this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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To Linux you say?
Well, how is his wife holding up?
To Linux, you say?
Meh. I never liked that whole concept. That's like saying "I hate the cars Detroit and Tokyo are designing, these days. That's why I'm going to build my own train."
"Wait, hold on! Don't walk away! It's not like it was, back in the old days! With the current build-your-own-locomotive kits, you ALMOST never have to lay any of your own track, anymore!"
All along, the correct solution would have been for Microsoft to have a real commercial competitor, other than Apple.
Do I have words for you about the beauty of building your own bicycle from scratch! And as an added perk you can do it in all the time that linux mint saves you by just giving you a fully functional operating system
Linux mint is Goooooood, man I love that OS.
If only I wouldn't need to build my own ISOs to install Linux. If only someone could build the system for me...
Nope, the correct solution would have been for MS to compete fairly with OSS, instead of, for example, buying the standardization of its Office suite formats, and then never implementing those formats to prevent OpenOffice from being 100% interoperable.
Hmmmmmm...what force might have coerced Microsoft to behave more reasonably, in that situation? PERHAPS A SOLID COMPETITOR, WHO WOULD GAIN MARKET SHARE AGAINST THEM, IF THEY PISSED OFF THE MARKET BY BREAKING COMPATIBILITY, IN THE VITAL OFFICE SUITE SPACE?
Robust competition in the actual operating system market would be the solution, exactly like I said.
The problem with Linux is that, despite being fucking free, it's not robust competition. It always hovers somewhere in the 1-4 percent range, for desktop users. It's not fair or logical for that to be the case, really...but here we are.
I honestly think there's a parallel universe, quite close to our own, where IBM made a bigger push to establish OS/2 (or something else) as a general-purpose, consumer-targeted operating system, or maybe a whole other company made a compatible competitor OS. I'm talking, like, all the way back in the early 90s, when Windows was just getting on its feet.
In that world, where Microsoft had been forced to split the market with a genuine competitor, they wouldn't have been able to do all the crazy shit that a monopoly allows. The point is, they truly would have had to be forced into that position. No business is going to compete fairly out of the goodness of its heart, because it doesn't have a heart. It only has predatory instincts.
Of course, to belabor the point, that's why nobody's high-minded philosophy about "free as in free speech, not free beer" software was ever going to be the solution. That kind of homespun cringe shit is exactly how you get 1-4 percent market share, even though your product can be obtained gratis.
It's not my fault, but it's the truth.
Strong antitrust and anti-corruption laws. Their actions were not "unreasonable", they were straight up illegal.
Edit: also you should read up on the whole thing. They didn't break compatibility with their own office suite of course. What they did is lie to (and almost definitely pay off) the standardization body: "here is the spec for OpenXML, you see we're open it's right here in the name, anyone can implement it and be interoperable with us". So OpenXML was standardized along with OpenOffice's OOXML (at the start of the process, only OOXML was considered for standardization).
Once the deed was done, they of course didn't implement OOXML in MS Office (as is their right), but they also didn't implement their own OpenXML spec properly, which means OpenOffice still had to reverse-engineer an intentionally obfuscated and broken format to try and read/write documents compatible with MSO.
So the whole thing has been absolutely useless, except for a couple of "experts" from the panel who came out of it a bit richer.
See, here's the thing, though:
Imagine what might have been accomplished if everyone who has ever oh-so-aggressively proselytized to their fellow citizens, trying to get them to adopt Linux had TALKED ABOUT THIS SHIT, INSTEAD.
Not as a reason to adopt Linux. Not as a way to try and grow Linux's 1-4 percent of the market share up to oooooh, maybe 8 percent. No. Imagine if they had set that shit aside and expended all that effort, getting the vote out for candidates who would have supported anti-trust enforcement.
And don't get pessimistic on me, now. If you're enough of a die-hard, lost-cause enthusiast to believe Linux can grow from 1-4 percent of the userbase to somehow, some way take over Microsoft's dominant position, one of these decades....well, you can't very well turn around and say "nah, all politicians are the same, there's no hope for change in that area."
Either be a pie-in-the-sky dreamer who never gives up hope OR DON'T.
In all honesty, I think most Linux street-preachers would actually rather open source never get any more traction. At least, not in the actual desktop operating system realm. Deep down, I think most of them prefer to be the poor, noble, beknighted underdog. Always preaching the truth, always being ignored by the idiot masses. It's a phenomenal way to stroke one's own ego.
