11 ms·

So both of the other big two desktop OSs now have official mechanisms to run Linux VMs to host Linux-native applications. You can make some kind of argument fr

by sho_hn 1y ago

So both of the other big two desktop OSs now have official mechanisms to run Linux VMs to host Linux-native applications. You can make some kind of argument from this that Linux has won; certainly the Linux syscall API is now perhaps the most ubiquitous application API.

OJFord 1y ago
'Linux with macOS.'
bakztfutur3 1y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
paxys 1y ago
Is it winning if you are the only one playing the game? Brag about this to an average Windows or Mac user and they will go "huh?" and "what is Linux?"
- sho_hn 1y ago
  > Is it winning if you are the only one playing the game? Depending on what you mean with "the game", I'd say even more so. MS/Apple used to villify or ridicule Linux, now they need to distribute it to make their own product whole, because it turns out having an Open Source general purpose OS is so convenient and useful it's been utilized in lots of interesting ways - containers, for example - that the proprietary OS implementations simply weren't available for. I'd say it's a remarkable development.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  By that logic, this feature and WSL shouldn't exist.
  - paxys 1y ago
    They exist because linux server developers would rather use windows or mac as their primary desktop OS rather than linux. That's not a flex for linux desktop. Quite the opposite.
    - baq 1y ago
      Trust me I’d rather use Linux than macOS, that’s after 2.5 years of full time work on a beefy MacBook Pro. The problem is that it isn’t possible to buy a machine as good as the MacBook which runs Linux. Asahi is not ready and won’t be for years, if ever.
      - whatevermom 1y ago
        Asahi is not that bad, did you try it out? I’ve been building a Sway configuration from scratch on it since two weeks and it’s working pretty well. Did a ton of administrative stuff with it yesterday without much trouble other than the key bindings being a bit weird coming from macOS.
        baq 1y ago
        Last time I checked M3 support is not coming anytime soon. M1 is kinda sorta maybe good enough sometimes? But it wouldn't be my main dev box.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      In my experience, it isn't Linux server developers who decide what platform their organizations provision on their employees' devices. That's up to management and IT departments who prefer the simplicity of employees using the same systems they do, and prefer to utilize the competencies in macOS/Windows administration their IT departments have.
    - Lio 1y ago
      Equally, they exist because mac and windows users would rather use Linux for their server operating system than anything else and that’s not a flex for Apple or Microsoft either.
sangeeth96 1y ago
> Linux has won Needing two of the most famous non-Linux operating systems for the layman to sanely develop programs for Linux systems is not particularly a victory if you look at it from that perspective. Just highlights the piss-poor state of Linux desktop even after all these years. For the average person, it's still terrible on every front and something I still have a hard time recommending when things so often go belly up. Before you jump on me, every year, I install the latest Fedora/Ubuntu (supposedly the noob-friendly recommendations) on a relatively modern PC/Laptop and not once have I stopped and thought "huh, this is actually pretty usable and stable".
- sho_hn 1y ago
  I'd say that's a fairly web development-centric take. I work at an embedded shop that happily puts a few million cars running Linux on the road every year, and we have hundreds of devs mainly running Linux to develop for Linux.
  - sangeeth96 1y ago
    The average person is not dishing out software that runs on millions of cars from the average PC/laptop they got off the shelves from their bestbuy equivalent. I’d say the same for the average developer. I’d also guess if given a choice and unless there are technical limitations that prevent it from being so, even the devs in your shop would rather prefer to switch to a usable daily driver OS to get things done. The desktop marketshare stats back me up on the earlier point and last I checked, no distro got anywhere close? Sure, Android is the exception (if we agree to consider) but until we get serious dev going there and until Android morphs into a full-fledged desktop OS, my point stands.
    - etra0 1y ago
      well, don't forget there's a fully fledged console now too, which by the way, runs games made for windows on linux, with better performance. And yes, that's bought by the 'average person'.
aljgz 1y ago
Well. It can also be argued that the other two platforms are finding ways to allow using Linux without leaving those platforms, which slows down market share of Linux on desktop as the primary OS.
- selcuka 1y ago
