History behind Windows and the man who should have been Bill Gates

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The flaw in this reasoning this far more basic. A lot of people chose to use Windows because it supports their needs. I'm not a Linux expert but I know it doesn't support my needs. Period. All of his preaching when his alternative isn't even an alternative is pointless.

A lot of people use Heroin because it eases their widthdrawal symptoms. They shouldn't though. Linux can do most of the things people need daily. Even gaming gets stronger and stronger by the day.

A few niche programs won't run on it natively. Boo-hoo.

Windows is the 8-ball in your pipe. Go ahead and smoke it - it'll cause you harm.
 
You're starting to sound like a politician. The very people you need to win over to adopt your platform, you are standing there and accusing of being too stupid to understand how wonderful your platform is! No one ever made progress in a movement by appealing only to the intellectual elites - they had to appeal to the masses. Doesn't mean you have to dumb it down, I mean the writings of Locke and the like were quite intellectual, but appealed to the masses in the colonies and sparked a revolution birthing the USA. But if the prevailing attitude in the community is that the masses are too stupid to get why they need GNU/Linux as their desktop OS, then the masses will never adopt GNU/Linux as their desktop OS.

The people in the colonies didn't spend all day inside staring at a 5x4 piece of glass and plastic, liking cat videos and arguing with deplorables or libtards.

I joke you have a point... and for whatever reason the hyper partisanship infecting the rest of the world also tends to infect our hobby. Yes I Know there is irony there seeing as I have posted more then once about my hate of windows... still I would honestly use windows more or at least be cool with my less techhead friends and family using it. IF MS would simply take some time and fix the biggest nagging windows issues, and continue their move toward being a decent acting company. (yes they get some credit for becoming better tech world citizen the last couple years, but after 20 years they still have some penance to pay) At this point if they fix their update system and continue fixing their security issues... windows may actually deserve to continue. ;)
 
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Which can be brought back to the OP. The "technically superior" product, or the "first product" is not necessarily the best product to use. Had Gates not done what he did in the 1980's, we would be in a world of hurt in the Personal Computing world. IBM didn't care about computers in the home, Amiga and BE were horribly mismanaged, and Apple's closed systems only found minimal appeal. It is the P.T. Barnums, Henry Fords, and Bill Gates of the world that give us the products we use on a regular basis that impact our lives, be it entertainment, transportation, or computers!

I'm not sure we would have been in a world of hurt. I think a system where the same hardware had 4-5 viable options of operating system when you bought it would have been a good thing. OEMs free to ship whatever they wanted... and consumers demanded. Hospital equipment in the 90s not shipping with XP would not have been a bad thing. lol

MS Fd us all over by making one OS to rule them all... and forcing it down OEMs throats, even in cases where windows was clearly not the ideal OS.

Imagine a world where the big software companies would have developed with cross platform sales in mind from the 80s on.

The only reason 90s windows software was only on windows was due to MS making it so. Creating frameworks and APIs that did not follow standards or where so oddly setup that it was far harder and a lot of work to support other systems. This is why Apple spend the 90s and 2000s buying up software companies to make Mac Software.... they gave the world garage band and logic X and a bunch of other great mac software. Still things would be far better if software companies could support other operating systems without having to do tons of work.

Thankfully the world today is a lot different. Every major software developer is using cross platform tools... and Even MS has mostly caved in their attempts to make developers windows only by forcing the use of locked to windows code. Heck even the MS C++ compiler is at last complaint with actual C++. For years to use MS compiler for a big project you had to basically introduce 1000s of C++ errors because MS decided to basically extend C++.

Not to write another book... I'm simply saying perhaps, if IBM had won they wouldn't have locked it down hard. Which would have been a good thing. As developers would have gravitated to using cross platform tools much earlier. I imagine the entire mobile explosion would have been very very different. Imagine if when the first smart phones started launching if the big PC software developers would have been able to recompile for mobile without almost completely rewriting.
 
