Microsoft has billions of dollars and thousands of people. So why is Windows still worse than Linux ?
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Most experts agree Linux is safer than Windows
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All scientific supercomputers use Linux
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Professional hackers use Linux
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Linux is the undisputed backbone of internet servers
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Critical military infrastructure relies on Linux
Microsoft's revenue was $300 Billion last year. They have UNLIMITED ressources.
So why is Windows still worse than Linux ?
161 replies
Their main goal is to extract maximum revenue, not to provide good products. Also, they've grown fat on the monopoly profits they enjoyed for decades. It's very hard to pivot back to competitiveness from that and as of now, they're not really compelled to do that.
This is it. For-profit companies exist to make a profit, not a product. Any time you ask "why did they do this thing that makes the product worse?" remember that the product doesn't matter to them, only the money it makes. If a change makes more money, they'll do it.
Some might think a worse product means worse sales and less profit, but they'd be wrong. Enough people buy products regardless of their quality that it's often more profitable to simply make the product as cheap as possible while maintaining just barely enough of the most basic functionality to meet the definition of what they're trying to sell.
true but to do that they have 100s of layers of variously documented backward compatibility and work-arounds. all their stuff is a mountain of deliberate technical debt that will affect the quality of their software
Aren't most for profit companies like this tho?
Not the ones that face actual competition. Younger people have probably never experienced this but markets in general used to be much more diverse and less concentrated.
Oh damn
Linux is setting out to make an operating system. Microsoft are setting out to make a data capturing advertising billboard that sometimes runs programs.
They’re a B2B company first and foremost. What they’re selling is the Microsoft ecosystem to companies, like their Office suite. Companies don’t care if each individual products sucks - just that they integrate well with other products. In particular, companies want good integration with Active Directory (Microsoft’s permission management system). Companies love controlling who gets access to what.
Consumer operating systems is more of a side hustle for them.
For the 4th time in my career, I'm selling something that competes with a Microsoft product or feature everyone purchases in end user license bundles and literally nobody gets configured and working.
Because with Linux, the software design decisions are made by engineers, not executives.
And the install decisions are made by people with options.
Because their management structure is horrendously overbloated and their internal culture is horrific.
I used to work for them. Every manager, every team lead, at every level, is viciously trying to climb to the top of the crab bucket, and pull every one else down at the same time.
Look at Asha Sharma's recent statment on reorganizing Xbox.
14 levels of management. 14. You have have a boss, who has a boss, who has a... up to fucking 14.
... the entire company is like this, not just Xbox.
Thats why everything is insane broken nonsense.
Oh, that and extreme over reliance on contractors to do most of the actual work. Contractors don't get stock options, you see.
This results in a situation where half of any project's timeline is the new contractors just trying to understand the code the previous contractors made.
That is all wasted time, compared to if you just actually had a consistent team you paid properly... and of course it massively exacerbates technical debt.
Nothing is actually properly documented, there are very, very few people who actually understand a codebase and have been maintaining and growing it for 10 years, no, its 10 years of 10 different sets of contractors, and maybe 3-6 different managers 'overseeing' this.
It is all spaghetti code.
There has never been a totally new Windows, certainly not in this century. That has never happened, and they lie internally to their own employees about that.
There has never been a total refactor of Windows. Windows 11 still has UI menus from Win 7, possibly fucking XP, if you dig deep enough.
Yeah, those are the good ones.
Yeah that's the worst bit tbf
If you're not going to make better UIs and you're going to keep the old ones around anyway... Why not just... add new items to the old ones?
Instead, you have like 3 or 4 different generations of control panel and they do different things so you go to the correct one based on what you need to do...
I'm just happy to not own any Windows machines anymore, not even dual boot. I actually liked 7. Like really liked it. 10 felt like a downgrade (I suspect because the UI was uglier and it had an extra layer of control panel added in either 8 or 10 that was more dumbed down so you'd usually want to go to the old one, which gets you thinking "why exactly did we need a new Windows version"). 11 is shit even on a brand new machine, even if it looks pretty-ish. It's slow, the reduced context menu is annoying... Yeah I could change a lot of things via registry keys and whatnot, but KDE Plasma just gives me a single system settings application that configures almost everything I'd want to configure on my machine, the rest is application specific stuff for which I'm fine just editing the conf files
To be clear I'm just venting because I'm frustrated with Windows, not because I think you like it lol
I laughed, then cried, because I still have to use this heap of shit operating system at work.
Same :(
This is the answer. I work in a big company which has a similar issue. The boots on the ground devs like me know how bad some cascaded orders and ideas are but when you try to bring it up it's like trying to talk to a brick wall with 13 other brick walls in the way
I'm gonna have to use that saying, lol
Its so cathartic to read this after dealing with the exact same bullshit with my own employer. Management has no clue what is actually going on, but refuses to listen to us peons because they've 'made it' to middle management so obviously they know better than all of us always.
Scott Adams went MAGA bonkers, but the Dilbert Principle is still a valid corrolary to the Peter Principle.
... the narcissistic sociopaths that are most managers simply don't care, because they are right and you are stupid.
... which is also why the love the overly confident lying know it alls that are LLMs... they are a perfect source of many elements of narcissistic supply.
Amazingly, Windows 11 still has some settings menus directly from 1992's Windows 3.1
... jesus christ.
I did not know it was actually that bad, that it went back that far... god damnit.
Star Citizen was ahead of its time lol
Easy, their objective is to make money, not develop software. Linux is made and maintained by users, for users...
