As it is, an alarming number are still hanging on to Windows XP or Windows 7 tooth and nail. When those folks do move, they seem more likely to move to smartphones, tablets or Chromebooks.
I wonder how we can make the transition be towards Linux for the average user. We moved my retired parents from Win7 to Ubuntu, and they're doing just fine (other than printer drivers). For most people's uses, Linux is a perfectly reasonable and functionally complete alternative to Win7 or XP.
There are also a good number of older printers out there that aren't supported by the latest versions of Windows but are supported in Linux. Some didn't make the jump to NT/XP, and some didn't make the jump to Vista/7/8.
My father seems to have the knack of buying printers and scanners that don't transition between Windows versions. I had no idea that printer drivers could break between Windows 7 and Windows 8, but they did.
He began emailing documents to himself and printing from his Windows 7 laptop.
About six months after Windows 8 was released, HP finally released a supposedly compatible driver for his printer. Upon installation of the driver, the system detected the same printer twice, and neither of the detected devices worked. Additionally, every application I tried printing from crashed as soon as the printer dialog appeared.
The situation was resolved when we discovered that HP has a Windows 8 compatible generic postscript driver that works with just about everything.
There's one machine in my house that I could run Linux on full time. Unfortunately, that's the machine my printer is hooked up to, and Lexmark refuses to make a printer driver for Linux for that model.
I didn't go out and buy a new printer, I reinstalled Windows.
Netflix doesn't work out of the box, but does work with Pipelight and a browser user-agent override. Ease of setup approaches trivial. In my experience it's stable.
The rest of your complaints are valid right now. I expect the game situation is going to change because of what Valve's doing w/ SteamOS.
I just searched for Pipelight. I found boat and trailer lights, something called FDS Team, eBay results, and something from the Arch wiki about Silverlight. Nothing about Netflix. How is this trivial?
On Windows, I can go to Netflix.com and it starts working. Even if it needs Silverlight, it installs it for your automatically. Users don't know what Silverlight is. They don't want to search through Arch's wiki. They certainly don't want to figure out what the hell a browser user-agent override is.
Netflix does work on Linux in the same way that a program written for a device that doesn't yet have a C compiler does work.
To wit: Netflix is (currently) harder to use on every Linux distribution than it is on Windows and Mac. It's probably too much hassle to be worth it for non-tech folks, but it does work.
My point was, Netflix does not work. It can be made to work, but by default, it does not work. If someone on the street stopped you and asked "does Netflix work on Linux", would you tell them "yes, if you install Pipelight and hack your user-agent string" or would you just say "no, not really".
I can't imagine that conversation. "It's trivial! You just go to fds-team.de... no, that's .de, not .com. Yup, fds-team.de slash cms slash pipelight... you know what, just search for Pipelight. It's like the third or fourth result down, just look for whatever doesn't have boats or trailers in the name. You'll install it with the command there, the sudo... no, that's sudo with an S, not psuedo. Ah, there's directions there, you can follow them. Now let me tell you about the user-agent string..."
No thank you. Netflix does not work on Linux. It can merely be made to work.
"Yes! It's not officially supported, but it does work. Go here https://launchpad.net/pipelight , click the 'Installation Instructions' link and follow the instructions for your distro. Don't know which one you're using? Here's how to find out..."
As I mentioned in my reply to your comment: "[Netflix on Linux is] probably too much hassle to be worth it for non-tech folks, but it does work."
> Netflix does not work on Linux. It can merely be made to work.
I guess we don't speak the same language. :) If you can make something work on Linux, then it works on Linux. Your assertion to the contrary is confusing.
Its not confusing. hkmurakami clearly states he wants to know how he can ease the transition to Linux for the average user. The average user isn't going to bother with the steps you mentioned. Just because it can be made to work doesn't mean its an acceptable solution for the average user.
Look at it this way - lets say I made, for example a fingerprint scanner for Windows, and you wanted to use it for Linux. I could say "yes! it works on Linux! You just have to write your own C driver!" You can clearly see this isn't an acceptable solution as writing a driver is needlessly complex especially if you don't have the proper documentation.
Now you might argue that writing a driver and searching Google for pipelight are in way two different leagues - but to the average user, asking them to do that might as well be the same as asking them to write their own driver.
Even the instructions you gave are confusing. Follow the instructions for your distro? Wait, you expect the average user to use the command line? What distro am I using? Linux? Should I follow AV Linux?