Not to write another book... I'm simply saying perhaps, if IBM had won they wouldn't have locked it down hard. Which would have been a good thing. As developers would have gravitated to using cross platform tools much earlier. I imagine the entire mobile explosion would have been very very different. Imagine if when the first smart phones started launching if the big PC software developers would have been able to recompile for mobile without almost completely rewriting.
I disagree. IBM was only concerned about selling the IBM ecosystem, and would never have voluntarily opened up their system. It was the state of affairs of the 1980's - everyone was tightly integrating their software and hardware. Then comes along Compaq and is able to get the legal rights to make an IBM clone, and need an OS - Microsoft stepped right up and provided. In my opinion, without Microsoft, we would have ended up with a fragmented personal computer world, with the incompatible IBM, Apple, Amiga, etc., all fighting for market share. The lack of customizations or third party manufacturers would have stifled the innovation that has led us to where we are.

I suppose we have a taste of the "best case scenario" when we compare Apple PC's with "Open" PC's. Since Apple adopted the Intel platform, they pretty much surrendered the platform war, and simply wrote their own OS, but wrote it to "only work" with their hardware, and have made it difficult (though not impossible) to install a different OS on their hardware.

Now, the Microsoft of the late 90's certainly did some shady deals, but to keep in perspective, somewhat understandable. Their dominant position had only recently been acquired, and there were serious potentials to unseat them. If Amiga hadn't been horribly mismanaged, who know what could have happened? The possibility of a resurgent Apple, and IBM was starting to (at least in some TV ads) push back.
 
If the writing is on the wall then, if Windows dies, steam dies with it, along with Ubisoft, EA, GOG and all those other games that folks play that they have owned for a long, long time. The Linux Desktop is dead, as nice as it is and will not be taking it's place. Also, Mac OS will not be doing that either.

The writing is not on the wall and Windows is not going anywhere, as much as people wish it to be so. (They never are able to think through to the actual consequences to the end of that, if that were to ever happen.

Nothing will die at all, developers will simply move to the platform that supports their customers needs as effectively as possible. Windows is no more than an OS, it's far from the only solution.

The reason why it's far from the only solution is that the Linux desktop is far from dead - And for the record, just stating it now, you made mention of the word 'Linux' before I did. ;)
 
Linux can do most of the things people need daily. Even gaming gets stronger and stronger by the day.

Here's an oped from Michael Larabel of Phoronix on the state of desktop Linux gaming:

The Linux gaming percentage continues hovering around the 0.5% mark on Steam with no major breakthroughs for AAA Linux gaming being the unfortunate situation. Linux VR gaming is slowly getting better albeit no compelling reason to use it over Windows, AAA-quality Linux games are just trickling in these days, no SteamOS-powered Steam Machines on the horizon, and for the time being just really no serious incentives for gamers to switch to Linux over Windows. But Valve does continue investing in Linux with their continued graphics driver improvements, occasional updates to SteamOS, and sponsorship of events like DebConf and XDC, among other open-source/Linux initiatives from the Bellevue company.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Survey-June-2018

From a HUGE Linux fan that's hardcode Linux this is hardly a victory speech for Linux gaming. A shit load number of gaps, Steam VR for Linux has slowly been getting for how long now with practically no game support while Windows now how thousands of VR games?

If desktop Linux support was as good as you and other claim there'd be a lot more people using desktop Linux.
 
Here's an oped from Michael Larabel of Phoronix on the state of desktop Linux gaming:



https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Survey-June-2018

From a HUGE Linux fan that's hardcode Linux this is hardly a victory speech for Linux gaming. A shit load number of gaps, Steam VR for Linux has slowly been getting for how long now with practically no game support while Windows now how thousands of VR games?

If desktop Linux support was as good as you and other claim there'd be a lot more people using desktop Linux.

99.9% of people don't give a shit about VR heatless, for the umptienth time. It's just too expensive and problematic for the general population. The number of non-VR linux games has risen by thousands and continues to do so. So for people who actually do intelligent stuff with their computers and don't game all day, linux has been a great option for years already.
 