Microsoft's mission isn't to improve the public good. Microsoft's mission is wealth extraction for its shareholders.
Windows is worse for you as an individual consumer. But I would argue Windows is a better product for advertisers and other interests that go beyond you. Those interests are at odds with your interests. You need to look at the bigger picture.
In a word: enshittification.
Honestly, people should have to go back to school when the turn 70 for a year to get updated. Plenty of folks still think capitalism runs on “make a good product at a good price.”
Maybe two months every decade? I'll be honest, it's pretty easy to be out of touch long before you're 70.
It does!
Trouble is in the digital world we don't have products anymore, we have services. And those run on "make it shit without a subscription".
And "good product at a good price" only works without advertising if it's SO good that it gets advertised by word of mouth.
So it's like 20-30% true.
Linux was built by engineers and professors based on idealistic values like progress and collaboration. Windows was also built by talented nerds, but at the direction of suits with the goal of making money.
And now they're ripping all the shit the talented nerds made out and replacing it with AI slop and ads.
Yep! Like every other tech company.
Engineers want to make something work with the stability to last a long time.
But lasting a long time cuts into profits.
Only partially user-centric decisions because the @someRandomOEM.com and @redhat.com people will send drivers with no documentation to go with it due to NDAs. Also only partially user-centric decisions because if someone is backed by a company, their solution will be pushed faster.
People on free software adjacent forums (probably originated on linux {.} org {.} ru?) thought of a standard unit of measurement for how much pedantic force a person is able to apply. It is called "1 Poettering", named after Lennart "Harry" Poettering. Values greater than 1 have not been observed; it is often assumed to be the highest constant similar to the speed of light. Here's a table from (my very subjective) consensus:
Maintainers of random projects that everyone takes for given are <=.1 until they riot when it becomes .6 temporarily.
If you ever worked on any big corporation, it becomes crystal clear why things suck. Megacorps value money first, second, third, fourth and fifth. Sixth comes avoiding being caught by their crimes.
So, Microsoft doesn't have a vision for Windows as an operating system, it sees Windows as a way to maintain a stranglehold in office computers the world over. It doesn't matter that most people on lemmy will say "switch to linux", they're not companies, they're not bosses - these are the vast majority of Windows users and South America + Asia + Africa make up a fuckhuge market. Sure, Europe and USA have more money, but the rest have sheer numbers.
Another thing that matters a lot is that many decisions come from the top and are enforced. If Satya Nadella or the director of whatever bullshit says something, those below have to comply. If the order from above is "cram bullshit ads in Windows Explorer, this has the highest priority", that has to happen.
Regarding resources, having them and allocating them in a decent manner are not the same thing. The same could be argued about USA having trillions of tax dollars and having so many people living in poverty without healthcare or even basic education. Lots of that money go to keeping their armed forces. Microsoft is not too different, they have to pay people who keep their datacenters up, pay for the energy of said datacenters, maintain several other apps they have - oh, and the CEOs bonuses, because he's such a great leader who totally deserves billions every year!!!!! Of those 300bn, how much are they diverting for Windows in general? 50b? 20b? 1b? Of that, how much is going straight for security, bug tracking and quality assurance?
Microsoft has pretty much lost most of their experienced employees, they're sitting on a mountain of spaghetti code with tech debt that goes back to windows 3.1 to maintain compatibility, they've fired their QA team, and their absolutely out-of-touch leadership is trying to force the surviving employees to use AI anywhere they can for developing the OS to pump up the numbers of AI users to prop up their insanely huge AI gamble so shareholders don't lose faith.
They're acting confident because they haven't had to respond to a credible threat to their monopoly for 30 years, and that arrogance combined with everything mentioned above will most likely be their ultimate demise. The corporate system they have created and perpetuated is no longer capable of righting the ship, both technologically and organizationally.
They made a statement years ago now about how they were going to respond to the success of the steamdeck by creating a handheld mode for windows, but they never did, and Valve ate their lunch and allowed Linux to gain a foothold among gamers. They probably couldn't manage building that handheld mode (it's been so many years now, but I read a post from a Microsoft employee detailing how it could take something crazy like a week of work just to add a new menu entry to a drop-down without it introducing major breakages elsewhere).
They haven't been able to develop a killer app or feature for Windows in over a decade, and I don't think there's anything else under their sleeve. I believe we are actively witnessing the downfall of an ossified giant, just as the once great Commodore fell due to incompetence and extreme corporate greed.
They already use Linux for their server division (azure). Eventually, if Linux is able dominate on the desktop in the next decade, they may shift to selling their own Linux distro with a 100% windows compatible container/VM instead, an inversion of their current model of selling Windows with their optional WSL (windows subsystem for Linux).
Linux has devs in charge instead of managers.
Different design priorities - MS devs aim to make the OS a marketing tool for other products, which are continuously obsoleted to encourage repeated re-buying. Linux devs aim to make stuff work.
I guess that explains why Poettering went to work for Microsoft...
Can't win them all
Apart from what everyone here is saying, which is probably mostly true, I want to add that the Windows division in microsoft isn't the biggest either in terms of revenue or funding; it's not even second. The office team is much bigger for instance - so Windows has not been Microslops priority for a good 15 years i'd say. My 2 cents
Also the number of developers and amount of money put into something doesn't make it is necessarily better. I almost want to think that fewer developers and less money on Windows is a good thing considering Microslop only ever wants to increase operating costs in order to make more revenue.
