Is Microsoft still a threat?

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I know about these drivers, unfortunately support seems to be fading for the AMD proprietary drivers on newer distributions. I couldn't even get it to install on Manjaro on my desktop, but fortunately the open source driver seems to work fine in the games I've tested. I also wish Intel's drivers would improve because even desktop and web browsing performance are lacking on my Thinkpad, which uses an early Core i7 with the "Ironlake" graphics chipset.

I know Linux is actually quite popular in non desktop/laptop computers, especially since Android is based on the Linux kernel, and most web servers run some form of Linux. I just with GNU/Linux would become more popular as a desktop operating system, because the last few versions of Windoze have been s**t, and Apple certainly isn't going to be releasing OS X for normal PCs any time soon (don't even get me started on Hackintoshes, I set one up and it doesn't have sound drives, nor have I been able to run El Capitan).

Hackintoshes only works on some hardware, none of my computers right now would run it well but I had an EeePC that ran it alright.

You have a very narrow view of who uses Windows and why. You seem focussed on games and mobile but that is just a small part of what PCs do. You claim the business world is moving away from Windows and that is just not true. I'm a professional developer and have been for over 20 years and never have I touched anything that isn't Windows. Many companies use Windows as it has the software they need. I couldn't do my job on anything but Windows and trust me many others are in the same position. There is a whole world of computers outside of games and mobile that you don't know about.

I work freelance as a 3D modeller outside of my studies, and there's job-related stuff I can't do without Windows either. That's why Microsoft can release a pile of junk like Windows 10 and get away with it.

Think anybody could list some programs that Linux would need in order to be taken seriously as a desktop OS? Off the top of my head, I can think of:

- DirectX 10/11/12
- Microsoft Office
- iTunes
- Photoshop

AFAIK Photoshop and Microsoft can run in WINE, but iTunes doesn't work at all (I think due to driver issues), and games that use versions of DirectX past 9 have problems.

Well I don't know about 3D modeling but my dad works in telecommunications and based on his experience everything is going to Linux. There maybe positions that still call for Windows and I may have over looked them but I don't have as narrow of view as you might think. My post still has valid points, virtualization in the enterprise world has really advanced and I can think of a few companies that use it for its legacy Windows applications. I didn't mean it was going to happen over night but it is one of the many reasons why Windows may fail in the future. What I said wasn't the gospel written in stone, I am aware of many different environments but more and more companies are exploring Linux and just because you use Windows today, it might not be what you use tomorrow.

Not sure iTunes is any great loss. Banshee and VLC are more than capable media players.

I'm a Foobar2000 man myself, but I know a lot of people rely on iTunes if they own iOS devices. Speaking of which, a Linux-native port of Fb2k would be super, especially since WINE has annoying graphical bugs with the UI. As well, Fb2k's CPU usage with WINE is absurdly high, especially considering that it's a rather lightweight program when run natively on Windows.

Why is a business going to be interested in virtualisation and emulation? Why move from an OS that works perfectly fine to a new one just to run your apps using emulation? Businesses spend a lot of money on these apps and a big part of that is support, and how willing do you think companies are going to be to support their products when they are not running on the OS they were intended for? As well as support, training is a big thing for business. Most people can use Windows apps intuitively as they follow MS guidelines for a common UI. As well as achieving this through extensive guidelines, they also achieve it by ensure the UI components are part of the underlying Windows framework making it easier to write apps for, but ensuring those apps look and act like all other apps. MS apps are also big on interoperability. Windows (from 3.1 onwards) has always come with a framework for allow apps to communicate in a generic fashion, and to embed their data in each other or allow inter-app scripting or for one app to use another's functionality.

Business isn't interested in Linux and it just doesn't have the applications they need, they are happy under Windows as Microsoft create excellent applications. Not only Office apps but their development tools are the best in the industry that leverage underlying frameworks that (now) come with the OS that are very rich and flexible object-orientated frameworks that again tie into the MS philosophy of interoperability.

Now let's get on to documentation. No-one documents in as detailed and extensive a way as MS do, and (yet again) all apps (even non-MS ones) are documented the same way due to guidelines and tools, and this is invaluable to developers.

So why is MS not going away soon? There is simply no need. Windows is a great OS, MS apps are great, Windows apps in general are great, MS dev tools are superb. People use MS products because they are good, people use Linux because it is free and that's the uneasy truth. So yeah, you might call Microsoft "M$" and repeat the rubbish people usually say about Microsoft, but as I said, there is a whole world of computers you don't know anything about and MS are where they are because they are damn good. And that doesn't come for free. If your top priority is that everything should be free then stick with Linux, but businesses that have money to spend want what is best and that is why MS has put every penny I have ever earned into my pocket

I wonder why BSD-based OSes aren't so big on the desktop space. I honestly think the FreeBSD philosophy is better for a desktop OS than the Linux philosophy. Linux is great and all, but one of its biggest problems is that it has very few standards; Linux software changes all the time breaking backwards compatibility, and distros differ so much from one another that things you can easily do on one distro may be much harder to accomplish on another distro.

The OS X kernel is (mainly) derived from FreeBSD 5 (except for virtual memory, context-switching and nano kernel tasks, which are Mach-based).

Just to point out (& I realize it's beside the point you were making), Windows Server does just fine with Hyper-V, so if someone has their heart set on virtualizing on top of windows, well there ya' go.

But on topic, there are far too many desktop workstations out there and a workforce that only knows Windows for MS to be considered a has-been. Possibly as important though to their IT depts and security, is Active Directory & its many management features.

True, but OS X differs significantly from other BSD-derived operating systems, and it has its own APIs that aren't found in other OSes, namely Cocoa.