99.9% of people don't give a shit about VR heatless, for the umptienth time. It's just too expensive and problematic for the general population.

Virtually all consumer facing technology that we today was at one time too expensive or problematic when they originated. And then they weren't. Maybe VR gaming won't become mainstream but at this point neither has Linux gaming. And if VR does get more popular, it's arguably as popular as desktop Linux gaming even now, Linux is going to be SOL. No development and people like you claiming how irrelevant VR is.

At someone like Michael Larabel is being open minded and understand that Linux gaming can't be in a great state if it's getting NO attention for the latest and greatest. No VR, no AAA, really nothing much beyond Steam and even they have backed away from Steam Machines.

The number of non-VR linux games has risen by thousands and continues to do so.

No VR games a two years ago, now close to 3k. No worse than Linux.
 
While I don't care in the slightest for VR, there seems to be a few titles available for Linux according to this website. Hardly barren in any way whatsoever.

https://vrgamesfor.com/platform/linux/

Having said that, VR? Pffft.

Currently Steam lists 85 VR games as Linux compatible and 2528 VR games as Windows compatible. And that's not counting Rift only games of which none are Linux compatible. VR is a more significant gaming market currently than most pro-desktop Linux folks I think are willing to admit simply because desktop Linux is completely irrelevant in this space.
 
Currently Steam lists 85 VR games as Linux compatible and 2528 VR games as Windows compatible. And that's not counting Rift only games of which none are Linux compatible. VR is a more significant gaming market currently than most pro-desktop Linux folks I think are willing to admit simply because desktop Linux is completely irrelevant in this space.

Seems like more than enough VR titles considering my interest in the technology. I guess anyone interested in VR is more than capable of making up their own mind if using Windows is worth the extra titles or not. However I'd hardly call 85 titles irrelevant considering the quality of 90% of those 2528 Windows titles.
 
Seems like more than enough VR titles considering my interest in the technology. I guess anyone interested in VR is more than capable of making up their own mind if using Windows is worth the extra titles or not. However I'd hardly call 85 titles irrelevant considering the quality of 90% of those 2528 Windows titles.

The Rift isn't even Linux compatible at all. And the idea that 85 titles versus 2528 isn't an overwhelming advantage is silly. It seems like the answer for everything for a lot of pro-desktop Linux folks if "90% don't care." Given that logic 90% don't care or aren't effected by the criticisms of pro-desktop Linux folks.
 
Virtually all consumer facing technology that we today was at one time too expensive or problematic when they originated. And then they weren't. Maybe VR gaming won't become mainstream but at this point neither has Linux gaming. And if VR does get more popular, it's arguably as popular as desktop Linux gaming even now, Linux is going to be SOL. No development and people like you claiming how irrelevant VR is.

At someone like Michael Larabel is being open minded and understand that Linux gaming can't be in a great state if it's getting NO attention for the latest and greatest. No VR, no AAA, really nothing much beyond Steam and even they have backed away from Steam Machines.



No VR games a two years ago, now close to 3k. No worse than Linux.

You're being completely annoying. The world does not revolve around gaming and especially not around VR which gives nausea to many people for example. You live in your little bubble, we get it. Just stop repeating your own fallacies. Microsofts dominant position in the desktop OS market is nobodys benefit and it needs to disappear. Period.
 
The Rift isn't even Linux compatible at all. And the idea that 85 titles versus 2528 isn't an overwhelming advantage is silly. It seems like the answer for everything for a lot of pro-desktop Linux folks if "90% don't care." Given that logic 90% don't care or aren't effected by the criticisms of pro-desktop Linux folks.

100% of the adult people who I introduced to linux and showed how its daily use differs in no meaningful way from a windows desktop, have accepted linux as their daily driver. They all had unwarranted fears and doubts which were easily cleared.

So the only reason why people continue use and pay for Windows is ignorance.
 
100% of the adult people who I introduced to linux and showed how its daily use differs in no meaningful way from a windows desktop, have accepted linux as their daily driver. They all had unwarranted fears and doubts which were easily cleared.

