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That’s a non-answer. The market very obviously did not produce a better alternative, and we’ve been playing this game for enough decades now to be reasonably co
by 9dev 1y ago
That’s a non-answer. The market very obviously did not produce a better alternative, and we’ve been playing this game for enough decades now to be reasonably confident it won’t—and if it will, Microsoft or some other megacorp will buy them, gut them, and carry on.
Regulation is the proper tool to force corporations to behave in a way that isn’t as harmful to society. This is something that should be regulated.
> For what it's worth, I'm typing this on my Debian desktop. In my opinion, a far better solution.
It’s almost comical how you speak about better alternatives in the context of capitalist markets, where better means reaching a higher market saturation, and then offer a niche solution that has a number of users so tiny that it’s less than a rounding error in any statistic.
- bigyabai 1y agoThis comment is almost unfathomable in a world where Windows and MacOS combined has a smaller install-base than Linux. The capitalists already chose their winners, they just never let down a rope to the consumer market.
- dotancohen 1y agoAre you referring to Android?
- rpdillon 1y agoI think he's referring to the fact that, while everyone jokes about "year of Linux on the desktop": In the last 30 years, we moved overwhelmingly from local workloads to internet workloads We moved overwhelmingly away from desktop and to mobile Android is the dominant mobile OS, and it's hand-in-hand with Linux at the kernel level The internet, meanwhile, is powered overwhelmingly by Linux So I tend to agree that just because normal folks think of "computing" as the Windows or Mac machine sitting in front of them, the world is now predominantly powered by Linux.
- 1718627440 1y ago... GNU/Linux smth. ...
- rpdillon 1y agoI generally appreciate the distinction, but I purposely did not use that distinction here because Android is only Linux if you don't include GNU.
- 1718627440 1y agoThe distinction is relevant here, because "year of Linux on the desktop" doesn't refer to Android. The philosophy of "Linux" is that the user has control. That applies more to BSD than Android. Also it's "on the desktop".
- rpdillon 1y agoI fear we're talking past one another.
- 1718627440 1y agoOh sorry is it correct that you meant, that the "year of Linux on the desktop" doesn't matter anymore, because computing switched to mobile and servers and there the Linux kernel is dominating, while I understood that you mean that Android counts toward the "year of Linux on the desktop"?
- rpdillon 1y agoYep, exactly!
- rpdillon 1y ago> they just never let down a rope to the consumer market So this is a coded statement that I fear most people won't get, but it's pretty profound. If I'm getting bigyabai's point, they are saying that people that are professionals at choosing operating systems have overwhelmingly chosen Linux, and it's really in the consumer markets, where folks don't have any special knowledge or judgment, that Windows and MacOS thrive. That's a good insight, because it's completely true. Both Windows and MacOS cater to audiences that, for the most part, don't care or want to care about how technology works, and this makes them vulnerable. Apple and Microsoft capitalize on this.
- 9dev 1y agoYour answer, and GP's reference to Debian, is highlighting the misunderstanding very precisely: Microsoft is not just an operating system vendor. If they stopped making Windows tomorrow, Microsoft would still exist and do well economically, because it's a hydra with a thousand heads. Hence my point: The classical concept of "displacement" doesn't apply to corporations at that scale anymore.
- DoesntMatter22 1y agoApple was a relativly small company on the verge of death and came all the way back to surpass Microsoft.
- 9dev 1y agoIndeed it did. Thirty years ago, when the world wasn't utterly dominated by giant tech companies like it is now. Back then Microsoft wasn't capable of buying a country if they so desired; they couldn't hold most world governments hostage, didn't have a product portfolio that covers almost any organisation globally, and didn't have a trove of petabytes (more?) of data to train artificial intelligence with. The world is a different place now, and old rules don't apply anymore.
- DoesntMatter22 1y agoI actually think Microsoft was much more dominant in the 90s. There really weren't solid alternatives to Windows and that was their Cash cow. Now there's tons of alternatives to virtually everything they do
- baxtr 1y agoThe market has created many better alternatives. The iPhone would have not been possible without MS being so ignorant about customers.
- dotancohen 1y ago> better means reaching a higher market saturation That most certainly is not my definition of better. My definition of better is addressing my needs as a user.
- 9dev 1y agoYou conveniently left out in the context of capitalist markets in your quote. The grandparent argued that legal solutions couldn't solve the problem, but the market could by producing a better solution. If that better solution doesn't displace the incumbent, it is by definition not a better solution, because that would—in the context of this question—imply displacing it, hence the market would have solved the problem. So whether Debian is addressing your needs better than Windows bears little relevance for the topic at hand.
- dotancohen 1y agoI quoted as much as I thought necessary to make clear which part of your comment I am referring to. In any case, I think that the term "better" applies for each consumer, therefore the better solution for any specific consumer does not necessarily have to displace the incumbent.