The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive Microsoft, tacitly admitting it has failed at talking all the Windows 10 PC users into moving to Windows 11 after all, is – sort of, kind of – extending Windows 10 support for another year. For most users, that means they'll need to subscribe to Microsoft 365. This, in turn, means their data and meta-information will be kept …
30 years! You were an early adopter! I have only just turned 20 years as a user - first on Ubuntu and now on Mint. Don't know what I will be using in 10 years from now, but I know it will still be some flavour of Linux or something else with Nix roots. It will not be anything made by M$, that's for sure.
We seem to be seeing more corporate adoptions of Linux on the desktop. I wonder if we are approaching a tipping point where enough adopters convince others that a Linux desktop will not leave them alone in the cold.
The next change will be when more ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) port their applications to Linux - further reducing reasons to stay on MS Windows.
This will create a lot of positive feedback.
EDIT: someone modded this down within 4 minutes of when I posted it. If you disagree with me please post a comment to say why (otherwise I will assume that you take Microsoft's shilling).
I don't know why some might have downvoted you, but I've seen this argument lots of times. Maybe eventually it will be true. It hasn't been any of the times I've seen it in the past, and I doubt it will be this time. Various groups deciding to adopt Linux have been heralded as the tipping point that was going to make Microsoft take notice, whether it was Dell shipping some computers with Ubuntu, various large companies with Linux desktops, or the ever-popular Munich switching some, no all, no none, no some again machines to something open source. All of those things happened, but it hasn't changed much.
I am not going to predict that happening again, and I tend to see most predictions as ideologically motivated. That goes in both directions. Although most of the ones I see are people who would really like Linux to take over predicting that Linux will take over, I see others predicting that any attempt to migrate will fail utterly based on almost no information other than that they assume that nobody can transition to Linux, when the major limiting factor is how much you want to make that change. A motivated organization can switch to whatever they want if they are willing to be consistent in migrating things, and it's worked in the past. I doubt every announced effort will get that far, but some of them will. I don't think that's going to make everyone else do it.
"A motivated organization can switch to whatever they want if they are willing to be consistent in migrating things, and it's worked in the past. "
The public sector org I work part-time in now has most systems it uses accessible by Web browser. Some still MS 365 but quite a few others not. Outlook/Teams still there, but they work in Chromium from my linux laptop to the same entropy level as through Edge on Windows 11 on the classroom laptops.
I can see a situation where just swapping the OS for endpoints doesn't make that much difference. Then the barrier for migration gets lower. I could imagine Linux/Chromebook laptops and MS 365 on servers in a few years. Then who knows?
Web apps do make switching the desktop OS easier. The places I've worked that either had adopted Linux desktops or had a mix have usually been heavier users of web apps. It really comes down to what applications they need to do their job and what each one's compatibility is, which differs too much from organization to organization to make any generalizations about how easy it is. Also, in a large enough unit, the change can be implemented in stages. For example, if an entire local government switches, the general administration might be able to switch while the police department stays on the old system longer as they likely have separate IT departments in any case, as long as the intersection of core software supports both systems. That makes a transition easier because lessons learned by one department can be used to make the implementation elsewhere easier.
"Web apps do make switching the desktop OS easier."
In many cases, web apps are a boon. It is increasingly difficult to distribute applications. People can or will not install "strange" applications on their own or employers computer.
Developers have to jump through many hoops, and pay money, to get apps in places where they will be downloaded or installed by users.
An awful lot of functionality can be developed using just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And if you develop for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari/iOS, your app will run almost everywhere.
As everything already works in the cloud, it is rather trivial to connect your app a cloud backend.
I for one of have stopped writing programs no one can or will install. I simply write the whole functionality in a web app. If I put it on GitLsb or GitHub, it will even be hosted for me.
In many cases, web apps are a boon
Not a heavy user of web apps myself, but I know a few people who have been moved from a combination of VPN and RDP to web apps and find that their day-to-day work has been made significantly more difficult. Mainly this is due to lack of support for multiple monitors, full-screening and such. These people tend to have several spreadsheets open at once, or scheduling software in one window with two or three diaries in other windows. On a more normal level, school- and university-age children complain that college guidelines might insist on specific formatting, footnoting and referencing requirements for assignments and essays which work well enough in desktop Word, but aren't even available in web Word. This first became apparent during the 2020/21 restrictions when time physically in college was limited and the only solution was to complete the bulk of the assignment at home, then grab an hour in the school library to re-do the formatting.
There are also apps which I cannot see becoming competitive any time soon delivered via the web; heavy graphics, audio and video editing spring to mind. Even on the end of a decent net connection, interaction can be plagued by latency issues.
M.
We seem to be moving quite quickly to an era in which the actual OS on the machine in front of you will be irrelevant, PROVIDED THAT you can access and use the apps / creative software / databases / communications you need on line. As Microsoft have already realised (and have done for quite some time) the money is to be made from selling cloud services, not operating systems.
The big questions now become :-
Who do you trust to support / maintain the business-critical remote software your business relies on to make and market your product?
Who do you trust with your critical intellectual property?
What will it cost?
Microsoft - particularly inf the context of Trump's America - seems to have universally failed on the trust issue. Almost everything else is secondary. Trust, if anything, will be what drives any changes.
This is why the sensitive designs / drawings I create for clients are created on an internet disabled machine, backed up on a separate air-gapped HDD, and are finally passed on by hand on dvd or memory stick. I make sure there is nothing sensitive left on my (Mint) machine when I enable an internet connection for update and maintenance purposes. My clients not only appreciate the level of security I can offer, but some will insist on it. Fortunately, Linux systems make this easy to manage.
