5 ms·

I truly believe if AAA titles would not release for windows exclusively no-one would have a good reason to use windows really besides inertia.

by gloosx 1y ago

0xEF 1y ago
Businesses would. The problem with that is you have decision makers in said businesses who don't know any better, so Microsoft-all-the-things gets pushed down the line. Offices are all trapped on Windows 10/11 and using Teams/Outlook with Exchange/Entra/Azure chugging along in all its misconfigured glory. Heck, half the MSPs I work side-by-side with seem to only offer support on Windows machines. It gets worse. When we go to the manufacturing side of the building, there's a high chance they're still using Windows 7. Yeah, still! And IT or Controls has no idea what to do with it since, well, it's still working. Is it secure? They don't know because the team is comprised of kids who memorized the CompTIA exams and use Windows 11 at home. Trying to get the business world to switch to Linux with all that in mind is an impossible task. It's the same as asking an American city to rip out all its old infrastructure at once and replace it with new instead of patching the old. The cost and knowledge required for such a task is unthinkable, to them. Believe me, I've tried. Microsoft was quite brilliant in the way that they shoehorned their way into the fabric of the way we do business, not just in the US, but on a global scale.
- miroljub 1y ago
  Yeah, I totally agree with what's being said here. It's a tough pill to swallow when you realize just how entrenched Microsoft is in the business world, and how difficult it would be to get everyone to make the switch to Linux. I mean, think about it - most companies are still stuck on Windows 10 or 11, and they're using all those Microsoft services like Teams, Outlook, and Exchange. It's like they're trapped in this Microsoft ecosystem, and it's gonna take a lot more than just a few people saying "hey, let's switch to Linux" to get them out of it. And don't even get me started on the IT departments in these places. A lot of them are just kids who memorized some CompTIA exams and don't really know what they're doing. They're using Windows 11 at home, but they have no idea how to deal with all the outdated Windows 7 machines that are still being used in manufacturing. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been really smart about this. They've managed to get their products and services woven into the fabric of how we do business on a global scale. It's gonna take a lot more than just a few open-source projects to change that.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
    ChatGPT response
    - tempaccount420 1y ago
      Keep AI accusations to yourself, it's very rude when you get it wrong.
      - zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
        He re-wrote the comment he was replying to. It was either AI or just pointless.
  - p_ing 1y ago
    They're "trapped" because there is no answer to the Exchange/Outlook combo for business purposes and it's very inexpensive for the value it provides. There are of course alternatives to Teams until you pair Teams with SharePoint/OneDrive/Copilot/Exchange/3rd party market. > A lot of them are just kids who memorized some CompTIA exams and don't really know what they're doing. Well, this is true throughout IT, even those who went to college for a CS or IT-based degrees. People want to make money, and IT has been a safe haven so far to do so.
    - seniorThrowaway 1y ago
      For larger orgs and enterprises, it is Active Directory/Entra. That is the true Microsoft killer app and lock-in driver. There is no comparable Linux solution that I am aware of.
    - thewebguyd 1y ago
      > They're "trapped" because there is no answer to the Exchange/Outlook combo for business purposes and it's very inexpensive for the value it provides. There are of course alternatives to Teams until you pair Teams with SharePoint/OneDrive/Copilot/Exchange/3rd party market. Yep, it's mostly this. Especially for businesses under 300 users, you get Exchange, EntraID, Defender EDR, InTune(MDM) + the Teams/SharePoint/OneDrive/Copilot all integrated for $22/user/month. For a little extra you get a half way decent PBX for VoIP too. If you tried to piece all that together yourself with different services, then integrate them to the same level, it's going to cost a hell of a lot more than that. Microsoft is smart too, as none of that requires Windows either. Even of these companies switched to Linux or macOS en masse, they'd still be using Microsoft. Plus, there's still no competitor to Excel for business types. We might be able to use Google Sheets to great effectiveness, but the finance department at the behemoths can't. The world runs on Excel, like it or not. > A lot of them are just kids who memorized some CompTIA exams and don't really know what they're doing. This is true for all fields not just tech/IT. Competent windows sysadmin work nowadays isn't all that different from macOS endpoints or Linux. Everything can be scripted/automated with PowerShell, or just using the Graph API for 365 stuff. You can effectively manage a windows environment and never touch a GUI if you don't want to. Microsoft usually isn't the best at anything, but what they excel at is being "good enough" and checking boxes.
