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> It's in Microsoft interest to keep kids in their ecosystem Yep, which is also why they purchased Minecraft. It was more like purchasing the community of Mine

> It's in Microsoft interest to keep kids in their ecosystem Yep, which is also why they purchased Minecraft. It was more like purchasing the community of Minecraft users, which has a lot of children as well. I really wished there were a Micronix or something - combining the best of both worlds (Microsoft's extensive resources and reach coupled with GNU/Linux freedom and open-source development) - and that probably is what Microsoft is slowly aiming towards. I guess we'll find out in a decade.

deleted 12y ago
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zxcvcxz 12y ago
Bill Gates can't continue espousing the ideas that everyone should have access to healthcare/technology/internet and be on the board of a company that charges way too much for an OS that --let's be honest-- isn't really miles ahead of any other OS... I did like the fact that he posted a picture of kids using Ubuntu on his FB page though.
- sebastianavina 12y ago
  Depending on the type of user you are, but Linux is miles ahead of Windows for research.
  - sremani 12y ago
    Which way is Linux miles ahead ? This is not a rhetorical question, I really want to understand. What features and functionality of Linux are missing in Windows that sets them miles apart ?
    - 4ad 12y ago
      Being Unix-like.
    - okasaki 12y ago
      Just off the top of my head: package management, live-cd functionality, architecture support, command-line interfaces, GUI variety, kernel customization, scaling to low-powered harware, licencing.
      - peatmoss 12y ago
        Package management covers this, but is too understated: many of the applications that researchers use are downright hard to get working on Windows--particularly if you require any customization. I've run into this in a maddening way when working with geospatial tools. Need custom OGR/GDAL support? Prepare to spend hours figuring out how to make it work with Windows. Some deal to a lesser extent with R. Amount of time spent on edge cases is Windows > Mac > Linux. I use a Mac, but every time I build up an R environment with lots of library dependencies on Linux, I find myself saying, "well, that was easier than I expected." Conversely, when I use Windows, I'm right back to fighting library dependencies. Windows makes simple things easy, but complex things nearly intractable.
        bohol 12y ago
        In my experience a lot of this isn't becuase it can't work on windows, but because the developer didn't take the time to make it work on Windows. I also had my fair share on build and dependency problems on Linux when wanting something custom. I think this is much more a ecosystem thing than a systems thing. Which do count of course.
      - wfunction 12y ago
        GUI "variety"? Are you joking? The very reason there exists so much "variety" is that they all suck. Windows has one GUI system and it's worked darn well for quite a long time, and will continue to do so. Linux might be able to let you make your windows do somersaults so you can show off to your friends, but it still hasn't been able to get the basics right, like focus-stealing prevention. Windows is miles ahead of Linux on GUI -- if there's one thing I can tell you for sure, it's that. And Linux is "miles ahead of Windows for research because of its command-line interfaces"? Really? Since when are 25-year-old command-line shells research products? Not to mention stuff like http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls As for package management, when it works it works, but sometimes I wish it could burn in hell. I can't tell you how many times I've run into problems getting packages to work because their dependencies were either (1) no longer available ("sorry! our servers changed, your version of Linux is outdated"), (2) only available in source code form (but good luck compiling it!), or (3) not available for my version ("sorry, this version is too new for your OS"), among other things. Distributing your dependencies along with your application might not be sound engineering practice, but it sure as hell can make things actually work out of the box so you can focus on what you actually want to do.
    - acadien 12y ago
      I use linux for research for several reasons. The most important reason is that I own several high performance computing resources that need to run code with as little interference from the OS as possible. Furthermore I need these machines to share a file system and I need to be able to set it up myself with little IT experience. For my purposes Linux is dead simple to use, well documented (most of the time), and does exactly what I need it to do which is to stay the hell out of the way while I burn cycles on real work.
      - semi-extrinsic 12y ago
        This. Basically, Windows for scientific software is as bad as Linux was for 3D FPS gaming fifteen years ago. Just ask anyone who has tried compiling anything scientific under Cygwin. And don't get me started on MS's own compilers. They STILL don't support C99, a sixteen year old standard for one of the most important programming languages!
        bohol 12y ago
        What do you mean by scientific? There's a lot of Windows only software for research. Mostly for applied things. But also things like data collection. There's even more if you look at development in things like engineering. Even industrial is surisingly much Windows only.
        semi-extrinsic 12y ago
        Well, yes, I'll give you that "scientific software" is indeed too broad. If I restrict it to "software developed by teams of scientists working at universities and research labs" it's better. And yes, lots of data aquisition stuff is Windows only, particularly the stuff that gets sold along instruments. But then, in that category, the trend seems to be requiring a (preferrably air-gapped) PC running XP. I've even seen stuff running only on Win98 still in use, and I've seen software for rheometers that is STILL distributed on 3.5" floppies. And don't get me started on the "needs-crypto-usb-dongle-to-function" stuff - someone should really tell them that the $300k instrument is a sufficient protection against software piracy.
