What we owe to microsoft and apple...

[ud6]

Clearly all of us love linux, but I was thinking today.. something like Linux Mint (user-friendly, windows, windows 'like' software) would not exist if it wasn't for windows. What would linux have been like if it hadn't both learned from the successes and failures of Microsoft and Apple? I don't know enough about the history of computing to say, but my guess is that a windows 'like' GUI system would have developed if we just had linux, but maybe later and maybe wouldn't be as good. Indeed much of the linux software would not be as good. Hardware support would probably be much better though, and even better integrated and open. Indeed maybe we would have a much more integrated user system and the 'internet of things' would have arrived long ago. Probably no anti-virus software, though possibly computer infiltration would be much more sophisticated? Unfortunately here we have cash points with windows 7 software (dismally slow cashpoints here and stupid menu systems with lots of crashes ah ah ah) - those would certainly be faster and more efficient. Would we be using a mouse? Maybe we'd have gone straight to digital glove?

Any thought on what life would be like now if we only had unix/linux and microsoft and apple (and Xerox) had never happened?

[gm10]

Without Microsoft the IBM PC might never have been the astounding success that it was, and without that the whole market would have been decisively different. The drive towards a GUI would have been there regardless, just as I think the current development away from the desktop towards mobile devices and the Internet of things was inevitable. Differences would have been in timing and the details.

I'm quite sure that without Microsoft's dominance the whole evolution would have been much slower. You still see this problem with Linux today - despite being much more standardized than in the beginnings, you still have compatibility problems left and right, need to compile software for your exact environment, etc. I love Linux for its diversity but at the same time it's definitely also its stumbling block as far as the desktop market goes. You saw the same thing in the smartphone market, the whole thing only exploded when with iOS and Android two dominant platforms were available.

It's basic economics, a unified market leads to stability and through this stability to prosperity. A lesson some people have not understood to this day but a simple truth nonetheless.

[xenopeek]

Any thought on what life would be like now if we only had unix/linux and microsoft and apple (and Xerox) had never happened?

If you already know Microsoft and Apple plagiarized the work done at Xerox, what is this topic about Here is early 1970's Xerox PARC:

Multiple companies and universities worked on GUIs for various OSes before (and since) Microsoft and Apple had their first GUIs. They were just part of where the industry was going. If not them, somebody else would have made something mainstream.

We don't owe anything to Microsoft or Apple on that front.

I'm quite sure that without Microsoft's dominance the whole evolution would have been much slower.

If Microsoft wouldn't have bought out the creator of a CP/M clone, to have an OS ready for the IBM PC, somebody else would have made something similar. Arguably Microsoft has been doing its "embrace, extend, extinguish" as a core business strategy for almost 40 years now. They're not special aside from what lengths they were willing to go to for their monopoly.

[gm10]

If Microsoft wouldn't have bought out the creator of a CP/M clone, to have an OS ready for the IBM PC, somebody else would have made something similar. Arguably Microsoft has been doing its "embrace, extend, extinguish" as a core business strategy for almost 40 years now. They're not special aside from what lengths they were willing to go to for their monopoly.

Sure, but I think that strategy is exactly what pushed the whole thing forward. If you remember, the home computer originally had a much higher market share than the PC, but it lacked the open standards of the IBM PC platform, which is why it eventually lost out to that. Windows may have been a quasi-monopoly, but it was an open one that allowed everyone access to it and thus everyone had an interest to push forward based on that.

But don't get me wrong, as I hope became clear from my previous post as well, I fully agree that the direction everything was going was inevitable.

[ud6]

...Multiple companies and universities worked on GUIs for various OSes before (and since) Microsoft and Apple had their first GUIs. They were just part of where the industry was going. If not them, somebody else would have made something mainstream...

Didn't realise that, I guess the commercial sector always sucks off those that actually create the ideas. Coco Cola was a flop when first invented, and guy sold idea to a man who was involved with marketing. Wonder what ever happened to that brand of fizzy drink?

[MintBean]

"Linux has gone from Command-Line- to Graphics-based interfaces, a clear attempt to copy Windows.

Nice theory, but false: The original X windowing system was released in 1984, as the successor to the W windowing system ported to Unix in 1983. Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. Windows didn't really make it big until version 3, released in 1990 - by which time, X windows had for years been at the X11 stage we use today. Linux itself was only started in 1991. So Linux didn't create a GUI to copy Windows: It simply made use of a GUI that existed long before Windows."