Because you most likely work with computers everyday on a professional level, you are vastly overstating the know-how of the average computer user. So yes, Netflix does work on Linux - if you are a wiz enough to get it up and working. The average user? No.
You two are ignoring most of what I wrote my very first comment to freehunter. Let me put it into context for you with some quotes:
F: "In reality, Netflix doesn't work on Linux."
Me: "Netflix does work on Linux in the same way that a program written for a device that doesn't yet have a C compiler does work. ... [Netflix is] probably too much hassle to be worth it for non-tech folks..."
F: "My point was, Netflix does not work. It can be made to work, but by default, it does not work... Netflix does not work on Linux. It can merely be made to work."
Me: "If you can make something work on Linux, then it works on Linux. Your assertion to the contrary is confusing."
1) Do you still not see how the words he wrote are confusing? If you can make something work, then it works!
2) Where does freehunter restrict the scope of his assertion to the set of people who would never, ever, ever read HN or any other tech site? I don't see anywhere in his argument where he does that.
As far as I can tell, he never says "Netflix actually does work on Linux for people who are technically inclined." The only thing that I see him saying about Netflix on Linux is that "...it does not work on Linux [unless you install the software needed to make it work]... [but even if you did that, that's not really Netflix working on Linux, for... reasons!]" Did I misread his posts?
The original discussion was around people with limited technical ability, and I called this out at picking someone off the street.
My car is missing the timing belt. It doesn't work. It can be made to work by putting a new belt in it, but I wouldn't tell someone that my car works. The best I would describe it as is a "yes, but it will take some work".
For all intents and purposes, it might as well not work.
> The best I would describe it as is a "yes, but it will take some work".
I can do one better: "My car is missing its timing belt and needs another. Otherwise, it's in good working order."
> The original discussion was around people with limited technical ability [thus it should have been obvious what I meant.]
So, a suggestion: rather than saying "In reality, Netflix doesn't work on Linux." or "My point was, Netflix does not work.", say something like "Netflix on Linux is too hard for the man on the street to manage.".
Yanno, I said exactly that in my first reply to you, but I guess that you missed the point that I was making. Maybe you were in too much of a hurry to carefully read the words that I carefully selected to most precisely get my point across. shrug
Netflix works just fine on Linux, right? Or am I mistaken?
> Or play games.
Most people actually do NOT play the big Windows games you are referring to. They play browser-based games. Work just fine.
> Or have any unsupported peripherals.
Linux' hardware support is actually far superior to that of Windows. Trotting out the 'unsupported hardware'-argument made sense ten years ago. It does not make sense today.
On top of that, it's a bit of a silly point to make. If they don't have a monitor, they can't use it either.
> Or want to use any commercial consumer software.
> Netflix works just fine on Linux, right? Or am I mistaken?
There are some hacks to make it work, but Netflix won't support you if you go that route. Basically, you need a specially patched version of Wine which runs Firefox for Windows with the Silverlight plugin. There are PPAs and the like for Ubuntu users, but it's still a bit ugly and hackish.
>Netflix works just fine on Linux, right? Or am I mistaken?
Desktop Netflix is built with microsoft silverlight for which there is no official linux distribution. It can be made to work with a WINE hack, but even something like that may be too much for the acerage users.
Linux still has a lot of trouble with hardware. My Logitech trackpad doesn't have tap-to-click support in Linux, for no apparent reason. This doesn't bother me (in fact, is preferred, since I'd be looking for a way to turn it off), but it's the single greatest complaint you'll find online with the trackpad and Linux.
But it's not just shiny newish hardware: my motherboard uses some audio chipset that was immediately recognized and used by Ubuntu, but it has various wacky issues: plug in headphones on the front panel and there's audio (after 10-15 seconds) through them, but when you unplug them, it doesn't switch back to the speakers plugged in the back. I can eventually unmute my speakers by playing around in alsamixer, but I'm not sure how, even though I've done it two or three times.
Also, Skype doesn't play well with pulseaudio (again, long-time known issue), so to ensure Skype working, you have to stop pulseaudio and start Skype, but then nothing else that uses audio works until you start pulseaudio again.
The last two points aren't that valid anymore when you compare it with an android/ios migration. People coming from the MS ecosystem will probably want to have the softs they had then, and it's most likely they'd have to look for an equivalent in the ubuntu/android/apple one, each of which sports an app market of some sort.
