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Offering a cloud service to a linux user is like tempting a vegetarian with meat. Linux users often choose Linux because they want to be in control of their da

by chme 7y ago

Offering a cloud service to a linux user is like tempting a vegetarian with meat. Linux users often choose Linux because they want to be in control of their data and devices, cloud services are about giving control of that away to companies.

ses1984 7y ago
I think a significant number of Linux users don't care about this.
- chme 7y ago
  That depends. If they are a Linux user because Linux runs on their server, router, mobile phone or what not. Then you are probably right. People that go through the trouble of installing Linux on a Desktop Machine, where Windows or MacOS was probably pre-installed, will either dual boot or use Linux exclusively. If they dual-boot, they will probably just use Office on the non-Linux System and not care. But if they use Linux exclusively they will very probably care about the freedom and control Linux brings.
  - ses1984 7y ago
    I still disagree. I used Linux almost exclusively because it made my job easier and I don't like switching between operating systems, and I use cloud services like Gmail and Dropbox. I also use the free version of onenote from ms. I just use whatever is convenient. Then I switched jobs, they gave me a new MacBook that doesn't run Linux so I use osx. Ten years ago I cared about privacy, now I feel like that ship has sailed. My own privacy is not that important. The privacy of my fellow citizens is gone. I mourn it kind of, but you can't close Pandora's box.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    There are a gigantic number of people whose university or corporate IT department installs Linux for them on standard issue hardware which they use every day for their job. E.g. big companies whose programmers all develop on Linux machines, or most academics in programming-adjacent fields like statistics or machine learning. Another category is people who installed it themselves because they like it better, but for non-ideological reasons. Like, a large chunk of programmers feel much more comfortable on Linux than Windows. (I’m not sure what to make of your point about dual booting — it’s hard to believe anyone would “not care” about having to do a full reboot every time they wanted to do something as common as view an office document. Now “let me finish reading that interview candidate’s resume” goes from something I can alt-tab to while compiling into an ordeal of saving all my open work, rebooting, downloading and opening and reading it, rebooting again, reopening all my work...)
    - Hwatwasthat 7y ago
      I fall into the another category. I use Linux because I like how I can customise heavily how it looks and have control over when updates are installed. I do some programming as well which does admittedly work better for me on Linux. I don't really care about the ideology. I use a Nvidia graphics card with closed source drivers because I want the best performance. Free and open source is nice, because I like how that works as an ecosystem but I'm never going to turn something I want down because its closed source. I considered dual booting for gaming but honestly enough works and as you say about rebooting just to open an office document, I don't feel like doing that just to play one game and then go back.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
>Linux users often choose Linux because they want to be in control of their data and devices, cloud services are about giving control of that away to companies. You may have been able to get away with that kind of broad generalization a decade ago (actually mo -- that's not true, AWS and Canonical's push to cloud started MORE than a decade ago. Google too. Let's call it 15 years ago), but that is certainly not the case now. And frankly, I think putting Linux users in a box where only FOSS drivers are allowed (even though Nvidia GPUs are doing much of the best work for CUDA) and to use it you have to be lock-step with an ideology that very few people will ever be able to be "pure" enough to follow completely (assuming they want to follow that ideology in the first place), does the Linux ecosystem a major disservice. I would posit that the vast majority of developers and end-users who access and use Linux on a daily basis are doing it at least in part through a cloud service -- whether its a cheap VPS or a large cluster of machines. *Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on Azure. These are my thoughts and do not represent those of others. I primarily use a Mac but have been playing with/arguing about Linux for 20 years -- going back to when I was 15 years old. I also use WSL on Windows.
- chme 7y ago
  Well we are talking about using Linux on a desktop machine exclusively, only then a demand for a non-cloud version of MS Office would make sense, I think. This subset of people are probably more likely to care about control of their data that just some people that dual-boot or use linux on their android phone.
