I'll take a screenshot of this for the future :)

But hey, if you build it they will come, right? Why it has to be a closed platform, that is proven to be the worst scenario around the years, when you can have several people around the globe collaborating to make another better and improved platform? Why that we must run an inquisition against Linux and praise M$ for all the "good" they are doing?

My experience tells me that this need to be changed. It has to start at some point, why not now? We can't have several games made in a limited closed framework, that will always subutilise the expensive hardware we have to buy again and again. It' preposterous from the players stand-point. Think about it, how many times the new video cards and processors are faster and better than the consoles that we actually have out there?

Windows 10 "god mode" / "game mode" you will say. But we still have several problems with Win10 / 8 that are not solved, performance problems, resource problems, etc.

Linux distros do have their own problems of course, but think about it: if there is a problem on those systems, it will be faster to get a fix. If not by a group of people, then from the other group of people. Or else, anyone who is able to fix something, can fix it and publish. For example, I still have problems with NVidia Optimus drivers. In Linux, they have native drivers AND community drivers, that sometimes works better than the official ones. But in Windows, I have a lot of games that I can't play, because NVidia simply doesn't care about it, or the game devs won't be moving a finger.

Anyway. As usual, sorry for my grammar errors and stuff, I'm not a native speaker ;)
Cheers!

I just dislike being controversial in here but I'll shoot a quickie.
Nah, just wanted to share. Gotta agree (righte-y? ;P) that not everyone out there knows a whole lot 'bout closed platforms or which laptop is or isn't suited for gaming. Just picture some kid getting home all excited and finding out about this whole, welp, cr*p. That's my concern. And yes, I have close people who bought laptops for gaming - not everyone's suddenly "hackerman" overnight - and ended up with "one of these" non-friendly devices. That can and will happen imho.

And when folks say "go to amazon or newegg or whatever and get yourself a decent machine and all" to me it's always "well gotta remember that not all dudes live in the US and etc" :P
Linux went from Wesnoth (which is an amazing labour of pure amour) to Mad Max.
Say that isn't huge, huh? :)

Definitely man.
Boggles my mind to see how much people game on integrated devices - love 'em, but that's not the case - and these so called "weak" pcs. Sometimes or actually a lot of times folks don't even research properly, don't blame them, and end up getting a chromebook or similar to game some light titles. Same happens with a ton of other stuff such as cars, musical instruments and the list goes on and on.

Yes, I saw it happen three times: one with pcs, the other with cars and actually with guitars, too, I kid ya not.

It's grown quite a lot actually. Metrics taken from places other than Steam's hardware survey have shown rather more substantial growth recently. Valve has subsidised a few, but most ports (the overwhelming majority) aren't subsidised. IIRC Aspyr and Feral actually fund their ports themselves, making their money back from sales of the ports. Give it time. That seems to be more of a problem with GOG though. We already know that GOG did get the rights to provide the Metro games here, but for whatever reason held them back (no idea why as GOG won't say, but the Metro Redux games are known for having great quality Linux ports). GOG could - and really should - do much better. Give it time https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

"About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft Maybe, maybe not. We'll see, give it time. Linux is in a very similar situation to GOG, especially GOG's early days. Actually, something funny I've noticed for a while now is that in many of your posts about Linux you could swap Linux with GOG and Microsoft/Windows with Valve/Steam and it fits perfectly, or almost perfectly. Although Linux has vastly more new/new-ish AAA games getting released for it than are getting released on GOG.

Mmmkay...

But what about the average end user? ;)

Two points that I believe we should be aware, besides to think this is a "click bait" kind of post:

- You have to pay more (??) to use the Windows Pro version
- I believe this could (and certainly will at some point) be implemented for other hardware besides the Surface. Your laptop or desktop for instance.

Imagine that it won't affect only games, but every single software that might not be listed / approved at their store. That's what I said about creating a fence. You can check what are the most popular technologies in this link: https://stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017#technology

In the 90's, Microsoft had the most popular languages from what I can remember. Today, C# is the 4th one, behind two Open Source languages. Way down in the list you will find VB.Net, another technology from MS. And now, MS is trying to open its development technologies to try to popularize them. Maybe to recover the time it has lost when it was trying to close it even more in the past?

That's what I'm trying to say. MS is closing the OS even more, when I believe it should do the opposite. Windows is no longer the most used OS in the world for example. I don't know, I might be completely wrong, and I'd like to hear what people has to say about it.

