Comment by skeaker
6 days ago
> Honest question: Why?
Because it works really well for a corporate environment where you require central management for your devices. Yes, the environments of Linux and Windows are different as you said, and unfortunately that means one will generally be better than the other within certain contexts. The corporate workstation use case is a gigantic one that Windows is currently dominating in, and this is terrible for Linux adoption because it means to get a job at a place that uses Windows you are incentivized to use it yourself so you can learn it. It also means that schools (which are often run like businesses internally) are way more likely to use it, so new students that are just learning how to use a computer are coming up on Windows.
Linux is indeed very different from Windows and that's fine, that isn't a problem at all and it has plenty of upsides. What should be clear is that this particular use case is a remarkable downside for Linux, and the mass adoption of Windows in the majority of businesses should make that self evident. Realistically Linux can and absolutely is used in business contexts in the same way as Windows (hence why France is going ahead with it), but it isn't as optimized for it as Windows is, when it totally could be. Macs have had some robust management platforms made for them that I've found pretty similar to AD for example. If someone developed a straight out AD clone for Linux that functioned more or less the same on the front-end it would be huge for Linux adoption in my opinion. Hopefully that answers your question.
I'm not up on my current windows security, but windows has been dominating for decades, much of which it's security was non existent, being originally a single user system. Linux being a nix is multi user from the ground up.
So you seem to be making a conclusion that isn't warranted.
That isn't to say any of this is wrong per se. Just that being the best does not necessarily lead to success.
Fair enough, but I think many people miss that something can be suboptimal in one way and very optimal in another. As an example, plenty of people here hail ffmpeg as the most optimal way to convert videos between formats, and for the technically inclined it sure is. Despite that, probably 99% of people that have ever needed to convert a video haven't touched it/don't know its name and never will because its interface is totally suboptimal. "It is the best and not successful" can be read as a true statement, but it leaves out that it is the best in this one sense and is far from the best in another sense.
To bring this back to the point I have found that AD is well documented, functions generally the same everywhere, and has an intuitive enough interface that you can get not-super-techy interns on the helpdesk up to speed on reseting passwords in it in short order. I couldn't say the same for any Linux management system I've touched, so even though you could say "system management on Linux is the best" and have that be a true statement, you're still missing where it fails and why that area matters to businesses.
I don't think we disagree. Problem is Linux users, of which I'm one, self selected to reject that ease because it's limiting. There's still a tension now, eg Gnome that is insistent on going all Mac in removing all options.
My personal suspicion is that you aren't going to get Linux to become what the windows users want it to be without it stopping being Linux. We've seen this with Android. So in some ways the rejection of centralisation on the Linux community is the thing that keeps it being Linux, for better or worse.
NT was designed as a multi-user system from the ground up.
Right but windows also aims to be backwards compatible which means it was trying to run things designed for a single user system undermining protections.
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