It’s really incredible how Microsoft is trying to drive people away, by:
Polluting what works.
Never actually finishing revamps in progress.
Pushing so much crap even normal users are conditioned to click Microsoft ‘features’ away as spam.
They don’t have to do anything! They could just freeze Windows 11 and gut development beyond security/api/hardware fixes, and rake in business “stuck on win32” dollars for eternity. But no, they are trying their absolute best to push folks to Android/iOS and open a window for stuff like the steam deck.
I bet we aren’t far from OEMs even getting sick of it, as shipping (admittedly, trashy self made) linux distros.
They aren’t trying to drive people away, they just have learned there’s nothing they can do that will substantially scare people away. So time to pivot to trying to milk that captive userbase for all they are worth. People who are leaving are leaving for mobile class devices and they learned in Windows 8/Windows Phone 7 that they have no idea how to tap into that market segment anyway.
Yes, ‘enthusiasts’ are going Linux but they are a rounding error, hardly worth trying to capture compared to the revenue capture from the rest of the market. Particularly since the enthusiast market tends to be a bigger pain in terms of being picky users who complain and simultaneously unlikely to just say ‘yes I’d like that service you just popped up in the notifications for only $5/month’.
Yes, ‘enthusiasts’ are going Linux but they are a rounding error, hardly worth trying to capture compared to the revenue capture from the rest of the market.
Agreed, it’s a rounding error.
But it won’t be if OEMs get fed up and start shipping it as an option, like Valve is already doing.
Microsoft has already done some questionably ‘OEM hostile’ things like pushing the Surface line, shutting out some OEM bloatware in favor of thier own, pollute performance-sensitive devices like handhelds, and such, and it seems MS isn’t slowing down.
In Late Stage Capitalism, companies have realized they can maximize their profits by making their product worse. Especially when they have a (near) monopoly.
Unless you are strictly talking next quarter’s immediate profits/stock price, this is just bad for Microsoft. They are sabotaging their already anticompetitive golden goose.
Late Stage Capitalism dictates they’d try to keep their lock-in, but this is more executive dysfunction.
I feel like Frankenstein didn’t know when to quit either. There’s a lot of companies twisting the knife into themselves because shareholders demand infinite growth, but creating systems that work in harmony are in exact opposition to that creedo, so until we eliminate the perverse cancerous idea of infinite growth, we won’t rid ourselves of these obviously bad actors that have themselves gilded with the guise of progress
Even infinite growth has been thrown out. The main objective seems to be ‘growth next few quarters’ like its a desperate act of survival; beyond that is the problem of whoever’s holding the bag then.
There are some companies still thinking long term, but money has definitely shifted to ‘bonkers short term’
That’s the problem, though. There’s always the next few quarters. They still ultimately demand and attempt infinite growth, they just never put any thought into how to do it sustainably, and the short-term fix is to start locking away existing features behind subscriptions, raising prices, putting ads in everywhere, cutting testing budgets, etc. Somehow the mentality turned into chasing infinite short-term gains
They could keep on developing updates to DirectX and whatever frameworks/libraries CAD software and the like might need. Keep the UI as is, but as 3rd party developers use the new APIs, Wine needs to adapt continuously.
A newer approach to cross-distribution compatibility is to use Linux namespace (container) technology, to run games in a more predictable environment, even when running on an arbitrary Linux distribution which might be old, new or unusually set up.
The Steam Runtime is also used by the Proton Steam Play compatibility tools, which run Windows games on Linux systems. Current versions of Proton (8.0 or newer) use the Steam Runtime 3 ‘sniper’ container runtime.
You target a version of the runtime when porting, and then ALL software ported to a given runtime will work on any host environment where you can support that runtime version
In fact, you can even run this on Windows if you want to avoid potentially messing up dependencies on the host OS, or avoid compatibility problems
Well that would explain why Steam works so awesomely in recent years. Even before I moved from my uber weird Gentoo setup to TumbleWeed, it got pretty stable at some point. Things just… worked. I mean the client itself largely, which some time ago was ultra buggy for me, whereas running games with Proton worked fine even then.
… upon the release of Windows 8 in 2012, Valve’s CEO Gabe Newell called it “a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space”, and discussed the possibility of promoting the open-source operating system Linux that would maintain “the openness of the platform”.
Gabe was worried about UWP (and Microsoft’s obvious plan for an App Store) back then. Remember, Windows Phone was a thing, and UWP/Windows 8 was shiny and new.
Microsoft failed spectacularly. Hilariously spectacularly.
But you aren’t wrong; Valve don’t want to hitch their business to the solvency of Windows.
Oh yeah, my poor mother was scammed into buying one of those, just about the most worthless piece of technology I’ve ever seen.
But yeah, it’s quite an amazing journey Gabe has been on. He led the Microsoft team that ported Doom to Windows 95 using DirectX, so he kind of put the first nails in the coffin that was OpenGL back in the day. By 2005 it was all DirectX, and then he clawed that Microsoft victory out of their hands starting in 2012 and 12 years later in 2024 I switched to Linux full time playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a Debian based system of all things. Kinda wild.
Gaming is the only thing I still find Windows useful for. I can neuter it to oblivion and just do literally everything else on linux better/easier, but (unfortunately) Cyberpunk 2077 and some other games still run much faster on neutered Windows, even compared to tricked out linux systems… At least on Nvidia cards.
It’s really incredible how Microsoft is trying to drive people away, by:
Polluting what works.