[thx-1138]

..................................
It's basic economics, a unified market leads to stability and through this stability to prosperity.
A lesson some people have not understood to this day but a simple truth nonetheless.

...gm10, no...that's just your personal opinion in regards to what economy is (or should be)
It's a popular idea shared by numerous people as well, sure - however, by no means a universal truth though.
Especially in the last few years, i can easily point you to tens of millions of people around the world,
from extremely different (and not merely 'ideological') backgrounds,
who were extremely let down exactly by that very specific 'simple truth nonetheless'...

May i remind you a short discussion we had in regards to homogenization at some point:
standardization should not be conflated with such...
As then you end up with long-standing ill side-effects upon people's shoulders,
maligned yet enforced patents etc...pretty much like Microsoft's quasi-monopoly as you described it...
Not that I have an 'answer' to all that, i don't really have a 'grand vision'...and even if i did,
i still dislike taking the role of the 'false prophet' to speak off...
But i do sense somehow that the road to prosperity (and/or standardization alongside),
would be better off starting off from diversity itself than stem from a single fixed-point of view.
Easiest example possibly: the Linux kernel grounded it's development exactly in the extreme diversity of hardware out there.
Eventually, and in the not-so-long-time, it became the most widespread 'standard' of the industry / market.

I'm quite sure that without Microsoft's dominance the whole evolution would have been much slower.

However, as an oversimplistic example...i really can't help myself thinking what the world would / could have been,
if during the last 35+ yrs Open Source and lack of maligned patents where driving the tech development, instead of MS & Apple.
To make some fun of it, the...'market' could have made those different choices earlier during this period...
and this could have easily resulted in a way much faster evolution. Better late than never i guess?...
So i don't think we owe anything to them - more likely they owe us.

[gm10]

Easiest example possibly: the Linux kernel grounded it's development exactly in the extreme diversity of hardware out there.
Eventually, and in the not-so-long-time, it became the most widespread 'standard' of the industry / market.

Let's not discuss the political side of things here, but just by your example I believe you ultimately made the same point I was making. Wide-spread industry standards bring the market stability to create based on them. Nobody creates and supports software for an extreme diversity of platforms, it's not cost effective. But as soon as you've got a wide-spread stable platform companies will do it, because their market now integrates all the people using that single platform. In other words, as diversity decreases the costs go down and the market grows.

I'm quite sure that without Microsoft's dominance the whole evolution would have been much slower.

However, as an oversimplistic example...i really can't help myself thinking what the world would / could have been,
if during the last 35+ yrs Open Source and lack of maligned patents where driving the tech development, instead of MS & Apple.
To make some fun of it, the...'market' could have made those different choices earlier during this period...
and this could have easily resulted in a way much faster evolution. Better late than never i guess?...
So i don't think we owe anything to them - more likely they owe us.

Well, the 'market' still hasn't made that choice for Desktop Linux, has it now? Because it's still not relevant, not homogeneous enough. The smartphone OS market was fragmented until Google pushed Android into it as a complete and open solution and that created the wide-spread platform that was needed, so now it along with the smartphone software market is thriving.

It's really not hard to understand the pattern. You may dislike homogeneity, but the market loves it, it's what enables safe investment.

Until the next great idea breaks the cycle and creates a new market, of course. But that's much harder and only achieved by a few.

[Portreve]

What's been said above: Xerox PARC → Apple → Microsoft → X → (amongst other things) GNU+Linux.

It's “Xerox PARC → Apple → Microsoft” because there was no extant market for GUIs until Apple proved it could be done on non-gazillion-dollar hardware and proved it could be a viable alternative to a text-based interface. Besides, much of the code to build Microsoft's initial foray into Windows was stolen from Apple, comments and Easter eggs and all.

In any event, we owe a great deal to PARC, and it's not undeserved to say we owe at least a bit to Apple.

The only thing we owe (in a good way) to Microsoft is the concept of writing an OS with the deliberate intent to license it and sell it independent of hardware. Until then (and actually for a great many years afterward) the computer world was all about platform wars. You built a box and you wrote the OS for it. None were interchangable and none would interoperate. It (that is, the PC market) was a totally enthusiast-driven world.