  > which slows down market share of Linux on desktop as the primary OS I think what slows down market share of Linux on desktop is Linux on desktop itself. I use Linux, and I understand that it's a very hard job to take it to the level of Windows or macOS, but it is what it is.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  It makes Linux the common denominator between all platforms, which could potentially mean that it gets adopted as a base platform API like POSIX is/was. More software gets developed for that base Linux platform API, which makes releasing Linux-native software easier/practically free, which in turn makes desktop Linux an even more viable daily driver platform because you can run the same apps you use on macOS or Windows.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    As someone that was once upon a time a FOSS zealot with M$ on email signature and all, the only reason I care about Linux on the desktop is exactly Docker containers, everything else I use the native platform software. Eventually I got practical and fed up with ways of Linux Desktop.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      > Eventually I got practical and fed up with ways of Linux Desktop. I was in the same boat and used macOS for a decade since it was practical for my needs. These days I find it easier to do my work on Linux, ironically cross-platform development & audio. At least in my experience, desktop Linux is stable, works with my commercial apps, and things like collaboration over Zoom/Meet/etc with screen sharing actually work out of the box, so it ticks all of my boxes. This certainly wasn't the case several years ago, where Linux incompatibility and instability could be an issue when it comes to collaboration and just getting work done.
duped 1y ago
Except for graphics, audio, and GUIs for which no good solutions exist
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  I'd consider revisiting this. These days you can do studio level video production, graphics and pro audio on Linux using native commercial software from a bare install on modern distributions. I do pro audio on Linux, my commercial DAWs, VSTs, etc are all Linux-native these days. I don't have to think about anything sound-wise because Pipewire handles it all automatically. IMO, Linux has arrived when it comes to this niche recently, five years ago I'd have to fuck around with JACK, install/compile a realtime kernel and wouldn't have as many DAWs & VSTs available. Similarly, I have a friend in video production and VFX whose studio uses Linux everywhere. Blender, DaVinci Resolve, etc make that easy. There is a lack of options when it comes to pro illustration and raster graphics. The Adobe suite reigns supreme there.
  - stebian_dable 1y ago
    Affinity suite has decent Wine community support by the way for raster / vector graphics.
  - wwweston 1y ago
    Can you tell me more about the audio work you’re doing (sound design? instrument tracking? mixing? mastering? god help you live sound?) and the distro and applications you use? I am more amateur/hobbyist than pro, but this is the primary reason I’m on macOS and I wouldn’t mind reasons to try Linux again (Ubuntu Studio ~8 years ago was my last foray).
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      > (sound design? instrument tracking? mixing? mastering? god help you live sound?) This minus live sound, and I stick exclusively to MIDI controllers. > and the distro and applications you use? I'm on EndeavourOS, which is just Arch with a GUI installer + some default niceties. I came from using Reaper on macOS, which is native on Linux, but was really impressed with Bitwig Studio[1] so I use that for most of everything. I really like u-he & TAL's commercial offerings, Vital, and I got mileage out of pages like this[2] that list plugins that are Linux compatible. I'm insane so I also sometimes use paid Windows plugins over Yabridge, which works surprisingly well, but my needs have been suited well by what's available for Linux. There's also some great open source plugins like Surge XT, Dexed & Vaporizer2, and unique plugins ChowMatrix. > I wouldn’t mind reasons to try Linux again (Ubuntu Studio ~8 years ago was my last foray). IMO the state of things is pretty nice now, assuming your hardware and software needs can be met. If you give it a try, I think a rolling release would be best, as you really want the latest Pipewire/Wireplumber support you can get. [1] https://www.bitwig.com/ https://www.bitwig.com/ [2] https://linuxdaw.org/ https://linuxdaw.org/
jeroenhd 1y ago
Linux has already won, in the form of Android and to an extent ChromeOS. Many people just don't recognize it as such because most of the system isn't the X11/Wayland desktop stack the "normal" Linux distros use. Hell, Samsung is delivering Linux to the masses in the form of Wayland + PulseAudio under the brand name "Tizen". Unlike desktop land, Tizen has been all-in on Wayland since 2013 and it's been doing fine.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Google could replace Linux kernel with something else and no one would notice, other than OEMs and people rooting their devices. Likewise with ChromeOS. They are Pyrrhic victories. As for Tizen, interesting that Samsung hasn't yet completely lost interest on it.
  - steeleduncan 1y ago
    > Google could replace Linux kernel with something else and no one would notice, other than OEMs and people rooting their devices. This would be better phrased If Google could replace Linux kernel with something else noone would notice, Google have spent a decade trying to replace the Linux with something else (Fuschia), and don't seem to have gotten anywhere