- smatija 1y ago
  I would be very happy with Windows 7 on manufacturing side - lots of CNCs that are still in use and supported by manufacturers are still on Windows 98.
  - dabockster 1y ago
    I worked at a neighborhood IT shop during the height of COVID and we’d see XP laptops all the time that were used as offline/airgapped controllers for things like CNC mills.
- gloosx 1y ago
  I left some room for myself with "a good reason" :) When company is forcing you to use something out of inertia, then it's probably not for a good reason. Actually regarding the "global scale" – I'm not really sure it's true, I think MS has influence mostly in US. Many EU and Asian companies I worked with were using OSX/Linux.
  - clows 1y ago
    I'm in the EU and (nearly) every company runs windows (on desktop). Especially in larger organizations (there's plenty of windows servers still).
- vrighter 1y ago
  The higher up have such a hardon for Microsoft, I think it could actually be used as a bridge across the Atlantic ocean. We've already spent years migrating shit off of microsoft platforms onto the newest and latest microsoft platforms.
Peanuts99 1y ago
I think you're underestimating how many businesses rely on Excel alone.
- gloosx 1y ago
  You're saying it like there is no alternative and you can't just open and edit same excel files in Libre Office Calc, Google Sheets or Numbers without any problem whatsoever.
  - skobes 1y ago
    I'll say it too! There's no serious alternative to Excel for those who rely on its advanced features. You can't just edit Excel files in Libre Office Calc, Google Sheets, or Numbers without any problem whatsoever.
    - gloosx 1y ago
      Can you give me an example of such advanced features? I really don't understand what outstanding feature did they pack in this "Excel" which has no alternative? If the only problem is migrating from XLSX to some other format I'm sure this is trivial and some tooling must be available.
      - herbst 1y ago
        The problem is not the "advanced features" within Excel but how they are used. If an excel sheet is basically just a front for a visual basic Programm it doesn't easily open anywhere. As Google's JavaScript API also doesn't work in open office and whatever else they all have in extra layers. However i am not sure when and why I encountered such a software last time, but my dad is a Visual Basic guy and has done a lot of these weird sheets for internal business stuff.
        gloosx 1y ago
        So the Visual Basic (lol) macros seem to be the only real thing retaining all the people on Excel, interesting...
b3lvedere 1y ago
The market is getting more diverse (mobile, steam deck alikes, laptops, consoles, etc), but i guess if you want to quickly earn the most money on your (huge) development investment, you better try and take the biggest piece of the pie first. Personally i don't really believe in AAA (or UbiSoft's AAAA) titles that much anymore. Strange exclusivity for some console or device may bring some money early on, but i have plenty games in my Steam libary that could run perfectly under many platforms. And most AAA games heavily drop in price after a few months, Nintendo being the sole exception.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  AAA and AAAA games became (expensive) gateways to microtransaction based money extraction application, in my opinion. I enjoy older, smaller games nonproportionately more when compared to big titles which require much more resources and time. Yes they look nice, yes they use every documented and undocumented feature of my GPU, yes "it's so fluffy", but it is not enjoyable, esp. with shoved down microtransactions. If we're talking FPS, give me any Half-Life (and Portal) title and I'm good. Gameplay first, unique art direction, good story, and a well built universe which is almost palpable with lore. If we're talking RTS, C&C series, Dune Emperor, Supreme Commander and StarCraft is enough.
  - gloosx 1y ago
    I have arm Mac and it's the most painful machine you can own as someone who likes games... Supreme Commander FAF I miss the most, unfortunately unplayable online due to floating-point calculation differences between ARM and x64 which are apparently untranslatable.
  - b3lvedere 1y ago
    I hear you. I don't like that ecosystem as well. I have more than 2000 games on Steam and i love my Steam Deck which i got for pretty cheap. It's a very fun game system and you can tinker a lot with it. Upgrading (bigger disk capacity) is very easy. Just bought Black Mesa for two bucks. Works almost flawlessly. Ten year old game , but much fun to be had. Most games i buy on the very very cheap. Bought Skyrim couple of weeks ago for five bucks. Sure, i click on the free thursday game on the Epic Games store, but i hate that interface with great passion.
icemelt8 1y ago
Adobe Photoshop? Microsoft Excel?
ErrorNoBrain 1y ago
You underestimate how many companies use microsoft business central for various things... But i also believe there's a lot of special software for laboratories etc, that run on windows only
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
UltraSane 1y ago
So many companies use windows server because they don't have anyone who knows Linux.

