Sony believed that they had so much market share that they could make a console that was leaps and bounds more complicated to code for, which would lock devs in and prevent them from going elsewhere, and they’d just have to suck it up because of said market share. Sony was wrong, and they lost out big time that generation (although they did manage to win the Blu-ray vs hd-dvd format wars).
Microsoft seems to believe they have so much market share that they can force people to upgrade to a privacy invading, ai infested piece of crap, and that everyone needs to suck it up because market share.
I’ve already started hearing wind that people, in statistically significant numbers, are finding alternatives… so is this the same situation as the ps3?
Just a passing musing without much to back up the gut feelings.


Microsoft is bleeding power users and PC enthusiasts at an unprecedented rate. This is a great thing for Linux, but they are still absolutely locked into the corporate world and that’s where the money is.
The reality is that Microsoft solved management of corporate policy and identity like 25 years ago and nothing else has come close. It has its problems, but Active Directory is an incredible piece of software. The combination of LDAP, with obfuscation of Kerberos to the point where you don’t even need to know it exists, combined with policy deployment to endpoints is nothing short of a miracle.
Linux has tools for all those things, but none are easy to deploy or configure. If you have to manage thousands of desktops, Windows is still the clear choice
AD and LDAP is notoriously insecure as hell by default. It took until 24H2 for MSFT to enable SMB signing, which was a solid 50% chance for an unauthenticated attacker to reach domain admin on any enterprise network.
There are a lot of solutions that eclipse AD in both quality and scope. It’s just like VMWare, a once solid product that orgs got vendor locked into, and are stuck for life.
If you are a large corporation or government, you’d have the resources to do exactly that. I keep hearing about European governments moving to Linux. And why wouldn’t you? Screw perpetual licensing.
What those EU governments are doing is out of interest for national security rather than hate for licensing. The US has changed drastically in the last decade and getting your sensitive data out of their infrastructure is a top priority.
The cost of change from Windows to Linux is pretty small for an individual. Most people have one or two machines and a handful of programs, none of which are critical to your continued existence.
In the corporate world, you need to be absolutely sure that everything will work flawlessly, which often means weeks or months of testing on top of all your regular IT duties, constant support tickets to obscure software vendors who may not have ever worked with Linux, and if some mission-critical piece of software breaks, then the company cannot operate until it is fixed…or you can continue to use Windows, even though it sucks more now.
I want Linux to have wider adoption in the desktop space, but it’s a catch 22. People aren’t going to move unless the software is guaranteed to work, and Linux-based software isn’t going to be made unless people are using it. This is why Proton was such a big deal. It offered a real option for gaming to move to the platform and now it’s viable and devs are starting to take linux into account.
Its not a guarantee of flawless operation thats required, its a source of liability if something goes wrong. Someone has to be responsible if the latest update blows everything up.
I’m sure large organizations moving to Linux are also choosing a distro that has paid support. It’s probably still cheaper than Microsoft licensing, though.
Now where did I place that consultant…
You keep hearing about the same 3 german states moving to LibreOffice. That’s not quite the same thing.
generally, yes, but it’s a couple more now;
point being: it’s a clear trend!
it’s slow, yes, but it seems to be picking up steam!
the idea is being seriously discussed at basically all state institutions.
and more importantly: the reason for this trend is clearly data security. which states actually care about. so there’s a very clear and easy to understand incentive, which makes it politically palatable.
we’ll have to see, but the trend seems to be heading in the right direction!
Novell solved directory services 25 years ago. It took MS 10 to catch up.
I was going to reply essentially the same thing! I’m glad someone remembers their IT history. :)
“IT history” :(
Oh, well, time to go back to my crypt.
Haha, recent IT history. :)
You mean Novell royally fucked up Netware and people went to AD at first because of that. But yes, AD was quite new then, mostly an add-on for NT domains (and still sort of is :) try going full kerberos…).
How did Novell mess up netware? If anything Novell should have teamed up with IBM or Apple to take on end user productivity.
Well remember netware had a 250 user limit per server before 4.0. Thats not alot in corp space. I remember running many servers just to handle user auth and logon back with netware 3.12
Wasn’t 4 still a flat directory? I’m talking about 5 when it got serious.
I present to you a wild notion:
Adobe OS.
They have the market value and revenue to do what steam is doing.
They could make switching a cost save if the OS integrates vertically with the creative cloud.
To be clear, I don’t want this and would t use it. But any business with licenses would say “wait… Ditch Microsoft ios, and… Poof? Everything works and we pay way less money?”
All that Microsoft provides any business at this point is AD/Azure.
I feel like Microsoft is taking massive Ls between now and 2030. I don’t think Adobe is gonna do this, I’m just saying if they did, it could work. Microsoft is a weak giant right now.
Adobe has been their own worst enemy for decades and their one true skill is fucking things up. The best thing about Adobe trying to make their own OS would be that it could wipe them out.
-signed, a long time bitter former Adobe user that still has to support their shit
Linux is a bad choice for multiple reasons. I wish Linux had better support for games, DAWS (my job) and other software.
Linux has close to the best support for games possible without support from the game developers.
Other windows software usually isn’t quite as good in my experience, but still better than non-native software on any other operating system.
Never used a DAW, so I can’t say anything about that.
Do you have any examples or details so we can understand your point better?
It runs FL studio and Ableton like complete ass as well as any plugin I need. Has terrible Nvidia support and even worse Intel support.
REAPER is great and has a linux version which is great
Realer is great. Unfortunately I don’t feel like redoing dozens of projects and learning a new daw 😭
FL studio and Ableton through WINE, I presume? That’s really the responsibility of the FL studio and Ableton developers, not Linux. I got Bitwig specifically because it supports Linux natively, and I hear it does it well (I haven’t tried it on Linux yet). From what I understand, the situation with Nvidia is also largely on Nvidia’s camp, although some distributions have gone above and beyond to get their GPUs to work well from the get go, like Pop OS, which I also just installed recently. No idea about Intel, but I thought I had heard that their support (and AMD’s) for Linux was much better than Nvidia’s.
I’m not complaining about Linux. But the lack of support that companies have for it. Seems to be a lack of interpretation somewhere. I have no real problem with Linux other than it mostly require major googling of how terminal works. Windows and even Mac are just simple to use and everything works.
I have used bitwig before too, but I’ve been using FL for almost 20+ years now. I’m not going to change my entire system and knowledge just because a community hates it when someone says windows is easier to use lmao.
That’s all fine and I understand your points and wishes. I think your first reply was downvoted because it was offtopic to the post your were replying to and because it did sound like you were complaining about Linux.