Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. Same for many SE Asian, Eastern European, African and LatinoAmerican countries as well.
Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like. The fact that Windows could be pirated easily is the main factor that led to its ubiquity and allowed it to become a household name. Its rapid popularity in the '00s and early ‘10s cemented its status as the PC operating system. It is probably the same for Microsoft Office as well (it is still a part of many schools’ standard curricula).
The fact that Windows still remains pirateable to this day is perhaps intentional on Microsoft’s part.
Windows is largely successful because there was nothing else good enough for Intel to use back in the late 80s. They struck a partnership and it took off, indoctrinating people into the Windows way of life for decades to come. Most people hate new tech, it means that they have to learn something new that they’d rather not (akin to telling someone to write with the opposite hand than the one they’ve been using their entire lives), even if that thing is simple. Piracy just strengthened that already strong foothold that they had.
In most countries other than those in Western Europe, North America, Japan and China, computers arrived roughly a decade late. In fact PCs never ended up being used in the mainstream till the late 90’s/early '00s in India, a lot of options had matured by then.
“a lot of options” like what? You have OS X and Linux. OS X only runs on Apple hardware (not including Hackintoshes) and Linux is still seen as less desirable than Windows, because everyone and their grandmother has used Windows at some point in their lives. They’ve probably never even heard of Linux. If they’ve never heard of Linux, they’ve definitely never heard of BSD or Solaris.
By the 2000s Microsoft was the dominant force in computing, Apple was suffering and only regained its foothold in the market after Steve Jobs came back in 97,and it still took years to become popular. Apple was always seen as a premium product so of course it wouldn’t be popular in countries like India. The only way you can usually get Linux on a PC is to build it yourself and install it, or buy it from the very few manufacturers that actually sell a computer with it pre-installed. So what does that leave? Windows.
Specifically talking about India, people started buying PCs when they first used it in offices or cyber cafes back in early 00s. And windows was the obvious best choice. Apart from that, the GUI was always very convenient for home use cases too.
Look man, I think most people would agree that if you want a good gaming experience and you can’t afford a good PC or gaming laptop then you’re either going to the internet cafe or getting a console.
the major OEMs basically get paid to put windows on the systems they sell. they get the licenses at a deep discount, then top that off with the money coming in for the preinstalled garbage.
Or Windows just works on so much different hardware. You can build a PC with the weirdest mix and match of hardware, and Windows will just… work. Also I bought a Microsoft sidewinder wheel from 1998 from a thrift store for $8, plugged it into my Windows 10 PC, and it just worked. Nothing special was needed. 1998 hardware literally plug and play on Windows 10 (and I’ve tested it on 11, and it works the same).
You can install MacOS on non-Apple hardware, but you need to buy very specific hardware, and download very specific hacks, to make it work.
Even Linux only works on specific hardware. This entire thread has people talking about how broken Linux is on their setups. The suggestions are to buy specific hardware and run very specific versions of Linux.
Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT.
…
Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like.
While i somewhat agree with your overall statement, this part is just wrong.
Linux in the late 1990s and 2000s was very different from today, where you just plug in a CD/USB and select your region.
Linux back then was very nerdy, you had to choose your hardware first to make sure there was a linux driver and the installation process was very difficult, especially before plug&play where you had to know which IRQs and slots you had to use for network, sound and videocard to avoid conflicts.
I remember trying to install Linux from a CD, only to work my war from one error message to the next because it did not like my videocard, soundcard or both.
Also, what would you do with a linux pc at home or at work if it could not run word, excel, duke nukem 3D, TTD, programs you knew from work/school or software you could pirate from your friends?
Linux’s development would have accelerated a lot had there been more demand. There wasn’t enough demand because pirated Windows was getting the work done.
I don’t think that necessarily holds true for OSS. The average user with no development experience wanting to use an open source project doesn’t mean it will always develop faster.