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Don't mistake company politics between ChromeOS, Android and Fuchsia business units, and the technical possibility of actually bothering to do so. Also don't forget Fuchsia has been mostly a way to keep valuable engineers at Google as retention project. They haven't been trying to replace anything as such, and Linux kernel on Android even has userspace drivers with stable ABI for Java and C++, Rust on the kernel, all features upstream will never get. Or on Rust's case, Google didn't bother with the drama, they decided to include it, and that was it.
  - gf000 1y ago
    Ah yeah, isn't that the definition of something you don't directly depend on? Of course they "could just replace the OS", I can also just write a new web browser and use it to browse the web as it's supposedly a standard. Except neither will support even a fraction of the originals' capabilities, at much worse performance and millions of incompatibilities at every corner.
pjmlp 1y ago
On the server room yes, but only in the sense UNIX has won, and Linux is the cheapest way to acquire UNIX, with the BSDs sadly looking from their little corner. However on embedded, and desktop, the market belongs to others, like Zehyr, NutXX, Arduino, VxWorks, INTEGRITY,... and naturally Apple, Google and Microsoft offerings. Also Linux is an implementation detail on serverless/lambda deployments, only relevant to infrastructure teams.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- inopinatus 1y ago
  BSD has nothing to feel mournful about. Its derivatives are frequently found in the data center, but largely unremarked because it’s under the black box of storage and network appliances. And it’s in incredible numbers - hundreds of millions of units - of game consoles. The BSD family isn’t taking a bow in public, that’s all.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Orbis OS has very little of FreeBSD, if that is what you mean. And outside NetFlix, there aren't many big shots talking about it nowadays.
    - inopinatus 1y ago
      It looks exactly like a BSD syscall table. Including one I wrote an implementation of. https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps5/Syscalls https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps5/Syscalls
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        Usually an OS is a little bit more than a syscall table.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
inopinatus 1y ago
That isn’t exactly new, the hypervisor underneath has been in macOS for years, but poorly exploited. It’s gained a few features but what’s really substantial today are the (much) enhanced ergonomics on top.
- sho_hn 1y ago
  I know, but they've invested some effort into e.g. a custom Linux kernel config and vminitd+RPC for this, so the optimizations specific to running containerized Linux apps are new.
tannhaeuser 1y ago
"It" (aka the cloud providers) has won in the foobar POSIX department such that only a full Linux VM can run your idiosyncractic web apps despite or actually because of hundreds of package managers and dependency resolution and late binding mechanisms, yes.
flmontpetit 1y ago
Fascinating to me how Windows and Linux have cross-pollinated each other through things like WSL and Proton. Platform convergence might become a thing within our lifetimes.
- sbarre 1y ago
  I made a "long bet" with a friend about a decade ago that by 2030 'Microsoft Windows' would just be a proprietary window manager running on Linux (similar - in broad strokes - to the MacOS model that has Darwin under the hood). I don't think I'll make my 2030 date at this point but there might be some version of Windows like this at some point. I also recognize that Windows' need to remain backwards compatible might prevent this, unless there's a Rosetta-style emulation layer to handle all the Win32 APIs etc..
  - flmontpetit 1y ago
    I think Microsoft will let Windows slowly die over the years. I am certain that at the strategy level, they have already accepted that their time as a device platform vendor will not last. Windows will be on life support for a while, as MS slowly corrals its massive client base onto its SaaS platforms, before it becomes a relic of the past. Beyond that point, the historical x86 PC-compatible platform lineage will either die with it, or be fully overtaken by Desktop Linux whereupon it will slowly lose ground to non-x86 proprietary platforms over the years. The average end user will be using some sort of Tivoized device, which will be running a closed-source fork of an open-source kernel, with state-of-the-art trusted computing modules making sure nobody can run any binaries that weren't digitally signed and distributed through an "app store" owned by the device vendor and from which they get something like a 25% cut of all sales. In other words, everything will be a PlayStation, and Microsoft will be selling their SaaS services to enterprise users through those. That is my prediction.
    - sbarre 1y ago
      Bleh I hope you're wrong! ;-)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by sho_hn 1y ago