Also, GP was talking about his retired parents, who probaby don't play games that much, or have their favorite on Windows, so it's pretty much the same issue as above, though now steam is available on linux, and there are plenty of little games available on app markets.
I don't know netflix as a user (not US cit.), so can't comment much on that. I understand that before the streaming services, people used to get rented dvds by mail. It's a little bit a step back to return to that solution (if it still exists), but it's not that unbearable, imho.
Of course, if said parents are computer savy, then these issues might not weight that much (VMs).
Fair point, for now. But Chromebooks can access Netflix, so there's no reason why this can't be extended to Chrome on Linux in the near future.
> Or play games.
Steam for Linux and Steam OS (which is a Linux distro) will change this. Already pretty much every upcoming indie game is being developed for Linux in addition to other platforms, and there's already a substantial library of games.
> Or have any unsupported peripherals.
Very few of those exist nowadays.
> Or want to use any commercial consumer software.
And what 'commercial' consumer software are you talking about? Most software nowadays can be accessed through the browser, quite a bit is spreading to Linux, or there's an acceptable free substitute. Don't tell me a free office suite with Linux isn't compelling to the average consumer, especially now that sending documents as PDF is more socially acceptable than sending Word files...
I mean, I use Ubuntu exclusively, all native apps, while attending University, developing pet projects, and doing normal 'computer' things like using Skype, playing games, etc... I recently bough a Fujifilm X-A1 camera (great device BTW), and GIMP even works great for importing and developing RAW files...
I don't see what more the 'average' consumer needs - and don't say MS Office or Photoshop, because the vast majority of people don't 'need' them...
Netflix already works on Linux and I use it everyday on Ubuntu under Firefox. Look up "Pipelight" plugin, which I understand is a Wine-based project to run Silverlight.
I don't use Netflix, but I do play games. Browser games, but also some games from Humble Bundle, and some 3D games.
I don't have that many unsupported peripherials. Ubuntu currently handles my wireless HP printer better than my other laptop with Windows 7.
There are alternatives to commercial consumer software. The goal of a typical user is not to use < program >, it's to accomplish < task >. Usually < task > is "browsing the web, using email, playing music and videos".
I dunno, you should have heard my dad after I upgraded him from Office '97 to Office 2007. Until that point, I was convinced that the ribbon was the some of the best UI Microsoft ever did...
"Worse then Vista"? Sorry, let me stop this guy right there - this is just utter populistic crap.
Personally, I have no problems with Windows 8, I even prefer it to 7 (or Android) on touch enabled devices.
This might be the "Windows Blue Hype" all over again.
Problem is that "touch enabled" laptops or PCs are abominations in the eyes of God :) The idea of touch screen is good in smartphones or tablets, but completely riddiculous for notebooks. And Metro is optimized for touch, but annoying to use with keyboard and mouse.
> Personally, I have no problems with Windows 8, I even prefer it to 7 (or Android) on touch enabled devices.
Even on non-touch devices, the big problems I have with Win 8/8.1 are solved by readily available third party software that gives you back a Win 7 style task bar / Start Menu (and, actually, I prefer and use this on my touchscreen laptop, as well.) AFAICT, Win 8 is an all-around improvement except for basically one highly-visible but trivially correctable UI decision for keyboard-centric devices.
I don't think that installing 3rd party software to fix core UI issues is trivial. I think that something like that would never occur to the vast majority of Windows users.
I don't think it's acceptable that I have to use third-party software (and most of it, last time I looked, was either additional cost or sketchy not-sure-if-free-or-spyware variety) just to make the thing usable.
The one I use is Classic Shell [1]. The current version is free (gratis) but not Free/Open Source. There is an earlier Open Source version.
> I don't think it's acceptable that I have to use third-party software (and most of it, last time I looked, was either additional cost or sketchy not-sure-if-free-or-spyware variety) just to make the thing usable.
IMO, its quite usable as-is, though I like the UI less for desktop/laptop use than the Win 7 UI because of the lack of the Start Menu, so I prefer to use the available third-party software to fix that; with that third-party software, I find it better than Win 7 entirely.
Corporate are not too keen on installing third party fixes.