In the 90s there where a lot more OS available to compete agains windows, who already had existing software (sometimes better and more capable) to compete with windows: MacOS (Popular in print, layout), BeOS, OS2/warp (tried to replace windows), Amiga OS (best for video editing work at the time), Atari, Novell Netware.
It’s not exactly like people where desperate for another OS at this point in the late 90s/early 2000s.
I once destroyed a CRT monitor by misconfiguring X11.
Nowadays Linux just works to the point where my 72 year old mother is able to deal with Pop_OS without issue.
But man, those early days of unstable drivers, slow dial-up internet, and navigating through Usenet and IRC for decent support was a nightmarish labor of love.
The silky smoothness that we have now was built on caffeine and the backs of millions of greybeards.
(For the record: “Greybeard” is a nerdy term of endearment that I’ve seen adopted by people identifying all across the rainbow. Kinda like dwarfs on Discworld).
Its not random thoughts, its the reality and msft knows it and they let it happened same as adobe with photoshop. They let students pirate their softwares so that by the time they graduated and enter the work field, they’d keep using it in their new job/company, where they would charge real expensive money for the license
Out of the 4 laptops i used recently, 3 of them were using a pirated version of windows. 1 of them(my laptop) didnt use a pirated version of windows because it was already paid when i bought the laptop. I thought all laptops(that are not using macos or linux) came with windows preistalled
Microsoft has openly encouraged piracy as far back as the 90s. I remember an interview with Gates where he said as much.
This has been part of Microsoft’s business model, especially for Windows and Office for 30 years. They actively encouraged pirating the software to ensure it cemented itself as the defacto standard in homes and offices with a view that one day users would have no choice but pay for it. For over 20 years now this has been part of the bigger desktop-as-a-service goal.
Soon businesses and home users will have no choice but to remotely log into a Windows system that is hosted in a datacentre and provided by Microsoft or one of their partners. Local installs will be a thing of the past. Think Citrix Presentation Server and thin clients which is where this whole idea started a long time ago.
Nah that’s just for high security government systems, if you run a small business or something you might not want to fuck around with thin clients unless you’re working directly with big databases and stuff
Even the MPAA and RIAA know piracy fuels culture and makes golden hits into platinum hits and boost sequel album sales and auxiliary items (toys and lunchboxes).
They can’t help themselves because to the execs and shareholders, it feels like lost sales and theft. And the DRM market capitalizes on those feelings.
I think this is really true. In 2000s people used to pirate everything (at least where I am from). And even now, apple marketshare is never big compared to US for example.
I think Windows is successful because it was defacto preinstalled on all computers. Even people in third world countries are buying computers whole, not a basket of parts to assemble.
Also software. You’re not going to assemble a computer, install Linux, and then not be able to run anything on it. You want to run all the software that was built to run on Windows, which was built to run on Windows because it came installed on every computer, etc. (Remember Linux back then really couldn’t run all that much. No office? No games? You’re toast.)
LOL Linux runs the world. https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=mZXx5oErnIc
The problem was that it was not user-friendly, and you needed to know how to use it. Now things are changing and seems it can run games even faster.
I don’t mind talking about Windows, Apple or Linux, but when someone says Linux is just for a “toast”… makes me think of how many devices runs Linux and not only toasters which I’m sure they also do if there is some screen display or Wi-Fi features.
Yeah, Windows is easier because it don’t have many distros and when you buy a new PC it already comes with it (no need to boot a Live ISO to install from 0) so that helps people to get started with their first OS, a Windows, so that’s why most people know how to use Windows.
None of that matters if a Linux distro was preinstalled
It’s not about difficulty
Also that article isn’t very good
For instance; installing software on windows involves going to the command line and telling it to install a package
But they frame it as going online and downloading from a website; you can do that on either OS even though it’s not something you should ever do. It’s just user error
But they frame it as going online and downloading from a website; you can do that on either OS even though it’s not something you should ever do. It’s just user error
I don’t think those regular users uses the terminal to install their apps. winget is 3 years old… and is much easier and faster to just run sudo pacman -Syu or sudo apt update ; sudo apt upgrade (no via Windows updates that forces you to do stuff you don’t want to). Many things changes… and the freedom that Linux gives to use what you like as you like is missing on Windows, starting with the Desktop Environment… KDE has many more features, faster and uses less RAM than any Windows.