So the only reason why people continue use and pay for Windows is ignorance.[/QUOTE]

Cool, so in about 10,000 years you will have personally converted everyone to Linux. I know the strengths and weaknesses of desktop Linux well enough. I'd be using Linux right now if it were what you say it is.

I have shit loads more invested in hardware and software that's only Windows compatible, the cost of Windows versus Linux is irrelevant to me personally. It matters not a single shit.
 
The Rift isn't even Linux compatible at all. And the idea that 85 titles versus 2528 isn't an overwhelming advantage is silly. It seems like the answer for everything for a lot of pro-desktop Linux folks if "90% don't care." Given that logic 90% don't care or aren't effected by the criticisms of pro-desktop Linux folks.

As stated, don't care for VR and I know I'm not the only member here to have such an opinion. As stated, I'm sure individuals can decide for themselves if Windows is worth it or not considering their VR experience.
 
As stated, I'm sure individuals can decide for themselves if Windows is worth it or not considering their VR experience.

Windows is the only platform for using PC VR currently that remotely makes sense. Linux is totally unviable. Steam VR is still a year after beta release a beta product. If you don't like VR, you don't like VR, but many do in this forum like it. Other than myself I don't recall any of hear mentioning using VR under Linux. That was a year ago but little has changed relative to Windows. The support for VR under Linux simply is not there.
 
So the only reason why people continue use and pay for Windows is ignorance.
I have shit loads more invested in hardware and software that's only Windows compatible, the cost of Windows versus Linux is irrelevant to me personally. It matters not a single shit.[/QUOTE]

That's your problem.
 
How is dealing with a wide range of PC technically living in a bubble from a PC perspective? That's literally the exact opposite of a bubble.
Your blind belief that the world revolves around VR and games is the bubble. Only nerds living in basements immerse themselves in games and VR most of the time. Normal people have lives and they use computers for daily tasks or work.

I actually took off the Windows PC from my son because he was gaming way too much. After a month I'll consider returning it.
 
Your blind belief that the world revolves around VR and games is the bubble.

Again, virtually all the affordable tech that you and I use on a daily basis today was considered by someone at the time of its origin "a bubble".

I actually took off the Windows PC from my son because he was gaming way too much. After a month I'll consider returning it.

Ok, that's a kid. I'm a 50 year old man that's been making my own living for decades now. PC gaming I believe has done for more good for me than bad. You equate gaming with heroin, you obviously have never met an opioid addict to make that comparison.
 
Again, virtually all the affordable tech that you and I use on a daily basis today was considered by someone at the time of its origin "a bubble".

Ok, that's a kid. I'm a 50 year old man that's been making my own living for decades now. PC gaming I believe has done for more good for me than bad. You equate gaming with heroin, you obviously have never met an opioid addict to make that comparison.

VR today is like a personal computer was at 1970. Still far far away from being a mainstream idea. You're about as smart in your message now as someone would have been in 1970 touting everybody should have a personal computer. Nobody then really cared, people still had lives. And that's without the nausea problems VR causes to many.

Gaming is a serious problem for many people and several people have died as a result of prolonged gaming sessions. I personally found that my quality of life improved drastically after I quit playing computer games regularly.

Do you have family heatless? Think how much time you spend ignoring your family members encased in the virtual bubble, wearing headphones and blind to your surroundings waving around like Stevie Wonder at a concert.
 
VR today is like a personal computer was at 1970.

You don't even use the tech so how would you even be able to make the comparison?

You don't have to like VR but you act as if you're an expert on something you don't touch.
 
Install Linux on my sig rig and little works. Personally boogered infinitely more with Linux.

Really? When did linux spy on you? When did linux place ads on your desktop? When did linux try to force you to use certain apps that bring them money? When did linux force change your settings? When did linux force reboot your computer? The list is endless, really.
 
You don't even use the tech so how would you even be able to make the comparison?

You don't have to like VR but you act as if you're an expert on something you don't touch.

