Windows was barely even mentioned on the first day of Microsoft's developer conference.
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Build 2018: Microsoft embraces its new platforms, Azure and Microsoft 365
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That is exciting about the Kinect sensor I have always loved the device whether in games or outside.
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It's interesting that Microsoft is becoming more of a platform independent service rather than relying on desktop Windows to drive adoption. But it's not like they've given up on Windows either as they're committed to feature updates every six months.
(That said, I had hoped to hear they were slowing down the rate of their Windows "feature" releases. Especially given all the issues with the current one even after it was pushed back.)
(That said, I had hoped to hear they were slowing down the rate of their Windows "feature" releases. Especially given all the issues with the current one even after it was pushed back.)
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They go where the money is. If there was enough of an install base that they could justify a port they would. But it's Linux, and there's plenty of FOSS alternatives that they probably wouldn't recoup the investment.
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I'd prefer they sort of go back to a Service Pack model but based on the Insider Program.
Release features into Insider as they are but don't announce features for a "feature release". Twice a year, after thorough Insider testing, all new features over that six month period, that are ready to be released are rolled into the service pack.
Edit
BUILD can then be about the features being put into the Insider Program rather than a feature build. That way people know they are beta features, they may not hit the next release and there won't be articles about what Microsoft failed to deliver or delivered broken because of the time scale.
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I'm not surprised about Microsoft 365. On the Xbox Microsoft has been pushing gamers to subscribe to Gold and to Game Pass. They're just selling subscriptions nowadays.
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I wonder if this can be applied to crypto mining and finally remove some of the pressure from graphics chips.
This is cool and scary at the same time. It would be nice to incorporate this into a consulting business. You no longer need hands and eyes at a site, you now only need hands, and soon enough you won't need hands because there will be a robot.
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For home use, I'll just stick with Libre Office. I have little need for writing 'documents' so Libre Office is more than adequate. Also a plus is that it doesn't have a ribbon interface.
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The subscription for Windows 10 will come no later than the end of April 2020, I expect. Microsoft will not give up on that revenue model for their OS's. They've been wanting to do that ever since Windows 8, but with pay to own offerings out there being supported (at least from a security if not a development point of view), it wasn't a viable thing to do since the TCO for everyone who had Windows 10 before that implementation will rise dramatically.
Once there is no viable "pay to own" Windows option, THEN users will be forced into subscriptions. It'll start with those who have held out with Win 7 as a "cheap and easy" way to upgrade to Win 10. The rest of the Win 10 user base will be phased in over the following year or so.
But Linux won't be the dominant OS - ever. It's still too focused on the techies, and not enough on the "average user" (AKA: the tech illiterate). Despite being much better than it was before, its learning curve is still unacceptably steep for most people. Its update (never mind upgrade) path is still way too difficult for most average computer users.
More to the point, I don't see Linux devs focusing on making it "simpler" to use. They have their hands full just making it work on most hardware, and many flavors seem to deliberately make it harder to use than it needs to be. While most flavors are beginning to get the message that they can get a lot more users if they made installing and running it as brain-dead simple as anything from Microsoft or Apple, but the priority is still on hardware compatibility and functionality, not as much on ease of use.
You'd need that ease of use (not to mention the ubiquity of programs available) to make Linux a dominant OS.
That said, I expect I'll be on the ESR equivalent of Mint 19, which is to be built off of the latest release of Ubuntu. I'm trying to decide if I dual boot for the games (not with Win 10) or either VM Windows (Something I haven't tried before) or hope that WINE works well enough for the few games I do play. None of them are new releases, so hardware reqs aren't going to be huge. I'm looking for hardware that's out there now for my next build in two years because of the lag in getting new drivers for Linux for new stuff.
For every choice, there are benefits and detriments. Choosing Linux over Windows takes more time and effort, but one has the privacy, security and cost advantage that Windows doesn't provide in equal measure. If the functionality can be made equivalent to what I have now, I'm fine with it.
Say what you want, but I can't be convinced to spend more money on a subscription for my OS. I see FAR too many down-sides to that for the end user, but NOTHING MS has done so far convinces me they're not going to do it. If MS fans don't see that coming, it's due to pure willful blindness on their part. I can only hope their fandom mitigates the shock when it does happen.