Not the same amount of people will do that, if they learn that any app is installed via the same app, pamac or whatever Ubuntu has to install those packages. It’s harder for them to look outside that app and if they do, probably, and I hope they will get into the community forums. Where they can get to know how that works with transparency, something missing on Windows.
But yeah, virus and scams exists everywhere, just that Linux users don’t need to download a .exe or .msi to install anything by default, as far as I know on people around me, they don’t know winget exist, even the most gamer.
Not really. Offices were one of the major early adopters of computers and windows is perfect for them with plethora of features they offered right out of the package.
Windows GUI was groundbreaking, their text processing and excel was a game changer, and windows doesn’t allow you to delete your own boot partition with a sudo command so it was pretty idiot proof.
Once windows had the majority of marketshare, it was pretty obvious that whoever was buying PCs (back in the day it was more that a dad got a PC from his office or bought one which was similar), got it with windows.
… Bill Gates said “And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
The practice allowed Microsoft to gain some dominance over the Chinese market and only then taking measures against unauthorized copies. In 2008, by means of the Windows update mechanism, a verification program called “Windows Genuine Advantage” (WGA) was downloaded and installed. When WGA detects that the copy of Windows is not genuine, it periodically turns the user’s screen black. This behavior angered users and generated complaints in China with a lawyer stating that “Microsoft uses its monopoly to bundle its updates with the validation programs and forces its users to verify the genuineness of their software”.
… the documents identified open-source software, and in particular the Linux operating system, as a major threat to Microsoft’s domination of the software industry, and suggested tactics Microsoft could use to disrupt the progress of open-source software.
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⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Windows is largely successful because there was nothing else good enough for Intel to use back in the late 80s. They struck a partnership and it took off, indoctrinating people into the Windows way of life for decades to come. Most people hate new tech, it means that they have to learn something new that they’d rather not (akin to telling someone to write with the opposite hand than the one they’ve been using their entire lives), even if that thing is simple. Piracy just strengthened that already strong foothold that they had.
In most countries other than those in Western Europe, North America, Japan and China, computers arrived roughly a decade late. In fact PCs never ended up being used in the mainstream till the late 90’s/early '00s in India, a lot of options had matured by then.
“a lot of options” like what? You have OS X and Linux. OS X only runs on Apple hardware (not including Hackintoshes) and Linux is still seen as less desirable than Windows, because everyone and their grandmother has used Windows at some point in their lives. They’ve probably never even heard of Linux. If they’ve never heard of Linux, they’ve definitely never heard of BSD or Solaris.
By the 2000s Microsoft was the dominant force in computing, Apple was suffering and only regained its foothold in the market after Steve Jobs came back in 97,and it still took years to become popular. Apple was always seen as a premium product so of course it wouldn’t be popular in countries like India. The only way you can usually get Linux on a PC is to build it yourself and install it, or buy it from the very few manufacturers that actually sell a computer with it pre-installed. So what does that leave? Windows.
Specifically talking about India, people started buying PCs when they first used it in offices or cyber cafes back in early 00s. And windows was the obvious best choice. Apart from that, the GUI was always very convenient for home use cases too.
Look man, I think most people would agree that if you want a good gaming experience and you can’t afford a good PC or gaming laptop then you’re either going to the internet cafe or getting a console.
windows is largely successful because of oems.
the major OEMs basically get paid to put windows on the systems they sell. they get the licenses at a deep discount, then top that off with the money coming in for the preinstalled garbage.
I think it is the other way around; easy pirate versions appeared becuz windows was popular, providing access to those who can’t afford.