OJFord 1y ago

'Linux with macOS.'

bakztfutur3 1y ago

[flagged]

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

paxys 1y ago

Is it winning if you are the only one playing the game? Brag about this to an average Windows or Mac user and they will go "huh?" and "what is Linux?"

sho_hn 1y ago
> Is it winning if you are the only one playing the game? Depending on what you mean with "the game", I'd say even more so. MS/Apple used to villify or ridicule Linux, now they need to distribute it to make their own product whole, because it turns out having an Open Source general purpose OS is so convenient and useful it's been utilized in lots of interesting ways - containers, for example - that the proprietary OS implementations simply weren't available for. I'd say it's a remarkable development.
yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
By that logic, this feature and WSL shouldn't exist.
- paxys 1y ago
  They exist because linux server developers would rather use windows or mac as their primary desktop OS rather than linux. That's not a flex for linux desktop. Quite the opposite.
  - baq 1y ago
    Trust me I’d rather use Linux than macOS, that’s after 2.5 years of full time work on a beefy MacBook Pro. The problem is that it isn’t possible to buy a machine as good as the MacBook which runs Linux. Asahi is not ready and won’t be for years, if ever.
    - whatevermom 1y ago
      Asahi is not that bad, did you try it out? I’ve been building a Sway configuration from scratch on it since two weeks and it’s working pretty well. Did a ton of administrative stuff with it yesterday without much trouble other than the key bindings being a bit weird coming from macOS.
      - baq 1y ago
        Last time I checked M3 support is not coming anytime soon. M1 is kinda sorta maybe good enough sometimes? But it wouldn't be my main dev box.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    In my experience, it isn't Linux server developers who decide what platform their organizations provision on their employees' devices. That's up to management and IT departments who prefer the simplicity of employees using the same systems they do, and prefer to utilize the competencies in macOS/Windows administration their IT departments have.
  - Lio 1y ago
    Equally, they exist because mac and windows users would rather use Linux for their server operating system than anything else and that’s not a flex for Apple or Microsoft either.

sangeeth96 1y ago

> Linux has won Needing two of the most famous non-Linux operating systems for the layman to sanely develop programs for Linux systems is not particularly a victory if you look at it from that perspective. Just highlights the piss-poor state of Linux desktop even after all these years. For the average person, it's still terrible on every front and something I still have a hard time recommending when things so often go belly up. Before you jump on me, every year, I install the latest Fedora/Ubuntu (supposedly the noob-friendly recommendations) on a relatively modern PC/Laptop and not once have I stopped and thought "huh, this is actually pretty usable and stable".

sho_hn 1y ago
I'd say that's a fairly web development-centric take. I work at an embedded shop that happily puts a few million cars running Linux on the road every year, and we have hundreds of devs mainly running Linux to develop for Linux.
- sangeeth96 1y ago
  The average person is not dishing out software that runs on millions of cars from the average PC/laptop they got off the shelves from their bestbuy equivalent. I’d say the same for the average developer. I’d also guess if given a choice and unless there are technical limitations that prevent it from being so, even the devs in your shop would rather prefer to switch to a usable daily driver OS to get things done. The desktop marketshare stats back me up on the earlier point and last I checked, no distro got anywhere close? Sure, Android is the exception (if we agree to consider) but until we get serious dev going there and until Android morphs into a full-fledged desktop OS, my point stands.
  - etra0 1y ago
    well, don't forget there's a fully fledged console now too, which by the way, runs games made for windows on linux, with better performance. And yes, that's bought by the 'average person'.

aljgz 1y ago

Well. It can also be argued that the other two platforms are finding ways to allow using Linux without leaving those platforms, which slows down market share of Linux on desktop as the primary OS.