My "cloud" is my very secure desktop and separate HDD. It is a hassle, no question, but it is necessary and it works for me.
but they work in Chromium from my Linux laptop
remind-me who is behind Chromium ? Do you really think that ditching Microsoft for Google will improve someone's privacy ? As for Chromium being open-source, did you try to compile Chromium yourself ? It's quite an eye-opening discovery. Icon, obviously
For sure...I suspect most conventional businesses probably still lean towards Microsoft...but I consult for and support a lot of dev houses (sort of third party devops, if you want to call it that, called in when dev teams get all tangled up and can't see the wood for the trees), and there has been a pretty big shift there over the last couple of years...I'd say more than half the devs (and I come into contact with hundreds of them a year) are using Linux either as their primary operating system on their main dev machine, or they have a laptop as a supplement to their main dev machine (basically their de facto) that has Linux on it (which exists because their sysadmin won't switch the desktops to Linux).
It's mostly dev shops that deal in Python, JS, PHP...that sort of thing...Java and .NET guys still seem predominantly married to Windows for some reason. There are a couple of Java devs I've come across that use Linux...but they seem to prefer the Red Hat flavoured offerings...I tend to find them on Fedora.
.NET guys will never let go of Windows. Even though they could if they wanted to...the fear of change there is real.
Linux only has to win once. Microsoft will have to fight to keep Windows users in its walled garden all the time. And considering they're adding more and more cruft people don't want it's a losing battle.
Once the train starts rolling there's no going back. Microsoft will lose its relevance and we'll see real innovation in the operating systems domain again. Microkernels anyone?
Majority? What are you basing this off of? Sources, please.
WSL is a great convenience for those who have have reason to experiment with Linux, but need to keep Windows as their primary OS
Sadly, it is also a trap, already being in the second 'E' phase of the traditional Microsoft EEE maneuver. I've run across a few projects here and there that list WSL2 as a hard requirement for one reason or another. BUT, good luck to Microsoft on that final E, as Linux usage percentages keep slowly trending upwards. A proper inflection point would be nice sooner rather than later though.
"Majority? What are you basing this off of? Sources, please."
That's basically chatter on the podcast vines. WSL is not a distro, so it does not show up in any downloads/distro statistics. So, my impression is not more than a guess based on the fact that Linux runs the VM/container revolution in the cloud, not on the desktop. I heard that Microsoft developed WSL to attract container developers, especially away from Macs. No hard numbers though.
"Sadly, it is also a trap, already being in the second 'E' phase of the traditional Microsoft EEE maneuver."
That was my initial fear too. On the other hand, ESR's reasoning about Windows development having become a costly side show for Microsoft is not without merits. And he was not alone in this view.
So, I don't know what to think of it yet.
It's a trap, indeed. But for whom?
WSL was developed because Linux won.
Linux runs 3/4 of all computing devices, from mobile devices to the cloud and Mars copter. Even MS' own Azure runs more Linux than Windows instances.
The last hold-out is the desktop, where Windows reigns.
But developing for the rest of the economy, from AI to Android, has to be done in Linux, or at least Unix. And MS was losing these developers to Apple and Linux.
Hence, incorporating Linux into Windows was a strategy to keep these developers on board.
To me, it sounds more like desperation. There is a link above to the view of Eric Raymond. That is worth considering too.
Yeah, but regular folks don't see Windows as an isolated product like an Android phone. Windows is all over their lives and the FOMO is real. Windows benefits from the lemming effect. People use it, because everyone else uses it and if everyone else uses it, they can't use something else in case it puts them at a disadvantage..."What if I can't open documents?", "What if I can't accept meeting invites?" etc etc.
Of course, none of this breaks if you use Linux, but the users don't know that.
Linux will eventually win out and we'll know that day has arrived when Microsoft releases a build of Outlook for Linux.
Microsoft is destined to be an Office Suite, Xnox and cloud service slinger...and it knows it.
I actually think Microsoft would quite like to dump Windows as a product. There are more drawbacks than benefits for them in continued OS development.
The only point here I disagree with is that Windows is a walled garden. It really isn't.
I'm a Linux user, have been for 20+ years and I think there are many problems with Windows...but being a walled garden ain't one. Only Apple has mastered the art of punting garbage and locking users in with Stockholm Syndrome.
With on premises Exchange it was none of Microsoft business who had an e-mail account at an organisation. Now they'll jump right in and mess around with an organisation's admin and suspend a user's e-mail (Azure, OneDrive, etc...) because Trump had a tantrum. Likewise there's nothing to stop them doing the same with home accounts/devices.
There's the real possibility of a country waking up to find itself offline. We've got to wean ourselves off convenience in return for a monthly fee and take charge of our own data.
Now they'll jump right in and mess around with an organisation's admin and suspend a user's e-mail (Azure, OneDrive, etc...)
And people still pay for this shit?
Now I know that inertia plays a big part but what else is keeping people stuck to MS?
Fear of the unknown, herd instinct, or is it the latest and greatest features like copilot?
As far as I can see it's not reliability, security of your data or ease of use.
So what is it?
Mostly inertia at this point. Training the workforce to do something different seems to be too much of an expense for many companies.
But starting companies? I’ve seen an entire low cost grocery store chain set up all of their cashiers with Linux.
Ironically, most large companies have their backend running off Linux or some flavor of commercial UNIX, and it’s mostly due to the same inertia effect. These businesses started out with UNIX and are unlikely to switch over to Windows anytime soon.
Outlook...people cannot and will not dump Outlook.
All it takes to knock Microsoft off it's perch is a fucking good email client.
The days of email are numbered though, and I think Microsoft knows this because quite a lot of the key functionality of Outlook has slowly been moving to Teams. Like calendars and so on.
The vision of the future is to hold people on Windows with Teams...you can tell, because they stubbornly refuse to release an official Linux build for Teams.
