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There is still an application barrier. If you want to make a OS that becomes popular, it needs to have better applications than other operating systems. Making

There is still an application barrier. If you want to make a OS that becomes popular, it needs to have better applications than other operating systems. Making the OS compatible with existing ones is bound to fail and violate IP rights. Making it Linux-based doesn't help because existing Linux applications are not competitive enough. They could be improved with consistent OS-level services and APIs but that requires developers to actually use them. Nobody is interested in an OS without killer applications.

constantcrying 1y ago
I don't think administrative work needs any killer applications. You need a complete system which actually works together and can be sourced by a single vendor.
- jonathanstrange 1y ago
  You're assuming that people want to switch but I'm talking about the incentives for end consumers to switch. There has to be some strong motivation for switching, and it's not only going to be GUI design. Something about a new OS must be really desirable, either the hardware it's running on or better applications. I'm using Linux as my daily workhorse since 2008 so I'm not opposed to it in any way. But the fact is that due to lack of integration with the OS, every Linux application is slightly less good than its commercial MacOS and Windows counterpart. GIMP is slightly awkward to use in comparison to Photoshop, LibreOffice can replace Word but definitely isn't better, pro audio applications are virtually non-existent for Linux and work only as good if you don't need any pro plugins (very few of which are produced for Linux), Dia, Inkscape, and other vector drawing programs are far less good than e.g. Affinity Publisher, and so on and so forth. Linux doesn't even have good content indexing comparable to Spotlight. Applications don't even have consistent user interfaces.
  - constantcrying 1y ago
    >You're assuming that people want to switch No, I am not. That is the stance of the EU. Switching is a matter of European security. What "people" want is already irrelevant and whether the GUI is consistent or not couldn't matter less.
    - nonrandomstring 1y ago
      > What "people" want is already irrelevant This! Software is stuck in some illusory ideal from the dotcom days, a global market of meritous choice. It's long been political and about sovereignty, control and security. Some comments above sing the praises of Adobe as a "no alternative" software. So, remember that time when Trump passed an executive order banning Adobe in South American countries [0]? The US does not get to use access to tech as a weapon, so they're not good enough by wider criteria in a changing political world. It doesn't matter how good are products by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Meta... I also happen to think they're technically inferior to a diverse inter-compatible and free ecosystem, but that's becoming a side show. In a way its good that there are no European vendors. The coming change cannot be mistaken for trade preference. People are being "forced to be free" of dangerous influence [1]. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49973337 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49973337 [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/
    - jonathanstrange 1y ago
      Oh well, that was a misunderstanding. If people are forced to use a new OS whether they want it or not, then of course any Linux distro will do and there is hardly any need for a new OS, let alone one that the EU has developed. I was assuming, in the context of the original post, that the EU lacks in innovation with regards to operating systems and tried to explain why it is hard to innovate in this area because of the application barrier and due to the fact that viable alternatives like Linux aren't competitive enough.
  - vladms 1y ago
    I would claim that many people would be fine using something else because they use 30% of the features of the respective applications. They end up using Windows (or Android, or iOS) also because because that is the only option when you go in a shop to buy the hardware. I have a hard time buying a computer without Windows installed even if I actively want to!
