Quoting: BeamboomThere are no impenetrable walls between Linux and the corporate world, other than amongst evangelists and - yes I dare say it - fanatics.

I must say I'm not particularly either pleased or impressed that you "dared say it"--in bold yet. Is saying "yes I dare say it" supposed to get you off the hook for insulting quite a few of the people here? Why would that be then? I don't think it would be appropriate for me to say "Yes I dare say it" and call you a corporate toady, do you? Of course you don't. So why you calling me an evangelist fanatic?

You make some interesting points but they can't be as strong as they seem if you have to mix in mockery of anyone who disagrees. It's particularly weird given that, in the post itself, you not only say that the position you're mocking is one you held yourself, but that it used to be completely justified, and the only thing that has changed your mind is close exposure to a steady stream of IT propaganda news which many of those with a different opinion might not have been exposed to in such a pervasive way. So the fact that other people don't have your information sources makes them, "yes you dare say it", fanatics. Sure, that makes a ton of sense.

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Quoting: mylkai dont think so, if i watch kids today. they dont care about PC/laptops anymore. they browse the web with their phone, they watch netflix with their phones, they listen to music with their phones, they play games on their phones

That isn't evidence of replacement. Kids yesterday didn't have the phones . . . but they didn't have desktop computers of their own, either. Mind you, my daughter does do a lot of that on her phone. Annnnd she edits video on her Macbook Pro. Just, not in public where you'd see her doing it.
At the university library where I work we have rows and rows of desktop computers; the kids fill them up all. the. time., and we lend out laptops, which are at the point of being more popular than books. The kids do not write their essays on phones.

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Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: Purple Library GuyUrgh, tell me about it. At my library we got a new system for all our info, and it's in the bloody cloud. So where it used to be if we checked out a book the reaction was instant, because the database was in the buiding, now there's a couple seconds lag on every single action because we're in Vancouver and the server is in bloody Toronto. It's also browser based, and the people who wrote it cunningly set it up so that if you open a new tab to do two things at once with it, your actions on the two tabs write to both or something so it corrupts your data. So we can't do that. And it breaks if you use browser controls like the reload or back button, you have to use their little "back" control instead, which varies its position depending how the browser is laying out the page. Has all the disadvantages of a web app but few of the advantages. But, you know, web apps and the cloud are fashionable. Gah.

One agency I translate for uses a Web-based translation interface. It's great because I don't need to pay hundreds for a license to a proprietary program that only runs on Windows. It sucks because for three hours today I couldn't get any work done while the server constantly threw up 502s or logged me out of my session. And I can't ever have two files opened at once in different tabs or computers because oh boy that is way beyond the Cloud's capabilities apparently.

That is one thing I have to admit: The web-based thing runs on my Linux laptop, which is occasionally handy.

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Quoting: tonR

Quoting: DrMcCoy

Quoting: ShmerlWhat I wonder about, is whether exFAT and ActiveSync implementations can be used in Linux distros without patent threats from MS now.

No: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/10/10/microsoft-oin-exfat.html [External Link]

Most importantly, the non-aggression pact only applies to the upstream versions of software, including Linux itself. [...] While we at Conservancy were successful in getting the code that implements exfat for Linux released under GPL (by Samsung), that code has not been upstreamed into Linux. So, Microsoft has not included any patents they might hold on exfat into the patent non-aggression pact.

Well, exFAT patent is how Microsoft cashing Android ($5 to $15 per device royalty) and among big obstacle for Linux mobile devices. Hell no they'll open it.

Mind you, I believe Samsung are among the outfits paying that tax, and they'd probably rather not. If I were them, I would upstream that code to Linux itself posthaste and beg the maintainers to take it in. As soon as it's in there in a part of Linux that Android uses, presumably Microsoft either has to pull back out of the OIN or lay off.

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Quoting: m2mg2

Quoting: mylkamaybe microsoft knows, that the desktop market is shrinking. mobilphones are the future and ms has no chance against android and apple. not tomorrow of course, but can you imagine what phones can do in 10 years? 10yrs agao we played snakes and now fortnite. in 10yrs we may have a complete office PC on our phones and tablets
even we gamers are a very small market compared to consoles. PS4 has way more sellings than pc games. so who needs a desktop OS in 10yrs?

cloud is the future. maybe cloudgaming and servers have linux. all you need is a tablet and a bluetooth gamepad to play cyberpunk... or a switch and you can play everywhere
even smart tvs could handle streaming. you don't even need a console anymore

Cloud is just a catch phrase. It is nothing new, just extending your local network into the internet. Offloading your management and hardware overhead by sacrificing security. I'm constantly amazed by how much worse the breaches keep getting while simultaneously the push for the cloud, the very thing enabling these massive breaches, keeps getting pushed harder. I had a vendor that was quoting a job for me say, "yeah but they're really getting better with the cloud security". Um, no they're not, not really. The breaches are still getting bigger and bigger. The guys keeping their LAN's local and secure keep sitting back laughing at all the breaches, until the executives force "the cloud" down their throats. Then they sit back and wait for the walls to cave in.

