You work in a bubble, Ig.
I'm getting about 4 hits a week from headhunters for major IT departments for large corporations that want Windows server experience. Microsoft lost the Internet server - and a LOT takes place on the Internet...
But there are still huge industries built on Microsoft technologies that have the same basic concerns about Linux systems as they've always had. This is such a ridiculous argument. It is the same one I've been having with Linux evangelists since 2007. "Whut about AWS and Google and Facebook and..."
Sure... the shit that internal IT departments don't want to deal with, that they outsource to hosted services - is all ran on Linux... sort of. A lot of time those Linux hosted services are hosting WINDOWS based Virtual machines where the actual business is being conducted. You end up with a Linux server that is hosting a bunch of Windows based published apps or Windows RDP servers or other Microsoft platforms - and they're being accessed by Windows corporate DESKTOP users. Hundreds of them.
So for each "win" you get - there are a thousand Microsoft platforms. AND... bonus...
The guys running the Windows parts, the internal IT staff - they're still making far more than their Linux counterparts. The internal IT department has a dozen employees - the hosted server space has 3 guys managing a hundred physical machines, the networking, the security, the storage - everything - and inside those hundred physical machines are represented THOUSANDS of Windows machines.
The only reason you believe any different is because you've sheltered yourself in a *nix centric world and never ventured far into these segments that require Windows background.
More frequently being Linux fluent is a PLUS for a Windows IT professional. Linux is more important in those Corporate IT jobs than it used to be - but, a lot of the internal IT staff at most of the major companies I've been doing gigs for the last several years don't know SHIT about Linux and don't want to - and their employee base - they're not touching Linux at all - Linux is the sewer of Information Technology... the pipes through which all the shit flows. Don't get me wrong, that is still important... critical even... but you're still just moving shit around.
Sat Mar 19 2022 17:22:32 EDT from IGnatius T FoobarYou're going to remain a niche. Especially if you're doing it so much
it kind of becomes the calling card of your platform. Linux, the
"RTFM" OS for brilliant, socially maladjusted neckbeards. There is a
REASON this stereotype exists of Linux.
Dude, that ship has sailed. Microsoft has lost every OS sector except the desktop. Believe me, I work in the data center business. *Everything* is Linux. The cloud is Linux, telecom is Linux, supercomputing is Linux, mobile is Linux, no one runs Windows Server anymore except to run Microsoft's own server software, and even that is questionable (SQL Server now runs on Linux, for example).
And the fact that the desktop is the only place where an oddball OS is still dominant, is kind of an albatross around its neck at this point. If you're comfortable with rebooting, you and the rest of the 99% can keep doing it.
The other 1% are the IT people who keep the world running.
They said the same shit about Windows 8 - the same studies about how Windows XP machines were still dominant throughout corporations, that they couldn't be upgraded enough to run Windows 8, that the interface sucked so bad - that corporations were refusing to budge... yada...
yada...
yada...
I've heard ALL of this before, over and over again.
The last gig I worked has 4000 employees in California alone, and they are all on Windows based NUCs, mostly running Windows 10, with some 7 still floating around out there.
When the paradigm changes completely, someone new will come along - and MAYBE they'll build that off something with a foundation of Linux - but more likely, it'll be something ALL new, and all of this shit will be like an IBM selectric typewriter.
You Linux guys are all broken records.
Sat Mar 19 2022 17:25:15 EDT from Nurb432And i could be wrong, but it 'feels' like the foundation is starting to show cracks in desktops too.. I think the coming windows 11 debacle where they obsolete so many functioning machines may be a tipping point. Most people are smart enough now to go 'wtf' 'why do i need a new computer it was fine yesterday'
As a matter of fact, the fight you just described between Atari and Commodore/Amiga - is likely what will happen with Linux/Windows platforms...
Something else will come along while they're busying fighting the same paradigm with ONE another - someone with something unique and innovative and completely different than both.
That is what it takes to disrupt Microsoft's incumbent corporate momentum. Linux has been chipping away at Microsoft's dominance since 1992... right, Slackware distros you mailed away for on CD...
Frankly, it is almost 40 years - and you really haven't made a lot of progress.
Shit in one hand and wish in the other. You did dominate the personal appliance market - as long as the end user doesn't ever have to see the Linux framework underneath the interface they operate.
I work in a windows centric world, and i do see a slow shift away from it. Agreed its slow, but its a movement and large enough to see it happening. Just found out the other day that an entire agency dumped windows off their desktops. And we didnt try to stop it. ( not sure how we are supporting them now, other than hardware and connectivity. Perhaps we are not. ( all our Linux people are on the server side and wont be supporting random desktops )
That means Docker on Linux most of the time, and something else (OpenShift or whatever) on Linux the rest of the time. Cloud Native operations on Windows is a joke and no one is using it.
To make Linux sound marginalized and unsuccessful you are forced to disingenuously pretend that the standalone desktop is actually the whole of Linux -- which of course it isn't. "Something else" *did* come along; it was the migration of most software back behind the glass where it can be maintained by professionals around the clock while people access it not only with traditional desktops (where the OS doesn't matter) but also mobile and portable devices.
The second disingenuous move was to move the goal posts, or perhaps the location of the starting line. This discussion originated with a laughable claim that Microsoft dominated the desktop by having the best product, rather than by using shady and often illegal business practices. This claim has of course been thoroughly destroyed.