- sterlind 7y ago
  I also work on Azure, hi! I have mixed feelings about closed-source blobs tainting my kernel. AMD did a terrific job open-sourcing their driver stack. I use Nvidia for deep learning out of necessity but I resent it, as I'm completely locked into X11 because they can't be assed to implement GBM. Nvidia has also gotten a stranglehold over the DL and HPC markets with CUDA, causing a chicken-and-egg problem where OpenCL isn't well supported because none of the cards that require it have serious power, and it's not worth AMD putting lots of money into the HPC market because it's locked into CUDA. NVidia needs Linux more than Linux needs NVidia (imagine competing on HPC while running Windows-only!) And yet, they contribute nothing to the kernel and stymie efforts towards unified standards like GBM. it's shades of DirectX all over again. that's the problem with tainting.
philwelch 7y ago
Linux is a kernel, it’s not a way of life. Chromebook and Android users are Linux users. People who use web applications that run on Linux servers are Linux users. Developers who use Vagrant or Docker on Mac OS, or Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows, are Linux users. Microsoft may or may not “love” the tiny subset of users who run Linux-based desktops and are unwilling to use web applications. But that doesn’t mean they don’t “love” Linux as a foundational technology of modern computing.
- rewgs 7y ago
  You're being pedantic. "Linux users" in a post like this clearly means a specific thing. Context matters.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    It means a specific thing, but the specific thing that it means is insignificant. The basic argument that “if Microsoft really cared about Linux they’d write native Office apps for Linux desktops” is myopic and, in itself, ignores the broader context of what makes Linux relevant in the first place. As you say, context matters—and context is exactly what I was providing.
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      Agree with you 100%. On a related note, it strikes me as wrong that so much of the discourse about Linux revolves around its suitability for general consumer desktop use. People always talk about “the year of the Linux desktop” (and not always ironically!) but honestly, whether a random person can play 4k Netflix on their Linux laptop is like 0.1% of why Linux matters in the world.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > Linux is a kernel, it’s not a way of life. You're being disingenuous. Linux users are users of Linux and software that runs on Linux. In the context of service deployment, this clearly refers to users who need to deploy Linux VMs to run software that runs on Linux. The kernel is irrelevant. This use case clearly refers to Linux distributions, which nowadays probably means Debian or a Debian-based distro. So obviously in this context a Linux users means someone who needs to deploy a Debian-based distro on VMs to deploy and run software on it. In fact, more often than not when people refer to running Linux they are actually implying that they need to deploy and run software on a specific ecosystem, such as a combination of a package manager, package repository, service manager, and even f Directory tree layout. This is not a way of life or a cult. It's a technical requirement that must be met for people to do their job.
RaleyField 7y ago
> want to be in control of their data and devices, The other day there was a thread on HN about which laptop is great for Linux. Tons of people recommended Lenovo, a guy from Redhat said it's even the brand that's used internally and I got a little depressed and smh. Nobody mentioned superfish. Those glorious days of Linux are gone.
- vetinari 7y ago
  Redhat internally uses Thinkpads. Superfish was on Ideapads, and it was bundled Windows software. While both are by Lenovo, they are separate product lines.
  - antisemiotic 7y ago
    "We are a totally trustworthy company, we screw only some of our customers."
    - vetinari 7y ago
      In that segment? I would wonder something is wrong, if they didn't. Ideapads are in market segment, that is extremely price sensitive, but not quality-sensitive. If the competition would cost 10 bucks less, it would be a huge win for them, so everyone tries to minimize price while preserving margins as much as possible. In the end, these devices do ship with Windows, which has privacy problems anyway. All this is moot, when you put Linux on it, which was the context we were talking about.
      - antisemiotic 7y ago
        To each his own, in my opinion consumer market for laptops being a trash fire doesn't excuse putting malware on them.
        vetinari 7y ago
        Yes, it was stupid. Should that mean you are never going to buy thinkpad again? Probably not.
skinnymuch 7y ago
The whole point of being vegetarian is to not eat meat. That in no way is analogous to Linux and cloud stuff. You seem to be talking about a subset of Linux users. And then a subset of that subset who find cloud apps as bad as vegetarians may find meat.