selcuka 1y ago
> which slows down market share of Linux on desktop as the primary OS I think what slows down market share of Linux on desktop is Linux on desktop itself. I use Linux, and I understand that it's a very hard job to take it to the level of Windows or macOS, but it is what it is.
heavyset_go 1y ago
It makes Linux the common denominator between all platforms, which could potentially mean that it gets adopted as a base platform API like POSIX is/was. More software gets developed for that base Linux platform API, which makes releasing Linux-native software easier/practically free, which in turn makes desktop Linux an even more viable daily driver platform because you can run the same apps you use on macOS or Windows.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  As someone that was once upon a time a FOSS zealot with M$ on email signature and all, the only reason I care about Linux on the desktop is exactly Docker containers, everything else I use the native platform software. Eventually I got practical and fed up with ways of Linux Desktop.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    > Eventually I got practical and fed up with ways of Linux Desktop. I was in the same boat and used macOS for a decade since it was practical for my needs. These days I find it easier to do my work on Linux, ironically cross-platform development & audio. At least in my experience, desktop Linux is stable, works with my commercial apps, and things like collaboration over Zoom/Meet/etc with screen sharing actually work out of the box, so it ticks all of my boxes. This certainly wasn't the case several years ago, where Linux incompatibility and instability could be an issue when it comes to collaboration and just getting work done.

duped 1y ago

Except for graphics, audio, and GUIs for which no good solutions exist

heavyset_go 1y ago
I'd consider revisiting this. These days you can do studio level video production, graphics and pro audio on Linux using native commercial software from a bare install on modern distributions. I do pro audio on Linux, my commercial DAWs, VSTs, etc are all Linux-native these days. I don't have to think about anything sound-wise because Pipewire handles it all automatically. IMO, Linux has arrived when it comes to this niche recently, five years ago I'd have to fuck around with JACK, install/compile a realtime kernel and wouldn't have as many DAWs & VSTs available. Similarly, I have a friend in video production and VFX whose studio uses Linux everywhere. Blender, DaVinci Resolve, etc make that easy. There is a lack of options when it comes to pro illustration and raster graphics. The Adobe suite reigns supreme there.
- stebian_dable 1y ago
  Affinity suite has decent Wine community support by the way for raster / vector graphics.
- wwweston 1y ago
  Can you tell me more about the audio work you’re doing (sound design? instrument tracking? mixing? mastering? god help you live sound?) and the distro and applications you use? I am more amateur/hobbyist than pro, but this is the primary reason I’m on macOS and I wouldn’t mind reasons to try Linux again (Ubuntu Studio ~8 years ago was my last foray).
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    > (sound design? instrument tracking? mixing? mastering? god help you live sound?) This minus live sound, and I stick exclusively to MIDI controllers. > and the distro and applications you use? I'm on EndeavourOS, which is just Arch with a GUI installer + some default niceties. I came from using Reaper on macOS, which is native on Linux, but was really impressed with Bitwig Studio[1] so I use that for most of everything. I really like u-he & TAL's commercial offerings, Vital, and I got mileage out of pages like this[2] that list plugins that are Linux compatible. I'm insane so I also sometimes use paid Windows plugins over Yabridge, which works surprisingly well, but my needs have been suited well by what's available for Linux. There's also some great open source plugins like Surge XT, Dexed & Vaporizer2, and unique plugins ChowMatrix. > I wouldn’t mind reasons to try Linux again (Ubuntu Studio ~8 years ago was my last foray). IMO the state of things is pretty nice now, assuming your hardware and software needs can be met. If you give it a try, I think a rolling release would be best, as you really want the latest Pipewire/Wireplumber support you can get. [1] https://www.bitwig.com/ https://www.bitwig.com/ [2] https://linuxdaw.org/ https://linuxdaw.org/

jeroenhd 1y ago

Linux has already won, in the form of Android and to an extent ChromeOS. Many people just don't recognize it as such because most of the system isn't the X11/Wayland desktop stack the "normal" Linux distros use. Hell, Samsung is delivering Linux to the masses in the form of Wayland + PulseAudio under the brand name "Tizen". Unlike desktop land, Tizen has been all-in on Wayland since 2013 and it's been doing fine.