The cloud is great for things that need to be on the internet (internet services) and horrible for things that don't.

Urgh, tell me about it. At my library we got a new system for all our info, and it's in the bloody cloud. So where it used to be if we checked out a book the reaction was instant, because the database was in the buiding, now there's a couple seconds lag on every single action because we're in Vancouver and the server is in bloody Toronto. It's also browser based, and the people who wrote it cunningly set it up so that if you open a new tab to do two things at once with it, your actions on the two tabs write to both or something so it corrupts your data. So we can't do that. And it breaks if you use browser controls like the reload or back button, you have to use their little "back" control instead, which varies its position depending how the browser is laying out the page. Has all the disadvantages of a web app but few of the advantages. But, you know, web apps and the cloud are fashionable. Gah.

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Quoting: mylka

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: mylkamaybe microsoft knows, that the desktop market is shrinking. mobilphones are the future and ms has no chance against android and apple. not tomorrow of course, but can you imagine what phones can do in 10 years?

Have tiny screens? Oh wait, they already do that.

The barrier for phones eating the rest of the desktop market is not mostly things like processing power; they're already powerful computers by the standards of not too many years ago, and anyway you can outsource computing power. It's the form factor itself; there are things for which you want the bulk of a desktop--the big screen or two, the comfortable keyboard, the many connections for peripherals and so on. Note the way tablets ended up having all these things to let them act like laptops you put together, with little keyboards and thingies to make the screen sit up.

big screen -> glasses, like VR now but smaller. OR foldable OLED displays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo6nF-T58PA [External Link]
keyboard -> special gloves, or laserkeyboards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3P5DZvn7mA [External Link]
peripherie -> all wireless

All that will doubtless happen, but look: Our perception of the rise of the phone and the fall of the desktop is shaped by markets. But that's about the pace of sales. In terms of actual use, there aren't a lot of places where there used to be desktops but they stopped using them in favour of phones. It's just that the market for desktops got saturated and planned obsolescence for them has weakened (who needs the latest and greatest to do spreadsheets at work?), while phones established a big new niche of their own and have so far been hanging on to planned obsolescence like grim death. So, sales of phones have grown and sales of desktops have shrunk. But the two things don't in my opinion have nearly as much to do with each other as people tend to think. It's just that desktops are a mature technology, not a new growing one.
So, sure, those snazzy technologies of which you speak will put in an appearance, phones will become cooler and more powerful . . . and people will continue to use desktop computers.

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Quoting: mylkamaybe microsoft knows, that the desktop market is shrinking. mobilphones are the future and ms has no chance against android and apple. not tomorrow of course, but can you imagine what phones can do in 10 years?

Have tiny screens? Oh wait, they already do that.

The barrier for phones eating the rest of the desktop market is not mostly things like processing power; they're already powerful computers by the standards of not too many years ago, and anyway you can outsource computing power. It's the form factor itself; there are things for which you want the bulk of a desktop--the big screen or two, the comfortable keyboard, the many connections for peripherals and so on. Note the way tablets ended up having all these things to let them act like laptops you put together, with little keyboards and thingies to make the screen sit up.

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Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: GuestI expect them to turn Windows into a Linux distro + proprietary libraries/API/DE at some point. It will be cheaper for them to maintain, will be able to enter most markets Windows can't enter/dominate now, like mobiles/servers, and will still allow them to be top dog, assuming they create a good and polished Linux based desktop OS and make linux-compatible versions of their stuff like Office...

Man if Windows becomes a Linux distro it's going to become tricky telling people they should switch to Linux.

Tricky but in some ways easier. I mean, if you're going to be running Linux anyway, why not use the real thing? If you're going to be using Linux anyway, why not one without spyware, one that doesn't lock you down, one that isn't trying to turn you into an integrated sales bundle, one that doesn't constantly give you a hard time for not making its browser your main one, et cetera et cetera et cetera?
Instead of it being a matter of Windows (familiar, "reliable" in a certain emotional sense, runs the software you use where other OSes maybe don't) vs. Linux (strange, different, might not run your software, might have device driver problems)--suddenly Windows would be just another Linux distribution, the one sold by a bunch of corporate greedheads who can't resist screwing with you.

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Quoting: jensI'm pretty sure that this is just a rationale long term business decision and that there is no huge conspiracy behind it.

You're probably right. Now if only I were clear on the exact difference between those two things.

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Quoting: razing32Like jarhead_h mentioned , the CoC Linux added seems to value politics over code quality.

Oh, god, let's not get into that again.

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