We have couple of XP machines that would run perfectly well for another 5 years if we upgrade them to SSDs. The thing is, Windows 7 costs twice as much as 8. Odd strategy MS.
> Corporate are not too keen on installing third party fixes.
On the other hand, corporate is often keen on throwing more money at Microsoft when better, less-expensive options -- whether OS, application, or anything else -- are available, so insofar as the UI issue is an issue for corporate users, it could probably be fixed by Microsoft releasing an $50/seat, centrally-deployable Windows 8 Corporate Interface Pack that restored the Start Menu on Windows 8 machines.
I don't have Win8 but I have seen people use it. How is the UI different for keyboards? Don't you still just tap the "Windows" button and then type what you want?
People are upset that they have to tap the "Windows" button instead of clicking the start menu button. Nevermind that Microsoft added the start button back in 8.1
IMO it's an almost absurdly trivial issue contrasted against holistic moderate improvements across the rest of the OS. Maybe a learning case-study on how narrow, particular elements of user experience & perception can turn against you...
There was always a Start button in Win8.0, which was demonstrated during the initial welcome screens. Hold your mouse in the upper-right corner to open the Charms menu, then click the start button there. (Edited for clarity)
> I don't have Win8 but I have seen people use it. How is the UI different for keyboards?
Its not different from Win 7 for people who never take their hands off the keyboard.
Its different for people who use pointing devices, though, since the Start Menu (not the "Start Button", which Win 8.1 restored and Win 8 had a close equivalent) is replaced with the touch optimized Start Screen which takes a lot more pointing device movement to get to options than the old Start Menu.
>> AFAICT, Win 8 is an all-around improvement except for basically one highly-visible but trivially correctable UI decision for keyboard-centric devices.
Requiring a non-supported hack to get around a central design decision doesn't work for the vast majority of users who expect it to just work. This highly visible UI decision is the whole point behind windows 8 and is central to the way Microsoft wants you to interact with the OS. If you aren't using the metro/modern apps there is no point in windows 8.
The 'improvements' are very modest over windows 8 and none of them have anything to do with the way the vast majority of users expect to be able to use the desktop. You still need to get into windows 8 stuff to perform basic tasks like changing settings or shutting down the computer(! yes, i am aware of other ways to do it but the average user is stuck). I still find the magic corner stuff like the charms bar in windows 8 to be totally jarring and strange and I am very technically proficient.
You act like things were any different with Vista... Most of the anti-Vista sentiment was also what you refer to as 'utter populistic crap' (though I don't think that phrase is actually applicable to what I think you mean).
Anecdotally, Vista to me was absolutely flawless: rock solid in the way 2000 used to be and XP never was, performant thanks to a real 64 bit version (XP 64 was a very ugly hack) and great looking (vs the XP playskool look I could never get used to).
The reason was I had a brand new, powerful rig and no legacy hardware.
The low adoption levels for Windows 8/8.1 are a result of their own success: you have a set of robust/reliable older versions that are still doing their tasks just fine. If the corporate world does not see the benefit, then there is no hurry to chuck what they currently have in favor of the new stuff, no matter how good.
I personally like Win 8/8.1, (I admit, not for the Metro stuff) especially since I am a developer. The out of the box availability of Hyper-V seems super cool to me. It is so easy to build up new VMs (both Win and Linux). Also, you can boot directly off of a VHD VM, which is also pretty cool.
As I said, it is the business side of things that slows down the adoption in the corporate world. And to make it a double whammy, the consumer market is massively going to the tablet side.
Author says win 8.1's install base is 25 million... Wrong conclusion.
The real issue is that some sets of pot smoking bozos decided to make upgrading from 8.0 to 8.1 a freaking pain, nightmare... Even for those with real broadband took days to upgrade!
Four windows 8 laptops in my house. No broadband internet and i have to download 3.5gb of stuff four times?
This stupid 'app store', inflexible control freak mentality is what will kill microsoft.
I never understood the decision to stop shipping an os every 2 years between xp and 7. hindsight is 20/20 and all, but i was critical back then as well. Service pack 1 should have been a (cheap) paid release with whatever features they could scrape together.
The net effect seems to be, a big fraction of customers are just completely entrenched in XP and have lost the ability to upgrade. If they can't pay to get up to date, what would they be willing to pay for? Are those customers MS wants? There's a market there, but it's a tight fisted one.
