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Most experts agree Linux is safer than Windows
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All scientific supercomputers use Linux
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Professional hackers use Linux
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Linux is the undisputed backbone of internet servers
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Critical military infrastructure relies on Linux
Microsoft’s revenue was $300 Billion last year. They have UNLIMITED ressources.
So why is Windows still worse than Linux ?
If you ever worked on any big corporation, it becomes crystal clear why things suck. Megacorps value money first, second, third, fourth and fifth. Sixth comes avoiding being caught by their crimes.
So, Microsoft doesn’t have a vision for Windows as an operating system, it sees Windows as a way to maintain a stranglehold in office computers the world over. It doesn’t matter that most people on lemmy will say “switch to linux”, they’re not companies, they’re not bosses - these are the vast majority of Windows users and South America + Asia + Africa make up a fuckhuge market. Sure, Europe and USA have more money, but the rest have sheer numbers.
Another thing that matters a lot is that many decisions come from the top and are enforced. If Satya Nadella or the director of whatever bullshit says something, those below have to comply. If the order from above is “cram bullshit ads in Windows Explorer, this has the highest priority”, that has to happen.
Regarding resources, having them and allocating them in a decent manner are not the same thing. The same could be argued about USA having trillions of tax dollars and having so many people living in poverty without healthcare or even basic education. Lots of that money go to keeping their armed forces. Microsoft is not too different, they have to pay people who keep their datacenters up, pay for the energy of said datacenters, maintain several other apps they have - oh, and the CEOs bonuses, because he’s such a great leader who totally deserves billions every year!!! Of those 300bn, how much are they diverting for Windows in general? 50b? 20b? 1b? Of that, how much is going straight for security, bug tracking and quality assurance?
Wait… why is this a question…? I guess it’s the same as when people ask my why Adobe is so terrible, why HP is terrible or why Apple is so terrible.
Companies eventually get so big and powerful they only care about companies.
Stop paying for Microsoft, pirate is Stop using Microsoft office, Get libre office Stop using HP, get Lenovo or Dell instead Everyone everywhere should stop using apple.
As much as I hate Apple/OoS and I do truly hate Apple… Adobe is the worst company on earth.
Easiest way to explain it is that Apple and Microsoft exist just to steal all your money Adobe not only wants to steal all your money but they wanted take it all then make you pay so they can lazily explain why they took your money. HP is in the corner breaking all your furniture so they can charge you a fee to fix it and put Microsoft, apple and Adobe trash on it.
It’s subjective. I’m not trying to be dismissive or something, but it’s that simple. Windows is more successful than Linux for what Microsoft wants it to be more successful at.
I’m not saying Windows is better. I like Linux more. I use it. I’m just saying that for the personal computing market share that Microsoft wants, Windows is more successful than Linux.
To be honest, if Microsoft wanted to affect other stuff with Linux, they’d probably just contribute the changes they want into it. It wouldn’t surprise me if they already did. They contributed many features to git for things they wanted to use in git.
they’d probably just contribute the changes they want into it.
I’ve heard they’re one of the biggest single company contributors to linux. No idea how much truth there is to that, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Is this a real question ?.One is about maximising profit extraction, one is not.
A lot of reasons. First of all, it’s not really their goal to make a good OS for users. They know that 95% will use windows no matter what, especially businesses, because they still more or less have a monopoly, especially in the desktop market.
In other words, any ressources spent on improving the desktop OS experience past the bare minimum is excess because they don’t really get anything concrete in return.
Yes, windows is less efficient than other os, but until recently, this wasn’t a problem for microsoft since you can just throw more/better hardware at the issue, which is a win win. They have to spend less ressources at optimizing code for better performance and, I imagine, they get a better cut since their hardware partners sell more devices because hardware gets obsoete every couple of years.
And in the server environment, they want it to be increasingly expensive because windows server is mostly used in cases where there is no alternative, and they want it all in their cloud.
Also, a lot of what is annoying about windows is per design. Ads, sponsorship ads, forced accounts, etc.
Passion vs corporate.
