The main problem is the catch-22: there's not much point in developing competitors to Microsoft's stack if businesses aren't going to ever consider them, and government departments won't consider alternatives if they can't get everything from a single vendor in a 100% risk free manner thanks to the "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" and "one throat to choke" mentality you get there.
Governments do this to themselves. The USG doesn't even have to pick Microsoft. They could potentially sign contracts with Apple for workstation hardware and services, that would encourage and feed the alternative ecosystem based around Apple, or they could fund Linux, etc. They don't though. It's just soooo much easier to sign one giant contract, because that minimizes work for them and it's not really important to get value for money if you're in the public sector. Signing a great deal won't get you a big bonus or anything like that, but taking risks can get you blocked from promotions. So, why risk anything?
Depends on the hardware. Stuff like mice, keyboards or game controllers yes, as long as they're supported by the host OS stack (don't get me started on bluez and the clusterfuck that's Linux audio in general). But anything dealing with user-mode USB drivers (looking at you Samsung ODIN or a truckload of webcams) or more exotic hardware is out of luck.
> Governments do this to themselves. The USG doesn't even have to pick Microsoft. They could potentially sign contracts with Apple for workstation hardware and services, that would encourage and feed the alternative ecosystem based around Apple, or they could fund Linux, etc. They don't though.
Apple shot themselves into their own foot here by completely discontinuing their Intel x86 lineup. You can run Windows stuff on the M series SoCs but performance is atrocious (unless it's ARM Windows, but good luck finding software compatible with that oddity, no thanks to Qualcomm here who couldn't be arsed to put out actually usable chips for years).
As for Linux, there is already a huge amount of government funding into Linux because of servers and their support contracts. That's how RH, SuSE and the other commercial Linux distributions are surviving. The problem is the desktop software stuff, here the chicken-egg problem comes into force - and made worse by the fact that unlike Microsoft who can just decree whatever they want and the rest of the world has to accept it, FOSS projects are mostly driven-by-consensus, and if you're a commercial or government entity needing a feature you have to either fork off with all the cost that entails or herding cats and playing petty politics with people from all around the world (who might just block your idea out of principle after finding out you're working on behalf of the government/Monsanto/whoever is problematic these days, on top).
A lot of the software getting hacked isn't even truly Windows-specific stuff to begin with though. VPN appliances, firewalls, they're probably all running out of date Linux distros. Active Directory servers could have some open source competitor too, aren't they mostly Kerberos? And for the rest, ChromeOS could knock it off too with a mix of web apps and RDP.
Yeah, but you'd need to rewrite the whole Windows app for a native Linux or macOS port because WINE to my knowledge can't access devices even if there were a Linux/macOS driver.
> Active Directory servers could have some open source competitor too, aren't they mostly Kerberos?
AD is so much more than just LDAP+Kerberos. You have a fully integrated file store, native and direct integration into Exchange (on-prem and cloud), group policies for users and machines, DNS, DHCP, NTP... one vendor, one tech stack, one management way. Set it up and you're done, and even a novice can set up a minimal working small-business environment in a day.
With Linux, you have to integrate/configure Samba (LDAP, GPO, file storage), Heimdall/MIT Kerberos, postfix/exim (Mail), no idea what one could even use for calendar sync, BIND (DNS), ISC DHCP server, Jitsi (Video calls), Mattermost (Teams chats). Each of these software pieces have their own configuration syntax, nothing integrates automatically on its own, guides are sometimes horribly outdated, there's subtle differences in behavior between distributions, some of these tools have web UIs for management, others are CLI, and all of them look and behave differently.
"Wine includes some limited support for direct hardware access, including running native Windows drivers. This comes with several restrictions, but we still have been able to successfully access some native devices."
"For example, the SteelSeries USB mouse driver offers the ability to modify the mouse's LED settings as well as simply driving the mouse, and in this case Wine is able to pass through the LED settings"
Unfortunately, these days the browser engine market is pretty lopsided so that strategy would need to be paired with something like a requirement to test in Gecko and WebKit because I trust Google’s long-term management even less than Microsoft.