Not releasing often enough seems like healthy for business criticism. At least some of those upgrades can be paid. It keeps customers in the upgrade habit. It keeps infrastructure nimble.
Releasing to slow means fossilization. That might be good for some aspects of business, it's cheaper. But again, less money to be had there.
This is a valid argument. I think he was talking about XP to Win7 bypassing Vista which is incorrect. The situation is very similar now Win7 to Win9 skipping Win8.
Come now. The Star Trek movie curse is somewhat true, at least for movies two through eight. Each odd numbered movie (in the set) has a worse all time domestic ranking than the following even numbered movie (in the set). There is at lease some true.
It kinda breaks with nine, because it did so much better than ten, and all of them did a lot worse than eleven and twelve (but we don't count those, they're different...)
so except all those exceptions, there's definitely a pattern!
By the time 5 came, most people were already speculating, and you ought to know as well as I do about how nasty an effect framing can have on nebulous judgements of "good" and "bad".
About 6 months ago I built a really sweet computer, put Windows 8 on it, and I barely touch it. Since I do iOS dev I also have a mac, and I find myself always using that even when I am not developing. I am even doing my Android dev on it. I liked Windows 7, but 8 I have not liked.
The desktop market may be shrinking but it is still huge, but Microsoft keeps throwing it's loyal Windows desktop users under the bus. Case in point: The Windows 8.1 fix to the start button is no more than an icon that takes you to the tablet view. Right clicking the icon brings you a plain menu with a few system type options on it. I hope someone tells me I'm doing it wrong, because I've lost patience with it. I use it, but I don't feel Microsoft cares about me. I'll jump ship in a heartbeat if I see something that meets my needs even a little better.
It's easy to make a mistake when you are being so radical. I hope innovation (consistent modern cross-product GUI experience in this case) will pay off for Microsoft eventually.
I'd argue that the central mistake was the decision to radically change the desktop experience to conform with the touch experience. I.e. the radicalism was itself the mistake. My feeling is that Apple made the right call here: Desktop and touch interfaces are different enough that you just have to write different code for each.
It's "funny" when I was looking for a laptop and read user's reviews of them, nearly every single one contained the line "No problems with the laptop, but Windows 8 was bad"
Why the hell does a desktop need the metro crap? Nowadays you use a desktop for getting work done, not looking at "live tiles" with useless info in them poking around the screen when trying to get something done.
When you are "consuming content" you have better alternatives (tablets etc.)
Win 8 would be excellent if you could just set the default start screen (metro / "normal") and the normal screen would function basically like win 7.
The central claim of this article, that releasing Windows 9 too soon will alienate customers, seems very weak. The author acknowledges that Windows 8 uptake has been slow, so there just aren't that many people out there that are running Windows 8. And it's not like enterprise customers feel strongly obligated to switch to a new version just because one is available.
Another alarmist article. There are threats to Windows dominance but Microsoft has always been fighting against their own market share with older releases when it comes to OS releases.
My biggest gripe with 8.1 or 2012 R2 is using the corners or charms on a VM or a smaller sized RDP session. Its awful. The right-click on the start menu is also a much needed improvement in 8.1 and especially for Server 2012 R2!
Die-hard windows users will stay with Windows. Not because they like Windows so much, but because they believe in crap "every second Windows version is good", "I can just wait for another version", "what I have just works".
81 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 275 ms ] threadI wonder how we can make the transition be towards Linux for the average user. We moved my retired parents from Win7 to Ubuntu, and they're doing just fine (other than printer drivers). For most people's uses, Linux is a perfectly reasonable and functionally complete alternative to Win7 or XP.
That's surprisingly important to the average user.
He began emailing documents to himself and printing from his Windows 7 laptop.
About six months after Windows 8 was released, HP finally released a supposedly compatible driver for his printer. Upon installation of the driver, the system detected the same printer twice, and neither of the detected devices worked. Additionally, every application I tried printing from crashed as soon as the printer dialog appeared.
The situation was resolved when we discovered that HP has a Windows 8 compatible generic postscript driver that works with just about everything.
I didn't go out and buy a new printer, I reinstalled Windows.
As long as they don't watch Netflix.
Or play games.
Or have any unsupported peripherals.
Or want to use any commercial consumer software.
The rest of your complaints are valid right now. I expect the game situation is going to change because of what Valve's doing w/ SteamOS.