by chme 7y ago

ses1984 7y ago

I think a significant number of Linux users don't care about this.

chme 7y ago
That depends. If they are a Linux user because Linux runs on their server, router, mobile phone or what not. Then you are probably right. People that go through the trouble of installing Linux on a Desktop Machine, where Windows or MacOS was probably pre-installed, will either dual boot or use Linux exclusively. If they dual-boot, they will probably just use Office on the non-Linux System and not care. But if they use Linux exclusively they will very probably care about the freedom and control Linux brings.
- ses1984 7y ago
  I still disagree. I used Linux almost exclusively because it made my job easier and I don't like switching between operating systems, and I use cloud services like Gmail and Dropbox. I also use the free version of onenote from ms. I just use whatever is convenient. Then I switched jobs, they gave me a new MacBook that doesn't run Linux so I use osx. Ten years ago I cared about privacy, now I feel like that ship has sailed. My own privacy is not that important. The privacy of my fellow citizens is gone. I mourn it kind of, but you can't close Pandora's box.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  There are a gigantic number of people whose university or corporate IT department installs Linux for them on standard issue hardware which they use every day for their job. E.g. big companies whose programmers all develop on Linux machines, or most academics in programming-adjacent fields like statistics or machine learning. Another category is people who installed it themselves because they like it better, but for non-ideological reasons. Like, a large chunk of programmers feel much more comfortable on Linux than Windows. (I’m not sure what to make of your point about dual booting — it’s hard to believe anyone would “not care” about having to do a full reboot every time they wanted to do something as common as view an office document. Now “let me finish reading that interview candidate’s resume” goes from something I can alt-tab to while compiling into an ordeal of saving all my open work, rebooting, downloading and opening and reading it, rebooting again, reopening all my work...)
  - Hwatwasthat 7y ago
    I fall into the another category. I use Linux because I like how I can customise heavily how it looks and have control over when updates are installed. I do some programming as well which does admittedly work better for me on Linux. I don't really care about the ideology. I use a Nvidia graphics card with closed source drivers because I want the best performance. Free and open source is nice, because I like how that works as an ecosystem but I'm never going to turn something I want down because its closed source. I considered dual booting for gaming but honestly enough works and as you say about rebooting just to open an office document, I don't feel like doing that just to play one game and then go back.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

>Linux users often choose Linux because they want to be in control of their data and devices, cloud services are about giving control of that away to companies. You may have been able to get away with that kind of broad generalization a decade ago (actually mo -- that's not true, AWS and Canonical's push to cloud started MORE than a decade ago. Google too. Let's call it 15 years ago), but that is certainly not the case now. And frankly, I think putting Linux users in a box where only FOSS drivers are allowed (even though Nvidia GPUs are doing much of the best work for CUDA) and to use it you have to be lock-step with an ideology that very few people will ever be able to be "pure" enough to follow completely (assuming they want to follow that ideology in the first place), does the Linux ecosystem a major disservice. I would posit that the vast majority of developers and end-users who access and use Linux on a daily basis are doing it at least in part through a cloud service -- whether its a cheap VPS or a large cluster of machines. *Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on Azure. These are my thoughts and do not represent those of others. I primarily use a Mac but have been playing with/arguing about Linux for 20 years -- going back to when I was 15 years old. I also use WSL on Windows.