We're talking about general population here and the vast majority of people have never even seen a VR set let alone tried to use it. It's a niche product of a niche scheme. Maybe your world revolves around VR, Onenote and who knows what. News flash: Other people still have real lives and other priorities. Like skiing, fishing, excercising... Or some people prefer to code instead of gaming, making useful time with the computer. Study stuff, make science experiments... In short, things that create self improvement where your VR games only make you passive and eventually dumb as your life circles around content that other people chewed ready for you.

A person using VR is the practical equivalent of the drones that used to be sci-fi. Not anymore.
 
Really? When did linux spy on you? When did linux place ads on your desktop? When did linux try to force you to use certain apps that bring them money? When did linux force change your settings? When did linux force reboot your computer? The list is endless, really.

So all of this dubious stuff versus basic hardware incompatibilities. You make have shown folks with $300 laptops how wonderful Linux is but not folks that have PCs that do things 99% don't even know are possible.
 
So all of this dubious stuff versus basic hardware incompatibilities. You make have shown folks with $300 laptops how wonderful Linux is but not folks that have PCs that do things 99% don't even know are possible.
As I said, there are people who use their computer for smart things and then there are couch slouches who sit with their head encased in a bucket.
 
Maybe your world revolves around VR, Onenote and who knows what. News flash: Other people still have real lives and other priorities. Like skiing, fishing, excercising…

But for some reason you take it upon yourself to talk about things you don't know anything about and go all whataboutism.
 
As I said, there are people who use their computer for smart things and then there are couch slouches who sit with their head encased in a bucket.

Yes, you're so smart talking about stuff that clearly have no experience. I guess pro-desktop Linux folks have to be betting on PC VR failure because if it does take off, better than conventional Linux gaming, that'll be bad.
 
Yes, you're so smart talking about stuff that clearly have no experience. I guess pro-desktop Linux folks have to be betting on PC VR failure because if it does take off, better than conventional Linux gaming, that'll be bad.

You continue to miss the point. The fact that you want to sit your days with your head encased in a bucket does _not_ mean that everyone else would want to let alone need to. There is no point to continue the discussion when you cannot understand even the basic concepts we're dealing with here.
 
There is no point to continue the discussion when you cannot understand even the basic concepts we're dealing with here.

When you bought up Linux gaming all I did was reference a recent oped from one of the top desktop Linux enthusiast sites on the state of Linux gaming which overall I thought was a reasonable assessment. PC gaming has always pushed boundaries that simply an important aspect to it and something that Phoronix understands and why that oped considered VR.

In the consumer space PC gaming is as big of deal as it's ever been. All the shit that's for sale related to PC gaming makes that obvious to anyone that's not got their head stuck in the sand. Not saying that mainstream gamers are into all of that stuff but again part of the aspect of PC gaming is pushing boundaries.
 
As said you clearly are either trolling or totally oblivious to the realities of regular people and their computer use. Both options are pretty bad.
 
As said you clearly are either trolling or totally oblivious to the realities of regular people and their computer use. Both options are pretty bad.

The average person's computing needs can be met with a smartphone. This place is full of people that build PCs and debate what kind of coolant to put into a water cooling loop.
 
The average person's computing needs can be met with a smartphone. This place is full of people that build PCs and debate what kind of coolant to put into a water cooling loop.
Again wrong. The average person can't read the tiny text properly from a smartphone let alone type with it. Extremely uncomfortable unless you're a teenager.
 
Again wrong. The average person can't read the tiny text properly from a smartphone let alone type with it. Extremely uncomfortable unless you're a teenager.
I wear trifocals and I can read the text in my iPhone 6. You seem to grasping at straws.
 
The average person can't read the tiny text properly from a smartphone let alone type with it.

OK, now you're just being ludicrous and posting just to be fucking posting, seriously. If what you just said had any truth to it, then 2.5 billion people wouldn't own smartphones or use them daily multiple times - can't get much more average than that.

And this thread just continues rolling towards the inevitable lock. I am amazed it has survived this far, truly. ;)
 
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