Beyond Jan 2020?

I was contemplating something last night. I am wondering if M$ has not actually created an opportunity for another company to take up where they have left off. And that is further Windows support.

Whenever you buy an OEM install disk etc. they advise you they do not support it. So what if someone else came in that would. Of course for a price but the user base could grow quickly. Also while M$ may not support newer hardware this new entity could. For arguments sake lets call it SkyLight.

SkyLight could be billed yearly at say $19.95. By default everything would go to their own servers for OS update(s). The rest of M$ update can remain with M$ for office apps etc.. I am sure there are even a few out of work people from M$ that could come over to work for SkyLight.

Being as M$ has abandoned the new hardware I am sure the market would grow quickly for SkyLight starting now. By 1/2020 it would increase dramatically. Once Win7 becomes abandonware that may even present other opportunities.

I am not sure if I am just dreaming but we all have to have a dream, right? Anyone else for Windows with SkyLight on their PC?

 

I'm for abandoning m$ Windows in its entirety by then, if another competent OS, or couple OSes, are created by then. Support is the hardest part in that, but Windows has made clear that they intend for service licenses for everyone.

If the steam OS and a couple others are ready by then, I'd gladly switch to a multi-boot scenario.

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We like to dream but AFAIK no one is willing take the R&D and $$$$$$ to promote to companies to create the software and drivers to support them. This is all fantasy talk so until someone brings out the $$$$ this is going nowhere fast.

Windows got the head start and got the software support so do you think they want to loose as well so there are two parties here - Microsoft itself and the Software companies that support Microsoft. One likes to think they can separate the other but that is all pure fantasy dreaming here as well.

You better look for the big $$$$ to do such Operations as well as the Software developers to support them otherwise don't even dream of that coming to fruition. Windows for all it's fault is Word Wide accepted as the "#1" to have or to emulate for other O/S be it iOS or Linux. As a Prime example look at the Malware that was spreading this past News cycle even Windows pirated got malware because they couldn't get protected in China. And you can guess from that which O/S was highly coveted to have and use - even if one was using pirated Windows O/S.

 

Just my two cents, but where I work (one of the biggest Fortune companies out there), we use a mix of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and (iirc?) some RedHat stuff. The Microsoft servers only run MS-specific stuff (SQL Server, IIS, Exchange, etc.), but most of the software we run goes onto either AIX servers or zLinux mainframes. Really, the only place in the company where MS is prevalent is on most workers' laptops, but that's really only because Windows 7 is familiar to most people and that's what HP sells on their Elitebooks (that said, some of the workers use OSX and Linux). Most of the software we run and operate is in-house stuff.

I can see a small shop running mostly MS on their servers, though any big company is going to have more of a mix of OSes and software (or no MS at all) for that space. That's the important space insofar as selling OSes goes since desktop OSes are becoming more and more irrelevant for Average Joe as everything moves out to "the Cloud(TM)" and any OS which can run a modern browser can run most anything a user would want.

 

There is no real O/S that will do all but my perspective is from the Consumer usage that Windows beat all the other O/S to the market faster and more accepted now and to cry over spill milk is too late. MS made their own O/S debacle but the other O/S didn't come up to the challenge so Windows grinds on that's the hard fact of Computing. Linux(UNIX) work good in server environment but wasn't able to translate it to the Consumer UI market which made it even harder to get accepted will so much commands that what I didn't like when I used Unix so much CLI that it ruined the fun of computing. Granted it was powerful but that isn't what at the end of the Day sells your product. If consumers can't use or learn it in a short day then why should they use it-and business follows consumer demands and that is why Windows came in and where it will stay.

 

You.... you do realize that desktop Linux distros come with GUIs, right? Ones where a user never has to open up a terminal if they don't want to.

But yeah, network effect is quite a powerful force. Not so much a good technical argument as to why something's better but rather a marketing argument.

 

But does one also realizes UI doesn't equate to the same commands that are different for each O/S as well. Linux has lost out to this already and yelling til blue in the face will not make it beat Windows. And also note Software support plays a big part in a O/S acceptance until Linux can gain a bigger market share of Paid Software it will not stop Windows. It's not only the O/S that is the reason why Windows can't be kicked of the top dog O/S market. Also everyone wants to be like Windows GUI and Microsoft Office so don't tell me they don't. And being late to the UI doesn't make them better then Windows.

 

So my Chevy is a bad car because the dashboard layout is different from BMW's?

Also, you're making some really strong assumptions about who wants to do what, without much in the way of backing it up. There are some distros which aim to look like Windows (ZorinOS) comes to mind), though I think you'd be hard pressed to make that claim with something like the Unity desktop, for example.

And I think you're still forgetting that most of these distros aren't aimed at the commercial market. Most are made by groups of people (or a single person) who's building an OS to their tastes, and later distributing it out on the Internet. There are some commercial Linux sellers out there (Redhat, OpenSUSE for example) and they're doing well enough in their markets (in a similar way as to how Apple is doing well in their environment; speaking of which, you know macOS is another unix-like OS, right?).