It would not be until, for example, Apple's release of systems with Sony's high density floppy drive that the physical capability existed to deal with FAT16-formatted floppy disks, and not until a couple years later when system components were developed to let one read and write mono-speed 720K and 1440K FAT16 disks that Apple (and never the other way around, mind you) enabled Mac users to deal with PC floppy disks. And that's just one example.

[KBD47]

Disgust and frustration with Windows has driven many people to Linux--so there is that
Apple's overpriced software and hardware have also driven people to Linux--so again, thanks Apple

[thx-1138]

gm10: the market 'likes' (if you will) to act as from a fixed-point-of-view, and even more preach that view as well ('being unified'),
but in reality, it's anything than unified: it constantly evolves / mutates according to the it's own internal pressure & demands.
Sure, i would agree that for the most part the 'will for homogeneity' is almost inherent to it,
as that pretty much represents the most quick ('n' dirty...literally) way to make an easy buck / become a monopoly.

Same way standardization does not have to mean / equal homogeneity,
diversity does not necessarily have to mean...factionalism / tribalism.
Which granted, we (the 'Linux community') are certainly quite guilty of - 'not invented here' etc.
Still however, that's somewhat over-exaggerated i think: factionalism certainly played (and plays) it's role,
but by no means was (or even is) the main culprit. Let alone diversity...

Bill Gates was no1 richest person in the world for a number of years. Nowadays that he's long now 'retired', he still is...no2.
Red Hat, the undisputed king of 'Linux in-the-market' if you will, merely made their 1st billion in 2012.
Gates...as a sole person walking on earth, not as a company...owns something like 89 billions?
Steve Balmer, his previous lieutenant / executive, aka mr. Linux-Is-Cancer back in 2001...still is no21 in this very day.
VERY powerful people - if they sneeze, not just the vendors & the 'market', but...the whole world dances.

...still, fast forward some 15-17 yrs later on:
a vast part of 'market' didn't followed by the book the oh-so-great homogeneity that mr. Balmer offered in the table,
but started looking around, adopting & implementing various open & semi-open source solutions.
Luckily for all of us, they didn't followed the 'Linux is Cancer' doctrine...
eg. how many billion lines of code used daily by thousands of companies are over at the (now bought by MS) Github?
Or Gitlab, Sourceforge etc etc?
Enormous pressure from MS (and Apple) is still there, albeit maybe in a somewhat different context.
Most obvious cases - see recent events in Munich & Linux, see NHS/Medibuntu over at UK, take...you name it.

In my poor point of view, under such hard circumstances, with billions of $ already in game & tied to certain interests,
it's almost a miracle that the 'linux desktop' didn't went the way of...NextSTEP, BeOS, or the...dodo bird since long time now.

The question is not so much 'why the linux desktop didn't it take the world by storm', but...
'how the hell did those guys manage to survive' (and yeap, even more when they were / are plagued by factionalism & micropolitics).
Add the widespread adoption of Android on top of it, cellphones / chromebooks etc - if i think of it 'reasonably'...the Linux desktop,
with it's well-known problems, should have...dropped from 1.3% that it was estimated (roughly) some 15 yrs ago.
'Logically' thinking, it should not have raised itself to what is supposedly a 2.3% nowadays instead.
Thank Red Hat, Canonical & those market players that truly believed that Linux could make a sustainable 'alternative' environment.
Thank the GPL as well (as without it, we'd have ended up instead with the masses-ready...BSD desktop).

...another example, as it happened that i was reading such yesterday...libinput.
It's written almost exclusively by a single guy...who was also further previously writing the synaptics driver.
Well, Microsoft has...120000 employees. Red Hat has 10000. And...almost only 1(!) of them works regularly on such:
how can someone then complain that 'diversity' is the problem here & that the 'linux desktop' hasn't conquered the world?
Pretty much most mainstream / recent distros have switched to libinput as well.
Instead of 'MS achieved this, MS did that' every now & then, this really needs to be repeated at every step:
it's truly a miracle that the linux desktop works as well as it does. Huge respect no-questions-asked.