Corporate suits just sell surface promises and support contracts for corporate environments. It’s a totally different mindset than Linux engineers have. Theirs is that of passion for excellent software and that’s all they care about.
Power of the people.
When a collective works on something together for their shared benefit, the outcome will be better than when a company exploits people for profit.
I agree with all your points. The quesion is why is Windows still dominating in market share?
The answer is user awareness, brand loyalty and fear of the unknown. Windows is the devil you know, most of the people I game with are scared of the instability of Linux, despite it being roughly equal if not better.
I think standardizing the user experience, making things less scary and generally more welcoming are major hurdles, but the good news is that should come with time and a larger userbase.
Windows just works. I installed Linux on my older laptop and it couldn’t see any of my network shares. “Where do I click the button for sharing?” God, that would be too easy. Nope, start editing config files to configure samba. I just want to access files.
Samba is indeed an annoyance, at least in the initial setup. In good faith though, does windows just work? Because there’s a habit for windows updates to break file sharing pretty regularly, not to mention permissions issues.
There’s a lot of work people put into windows that they just don’t realise because they’ve been in the ecosystem for that long. Having been on both sides for a bit now, Linux requires a hell of a lot less regular maintenance than windows needed. Sure I’m a power user, but I think that Linux is getting better and better all the time for general users.
When the user base is as large as Windows, plus people run it on whatever crap they have, there are bound to be some issues. I am running Win11 on unsupported hardware without issues. I can’t remember the last time I needed to edit the registry. Yes, Windows just works.
Office, the fucking office suit everyone and thier grandma uses that does not work with alternative that run nativity on Linux… ugh…i mean office works bearly between two windows machines…so its not like the open source community did not give it a try, but the random proprietary standard in .doc/docx etc …just locks us in…
I use LibreOffice and Office, and I much prefer Office. LibreOffice uses docx files just like Word does.
Bloat and feature creep, and is marketed not only to corporations because sysadmins’ existing experience with that platform, but also towards the mainstream as much as Apple and Google (through ChromeOS).
Profit some times makes terrible decisions. In other cases, where cost has a relation to efficiency, profit does great. See also: capitalism.
too many spoons in the bowl spoil the batter
Windows is better in compatibility with many commercial products, but the gap is quickly closing, and I think Microsoft is feeling the pressure.
If you include the entire history of Windows programs, I have my doubts about this. For instance I’ve had more consistent results running old Windows games on Linux through WINE/Proton than I had in Windows 10. Linux may have better backwards compatibility with Windows programs than modern Windows does.
Their main goal is to extract maximum revenue, not to provide good products. Also, they’ve grown fat on the monopoly profits they enjoyed for decades. It’s very hard to pivot back to competitiveness from that and as of now, they’re not really compelled to do that.
true but to do that they have 100s of layers of variously documented backward compatibility and work-arounds. all their stuff is a mountain of deliberate technical debt that will affect the quality of their software
This is it. For-profit companies exist to make a profit, not a product. Any time you ask “why did they do this thing that makes the product worse?” remember that the product doesn’t matter to them, only the money it makes. If a change makes more money, they’ll do it.
Some might think a worse product means worse sales and less profit, but they’d be wrong. Enough people buy products regardless of their quality that it’s often more profitable to simply make the product as cheap as possible while maintaining just barely enough of the most basic functionality to meet the definition of what they’re trying to sell.
Aren’t most for profit companies like this tho?
Not the ones that face actual competition. Younger people have probably never experienced this but markets in general used to be much more diverse and less concentrated.
Oh damn
They’re a B2B company first and foremost. What they’re selling is the Microsoft ecosystem to companies, like their Office suite. Companies don’t care if each individual products sucks - just that they integrate well with other products. In particular, companies want good integration with Active Directory (Microsoft’s permission management system). Companies love controlling who gets access to what.
Consumer operating systems is more of a side hustle for them.
For the 4th time in my career, I’m selling something that competes with a Microsoft product or feature everyone purchases in end user license bundles and literally nobody gets configured and working.
Linux is setting out to make an operating system. Microsoft are setting out to make a data capturing advertising billboard that sometimes runs programs.