On Windows, I can go to Netflix.com and it starts working. Even if it needs Silverlight, it installs it for your automatically. Users don't know what Silverlight is. They don't want to search through Arch's wiki. They certainly don't want to figure out what the hell a browser user-agent override is.
In reality, Netflix doesn't work on Linux.
To wit: Netflix is (currently) harder to use on every Linux distribution than it is on Windows and Mac. It's probably too much hassle to be worth it for non-tech folks, but it does work.
I can't imagine that conversation. "It's trivial! You just go to fds-team.de... no, that's .de, not .com. Yup, fds-team.de slash cms slash pipelight... you know what, just search for Pipelight. It's like the third or fourth result down, just look for whatever doesn't have boats or trailers in the name. You'll install it with the command there, the sudo... no, that's sudo with an S, not psuedo. Ah, there's directions there, you can follow them. Now let me tell you about the user-agent string..."
No thank you. Netflix does not work on Linux. It can merely be made to work.
I can:
"Does Netflix work on Linux?"
"Yes! It's not officially supported, but it does work. Go here https://launchpad.net/pipelight , click the 'Installation Instructions' link and follow the instructions for your distro. Don't know which one you're using? Here's how to find out..."
As I mentioned in my reply to your comment: "[Netflix on Linux is] probably too much hassle to be worth it for non-tech folks, but it does work."
> Netflix does not work on Linux. It can merely be made to work.
I guess we don't speak the same language. :) If you can make something work on Linux, then it works on Linux. Your assertion to the contrary is confusing.
Look at it this way - lets say I made, for example a fingerprint scanner for Windows, and you wanted to use it for Linux. I could say "yes! it works on Linux! You just have to write your own C driver!" You can clearly see this isn't an acceptable solution as writing a driver is needlessly complex especially if you don't have the proper documentation.
Now you might argue that writing a driver and searching Google for pipelight are in way two different leagues - but to the average user, asking them to do that might as well be the same as asking them to write their own driver.
Even the instructions you gave are confusing. Follow the instructions for your distro? Wait, you expect the average user to use the command line? What distro am I using? Linux? Should I follow AV Linux?
Because you most likely work with computers everyday on a professional level, you are vastly overstating the know-how of the average computer user. So yes, Netflix does work on Linux - if you are a wiz enough to get it up and working. The average user? No.
F: "In reality, Netflix doesn't work on Linux."
Me: "Netflix does work on Linux in the same way that a program written for a device that doesn't yet have a C compiler does work. ... [Netflix is] probably too much hassle to be worth it for non-tech folks..."
F: "My point was, Netflix does not work. It can be made to work, but by default, it does not work... Netflix does not work on Linux. It can merely be made to work."
Me: "If you can make something work on Linux, then it works on Linux. Your assertion to the contrary is confusing."
1) Do you still not see how the words he wrote are confusing? If you can make something work, then it works!
2) Where does freehunter restrict the scope of his assertion to the set of people who would never, ever, ever read HN or any other tech site? I don't see anywhere in his argument where he does that.
As far as I can tell, he never says "Netflix actually does work on Linux for people who are technically inclined." The only thing that I see him saying about Netflix on Linux is that "...it does not work on Linux [unless you install the software needed to make it work]... [but even if you did that, that's not really Netflix working on Linux, for... reasons!]" Did I misread his posts?
My car is missing the timing belt. It doesn't work. It can be made to work by putting a new belt in it, but I wouldn't tell someone that my car works. The best I would describe it as is a "yes, but it will take some work".
For all intents and purposes, it might as well not work.
I can do one better: "My car is missing its timing belt and needs another. Otherwise, it's in good working order."
> The original discussion was around people with limited technical ability [thus it should have been obvious what I meant.]
So, a suggestion: rather than saying "In reality, Netflix doesn't work on Linux." or "My point was, Netflix does not work.", say something like "Netflix on Linux is too hard for the man on the street to manage.".
Yanno, I said exactly that in my first reply to you, but I guess that you missed the point that I was making. Maybe you were in too much of a hurry to carefully read the words that I carefully selected to most precisely get my point across. shrug
Netflix works just fine on Linux, right? Or am I mistaken?
> Or play games.
Most people actually do NOT play the big Windows games you are referring to. They play browser-based games. Work just fine.
> Or have any unsupported peripherals.