...some fronts you win, some fronts you lose - you can't win them all.
If a sole player won them 'all', you'd have...guess what - homogeneity, heh...ie. a world according to the image of Microsoft, Google etc.
As is it 'now', we're not winning the desktop, fine, makes sense considering the circumstances & the internal contradictions.
Linux has 'won' on many other fronts though, remains to be seen from here on.
And it's certainly changed the rules of the market as well up to a certain extent:
to a vastly considerable extend i'd say - the 'MS-Loves-Open-Source turn' in the recent yrs speaks for itself way better than i could do.

And that's pretty much why i disregard any pro-Microsoft 'argument': no, in the course of recent history,
(next to) anything could have instead been re-implemented in an open src & without stupid patents manner.
From the very beginning, and, also, from the very ground up.
Merely 2 days ago: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... e-AV1-Beta
Not sure if someone should laugh or cry. Finally, as it took them roughly some 20 yrs to 'get it':
20 yrs of .wmv / wmas & quicktimes & similar nonsense.
Seems that Hollywood-related paid royalties & patents were truly biting them in the butt?
Good - as that's the world they helped building all along.

[jimallyn]

I don't owe anything to Microsoft, but they owe me - and a lot of other people - big time. If Microsoft had to compensate people for all the time they spent rebooting their computers, recovering their data (and for all the data they lost), reinstalling the OS, and so on, they would be in debt. Or maybe gone completely. I hated Microsoft and their crummy products in the DOS days, long before Windows came out. When a friend came into my shop and handed me a CD one day in 2002, and said, "Here, try this, it's Linux" I was absolutely delighted. Finally, a way to get away from Microsoft! Ten or twelve years ago, I met a man who quickly became a good friend. When he found out I used Linux, he was excited: "You use Linux? Awesome! Can you install that on my computer for me?!!!" Why was he so eager to use Linux and get away from Microsoft? Because he is a Christian pastor, and he felt he had to set an example for his congregation by not giving any money to an immoral corporation like Microsoft. He and his family have been missionaries in Nicaragua for the last seven years, and only come to the states once a year. He was pleased to have a reliable OS that didn't require constant fixing. I don't owe Microsoft anything.

[gm10]

@thx-1138: I think you're still making my point about the market though. I've been saying that a stable platform is needed. Diversity follows on top of that. Players in the market cannot all do the same thing, they all have to find their niche. As I've been saying the IBM PC as the stable standard allowed the desktop market to thrive, and Windows as the stable operating system platform cemented that. And the diversity in hardware that you laud comes down to that open IBM PC platform.

Of course Microsoft made money of it, that's the nature of the thing. And of course Red Hat makes less money, because they don't own their base, they just build on top of it, and in the desktop market it's vastly less popular than the Windows base, so that market is that much less profitable (Linux has relevant market share in the server market and for integrated systems/solutions, but not the desktop market).

The Linux Desktop doesn't go the way of the Dodo due to the GPL. Don't forget that many Linux Desktop distributions have actually gone the way of that bird, not everyone survives, but the concept does because the GPL ensures someone else can pick up the torch and carry it further.

Also don't misunderstand that I'm lauding Microsoft for their technical achievements. I never did (although there are some but it's really not relevant). All I have been saying is that they provided the stable platform that allowed others to thrive. That takes some uncertainty out of the equation, which my argument is speeds up the evolution of things building on that platform. And it's not just Windows itself, but also all the standards on top.

I'll just address one point specifically:

Merely 2 days ago: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... e-AV1-Beta
Not sure if someone should laugh or cry. Finally, as it took them roughly some 20 yrs to 'get it':
20 yrs of .wmv / wmas & quicktimes & similar nonsense.
Seems that Hollywood-related paid royalties & patents were truly biting them in the butt?
Good - as that's the world they helped building all along.

First of all, this is nonsense. Youtube has been using free codecs where they can. The article you yourself linked tells you that the standard codec they are using is VP9, which is open and free. Here's a youtube related post of mine listing all the available codecs on a youtube video: viewtopic.php?p=1497467#p1497467.

And second, read what the article you linked says, AV1 isn't supported in any hardware and is inefficient in software, in other words there is no platform for it, thus the support is just experimental. Again, the platform for it is missing, that slows things down. Preach it.

[michael louwe]

Any thought on what life would be like now if we only had unix/linux and microsoft and apple (and Xerox) had never happened?