Two years, tops, folks. And I wouldn't be surprised if it happened somewhat sooner.
I don't expect Linux to ever gain dominance in the OS market (even in total across all flavors), but I do expect it to gain more market share as the more tech-savvy users who don't like Microsoft's business practices or the direction of their monetization efforts abandon MS for Linux. Personally, I hope it's enough of a market share to convince device manufacturers to natively support it as well as they do Windows. It's highly arguable as to whether or not that will happen, though. Some folks would rather take the path of least resistance irrespective of the consequences of doing so (be them privacy, financial or what have you).
I don't understand why people would object to others choosing what works best for themselves. We all have different needs and priorities. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional. Having a choice is exceptionally important, and like ISP's, most of us only have one when it comes to OS's. But with some work, and learning, that choice expands to a startling large number of other options that may work as well, or better, than what's out there now for an individual. Linux caters to those individuals and we accept the consequences of our choices.
The masses who aren't interested in the learning curve have to deal with the consequences of their choices. As long as everyone is mostly satisfied by their choices, I don't see a problem with any of that.
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I don't see how they'd ever be able to seriously push Windows as a subscription. The vast majority of people buy a computer and Windows just comes with it. The OEM isn't going to want to pay any more money than they already are, so the subscription would only be for a limited time. I'm sure that your average customer would really enjoy their computer to all of a sudden stop working and harassing them to "pay for the software that already came with the machine"
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The equation has been flipped, Windows now exists to promote and enable their Cloud Services and related technologies, instead of those services and technologies being designed and marketed specifically to promote more Windows adoption.
Its a somewhat subtle, but significant shift in strategy IMO.
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Yeah but ask your average computer user if they how to install an OS at all. The answer is guaranteed to be a resounding no. And that is only from the people who even know what an "operating system is". I fall for this trap all the time. Installing something like Linux Mint is dead easy for me and then I get a call from my uncle asking what the fuck a high sierra is when his mac updates and why is it on his computer. Whats easy or common for us is not for your average user. And for that reason, unless Linux comes preinstalled on computers en-masse and doesn't require ever touching the terminal, Linux will never have a substantial presence on desktops.
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I feel like a lot of people here, Linux fans in particular, really want this to be about Windows as a subscription. So they're looking into it far too closely. I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar, but I doubt the people at Microsoft would be so brazen as to think it would fly in our current technological climate.
In order for something on this level of disruption for their ecosystem to take place, they'd have to disrupt how computers are actually sold.
In order for something on this level of disruption for their ecosystem to take place, they'd have to disrupt how computers are actually sold.
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Well, there are plenty of apps built on Electron. Some are good. Only if they weren't as resources heavy. So having things out of browser wouldn't be too hard. But I was asking for having it run on Linux, not using browser or JavaScript framework. Yes, I can see your opinion is no.
Frankly if they can justify make Office for Mac I'm sure they can make it for Linux. Same goes for Adobe and Autodesk. Mac has a lot of users but it's hardly a dominant platform outside phones and tablets. And even then most people use Android.
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They already have different versions of their OS for home use and businesses. I wouldn't be surprised if they make a business version be a subscription. And have a dumbed down version for every day users. I was doubtful Adobe would succeed with their subscription idea, and unfortunately they have. As far as I remember even Autodesk has subscription.
I use all three platforms there is no way in hell I would want to pay for a subscription.
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They already have a subscription for the business version, it's called Microsoft Software Assurance and it's how you get Win 10 Enterprise. MS isn't ever going to have a subscription-only version of their retail products, because those are used to sell subscriptions to things like OneDrive and Office 365, and sell apps through the Store.
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It's aimed at business customers and includes the Windows 10, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility and Security, and Machine Learning Tools.
It would largely replace your volume license agreement.
Also, Microsoft has damn-near stopped negotiating pricing for on-premises software. If you were getting a sweet deal on you Volume Licensing before, it's probably not going to happen now. But Microsoft will negotiate cloud licensing...