You can always tell which products Microsoft intends to lock people in with, because they don't release Linux builds for them...and you can tell where Microsoft cannot win, because they do release Linux builds.
Take vscode for example. They know they can't really stop developers moving to Linux...but they can follow them...which is why vscode has a Linux build and a Macos build. Something like Teams or Outlook would be vastly less complicated for them to produce Linux builds for...and yet they don't do it despite having every opportunity to do so.
Developers are not vulnerable users. You can't lock them in...but your typical jobsworth cubicle jockey, they're extremely vulnerable and highly resistant to change. Outlook and Teams is their livelihood, control those and you've got a huuuuuge share of the market by the balls.
Saw a few articles about 'M365 local' last week.
Interesting I thought. Fully on-prem might be workable for some of my clients. They aren't that cost conscious.
Runs on Azure local. Ok. That sounds fine.
Hmm. Azure local still needs to talk to Azure but can't find it detailed as to why. Licensing presumably.
Nope. I'm out. Unless it can be totally sandboxed apart from Exchange being able to send and receive emails externally it's no use to me.
"Hmm. Azure local still needs to talk to Azure but can't find it detailed as to why. Licensing presumably."
"If Azure Local doesn’t sync with Azure in 30 consecutive days, the cluster’s connection status shows Out of policy in the Azure portal and other tools, and the cluster enters a reduced functionality mode. In this mode, the host infrastructure stays up and all current VMs continue to run normally. However, new VMs can’t be created until Azure Local is able to sync again. The internal technical reason is that the cluster’s cloud-generated license has expired and must renew by syncing with Azure."
"Nope. I'm out. Unless it can be totally sandboxed apart from Exchange being able to send and receive emails externally it's no use to me."
Same with my org. Sandboxed VMware.
We've tested Azure Local for several months now (global corp wants to save dough) and even setting it up with outbound connection only through a webproxy seems to be really hard even with Micros~1 engineers in the mix.
Yes, non-US dependent desktops are just a tiny piece of it, and private sector dependence is not going to be fixed by governments.
As things are, the US (and increasingly China), have a huge amount of power over other countries that can be exerted by just turning things off - sanctioning individuals, organisations or countries.
Exchange and email providers are just scratching the surface. One real shame is neglecting the opportunity to make power infrastructure more resilient by encouraging household solar - instead its app controlled through (frequently Chinese) servers. Cars, appliances, routers are all equally vulnerable. The NHS depends on AWS. Lots of businesses do too. Almost all mobile phones are US controlled (a small number Chinese controlled, and a tiny number pure FOSS) and people depend on them. Payment systems (Mastercard, Visa, Swift, Apple Pay, Google Pay) are largely US controlled.
A few governments are thinking about addressing US control of government systems. I do not know of any (apart from countries that are enemies such as Russia, China and Iran) that are even trying to address US control of their private sector and households, nor any that are paying any attention to Chinese control. Thanks to Trump a few are making a gesture, but its not really going to change very much.
Rewriting on other platforms could be seriously tricky. MS has made Windows a really good platform for very heavy duty 3D graphics. Games benefit from this, which is why there's a lot of games that are on Windows and not on Mac (or Linux). Porting some heavy duty applications (on the scale of Catia) to non-Windows could be a serious downgrade.
I mention Catia because it's French.
@bazza "Porting some heavy duty applications (on the scale of Catia) to non-Windows could be a serious downgrade."
Catia, NX and Creo are all old enough that they were originally written for Unix. They've definitely all been available for Unix or Linux with the last 15 years*.
(NX is still available for SuSE and RedHat, Catia was available for Solaris and the last IBM Power workstations, and Creo's precursor was available for RedHat.)
WINE and Proton have made tremendous improvements in recent years, to the point that many Windows games run at least on a par on Linux and in some cases better. So Catia and other similar applications don't need to be rewritten. They just need a few tweaks to make them Proton compatible.
What's the problem with MS languages? I've got C# that runs from embedded through mobile and desktop to web and cloud-scale apps, running on Windows, Android, and Linux. Probably some VB.NET too, somewhere. I'm not aware of it 'calling home' to MS or being otherwise troublesome.
Is this just a 'Microsoft Bad' attitude or have I missed something?
> What's the problem with MS languages?
Who controls the compilers and their licensing Ts&Cs that enable and limit commercial usage to produce executables for sale?
With open source permissive licensing there is no real difference between personal/academic usage and commercial usage. So having to get a license to permit you to sell the executable output of a compiler is probably an unexpected surprise.
It's a bit more difficult than that.
Windows is a "Proactor" system. Linux / Unix is a "Reactor" system. One can implement Proactor programming models on Reactor, but you cannot efficiently implement Reactor model programmes on a Proactor system. The difference: on Windows one sets up callbacks that are run async and block on IO, in Unix you can wait for IO to become ready and then decide what to do.
This has shown up on several occasions. The developers of cygwin hit a stumbling block implementing the select() function call (on top of Windows). Basically for anything other than sockets you cannot, so they have to have one thread per fd spinning on data availability. C++'s Boost when considering async IO opted to implement Proactor instead of Reactor simply so that Boost C++ could work on Windows.
So if you use a tool kit like wxWidgets, it can be very difficult to port a reactor system app written using the toolkit to Windows.
"I use Fusion 3D design software, which informed me the other day that I'd have to migrate to Win 11. No, I'm not going to do that. I'll use a different package under Linux.”
Which is what?
Look at it from the provider's perspective, you claim that you will move to an alternative package, but will you? Really will you? Many, many claims have been made (this is the year of Linux on the desktop, has been made for, what the last ten years at least), but here we are.
"No, I'm not going to do that. I'll use a different package under Linux.” - statistically, no you won’t, it’ll be too difficult and you will cave in and get Windows 11. And that is how the software providers see it, now maybe you are an exception to the rule and actually does move elsewhere, in which case good for you.