pjmlp 1y ago
Google could replace Linux kernel with something else and no one would notice, other than OEMs and people rooting their devices. Likewise with ChromeOS. They are Pyrrhic victories. As for Tizen, interesting that Samsung hasn't yet completely lost interest on it.
- steeleduncan 1y ago
  > Google could replace Linux kernel with something else and no one would notice, other than OEMs and people rooting their devices. This would be better phrased If Google could replace Linux kernel with something else noone would notice, Google have spent a decade trying to replace the Linux with something else (Fuschia), and don't seem to have gotten anywhere
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Don't mistake company politics between ChromeOS, Android and Fuchsia business units, and the technical possibility of actually bothering to do so. Also don't forget Fuchsia has been mostly a way to keep valuable engineers at Google as retention project. They haven't been trying to replace anything as such, and Linux kernel on Android even has userspace drivers with stable ABI for Java and C++, Rust on the kernel, all features upstream will never get. Or on Rust's case, Google didn't bother with the drama, they decided to include it, and that was it.
- gf000 1y ago
  Ah yeah, isn't that the definition of something you don't directly depend on? Of course they "could just replace the OS", I can also just write a new web browser and use it to browse the web as it's supposedly a standard. Except neither will support even a fraction of the originals' capabilities, at much worse performance and millions of incompatibilities at every corner.

pjmlp 1y ago

On the server room yes, but only in the sense UNIX has won, and Linux is the cheapest way to acquire UNIX, with the BSDs sadly looking from their little corner. However on embedded, and desktop, the market belongs to others, like Zehyr, NutXX, Arduino, VxWorks, INTEGRITY,... and naturally Apple, Google and Microsoft offerings. Also Linux is an implementation detail on serverless/lambda deployments, only relevant to infrastructure teams.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
inopinatus 1y ago
BSD has nothing to feel mournful about. Its derivatives are frequently found in the data center, but largely unremarked because it’s under the black box of storage and network appliances. And it’s in incredible numbers - hundreds of millions of units - of game consoles. The BSD family isn’t taking a bow in public, that’s all.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Orbis OS has very little of FreeBSD, if that is what you mean. And outside NetFlix, there aren't many big shots talking about it nowadays.
  - inopinatus 1y ago
    It looks exactly like a BSD syscall table. Including one I wrote an implementation of. https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps5/Syscalls https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps5/Syscalls
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Usually an OS is a little bit more than a syscall table.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]

inopinatus 1y ago

That isn’t exactly new, the hypervisor underneath has been in macOS for years, but poorly exploited. It’s gained a few features but what’s really substantial today are the (much) enhanced ergonomics on top.

sho_hn 1y ago
I know, but they've invested some effort into e.g. a custom Linux kernel config and vminitd+RPC for this, so the optimizations specific to running containerized Linux apps are new.

tannhaeuser 1y ago

"It" (aka the cloud providers) has won in the foobar POSIX department such that only a full Linux VM can run your idiosyncractic web apps despite or actually because of hundreds of package managers and dependency resolution and late binding mechanisms, yes.

flmontpetit 1y ago

Fascinating to me how Windows and Linux have cross-pollinated each other through things like WSL and Proton. Platform convergence might become a thing within our lifetimes.

sbarre 1y ago
I made a "long bet" with a friend about a decade ago that by 2030 'Microsoft Windows' would just be a proprietary window manager running on Linux (similar - in broad strokes - to the MacOS model that has Darwin under the hood). I don't think I'll make my 2030 date at this point but there might be some version of Windows like this at some point. I also recognize that Windows' need to remain backwards compatible might prevent this, unless there's a Rosetta-style emulation layer to handle all the Win32 APIs etc..
- flmontpetit 1y ago
  I think Microsoft will let Windows slowly die over the years. I am certain that at the strategy level, they have already accepted that their time as a device platform vendor will not last. Windows will be on life support for a while, as MS slowly corrals its massive client base onto its SaaS platforms, before it becomes a relic of the past. Beyond that point, the historical x86 PC-compatible platform lineage will either die with it, or be fully overtaken by Desktop Linux whereupon it will slowly lose ground to non-x86 proprietary platforms over the years. The average end user will be using some sort of Tivoized device, which will be running a closed-source fork of an open-source kernel, with state-of-the-art trusted computing modules making sure nobody can run any binaries that weren't digitally signed and distributed through an "app store" owned by the device vendor and from which they get something like a 25% cut of all sales. In other words, everything will be a PlayStation, and Microsoft will be selling their SaaS services to enterprise users through those. That is my prediction.
  - sbarre 1y ago
    Bleh I hope you're wrong! ;-)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]