True but my impression is that in contrast to other divisions it probably doesn't get the focus, resources or the vision it needs. It's just a means to sell their other stuff, so all the great people will choose to work for other teams. I remember seeing a discussion with Dave Cutler (if i remember his name correctly) a few years ago saying he left the windows team to work on xbox and azure because it was much more interesting - i know the guy has done it all and was looking for something different but it didn't seem very encouraging
Windows isn't trying to do what Linux does.
On the server end, Linux beat every competitor out there, including Windows Server, because it was free and development occurred along the lines of educated users making improvements. So, at first Linux was worse to use, but it was cheaper. Then, Linux was about as easy/stable as paid for versions, but it was cheaper. When it became easier to use to educated users and more stable and cheaper, all paid server OS's died.
That said, I bring up educated users because Linux is only a kernel and Windows by itself does more than Linux does by itself. On the consumer end, no one has been able to threaten Windows without a DRM'd app store. Consumers won't do bug fixes at the scale that enterprise users will. Consumers generally need more developed on the UI side to make the OS functional while you can run Linux in terminal mode. Most of Windows' development went into this, making Windows easy/desirable for consumers. In contrast, most Linux development time went to making Linux more easy/desirable for enterprise users/servers.
This is really the first year that Linux for consumers is viable and a lot of that work packaging Linux for consumers came from Valve putting the various pieces of open source software together and sanding down the rough edges. In contrast, Microsoft has been doing that for a generation.
10b in UNIX revenue in 2012 https://www.tahawultech.com/news/the-last-days-of-unix/
https://cioafrica.co/the-long-slow-death-of-commercial-unix/ one vendor drops from 1.6b to .6b revenue in four years
https://www.matrix42.com/en/blog/2016/10/17/the-cost-punch-of-core-based-licensing-for-microsoft-windows-server Microsoft moves from per processor licensing to per core licensing, to prop up revenue on server OS products. Revenue reported bundles all cloud and software services in with licensing, so any increases in this revenue bundle are most likely attributed to cloud and infrastructure revenues, considering the reported CapEx of Asure infrastructure.
I think even Microsoft is in trouble for OS sales. I have seen an increase in Linux based applications in my industry, at the expense of Windows. SOC appliances are more visibly Linux based as well.
Their business isn't to make an operating system better than linux.
Wait.. why is this a question..? I guess it's the same as when people ask my why Adobe is so terrible, why HP is terrible or why Apple is so terrible.
Companies eventually get so big and powerful they only care about companies.
Stop paying for Microsoft, pirate is Stop using Microsoft office, Get libre office Stop using HP, get Lenovo or Dell instead Everyone everywhere should stop using apple.
As much as I hate Apple/OoS and I do truly hate Apple.. Adobe is the worst company on earth.
Easiest way to explain it is that Apple and Microsoft exist just to steal all your money Adobe not only wants to steal all your money but they wanted take it all then make you pay so they can lazily explain why they took your money. HP is in the corner breaking all your furniture so they can charge you a fee to fix it and put Microsoft, apple and Adobe trash on it.
It's subjective. I'm not trying to be dismissive or something, but it's that simple. Windows is more successful than Linux for what Microsoft wants it to be more successful at.
I'm not saying Windows is better. I like Linux more. I use it. I'm just saying that for the personal computing market share that Microsoft wants, Windows is more successful than Linux.
To be honest, if Microsoft wanted to affect other stuff with Linux, they'd probably just contribute the changes they want into it. It wouldn't surprise me if they already did. They contributed many features to git for things they wanted to use in git.
I've heard they're one of the biggest single company contributors to linux. No idea how much truth there is to that, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Linux benefits enormously from community review.
It's a lot easier to find bugs when literally the whole world can review the source code.
Because they are prioritizing data collection over performance.
Windows is no longer about giving customers a good operating system. It’s now a vehicle for Microsoft to collect data from you for them to use and sell to other parties at a profit. It’s why Microsoft hasn’t cared much about pirated versions of Windows much anymore. They’ll do small things to annoy you, but overall, you can still use it and they still get to collect your data.
Microsoft is only starting to be more concerned as Windows loses market share and Linux gains some. The Steam hardware survey has only gone up a few points of percentages but this accounts for thousands of losses and this only shows gamers who use Steam, not all the other use cases.
So Microsoft is finally starting to make some promises to improve performance now that they have some real competition. And they’re only doing that because they want to continue collecting your data.
That is what Windows has become, unfortunately. Your performance while using it is very secondary, if not at all a priority of theirs.
Commercial closed source loses because of the profit motive to cut corners and make anti-features. Plus little to no independent peer review. Also legacy stuff can't just be recompiled or ported by anyone, so ABI has to be stable for a long time. Even new stuff, can't be all compiled to the same one version of every lib, so basically ever program has it's own version each lib it uses.
Plus they have a big user base locked in, so they have to take whatever they are given. So motivation to be good is low.
Just so many reasons!
I think Microsoft has grown too large to deliver a coherent product, and has probably forgotten how to do so. Beyond a certain point, knowledge just completely breaks down, without near perfect knowledge management, senior developers leaving just leaves an understanding gap too big to ever fill. Windows has been around so long that people have had entire careers working on it and have retired and it's all falling apart.
Individual teams still deliver decent stuff, dotnet, WSL all stuff pushing in the right direction... But no unified approach. The core windows teams seem paralyzed to implement real change. By all reports the code is now a spaghetti mess and no real endeavours to fix anything can get budget approval. Any budget that might exist to fix it is being redirected towards copilot projects
That and layoffs. When someone is with a company for a long time and becomes senior, not only do they have immeasurable value in their institutional knowledge but they are also the “person” for their area of expertise. They know things or know the person responsible for things. When they leave or are forced out, less senior people don’t have a way to bridge the siloes (outside of dealing with layers of management), so problems go unaddressed.