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      As the netbooks wave has proven, followed by Android and ChromeOS one, is that when you go to the shop, you will be getting a laptop with Asus Linux, Dell Linux, HP Linux, naturally branded with cool names from their marketing department, and full of usefull apps as differentiation factor, and naturally the related Linux drivers are only available from their respective support pages for the usual support timeframe. They might eventually add support to something like Ubuntu, alongside their own OEM specific distribution, but naturally folks will complain they cannot install NixOS, and eventually they will remove those devices from the shops, as their sales become a rounding error. However I do agree BSD and Linux distributions seem to be the only way to get independence from USA powered OSes, especially if we get back into the export regulations with the current ways of the administration in power.
- noirscape 1y ago
  Administrative work needs 2 killer suites to work: Microsoft Office and the Adobe design suite. Any replacement for these will basically have to be a bug for bug clone if you want them to work. LibreOffice is 80% of the way there, but it still mucks up too often to be reliable. PDF viewers are plenty, but there's no effective replacement for Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop[0]. Third party vendors you have to work with for other things (ie. Printing folders) require stuff to be in the formats made by these two software suites and their response to "your printing press isn't following the PDF spec" isn't gonna be "oh sorry, we'll migrate our hardware", it's gonna be "the printer says no and my other customers don't complain so just send me the files correctly." Since Adobe and Microsoft are the default, this is something third party vendors can say and get away with. The shoe is on your foot, not on theirs. [0]: GIMP doesn't even come close to being a Photoshop replacement, they do very different things. Photoshop is a photo editor + drawing program, while GIMP is aimed at image manipulation. The difference comes into play with how the interface is designed and the complexity of certain actions in each program. GIMP is designed to let you do specific individual things to an image, while Photoshop is more aimed at giving the user entire workflows.
  - guappa 1y ago
    > but there's no effective replacement for Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop[0]. Ah photoshop. Every municipality employee uses photoshop at least 5h a day!
  - Tmpod 1y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with Adobe design suite being needed. I am a close to someone who's been through multiple different public sector institutions in my country and the only true constants is the cord Microsoft Office suite (Word+Excel+PowerPoint), Outlook and more recently Adobe Acrobat (mostly because of digital signing) and Microsoft Teams. The core office suite is very good and people are very used to it. It also seems to be the hardest to truly replace, in my opinion. LibreOffice and OnlyOffice are a good step forward but they're not replacements yet, for a lot of people, due to a simple fact (already mentioned somewhere here): people have been using this software for decades and are very used to the way they work, and replicating that, especially nicher things, is not trivial and takes a lot of work. Still, I'm hopeful. Outlook, Acrobat and Teams may be easier to switch, particularly the last two. Outlook (and Exchange) has some extra nicities compared to plain standard email (from the top of my head, I recall read receipts and automatic responses for when you're away being important ones), but there are some nice projects tackling both the client and server side parts of those features. Acrobat could maybe be replaced by a reader like Okular, given a bit more polish, and Teams is so bad and often used in such basic ways that it could trivially be replaced by something like Mattermost (though I personally much prefer Zulip's model). Again, all this is based on my experience and certainly won't apply everywhere.