But most won’t, and the software providers know this; you might leave, but they don't really care, they are not going to expend resources making a version of their product for NXM, you simply aren’t that important to them!
And this sounds bad doesn't it, as if I’m a shill for Microsoft? I’m far from that, but it is the reality of the situation. Maybe an individual will move, fine, MS doesn’t care, imagine you run a company with, say twenty people using Autodesk software, and they are experts in using it? What do you do? Do you tell them all, ‘right as of Monday you will all be using xyz software running on abc flavour of Linux, it's mostly the same but.....’?
In theory its should be fine, in practice you will probably be out of business by the following Friday when no work is done!
No you are going to cabe and get new PCs (if necessary) and run Win 11, you realistically don’t haver a choice!
And yet again I sound like a MS shill, so will probably attract many downvotes, so be it. All I am trying to say is that the knee-jerk response of ‘just move to Linux’ doesn't always work for very good reasons.
For a home / domestic user, then fine, go for it, but then MS doesn’t care about you anyway so no loss, but for a company with tens, hundreds, thousands of Windows PCs, what do they do?
Thank you for your comment, and yes I did get a beer.
To be honest, I don’t like it either, but it is the reality of the situation.
'This is the year of Linux on the desktop’; no it isn't, neither will be next year or the year after, not because Linux is inferior to Windows, far from it, it’s down to inertia.
And how do we overcome said inertia and get corporates to, at least consider, changing?
> And how do we overcome said inertia and get corporates to, at least consider, changing?
1. Get government to adopt open source and open file formats. Corporations only started paying attention to interoperability when government and a few major user companies started pushing MAP/TOP/OSI (okay business discovered/woke up to the realisation they already had a TCP/IP stack bundled for free (BSD) with the systems they had already purchased…).
2. Given the education system was key to the growth of Unix and C, we need to encourage them to also adopt open source equivalent to 365 et al. and where equivalents don’t exist provide them with funding to partner with local businesses to develop equivalents.
However, expect it to be 10+ year project…
"And how do we overcome said inertia and get corporates to, at least consider, changing?"
I think the biggest, most important thing that we need to and haven't been doing is having a reason which makes sense to the nontechnical. The recent changes have been happening because they finally have something they can understand as an advantage: maybe Trump makes the US do something which makes Microsoft do something which breaks your stuff. That's understandable. I don't think that will work for long, because while I expect the US to do lots of crazy things, turning off Denmark's government computers is not one I expect, and if I'm correct, that argument will lose its influence after a while and we'll be back to the situation we were in before.
The most common arguments I've seen tend to be limited or incorrect, including ideological opposition to Microsoft (managers don't care), financial arguments that haven't been thought through and end up positing incomplete numbers, and the prospect of modifying the source code which most companies will never do and thus they don't care that they can. There are three broad approaches that any successful migration needs to take:
1. Providing an easily understood and well thought out reason why the business will benefit from making the change and why the benefit is greater than the costs, both financial and in time and opportunity cost. It needs to convince people so that they can be shown it when they're annoyed at things that don't interact well or new things they don't know how to use yet. This is hard, but people who rush through it often fail. Yes, I know that the managers never come up with that good a reason when they want to change things, but unfortunately, they have the money and power and IT does not.
2. Doing so much work inside the IT department that most people don't notice that things are changing. Slowly move things that wouldn't work on Linux to things that do so that, when you do switch people to Linux, they don't have to change their entire workflow. This tends to work well, but it takes longer and is more work and, to someone who really wants things changed over tomorrow, it takes longer to get there.
3. Take over the company so you can dictate to everyone what they'll use and tell anyone who complains that you don't care. If it's your company, this will be an option. If it's not, chances are you'll never be able to do it and acting like you can will have disastrous effects on the change and your career.
These changes are taking place because the US vanished the computer accounts and data for indictments of a judge in the International Criminal Court.
If the US has demonstrated the capability and ability to use that ability against a judge just because they don't like court rulings then less controversial targets are also at risk, which is why US clouds are having rainfall from their systems into onprem solutions. Simply put; they cannot be trusted and this is unlikely to change.
Microsoft (MS), in its early days, under the direction of its founders, was a wonder to behold. As with other startups surviving to become mega-concerns, the impetus from truly 'driven' people declines. Undoubtedly, MS employs some software engineers of immense talent. Yet, its direction appears wholly dominated by business school graduates with tunnel vision centred upon profit maximisation and whatever bonuses they can squeeze out.
MS compares well with another industrial behemoth founded long before MS, i.e. BOEING. The latter's glory days have passed; apparently, engineers have been relegated to positions of influence far below those of 'money men'. Former employees have alleged that cost-savings led to a reduction in production line quality control; some flight disasters have been attributed to laxities; no matter, even should BOEING collapse its top tier of management, it in no sense entrepreneurial or with real financial or emotional skin in the game, shall depart to enjoy stashed away personal wealth: ditto for MS.
Currently, MS' grip on its market comes much more from its locked-in customer base than from innovative appeal.
Major customers have investment tied into equipment and into software 'bought' before the imposition of subscriptions. Companies willing to hire outstanding people to lead and service their IT departments, are in a good position to ditch MS and take up alternatives: at least from a technical point of view. However, much to MS' liking, the generality of managers and lower level employees are hooked into the MS ways of doing things.
Now that some Linux distributions have converged with Windows with respect to ease of use by non-experts, and similarly for other 'office software', the practicability and cost of familiarising staff with it should be much less than, say, a decade ago.
To leave it at that would be foolishly short-sighted. New entrants into employment, school-leavers and graduates, have, over the course of their education and experience at home, been inducted into Microsoft ways. Just like the cunning 'Old Dope Peddler' in a Tom Lehrer ditty, MS acts as follows.