A lot of reasons. First of all, it's not really their goal to make a good OS for users. They know that 95% will use windows no matter what, especially businesses, because they still more or less have a monopoly, especially in the desktop market.
In other words, any ressources spent on improving the desktop OS experience past the bare minimum is excess because they don't really get anything concrete in return.
Yes, windows is less efficient than other os, but until recently, this wasn't a problem for microsoft since you can just throw more/better hardware at the issue, which is a win win. They have to spend less ressources at optimizing code for better performance and, I imagine, they get a better cut since their hardware partners sell more devices because hardware gets obsoete every couple of years.
And in the server environment, they want it to be increasingly expensive because windows server is mostly used in cases where there is no alternative, and they want it all in their cloud.
Also, a lot of what is annoying about windows is per design. Ads, sponsorship ads, forced accounts, etc.
Windows is only like 10% of Microslops business.
why is no one talking about this point. MS shows its financials, its all Azure which is run on linux. Why would you fight for market share on a thing that is the biggest drag on your money maker. You spend how much in lawyers and PR on a product that MAYBE hit 10% or your overall costs. You wanna spend how much on drivers for everything, when the big boy in the room can dictate what devices work on YOUR OWN SERVERS that makes 75% of your cash. Nah milk that base for all its worth til it goes away.
Corporate culture. Microsoft may be one company to us outsiders, but internally they are a ton of different divisions divided into teams. All those teams have their own agendas, priorities, and competing visions.
If you just look at the Windows kernel project, it’s really good.
Came to say "culture". This is the thing most average Americans struggle with. We've had capitalism drilled into us from birth. Want something better? Pay more. Full stop.
Somehow we miss there is so much more to being a society than just transactional interactions. Not that the open source community doesn't have its problems but it fundamentally is approached differently. With no profit motive why would you spend a single minute of your precious time doing anything for another person, especially a stranger?
That is at the heart of it, but you can decompose it into leadership (or a lack of it), misaligned incentives, intercompany politics, atrophying innovation, and on and on with the corpo buzzwords.
Is this a real question ?.One is about maximising profit extraction, one is not.
By design.
I can only conclude that they change stuff just to make it seem like they're keeping busy, and they're vibe coding it without any QA so it doesn't perform as intended either. For instance, I have to use Teams at work, and I have certain projects prioritized over others. These have alerts and notifications set up, or at least they did until last week, when Teams inexplicably turned them off because they're trying to get people to tag ID's more.
Stupid. Just stupid.
Three things: Bloat, Greed, Capitalization.
Passion vs corporate.
Corporate suits just sell surface promises and support contracts for corporate environments. It's a totally different mindset than Linux engineers have. Theirs is that of passion for excellent software and that's all they care about.
Power of the people.
When a collective works on something together for their shared benefit, the outcome will be better than when a company exploits people for profit.
Why worse? It's not a better or worse race.
SW Compatibility? Windows wins hands down. Try run decade (even years) old binaries on Linux, good luck.
Security and privacy? Well🤣... Maybe here Linux wins by a small tad /s.
And so on.
Microsoft focus is on different aspects than Linux, like monetization, lock in, business apps like office, store apps, and who knows what other crap. Linux efforts are usually focused on what is actually needed for a better quality of usage.
On the long run Linux is doomed to success, because Microsoft like all companies will die one day. Linux will never die because it cannot be killed ....
Well, old software doesn't run on windows anymore.
Not sure what you mean by old.
10 year old Windows software? Will definitely run.
20 year old Windows software? Will run but might require admin rights or compatibility mode.
30 year old Windows oftware? Might run but probably need a VM.
For Linux the focus is more on improvement, less on compatibility. That's a deliberate decision.
Not true.
It really depends. And I say this as someone who's spent years in the enterprise software management space.
In the last few years, older software has become less capable of running on Windows. Tried to run a 2006 app the other day and it won't even install. So had to run it in a VM of Windows 7.
But your general point still stands. Lots of SMBs can continue to run on older software, to a point.
I do still use LOTS of old software with little ussue.
What is the application you had issues with? It's very uncommon for a 10 year old application to not run on Windows. And if it doesn't, it's usually not the fault of the OS but of some obsolete technology.
Why do you need to run 10-30 year old software? This is a big red flag in my book: if your software can’t be bothered to be upgraded then why would you expect your OS to be?
What is the problem of running 10-30 year old desktop software locally? This is actually very common in some sectors, such as governmental infrastructure or industrial use. It's not like those applications are reachable from the internet or even contact a server. Windows itself ships with applications that haven't changed for decades, such as the character map and resource monitor.
Then run it on the relevant (outdated) OS? Why should the OS be constantly held back because the software sucks?
If the developer would just address the issues as they come and recompile for OS upgrades it shouldn’t be a problem — but if you’re using software where the developer can’t bother to recompile after 30(!!!) years I think there’s a more serious problem.
Ideally you want the OS to be updated, because old OS are vulnerable when the computer is networked. In fact most IT departements require every PC to have an up to date OS.
It's not always a matter of bothering - many applications are customized and made for a specific purpose. An application could have been sold to only one company as a one off, or even developed by a long retired employee. Want an update after 20 years? Sure, after paying another invoice, provided that the developing company still exists and is still willing to support such old tech.
It is just a given that many companies are stuck with some old software somewhere in their process. That explains the policy for Windows.