constantcrying 1y ago

I don't think administrative work needs any killer applications. You need a complete system which actually works together and can be sourced by a single vendor.

jonathanstrange 1y ago
You're assuming that people want to switch but I'm talking about the incentives for end consumers to switch. There has to be some strong motivation for switching, and it's not only going to be GUI design. Something about a new OS must be really desirable, either the hardware it's running on or better applications. I'm using Linux as my daily workhorse since 2008 so I'm not opposed to it in any way. But the fact is that due to lack of integration with the OS, every Linux application is slightly less good than its commercial MacOS and Windows counterpart. GIMP is slightly awkward to use in comparison to Photoshop, LibreOffice can replace Word but definitely isn't better, pro audio applications are virtually non-existent for Linux and work only as good if you don't need any pro plugins (very few of which are produced for Linux), Dia, Inkscape, and other vector drawing programs are far less good than e.g. Affinity Publisher, and so on and so forth. Linux doesn't even have good content indexing comparable to Spotlight. Applications don't even have consistent user interfaces.
- constantcrying 1y ago
  >You're assuming that people want to switch No, I am not. That is the stance of the EU. Switching is a matter of European security. What "people" want is already irrelevant and whether the GUI is consistent or not couldn't matter less.
  - nonrandomstring 1y ago
    > What "people" want is already irrelevant This! Software is stuck in some illusory ideal from the dotcom days, a global market of meritous choice. It's long been political and about sovereignty, control and security. Some comments above sing the praises of Adobe as a "no alternative" software. So, remember that time when Trump passed an executive order banning Adobe in South American countries [0]? The US does not get to use access to tech as a weapon, so they're not good enough by wider criteria in a changing political world. It doesn't matter how good are products by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Meta... I also happen to think they're technically inferior to a diverse inter-compatible and free ecosystem, but that's becoming a side show. In a way its good that there are no European vendors. The coming change cannot be mistaken for trade preference. People are being "forced to be free" of dangerous influence [1]. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49973337 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49973337 [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/
  - jonathanstrange 1y ago
    Oh well, that was a misunderstanding. If people are forced to use a new OS whether they want it or not, then of course any Linux distro will do and there is hardly any need for a new OS, let alone one that the EU has developed. I was assuming, in the context of the original post, that the EU lacks in innovation with regards to operating systems and tried to explain why it is hard to innovate in this area because of the application barrier and due to the fact that viable alternatives like Linux aren't competitive enough.
- vladms 1y ago
  I would claim that many people would be fine using something else because they use 30% of the features of the respective applications. They end up using Windows (or Android, or iOS) also because because that is the only option when you go in a shop to buy the hardware. I have a hard time buying a computer without Windows installed even if I actively want to!
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    As the netbooks wave has proven, followed by Android and ChromeOS one, is that when you go to the shop, you will be getting a laptop with Asus Linux, Dell Linux, HP Linux, naturally branded with cool names from their marketing department, and full of usefull apps as differentiation factor, and naturally the related Linux drivers are only available from their respective support pages for the usual support timeframe. They might eventually add support to something like Ubuntu, alongside their own OEM specific distribution, but naturally folks will complain they cannot install NixOS, and eventually they will remove those devices from the shops, as their sales become a rounding error. However I do agree BSD and Linux distributions seem to be the only way to get independence from USA powered OSes, especially if we get back into the export regulations with the current ways of the administration in power.
noirscape 1y ago
Administrative work needs 2 killer suites to work: Microsoft Office and the Adobe design suite. Any replacement for these will basically have to be a bug for bug clone if you want them to work. LibreOffice is 80% of the way there, but it still mucks up too often to be reliable. PDF viewers are plenty, but there's no effective replacement for Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop[0]. Third party vendors you have to work with for other things (ie. Printing folders) require stuff to be in the formats made by these two software suites and their response to "your printing press isn't following the PDF spec" isn't gonna be "oh sorry, we'll migrate our hardware", it's gonna be "the printer says no and my other customers don't complain so just send me the files correctly." Since Adobe and Microsoft are the default, this is something third party vendors can say and get away with. The shoe is on your foot, not on theirs. [0]: GIMP doesn't even come close to being a Photoshop replacement, they do very different things. Photoshop is a photo editor + drawing program, while GIMP is aimed at image manipulation. The difference comes into play with how the interface is designed and the complexity of certain actions in each program. GIMP is designed to let you do specific individual things to an image, while Photoshop is more aimed at giving the user entire workflows.
- guappa 1y ago
  > but there's no effective replacement for Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop[0]. Ah photoshop. Every municipality employee uses photoshop at least 5h a day!
- Tmpod 1y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with Adobe design suite being needed. I am a close to someone who's been through multiple different public sector institutions in my country and the only true constants is the cord Microsoft Office suite (Word+Excel+PowerPoint), Outlook and more recently Adobe Acrobat (mostly because of digital signing) and Microsoft Teams. The core office suite is very good and people are very used to it. It also seems to be the hardest to truly replace, in my opinion. LibreOffice and OnlyOffice are a good step forward but they're not replacements yet, for a lot of people, due to a simple fact (already mentioned somewhere here): people have been using this software for decades and are very used to the way they work, and replicating that, especially nicher things, is not trivial and takes a lot of work. Still, I'm hopeful. Outlook, Acrobat and Teams may be easier to switch, particularly the last two. Outlook (and Exchange) has some extra nicities compared to plain standard email (from the top of my head, I recall read receipts and automatic responses for when you're away being important ones), but there are some nice projects tackling both the client and server side parts of those features. Acrobat could maybe be replaced by a reader like Okular, given a bit more polish, and Teams is so bad and often used in such basic ways that it could trivially be replaced by something like Mattermost (though I personally much prefer Zulip's model). Again, all this is based on my experience and certainly won't apply everywhere.