[TriLUG] Steam says that two percent of its users are now on Linux

John Vaughters jvaughters04 at yahoo.com
Thu Mar 7 15:44:44 EST 2013


>I hope you at least have more consciousness of consumer software in
>general.  Your argument would seem to be that because command lines are
>nearly identical from machine to machine, the problem of making and
>deploying software for various target markets is solved.  Unfortunately
>that's preposterous, as command lines are a late 80's UI paradigm at best.
>At least, consumers stopped accepting command lines as UIs once Windows 95
>shipped, and arguably they were well on their way to that conclusion in the
>Windows 3.1 era.  Apple is cleaning up precisely because they do a lot of
>things that Microsoft and the Linux community don't.  It may not matter
>from where you sit, but it matters to an awful lot of consumers.  Canonical
>knows this as well, which is why they're attempting Mir, and why they did
>Ubuntu in the 1st place.

 
Brandon,
 
I think you are missing the point of open source vs not open source. Windows is pretty much the only one left not using world wide code dev. Back around 2000 Apple and IBM ditched their OS precisely because they realized they would not be able to keep up with the dev cycle of Open Source. Apple decided that it would be better to focus on the User Experience instead of mundane issues of an OS that are already improving with very little effort on their part to integrate into their OS. IBM had the same strategy. They were going to sell services and ditch the AIX OS for Red Hat. 
 
So what this has done is get just about every OS available in the world on Open Source Dev except Microsoft. So when I can jump on an Apple and run GUI programs via SSH on my Linux Servers from any place in the world, I am thinking this is what we call standards. Since those trivial standards (Not really trivial for coders) are being developed rapidly by the world, we all benefit. Then enter Microsoft; they do not beleive in standards and constantly are coding what has already been done and usually better. This will eventually hurt them and already has. However they still own the Business Management Software, ie Domain Controllers that really make it easy to deploy huge numbers of computers. This has saved them.
 
This is why I lump Apple and Linux, they are at the root very much alike. Microsoft is not leveraging the great work being done for them, so they stand out. The original point was that *nix already owns the market and drives Microsoft.
 
Now to preposterous. I will take the my best CLI user over your best GUI user anyday and make a bet on a productivity test. I promise you typing and knowing the OS from the text side is without a doubt the fastest way to manage servers. Less so with Microsoft, becasue they do not follow the text file set up as cleanly as *nix, but still very good on CLI. This is especially true with scripting for repeating tasks. 
 
Obviously text games are very boring, and UI is how most use a computer. But I stand by my prediction that Micorsoft will prevail for a long time, despite their failings. Don't expect Linux to take over this market anytime soon.
 
John Vaughters


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