For the non-business user though, it's business as usual. Though Microsoft does have high hopes for Windows 10 S for building their walled-garden.
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<laughs>
No, it's not that I've not used a modern version of Linux. It's that I've had much more extensive experience with the "AVERAGE USER" than you have. That anyone would have to tell someone that there are tools they need to use in the first place proves my point.
The biggest problem I find in techies of all kinds is the applied ignorance of how ignorant the average user is. When I say applied, they always seem to think that "If I can do it, anyone can".
Not true. Not by one hell of a long shot.
I DID say that Linux was much better than it used to be. But the care and feeding of it is most decidedly NOT - especially for device support, printer installations and configuration and a host of other things that always are harder to do than Windows does them. Those "little things" that techies (especially Linux techies) shrug off as inconsequential substantially contribute to receding hairlines among average users.
It DOES get easier the more one uses it, but few people think back to those bad old days when they didn't know what the hell they were doing and blew up something when they pressed Alt+F4 because they didn't know pressing Alt+F4 at that moment was a bad thing (as a general example). Techies have something average users do not: repeated experience with the nuts and bolts of computer operations.
MOST average users are lucky to know what a mouse does. I still have relatives who call asking me why they always get two of the same web pages. I keep telling them, "Stop double-clicking on the links."
<sighs>
I'd LOVE for Linux to be a mostly hands-off fiddling OS for the masses from bare disk to full functionality. Maybe one day, it will be. But that day isn't today, nor any day UP to today. Even the bootable CD's or USB's have issues, and they're designed to be "configuration-free". They're less of a PITA than before, but they still have issues, depending on the hardware.
Look, I WANT Linux to be a "for the masses" alternative. I think that'll help keep the other OS makers more honest and be better for everyone. But fooling one's self into believing that what they have today is already "average user" ready willfully ignores the fact that it isn't.
Go grab mom or dad, set them up in front of a new computer with a blank disk and say nothing except, "Do it yourself." and see how far they actually get. I expect, as long as you don't prompt them at all, they'll have major issues. That contrasts against what Windows does, which is USUALLY get them to where they need to go in a configuration they don't need to screw around with as much (default privacy issues entirely aside).
I don't LIKE Windows much (for reasons other than functionality and ease of use), but I do have to admit that when it comes to catering to the typically tech-ignorant public, they've done a hell of a lot better for themselves than Linux devs ever have in ANY flavor. In that respect, I do my best to not let my biases blind me to the realities of the world out there.
No one can fix a problem unless they realize it's still a problem needing fixing.
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If anything, they seem to be pushing to go faster: unlike all prior 'feature updates' 1803 was set to immediately 'supersede' 1709 when released to WSUS, despite 1803 not being CBB yet, and 1709 still being well within the supported window.
Made for wacky lulz among those doing the 1709 rollout to 1703 or earlier clients when that little change got dropped into the mix. Still no comment from Team Redmond no why they decided to do this for the first time.
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But what about Windows 10 Mobile aka Windows for ARM? They've shortened their support timeline to 10-18 months (used to be 2 years) so Windows Phones (even if hacked/upgraded to 1709) will lose support by early 2019.
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It is because you are off-topic, and every time there is a story about windows a bunch Linux evangelists start preaching about the year of linux on the desktop. Also you all tend to be self-satisfied smug b**tards thinking just because you like to yum and apt-get shit, means everyone else should validate your choices. We get it. You like it. Now can we talk about something relevant please.
I mean... C'mon.
And just btw. Windows sysadmins can retrain and become Linux sysadmins pretty quickly if that was the way of the market. You aren't some special snowflake because you can boot up ubuntu and run a webserver ffs.
Sorry for the flame, and responding to the troll. Just so tired of this shit sometimes.
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This has been pretty clear at Microsoft conferences and on their videos for a while. Microsoft employees presenting have been using Macs or Linux almost as often as Windows, and they're really pushing cross-platform development and deployment, e.g. develop .NET core on your Mac and deploy in Azure. For example, pull up a few random videos at https://channel9.msdn.com/ and you'll see what I mean.
