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> and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem So the only superiority is that it runs the apps most people want to run? And this is why geek
by raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
> and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem
So the only superiority is that it runs the apps most people want to run?
And this is why geeks are always the “Less space than Nomad. No Wireless. Lame” types or the HN equivalent when talking about DropBox:
“For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”
- dijit 7mo agoMost people want a web browser. Even Microsofts esteemed moat (office) is “Web only” on the lowest tier.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoPC gaming revenue on its own is around $45 Billion a year and there are all sorts of vertical market software that only runs on Windows. But even if all most people want is browser, why go through the hassle of running Linux? I usually recommended a Windows PC to most people because on the low end, they are cheap, disposable, and if the one odd program they might want to run isn’t available, I didn’t have to hear about it. If they know what they want, I didn’t have a problem recommending an Air and now for a lot of use cases, a Neo.
- dijit 7mo agoI work in games (formerly AAA). Chicken and egg problem. Valve is making enough headway that game makers take Linux seriously. We’ll likely see a lot more native releases over time. (once the worry about anticheat subsides).
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoAnd still why should normal people go to Linux over Windows? Linux support is still not that great from OEMs and for the unwashed masses your local Best Buy or Apple Store.
- dijit 7mo agoOk
- butterlesstoast 7mo agoOk
- mrj 7mo agoHave you read the article? There's real frustration with Windows. It's so bad that my 15 year old, who only really uses his computer to launch Steam, asked me to help him install Linux. He had heard about Bazzite and already knew his gpu would be compatible. He gets about 20 fps more on Linux and can choose when updates are applied. There's no forced online login, ads in the OS or copilot prompts. His browser doesn't revert to Edge. He doesn't really want to care but Microsoft's decisions have made their main product into an annoyance.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoAnd people would be less frustrated with Linux?
- GTP 7mo agoSome people, myself included, are already less frustrated with Linux. Which means it is likely that other people would be less frustrated if they tried Linux. Not 100% of them, of course, but some for sure.
- mrj 7mo agoYes, as I explained. He's happy with it. He doesn't care about the OS just wants it to launch programs like it's supposed to.
- p_ing 7mo agoWhy bother making native releases when Valve/Proton will take care of it? Who wants the headache of supporting another build and directly supporting N flavors of Linux distributions? When it comes to games, Linux has an OS/2 problem.
- lemagedurage 7mo agoSteam runtime already gives developers a single target rather than having to support different distros individually. If Steam Deck, the new Steam Machine etc take a significant part of market share, I think it will be more enticing for game developer to release a native version for Linux. Providing a native version should still be more robust and performant.
- p_ing 7mo ago> still be more robust Why? The only stable ABI on Linux is Win32.
- motbus3 7mo agoI believe this even without checking the numbers. That said, I now own a steam deck and I only buy games supported. There is a new game with no support? So sorry. Can't be done
- bangaladore 7mo ago> Microsofts esteemed moat (office) is “Web only” on the lowest tier. If you've ever used it before, you'd quickly come to the conclusion that web only Office is only useful for someone writing essays for school. The moment you need to do anything more complex than that, the document renders completely differently on web vs app-- not to mention there are tons of critical features that aren't even available on the web version.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoI don’t do anything too “serious” as far as writing documents that Google Docs can’t handle - we use that at work instead of Office - is Word that much better than GSuite for most cases or is Office Web worse than GSuite?
- esseph 7mo ago> is Word that much better than GSuite for most cases or is Office Web worse than GSuite? Excel is really The Thing. So many businesses and departments rely on it.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoI believe that. When I was in graduate school in 1999-2001 (MBA) before I dropped out. I learned firsthand the beast that was Excel.
- Arch-TK 7mo agoSome people have some bizarre obsession with having absolute and total control over the placement of every single last character in their document while simultaneously not caring about the fact that this placement is sometimes not reproducible and randomly becomes diseased. My most memorable MS Word experiences are all the times I accidentally put my document into a weird state and didn't notice something was wrong until I've spent 3 more hours on it, at which point I was forced to re-create the document by copy pasting text into an earlier copy. And the only reason I knew something was subtly wrong was because the weird VB extension I was required to use would stop working correctly. Basically this would happen when some random key element of the document had ended up with a very subtly different style. If I didn't have to worry about the VB extension breaking, I'd just have a document with some weird bug somewhere. If I wanted a professional looking document, I would use some modern LaTeX variant maybe with Pandoc to generate most of it from something more restricted like Markdown. If I wanted total control over the content of a page, I would use some kind of graphical publishing software with text and vector graphics. I have zero idea what kind of Stockholm syndrome you must have to think that Microsoft Office (or any other similar WYSIWYG editor for that matter) is power user software. It has lots of features, that's for sure. But the features form a Jenga tower. That makes it a toy.