Linux' hardware support is actually far superior to that of Windows. Trotting out the 'unsupported hardware'-argument made sense ten years ago. It does not make sense today.
On top of that, it's a bit of a silly point to make. If they don't have a monitor, they can't use it either.
> Or want to use any commercial consumer software.
Your only valid point.
There are some hacks to make it work, but Netflix won't support you if you go that route. Basically, you need a specially patched version of Wine which runs Firefox for Windows with the Silverlight plugin. There are PPAs and the like for Ubuntu users, but it's still a bit ugly and hackish.
Desktop Netflix is built with microsoft silverlight for which there is no official linux distribution. It can be made to work with a WINE hack, but even something like that may be too much for the acerage users.
But it's not just shiny newish hardware: my motherboard uses some audio chipset that was immediately recognized and used by Ubuntu, but it has various wacky issues: plug in headphones on the front panel and there's audio (after 10-15 seconds) through them, but when you unplug them, it doesn't switch back to the speakers plugged in the back. I can eventually unmute my speakers by playing around in alsamixer, but I'm not sure how, even though I've done it two or three times.
Also, Skype doesn't play well with pulseaudio (again, long-time known issue), so to ensure Skype working, you have to stop pulseaudio and start Skype, but then nothing else that uses audio works until you start pulseaudio again.
Lots of issues, still.
Also, GP was talking about his retired parents, who probaby don't play games that much, or have their favorite on Windows, so it's pretty much the same issue as above, though now steam is available on linux, and there are plenty of little games available on app markets.
I don't know netflix as a user (not US cit.), so can't comment much on that. I understand that before the streaming services, people used to get rented dvds by mail. It's a little bit a step back to return to that solution (if it still exists), but it's not that unbearable, imho.
Of course, if said parents are computer savy, then these issues might not weight that much (VMs).
Fair point, for now. But Chromebooks can access Netflix, so there's no reason why this can't be extended to Chrome on Linux in the near future.
> Or play games.
Steam for Linux and Steam OS (which is a Linux distro) will change this. Already pretty much every upcoming indie game is being developed for Linux in addition to other platforms, and there's already a substantial library of games.
> Or have any unsupported peripherals.
Very few of those exist nowadays.
> Or want to use any commercial consumer software.
And what 'commercial' consumer software are you talking about? Most software nowadays can be accessed through the browser, quite a bit is spreading to Linux, or there's an acceptable free substitute. Don't tell me a free office suite with Linux isn't compelling to the average consumer, especially now that sending documents as PDF is more socially acceptable than sending Word files...
I mean, I use Ubuntu exclusively, all native apps, while attending University, developing pet projects, and doing normal 'computer' things like using Skype, playing games, etc... I recently bough a Fujifilm X-A1 camera (great device BTW), and GIMP even works great for importing and developing RAW files...
I don't see what more the 'average' consumer needs - and don't say MS Office or Photoshop, because the vast majority of people don't 'need' them...
I don't have that many unsupported peripherials. Ubuntu currently handles my wireless HP printer better than my other laptop with Windows 7.
There are alternatives to commercial consumer software. The goal of a typical user is not to use < program >, it's to accomplish < task >. Usually < task > is "browsing the web, using email, playing music and videos".
They will be happy with anything you are enthusiastic about that is lawful and is not harmful to your health.
She wanted one thing from the laptop - remote desktop client to connect to her main machine.
I used mint. After 30 minutes of trying to find suitable gui for rdesktop that does not require touching console just threw XP.
Personally, I have no problems with Windows 8, I even prefer it to 7 (or Android) on touch enabled devices. This might be the "Windows Blue Hype" all over again.
Few people will see this clarification and become misinformed.
Even on non-touch devices, the big problems I have with Win 8/8.1 are solved by readily available third party software that gives you back a Win 7 style task bar / Start Menu (and, actually, I prefer and use this on my touchscreen laptop, as well.) AFAICT, Win 8 is an all-around improvement except for basically one highly-visible but trivially correctable UI decision for keyboard-centric devices.
I meant trivial for me. I agree that its not trivial in the market.
I don't think it's acceptable that I have to use third-party software (and most of it, last time I looked, was either additional cost or sketchy not-sure-if-free-or-spyware variety) just to make the thing usable.
The one I use is Classic Shell [1]. The current version is free (gratis) but not Free/Open Source. There is an earlier Open Source version.