I truly believe if AAA titles would not release for windows exclusively no-one would have a good reason to use windows really besides inertia.

by gloosx 1y ago

I truly believe if AAA titles would not release for windows exclusively no-one would have a good reason to use windows really besides inertia.

0xEF 1y ago

Businesses would. The problem with that is you have decision makers in said businesses who don't know any better, so Microsoft-all-the-things gets pushed down the line. Offices are all trapped on Windows 10/11 and using Teams/Outlook with Exchange/Entra/Azure chugging along in all its misconfigured glory. Heck, half the MSPs I work side-by-side with seem to only offer support on Windows machines. It gets worse. When we go to the manufacturing side of the building, there's a high chance they're still using Windows 7. Yeah, still! And IT or Controls has no idea what to do with it since, well, it's still working. Is it secure? They don't know because the team is comprised of kids who memorized the CompTIA exams and use Windows 11 at home. Trying to get the business world to switch to Linux with all that in mind is an impossible task. It's the same as asking an American city to rip out all its old infrastructure at once and replace it with new instead of patching the old. The cost and knowledge required for such a task is unthinkable, to them. Believe me, I've tried. Microsoft was quite brilliant in the way that they shoehorned their way into the fabric of the way we do business, not just in the US, but on a global scale.

miroljub 1y ago
Yeah, I totally agree with what's being said here. It's a tough pill to swallow when you realize just how entrenched Microsoft is in the business world, and how difficult it would be to get everyone to make the switch to Linux. I mean, think about it - most companies are still stuck on Windows 10 or 11, and they're using all those Microsoft services like Teams, Outlook, and Exchange. It's like they're trapped in this Microsoft ecosystem, and it's gonna take a lot more than just a few people saying "hey, let's switch to Linux" to get them out of it. And don't even get me started on the IT departments in these places. A lot of them are just kids who memorized some CompTIA exams and don't really know what they're doing. They're using Windows 11 at home, but they have no idea how to deal with all the outdated Windows 7 machines that are still being used in manufacturing. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been really smart about this. They've managed to get their products and services woven into the fabric of how we do business on a global scale. It's gonna take a lot more than just a few open-source projects to change that.
- zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
  ChatGPT response
  - tempaccount420 1y ago
    Keep AI accusations to yourself, it's very rude when you get it wrong.
    - zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
      He re-wrote the comment he was replying to. It was either AI or just pointless.
- p_ing 1y ago
  They're "trapped" because there is no answer to the Exchange/Outlook combo for business purposes and it's very inexpensive for the value it provides. There are of course alternatives to Teams until you pair Teams with SharePoint/OneDrive/Copilot/Exchange/3rd party market. > A lot of them are just kids who memorized some CompTIA exams and don't really know what they're doing. Well, this is true throughout IT, even those who went to college for a CS or IT-based degrees. People want to make money, and IT has been a safe haven so far to do so.
  - seniorThrowaway 1y ago
    For larger orgs and enterprises, it is Active Directory/Entra. That is the true Microsoft killer app and lock-in driver. There is no comparable Linux solution that I am aware of.
  - thewebguyd 1y ago
    > They're "trapped" because there is no answer to the Exchange/Outlook combo for business purposes and it's very inexpensive for the value it provides. There are of course alternatives to Teams until you pair Teams with SharePoint/OneDrive/Copilot/Exchange/3rd party market. Yep, it's mostly this. Especially for businesses under 300 users, you get Exchange, EntraID, Defender EDR, InTune(MDM) + the Teams/SharePoint/OneDrive/Copilot all integrated for $22/user/month. For a little extra you get a half way decent PBX for VoIP too. If you tried to piece all that together yourself with different services, then integrate them to the same level, it's going to cost a hell of a lot more than that. Microsoft is smart too, as none of that requires Windows either. Even of these companies switched to Linux or macOS en masse, they'd still be using Microsoft. Plus, there's still no competitor to Excel for business types. We might be able to use Google Sheets to great effectiveness, but the finance department at the behemoths can't. The world runs on Excel, like it or not. > A lot of them are just kids who memorized some CompTIA exams and don't really know what they're doing. This is true for all fields not just tech/IT. Competent windows sysadmin work nowadays isn't all that different from macOS endpoints or Linux. Everything can be scripted/automated with PowerShell, or just using the Graph API for 365 stuff. You can effectively manage a windows environment and never touch a GUI if you don't want to. Microsoft usually isn't the best at anything, but what they excel at is being "good enough" and checking boxes.
smatija 1y ago
I would be very happy with Windows 7 on manufacturing side - lots of CNCs that are still in use and supported by manufacturers are still on Windows 98.
- dabockster 1y ago
  I worked at a neighborhood IT shop during the height of COVID and we’d see XP laptops all the time that were used as offline/airgapped controllers for things like CNC mills.
gloosx 1y ago
I left some room for myself with "a good reason" :) When company is forcing you to use something out of inertia, then it's probably not for a good reason. Actually regarding the "global scale" – I'm not really sure it's true, I think MS has influence mostly in US. Many EU and Asian companies I worked with were using OSX/Linux.
- clows 1y ago
  I'm in the EU and (nearly) every company runs windows (on desktop). Especially in larger organizations (there's plenty of windows servers still).
vrighter 1y ago
The higher up have such a hardon for Microsoft, I think it could actually be used as a bridge across the Atlantic ocean. We've already spent years migrating shit off of microsoft platforms onto the newest and latest microsoft platforms.