- Gigachad 7mo agoI don’t think I’ve ever met someone who only uses the web browser exclusively. It’s true that most stuff is in the browser, but basically every user has a couple things that are native apps which don’t work on Linux. Wine has come a long way for gaming, but my experience is for regular programs, most stuff doesn’t work. Even the simple apps are usually critically broken.
- rfrey 7mo agoPeople loved the iPod. Users loved Dropbox. Nobody loves windows.
- gambiting 7mo agoI like Windows. Windows 11 gets on my nerves a lot but fundamentally I think it's a great system if you're a software developer or if you play video games(and I do both). I also have to use MacOS as part of my work and I don't understand how anyone uses it daily, it's like it's made by someone who never actually has to use it themselves. But I imagine it's a matter of personal preference to an extent.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoI was forced to use Windows recently for a year between late 2023-2024. Windows itself is fine. It’s the hardware that sucks with it still being forced to be on x86. The heat, the bad battery life, the fan noise, etc. On the Mac side, either way I spent all of my day in VSCode and the browser - we use GSuite - Zoom and Slack. It wouldn’t make that much of a different either way. The only integrations I use between my work Mac and my personal Apple life are my iPad for a second screen, shared subset of passwords. I have a separate Apple Account for my work computer and I share work related passwords.
- phainopepla2 7mo agoWhat kind of software development do you do? I don't really mind Windows that much for non-development use, once you disable all the bloat. But for development... It seems obviously a distant third behind Linux and Mac, and I don't think I've ever heard any developer say otherwise. And I say this as someone who is forced to use it at work, so it's not out of ignorance (thank god for WSL). But that's why I ask what kind of development you do, because I suppose there are areas where Windows really is a good option.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoI am definitely not a Windows fan. But I was forced to use it for a year. I do mostly AWS stuff cloud + app dev. VSCode with WSL and Docker Desktop was fine.
- colordrops 7mo agoWhat a horrible take, nothing but a tautology. It only runs the apps most people want to use because it's installed on so many computers, so developers target it. Linux can run anything Windows can. It's the same hardware, and if it was a much more popular desktop you bet your life that banks and streaming companies and AAA game developers would target linux as a supported platform. Has nothing to do with the quality of Windows, only the install base, which was the original point.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoIt doesn’t matter why it only runs apps most people want to use. As long as you don’t think a “quality” of something is that “it can do what I want it to do”.
- colordrops 7mo agoAs long as you think of "quality" as "something that is not quality". bad logic. There are many systems that are only usable because they are popular but everyone hates them and thinks they are garbage. Market capture doesn't equal quality, sorry, that's a horrible take.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoIf I need to do a thing and a product I use can’t do it? Why should I buy it? Does Linux have the software support of Windows? The hardware support? So what argument could you give Joe Normal about how Linux is better than Windows ?
- colordrops 7mo agoThat's a fair argument as to why someone should use windows. What does that have to do with quality though? You are confusing two things. Whether you should use it or recommend it is not the same as whether it's good quality.
- Sirental 7mo ago
- seba_dos1 7mo agoBut it still was lame and ultimately made the world a worse place; and mounting remote storage is convenient and often preferable to something like Dropbox for several reasons. The fact that these aren't what matters for gaining wide popularity doesn't make such statements false.
- sonofhans 7mo agoThe iPod made the world a worse place? I’m skeptical; I see very little bad about iPods. Do you think the quote what about the iPhone?
- seba_dos1 7mo agoiPods are the main thing that allowed iPhone (the bigger brother of iPod Touch) to be successful. I'm reasonably convinced that without the iPod craze, Apple's phone wouldn't make such a big market impact, if they would release it at all.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoThe iPod Touch was released after the iPhone.
- seba_dos1 7mo agoA few months after.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoWhat’s funny is that there were two years worth of rumors about the “true video iPod” and people nailed the specs of the iPod Touch. But no one suspected the “iPhone” that had also been rumored would be basically the same thing
- bombcar 7mo agoThe main reason I got an early iPhone was because why carry an iPod and another phone when I could carry one device.