He gives the kids free samples
because he knows full well
that today's young, innocent faces
will be tomorrow's clientele
Educational establishments receive grants, and/or discounted software, and/or special customer privileges, to persuade staff and students into depending upon MS products; staff and students are enabled to use this software at home; this formerly by issuing copies and latterly via online cloud access.
Schools and universities within, or straddling, the public sector, are 'persuadable' into Linux, LibreOffice, etc. through diktat and/or financial pressure. Government and city councils must bear this in mind when implementing migrations from MS.
I fully agree on most of what you say, though your use of "wonder" in "Microsoft (MS), in its early days, under the direction of its founders, was a wonder to behold" makes me raise my eyebrows.
Please take a look at the eye-opening Barbarians Led by Bill Gates to see exactly how wonderful it wasn't!
Quote from Douglas Adams from 2001?
"The idea that Bill Gates (one of the founders of Microsoft) has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, led them into it in the first place..."
Had this on my wall for years ...
But I am cautious. This has happened in the past, in Germany precisely: switching all civil services to open office in Linux.
Then, 5 years after, they also announced the were back to Microsoft due to all the headaches about file format et all ...
It will just require one new "beautiful" (like the Orange lunatic would say) change of default file format in Office for the cows come back home ...
Of course, this new format won't be public, like last time and open/libre office people will scramble for years to decipher it ....
Been there, done that ...
As one who has for decades been given client datasets in Excel format for mangling into (linux) dB/web servers, today is something of a red-letter day: I have just received my first ever spreadsheet in ODS format. It was provided to my client by their client, a UK government agency. Perhaps someone somewhere is finally paying attention.
One thing to bear in mind is that Microsoft shilled it's way to getting it's "not really a proper standard" Office Open XML ratified as an ISO standard was because governments were waking up and started putting "must use open standards" into procurement rules. This put MS on the back foot as it would automatically exclude it's software.
They could have put some effort into properly supporting ODF - but that would have removed the "but I need compatibility with the Word & Excel other people use" argument for people using it's software. So instead they stuffed national standards bodies with shills to wave it through. I recall reading both the standard and critiques of it - to say OOXML is "poor" would be an understatement.
So from that PoV, they actually can't "just change the format" as that would automatically lock them out of many government contracts. They have to formally update the OOXML ISO standard - and that would allow everyone else to read what changes they were making.
But aside from file formats, we need government sized customers to start specifying open protocols as well. One fo the barriers these days is that MS have glued so much together with proprietary protocols (i'd describe it as a pile of steaming turds, held together with unicorn poop and fairy dust, with a layer of lipstick to make it presentable) that it's "very hard" to try and replace anything but the whole lot - and big bang replacements like that are hard and expensive.
...big bang replacements like that are hard and expensive.
Maybe so, but if the top management are behind the project it can and will be done.
I was working at Grangemouth when BP rolled out the "Common Operating Environment" COE. That meant taking the wide variety of OS's, networks and hardware that had been installed by the various departments when they were able to choose what equipment and protocols to install. Everything from dumb terminals, complete with green screens, to NT4 servers, Decnet, ethernet, DOS, Windows 3.11 the list went on and on.
Now Grangemouth was a huge site, it being the only site where all three branches of BP's operations BP Oils, BP Chemicals and BPX were together in one place. A lot of planning went into the change, lots of high paid specialists and lots and lots of new hardware and software. Training, audits and on-site visits later the whole thing was rolled-out and it worked. It took a while for everything to settle down but it did mean that the workload of the IT department was significantly reduced.
Everyone was involved, consulted and listened to.
It was well done, and if BP could sort out the mess the IT infrastructure was in on such a scale then it should not be impossible to ditch MS and go for something else.
Where there's a Will there's a way.
Wasn't Grangemouth the place that blew up...
Certainly not when I was there.
I did hear a few stories about the cat cracker blowing up and depositing part of itself in the BP Chems' canteen about half a mile down the road. But that was years before my time.
The process side of things had nothing to do with the roll-out of COE.
That was handled by the ITSO, IT Supply Organisation, different managers, different staff and a different cost centre.
Oddly enough, having been forced to move to an "open standard" they changed the UI, forcing their users to relearn. LO's UI was rather close to the previous MS Office's. Now, of course, the having to relearn the UI is the argument for adopting LO. I wonder why MS changed the UI - but it's worth remembering that all MS's corporate users had to relearn the product and .... the sky did not fall in.
> But aside from file formats, we need government sized customers to start specifying open protocols as well.
Basically GOSIP 4.0 (released 1991) updated and extended to cover modern office applications and technology.
Which means restoring technical authority to departments like CCTA and having an open public forum for contributions.
Obviously, this needs to co-ordinated internationally, so that UK GOSIP isn’t massively different to Oz GOSIP for example.
Aside: whilst back in the late 1980s and early 1990s OSI networking ie. Connectivity, was in the limelight the real value to IT user organisations was in the application Standards (protocols and file formats). A part of GOSIP that was less well defined and agreed upon.
"Then, 5 years after, they also announced the were back to Microsoft due to all the headaches about file format et all ..."
From TFA (you did read it, didn't you?):
"Oddly, this move came after Munich's city leaders were pleased to announce in 2016 that Microsoft was moving its German headquarters to town. Funny that, eh?"
> "Oddly, this move came after Munich's city leaders were pleased to announce in 2016 that Microsoft was moving its German headquarters to town. Funny that, eh?"
I think many here are unfamiliar with the lengths Microsoft went to to maintain its market and on-going revenue stream; whether it is EMS/Exchange, WinCE, Windows, Azure etc.
It will be interesting to see how MS gets around the problems the Weirdhouse is creating; can’t see it relocating its HQ out of the US…
This has happened in the past ...