    - Marat_Dukhan 12y ago
      In the kernel: 1. Access to hardware performance counters and energy counters 2. Easily loadable custom drivers 3. File system that is not slow as hell ("Getting the modification time of a file ... seems to be about 100 times slower on Windows than it is on Linux"[1]) 4. Practical mechanism to allocate large pages 5. Futex In the ecosystem: 1. Package manager 2. C99 compiler 3. POSIX environment (a lot of scientific libraries and tools depend on it) [1] http://www.aosabook.org/en/posa/ninja.html http://www.aosabook.org/en/posa/ninja.html
    - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      SMP is probably one of the reasons Linux is so beloved in research, Windows may have caught up there somewhat, but it wasn't too long ago when you had to pay extra for a version of Windows that would allow you to use a second processor. Windows isn't even an also-ran in supercomputers, which is a shame really. Also being able to have farms of Linux boxes without fussing about with Windows licenses. Networking is another. Windows at least used to have a bunch of different crippleware SKUs with differing networking abilities Filesystems, Linux supports tons of them out of the box.
  - fsloth 12y ago
    "Linux is miles ahead of Windows for research." I think you need to be a bit more specific than that - for research in what field. I can think of several computational areas where either the OS is irrelevant or Windows is a better platform due to ecosystem issues. But yeah, supercomputers, servers, networking, etc, probably.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- rplnt 12y ago
  Is it more expensive than OS X though? Windows licenses are like $50 for OEM. With OS X you have to constantly buy upgrades since their support period is short. I might be wrong though, never bought an OS X license.
  - spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
    And OSX and Server is an orphan product try to find any usefull information about using OSx/Mac's when you have more than one or two systems. Thers no G dmm X Clinet FFS I am Migrating our mostly Mac shop from standalone to networked using OSX and to be honest using windows server 2012 woudl have been far cheaper in time and hardware costs
    - eyko 12y ago
      Please explain networked...
      - jcrawfordor 12y ago
        I assume he means shared profile/network authentication/configuration management. Active Directory stuff, basically, which yeah, OS X server can do, but I share the opinion that it is actually much harder to get set up to feature parity.
        walshemj 12y ago
        Sorry I should have said to set up central single sign on mobile accounts for laptops you know basic small office functionality. There isn't even a method for converting from stand alone users to a network one! - looks like those that say that Apple is abandoning osx users for ios have some validity
  - oscargrouch 12y ago
    Using the uglier to say that something ugly is not that ugly, is using logic in a dishonest and misleading way
  - 12y ago
- hipsterrific 12y ago
  OS X is free now on the condition of using only Mac hardware. Windows is the only OS that isn't free and their market share has been gobbled up by Apple in the last decade or so. I think the only place where Windows is still pricey is the enterprise, but Apple has made it a point to give away their OS completely free to everyone. Apple got out of the server game mostly because Linux has and will take over in the long run (especially with platforms like docker which should make it easier to deploy apps).
  - ntakasaki 12y ago
    >OS X is free now on the condition of using only Mac hardware. By that metric, Windows is also free if you buy a Surface. >their market share has been gobbled up by Apple in the last decade or so Today I learned that going from 5% to 7% marketshare is gobbling up a rival that has 90%+ marketshare.
    - yellowapple 12y ago
      > By that metric, Windows is also free if you buy a Surface. There's a difference between Microsoft's model (using a hardware product to better market a software product) and Apple's model (using a software product to better market a hardware product). Microsoft is a software company first and foremost, while Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. That's the root cause of the reason why your particular comparison isn't exactly valid: that OS X is not at all designed to work on hardware that wasn't built by Apple (and, indeed, getting OS X to work on non-Apple hardware requires a modified OS X and installer on top of matching the hardware of a Mac almost perfectly).
- cheald 12y ago
  I know the whole Micro$oft thing is fun and all, but Microsoft does put an awful lot of money towards providing technology in developing countries (OLPC, for example), as well as general philanthropy for non-profits. "Making a profit" and "spreading information access to those who don't have it" are not mutually exclusive.
brudgers 12y ago
> Yep, which is also why they purchased Minecraft. It was more like purchasing the community of Minecraft users, which has a lot of children as well. Microsoft has a strong presence in the gaming industry and a history of producing games going back several decades. Notch was looking to cash out of Mojang, and the kids playing Minecraft also have Wii's and 360's and Playstations...or at least the ones in and around my house. They have iPhones and iPads too and game on them as well.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

zxcvcxz 12y ago

Bill Gates can't continue espousing the ideas that everyone should have access to healthcare/technology/internet and be on the board of a company that charges way too much for an OS that --let's be honest-- isn't really miles ahead of any other OS... I did like the fact that he posted a picture of kids using Ubuntu on his FB page though.

