5 ms·

>gradually and then suddenly. governments, institutions, and large enterprises (like, thousands of people) do not have the power to do anything "suddenly". the

>gradually and then suddenly. governments, institutions, and large enterprises (like, thousands of people) do not have the power to do anything "suddenly". they have contracts, and cash flow concerns. you cannot suddenly replaces tens to hundreds of thousands of machines. 20-50 years down the road? maybe! they (microsoft) surely arent doing themselves many favors. but they are certainly not in "significant danger" today.

homarp 7mo ago
and then something like COVID happens and they change fast.
- john_strinlai 7mo ago
  expanding your vpn to support more employees working from home is much easier than replacing hundreds of thousands of machines, all of the windows-only software that runs on those machines, training all of your employees on a new operating system, cancelling all of your existing contracts... you get the point.
  - homarp 7mo ago
    well, it happened with Teams meetings replacing fancy CISCO equipments. It happened with all the vpn+shared drives buried to just use SPO. different experience,I guess. Did your employees got trained? or just sent the link to 3 'online trainings'? Managers manage to switch to Mac seamlessly. I am sure the rest will follow with cheaper macs now available. And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian)
    - john_strinlai 7mo ago
      >And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian) office is a tiny, almost negligible, piece of the puzzle. quickbooks, solidworks and other cad software, bespoke software, security software, user management, permissions management (replacing active directory), contractual obligations, the millions of dollars required in implementation, the millions more dollars required for increased user support, and so on... but, again, just to reiterate: i am disputing that windows is in "significant danger" today.
Orygin 7mo ago
Still, a lot of those woke up from a profound sleep about digital sovereignty and are now contemplating leaving the American software ecosystem. It won't be sudden, until it is
jon-wood 7mo ago
You can't suddenly replace them, but in a lot of cases you can find that over an extended period more and more people choose the MacBook option from IT rather than the Windows one.
- john_strinlai 7mo ago
  most people are not willing to learn an entire new operating system for no reason, though. this might happen in tech-based companies, sure, but banks? accounting firms? ive never seen them offer macbooks. this is also ignoring all of the critical software that is windows-only (e.g. quickbooks, solidworks, bespoke programs in banks and government). point is: microsoft is not in "significant danger" today.
  - olyjohn 7mo ago
    Most people dont even use the operating system. They look for the apps menu, then click what they want to run. Most people can switch between OSes easier than you think because there really isn't that much difference in how they work on the surface.
    - john_strinlai 7mo ago
      users are one component, but you are still ignoring/forgetting the rest. user management, file management, security, windows-specific software, auditing requirements, required capital investment, lack of competent linux sysadmins compared to windows sysadmins, and so on.
      - LtWorf 7mo ago
        > lack of competent linux sysadmins compared to windows sysadmins, and so on. Wasn't this a microsoft marketing campaign like 20 years ago? Are we still on it?
  - jon-wood 7mo ago
    An increasing number of people are coming into the workplace never having used a Windows machine, or only occasionally having done so when it was absolutely necessary.
jerf 7mo ago
"Suddenly" in this case does not mean tomorrow. It means that, today, a lot of enterprises begin pondering the question, and then about a year from now, they start seriously studying and prototyping it, and then "suddenly" in 2029 Microsoft starts seeing a deluge of defections. It means a whole bunch of peopling finishing the conversion all at once, relatively speaking, even if that "all at once" is 3-4 years away. To put it another way, the thresholds where people get annoyed enough to quit are highly correlated to each other. If individuals on HN are posting "I don't want to switch, I've been working this way for decades now, but Windows has crossed the line for me, I've switched to Linux, and it was easier than I thought it would be", then corporations and governments are having very similar deliberations internally. This is probably a more accurate model for how "influencers" seem to work than the idea that some crazy guy in your organization falls in love with Product X and evangelizes it internally. I'm sure that happens and is a real force, but this correlation-of-experience effect is probably bigger on the whole. If Product X was good enough to make an evangelist internally, or more germane to this conversation, to make some a mortal enemy of it internally, it's usually because it was a good enough or bad enough product to be able to do that in the first place, and eventually everyone will figure it out in exactly the same way, just later. 20 years is way too large a minimum estimate. If Microsoft responds correctly that might be good, but if they just decide to rest on their laurels and extract whatever value they can out of Windows while they can, Windows would never last 20 years of that. Even the slowest organizations can move faster than that. After all, to cut Microsoft's revenues off at the knees, they don't need to remove every last Windows 2000 server in their backoffice they can't upgrade, they need to cut out just the majority of desktop licenses.
- john_strinlai 7mo ago
  >20 years is way too large a minimum estimate. i disagree. unless intuit is also rewriting quickbooks, dassault systèmes is rewriting solidworks, every bank is rewriting their custom windows-only software, every government branch is rewriting their custom windows-only software, etc. and every company is willing to retrain 95% of their employees on a new operating system, have increased support requirements for a few years at least, etc. not even touching the capital required for such a transition that in many cases has questionable benefits (from a business perspective). time will tell! i have first-hand experience with how fast banks move, so i will stick by my 20 year minimum. happy to see otherwise, though. in any case. what i replied to was a claim that windows is in "significant danger" today. it is not.
thesuitonym 7mo ago
And how many times this year have you seen a headline with some European country's government starting to migrate away from Microsoft?
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- john_strinlai 7mo ago
  a couple? and as far as i know, none of them have completed the transition. it is great that some are starting, seriously. but windows is not in significant danger as of today.

