Magnitus: I read your other post and you're saying because the OS is a moving target and they can't adapt the source code of closed source, it will break.
Fair enough, but Windows also suffer from this problem. The difference is that whoever made the closed source will fall over themselves to bridge the compatibility gap with the latest version of Windows.
Thanks for taking the time to read that. However, Windows doesn’t suffer from this problem anywhere near as much because of it’s API’s. I’m talking about Dot Net, Visual Studio and Direct X. These API’s work by stacking themselves, and over the years Microsoft has improved this. For example, if you want to play something that was made with VC 2013 than you need to install the VC++ distributable 2013. However if it was made using VC 2015 you only need to install distributable 2020 because it includes 2015 and 2016.
Another reason Windows has high compatibility is due to the way Microsoft changes things, or to be more precise the way they don’t. Let’s compare Windows 8 to Ubuntu 21. If you use Ubuntu 21 you may notice that it no longer uses the Unity interface (thank god) but you may have also noticed that a few gog games no longer work on it. Well, that’s one of the reasons why. There are too many changes since Ubuntu 18 and the games got left behind. They won’t even be able to work on 18 for much longer because eventually the repositories will be taken offline and you’ll no longer be able to download the dependencies needed to make the games work.
Now lets talk about Windows 8. They removed the start menu so how the hell did games and other programs continue to work on it without a start menu? The answer is, Microsoft ‘technically’ didn’t remove it at all. Despite what the interface may look like, underneath it all, the start menu is still there. This is so older programs can still work. Whenever Microsoft changes something in Windows they always do it in such a way that will affect the least amount of programs as possible. They tend to build new stuff on top of old stuff while keep the old stuff still functioning. Linux doesn’t do this. There is no Unity or any trace of it in Ubuntu 21. This is why Linux is small, fast and secure. It is also why Windows runs every game ever made. They never get rid of the old infrastructure, they just build on top of it. All things considered, it’s amazing it works as well as it does. Linux doesn’t let old programs hold it back which means it works better, but also means less things work on it.
Magnitus: I don't begrudge other people for not sharing my expertize or having zero interest to learn about it.
The mistake you’re making isn’t begrudging people for their lack of knowledge, but rather presuming that
you know more than than they do.
When you say things like:
Magnitus: You can't know everything and its unreasonable to expect people to invest the time to know everything. Making computers usable for the less knowledgeable is a worthwhile endeavor.
It comes off as condescending. Even if you do know more; no one is going to want deal with you after been spoken to like that. Perhaps you genuinely are unaware of how this comes off as but it’s not a good look and it’s very common among Linux users.
Magnitus: I was talking about end users, not software developers.
The main issue with the Linux desktop is that it doesn't cater to enough of them.
If you have the user-base, the software developers will come (because there is a financial incentive to). If you don't, well…
Software developers are the focus of this conversation. It’s why I started it. You do need to cater to end uses but you also need to cater to developers well. Linux doesn’t really do this, and that’s what I wanted to address.
Magnitus: They kind of do, if Sony tells Playstation game developers to jump, they do. Same for Xbox games, MacOS/iOS apps, etc, etc.
You’re forgetting that Sony pay them and also send them development kits. This is the infrastructure I was talking about. As for xbox there’s even more going on there. Have you noticed the abundance of genres on the PC? Fighting games, sidescrollers, 3D platformers. While Steam is due their credit Microsoft also played their part into making this a reality. There are two tools they used to help make this happen.
#1 They streamlined the development for both consoles and PC. Porting games from the xbox to the PC has never been easier. More than twice the consumer base with less than half the time or expense. You can’t expect developers to just make you stuff you free. Even if you buy games that are ported to Linux, it often doesn’t cover the cost price. So it ends up costing developers more money to produce a game for Lniux than they’ll make back.
#2 xinput proctical. In 2006 Microsoft released a new standard for PC controllers known as xinput. Before this every controller used direct input. Thanks to this standard neither gamers and developers alike wouldn’t have to waist time setting up the controls. You just plug and play. This has done wanders for porting those aforementioned genres; not to mention emulators.
In fact, they did such a good job of improving the infrastructure and facilitating workflow that Horizon Zero Dawn, (a PlayStation exclusive) not only came to PC it even came here to gog. Take a moment to think about that. It’s no wander Microsoft doesn’t care about console exclusives. Why make money from selling games when you can make money from the infrastructure itself.
Magnitus: The madness needs to stop somewhere, standards are good, unless of course you're the owner of a closed platform and you're trying to build a walled garden.
What you call a walled garden I call quality control. This is kind going off topic but it’s worth remembering that Artai almost singlehandedly destroyed the games industry while Nintendo singlehandedly saved it. They used quality control to do this. And by that I mean they used license agreements to effectively build a walled garden which gave them more control over what was released on their system. It also made it harder for competitors to get up off the ground. They even got into legal dispute over antitrust legislation. But you really can’t argue the results. All I can say is, thank god Nintendo won.
Anyway the short and sweet of all of this is, if Linux wants games it’s gonna have pick itself up by the bootstraps and build a garden of it’s own; that developers can use to grow their games.
Magnitus: I think the more technically savy you get, the more attractive Linux looks (that certainly was the case for me as I progressed in my career).
No I disagree with that. It’s easy to recommend Ubuntu or POP to anyone who just wants an internet machine or who just uses their computer casually. It’s when they want to do something more than it gets harder to do so.
Magnitus: Microsoft has high cohensiveness with its products the same way Apple does (well, a little less than Apple): Because its a walled garden.
The term walled garden is over used among the Linux community I think. It’s really only Linux users that use that term and it’s quite subjective. Windows might be closed source but it’s pretty customizable. You might actually be surprised to see what people have managed to do with the Windows OS. Also if you do an image search for ‘walled Garden’ what you’ll find is some rather beautiful gardens out there. Sorry, I know this part went way off topic but ‘walled Garden’ is a silly term if you think about it. It’s up there with things that Linux users say that makes normal people scratch their head and think “what the hell is this guy talking about?”
Magnitus: Everything is controlled by Microsoft. I won't deny that fragmentation is not an issue in the Linux world with all the distos and competing standards. However, they are solving the harder problem of not just having things work cohesively within a single organization, but trying to come up with universal standards across organizations.
I wouldn’t describe Microsoft as really have ‘control’ over the situation. Compared to other massive conglomerate they seems to have embarrassed chaos as part of their business model. It’s really quite strange, there doesn’t seem to be any consistency to the way they conduct themselves. Maybe they’re a bit like Valve; simply too big to care.
Magnitus: However, plenty of legacy things have broken in Windows (including many games, they do break across versions of Windows and some peripherals like my old joystick that not longer works on modern Windows) and developers are scrambling to make it work when it does.
Most of the market for PC end-users is with Windows and they expect their things to work. Whoever has a financial incentive for their things to work well for desktop end-users will make it work with the latest version of Windows, somehow.
As I stated in one of my previous posts, the backwards compatibility isn’t perfect, but it is leaps and bounds above anything else I’ve ever used. It’s true that people on the internet contribute to Windows compatibility, but the way Microsoft has built it also contributes to it. Linux on the other hand is always moving forward not letting old software hold it back. Thus you get pros and cons to both approaches to building an operating system.
Wow that took ages. Sorry for the late reply but this rebuttable was quite well thought out. I don’t agree with most of what you said, but I appreciate the work you put into this to I’ve responded in kind.