Peanuts99 1y ago

I think you're underestimating how many businesses rely on Excel alone.

gloosx 1y ago
You're saying it like there is no alternative and you can't just open and edit same excel files in Libre Office Calc, Google Sheets or Numbers without any problem whatsoever.
- skobes 1y ago
  I'll say it too! There's no serious alternative to Excel for those who rely on its advanced features. You can't just edit Excel files in Libre Office Calc, Google Sheets, or Numbers without any problem whatsoever.
  - gloosx 1y ago
    Can you give me an example of such advanced features? I really don't understand what outstanding feature did they pack in this "Excel" which has no alternative? If the only problem is migrating from XLSX to some other format I'm sure this is trivial and some tooling must be available.
    - herbst 1y ago
      The problem is not the "advanced features" within Excel but how they are used. If an excel sheet is basically just a front for a visual basic Programm it doesn't easily open anywhere. As Google's JavaScript API also doesn't work in open office and whatever else they all have in extra layers. However i am not sure when and why I encountered such a software last time, but my dad is a Visual Basic guy and has done a lot of these weird sheets for internal business stuff.
      - gloosx 1y ago
        So the Visual Basic (lol) macros seem to be the only real thing retaining all the people on Excel, interesting...

b3lvedere 1y ago

The market is getting more diverse (mobile, steam deck alikes, laptops, consoles, etc), but i guess if you want to quickly earn the most money on your (huge) development investment, you better try and take the biggest piece of the pie first. Personally i don't really believe in AAA (or UbiSoft's AAAA) titles that much anymore. Strange exclusivity for some console or device may bring some money early on, but i have plenty games in my Steam libary that could run perfectly under many platforms. And most AAA games heavily drop in price after a few months, Nintendo being the sole exception.

bayindirh 1y ago
AAA and AAAA games became (expensive) gateways to microtransaction based money extraction application, in my opinion. I enjoy older, smaller games nonproportionately more when compared to big titles which require much more resources and time. Yes they look nice, yes they use every documented and undocumented feature of my GPU, yes "it's so fluffy", but it is not enjoyable, esp. with shoved down microtransactions. If we're talking FPS, give me any Half-Life (and Portal) title and I'm good. Gameplay first, unique art direction, good story, and a well built universe which is almost palpable with lore. If we're talking RTS, C&C series, Dune Emperor, Supreme Commander and StarCraft is enough.
- gloosx 1y ago
  I have arm Mac and it's the most painful machine you can own as someone who likes games... Supreme Commander FAF I miss the most, unfortunately unplayable online due to floating-point calculation differences between ARM and x64 which are apparently untranslatable.
- b3lvedere 1y ago
  I hear you. I don't like that ecosystem as well. I have more than 2000 games on Steam and i love my Steam Deck which i got for pretty cheap. It's a very fun game system and you can tinker a lot with it. Upgrading (bigger disk capacity) is very easy. Just bought Black Mesa for two bucks. Works almost flawlessly. Ten year old game , but much fun to be had. Most games i buy on the very very cheap. Bought Skyrim couple of weeks ago for five bucks. Sure, i click on the free thursday game on the Epic Games store, but i hate that interface with great passion.

icemelt8 1y ago

Adobe Photoshop? Microsoft Excel?

ErrorNoBrain 1y ago

You underestimate how many companies use microsoft business central for various things... But i also believe there's a lot of special software for laboratories etc, that run on windows only

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

UltraSane 1y ago

So many companies use windows server because they don't have anyone who knows Linux.