Computers would not have become a mass consumer product like TVs and video/music players(eg VCRs and Sony Walkmans).

Apple and M$ brought computers to the mass consumer market by making them very user-friendly to the average users and newbies, especially with the GUI feature of the late 1980s. During the 1990s, such consumers willingly paid M$ and Apple to use their OS and ignored the free non-user-friendly Linux OS which was lacking in built-in GUI apps/programs.
....... By dominating the mass market for computers, Apple and M$ were also rewarded with dominance in apps/programs/games availability and hardware support from the OEMs.

If there had only been Unix/Linux, ie no Apple and M$, computers would likely have remained a small and limited niche market for only tech-geeks and hobbyists/DIYers.

Similarly for Apple and Google bringing smartphones to the mass consumer market, ie iOS and Android OS are very user-friendly to the average users and newbies.

It requires money to make an OS very user-friendly to the average users and newbies. M$ gets the money by selling Windows licenses at affordable prices to the consumers/masses while Google gets the money by selling ads, user-data and collecting commissions from the sale of Android apps. This is the root cause for the failure of Linux, ie no money or business sense. Like they say, "Money talks, bullshit walks".

[ud6]

...This is the root cause for the failure of Linux, ie no money or business sense. Like they say, "Money talks, bullshit walks".

Maybe with the gap in the market, linux would have started charging, or someone else. I'm not convinced money drives good things. You look at most scientists, they're low paid (at least in UK) and they produce ideas and technologies that the commercial sector utilise for profit. The hard work isn't done by ploughing in lots of money, though some money seems essential. Internet wasn't developed by a commercial institute either.

I'm not a geek or anti-capitalist that uses linux cos of cost, privacy or programming but simply because it's robust, faster and to me more user friendly than windows.. if I had to pay, I'd still use mint. One of the things that music and video piracy show is that there's a desire to share things. But I guess that consistent long term support and drive to please a customer base is often done by people that maybe hate their job but have to feed their family, so they just keep on doing it.

[gm10]

Maybe with the gap in the market, linux would have started charging, or someone else. I'm not convinced money drives good things. You look at most scientists, they're low paid (at least in UK) and they produce ideas and technologies that the commercial sector utilise for profit. The hard work isn't done by ploughing in lots of money, though some money seems essential. Internet wasn't developed by a commercial institute either.

It's not like money was there at the start. Bill Gates and Paul Allen were just coders, computer scientists if you will, themselves. They just had the better idea and business plan than other scientists and thus the money followed. And while Internet was originally developed with government money, it's certainly commercial interests that made it what it is today.

One of the things that music and video piracy show is that there's a desire to share things.

You do realize that these things are pirated out of commercial interests, right? The few idiots getting caught sharing these from home via file sharing platforms aside, the majority of the piracy is done for lots of money. It's a million dollar business. Originally the release groups were mostly about bragging rights, about being able to do it and do it before the rest of them, but reality catches up with everybody.

[thx-1138]

The Linux Desktop doesn't go the way of the Dodo due to the GPL.
.............................................

...Play it again Sam
Ok, on a more serious note. Yes, the GPL does 'guarantee' survival. But what it doesn't / couldn't offer though by any means,
is protection from hostile forces in the market: things can very easily stagnate regardless,
especially when talking about the 'desktop' specifically & not the 'kernel' generally.
Almost every single time you read that x dev was hired by to MS / Apple or Google, you know it's one-hand-less for the 'desktop'.
Sad, but that's how it's been so far.

I don't disagree with you that stability is a prerequisite if Linux wants to succeed.
I disagree up to a part (or better said, i don't entirely agree) with the 'diversity follows on top of that'.
Take jimallyn's excellent example above. Recall what i said: "millions of people around the world,
from extremely different (and not merely 'ideological') backgrounds".
Ie. people who do NOT like the market's current (and frequently unethical) practices one way or another,
and do actively look for an 'alternative' to the very products offered by that market.

