This comment was wildly invalid even years ago.

See proton, heroic launcher, etc, etc.

Cyberpunks own benchmarking suite runs 30% faster (for whatever reason; my wintendo install is stock and nothing but nvidia drivers) on the ntfs windows partition on Arch.

No it makes no sense at all. I do my gaming on Arch.

Windows sucks and I hope to see the demise of Microsoft during my lifetime(crosses fingers).

Most of their revenue is tied to other stuff though

1. Productivity / Business (~43%)

Includes:

Microsoft 365 (Office, Teams) - these can be likely ported to Linux if they're not already since they also work on MacOS? LinkedIn Dynamics (ERP/CRM)

~$120.8B

2. Cloud (~38%)

Includes:

Azure (runs on mostly linux, and moving cloud provider as a big corp is expensive, I don't see massive companies stuck in azure infra moving from it) Server products (Windows Server, SQL Server, etc.)

~$106.3B

I fully support the demise of Windows as an OS

But microsoft as a company has shifted away from Windows as their source of revenue, and will probably not be impacted too badly if it were to die completely.

The French move will hit the Productivity/ Business segment. Their motivation is to limit extra-European dependence so they will look elsewhere for this.

Similar to Germany with its DeutschlandStack and some migrations already ongoing.

> Microsoft 365 (Office, Teams) - these can be likely ported to Linux if they're not already since they also work on MacOS?

I thought the Mac versions were not a full fledged port and were missing features present in Windows.

You’re correct.

Azure services mostly run on Windows via Hyper-V, sans core networking.

I was under the impression anticheat is the only thing stopping linux gaming from taking over

Anticheat and support for joysticks, steering wheels, VR, etc. is one factor for sure. I would say almost all games people play, which dont fall in the above categories, run out of the box with no or very minor tweaks needed (no terminal).

Yes it's true

Actually, it's the exact opposite. There is really no alternative to PowerPoint on Linux, unfortunately. I'm saying this as someone who's used Linux for 20 years now.

I haven’t seen power point used professionally for over a decade. All google (though I’ve made the odd prezi)

Are you just hanging around California startups? I work in big consulting and am inside hundreds of the largest companies in the US, everyone of which is fully Microsoft and only ever seen PowerPoint. I’m in dozens of teams meetings a week across as many organizations and have been in 2 Google meets meeting in the last decade, both of which were California fintech startups.

Yes, most people use MS where I live, too. But most of them only scratch the surface. To this thread's point, 99% of PowerPoint presentations I've seen are just walls of text on a bunch of slides, with the occasional illegible graph.

Now I'm not saying I actually know my way around PPT or that I'm some presentation whiz, but this can probably be done with the browser version. Just like the "new" Outlook is simply a new Edge skin.

I work for a company that has drunk the MS Kool-Aid and then went back for a refill, yet I've never had any issue using the web version of the suite ever since it came out. I don't even run Windows on my work laptop. Teams is the only app that seems marginally better in its heavy version (heh), since it supports separate windows for the calls.

I've been out of the powerpoint loop myself for almost 20 years too; does it actually have any valuable functionality that you can't get on the free alternatives?

European startups mostly.

Every single morning on the train to work, I watch people put finishing touches on PowerPoint presentations.

I've worked in academia for years (in computer vision labs) and I can confidently say that PowerPoint is the best tool to prepare research presentations.

At least in my field, 90% of presentations are Beamer. PowerPoint is bad at equations just like Word. Besides easily integrating video/animations I can't think of why it would be better.

Could you go into details about why you think this?

I haven't used PowerPoint in years as I think my needs are pretty simple but I wonder what I'm missing.

I can see that the Microsoft ecosystem gives control on who can view files and provides collaboration and control. Both of which would be useful in the corporate world.

Is there's somethnig other than that or is it just ease of use?

For the most part I see people using MS Office tools because it's what they are familar with. They're familar with it because it's the only thing their IT department will allow them to use.

I continue to be impressed as to how much of a bubble HN people reside in. A very small bubble.

Perhaps! I’m not in the US for what it’s worth

I'm actually constantly surprised by the diversity of experiences I'm seeing here. It's very much not a small bubble, at least not in comparison to any other social network/activity in my life.

Probably just a matter of time, it’s possible the friction will create opportunities. Something in the spirit of iaPresenter, md first would be awesome.

At the moment i have long html page with key event for next and previous, tiny script to check on specif markup for autoscroll.

Huh? There's a ton of PowerPoint alternatives that work on Linux. LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, Collabora Office, Calligra Stage, Google Slides, the online version of PowerPoint, more techy things like LaTeX Beamer or Reveal.js. Maybe these don't have perfect PowerPoint compatibility, or some niche PowerPoint feature you need but there's plenty of slide deck making options that work on Linux.