sebastianavina 12y ago
Depending on the type of user you are, but Linux is miles ahead of Windows for research.
- sremani 12y ago
  Which way is Linux miles ahead ? This is not a rhetorical question, I really want to understand. What features and functionality of Linux are missing in Windows that sets them miles apart ?
  - 4ad 12y ago
    Being Unix-like.
  - okasaki 12y ago
    Just off the top of my head: package management, live-cd functionality, architecture support, command-line interfaces, GUI variety, kernel customization, scaling to low-powered harware, licencing.
    - peatmoss 12y ago
      Package management covers this, but is too understated: many of the applications that researchers use are downright hard to get working on Windows--particularly if you require any customization. I've run into this in a maddening way when working with geospatial tools. Need custom OGR/GDAL support? Prepare to spend hours figuring out how to make it work with Windows. Some deal to a lesser extent with R. Amount of time spent on edge cases is Windows > Mac > Linux. I use a Mac, but every time I build up an R environment with lots of library dependencies on Linux, I find myself saying, "well, that was easier than I expected." Conversely, when I use Windows, I'm right back to fighting library dependencies. Windows makes simple things easy, but complex things nearly intractable.
      - bohol 12y ago
        In my experience a lot of this isn't becuase it can't work on windows, but because the developer didn't take the time to make it work on Windows. I also had my fair share on build and dependency problems on Linux when wanting something custom. I think this is much more a ecosystem thing than a systems thing. Which do count of course.
    - wfunction 12y ago
      GUI "variety"? Are you joking? The very reason there exists so much "variety" is that they all suck. Windows has one GUI system and it's worked darn well for quite a long time, and will continue to do so. Linux might be able to let you make your windows do somersaults so you can show off to your friends, but it still hasn't been able to get the basics right, like focus-stealing prevention. Windows is miles ahead of Linux on GUI -- if there's one thing I can tell you for sure, it's that. And Linux is "miles ahead of Windows for research because of its command-line interfaces"? Really? Since when are 25-year-old command-line shells research products? Not to mention stuff like http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls As for package management, when it works it works, but sometimes I wish it could burn in hell. I can't tell you how many times I've run into problems getting packages to work because their dependencies were either (1) no longer available ("sorry! our servers changed, your version of Linux is outdated"), (2) only available in source code form (but good luck compiling it!), or (3) not available for my version ("sorry, this version is too new for your OS"), among other things. Distributing your dependencies along with your application might not be sound engineering practice, but it sure as hell can make things actually work out of the box so you can focus on what you actually want to do.
  - acadien 12y ago
    I use linux for research for several reasons. The most important reason is that I own several high performance computing resources that need to run code with as little interference from the OS as possible. Furthermore I need these machines to share a file system and I need to be able to set it up myself with little IT experience. For my purposes Linux is dead simple to use, well documented (most of the time), and does exactly what I need it to do which is to stay the hell out of the way while I burn cycles on real work.
    - semi-extrinsic 12y ago
      This. Basically, Windows for scientific software is as bad as Linux was for 3D FPS gaming fifteen years ago. Just ask anyone who has tried compiling anything scientific under Cygwin. And don't get me started on MS's own compilers. They STILL don't support C99, a sixteen year old standard for one of the most important programming languages!
      - bohol 12y ago
        What do you mean by scientific? There's a lot of Windows only software for research. Mostly for applied things. But also things like data collection. There's even more if you look at development in things like engineering. Even industrial is surisingly much Windows only.
        semi-extrinsic 12y ago
        Well, yes, I'll give you that "scientific software" is indeed too broad. If I restrict it to "software developed by teams of scientists working at universities and research labs" it's better. And yes, lots of data aquisition stuff is Windows only, particularly the stuff that gets sold along instruments. But then, in that category, the trend seems to be requiring a (preferrably air-gapped) PC running XP. I've even seen stuff running only on Win98 still in use, and I've seen software for rheometers that is STILL distributed on 3.5" floppies. And don't get me started on the "needs-crypto-usb-dongle-to-function" stuff - someone should really tell them that the $300k instrument is a sufficient protection against software piracy.
  - Marat_Dukhan 12y ago