homarp 7mo ago

and then something like COVID happens and they change fast.

john_strinlai 7mo ago
expanding your vpn to support more employees working from home is much easier than replacing hundreds of thousands of machines, all of the windows-only software that runs on those machines, training all of your employees on a new operating system, cancelling all of your existing contracts... you get the point.
- homarp 7mo ago
  well, it happened with Teams meetings replacing fancy CISCO equipments. It happened with all the vpn+shared drives buried to just use SPO. different experience,I guess. Did your employees got trained? or just sent the link to 3 'online trainings'? Managers manage to switch to Mac seamlessly. I am sure the rest will follow with cheaper macs now available. And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian)
  - john_strinlai 7mo ago
    >And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian) office is a tiny, almost negligible, piece of the puzzle. quickbooks, solidworks and other cad software, bespoke software, security software, user management, permissions management (replacing active directory), contractual obligations, the millions of dollars required in implementation, the millions more dollars required for increased user support, and so on... but, again, just to reiterate: i am disputing that windows is in "significant danger" today.

Orygin 7mo ago

Still, a lot of those woke up from a profound sleep about digital sovereignty and are now contemplating leaving the American software ecosystem. It won't be sudden, until it is

jon-wood 7mo ago

You can't suddenly replace them, but in a lot of cases you can find that over an extended period more and more people choose the MacBook option from IT rather than the Windows one.

john_strinlai 7mo ago
most people are not willing to learn an entire new operating system for no reason, though. this might happen in tech-based companies, sure, but banks? accounting firms? ive never seen them offer macbooks. this is also ignoring all of the critical software that is windows-only (e.g. quickbooks, solidworks, bespoke programs in banks and government). point is: microsoft is not in "significant danger" today.
- olyjohn 7mo ago
  Most people dont even use the operating system. They look for the apps menu, then click what they want to run. Most people can switch between OSes easier than you think because there really isn't that much difference in how they work on the surface.
  - john_strinlai 7mo ago
    users are one component, but you are still ignoring/forgetting the rest. user management, file management, security, windows-specific software, auditing requirements, required capital investment, lack of competent linux sysadmins compared to windows sysadmins, and so on.
    - LtWorf 7mo ago
      > lack of competent linux sysadmins compared to windows sysadmins, and so on. Wasn't this a microsoft marketing campaign like 20 years ago? Are we still on it?
- jon-wood 7mo ago
  An increasing number of people are coming into the workplace never having used a Windows machine, or only occasionally having done so when it was absolutely necessary.

jerf 7mo ago

"Suddenly" in this case does not mean tomorrow. It means that, today, a lot of enterprises begin pondering the question, and then about a year from now, they start seriously studying and prototyping it, and then "suddenly" in 2029 Microsoft starts seeing a deluge of defections. It means a whole bunch of peopling finishing the conversion all at once, relatively speaking, even if that "all at once" is 3-4 years away. To put it another way, the thresholds where people get annoyed enough to quit are highly correlated to each other. If individuals on HN are posting "I don't want to switch, I've been working this way for decades now, but Windows has crossed the line for me, I've switched to Linux, and it was easier than I thought it would be", then corporations and governments are having very similar deliberations internally. This is probably a more accurate model for how "influencers" seem to work than the idea that some crazy guy in your organization falls in love with Product X and evangelizes it internally. I'm sure that happens and is a real force, but this correlation-of-experience effect is probably bigger on the whole. If Product X was good enough to make an evangelist internally, or more germane to this conversation, to make some a mortal enemy of it internally, it's usually because it was a good enough or bad enough product to be able to do that in the first place, and eventually everyone will figure it out in exactly the same way, just later. 20 years is way too large a minimum estimate. If Microsoft responds correctly that might be good, but if they just decide to rest on their laurels and extract whatever value they can out of Windows while they can, Windows would never last 20 years of that. Even the slowest organizations can move faster than that. After all, to cut Microsoft's revenues off at the knees, they don't need to remove every last Windows 2000 server in their backoffice they can't upgrade, they need to cut out just the majority of desktop licenses.

john_strinlai 7mo ago
>20 years is way too large a minimum estimate. i disagree. unless intuit is also rewriting quickbooks, dassault systèmes is rewriting solidworks, every bank is rewriting their custom windows-only software, every government branch is rewriting their custom windows-only software, etc. and every company is willing to retrain 95% of their employees on a new operating system, have increased support requirements for a few years at least, etc. not even touching the capital required for such a transition that in many cases has questionable benefits (from a business perspective). time will tell! i have first-hand experience with how fast banks move, so i will stick by my 20 year minimum. happy to see otherwise, though. in any case. what i replied to was a claim that windows is in "significant danger" today. it is not.

thesuitonym 7mo ago

And how many times this year have you seen a headline with some European country's government starting to migrate away from Microsoft?

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
john_strinlai 7mo ago
a couple? and as far as i know, none of them have completed the transition. it is great that some are starting, seriously. but windows is not in significant danger as of today.