Windows: "if we stop shipping this 25 year old library 5% of corporate users will experience problems which will cost us money and reputational damage, so we keep it compatible."
Linux distro: "we are going to replace X with Y because it is better. Things will break and it is partially up to the community to solve it."
Sometimes software is just... Done. Feature complete and sometimes still just the best way of doing something. It's a rare thing, but sometimes happens.
I guess a good example is WordPerfect 6.2 for DOS; it's to this day a great WYSIWYG word processor, and the most feature complete TUI word processor for people who like distraction free writing. There are still proponents meticulously documenting how to get it working and integrated with modern OS's so that it can access modern printers.
Games comes to mind.
I've actually had a case where something old didn't work on Windows, but was fine on Linux with wine, lol
Right, that which is dead can never die.
(I kid, I kid)
Winblows fanboy spotted.
Are you /s or you didn't read my post?
It also depends on what you mean by worse than Linux. A lot of the criteria that you're evaluating definitely have Linux as better than Windows, but Windows is better than Linux in other ways that I notice on a day-to-day basis when I'm switching between the two.
Performance under memory pressure is the biggest one, I think. I don't know why, but Windows handles extreme memory pressure and heavy page filing incredibly gracefully, whereas any Linux device I've used, and Macs, seems to stutter, slow down, and really struggle under memory pressure, even when there is superior hardware involved. I usually have to wait several minutes before my daily Linux driver recovers from heavy page filing, whereas it's usually just a couple of seconds with my Windows box.
Windows has had to deal with memory pressure a lot more than Linux. Some of this is bloat, but historically there's also just been a lot of low end systems sold with Windows. All of the Windows 7 systems sold with 1GB, the Windows XP systems sold with with 256MB, running Windows 98 in 16MB, and so on.
Windows is always looking for memory it can page out and does a lot of preemptive paging so that if it suddenly needs a bunch of free RAM - like if the user suddenly launches some memory hog of an application, Windows has it available. Windows is also a bit smart about it - it'll page things out but still keep the data in RAM too. So for example an application idle in the background will be paged out in case Windows needs that memory, but it's also kept in RAM so if the user pulls the application back up, Windows doesn't have to read everything back from the page file either.
This has lead to complaints about Windows constantly thrashing the disk and doing things in the background, but there is some method to the madness. Though I will complain that Windows still seems to do this even in situations where the PC has a lot of RAM and large amounts of it aren't being used.
The Linux kernel, on the other hand, doesn't do a lot of this like Windows does. Which is fine so long as you have enough RAM. But in a situation where there isn't a lot of free RAM and suddenly the user launches a big application, the kernel suddenly has to do a bunch of swapping to free up memory and that can take a bit, especially if the drive is slow.
The Linux kernel does have a "Swappiness" setting that can modify its behavior, but I've never really played around with that myself.
Thank you for thoughtfully engaging. I appreciate your knowledge.
That behavior with Linux is absolutely real, and it's very weird that it hasn't been fixed in over a decade. It's due to the default OOM (out of memory) killer being way too conservative with killing an application when the memory is completely full and disk swapping. Some people have solved this with an app that watches for OOM situations and acts with more decisiveness to kill an offending application before it swaps and brings the system to a halt, called EarlyOOM.
That still isn't quite as good as Windows handling though, as Windows can generally handle those situations without killing the application at all.
TIL!
Awkwardly, I find that the largest memory pressure tends to come from a particular web page that continually gobbles up more memory the longer it is open.
There's always one of these somewhere, and I'm bad at closing tabs. I usually notice pretty quickly when I come back to my computer. As soon as we start hitting page filing, since everything is stuttering and slow, but if it goes overnight, it can literally be 15 to 20 minutes before the system is responsive again after I kill the offending process.
Whereas on my work device, which is Windows, I usually might not even notice until I've maxed out my page file, which can be 64 or 128 GB depending on the device. And even then, I only notice because file operations start getting slow because the SSD is being thrashed. Killing the offending process results in responsiveness usually within a few seconds and a full clear out of the page file in a couple minutes.
The explanations that I've gotten from another commenter make a lot of sense. That Windows has just always had to deal with high memory pressures, so has been forced to mature in that sense. It is rather odd that Linux is behind on this, though, given its overwhelming representation in headless environments
I dont know; this seems like super specific case where you've economic means to afford or be around all of those high end systems and the same hardware is underpowered for your use case.
My first personal laptop had Windows 7 but as soon as Windows 8 came it struggled (only having measly 2GB of RAM) - so i switched to Ubuntu and it was a breeze for the next 10 years. I always used to try new version of Windows when released but it they always seemed to be memory hog and become bloated over time.
You kind of haven't addressed the point though, you’ve just pointed out that linux experiences memory pressure less often.
But OPs point is that Windows is better at it when you inevitably fill its memory. I run multiple clusters of docker containers and virtualised systems in my day to day, and its true that linux (Ubuntu at least) isn't the best at huge memory pressure, especially when I fill swap. And I’m running the latest intel chip with 32gb. I wish I’d gone 64gb… but, memory prices.
I don't know if thats better or worse than Windows though, I haven’t touched an MS machine in a decade.
My response wasn't about memory pressure but rather how that scenario is rather specific.
I havent used windows for years so i don't know if it performs better or worse than say Ubuntu or Fedora under memory pressure.
They have a near on monopoly, and even if end consumers start switching to Linux, businesses are going to be much harder to sway. They simply don't need to care about software quality when they have massive guaranteed business customers.
Priorities and objectives.