Yes.
And will keep on happening, basically because there are truly absurd shitloads on moolah behind the endless drive for control of information/data, something that has become a geostrategic goal in the past 60+ years.
Also because absolutely every corporation involved counts with the ultimate tool to achieve that goal: the Mighty Brown Envelope™.
It is a multi-platform application that can be adapted to the needs of any client with just a few keystrokes and counts with government backing/grants/tax incentives to further develop means towards its deployment where necessary.
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Technically you might be right. But they will be under control of a corporation subject to USA law, notably the USA Freedom Act (successor to the Patriot Act). This increases protection of USA civilians but enables foreign surveillance. See 6 things to know about the newly approved USA Freedom Act.
OK, let us look at the implications of that:
• USA mandates some bug/spyware into the source code of the Linux Kernel, or Apache or some other important component of a Linux system
• This code is open source; it is likely that someone will notice the bug/spyware and shout LOUD on some forum
• USA mandates that Red Hat (a USA company) leave the bug/spyware in its distribution - it will have to do it
• USA mandates that Debian or Suse or Ubuntu or ... leave the bug/spyware in its distribution
•• These are global organisations, they will have seen the SHOUT
•• They will tell the USA to fuck off
• The USA might be able to mandate copies in repositories located in the USA to have the bug/spyware; non USA repos will remove the bug/spyware
• Users located in the USA might be mandated to use the USA located repos and so suffer the consequences
• Users located outside of the USA will use repos that contain good code and so not have a problem
So: who suffers, who is disadvantaged ?
USA mandates some bug/spyware into the source code of the Linux Kernel, [...] This code is open source
you mean than all the binary firmware blobs needed for the network cards are somehow open-source ? What good is a firewall if your first line of defense is a traitor ?
It'll be in your country of residence or the closest datacenter.
Say what!? Don't be daft.
Ahh ...
Had too much to drink at the pub last night and still cannot get your duckies in a row?
Do us all a favour: sober up before you post.
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(Smith declared Microsoft had not been "in any way [involved in] the cessation of services to the ICC.)
OK so Microsoft are saying they had nothing to do with it, but someone obviously did. So either Microsoft are the ones who pulled the plug on the account and are denying it or the 3 letter US gov agencies are able to go in and close down accounts without Microsoft being able to stop them. Either way it means if your outside the US and could possible come to annoy the thin skinned orangutan then your data isn't safe on any US cloud.
It's not just Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Apple that we want shield our data from, but all the other big players too from gaming, Sony, Valve etc should be held in region, yes they can still access the data for analytics but it stays in region and should disappear to USA, SKorea, Japan etc. Business have to now accept the wild west of data handling is over and people have and regulators have woken up and dare they try anything funny line auto-optin, yes looking at you Meta scum !
That being said, it really pissed me off that Redmond is now the owner of Minecraft and of Blizzard.
Since the last interface update of Minecraft (curious how often those things happen these days, without any substantial visual difference from my point of view), when I launch Minecraft on my gaming rig I now get a popup that tries to get me to go to the Microsoft store. I ignore it and get on with connecting to my server, but the message is clear : the enshittification has started.
I dread to find out how they're going to kill Diablo III (no worries about Diablo IV though - Blizzard killed that one itself with stupid design decisions).
Or not. This would require competence and intelligence from politicians, which is too great an ask by some margin.
Just switch to LTSC and wait for Trump to lose power or be bumped off, and for the AI scam/bubble to implode.
I'm sure there are people on here who have been telling everyone they know, for decades, that 'this is the year of Linux'. It's a bit like how every promised reform of the NHS will finally fix it.
When you get older you eventually realise that the bad people always win in the end, nothing will ever get better and that to our glorious leaders, we are all just livestock.
Nothing good will happen. Get over it and make the most of the oppressed prole ecosystem we inhabit.
In reality 'the bad people' don't win in the end. They die, just like 'the good people', and everyone in between. It's called 'the human condition'. The dividing between good and bad is a misdirection from the truth: we're all a mixture, and some of us are definitely worse than others, but one way or another we're all responsible for what we contribute to 'the way things are'.
By all means 'make the most of' the world we inhabit, but it's up to each of us to decide what that means in practise. Of course, we all get to experience the consequences of the choices we all make—for better and for worse.
But don't go looking for scapegoats, that behaviour is a sure sign of irresponsible, poor-me, it's all someone else's fault, 'toddler' behaviour. Plenty of us are guilty of it.
"This would require competence and intelligence from politicians, which is too great an ask by some margin."
Given TFA gives numerous examples of change being driven by politicians of all levels maybe it's not as big ask as you think. Even those who are not technically competent must have gained some glimmer of understanding that they are a bit exposed to risk and are likely to be asking their advisors. If their advisers are earning their money they'll be researching their answers if they don't already have them to hand.
I fear you may be putting too much confidence into the statements of politicians, probably because you'd like what they're currently saying to happen. We all do it from time to time, assuming that what a politician says they care about today will match their actions later on. Unfortunately, they, and many other people, are great at sounding interested before completely changing their stance.
I don't necessarily mean that they'll be full-throated Windows supporters in a month, although some might. I mean that when difficulties start to arise, for example they're asked for some funds to build some piece of software which the system needs, doesn't run well under Linux, but can be reimplemented with two years of work from a small team, they might suddenly discover that they're not motivated to obtain that funding, so they tell the IT department to figure something else out. Or they are replaced by different politicians who decide this thing sounds like a waste of time or money and tries to cancel it. Or they're replaced by someone who is totally fine with that Linis thing, whatever computery nonsense they're on about, but won't do any work to help it along. Or they're really into technology and insist on adding some AI to the system because after all, they're building it from scratch, so why stick with something old when we could be innovating LLM governance.