Never actually finishing revamps in progress.
Pushing so much crap even normal users are conditioned to click Microsoft ‘features’ away as spam.
They don’t have to do anything! They could just freeze Windows 11 and gut development beyond security/api/hardware fixes, and rake in business “stuck on win32” dollars for eternity. But no, they are trying their absolute best to push folks to Android/iOS and open a window for stuff like the steam deck.
I bet we aren’t far from OEMs even getting sick of it, as shipping (admittedly, trashy self made) linux distros.
They aren’t trying to drive people away, they just have learned there’s nothing they can do that will substantially scare people away. So time to pivot to trying to milk that captive userbase for all they are worth. People who are leaving are leaving for mobile class devices and they learned in Windows 8/Windows Phone 7 that they have no idea how to tap into that market segment anyway.
Yes, ‘enthusiasts’ are going Linux but they are a rounding error, hardly worth trying to capture compared to the revenue capture from the rest of the market. Particularly since the enthusiast market tends to be a bigger pain in terms of being picky users who complain and simultaneously unlikely to just say ‘yes I’d like that service you just popped up in the notifications for only $5/month’.
Agreed, it’s a rounding error.
But it won’t be if OEMs get fed up and start shipping it as an option, like Valve is already doing.
Microsoft has already done some questionably ‘OEM hostile’ things like pushing the Surface line, shutting out some OEM bloatware in favor of thier own, pollute performance-sensitive devices like handhelds, and such, and it seems MS isn’t slowing down.
Yup, most people would just use Mint if it came on their laptop and not really think about it.
In Late Stage Capitalism, companies have realized they can maximize their profits by making their product worse. Especially when they have a (near) monopoly.
Unless you are strictly talking next quarter’s immediate profits/stock price, this is just bad for Microsoft. They are sabotaging their already anticompetitive golden goose.
Late Stage Capitalism dictates they’d try to keep their lock-in, but this is more executive dysfunction.
I feel like Frankenstein didn’t know when to quit either. There’s a lot of companies twisting the knife into themselves because shareholders demand infinite growth, but creating systems that work in harmony are in exact opposition to that creedo, so until we eliminate the perverse cancerous idea of infinite growth, we won’t rid ourselves of these obviously bad actors that have themselves gilded with the guise of progress
Even infinite growth has been thrown out. The main objective seems to be ‘growth next few quarters’ like its a desperate act of survival; beyond that is the problem of whoever’s holding the bag then.
There are some companies still thinking long term, but money has definitely shifted to ‘bonkers short term’
That’s the problem, though. There’s always the next few quarters. They still ultimately demand and attempt infinite growth, they just never put any thought into how to do it sustainably, and the short-term fix is to start locking away existing features behind subscriptions, raising prices, putting ads in everywhere, cutting testing budgets, etc. Somehow the mentality turned into chasing infinite short-term gains
I mean…yeah. I said maximize profits, not long term sustainability. Executive bonuses are based on this quarter’s stock price.
The dysfunction comes from incentives to act badly. What makes it “Late Stage” is the complete lack of thought for the future.
My god, imagine a world where all software is produced by OEMs.
If they ever stop making updates, then Wine will catch up and you won’t actually need Windows anymore.
They could keep on developing updates to DirectX and whatever frameworks/libraries CAD software and the like might need. Keep the UI as is, but as 3rd party developers use the new APIs, Wine needs to adapt continuously.
Yeah. But the barrier of installing linux makes that a kind of non-concern now, they can only change so much without breaking Win32.
It’d be hilarious if Windows shrinks and Wine/Proton become the de facto dev target on linux (which is honestly where things are headed now).
Valve even has a docker container target that includes Wine for future proofed porting
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime
You target a version of the runtime when porting, and then ALL software ported to a given runtime will work on any host environment where you can support that runtime version
In fact, you can even run this on Windows if you want to avoid potentially messing up dependencies on the host OS, or avoid compatibility problems
Well that would explain why Steam works so awesomely in recent years. Even before I moved from my uber weird Gentoo setup to TumbleWeed, it got pretty stable at some point. Things just… worked. I mean the client itself largely, which some time ago was ultra buggy for me, whereas running games with Proton worked fine even then.
It’s hilarious. It’s like they’re eagerly waiting for Windows to self immolate, all prepped to stroll into the vacuum it leaves.
They’ve been preparing since 2012:
Gabe was worried about UWP (and Microsoft’s obvious plan for an App Store) back then. Remember, Windows Phone was a thing, and UWP/Windows 8 was shiny and new.
Microsoft failed spectacularly. Hilariously spectacularly.
But you aren’t wrong; Valve don’t want to hitch their business to the solvency of Windows.
Oh yeah, my poor mother was scammed into buying one of those, just about the most worthless piece of technology I’ve ever seen.
But yeah, it’s quite an amazing journey Gabe has been on. He led the Microsoft team that ported Doom to Windows 95 using DirectX, so he kind of put the first nails in the coffin that was OpenGL back in the day. By 2005 it was all DirectX, and then he clawed that Microsoft victory out of their hands starting in 2012 and 12 years later in 2024 I switched to Linux full time playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a Debian based system of all things. Kinda wild.
Gaming is the only thing I still find Windows useful for. I can neuter it to oblivion and just do literally everything else on linux better/easier, but (unfortunately) Cyberpunk 2077 and some other games still run much faster on neutered Windows, even compared to tricked out linux systems… At least on Nvidia cards.