    In the kernel: 1. Access to hardware performance counters and energy counters 2. Easily loadable custom drivers 3. File system that is not slow as hell ("Getting the modification time of a file ... seems to be about 100 times slower on Windows than it is on Linux"[1]) 4. Practical mechanism to allocate large pages 5. Futex In the ecosystem: 1. Package manager 2. C99 compiler 3. POSIX environment (a lot of scientific libraries and tools depend on it) [1] http://www.aosabook.org/en/posa/ninja.html http://www.aosabook.org/en/posa/ninja.html
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    SMP is probably one of the reasons Linux is so beloved in research, Windows may have caught up there somewhat, but it wasn't too long ago when you had to pay extra for a version of Windows that would allow you to use a second processor. Windows isn't even an also-ran in supercomputers, which is a shame really. Also being able to have farms of Linux boxes without fussing about with Windows licenses. Networking is another. Windows at least used to have a bunch of different crippleware SKUs with differing networking abilities Filesystems, Linux supports tons of them out of the box.
- fsloth 12y ago
  "Linux is miles ahead of Windows for research." I think you need to be a bit more specific than that - for research in what field. I can think of several computational areas where either the OS is irrelevant or Windows is a better platform due to ecosystem issues. But yeah, supercomputers, servers, networking, etc, probably.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
rplnt 12y ago
Is it more expensive than OS X though? Windows licenses are like $50 for OEM. With OS X you have to constantly buy upgrades since their support period is short. I might be wrong though, never bought an OS X license.
- spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
  And OSX and Server is an orphan product try to find any usefull information about using OSx/Mac's when you have more than one or two systems. Thers no G dmm X Clinet FFS I am Migrating our mostly Mac shop from standalone to networked using OSX and to be honest using windows server 2012 woudl have been far cheaper in time and hardware costs
  - eyko 12y ago
    Please explain networked...
    - jcrawfordor 12y ago
      I assume he means shared profile/network authentication/configuration management. Active Directory stuff, basically, which yeah, OS X server can do, but I share the opinion that it is actually much harder to get set up to feature parity.
      - walshemj 12y ago
        Sorry I should have said to set up central single sign on mobile accounts for laptops you know basic small office functionality. There isn't even a method for converting from stand alone users to a network one! - looks like those that say that Apple is abandoning osx users for ios have some validity
- oscargrouch 12y ago
  Using the uglier to say that something ugly is not that ugly, is using logic in a dishonest and misleading way
- 12y ago
hipsterrific 12y ago
OS X is free now on the condition of using only Mac hardware. Windows is the only OS that isn't free and their market share has been gobbled up by Apple in the last decade or so. I think the only place where Windows is still pricey is the enterprise, but Apple has made it a point to give away their OS completely free to everyone. Apple got out of the server game mostly because Linux has and will take over in the long run (especially with platforms like docker which should make it easier to deploy apps).
- ntakasaki 12y ago
  >OS X is free now on the condition of using only Mac hardware. By that metric, Windows is also free if you buy a Surface. >their market share has been gobbled up by Apple in the last decade or so Today I learned that going from 5% to 7% marketshare is gobbling up a rival that has 90%+ marketshare.
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    > By that metric, Windows is also free if you buy a Surface. There's a difference between Microsoft's model (using a hardware product to better market a software product) and Apple's model (using a software product to better market a hardware product). Microsoft is a software company first and foremost, while Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. That's the root cause of the reason why your particular comparison isn't exactly valid: that OS X is not at all designed to work on hardware that wasn't built by Apple (and, indeed, getting OS X to work on non-Apple hardware requires a modified OS X and installer on top of matching the hardware of a Mac almost perfectly).
cheald 12y ago
I know the whole Micro$oft thing is fun and all, but Microsoft does put an awful lot of money towards providing technology in developing countries (OLPC, for example), as well as general philanthropy for non-profits. "Making a profit" and "spreading information access to those who don't have it" are not mutually exclusive.

brudgers 12y ago

> Yep, which is also why they purchased Minecraft. It was more like purchasing the community of Minecraft users, which has a lot of children as well. Microsoft has a strong presence in the gaming industry and a history of producing games going back several decades. Notch was looking to cash out of Mojang, and the kids playing Minecraft also have Wii's and 360's and Playstations...or at least the ones in and around my house. They have iPhones and iPads too and game on them as well.