What i'm trying to suggest to you, without resorting to 'idealism' however, is that it's not a strictly by-the-numbers game.
It's not a matter of "Linux complying to the already established rules of the market".
Up to a certain point, it's also about shaping this damn market with different ideas and ways on how to make profit.
Microsoft / Apple etc instead just have to show raised numbers at the end of the month and also 'innovate technologically'.
Rewind 20-25+ yrs back, and the market players would take you for either a fool or a nutjob promoting open/free software.
So, that's way far from being an easy task...and it's not just a technical...or 'technocratic' issue if you will:
referring to a potential unification (or homogeneity if you will) of eg. the packaging system, the gui toolkit selection and the likes.
Sure it includes such issues at the very core as well - no proper car engine, and others will be thinking you're a snake oil salesman.

...if Linux complied to the current 'rules' of the game if you will, and accepted certain questionable practices 'as is',
then no questions asked that in a few yrs it could go from 2.3% to 12.3% or more.
Then however, it would simply just be...at best...a somewhat improved clone of 'those other OSes'. What would be the point in such?

Having said the above, if you follow my line of logic, Linux's road to stardom was not really meant to be a...
fast-track guide to 'prosperity' and/or 'market success'. That's also the reason i explicitly mentioned above it's cousin, BSD.
It is far more wiser / grounded comparing Linux to such than say Windows
(who by '91 had the almost unconditioned support of most vendors).

...also: an 'argument' semi-frequently expressed by some people (not claiming that you said such),
is that "a big serious company should take over and then blah-blah..."
Ehhhm, no. See the 'at best...a somewhat improved clone of 'those other OSes'.
Furthermore, this 'argument' is kinda obsolete: this already happened once, and the result was / is Android.
Fair enough, and there are various lessons to be taken by such...
but i certainly don't think Android was the 'linux desktop''s much desired Salvation...neither i think data gathering is the road to Mecca.
Repeating the same 'demand' / history, the 'huge company taking over Linux to supposedly save it" seems to me like...
the king is dead, long live the (new) king.
And ironically, indeed the king is dead (with Google moving to Fuchsia)...

What Linux needs is more companies getting seriously involved in it, not a 'single' big megacorp Leviathan taking over like per above.
Microsoft also could very well become the next one that would utilize the linux kernel for some of it's OSes,
they are a pretty flexible company, but surely it wouldn't change much for me.
What we need instead is more Red Hats, more Canonicals if you will.

...and through that, more 'tentacles' in the market. Think also of the dev-related stagnation / starvation problem(s) mentioned earlier as well:
i repeat, the GPL doesn't protect the 'desktop' from such...between writing patches in the basement,
and living in a nice flat in Silicon Valley or Palo Alto, the choice would be obvious for everyone.
More companies willing to work on Linux & help the developers earn their living.

..................
First of all, this is nonsense. Youtube has been using free codecs where they can. The article you yourself linked tell........

...my point was not what you understood - Google indeed has already been supporting / contributing to open codecs in the past.
The fact that Youtube picks up AV1 means simply..."it's started". You already know what the next 'standard' is.

But indeed, count me guilty, as i rushed typing it without really explaining - my comment was meant to point to MS & Apple.
That there is a certain level irony, that those companies that promoted for (20 yrs .wmv / wmas & quicktimes & similar nonsense),
promoting patents everywhere possible...nowadays, due to the way that the wind has changed within the market with streaming etc,
have to...invent ways to avoid paying royalties themselves for equally similar patents. Now, their language instead took a 180° turn,
as they speak of...alliances for 'Open Media' and similar. Still, better late than never my guess.

[gm10]

I don't disagree with you that stability is a prerequisite if Linux wants to succeed.
I disagree up to a part (or better said, i don't entirely agree) with the 'diversity follows on top of that'.
Take jimallyn's excellent example above. Recall what i said: "millions of people around the world,
from extremely different (and not merely 'ideological') backgrounds".
Ie. people who do NOT like the market's current (and frequently unethical) practices one way or another,
and do actively look for an 'alternative' to the very products offered by that market.

Remember that the point I was arguing here was only with respect to what I believe Microsoft contributed to the evolution of the desktop.

Obviously I still enjoy the Linux desktop, I think the idea of free and/or open-source software (yes, Stallman would crucify me for that or I added) is a great thing and I have contributed to it over the years. So you don't need to convince me of the value of that. Great things can come from alternative ideas, and I applaud all of them.