Or Windows just works on so much different hardware. You can build a PC with the weirdest mix and match of hardware, and Windows will just… work. Also I bought a Microsoft sidewinder wheel from 1998 from a thrift store for $8, plugged it into my Windows 10 PC, and it just worked. Nothing special was needed. 1998 hardware literally plug and play on Windows 10 (and I’ve tested it on 11, and it works the same).
You can install MacOS on non-Apple hardware, but you need to buy very specific hardware, and download very specific hacks, to make it work.
Even Linux only works on specific hardware. This entire thread has people talking about how broken Linux is on their setups. The suggestions are to buy specific hardware and run very specific versions of Linux.
While i somewhat agree with your overall statement, this part is just wrong. Linux in the late 1990s and 2000s was very different from today, where you just plug in a CD/USB and select your region. Linux back then was very nerdy, you had to choose your hardware first to make sure there was a linux driver and the installation process was very difficult, especially before plug&play where you had to know which IRQs and slots you had to use for network, sound and videocard to avoid conflicts. I remember trying to install Linux from a CD, only to work my war from one error message to the next because it did not like my videocard, soundcard or both.
Also, what would you do with a linux pc at home or at work if it could not run word, excel, duke nukem 3D, TTD, programs you knew from work/school or software you could pirate from your friends?
Linux’s development would have accelerated a lot had there been more demand. There wasn’t enough demand because pirated Windows was getting the work done.
I don’t think that necessarily holds true for OSS. The average user with no development experience wanting to use an open source project doesn’t mean it will always develop faster.
In the 90s there where a lot more OS available to compete agains windows, who already had existing software (sometimes better and more capable) to compete with windows: MacOS (Popular in print, layout), BeOS, OS2/warp (tried to replace windows), Amiga OS (best for video editing work at the time), Atari, Novell Netware.
It’s not exactly like people where desperate for another OS at this point in the late 90s/early 2000s.
I remember trying to get wireless working and having ndiswrapper wrap the windows drivers and having it fail epically
PTSD…
I once destroyed a CRT monitor by misconfiguring X11.
Nowadays Linux just works to the point where my 72 year old mother is able to deal with Pop_OS without issue.
But man, those early days of unstable drivers, slow dial-up internet, and navigating through Usenet and IRC for decent support was a nightmarish labor of love.
The silky smoothness that we have now was built on caffeine and the backs of millions of greybeards.
(For the record: “Greybeard” is a nerdy term of endearment that I’ve seen adopted by people identifying all across the rainbow. Kinda like dwarfs on Discworld).
Greybeard is also the name for an experienced DRG player
Its not random thoughts, its the reality and msft knows it and they let it happened same as adobe with photoshop. They let students pirate their softwares so that by the time they graduated and enter the work field, they’d keep using it in their new job/company, where they would charge real expensive money for the license
Out of the 4 laptops i used recently, 3 of them were using a pirated version of windows. 1 of them(my laptop) didnt use a pirated version of windows because it was already paid when i bought the laptop. I thought all laptops(that are not using macos or linux) came with windows preistalled
Microsoft has openly encouraged piracy as far back as the 90s. I remember an interview with Gates where he said as much.
This has been part of Microsoft’s business model, especially for Windows and Office for 30 years. They actively encouraged pirating the software to ensure it cemented itself as the defacto standard in homes and offices with a view that one day users would have no choice but pay for it. For over 20 years now this has been part of the bigger desktop-as-a-service goal.
Soon businesses and home users will have no choice but to remotely log into a Windows system that is hosted in a datacentre and provided by Microsoft or one of their partners. Local installs will be a thing of the past. Think Citrix Presentation Server and thin clients which is where this whole idea started a long time ago.
Nah that’s just for high security government systems, if you run a small business or something you might not want to fuck around with thin clients unless you’re working directly with big databases and stuff
One of the zillion reasons why piracy is morally correct and the exact reason I will never pirate. (use open source instead)
1111111111111.
Just saying.
…and they knew it from the beginning.
Even the MPAA and RIAA know piracy fuels culture and makes golden hits into platinum hits and boost sequel album sales and auxiliary items (toys and lunchboxes).
