and Linux will not penetrate that market unless it makes it possible to release completely proprietary (even woefully crappy, move fast and break things) software easily. For most proprietary desktop software businesses, porting to Linux is not profitable.

There could be incentives for hobbyists and off-hours professionals to contribute to it for fun. However, there are huge missing gaps of usability for the wider population. Windows, macOS, iOS and Android guarantees good support for internationalized, proprietary-first, out-of-the box working OSes which disappear under apps.

Making Linux popular means commonizing things. It requires finding economic incentives to people to maintain unwanted parts not for fun but for money. It'll bring all the things that make the technical people avoid. It has to drive zealots and strong open-source people away. It happened with Android, it will happen to Linux, if somebody finds a way to monetize it for the consumer market.

Ultimately, I don't believe we can solve a socioeconomic problem surfacing on technical devices with technical solutions. Whatever fight against big tech has to be won on the streets, parliaments and courtrooms.

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roscas 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Whatever fight against big tech has to be won on the streets, parliaments and courtrooms.", let me add schools here.

The main problem is that Windows comes on laptops.

So how can we fight this? It might be hard to make this illegal as also Apple creates hardware and put's the software on it.

So the only way is to teach people about their options.

	▲	okanat 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't see this as the Windows being default on a laptop problem. It is a problem of letting companies grow too big. Google equally abuses their position with Android. We need to force big tech into splitting. No way around it. Adtech, IT infrastructure, operating system development, office software and browser development should never belong to the same business. It is not Windows on the laptops that makes Microsoft at the center of IT, it is all the software ecosystem around it which Microsoft also owns a huge slice of it. Throughout the 90s and 00s they were let to buy all of their competition that released software on various platforms. Everything from finance software, reporting software, Microsoft Office suite, Azure Active Directory all belongs to Microsoft. There is no competing with such behemoths. They are guaranteed to be abusive. Breaking this kind of monopoly first requires encouraging open standards. Got a government contract? You have to release every single detail of the output formats with all the features you support on them. Delivery of all sorts of software to public institutions can only be made with the full copyright assignment to public as well. This doesn't absolve Linux or any other third party OS developers from being competitive. Linux currently isn't competitive. It is 2 decades behind in many areas. However, a fair market economy will actively break behemoths like Microsoft and let other developers to compete with them. It should encourage actual competition and prevent cheap buyouts of competitive products. Similarly enforcing ownership rights is critical. If you cannot change software on a device you have, you don't own it. In a properly competitive environment you don't need the knowledge to install OSes. A competitive business would handle that for you or other smaller businesses providing such IT support would also pop up.

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LexiMax 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Linux will not penetrate that market unless it makes it possible to release completely proprietary (even woefully crappy, move fast and break things) software easily.

Underrated point.

Most Linux distros have historically catered to an ecosystem of open source software with the distro repository model, and cross-distro software distribution is probably the biggest papercut still remaining with Linux today.

Thank goodness things are so much better these days with Electron, Steam, Docker, FlatPak and WINE. But there are still gaps that need filling.

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Shorel 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Steam and WPS office work in Linux quite well.

In fact I was able to open some huge Excel files more easily in WPS than in MS Office (I have a work laptop that runs Windows 11).

But, I think you have a point, and that point is that the most stable Linux API to release software is actually the Win32 API provided by Wine. Native libraries treat backwards compatibility like a liability.

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ankurdhama 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Linux will not penetrate that market unless it makes it possible to release completely proprietary (even woefully crappy, move fast and break things) software easily

That sounds like skill issue (i.e the company developing the software doesn't have engineers experienced in developing apps for Linux). There are many proprietary software available for Linux.

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worik 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> For most proprietary desktop software businesses, porting to Linux is not profitable.

True, but mostly because they see software as a binary number on a disc.

If they saw software as an artefact to build, as Free Software does, this would not be a problem.

A pox on all their (propitiatory) houses. All they are all beneath contempt. They want money, above all. They love money, above all. They care not for their users

Timothy 6:10

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Seattle3503 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The hate Electron apps get is perhaps a good example of this.

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roscas 3 days ago | parent [-]

Any Electron app is a privacy nightmare as it connects to Google for "dictionary" download. You cannot disable this, unless you block redirector.gvt1.com domain.

	▲	jcgl 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I use opensnitch and has always wondered what that was. Thank you!
	▲	akimbostrawman a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I have not seen that in signal and element desktop apps. I imagine you can configure it.