I tried LibreOffice (Impress) for something simple and it was not good - in fact it would just freeze. Although it did have a feature on MacOS that PowerPoint for Mac didn't, so I ended up using Impress for the first little bit and then PowerPoint for the rest.

And then Canva, Prezi, etc. I can't understand the idea that there's no alternative to PowerPoint on Linux either.

Presentation has been a solved problem for more than 2 decades already.

Whenever we are talking migration out of the windows world, there is always a group of MS fanboys that pretend that you can't replace a software with another one if it doesn't even have the exact same set of features down to the smallest details while totally ignoring the interesting features the replacement can have.

The reality is there are never 1:1 replacement and Microsoft would have never had any sort of success in the office area to begin with that sort of nitpicking.

I'd think the only Office part difficult to replace is Excel. It has a lot of functionality, provides a lot of value and is the workhorse of most business processes I see. Now how do you replace THAT?

Libre Office Impress does all the things that PowerPoint is used for at my workplace.

I'm guessing it's not compatible with Teams and that MS make sure it doesn't work properly with LO produced PPT files.

If there’s no alternative to PowerPoint, that should be treated as a plus, not as a problem.

Run your Windows games on Linux: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/nearly-90-percen...

My Linux computer now is my main gaming machine. I purged my Windows partition a couple of years ago and haven't had the need to look back yet.

1. total abandonment of desktop as a platform, and the massive hurdles to distribute desktop software

2. move to Cloud and use electron wrappers because not even MS can bother making native apps on their shitty platform

3. Make Windows so shit that even hardcore power users can’t debloat it.

The moat of Windows is gone. Games, office work, all the classic arguments, have basically vanished in the last 5-10 years. The only surprise is why more people don’t get in the life rafts, when the ship is listing at 45 degrees. Is it because there’s still an army of workers and institutional inertia trained in Active Directory?

Most consumers are primarily on mobile devices.

Windows persists in the workplace where the cost to replace it is significantly higher than keeping it, and keeping it doesn't cost much to begin with. Part of that cost would be training, yes.

The other part is finding compliant equivalents for the rest of the software they use. If the MFA, VPN, chat, email, etc. are all already vetted and designed to be compatible, there's no way they'd want to switch. Many policies regarding proprietary information disclosure are also built off this ecosystem and the certifications Microsoft's cloud already has.

4. putting Mac users in charge of the UI who are genuinely incapable of understanding how they are breaking continuity.

That's like staffing a neurosurgery department with dentists. Or a dental clinic with neurosurgeons, it does not matter, you can have decades of experience working with a drill in the head area and still be the wrong person for the job.

Continuity with what exactly? IME Windows has been a mish mash of GUI frameworks to the point you teleport through time whenever you click around in control panel, since.. the XP era? I mean, I don’t disagree with you in principle, but the timing is like saying horse carriages aren’t keeping up with cars because they’re designed by car users. The Satya era can be good or bad depending on who you ask, but that’s for Microsoft as a company – windows as a product has had no coherence for a decade+, and that’s generous.

> Is it because there’s still an army of workers and institutional inertia trained in Active Directory?

Yes, that is a huge driver of inertia. I've had to battle that in so many different companies now, and it is absolutely aggravating. That on top of comments about how Linux sucks from someone who either has never used it, or has only used it on a server and thinks that is all Linux has to offer, are absolutely soul destroying.

Except today games all work and invariably markedly better on Linux. Even the games that stopped working on Windows for me work great, like https://www.protondb.com/app/2008510

The vast majority of my Steam library runs on Mint without issues (and some older games run actually smoother on Linux than they did on Windows).

Not to mention my very large emulation library.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

They offer a full ecosystem where everything integrates with everything else, especially the central pillar of identity. But you will pay for that in more ways than just money or lockin. If you work with their solutions, the more you dig into them with the help of MS people, the scarier it gets. So many "holy cow" moments.

Businesses choose it because it works with what they already have, the existing tools, processes, skills and because Microsoft was always a safe choice by virtue of being almost implicit. They choose Microsoft because they're already deep into Microsoft, it's the option carrying the lowest risk and lowest short term cost.

Switching to Linux is complex, expensive and risky. The transition is long and expensive, plagued with teething issues, your MS focused knowledge is redundant, the patience of your sponsor can run out before the move delivers anything of impact. Who wants to take such risks when they can just not rock the boat and call it a day?

What Microsoftoffer is having only one contact / contract for a huge fraction of the IT needs of a company so I can understand it solves some headache vs building stuff from many bricks with as many contracts.

Microsoft offers ease of integration, in exchange for your company to be locked in forever in their domain.