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... it’s new platforms, Bizarre and Microsoft 350. I need some sleep, I believe!
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I was one of those muppets, but around the time the 2.6 kernel came out, I moved on... first to Irix, then OSX, now Windows.
Life is to boring to beat on one drum your whole life. Although I still like to see what the latest slackwares and debians look like every few years...
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I don't understand why they always botched it so badly though. I would love to see it come back. My kids loved that more than anything and it is very immersive and group friendly... If they would just out a camera in it that could count fingers on a hand and track them....sadness.
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Bitcoin has already gone full-on ASIC; a lot of the remaining stuff is memory-bound or computationally complex and thus doesn't gain as much from chip-level implementation.
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Microsoft has almost always had different versions for business and home users.
Previously, Microsoft only released a new version every few years and it was only $100 or so.
Adobe, on the other hand, sold Photoshop. The full extended version of which, came with a price tag above $1000. Every new version carried that tag unless you got an "upgrade." And even that was hideously expensive. We're talking a whole new version with new and useful features. Not too mention performance enhancements.
It should be absolutely no surprise that Adobe's subscription model succeeded/ is succeeding. They took a program that cost $1000 (USD) and made it cost only $99 (USD) per year. And that includes Lightroom. The cost/ value is almost excessive. It'd take almost a decade before you ended up paying the same price for one single edition, full version of Photoshop. And in that time, you get every new upgrade?
Even if they raised the price to $200 per year, it'd still take nearly 5 years before you were at parity.
At $10 a month (without a yearly subscription), people like me, who could only bootleg the software before, can actually afford to use it legitimately.
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all i know is when a 2 line quip is enough to motivate the MS Bots to delete my post you know you are onto something...
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I feel like a lot of folks are completely missing the big picture of the shifts in technology in the last 5 years. The cloud has already surpassed Windows/OSX/Linux as the primary operating system of computing. That's right -- the cloud IS the new OS, and it harkens back a bit to the mainframe/minicomputer model of the 70s/80s. Modern OS's primarily come in 2.5 flavors AWS/Azure/Google and rely heavily on cloud services (everything from load balancers to databases) and container technologies like Kubernetes and Docker. What happens in the periphery primarily in the mobile space, but also in Windows/OSX/IoT/sensor spaces is not terribly different than a Vax terminal of my youth. These announcements complete reflect the new reality, and show Microsoft has righted the ship, imho.
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[topic]
JG "John" Chirapurath, general manager of Azure Data, in an interview with The Register at Build 2018.
"SQL Server running on Linux, with embedded R and Python, is Microsoft's most successful server product ever"
"It is the most successful server product we've ever released, in terms of downloads. Our typical download volumes are in the hundreds of thousands. We're looking at seven million downloads."
The paradigm has changed and the "desktop" is almost moribund - Windows meaning little more than 11% worldwide OS's. The "cloud" and mobile are today current bets.
[offtopic]
The year of Linux - Linux is the kernel, not only the desktop "Linux flavours". So, the kernel Linux is the most used OS in the world by significant margin.
JG "John" Chirapurath, general manager of Azure Data, in an interview with The Register at Build 2018.
"SQL Server running on Linux, with embedded R and Python, is Microsoft's most successful server product ever"
"It is the most successful server product we've ever released, in terms of downloads. Our typical download volumes are in the hundreds of thousands. We're looking at seven million downloads."
The paradigm has changed and the "desktop" is almost moribund - Windows meaning little more than 11% worldwide OS's. The "cloud" and mobile are today current bets.
[offtopic]
The year of Linux - Linux is the kernel, not only the desktop "Linux flavours". So, the kernel Linux is the most used OS in the world by significant margin.
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They first have to establish market relevance. MacOS is way ahead of Linux on that front. If for some ludicrously Trump-election-winning-type-event were to take out Windows as the dominant computer OS, MacOS would easily replace it much more easily than Linux.
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Stochastic
Ars Scholae Palatinae
The Kinect to me seemed like a winning idea that just needed further technical refinement. Less latency, greater resolution, wider field of view. If it can track individual fingers accurately, that is, quite literally, a game changer.
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