Also, as someone who actually uses Windows 11 Professional all day, every working day, I honestly haven’t encountered these adverts everyone is always referring to (maybe it’s because I’m not in the US).
As for the UI, initial release didn’t allow ungrouping of Windows on taskbar and context menus hid most things behind an extra click. This was crap, but a major update a while back has resolved these.
I’ve tried Linux, I occasionally need to use it or macOS for development of our cross platform Electron based product, and I would still choose Windows as it really has consistently “just worked” for me since around Windows 2000.
But if macOS or Linux works well for you, I’m happy you’re happy and perhaps you in turn could be happy for people who are happy with Windows (and ideally without thinking they must be deluded or something).
Thunderbird is a lot more reliable than outlook - I use both daily. But yeah there's no 'thunderbird software suite'. I don't think that's really an issue though. Outlook breaks regularly, and our desktop support group had to deploy an 'outlook reset' app because the vendor is unresponsive. Being that unresponsive lessens the attractiveness of a 'software suite'.
>Or hell, even compatibility with old versions of the same app isn't a given in LibreOffice.
If I find MS word can't open a file, Libreoffice always does. I've never had a problem opening a libreoffice writer or MS Word file. I'm no 'power user' though.
The reason businesses and organizations stick to microsoft is because it's what they're used to, not because the apps themselves are better.
As for microsoft as a vendor - they are as obtuse a vendor as I've ever dealt with. Nearly always 100% unresponsive - even with projects involving hundreds of thousands of yearly dollars in licensing fees. I think being unresponsive is some kind of corporate culture thing with them. They're like the McDonalds of IT vendors. You get what's on the menu and that's it. If it doesn't work, well too bad because they know the perceived cost of switching is believed to be too high.
For me, it is. Outlook natively integrates with Teams, Onedrive and the rest of the Office suite. Everything is available at once, with one click, in a reasonably similar UX/UI pattern (okay, outside of the horror that is Teams with direct chats, meeting chats and Teams team chats). Let's just take a Teams meeting invite... in Outlook it directly opens the Teams meeting, in Thunderbird first the web browser pops up, which then opens Teams, and leaves a stray tab behind. It may be just ten seconds, but it's so much more annoying.
The problem is that there isn't much in terms of alternatives, especially not if you prefer to have one software / vendor / tech stack.
- In groupware, there used to be Lotus Notes, but that went down the drain years ago. Thunderbird can do everything Outlook can (i.e. provide an email client, calendar and address book), but there is no official(ly supported) Thunderbird server software suite so there's always a potential for subtle bugs between whatever one chooses for directory, email and calendar backends.
- for AD there's obviously Samba but it, again, lacks a management UI that supports all of its features, so yet another potential for issues.
- the Office suite alternatives are even more of a nightmare, both in terms of usability, stability as well as compatibility with the millions of legacy files originating from Office. Or hell, even compatibility with old versions of the same app isn't a given in LibreOffice. (And I'm not sure stuff like MS Access even has a FOSS counterpart)
- And then, there's all the other stuff that integrates with AD for authentication/authorization. In a lot of cases, it's "either use MS AD or you're on your own when you hit issues".
- finally, Windows itself. Essentially, the US Government would have to sink billions of dollars into ReactOS development to make it compatible enough with mainstream Windows versions to run all the legacy software that people use - and no, WINE alone is not enough, not for anything that deals with hardware directly. And I wouldn't assume it's possible to even hire enough developers that are skilled to develop for WINE/ReactOS and fulfill the project requirements of never having been exposed to Windows source code.
Microsoft has achieved an insane amount of vendor lock-in, even Apple with all its financial and technological might or Valve (who invested a huge amount of money and work into getting WINE feature-rich enough to run a ton of AAA games on their Steam Deck) have been able to even come close. They can provide as shitty a service/software as they want, their audience literally has no other choice.
(Me personally, I'll keep my Windows 7 and 10 VMs alive for as long as I can, but no way in hell I'm ever moving to the ad-ridden, bling-bling flashy pseudo-hipster-UI disaster that is Windows 11)