chme 7y ago
Well we are talking about using Linux on a desktop machine exclusively, only then a demand for a non-cloud version of MS Office would make sense, I think. This subset of people are probably more likely to care about control of their data that just some people that dual-boot or use linux on their android phone.
sterlind 7y ago
I also work on Azure, hi! I have mixed feelings about closed-source blobs tainting my kernel. AMD did a terrific job open-sourcing their driver stack. I use Nvidia for deep learning out of necessity but I resent it, as I'm completely locked into X11 because they can't be assed to implement GBM. Nvidia has also gotten a stranglehold over the DL and HPC markets with CUDA, causing a chicken-and-egg problem where OpenCL isn't well supported because none of the cards that require it have serious power, and it's not worth AMD putting lots of money into the HPC market because it's locked into CUDA. NVidia needs Linux more than Linux needs NVidia (imagine competing on HPC while running Windows-only!) And yet, they contribute nothing to the kernel and stymie efforts towards unified standards like GBM. it's shades of DirectX all over again. that's the problem with tainting.

philwelch 7y ago

Linux is a kernel, it’s not a way of life. Chromebook and Android users are Linux users. People who use web applications that run on Linux servers are Linux users. Developers who use Vagrant or Docker on Mac OS, or Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows, are Linux users. Microsoft may or may not “love” the tiny subset of users who run Linux-based desktops and are unwilling to use web applications. But that doesn’t mean they don’t “love” Linux as a foundational technology of modern computing.

rewgs 7y ago
You're being pedantic. "Linux users" in a post like this clearly means a specific thing. Context matters.
- philwelch 7y ago
  It means a specific thing, but the specific thing that it means is insignificant. The basic argument that “if Microsoft really cared about Linux they’d write native Office apps for Linux desktops” is myopic and, in itself, ignores the broader context of what makes Linux relevant in the first place. As you say, context matters—and context is exactly what I was providing.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Agree with you 100%. On a related note, it strikes me as wrong that so much of the discourse about Linux revolves around its suitability for general consumer desktop use. People always talk about “the year of the Linux desktop” (and not always ironically!) but honestly, whether a random person can play 4k Netflix on their Linux laptop is like 0.1% of why Linux matters in the world.
rumanator 7y ago
> Linux is a kernel, it’s not a way of life. You're being disingenuous. Linux users are users of Linux and software that runs on Linux. In the context of service deployment, this clearly refers to users who need to deploy Linux VMs to run software that runs on Linux. The kernel is irrelevant. This use case clearly refers to Linux distributions, which nowadays probably means Debian or a Debian-based distro. So obviously in this context a Linux users means someone who needs to deploy a Debian-based distro on VMs to deploy and run software on it. In fact, more often than not when people refer to running Linux they are actually implying that they need to deploy and run software on a specific ecosystem, such as a combination of a package manager, package repository, service manager, and even f Directory tree layout. This is not a way of life or a cult. It's a technical requirement that must be met for people to do their job.

RaleyField 7y ago

> want to be in control of their data and devices, The other day there was a thread on HN about which laptop is great for Linux. Tons of people recommended Lenovo, a guy from Redhat said it's even the brand that's used internally and I got a little depressed and smh. Nobody mentioned superfish. Those glorious days of Linux are gone.

vetinari 7y ago
Redhat internally uses Thinkpads. Superfish was on Ideapads, and it was bundled Windows software. While both are by Lenovo, they are separate product lines.
- antisemiotic 7y ago
  "We are a totally trustworthy company, we screw only some of our customers."
  - vetinari 7y ago
    In that segment? I would wonder something is wrong, if they didn't. Ideapads are in market segment, that is extremely price sensitive, but not quality-sensitive. If the competition would cost 10 bucks less, it would be a huge win for them, so everyone tries to minimize price while preserving margins as much as possible. In the end, these devices do ship with Windows, which has privacy problems anyway. All this is moot, when you put Linux on it, which was the context we were talking about.
    - antisemiotic 7y ago
      To each his own, in my opinion consumer market for laptops being a trash fire doesn't excuse putting malware on them.
      - vetinari 7y ago
        Yes, it was stupid. Should that mean you are never going to buy thinkpad again? Probably not.

skinnymuch 7y ago

The whole point of being vegetarian is to not eat meat. That in no way is analogous to Linux and cloud stuff. You seem to be talking about a subset of Linux users. And then a subset of that subset who find cloud apps as bad as vegetarians may find meat.