD
  - m0xte 7y ago
    Not the original poster but from experience of running windows on everything for over 20 years the risks are: being treated like a criminal until you prove yourself innocent, unreliable and difficult to automate tooling, half-baked clones of ideologies as a me to proposition rather than a product direction, absolutely no support worth mentioning even when you pay for it in organs, schizophrenic roadmaps which never materialise or turn up half baked, pretending to care about the community while shitting on it with telemetry and products being yanked that you rely on. Then QA so bad that it makes me wonder if there was any. I feel like most of my time and cash investment has been thrown into putting a marketing facade over this steaming pile of feces. Now there's a pile of legacy on top of Windows which is unavoidable but at this point I couldn't possibly consider building a product from scratch on top of something which has been basically a 20 year long bad trip. I will also push for everything to be moved off their platforms at every available opportunity. On numerous occasions the pure frustration caused by MSFT has nearly made me quit the industry entirely. To confirm, everything is greener on the other side. I do that too.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  Depends on the app. Legacy LoB / Enterprise stuff is very Windows-centric. For example, think of the huge sub-industry of “component vendors” that service the legacy Visual Basic ecosystem. If your CTO says they want that LoB system _in the cloud_ without rewriting it then you’re in the market for a Windows cloud provider.
  - bogwog 7y ago
    I get the legacy part of it, but for new development I don't see the benefit. Even if Microsoft offers to subsidize hosting if you use Windows or one of their services, that obviously would not last forever.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  In a lot of companies Windows is where it’s at. There is just no way to change this.

are they trying to get more people to use linux? because that's how you get more people to use linux

by ptah 7y ago

are they trying to get more people to use linux? because that's how you get more people to use linux

I don't understand why anyone would even want to use Windows. You're taking on a huge risk for very little to no benefit. It's not like there's a shortage of engineers familiar with Linux in the world.

abarringer 7y ago
Just because you run windows doesn't mean you like it. SQL Server, vendor app requirements etc. A windowless world is about as likely as a paperless bathroom and for the same reasons. Also, not sure what huge risk you are talking about here besides licensing pricing?
- bogwog 7y ago
  > Also, not sure what huge risk you are talking about here besides licensing pricing? The many business risks of being 100% tied down to a single provider (Microsoft). Licensing is one, but also what would happen if Microsoft decided to kill off a service that your product depends on? You'd have to invest in finding an alternative and rewriting your software. Or what if Microsoft sells that service to another company which is actually directly competing with you, and then decides to stop providing third party access, or looks at your usage metrics/data to gain a competitive advantage over you. Or maybe Microsoft gets an incompetent CEO which drives the company to bankruptcy, and Windows and all their services you depend on are sold to hundreds of different companies which you now need to deal with. Building your software on Linux or BSD means you don't have to worry about any of that since you own everything. It's like you're getting vertical integration for free. It's a no-brainer.
  - abarringer 7y ago
    Both replies to me earlier comment mentioned vendor lock in. Is there any greater vendor lock-in then integrating AWS thousand and one services? Is it really riskier to trust MS to not kill a product then Google? Is the answer really to write everything yourself from the OS up? I don't disagree that MS could do any of what you mentioned but I'm not sure AWS/GCP etc wouldn't be as likely to as well.
    - bogwog 7y ago
      I think you misread my comment. I was talking about Windows, not Azure. As far as I know, Azure lets you run Linux on their machines, so there's no point in using Windows and locking yourself in.
  - ldiracdelta 7y ago
    You are vastly more likely to have a long, dependable platform when you use Microsoft than almost anything else. They worship backwards compatibility. Being stranded and all-alone on an open source dependency is very possible. You're vastly more likely to be stranded after using a Google open source product. I say all this having used the linux stack for my entire professional career. I prefer linux by a long shot, but Microsoft backwards compatibility is exemplary compared to almost anyone else, including open source.
    - bogwog 7y ago
      Now that's some grade-A FUD
- m0xte 7y ago
  Not the original poster but from experience of running windows on everything for over 20 years the risks are: being treated like a criminal until you prove yourself innocent, unreliable and difficult to automate tooling, half-baked clones of ideologies as a me to proposition rather than a product direction, absolutely no support worth mentioning even when you pay for it in organs, schizophrenic roadmaps which never materialise or turn up half baked, pretending to care about the community while shitting on it with telemetry and products being yanked that you rely on. Then QA so bad that it makes me wonder if there was any. I feel like most of my time and cash investment has been thrown into putting a marketing facade over this steaming pile of feces. Now there's a pile of legacy on top of Windows which is unavoidable but at this point I couldn't possibly consider building a product from scratch on top of something which has been basically a 20 year long bad trip. I will also push for everything to be moved off their platforms at every available opportunity. On numerous occasions the pure frustration caused by MSFT has nearly made me quit the industry entirely. To confirm, everything is greener on the other side. I do that too.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Depends on the app. Legacy LoB / Enterprise stuff is very Windows-centric. For example, think of the huge sub-industry of “component vendors” that service the legacy Visual Basic ecosystem. If your CTO says they want that LoB system _in the cloud_ without rewriting it then you’re in the market for a Windows cloud provider.
- bogwog 7y ago
  I get the legacy part of it, but for new development I don't see the benefit. Even if Microsoft offers to subsidize hosting if you use Windows or one of their services, that obviously would not last forever.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
In a lot of companies Windows is where it’s at. There is just no way to change this.