Exactly.
Ive used Linux for years as a daily driver. That said, windows is the "better" desktop OS for people who use the OS to open chrome and then buy things from Temu while browsing facegram on their phone with their off hand.
Linux is the better server OS, which answers all your other points.
Years ago I installed Mint on an elderly parents laptop and said "that icon is your web browser". They've used it for 8 years without a single problem.
I disagree. Linux is as good of a desktop OS too. Linux is better than microslop in every way
I have to disagree. Linux desktop is perfect if you're just using it for browsing, emails and documents. It's when you want to game or use special software, you might run into issues.
Enshitification
Vibe coding.
Money can't buy love. Fuck Microsoft.
Money won't buy quality either
If the free software foundation got 1 billion, it would do many times over what 300billion has done for windows, but not just the OS but the entire software ecosystem around Linux. And it would all be ours to keep.
I agree with all your points. The quesion is why is Windows still dominating in market share?
The answer is user awareness, brand loyalty and fear of the unknown. Windows is the devil you know, most of the people I game with are scared of the instability of Linux, despite it being roughly equal if not better.
I think standardizing the user experience, making things less scary and generally more welcoming are major hurdles, but the good news is that should come with time and a larger userbase.
Windows just works. I installed Linux on my older laptop and it couldn't see any of my network shares. "Where do I click the button for sharing?" God, that would be too easy. Nope, start editing config files to configure samba. I just want to access files.
Samba is indeed an annoyance, at least in the initial setup. In good faith though, does windows just work? Because there's a habit for windows updates to break file sharing pretty regularly, not to mention permissions issues.
There's a lot of work people put into windows that they just don't realise because they've been in the ecosystem for that long. Having been on both sides for a bit now, Linux requires a hell of a lot less regular maintenance than windows needed. Sure I'm a power user, but I think that Linux is getting better and better all the time for general users.
When the user base is as large as Windows, plus people run it on whatever crap they have, there are bound to be some issues. I am running Win11 on unsupported hardware without issues. I can't remember the last time I needed to edit the registry. Yes, Windows just works.
Office, the fucking office suit everyone and thier grandma uses that does not work with alternative that run nativity on Linux... ugh....i mean office works bearly between two windows machines....so its not like the open source community did not give it a try, but the random proprietary standard in .doc/docx etc ...just locks us in...
I use LibreOffice and Office, and I much prefer Office. LibreOffice uses docx files just like Word does.
The search bar just doesn't work. It's right in the middle of the screen so I keep clicking it and even type things in but it simply doesn't populate with any results even if you wait. Absolute joke of a company
Microsoft and the like are doing a great job to prove they don't have to release anything quality and people will still throw them buckets of money. It's wild to watch, but hey it's better they stay there than come to Linux in the masses to encourage the enshitification of stuff that's still good.
Because ease of use and simplicity go a long way.
Its about mass appeal, not quality.
Normal people dont want to have to know CLI
The fact that you cant use Linux without at least some form of understanding of CLI is why it will never supersede windows.
Pretty much. That's why Mac OS has such a cult following with non tech people. It's simple, intuitive, does everything for you, and everything "just works" even if you're paying top dollar for it.
Because programming something that is open and free for anyone to see ane change and contribute is fun! And fun means better programming and love towards the software
Microsoft doesnt love its software or its users.
They got the userbase they
havehad and abused everyone.. they can no longer do that without consequncesBecause Microsoft's goal is to make as much money as possible for their investors.
Linux's goal is to make a good (and mostly Open Source) OS for the community.
But to be fair, Windows, at it's core, isn't a bad OS. It's all the bloat, that makes it almost unusable.
Linux is a system and a tool, Windows is a product. You don't market high end precise machinery to everyday people, because it can be a pain. You sell them a product that is easy and simple.
Microsoft is trying to do both and failing at both horribly.
Who's going to be a more well rounded person? The spoiled rich kid or the kid who had to struggle through life?
Bad news - we've improved the definition of 'well-rounded' to mean extracurriculars in high school plus courses outside the requirements for your major in college. So the rich kid wins by a landslide.
Bloat and feature creep, and is marketed not only to corporations because sysadmins' existing experience with that platform, but also towards the mainstream as much as Apple and Google (through ChromeOS).
Profit some times makes terrible decisions. In other cases, where cost has a relation to efficiency, profit does great. See also: capitalism.
If windows is worse than linux then why are dev companies holding us all hostage on Windows?
Inertia
Linux and their users absolutely have reputations that make the mental move more difficult. Plus marketing. If more people, that are continually getting sick of Windows, knew that there was a plug and play Linux distro that's as easy to use, they'd probably be a lot more likely to move over.
THIS IS likely is, it doesnt seem user friendly for the masses who are not saavy enough to know which one is good and how to do it.
And paybacks.
Marketshare
Wdym? In my experience, everything Windows can do, Linux can do better
So why are all these companies holding the majority of the market hostage on windows?
Idk what you're talking about. All the major companies let you buy the laptop with Linux. It's cheaper for both parties
too many spoons in the bowl spoil the batter
Windows is better in compatibility with many commercial products, but the gap is quickly closing, and I think Microsoft is feeling the pressure.
If you include the entire history of Windows programs, I have my doubts about this. For instance I've had more consistent results running old Windows games on Linux through WINE/Proton than I had in Windows 10. Linux may have better backwards compatibility with Windows programs than modern Windows does.
Because there is no profit in good software.
Windows is still good enough for Microsoft to sell licenses, sell services, and other large contracts.