Yeah that's all we talked about over at Slashdot at the time. Nobody else gave a fuck.
Actually if "windows" is "cars" and linux is "trains," ditching windows for linux is more like selling your car in NYC and taking the subway instead because while it is less glamorous it actually works better to get you around the city and you don't have to worry about all the extra bullshit like paying for or finding parking.
That analogy fails, because a full 32 percent of New Yorkers take the subway for their commute, whereas about 1-4 percent of people use Linux.
Go ahead and say "well, that's because a lot of people are stupid sheep." Doesn't really matter. The fact is, Linux has been "just about to take over the desktop OS market and leave all these commercial-software-loving Wintel Box users in the dust" for almost as long as we've been waiting for nuclear fusion.
And it actually looks like we MIGHT get fusion power, before Linux can break 6 percent (edit: wait, if you count ChromeOS, I guess it broke 6 percent, at some point. I don't know if you count ChromeOS, though. I kinda don't, because of how much it relies on cloud shit)
If any non-windows PC-compatible operating system had ever put together a 32 percent market share, that would have made EVERYTHING better, because it would have been placing market pressure on Microsoft. They wouldn't be able to pull bullshit stunts like we've been talking about.
But Linux could never actually get enough users. It just wasn't ever meant to be.
EDIT: I actually had my numbers wrong. 32 percent is the number of commuters who use the subway to get INTO New York City, for their daily commute. Apparently, A FULL 55 PERCENT OF ACTUAL NEW YORK RESIDENTS say they use the subway as their primary mode of transportation, inside the city.
So, again, the analogy simply cannot hold. Linux will never have 55 percent of the userbase.
You probably think it should have 55 percent. And that's fine. But a bunch of could'ves, should'ves, and would'ves taped to a $10 bill are worth one picture of Alexander Hamilton, and not much else.
It isn't about % of users lol, that's a fight you're having with yourself, and now I'm wondering if you think the % of people who use their own home-built trains to get around is comparable to the % of linux users. It's about user experience. Sure, if you NEED your car to go offroading the subway may not be the best option, same as if you NEED to play Destiny 2 you may not want to use linux, but for most people who just want to get around the city the subway is the best option, even for the people who moved from out of state and are used to their car so they don't utilize the trains. For most people who just want to browse the internet (or a myriad of other non-windows-exclusive programs), linux is actually better than windows, even if those people are used to the OS that ships with their computer.
Analogy holds up.
Oh! And Tl;dr, jfc my guy.
Recompiling your OS kernel: "I'll do that shit, sure. It'll make me feel SO MUCH SMARTER than those WintelBox Sheep."
Reading about 300 words: "Nah, too long."
EDIT: Also, you say it's not about % of users, but that really is just your opinion. Things WOULD be a lot different, if there were significantly more Linux users. I won't bother to elaborate on how exactly I think things would be different, because I realize you don't like reading.
Never had to recompile my kernel unless you mean
sudo dnf update -y
which yeah I guess would be hard for someone like you.Too late. Neal Stephenson already beat you to the punch with this analogy.
This is from In The Beginning... Was The Command Line. Published 1999.
You know, if I had a nickel for every time I quoted a chunk of a Stephenson book in the last few days I'd have two nickels. But it's weird that it's happened twice.
That's all amusing, in its own belabored way. But think about the specifics. That little screed was published in 1999. I'm pretty sure there was no 3D accelerated GPU on the market that had functional Linux drivers, at that point. I guess that would be like the free tanks being unable to drive on many newly built roads.
I imagine the station wagon buyer pointing this out, to which the guy with the bullhorn would reply "You don't need to drive on those roads!"
That's always the Linux answer. Whatever it can't do, you just don't need to be doing. Until the driver support DOES come along, then they add it to the "see, Linux can do anything and everything" list, without feeling the slightest hint of self-awareness.
I could be wrong about the state of Linux drivers for GPUs, in the late 1990s. If I am, then fuck it. You could say I just wasted those three paragraphs. But there's always something. Printers, scanners, webcams, other peripherals. The corner cases do get fixed eventually, and there are a lot less of them, in 2024. But in the 90s, it was a lot worse. There truly were plenty of things that you just couldn't do with Linux. Given that, I find the characterization of Linux as an invincible supertank among shitty cars to be more than a bit stretched.