As of last month Windows had an 86% market share of computer OS's (OSes, OSs??), with OSX in a distant second, and as far as I can tell, that's been the case for a very long time. How possible is it for Linux to rival Windows in the PC market by today? I'd imagine something would have to happen to hurt Microsoft's dominance in the field, possibly one of the number of federal anti-trust cases against it.
Is it possible for Linux (or something like it) to become a serious competitor to Windows?
I don't think it is a matter of stopping Microsoft. I think you would have to have a POD where some vendor wanted that market share.
Apple is content being an elite vendor, and has a loyal following who is willing to pay more. That has recently worked well enough to make them the most valuable company on the planet They are not interested in the low end of the market or enterprise users.
Linux is a DIY OS for users who really know what they are doing. That filters out most computer users who don't care about the OS and don't want to/don't know how to tinker with it. And it's free. There is no financial incentive.
Microsoft has been doing this for a long time, and has a mature infrastructure to support businesses. And a world full of low end hardware makers that will run it. In a way, Windows is its own greatest competitor, because there are multiple Windows iterations being used simultaneously today.
Microsoft and Apple have both had multiple difficult periods. If you are writing a timeline, you would need to pick a POD, and see how things roll out from there.
https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/operating-systems-market-share/#gref
Apple is content being an elite vendor, and has a loyal following who is willing to pay more. That has recently worked well enough to make them the most valuable company on the planet They are not interested in the low end of the market or enterprise users.
Linux is a DIY OS for users who really know what they are doing. That filters out most computer users who don't care about the OS and don't want to/don't know how to tinker with it. And it's free. There is no financial incentive.
Microsoft has been doing this for a long time, and has a mature infrastructure to support businesses. And a world full of low end hardware makers that will run it. In a way, Windows is its own greatest competitor, because there are multiple Windows iterations being used simultaneously today.
Microsoft and Apple have both had multiple difficult periods. If you are writing a timeline, you would need to pick a POD, and see how things roll out from there.
https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/operating-systems-market-share/#gref
The problem is that an OS is a natural monopoly. The thing is the cost of an O/S is nothing compared to the salary of a programmer. Windows comes out of MS-DOS which was a variant of IBM-DOS. When IBM first came on the scene it first nearly wiped everyone else out because of the IBM name. This set the standard for the OS. It might not have been the best standard but it was a standard. Once that happened businesses were even more unwilling to hire non MS-DOS programmers because they were so difficult to find. When it turned into Windows they followed the technology. Businesses became "Windows shops" because it was easier to find Windows programmers and it is easiest to maintain only one OS than two or more.
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The whole OS/2 Windows fiasco was a perfect opportunity for someone else to jump it.
IBM and Microsoft fought on the direction OS/2 should take and it took far longer than was expected. Then Windows 3.1 made a surprising breakthrough and all the software developers had to ditch their OS/2 versions and go back to Windows. It's what killed Word Perfect as the dominant word processing company.
If Windows 3.1 wasn't quite as successful. And if someone had another option lined up and pushed it, it might have taken off.
Let's say Dell loads GEM on all their computers, and then Digital Research figured out a way to put that GEM environment on top of a Unix variant, so fully GEM compliant software could now properly multitask...
I think that requires 2 PoDs. Windows 3.1 not taking off, and DR having a better way forward. Given those two, Dell, say, might well have jumped ship.
It's hard to remember now, but early versions of Windows were a real kludge, and not a major threat to anyone.
IBM and Microsoft fought on the direction OS/2 should take and it took far longer than was expected. Then Windows 3.1 made a surprising breakthrough and all the software developers had to ditch their OS/2 versions and go back to Windows. It's what killed Word Perfect as the dominant word processing company.
If Windows 3.1 wasn't quite as successful. And if someone had another option lined up and pushed it, it might have taken off.
Let's say Dell loads GEM on all their computers, and then Digital Research figured out a way to put that GEM environment on top of a Unix variant, so fully GEM compliant software could now properly multitask...
I think that requires 2 PoDs. Windows 3.1 not taking off, and DR having a better way forward. Given those two, Dell, say, might well have jumped ship.
It's hard to remember now, but early versions of Windows were a real kludge, and not a major threat to anyone.
I have used Linux to salvage old laptops , I don't find it as wonderful as the Linux promoters would have you believe. It has its uses, but If I bought a new computer that did not have any OS , I would pick windows because it is easy to use and it works from the word go . I have a Chromebook that doesn't use windows, it works fine but has limitations and is not a challenge to Window ether . Apple OS work well , but Apple products are over priced and will be for the foreseeable future. So , despite the bad feeling some people have for Microsoft , it will continue to be the main OS for many years to come.
The success of the IBM compatible PC was what made Microsoft so dominant.
IBM when they built their first PC they intend it a a short term project and bought in the part for other companies. intel Microsoft etc.
The only non-stand part was the bios. Without access to the bios code they did not think any one could copy the IBM pc.
Compaq and possible other paid a company to reverse engineer the IBM bios. What they asked to was the function of the bios not the code.
They then paid some to write new code to preform the same functions. This allowed to many companies to produce IBM compatible PCs.