It does not need to be faster, safer, or generally "better" since there is no competition in the traditional sense. Almost everyone is trained to work with Windows and almost all software works on Windows, so it's just (seen as) a more sensible option for most businesses.
Why does it ask me to login, including 2FA, to only say, Logged Out, you should logout of all your browser windows?
Linux is free
Linux is open
Linux was designed to be small when it needed to be
Linux has historically suffered from insufficient accepted talent to compete with user interfaces on Mac or Windows. Even attempts from window managers to borrow from Windows and Mac had missed the mark for decades.
Windows is paid
Windows is closed
Windows was designed to fuel schools and corporate America
Windows paid UX people and tried to make a comfortable experience for everyone ... until they didn't
For years, Linux distros mostly did their own thing, trying to be good enough to use.
Linux is now close enough to the Windows/Mac desktop experience that every misstep Big corporations make will just push people into open source.
I suspect that within the next decade or so there will be many attempts to pass laws to keep open source out of the public's hands.
Becauae making a good product is not their goal, and never was.
MS exists to monetize their products, or in other words extract maximum profit. When they were an underdog or competitor (Win 3.1 era), making a better product was the primary way to beat Apple et al.
But now they rely in integration/lock-in of their ecosystem, and making their products better will not increase their market share. That means improving their products is against their financial interests.
This is not true. Supercomputers do, but in my research centre there are still lots of people using Windows and Mac. Linux usage is definitely way higher than the broader populace, but it's not "all".
First off, it's different not just better. Windows comes out of the box usable and compatible with everything. It minimized flexibility and most of it just worked. This is kinda changing recently but anyone who says Linux just works better is selling your something.
Second Linux desktop has only become usable and working on a critical mass of hardware recently. Even 5 years ago Nvidia was broken (still is, less so) along with lots of hardware. Wayland was unstable trash.
Finally, valve is putting in hundreds of millions of dollars into Linux because Gabe has made it his mission to take his 30% cut on Linux.
There is tons of money being spent making Linux usable for normies.
Flat out wrong. Microsoft made sure that Windows 11 would not be compatible with older hardware, at this point, there are many more systems that will run Linux than will run Windows 11.
Not to mention, as a recent Linux user, the most profound part of switching, was how easy it was to setup my system. Anyone who has done a clean install of Windows, or built their own computer, can tell you what a pain it is to find and configure drivers for a lot of your hardware. In 5 minutes, Linux had my system up and running, and even setup my networked printer.
The irony here is that Linux is free, there is nothing to sell, vs Microsoft, a closed source multi-billion dollar company that charges the consumer to have literal spyware shoved into their systems, and you're out here defending it with "points" that are, in my experience, 100 percent the opposite of what you claim.
I put Mint on my mom's laptop, because it was easier and safer for her to use than Windows 11, and it has led to a lot fewer (zero really) issues for me to resolve on her computer.
OK, we all know "compatible with everything" was more so software and most hardware. Installing windows is not difficult at all, not like it used to be. A clean install, hit windows updates, 90% of drivers are done this way, no problem. Maybe back in XP days you needed the driver discs and whatnot.
I'm not trying to stick up for Microsoft, but you sound like you just hate the simplicity of it and are looking for the negatives. Windows has long been the "easier is" to use, install, or compatible with software. Most regular people are not going to want to do CLI for software, updates, or other functionality.
Linux is getting easier to install, easier to use (less CLI bs for the masses), and more compatible with applications. So that's a good thing. Like Mint, you pointed out being very easy, but also it looks functionally similar to Windows which helps with comfort using a new system.
Last thing I'll touch on. Windows ditched x86 hardware (32-bit) which was necessary, I think, due to RAM requirements. I was a tad disappointed with the 8th gen Intel rule, but that's easily bypassed even today for older hardware. That's for the TPM2.0 support, and again, from a security standpoint for the masses, it makes sense.
Not even close. I do a shitload of Windows 11 installs for work. Clean install on most machines involves going to the manufacturer's site and grabbing drivers. Windows update is horrible about getting them all, and it's really fucking slow to do it that way. Discs that come with your hardware are functionally useless, by the time you buy the hardware, that software is out of date, most of them just contain update applications to install the latest drivers from the manufacturer's site. Plus, who is bothering to put optical drives in their machines anymore?
Chances are, I've been using Windows longer than you've been alive. It's not simple anymore. It used to be, if your system crashed, you got a nice message telling you why, now you just get a frowny face and a fuck you. Used to be, you could use the control panel to admin your system from a centralized point, now you have fragmented "modern" settings menus that pester you with shit you don't need, and hide existing tools that work better (printer settings menu in win 11 is fucking garbage.)
It's not simple. Used to be you had an operating system. Now everything you see is a glorified system hogging web UI. Why make an efficient UI element when you can just load a fucking web browser for every little thing? And they wonder why 8GB of RAM is the bare minimum to use Windows today...
Lmao, OK bro... You must've used windows before 3.1 then, cuz I've been using windows since 3.1.1 with DOS.
I haven't had to do that for any PC in probably close to a decade unless I've got a Windows USB installer from media creation tool and config offline on older hardware so there's no chance to really detect anything. On the Dells, Lenovos, and even a few "custom" hardware, it's not been a problem for me. It certainly can be annoying, at times, but like you said, you've been doing it a long time, so have I. It's a non issue.
