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Every time this happens, I wonder why people do not just drop Windows entirely.
by ryao 1y ago
Every time this happens, I wonder why people do not just drop Windows entirely.
- tiahura 1y agoBecause they run Word Excel and Outlook.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoCan’t you run that on a browser these days?
- nottorp 1y agoNot the good ones everyone is used to :)
- kayodelycaon 1y agoHave you tried to use office on the web? The answer is no, not unless an absolutely crippled version is sufficient for your needs.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoOf course not - luckily I haven’t used Microsoft office in decades. Which is why I was asking what the capabilities are “these days”.
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago>Outlook Even more reason to switch.
- zdw 1y agoThis is the real reason. Put your data in the MS format roach motel, and it's a challenge to ever get it out with full fidelity. The mid-oughts battle over this in the international standardizations space is pretty fraught: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open... And even now, even though there is a "standard" and schemas for, MS's apps mostly ignore them, or use undocumented extensions (as far as I'm aware), so it the whole thing was truly straight from MS's embrace/extend/extinguish playbook.
- imzadi 1y agoLike it or not, Linux is still not really user friendly compared to a windows computer. Users still have to do command line stuff, and the software you are used to is not available. The equivalents are not as shiny as the windows versions. Macs might be too expensive for some people who are still running on old hardware.
- JohnFen 1y ago> Users still have to do command line stuff Not really, unless they're doing something special. But if they're doing something special, they're not average users.
- TremendousJudge 1y ago> unless they're doing something special In my experience with Linux desktop, this could be "have the touchpad work the same as it did on Windows", "plug in an extra monitor and have it behave somewhat normally", or "play this game". But yeah, I guess that as long as we only expect "average users" to only use a web browser to look at Youtube, it's fine.
- dismalaf 1y ago> have the touchpad work the same as it did on Windows", "plug in an extra monitor and have it behave somewhat normally", or "play this game". I have no idea how touchpads behave on Windows, but in, say, Gnome or KDE, you can adjust it through the GUI. Extra monitors work fine on Gnome. Steam works fine in general, across distros.
- bigyabai 1y agoGNOME and KDE both have the same touchpad gestures as Windows 10/11, and the monitor extension logic is basically identical too (GNOME even has a Win+P accelerator). Game variety hasn't really been an issue since the Steam Deck came out, with apologies to League of Legends addicts that probably ought to move on with their lives anyways. Like, I understand that my MRI operator can't just install Linux on their PC. But the majority of people are usually not dependent on Windows-exclusive software, especially in the smartphone era.
- supertrope 1y agoYou'd have to know what an operating system is, that you can install a different one than Windows, and still be able to run all of your software on the new one or acceptable substitutes.
- andrepd 1y ago1. Windows comes pre-installed. That means >99% of users (and I mean this literally) will not even consider running anything else (probably they don't even realise there's such a thing as not-Windows on a PC). 2. Enterprise software runs on Windows, that creates enough lock-in for Windows to always be a majority.
- JohnFen 1y agoThis is the correct answer.
- kayodelycaon 1y agoBecause the vast majority of society does not support Linux, if they even know what it is to begin with. So few people actually use Linux and they use wildly different versions of it.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoWhat is the alternative for an average joe? That said, Steam OS for desktop (if ever) would be a serious contender, since a big chunk of high-end PCs are only used for gaming and internet browsing.
- account42 1y agoYou're better off picking any popular normal distro over running SteamOS on unsupported hardware.
- bfmalky 1y agoI can't run Ableton or Lightroom on Linux, and Macs are almost 3x the cost of a similar spec'ed windows laptop. The apps are quite specific to me, but I imagine there are similar killer apps for other windows users.
- deltarholamda 1y ago>3x the cost of a similar spec'ed windows laptop Man, I'm not so sure about that. The M-series Macbooks are just crazy good for speed and battery life. The basic bottom-tier Macbook is $1000 and will do for a vast majority of people. A $330 Windows laptop is going to be a phenomenal heap of junk. People were running Ableton on 16GB M1 Macbooks a couple of years ago.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoA $400 Windows laptop from Costco with a $50 memory upgrade is a pretty decent machine. Source: I'm using one right now.