Just because a politician announces that they're willing to do something doesn't mean they know what it is, why they're doing it, what they need to do to do it successfully, or anything else. The IT departments involved have the capability to do a lot of this on their own, but if you think they'll get support from politicians if they need it, I think you are being dangerously overoptimistic.
The leaders in making a gov.-wide switch here are Denmark. Trump wants to take Greenland from them because he fancies it. A bit like Putin wanting to take Ukraine because he fancies it. One of Trump's weapons would be turning off their Microsoft services.
What we have here isn't a government looking at the choice of MS services or FOSS. They're looking at a choice of paper, typewriters and postage stamps or FOSS.
If you say so, but I'm still seeing a combination of wishful thinking coupled with finding reasons why politicians will treat the thing you want to happen a lot more seriously than they treat most things.
You originally told me about "change being driven by politicians of all levels", but now, you've reduced this to Denmark. Even if I accept your theory, that doesn't explain why I should have confidence in German and French politicians, and I don't, although I do have some confidence in German and French government IT employees.
It also assumes that all Danish politicians view the Greenland situation in the same way you do. Some of them might not think that the US is about to invade them because that would be ridiculous and stupid. Of course, the US has demonstrated that something being ridiculous and stupid isn't necessarily a reason not to do it, but that's far from proof that they would start an invasion, which would theoretically require all NATO members to declare war on them. They also have a lot of examples of Trump's negotiation style (start with something ridiculous in the hope of getting something large but having people think it's smaller because it's not the ridiculous thing), which would suggest that the risk of military invasion is not the one they need to worry about, with economic or diplomatic coercion being more likely attempts.
And, if the US did invade Greenland, shutting off Microsoft products to Denmark wouldn't be a very important tactic. Doing it would cause chaos, but they don't need to. The US has lots of soldiers they can drop onto the parts of Greenland that they care about. They have lots of ships and aircraft they can place near Greenland to look for reinforcements. A lot of those things are already in Greenland.
And, by the way, that doesn't have to be true for it to have an effect. The US could have a Greenland Invasion Bureau in Washington right now, and as long as some Danish politicians don't think that's realistic, they can easily not share your assumption about how urgent it is to switch away from Microsoft products. This cannot be the first time when you've seen a politician ignore something that you think is a serious problem because they either don't seem to recognize it as the threat that you do or because they don't like what they'd have to do if it was so they're choosing not to look at it to avoid having to make the hard choices. You seem quite pleased that politicians have made this choice. That they seem to have done so doesn't prove that they will stick with it or that they have technical understanding of what it is.
Europe needs to build out a full software stack that encompasses everything on the desktop and into the cloud. It would be absolute madness for any government, NGO, military, or other large industrial company to trust anything by Amazon, Microsoft or Google at this moment.
The EU is handing out money. Sadly, many EU countries happily use that money on American products and services. Noticed how many new business Palantir and Anduril just won in Europe?
And the same happens in the UK.
The reality is that, no matter what funds the EU will make available, it will only serve to enrich American corporations and to further ingrain Europe's dependency on the USA.
I'm talking about handing out money to companies building viable replacement services and open source projects. I have no idea why you're going off about Palantir as if they just swoop in and steal money earmarked for particular things.
I'm continually amazed when I hear that users are looking for the "best" OS.....or the "best" application.
My personal approach is to look for the "least bad" OS or the "least bad" application.
Well.........since 1999, my "least bad" OS has been RedHat (1999 to 2005), and Fedora (2006 to the present).
On the application side I've been making what others out there deem to be crazy choices, for example LibreOffice.
But all these choices have meant that MICROSOFT HAS NOT BEEN PRESENT AT LINUX MANSIONS FOR AT LEAST TWENTY FIVE YEARS.
Least bad!!
If you define the Year of the Linux Desktop as the year Linux took over the majority of OSs, 2025 could be considered the year of this beginning.
Due to security and sovereignty, the YotLD is inevitable. Europe, India, China, Russia, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and eventually all, will, without any exception, change their dependency on foreign software.
This was clear to me 20 years ago; now it only comes to the forefront and into politics. And now it's happening!
there is literally no reason for most desktops on this planet to upgrade to windows 11, yet people are being forced into it for "security". security for a product that is so badly made that you have to spend $millions patching it every month & can take out your entire infrastructure because the patches are so badly written.
SaaS means that a huge chunk of office workers don't REALLY need anything more powerful than something that could run windows 98.
i mean genuinely, what are most office drones doing today that's any different to windows XP/office 97?
I've been pro MS for most of my career but over the last decade and a half, there's been literally ZERO innovation. offshoring support. enshitification of product.
take a 10 year old machine, stick linux on there with a good non Google browser & you're able to do huge amounts of work on hardware that cost nothing. secure the browser with proxy, stop Developers don't being able to make any infrastructure decisions & stop going microservices & severless for shits & giggles, you csn VERY easily be off of not only MS desktop but also ALL the hyperscalers.
i haven't heard ONE argument from anyone yet that would convince me that a GOOD European based experienced set of Sysadmin run projects couldn't get anyone out of azure/aws/gcp in sub 24 month projects.
email might be the hardest but that is aldo doable
Redmond has been doing that to itself for decades, but that did not convince anyone to move away from Windows. It was just the cost of business, and the IT drones had to be paid for something, right ?
Having a big baby sitting in the Oval Office, making threats, arbitrary decisions and generally demonstrating total unreliability and the unwavering will to punish by every possible means anyone/entity/country that doesn't kiss his ass was a very big wake-up signal.
I think this is serious, and it is going to become a serious issue for Microsoft/Apple/Oracle etc, and a game-changer for everyone else.
So, thank you Trump ?
