I ran Linux for 19 years, leaving for macOS a few years ago, but I work for a boss who LOVES Microsoft. He's awesome. Fairly technical (but out of date), awesome at corporate politics, cares about his employees: all-around great guy. But Microsoft can do no wrong in his eyes. He still has a Windows phone and watch, when he knows the platform has been effectively dead for over a year or more.

I think what it boils down to is that he's abdicated his technical thinking to Microsoft because he can't keep up with it any more. When Microsoft was at it's 90's peak, he concluded that he could snuggle into their product-bosom, and ride out the rest of his career on his knowledge of Visual Basic. He wasn't necessarily wrong, but it's a decision that he doesn't have the bandwidth to reevaluate now, as his career is centered around managing. So he just ignores all of these kinds of articles. I guess that's one approach.

People at much higher levels in large companies are in much the same boat. They make purchasing decisions based on Microsoft doing no wrong, and give them the capital to ignore feedback from the public sector. And that's why we are where we are.

At least, that's the way I think it works.

> Maybe I am a linux hermit, but you guys really abide this shit?

Didn't Ubuntu do something like this with search in the past? These companies love to cream off whatever extra income they can get. Turning operating systems into services, with their increasing reliance on expensive cloud data centers is only going to make the problem worse.

Ubuntu did and got heavily criticised for it by the wider community. So Canonical reversed their decision on opt-out in-OS ads.

For what it's worth, it's easier to switch between Linux distributions than it is to switch from Windows to something else. Ubuntu is only one of literally thousands of desktop Linux's - many of which are forks / reskins of Debian or Ubuntu to begin with, so it was pretty trivial for users to dump Ubuntu in favour of an ad-free Linux. So Canonical didn't really have much choice other than to listen to the complaints.

> For what it's worth, it's easier to switch between Linux distributions than it is to switch from Windows to something else.

That's understating it a bit. You just sudo apt install one package, log out, and select the different DE. It's a 30 second job.

There's a huge difference between just switching your desktop and switching your entire distribution, but it's still easy. Just plow under the OS partition with something else.

And this is actually one of the great things about zfs: you can now have a volume manager and filsystem that is fully portable across FreeBSD, (Open)Solaris and Linux. Keep /home on a zfs volume, and you can really mix things up.

The only thing missing is solid cross os encryption - but for those that can live with some metadata being exposed, it looks like encryption is coming [ed: to open zfs].

I suppose one might even share home filsystems with OS X - but running OS X requires Apple hardware (and/or breaking the license and some hacks).

[Ed: and sharing home filsystems across unix-like os' actually works: thanks to things like the Bourne shell and other software being available and using the same storage for preferences etc (typically text files) - Bsd even comes with an emulation layer to run Linux executables.]

Canonical is a for profit company that ships a distribution of Linux. Linux has many very free alternatives. Ubuntu has a very nice user experience, and that's why people choose to use it.

Edit: corrected the company name!

Sorry to nitpick here, but...

Ubuntu is a linux distribution; Canonical is the company that maintains, serves, ships, and provides support for Ubuntu. I feel like you didn't make that distinction clear in your comment.

You're of course correct, I updated my comment.

To nitpick even more, Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution.

Yes, Ubuntu had something called the "amazon search lens" which was easily removed with a command-line like "sudo apt-get remove amazon-search-lens". It pissed off a lot of people though, and a bunch simply moved to a competing distro, such as Mint. This was pretty easy since Mint is derived from Ubuntu (but without the UI stuff). Canonical finally relented and removed the offending software.

See, this is why competition is so nice. With Linux, it's fairly easy to jump ship and move to a competing distro at any time. I can do it in under an hour. (It helps keeping your user data on a separate partition from the rest of the OS.) It's really easy when you stay within the same "camp" of distros, so there's little learning curve: the Debian/dpkg distros are somewhat different from the Redhat/Fedora/RPM distros, but within those camps they're extremely similar. Even switching between those camps isn't that hard. One distro pisses you off? No problem, just go download one of its sister distros and install. Try that with Windows. And if you'd rather stick with your distro but make a change, this is comparatively easy since the system is open-source and put together in a transparent way. Like the Amazon search lens above: it wasn't baked deeply into the system in an opaque way, it was a separate dpkg package. It's easy to look at package contents for system components like this, see any dependencies, and uninstall them if you don't like them. You can even take out large parts of the system (like the UI) and replace them with something entirely different, which is exactly what Linux Mint does, using Ubuntu's base packages, omitting Ubuntu's "Unity" DE, and sticking your choice of 4 different desktop environments on top.