- bfmalky 1y agoYes, the bottom tier MacBook Air is about £1k, but only comes with a 256gb SSD. You can get a decent windows laptop for about that price with 1tb of storage and 32gb of memory. A similar spec Mac is close to £3k. CPU wise they are all fine for real-time audio, but the extra storage really matters.
- account42 1y agoAbleton or Lightroom both have some level of support under Wine but it depends on the version you need. But both also have alternatives and IME killer-apps tend to become a lot less important once users have sufficient other motivations. Nothing is really irreplaceable.
- bfmalky 1y agoI would love to replace Lightroom, but unfortunately the alternatives just aren't as good. There are good alternatives to Ableton, but once you get to know a DAW it is hard to switch. And running a DAW with an ecosystem of 3rd party VST plugins and low level access to audio hardware on Wine sounds like a recipe for a bad time, but I confess I haven't tried it. So, yes, these things are possible, but it is still easier to just use Windows.
- room505 1y ago...because I cannot run Revit on Apple or Linux.
- TiredOfLife 1y agoThis is the firsf time they did arbitrary requirement cutoff.
- k0tan32 1y agoI often notice that Linux (and maybe some BSDs) can accommodate two extremes on the tech competence spectrum especially well: the least opinionated users may treat their computer as a black box and just enjoy web browsing / chatting / media with some help, while the most savvy can extract value from tailored and private setups (like stability of Debian or power of Nix). At the same time, Linux on the desktop fails often for everyone in between: the learning curve is still higher (especially for people coming from Windows), and some very specialized professional proprietary software can be missing. Luckily, as mentioned in the article, Microsoft tries to make the balance more equal. Writing this as a person who has used Linux for the last 15 years with a 2-year break for macOS and back.
- JohnFen 1y ago> the learning curve is still higher (especially for people coming from Windows) I don't think the learning curve is higher at all. It's roughly the same as with Windows. But if you're coming from Windows, the fact that you have to mount a learning curve for the new OS can be a real friction point. When most people learned Windows, they did so over time, without pressure. If you're switching operating systems, you likely want to become competent in it very quickly. That can make it seem like the learning curve is higher when, in fact, it's just that you're trying to run up that hill faster.
- k0tan32 1y agoI agree with you per se that the learning curve in many ways is a function from your past experience, but there's no contradiction with what I previously stated in the context of this article - since émigré from Windows will obviously have some experience with Windows, they have this learning bias already, and potentially a different mindset/expectations (the most famous - why can't I just download an .exe?!) Some [1] Linux distros were even trying to emulate this experience (which is a dead end obviously) [1] Like Linux XP https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linuxxp https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linuxxp
- RajT88 1y agoThat is the funny thing - this regularly happens when a new OS comes out. People have been observing for decades now how Microsoft keeps the hardware industry afloat.
- account42 1y agoSome people do. Some of them even stick with it. But also new people grow up with their school-provided Windows/Apple/ChromeOS laptops and only know mobile phones beyond that so the trend is probably not all that positive.
- rich_sasha 1y agoI'm back to Windows for a new $job. It's truly awful in so many ways, Linux is a joy by comparison for daily driving, with Mac a close-ish second. With one difference: I'm not scared of software upgrades. The number of times my laptop was semi-bricked by an update, usually graphics driver, which required frantic googling for random commands, GRUB scripts with enormous disclaimers about how mistyping something will brick the laptop for good, discussions about Nouveau and how it's lal Nvidia's fault really... That's bad, always was, never got better for me, and I really don't miss it.
- rstuart4133 1y agoI use Debian stable. I'm utterly unafraid Debian's security patches, in fact I just accept them on my home server boxes without inspection. The same can not be said for Windows - I'm seen Windows security upgrades render boxes unbootable. Moving between between versions is a different matter. Yes, Windows does it better, but not reliably enough for me to trust it. So for both Debian and Windows it's a case of replace the drive, and do a fresh install. In Debian's case, zstd < /dev/sda >/mnt/usb/sda-backup.zstd also works, if you have time to kill. Copying everything to a squashfs image also works well. If your using Ubunt then your experience will be different. People who choosing Ubuntu over Debian is as perplexing to me as people voluntarily using Windows.