> I don't think it's acceptable that I have to use third-party software (and most of it, last time I looked, was either additional cost or sketchy not-sure-if-free-or-spyware variety) just to make the thing usable.
IMO, its quite usable as-is, though I like the UI less for desktop/laptop use than the Win 7 UI because of the lack of the Start Menu, so I prefer to use the available third-party software to fix that; with that third-party software, I find it better than Win 7 entirely.
[1] http://www.classicshell.net/
We have couple of XP machines that would run perfectly well for another 5 years if we upgrade them to SSDs. The thing is, Windows 7 costs twice as much as 8. Odd strategy MS.
On the other hand, corporate is often keen on throwing more money at Microsoft when better, less-expensive options -- whether OS, application, or anything else -- are available, so insofar as the UI issue is an issue for corporate users, it could probably be fixed by Microsoft releasing an $50/seat, centrally-deployable Windows 8 Corporate Interface Pack that restored the Start Menu on Windows 8 machines.
IMO it's an almost absurdly trivial issue contrasted against holistic moderate improvements across the rest of the OS. Maybe a learning case-study on how narrow, particular elements of user experience & perception can turn against you...
(I'm pretty sure the link you provide has been updated for Win8.1)
Its not different from Win 7 for people who never take their hands off the keyboard.
Its different for people who use pointing devices, though, since the Start Menu (not the "Start Button", which Win 8.1 restored and Win 8 had a close equivalent) is replaced with the touch optimized Start Screen which takes a lot more pointing device movement to get to options than the old Start Menu.
Requiring a non-supported hack to get around a central design decision doesn't work for the vast majority of users who expect it to just work. This highly visible UI decision is the whole point behind windows 8 and is central to the way Microsoft wants you to interact with the OS. If you aren't using the metro/modern apps there is no point in windows 8.
The 'improvements' are very modest over windows 8 and none of them have anything to do with the way the vast majority of users expect to be able to use the desktop. You still need to get into windows 8 stuff to perform basic tasks like changing settings or shutting down the computer(! yes, i am aware of other ways to do it but the average user is stuck). I still find the magic corner stuff like the charms bar in windows 8 to be totally jarring and strange and I am very technically proficient.
The reason was I had a brand new, powerful rig and no legacy hardware.
As I said, it is the business side of things that slows down the adoption in the corporate world. And to make it a double whammy, the consumer market is massively going to the tablet side.
A lot of us aren't. And we hate Windows 8.
The real issue is that some sets of pot smoking bozos decided to make upgrading from 8.0 to 8.1 a freaking pain, nightmare... Even for those with real broadband took days to upgrade!
Four windows 8 laptops in my house. No broadband internet and i have to download 3.5gb of stuff four times?
This stupid 'app store', inflexible control freak mentality is what will kill microsoft.
The net effect seems to be, a big fraction of customers are just completely entrenched in XP and have lost the ability to upgrade. If they can't pay to get up to date, what would they be willing to pay for? Are those customers MS wants? There's a market there, but it's a tight fisted one.
Not releasing often enough seems like healthy for business criticism. At least some of those upgrades can be paid. It keeps customers in the upgrade habit. It keeps infrastructure nimble.
Releasing to slow means fossilization. That might be good for some aspects of business, it's cheaper. But again, less money to be had there.
" companies want desktop operating systems they can rely on for three to five years"
should probably be changed to
"companies want desktop operating systems they can rely on for thirteen to fifteen years"
Time between the release of 7 and 8: 1100 days
Time between the release of 8 and 9 (assuming a July 1st, 2015 release): 978 days
It kinda breaks with nine, because it did so much better than ten, and all of them did a lot worse than eleven and twelve (but we don't count those, they're different...)
By the time 5 came, most people were already speculating, and you ought to know as well as I do about how nasty an effect framing can have on nebulous judgements of "good" and "bad".
I'm surprised I got a downvote for the parent post, frankly. You'd think the majority of the demographic here would be against insane pigeon logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Superstitious_pi...
Why the hell does a desktop need the metro crap? Nowadays you use a desktop for getting work done, not looking at "live tiles" with useless info in them poking around the screen when trying to get something done. When you are "consuming content" you have better alternatives (tablets etc.)
Win 8 would be excellent if you could just set the default start screen (metro / "normal") and the normal screen would function basically like win 7.