They did, and you can make an excuse of it in their case considering what they charge for an OS. Nevertheless, the users were revolted, and Canonical removed the ads.

it gets worse.

In the enterprise space you used to buy "Software assurance" to make sure you were always licenced to have the latest version.

NOW, with Win10, Software assurance is the reverse. you have to PAY EXTRA to make sure that your win10 version DOESNT get new feature updates. To keep it at certain level. (ie prior to when they started pumping it full of adverts).

To me thats a stand-over tactic... "Nice OS you got there... it'd be a shame if something was to 'Appen to it..."

If you look at the XP legacy problem that makes sense these days. If you want MS to support your snowflake of a system then that costs money.

Are you calling XP a snowflake? One of the most popular releases of Windows? There's nothing wrong with enterprises saying they wanted to stay on a version of Windows, just like there's nothing wrong with Microsoft saying they no longer want to support it, but that hardly makes XP a snowflake. Microsoft can certainly try to flip pricing to earn a profit, but they have to understand that it comes at the risk of alienating users.

At some point, they probably decided it's worth the payoff to alienate users who are using a desktop OS from 2001 ;-)

Microsoft also changed the licensing for the server OS to per core rather than per CPU. Talk about milking the cow even more!

In all fairness, with the modern state of security I think this is something enterprise will have to get used to.

Look how much we use the web nowadays.

Our shit-abiding tolerance is higher than you might think.

As a web developer, I feel the same way. The web has really devolved into layers and layers of crap.

Ain't that the truth.

It's been about 10 years or so since I did any web development. And yesterday we had a thread here about CSS minifying, and one of the CSS files were ~250KB. What the hell kind of abominations are people making that need 250KB of CSS?

10 years ago we had CSS minification, primarily to reduce the number of web requests. As a .net developer it was simple, you point it at your css and it combined and compressed it for you. Now the minifying is all about compiling to css, you have to run a node server to do it and the results are still more bloated than 10 years ago. Web development went off the deep end.

The results are from including all of bootstrap, even though you only use 3 parts, plus a theme that doesn't do a custom build, that overrides it all, then a couple other components with their own huge CSS, even though you're only using 1.

Without being judicious, it's easy enough to see happen.

Not to mention a few resource embeds to shave load time (fonts, svg, images, etc).

Are there ads on the web? I've not noticed … uBlock Origin is a wonderful thing!

I've been going the other way lately, back to much faster desktop apps for everything.

Then there's the desktopified apps (spotify, slack, even VS Code), which work surprisingly well. Of course when React Native desktop environments stabilize, that may become a much more preferred target.

I avoid electron apps like the plague too.

Reactive native I'm more open minded about, but I'll reserve judgment until I see how well the obey things like themeing.

I don't mind the electron apps... also, am mostly okay seeing material-ui like designs in applications even when non-native... React Native should be native to the environment, though uncertain as to how theme friendly, I haven't played with it... for my needs Cordova and Electron have been good enough so far.

But I can see how they wouldn't be the preference.

Every time I install Ubuntu I have to remove amazon links from my dock. So I dunno how niche the other side of, "you guys" is, but it's not simply Linux vs. Windows.

Please don't confuse "Ubuntu" with "Linux". What you are saying is something like "Fire is bad because it burns people".

Ubuntu might be the most popular linux distro, but there's so many other options out there. Take a look at https://distrowatch.com/ there's basically a distribution for any type of usecase you might imagine. Hell if you can't find a distribution to suit your needs nothings stopping you from starting your own.