You could stop Microsoft if the reserve engineering of the bios on the IBM pc failed.
The other factor that drive sales of IBM compatible pc later was lotus 123 spreadsheet software. No lotus 123 for ms-dos would limit their success.
There were other computers that might have made a better platform to build a standard for PCs on like.
Brief History of the Progression of Computer Technology
The IBM Compatible or Clone
https://www.hobbyprojects.com/progression-of-computer-technology/the-ibm-compatible-or-clone.html
The IBM PC That Broke IBM
https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/the-ibm-pc-that-broke-ibm/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha
IBM when they built their first PC they intend it a a short term project and bought in the part for other companies. intel Microsoft etc.
The only non-stand part was the bios. Without access to the bios code they did not think any one could copy the IBM pc.
Compaq and possible other paid a company to reverse engineer the IBM bios. What they asked to was the function of the bios not the code.
They then paid some to write new code to preform the same functions. This allowed to many companies to produce IBM compatible PCs.
You could stop Microsoft if the reserve engineering of the bios on the IBM pc failed.
The other factor that drive sales of IBM compatible pc later was lotus 123 spreadsheet software. No lotus 123 for ms-dos would limit their success.
There were other computers that might have made a better platform to build a standard for PCs on like.
Brief History of the Progression of Computer Technology
The IBM Compatible or Clone
https://www.hobbyprojects.com/progression-of-computer-technology/the-ibm-compatible-or-clone.html
The IBM PC That Broke IBM
https://hackaday.com/2017/12/11/the-ibm-pc-that-broke-ibm/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha
Word for windows 3.1 was not very popular when it came out first as it was very slow compared to Word Perfect for DOS.
When I worked in the University of Ulster in the early 1990s many of the secretaries made extra money typing up thesis and PHD for students.
Went the university removed Word-perfect for dos and replaced it with word for windows all the secretaries complain that the software could not keep up with their typing speed.
There were General protect fault that happen if windows 3.1 etc detected an non Ms-dos os.
This resulted in a court case against MS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#DR_DOS_6.0_/_Competition_from_Microsoft
Maybe Caldera could be the big software company?
Caldera vs Microsoft - the settlement
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/600488.stm
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I had forgotten that BSD was quite so late. It came out just before Windows 3.1
If you could speed that up by a year or so, that would be a great underlying OS to fulfill the role we're talking about.
If you could speed that up by a year or so, that would be a great underlying OS to fulfill the role we're talking about.
marathag
Banned
Caldera- was worse dealing with them, vs any other company my company dealt with during the DotCom boom and bust era. For a Novell spin off, they made me wish I could deal actual Novell people, and that was like popping an eye out with a spoon.
It's a matter of the network effect. If most people have windows and it takes extra man hours to make a cross platform software than to make it just a Windows exclusive, most businesses will just make Windows versions. In turn, that means more people turn to Windows instead of Linux because most of their favorite software is compatible with Windows. Which reinforces the cycle.
Savvy users can dual boot Windows and Linux.. but what's the point if every software you want to use is in Windows, but not all of them are in Linux?
Savvy users can dual boot Windows and Linux.. but what's the point if every software you want to use is in Windows, but not all of them are in Linux?
All that is need is a common file format between the apps in windows and those on Linux.
Apps like open office could save in their native format or in ms office formats.
All that counts is have the documents portable.
But then you have differences in formatting when swapping applications, which happen, and make sharing documents with customers or suppliers a potential problem. So we're back to square one: user wants to use the PC for Office, Minesweeper and a few other things. Still needs Office for commercial use, lacks the rest. Chooses Windows for simplicity and reliability.
As you say Novell might be better.
It could always be a lot worse of apple became the dominant player in the computer business.
The big chance for a Unix version to become the standard for PCs was when SCO (Santa Cruz Operations) was asked by IBM to come in and make a presentation. It was the PC teams choice for an operating system. The CEO of SCO at the time always made a game of getting to airline flights at the last minute as they were closing the door and getting them to open it to let him on board. On his flight to the IBM meeting he got there as the door had just clicked closed and they would not open the door to let him board. There were stories floating around the Unix world that there was an FAA inspector evaluating the airline operations that day so the airline followed the rules to the letter that day. He missed the flight and by the time he made the next one he had missed the meeting. IBM upper management decided that they didn't want to deal with a company run by someone with such a cavalier attitude. The next day was a meeting with a young developer who had gotten an entre because his motrher was on the board of the Seattle United Appeal with a senior IBM Exec. He showed up and made a competent presentation.
If the U.S. Justice department had taken a slightly different twist with the MS Antitrust case things might have been different. If the Gov't had insisted that there be a solid well defined boundry between the OS and the application layers so that developers would have a standard set of system calls, etc to work towards it would have created a much more fair arena for OS and application developers. As it was if a competitor found a way to work with a MicroSoft product the next set of patches or the next version would introduce subtle changes that would cause problems. For example Sun Microsystems developed a way to allow MSOffice to work on the Solaris OS. The next set of patches to Office introduced a subtle check to determine if the product was running on a Sun machine and cause Office to crash.