Always, when the transition to the Linux desktop is suggested, I see reactions that explain why it won't be done, because a certain application does not work under Linux. Here it is Fusion 3D. Often it is photoshop. And always, there is an alternative under Linux, but the alternative is not as well developed as the WIndows software.
Yes, there are still reasons to use Windows. But most of us do not use Fusion 3D. And, for anyone shooting in JPEG, GIMP is quite sufficient. If I look at my day-to-day work, the only reason that I use Windows is, that the organisation that I work for has sold their soul to Microsoft.
I would have though the Russian Federation would have moved to some Linux variant long ago. But Windows appears still to be very significant. (Not surprisingly, percentages vary depending where you look. But 25 to somewhat over 50% seems commonly reported.)
Yet they possibly have some of the most obvious reasons to switch away from Windows.
I see a certain irony in the possibility the EU might overtake the RF in abandoning Windows.
It would be wonderful to see the MS monopoly broken by a large number of countries working together to produce a usable Linux based ecosysem of software. But I don't think it'll happen.
The cost to change from W10 to 11 might be high but the cost to change to Linux would be higher for many.
My Mrs runs a small charity they do nothing complexct with IT at all, they just had their MS charitable 365 licenses withdrawn leaving them on the barely usable tier (old E1 online only etc).
I suggested a move to linux, as said they do nothing other than basic office work (word processing, some spreadsheets) and email. They only have a couple of computers. I said I could put Linux (Mint, SUSE etc) with Libra Office, and something like Thunderbird for email....Nope not interested even in contemplating a change.
Now scale that up to a piece of government like a Council. Councils are bibically complex, with hundreds of odd bespoke pieces of software, many venerable with no or little support, locked in suppliers who do nothing to help (Crapita, Northgate etc) who can't even keep up with MS updates and a workforce who willl run to unions if the desktop wallpaper is changed to a colour they don't like. On top of that most have run a cloud-first strategy and have largely removed their on-prem server infrastructure.
The effort to get them to use FOSS whould be huge, it would be a 20yr project.
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Meanwhile there is a significant chance that the US populous might realise that Ol' Trump doesn't have their best interests at heart and he might well be asked not to become dictator perpetuo. "Beware the Ides of March" etc etc
The cost of switching to Linux might be higher than the cost of switching to Windows 11 (it may be lower) but it's a one-off cost.
Sensible businesses will factor in the cost of switching to Windows 12 and Windows 14 as well.
After all, if 11 makes MS money, that the sensible next step for them.
If it doesn't make MS money, bailing out of an increasingly-unsupported OS makes even more sense.
Why not an EU common design for a RISK-V laptop with built in security for board and operating system?
Have some governments pitch in for minimum orders and pick a primary and secondary assemble supplier, distribute the component builds among member contries.
It could be the springboard for a revived sovereign computer industry.
If you want mass migration to linux you will need personal desktop users to move to linux. That requires some kind of consolidation to a trusted centralized hub for downloads. The current internet is no longer safe or useful. I can't just go willy nilly downloading stuff off git hub for instance. I don't know what's real and what's not. You will need a trusted "go to" for linux for developers as well. If devs don't support it in mass you still have a problem.
Maybe some of you weren't here at the time but the year of the Linux desktop could've happened over 25 years ago if it weren't for Microsoft's smart moves and Corel's clueless management.
Late 1999 Corel released Corel Linux, which was extremely polished and uncannily stable (remember this was the time when most consumers were running MS-DOS based Windows 98). I was working at some large computer company at the time and reviewed it. I then knew that the year of the Linux desktop had arrived, or could've arrived had the planets aligned. But they didn't. Microsoft the paranoid company correctly identified the threat and took action. They offered Corel a sizeable sum of cash and preferential treatment if they encountered problems developing their Windows products.
To my amazement the CEO of Corel took the bait. He was probably thinking more about his quarterly bonus and didn't have the foresight to see the implications of his deed.
Now over a quarter century later Linux Mint pops up and will very likely take a bite out of Microsoft's desktop market-share. Unless they pull out another rabbit out of their hat.
I've never paid for a piece of software in my life, and I really do not see any good reason to start anytime soon.
Has anyone here ever paid for software and found it came with the Right to Modify and the full Source Code necessary for the exercise of this right; the ability to keep it forever, and permission to make as many copies as you like; and the personal e-mail addresses of the developers, who will treat you as an equal? And if so, how much did you pay?
Because that, which is what I get with the software I don't pay for, is the bare minimum I have come to expect.
Well, let's consider one example where I decided to pay. The software concerned cost about £40. I considered writing something myself to accomplish a similar goal. I decided that doing this would likely take me about two hundred hours of work and some time training something on a GPU, for which I'd be paying the power bills. Even if I have limitless free energy for the training, I'd have to value my time at less than £0.20 per hour. I didn't. Of course, had I done that, I'd now be free to modify and distribute the source, but I haven't ever felt the desire to modify the software I bought (it's complicated because part of it actually can be modified, but part of it is compiled and not available for modification). So yes, I suppose I do.
On other occasions, I take an approach more to your liking. One time, I was told that simple software to do a basic task would cost an inordinate amount to purchase. They later decided that this would be included for me free of cost, since I, or in this case a place I was working with, had bought something else from them. I was so offended by the original price they intended to charge for what I saw as a tiny utility that, instead of running the proprietary version they gave me for free, I reimplemented it over a weekend and published it as open source. So in that case, I did value my time quite low.
I think the difference between us is that I see the ability to modify software as useful and something I'd prefer to have, but not something I can't do without. There is software I don't want to modify, and there is software I can't write on my own and organized open source projects haven't matched. I don't mind paying a reasonable price and not modifying it in order to get access to something useful, and while there's a lot of software I won't buy, it not being useful or the price being excessive are bigger factors than not getting unlimited access to the source code.
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