Problem with Linux In it's many varieties is that it is not as easy for the average user to use as Windows or the MAC System is. Until this problem is overcome, Linux will not be a major threat to Windows or the MAC OS, despite what it fans say.
ANyway, people don't get that Windows 10 S is just a labeling for the OS for Microsoft's latest attempt to compete in the hand held divice market.

Holy moses did he really say that? I'm always intend to get untuned to what the guy says but this one takes the cake to me.
Ouch. Closed mentality at its finest.

Open source is infinitely preferable to the proprietary garbage peddled by shysters like Microsoft.

This is why I left MS, when Vista rolled out. Paladium and TPM, and absolutely no alternative. This is true meaning of "secureboot", evolution of vista's "palladium". A system that trusts and belongs to the 3rd party, but not (to) the owner.

Either you gulp the whole package or spend days hacking around, this is how MS users are treated. And they like it! In 2010 I saw Solaris OS for the first time and played a bit with it. It was pure awesomeness, albeit it had no games. It run KDE3 and Firefox. It had similar applications, but felt different, much better than MS and Apple classic. And only later I discovered that there was Solaris' smaller brother - Linux, made to run on any hardware without proprietary straps.

So I installed linux on bare hardware (it was Ubuntu Studio 8.04) in dualboot, but never booted into XP for several weeks. Then I went for full wipe. Meanwhile fellow users had to combat with many Vista's editions and huge hardware requirements. While nothing really improved from user perspective.

People who think Linux users are nuts, forget that they are (or more exactly, were) - expert microsoft users in the past. Do I sincerely care about "marketshare"? Absolutely not.

I care, that application runs, or in case of some games - plays, at some acceptable fps.
I care, that application does what I want it to do.
I care, that application does not include ads, unnecessary drm, nag screens, especially if I payed for it.
I care, that OS does not include things that just have to use, because some corporation wants me to use it.
I care, that the OS treats the owner as boss, that it does what owner wants it to do, regardless of how stupid it may be. That owner - is the user, not some corporation.
I care, that if I rationally dislike some component, that I can use an alternative and no artificial barriers are made. This also includes running applications and games with outdated ABI.
I care, that the OS is universally secure and does not need an extra antimalware components.

Windows can't do this. Can't. The way how GOG currently makes old games run - is via DOSbox.
Look up Dosbox history! It was made to make DOS applications run in... and initially run in [url=https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/code-0/80/tree/dosbox/trunk/src/debug/debug_win32.cppD]Win32 CMD! Where is MS with its DOS support now? Essentially - dropped/depricated.

The same thing happens with Wine. It already runs more windows software, than windows itself. At some point, wine - will run on windows - to run windows software.. unless MS manages to completely "secure" itself away from its users.

Why? Because - Windows is not a universal "OS / hoster", its a "product", "appliance", "application". Its designed to fulfill certain expectations, that certain group expects it to fulfill - and that group are NOT its users. Its the core conflict - commercial software can never be true "personal" OS. A middleware, console, to run certain tasks - sure, but its never a "personal" thing. Linux kernel is. This is why Linux runs more windows software than windows itself (dos+win32/64 combined). Certainly if MSDOS from ground up were a walled garden with hard control on APIs, like Nintendo, then it would run and support more current and legacy software. But MSDOS was from ground up - "personal", where 3rd party choice/input mattered, and it was its major advantage.

Yeah, but its you guys paying for it. Perhaps the MSO interface that it is worth its price. Eitherway, with Libreoffice, you are not forced upon specific interface. =)

Outside of certain instances where e.g. manufacturers/developers don't provide Linux drivers nor provide documentation to help Linux developers make drivers, Linux can be about as easy to use as Windows now. Even easier than Windows for some things.

I recommend Linux Mint - I had no experience with Linux prior to using it (having used DOS/Windows exclusively for over 20 years prior), and switching to it was a comparable experience to when I moved from WinXP to Win7. It'll take a little getting used to the differences, but it's not really any more difficult to use.

Source from the wikiquote page: Speech at the University of Washington, as reported in "Gates, Buffett a bit bearish" CNET News (2 July 1998)

There are lots of other little things like that on the pages I linked to.

This.

You have to also understand this in historical context.
MSDOS is clone of CP/M, which was shipped with IBM PCs for $12.
The original, CP/M has cost $120.
He has been doing this for ages, selling at loss, to make everyone addicted, locked up. And then cash out. The popularity of dos and windows are all due to this, not due to their real technical advantages.

You just managed to brake 4 from 5 General Rules in Forum Conduit Code. You are on your way to success, sir.

For the whole saga of how DOS was prerry much cloned from CPM, I recommend "Fire In the Valley" easily the best history of the Personal Computer revolution available. I