But as in politics, the opposition may have the better ideas, but what counts in the end is the majority. The ideas that make it to the mainstream are those that drive things. And that's not to say that the Linux desktop cannot make it to the mainstream one of these days, but since the thread is about how Microsoft and Apple contributed, it's about how they shaped the mainstream.

but i certainly don't think [...] data gathering is the road to Mecca.

While being strongly invested in questions of privacy myself, I do believe that data becoming a market focus was and is inevitable and nothing is ever going to stop that. Scientia potentia est - knowledge is power, this has been known all along and as networks and markets and hopefully eventually the world grow together as one I have no doubt that the value of data will only rise.

What Linux needs is more companies getting seriously involved in it, not a 'single' big megacorp Leviathan taking over like per above.

There are a number of huge players in there already, billions are being made with and around Linux, but with the exception of maybe ChromeOS and SteamOS, none of it is about the desktop market, and those are limited approaches since hardware-bound.

And at the risk of repeating myself, all desktop Linux needs is a stable base that people can trust in. The only bit of theoretical stability that Linux currently has is the Kernel, because Linus is keeping a fairly tight lid on that. However, it's hard to trust even that when every other kernel update can blow up your system, a new kernel series coming out every 2-3 months may or may not support your hardware anymore, etc.

On the other hand everybody is stuck with outdated systems like the X server because nobody is pushing better solutions, even things like e.g. Wayland have their own set of drawbacks and those only getting implemented slowy. As a result this leaves the user with issues that theoretically have been solved many years ago but remain in practice. You see threads about users lacking basic features like tear-free browsing or proper HiDPI support on here every day. If you want to push the Linux Desktop then all the contributors need to get their shit together, sit down at a table and hammer out some working standards to get rid of this mess.

Things that Microsoft always did right was provide exactly those standards. From their driver models that simplified and to a point abstracted both driver development and implementation, over their various APIs allowing further abstraction for software developers, always made it very easy to write software for Windows. If Linux had proper drivers, proper APIs including something like DirectX, a unified software distribution model and rolling release models across the board, the consumer market might have turned to it long ago. There are some attempts of this in the Linux world but just looking looking at the hate that systemd is still getting you know that it's no easy task.

my comment was meant to point to MS & Apple.
That there is a certain level irony, that those companies that promoted for (20 yrs .wmv / wmas & quicktimes & similar nonsense),
promoting patents everywhere possible...

Fair enough. I agree that proprietary fair formats, codecs, anything are stumbling blocks. They were part of the business model to bind users to the platform. I believe it's hard to gauge how much of an impact that has had. I would like to think that the problems caused by this outweighed the benefits on both sides, but I lack any reliable data on this.

[rickNS]

Any thought on what life would be like now if we only had unix/linux and microsoft and apple (and Xerox) had never happened?

If you already know Microsoft and Apple plagiarized the work done at Xerox, what is this topic about Here is early 1970's Xerox PARC:

I for one am really glad to see someone use that word " plagiarized ". THANKS. The heads of those two mentioned companies are about the worst parasites that ever crawled on the face of this planet. (glad one is already dead, hopefully the second gets what he deserves on judgment day.)

DOS invented when Bill was in diapers, yet many think MS-DOS is a windows thing.

I fear the same thing may happen with the recent "bed partners", Windows + Ubuntu. Quote a "Windows Subsystem for Linux" or WSL. IMO no good can come of this, how long will it be before it is just a windows subsystem...and no mention of linux?

Considering MS called linux a cancer, and now this turn of events. I'm suspicious, what motive for such a change of heart? NO INTEGRITY ?

No one "owes" MS or Apple anything.

[gm10]

DOS invented when Bill was in diapers, yet many think MS-DOS is a windows thing.

In this day and age of alternate facts, I guess you are entitled to say that. Lol.

I fear the same thing may happen with the recent "bed partners", Windows + Ubuntu. Quote a "Windows Subsystem for Linux" or WSL. IMO no good can come of this, how long will it be before it is just a windows subsystem...and no mention of linux?

Considering MS called linux a cancer, and now this turn of events. I'm suspicious, what motive for such a change of heart? NO INTEGRITY ?

Hmm, let's see. Microsoft was selling Unix before it even created PC DOS, every version of the NT kernel had a POSIX subsystem and Microsoft is the biggest net contributor to open source in the world. Oh, and despite all that, their desktop OS is actually successful.

Yes, your jealousy is warranted.