People can't invoke the name "Linux" and exclude Ubuntu when it suits their narrative. So what I said is perfectly reasonable.

All poodles are dogs, not all dogs are poodles.

Using 'dogs' and 'poodles' interchangeably subconsciously implies that all/most dogs are poodles.

I think the big difference here is the relative mindshare of Windows in the Windows ecosystem (100%) vs the share of Ubuntu in the Linux ecosystem (popular and dominiant, but not 100%).

A very small portion of the Linux community made the decision to put the launcher ads in, a large chunk of the community made a very loud fuss, and the feature was removed.

> People can't invoke the name "Linux" and exclude Ubuntu when it suits their narrative.

Why not? Ubuntu (along with Red Hat & others) is a commercial distribution of Linux, but it's not the only Linux. Users who care about their freedom & privacy don't use Ubuntu, because it includes proprietary drivers & does things like phone home.

Users of distros such as Debian, OTOH, do care about those things, and I think it's very fair for us to note that we find the behaviour of Microsoft recently to be quite remarkably sad.

Of course you can. Why do you think they can't? Just because a company is shipping a Linux distribution which has some less than pleasant defaults that suddenly taints all of Linux?

If I start selling beer with piss in it, does suddenly all beer taste like piss or just the one I'm selling?

You (and malikNF) are acting like Waterluvian was saying all Linux is bad, when that couldn't be further from the truth. Waterluvian is saying that simply choosing to switch to Linux doesn't automatically mean you'll get away from bullshit.

Given how other distros stepped up their UX game (with regards to things that are outside the DM/WM combo such as OS install, package management etc), there's no real good excuse for the continued mainstream momentum of Debian/Ubuntu =) Korora (Fedora for newcomers) and Manjaro (Arch for newcomers) seem to install without a hitch these days and largely work fully as expected on most machines "out-of-box". Seem to have come a long way from just a few years ago.

> there's no real good excuse for the continued mainstream momentum of Debian/Ubuntu

Debian's momentum is due to the fact that it's a really stable, really well-thought-out, sysadmin-friendly, production-quality, freedom-respecting, privacy-respecting Linux distro; I don't think that has changed, and I don't think that anything beats them by those metrics.

Ubuntu's momentum is due to the fact that it supports proprietary hardware, is easy to use, and is pretty. You may be right that other distros are better than it there.

Debian & Ubuntu are very different.

The only reason I use Windows is that still most tripple A games need DirectX to run.

The only reason AAA games target Windows is because you rely on Windows for that.

It's a very stable economic arrangement /s.

Shifting the blame to the customers is pointless here. Most of them can't do anything about it. They are either incapable or just not interested after the system came with the PC.

What would be the point for those people to change to Linux if they can't do there what they've bought the product for?

And yet somehow the Innovator's Dilemma exists.

Given how not great Steam's Linux push worked out, it's not entirely surprising it stays the way it has... for now.

Yes. I want Steam on Linux to work as well.

It is working. I sure didn't expect platform parity when they announced it, and yet, I don't feel like a 2nd class citizen anymore. Linux games are now cross platform, not terrible ports. And the 3 largest game engines now compile to linux out of the box (more or less). The support burden has lessened as well. It is great all around.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that it didn't work, or there were shortcomings in the platform... only that sales haven't been great (think Steambox, etc).

As a Mac user who loves to game, the situation can be incredibly frustrating. It seems about half the games I want to play are available (and great!) but half either remain PC-only forever, or take an age to get released on Mac — I've been waiting for The Witness for over a year now! Still, if the alternative is adverts in my file explorer, I'd take absolutely anything else instead.

Who would have thought building on proprietary standards would lead to vendor lock in?

Is "most" still true, or should it be "some" now?

something something vulkan something

I unchecked some checkbox at install and have never seen this on my windows boxes.

I can see a philosophical opposition to this stuff, but practically it doesn't affect me at all.

I set a group policy when i first installed it over a year ago to disable all telemetry and advertising. I have never once seen any of these big stories people keep posting about Win10.

I imagine we'll see an increase of these stories from the apparent mass exodus from macOS to Windows.