windows 7 EOL opportunity for linux?

[Portreve]

I'm not really sure why I'm about to post this response. I think it has as much to do with trying to get my mind off of personal matters vexing my thoughts today as it has to do with the topic at hand. Nevertheless, I'll try to shepherd together some coherent thoughts for you to contemplate.

Because of how society raises people, which I hope folks here take to mean people are raised to be incurious, ethically and intellectually compromised, and above all to use ideology to process the events of their lives and the events surrounding their lives, it should come as no surprise that people generally are not tech enthusiasts (certainly in the classical sense as people such as myself have always been) and most people don't want to have to stop and think about things. They just want stuff to work, and they don't really care what goes on behind the scenes. Whether it's political machinations, or incompetence in software design giving rise to exploit hunter/exploiters, or sweatshop labor making the clothes that they wear or phone that they talk on, it's all different sides of the same coin.

People are raised — whether deliberately and with malice of forethought, through incompetence of sloppy thinking, or some combination of both — to just accept the world around them at face value and not rock the boat. If you grab the average person on the street and ask them why they accept Microsoft's incompetence and the exploitation-based malware, constant breaking of system stability, or whatever else, that average person will just shrug their shoulders and indicate, through some sort of mindset and corresponding choice of words, that "that's just how it is" and "yes, it's awful, but what can anybody really do about it?" and as I've said above, if you're up against that kind of mindset, you've already lost the debate, and whatever educational opportunity/teachable moment you might have had has now evaporated.

I don't see IBM, Google, or anybody else giving a d**n what desktop OS their customers use. I don't see them as having a vested interest, in that sense, in GNU+Linux. Besides, they're too busy trying to not lose customers to each other, or to a sea of other competitors, to try and moralize in the marketplace about the virtues of libre licensed, peer reviewable and community contributable open source code-based operating systems and programs. Besides, any such moralizing is effectively meaningless or, even worse, entirely hypocritical, if they didn't take a high ground and say their stuff will only work in GNU+Linux. Even in the food business, on the whole, restaurants would never try and tell customers you may only eat "healthy" food from them because they know they'd lose their customers, by and large, to any competitor which continued to sell less healthy (or even completely unhealthy) food which everyone was familiar with.

Incidentally, this is often the reason that government regulation and only government regulation can be a viable option, because then it forces everyone to play by the same rules, and gives them all the excuse that "Hey, it's not our choice."

What has to happen here if we, the GNU+Linux-using community, actually want to change the world and bring everyone around to our way of thinking, is to have a full, drop-in replacement platform ecosystem which is worth marketing, and a marketing campaign to push it. Oh, yeah, and we're going to need to have hardware vendors actually sell distro-equipped hardware. Again, people think of computers as appliances. Either the appliance ships with GNU+Linux, or it doesn't. Either the thing does what they want it to do and runs the software they want to run or are told they need to run, or it doesn't.

[rene]

Oh, yeah, and we're going to need to have hardware vendors actually sell distro-equipped hardware.

Certainly having that be norm is likely to remain an issue for quite some time still. Although admittedly the third party hardware market is not what it used to be either --- it's been a while since any of us went out and bought a XtremeGamer Fatal1ty 7.1 soundcard with 5,25" frontbay featuring large numbers of value-add leds and switches --- OEM's are always going to need some way of distinguishing their device from the competition; up to now generally consider distinguishing details of prime commercial interest. It's the reason why Linux drivers tend to be bland, least common denominator drivers: the actually nice details aren't open --- and perhaps rightly so in a world where a well documented piece of hardware with ready written software can spur a Chinese clone in far too little time to recoup one's own development costs. Only when the "value add" is in fact near-exclusive in hardware or firmware itself such as in the case of graphics hardware does this matter less... but while AMD is coming into the light currently, market leader Nvidia is stumbling about in the dark to date for example.

Sure, a few value-add buttons on a laptop are less of an issue to open up (even if only since you basically can't hide them anyway) but in the general sense the third party hardware market will, as long as it exists in relevant capacity in the first place, keep Windows and its closed model nicely alive.

[Pierre]

Yeah, sorry for the cynicism, but I've been here for almost 20 years now; the number of "opportunities" I've seen come and go inspires little trust in Linux' desktop-breakthrough, ever.

it was actually Win-10 that was the Real Opportunity,, IMHO anyway.
- - that opportunity does still exist, even for these days.
that is Desktop Linux Vs Desktop Windows.
- - Not Google's Android, or what-ever.

[rene]

it was actually Win-10 that was the Real Opportunity,, IMHO anyway.
- - that opportunity does still exist, even for these days.

As alluded to above,I believe any window of opportunity even if deemed real originally to be closing rapidly; people are getting used to Windows 10 and will have familiarity morph into appreciation in the same manner as has happened each time before.

Basically, we're still doomed to irrelevance. Which is for long-time Linux users nicely familiar and largely appreciated....

[shmickcomputer]

Spare a thought for those of us who have to eek out a living fixing Windows problems. Let them stick to Windows!

[lewtwo]

No, because most of Windows 7 users will buy a cheap laptop, which has Windows 10, and then they use that laptop about one year (the maximum time when 32 GB hard drive is full and Windows is unusable), and then they will buy a new cheap laptop, which has Windows 10, .... and so on.

Let Windows 7 users be in peace.

I have predicted that Windows Update will eventually brick many of those 32 Gbyte eMMC Windows 10 machines.
There is only one cure for Windows Update and that is to abandon Windows.

[lewtwo]

I have been installing Windows 10 quite a bit lately. It is arguably a better OS than Windows 7 although the user interface sucks. If one uses the Oct 2018 release of Windows 10 then it does not need to spend days loading updates. I do have to immediately remove/disable some of the Microsoft bloatware (One drive, Explorer 11, Edge, Cortana, Microsoft Store, Office 360 Trial....). Then I install Linux Mint dual boot beside it. If I boot Windows, I can use VMware player to run the same copy of Linux Mint inside of Windows (via direct disk/partition access).

There are a few applications that are NOT available in the Linux environment or for which a suitable substitute does NOT exist (i.e. Amazon's Kindle ereader). The reason for installing Windows 10 as a native OS is because the license is "embedded" is the machines hardware via the damned UEFI BIOS.

It is a compromise that works for me ... thus far.

[lewtwo]

According to netmarketshare, since Aug 2016(end of the free Win 10 upgrade offer) until Nov 2018, .....

Do not tell Microsoft but the "Free Win 10 upgrade" still works (I should say it is was still working last week).

[VinceC]

The primary limiting factor here for migration of the masses towards GNU+Linux is one of intellectual laziness. I would say "ignorance" but ignorance is actually an adjective, not a verb, and in any event is eminently curable. However, people have to actively want to cure it. That means bothering to take personal responsibility, and frankly I don't see that happening.

Portreve, I appreciate your post. In my PC service/repair experiences I have given away a couple of Linux PC's to close customers hoping to expose folks to the world of Linux. The PC's were returned in a few weeks. The excuses given reflected exactly what you said in your post...
Thanks to all who use Linux and post their comments and experiences.
Cheers!

[lsemmens]

You're wrong there, rene, Windwoes ME was the best ever, closely followed by 8.....................advert for another OS, that is.