I agree on the RAM hogging reworked Edge Webview BS though. It's obnoxious to try and just web wrap everything. That's the latest douchification of any software, but I think the real reason behind it is users' data to track it and sell it. Anything on the web, through Chrome or Edge, now they get detailed insight on what you do and how you do it. They cry "uniform platform and latest updates", I say it's "you will own nothing and be happy"
Then clearly, you haven't done a proper clean install of Windows on a system in over a decade. I've yet to see a system actually install all of its devices from a Windows update. Hell, even Microsoft's own fucking hardware requires that you download and run the Surface app to get their drivers. I call bullshit. You either haven't done it, or you've recovered from the OEM recovery partition that has the shipped/updated version of the drivers from the previous install.
K dude. Not worth arguing over. I don't really care that much
Wasn't much of an argument on your end to begin with.
I just installed Windows 11 in a virtual machine for software development purposes.
Simple!
Touche on the ms account. During startup, I've gotten so used to F10+Shift and typing "oobe\bypassnro" to not require network access not ms account.
👌👍
It’s worse than macOS, Linux not so much
Yes and no. Security through obscurity doesn't innately mean its more secure. The recent AUR debacle proved that all it takes is a competent and malicious actor with the time and dedication to make something to target Linux. And why has nobody done it? Because the Linux market share is still absolutely pathetic compared to Windows, and is even abysmal when compared to MacOS. The returns on hacking a single Linux distro simply aren't worth the investment.
I would also argue it is far easier to unintentionally brick your system with Linux, and if people don't know what they're doing (see: most end users) they can and will very easily leave themselves more exposed in the long run than by using the spyware that is Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android.
This pretty effectively explains all your other bullet points with minimal extrapolation; everything else you listed requires significant know-how for the systems to function properly. These are the super-deep superusers. Some of them probably tossed a few bones to Microsoft and their end-users, but as others have pointed out individuals and companies have vastly different motivations.
Between those main ideas... Yeah..
Linux cannot leverage security through obscurity, since its source code is open, so this point is not pertinent.
Aur isn't Linux. Aur is a feature of a distro and not Linux code.
But I get your point: Aur is a product of dark-pattern app coding that flies in the face of established best practice, of ISO, and of SLSA. Had we not fired our mentors and documenters 20 years ago we would not have had such a Lost Boy generation of system engineers growing up in that wasteland without mentors to tell them why something is a really dumb idea.
Supply-chain exploits are preventable, but only if coders are led by proper system engineers who follow and enforce standards; but this is boring and costly so neither VC money nor the kids building these really bad tools are gonna magically support such a notion.
Obscurity as in there are how many flavors each with their own repos and dependencies? And which one are you using? So which vulnerabilities work on you? And are you even aware of them?
Hiding among the weeds obscures you from view.
And while AUR isn't Linux code and I definitely understand that, it is very much what you're talking about; if anybody bothered to RTFM, they'd have had as many AUR issues as I did when the shit hit the fan - precisely none. And I'm only on Arch because Cachy is basically iOS for Arch if you can read and utilize copy/paste functions, a dazzlingly high bar for entry that somehow even I am capable of.
Then again, I also know enough to have a clue as to how much I really don't know. Most people just assume magic box makes pretty pictures happen and anybody who knows how to change operating systems are literal wizards.
And so I would argue that being on Linux and the variety of flavors is, again, a form of obscurity in and of itself. Yeah, its all open source. Did you plot an attack for that distro? That file structure? How about a missing dependency? It simply isn't worth it to plot Linux malware at this market share just like 20 years ago it wasn't worth it to put malware on Macs; their use is still too obscure. Once critical mass is achieved, watch Ubuntu and Mint malware variants increase by an order of magnitude. Until then, the whales are all on Windows and Mac.
It's the invisible hand of the free market at work.
Linux better than Windows?
Lol
They're different.
Ask the world's biggest companies, who spend hundreds of millions annually to manage tens of thousands desktops for tens of thousands of users, which is the better desktop OS for their use-case.
This is such a tired, worn-out argument, that merely demonstrates an ignorance of how business operates.
Hell, Windows user, system, and software deployment management was mature before Linux even existed.
Each has their strengths - Linux is a better choice for general servers, which is why every virtualization platform runs on it, and also why massive file servers, web servers, etc, run Linux. Or for purpose-built solutions.
Also, a hacker recently got caught because he was using Windows, so...
You haven't explained why what hackers use means, anyway.
Those companies aren't paying for quality software, they are paying for support and vendor lock-in.
The familiarity of users is not really an argument for an OS being good though, is it? Neither is how deep you're into the ecosystem. Of course if you say to a windows admin that runs an AD forest with 10k users "you should just switch to Linux because it's better bro lol" you can't be taken seriously, but that is not because windows is "better".
Sorry what? I would barely call the mess of AD/AAD/Entra/Intune/whatever "mature" today, the registry is a shitshow, same with GPOs, and you're saying it was actually good in 1991, on Windows 3.0, 8 years before the first release of AD? Also, what software deployment?
And which are Windows'? Whenever someone says that "windows has its strengths", it always seems to boil down to either a) users know how to use it or b) some software I need is not available on Linux. Both are legitimate points and I don't fault anyone for running windows in those situations, but neither is a point for the OS per se. You listed several for Linux, I'm curious if you can name some for windows that are not the above.
So, what? Are you happy a "dangerous criminal" was stopped using undocumented intrusive telemetry or that it demonstrates that skids who use windows exist?
Define worse. For most people's use cases it's not.
Too many chefs in the kitchen spoils the hroth
Capitalism
Because you have a bias?
I think it's spelt 'opinion'.
Tomato, tomahto. OP is still presenting it as fact.
This is the only correct answer in this whole thread!