Unfortunately they also destroyed the age old lesson: "cheaters never proper"
ya, they do.
Mon Mar 21 2022 09:11:03 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar. This discussion originated with a laughable claim that Microsoft dominated the desktop by having the best product, rather than by using shady and often illegal business practices. This claim has of course been thoroughly destroyed.
And it is funny how the entire 'personal computer' market was created out of a desire to get away from the 'back room leased resource' model of IBM and others.
Yet, here we are again. We have come full circle.
Unfortunately they also destroyed the age old lesson: "cheaters never
proper"
Yeah, that was never true. Whoever said "cheaters never prosper" or "crime doesn't pay" obviously didn't get away with either.
So me bitching about local install of office suddenly not working and the only solution was to reload from scratch as we couldn't even remove it to start over.....
Well, it started working today. We did get an update of something over weekend. ( who knows what ). Accidentally started word locally on a brand new document on my desktop, forgot to move it to one-drive so Online Word could see it ( or wait for it to sync on its own ) and the damned thing opened just as i said 'dammit'.. tried outlook, it works now too.
Stupid system.
I forget who else ( other than Minix ) is using a microkernel. I
think QNX does, and a few others. Not as much into operating
systems ( or ISAs ) as i was 20 years ago. These days i just want it
to work.
QNX uses a microkernel I think.
Mac OS also uses a microkernel ... sort of. The BSD Unix sitting underneath it uses the Mach microkernel, but like Microsoft they haven't been good about keeping it pure.
I knew it did ( QNX ) but not really looked at it for 20+ years now.
ya i also remember mach being at the core of OSX with a lot of FreeBSD user land + a custom GUI overlay .. convoluted mess ( and i *think* i heard iOS as based on mach too, but never verified that. )
I remember early on "coo, apple is doing FreeBSD!".. then looking closer, nah, not really. Still better than Windows, but too hacked up to like it.
Exactly. Mac OS having a unix kernel is about as useful as Windows having a microkernel; e.g. not very useful at all.
2022-04-02 17:27 from IGnatius T Foobar
Exactly. Mac OS having a unix kernel is about as useful as Windows
having a microkernel; e.g. not very useful at all.
I know some people who likes Mac because they get the convenience of Unix with the ease of use of a big, UX centered vendor. Or so they say.
Usually such people are UX masturbators who like adding JQuery and GBs of frameworks to things that could have been 100 lines of html and css combined. Id est, people who deserve to take an axe in the balls.
I agree its just as or more user friendly from a GUI point of view, but Is KDE still as bloated as it used to be? I stopped using it long ago due to resource use, and that i didn't need an 'integrated' desktop ( and all the advantages that go along with one ) as i was using non-kde apps anyway. Tho i guess now machines are so much faster and larger i wouldn't notice...
Fri Apr 08 2022 04:02:16 PM EDT from IGnatius T FoobarI call bullshit. KDE is just as usable as Mac OS, and the Linux underneath is way more unix native than Darwin.
KDE was such a piece of shit for so long - it would take remarkable resources to get people to go back to it.
The migration from Windows to Linux, Nurb - that you talk about - see where they are 18 months ago - if the initiative is a success, or if there is a new CIO and IT manager and they're migrating back to Windows on the desktop.
The goalposts haven't changed. The fact that Ig is championing KDE as "as good as OSX" shows how far you can trust his subjective opinion on matters like these. He sees everything from a Developer/Engineering practical utility perspective - he doesn't really understand userspace - and he thinks that the users should be happy with what they get - but I don't think he understands
A:What users WANT
B:What they experience
Most of his interfacing with computers is done far away from Userspace - he isn't a Desktop GUI power user or any sort. He hops into it for a brief while, does whatever thing he is FORCED to do in it, then jumps back out into the frontier. He is the Ted Kaczynski of IT professionals - he doesn't want to be in a big shiny office in the middle of the information superhighway metropolis - he wants to be in a primitive shack far away from everyone else out in the wilderlands of cyberspace.
So when he goes, "This is fine... and that sucks..."
He shouldn't be trusted.
Or, more appropriately - the truth is 180 degrees from what he thinks it is.
To wit, Gnome is the most popular UI for Linux to this day in part because Debian uses it as a default, and Ubuntu uses it as a default because it is built on Debian - and Debian actually delivered, despite its reputation as a "developer oriented" *nix - the first Linux that really worked well for people who just wanted a machine to compute productively on - not to dick around with strange and powerful arcane CLI commands all day and chase endless dependencies in order to get a simple program running. Ubuntu took it one step further, and polished the Linux turd to a bright shine.
KDE was PRETTY - but it wasn't stable - and it simply didn't get the market MINDSHARE that Ubuntu brought to Gnome and Linux as a whole. Lots of *real* Linux people HATE Ubuntu... and don't really care for Debian. There is no argument that among a broader USER demographic, Ubuntu and Debian are by far the most successful Linux distros ever.
Because they tend to do things the way USERS want - something that is an alien concept to MOST of the rest of the *nix world - that thinks that users should do things the way the DEVELOPERS want.
You can try and dodge that truth all you want - but that IS the goalpost. It is why Windows dominates, it is why OS X competes, and why even with Debian and Ubuntu and a bunch of other attempts at User-Centric *nix distros, Linux hovers at around 2% of market share when comparing... apples to apples.