They can’t help themselves because to the execs and shareholders, it feels like lost sales and theft. And the DRM market capitalizes on those feelings.
I think this is really true. In 2000s people used to pirate everything (at least where I am from). And even now, apple marketshare is never big compared to US for example.
microsoft owns github
microsoft owns windows
mas is used to pirate windows
mas is hosted on github
hmmmm…
I think Windows is successful because it was defacto preinstalled on all computers. Even people in third world countries are buying computers whole, not a basket of parts to assemble.
Also software. You’re not going to assemble a computer, install Linux, and then not be able to run anything on it. You want to run all the software that was built to run on Windows, which was built to run on Windows because it came installed on every computer, etc. (Remember Linux back then really couldn’t run all that much. No office? No games? You’re toast.)
Not true. People wouldn’t buy a pre-installed windows because its much way expensive. They just buy a preinstalled pirated windows instead.
LOL Linux runs the world. https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=mZXx5oErnIc
The problem was that it was not user-friendly, and you needed to know how to use it. Now things are changing and seems it can run games even faster.
Can’t wait for Linux to be mainstream in 2085!
The year 7.776769 E+6016(2085! is about 7.776769 E+6016 years after the death of the universe
You’re funny xD, but it is already, just not for normal desktop users.
So servers? Yes we all know that.
Hahaha, the problem is the things you don’t know, not only on servers, on more devices that you ignore and skip just to make fun of it right now.
Linux users can’t stop talking about Linux.
I don’t mind talking about Windows, Apple or Linux, but when someone says Linux is just for a “toast”… makes me think of how many devices runs Linux and not only toasters which I’m sure they also do if there is some screen display or Wi-Fi features.
So I reply to them if they talk about it, yeah.
It wasn’t harder than Windows
Windows was preinstalled
Now Windows also has the benefit of user base
Yeah, Windows is easier because it don’t have many distros and when you buy a new PC it already comes with it (no need to boot a Live ISO to install from 0) so that helps people to get started with their first OS, a Windows, so that’s why most people know how to use Windows.
You might want to read this awesome blog: https://duncanlock.net/blog/2022/04/06/using-windows-after-15-years-on-linux/
None of that matters if a Linux distro was preinstalled
It’s not about difficulty
Also that article isn’t very good
For instance; installing software on windows involves going to the command line and telling it to install a package
But they frame it as going online and downloading from a website; you can do that on either OS even though it’s not something you should ever do. It’s just user error
I don’t think those regular users uses the terminal to install their apps.
wingetis 3 years old… and is much easier and faster to just runsudo pacman -Syuorsudo apt update ; sudo apt upgrade(no via Windows updates that forces you to do stuff you don’t want to). Many things changes… and the freedom that Linux gives to use what you like as you like is missing on Windows, starting with the Desktop Environment… KDE has many more features, faster and uses less RAM than any Windows.Most regular users on Windows stills goes on “google.com” and search for their programs, and then things like this happens: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/google-hosted-malvertising-leads-to-fake-keepass-site-that-looks-genuine/
😔
And on Linux they would do the same
Not the same amount of people will do that, if they learn that any app is installed via the same app,
pamacor whatever Ubuntu has to install those packages. It’s harder for them to look outside that app and if they do, probably, and I hope they will get into the community forums. Where they can get to know how that works with transparency, something missing on Windows.But yeah, virus and scams exists everywhere, just that Linux users don’t need to download a
.exeor.msito install anything by default, as far as I know on people around me, they don’t knowwingetexist, even the most gamer.Not really. Offices were one of the major early adopters of computers and windows is perfect for them with plethora of features they offered right out of the package.
Windows GUI was groundbreaking, their text processing and excel was a game changer, and windows doesn’t allow you to delete your own boot partition with a sudo command so it was pretty idiot proof.
Once windows had the majority of marketshare, it was pretty obvious that whoever was buying PCs (back in the day it was more that a dad got a PC from his office or bought one which was similar), got it with windows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents