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Comment by fancyfredbot | Hacker News Reader

The intensity of feeling within the Linux community towards Windows and Microsoft back then was intense. I remember turning up to my university CS course and witnessing the formation of a Linux clique - if you ran windows you weren't really welcome! Dual-booting might get you reluctantly accepted though.

I wonder if the same thing still goes on. It probably was quite an effective filter for the nerdiest and most obsessive people back in 1999, and it probably still is, but somehow that kind of mindset seems a bit outdated today. If it does still exist I'd be interested to know what kind of status macOS has! Literally nobody on the CS course had a Mac, despite the very cool and colourful iMacs being very popular.

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> but somehow that kind of mindset seems a bit outdated today

It's hard to understand today because Windows isn't by far the overlord it was in the late 90s and early 2000s. Alternatives like Amiga, Atari, SGI, Sun and even the Mac were dead or on their deathbed, and it looked like there would only be one operating system in the future, and one that wasn't exactly a triumph of engineering.

Thankfully that future didn't happen and Windows is essentially only relevant for running PC games today.

> Thankfully that future didn't happen and Windows is essentially only relevant for running PC games today.

What an odd statement. You’re ignoring the vast majority of all office computers all over the world here, the on-prem infrastructure of most companies, and cheap home computers. Not everyone can afford to buy a Mac; Office tools and huge swaths of domain-specific tools only run on Windows; and despite what Linux enthusiasts want you to believe, Linux doesn’t support existing Windows software well enough for common business use.

You may be referring to the needs of rich software engineers in western countries exclusively here, but overwhelming majority of the world’s client computers are firmly in Microsoft’s hands.

Most relevant software today runs in web browsers or are cross-platform applications, so even when you have a Windows laptop, you probably spend most time in a web browser or a webview wrapped in an app and not in a native and exclusive Windows application.

That's a very different situation from 20 years ago, where a lot of important software only existed for Windows.

E.g. today you can just ditch Windows and install Linux on that same old laptop and wouldn't lose anything important.

Also, for most people these days, Android and iOS are the primary operating systems in use. And you can’t easily run Windows applications there.

You’re thinking of end users. The masses of office workers in the world are, and will continue to be, using Microsoft Office as their most important tool of trade, and thus will continue to run Windows.

As long as the browser variants of Microsoft Office aren’t as capable as their desktop variants, that isn’t relevant. CAD software is another contender that mostly requires a Windows environment; as is lots of financial software and industrial control tools.

I agree with you that many people probably could use a Linux computer if there was any incentive to go that direction. That isn’t reality though, and likely won’t be any time soon.

Perhaps more importantly, given enough years and as the technology commoditizes, the "need" to take sides about whatever tech lessens. "Sides" are usually for the hot big thing in tech. But OSes are long past that phase and far too unexciting for most people to have the critical mass needed to create this kind of polarization.

Found the programmer...

You have an extremely skewed view of what "relevant software" is, if you believe this. The second you try and use a computer for anything professional, besides nerd stuff and a few key "creative" areas that Apple has cultural cachet in like music production and graphic design, you are absolutely going to find yourself reliant on some completely entrenched "industry standard" piece of software that's been around for many decades and only runs on Microsoft Windows. Autodesk still sells 3ds Max for a couple grand, and it's Windows-only. Hell, even TurboTax only runs on Windows. And if you manage to dodge that, there's bound to be some critical piece of hardware that can only be controlled from a Windows computer.

The biggest propaganda win that Microsoft pulled was getting nerds - the biggest loudmouths about software freedom - off their case. 90s style free software fanaticism is basically dead. Meanwhile the rest of the world is absolutely still locked in to Windows. Know how you can tell? Because Windows is now widely regarded as a pile of shit, riddled with adware even out of the box ("Candy Crush in the Start menu") and yet people still use it, because they have to.

>E.g. today you can just ditch Windows and install Linux on that same old laptop and wouldn't lose anything important.

I challenge you to try this with a nontechnical friend who uses a computer for work. They will be screaming at you to put it back like it was within the week. I say this as a die-hard Linux user.

> The biggest propaganda win that Microsoft pulled was getting nerds - the biggest loudmouths about software freedom - off their case

it still amazes me how the newer generation of technical people see Microsoft as non-evil or, in some cases, even the good guy. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was re-convincing the world he doesn't exist.

edit: wasn't the google motto "don't be evil" basically meant to mean don't be Microsoft?

Try easily finding admins and heldesk staff to manage your 1000+ org using something other than Active Directory and M365. MS absolutely owns this space.

Thing is, most people don't use a computer for "anything professional" these days beyond Outlook and maybe Office at work, plus LOBs which are almost always web apps these days.

In fact, it increasingly feels like desktop itself is relegated to this kind of use, with smartphone becoming the primary computing device for most things.

> plus LOBs which are almost always web apps these days.

And this is where Linux won over MS - it wasn't on the desktop (which is still a mostly terrible experience to this day), but in the server room.

Coupled with Java or Perl and OSS Databases (MySQL and Postgres), people began moving software off the desktop and onto websites. Better web browsers (something else MS tried to dominate and were rebuffed) also helped. This cut MS out of the loop on new popular web servers (apache), protocols, languages and infrastructure - probably deliberately. This then allowed alternative platforms like the new iPhone and later android to gain a niche which they've since expanded massively.

I think people saw the monoculture that was developing around Windows (from days of XP onwards), and didn't like it, so actively sought to make their own path, Linux became was keystone there (could have been BSD though also...).

> "The biggest propaganda win that Microsoft pulled was getting nerds - the biggest loudmouths about software freedom - off their case."

Microsoft didn't lift a finger. In the early years while they still had developer fanaticism behind it, the FOSS movement delivered Linux, which was an adequate substitute for Windows, but failed to deliver an adequate software ecosystem to compete with the Windows software ecosystem to jumpstart Linux desktop adoption. Excel and Active Directory are big examples but I'm sure people can come up with others. So users stayed where the software they needed was.

FOSS momentum really began to falter once it became clear that none of the proposed business models that were based on being free and open, OSI style, were working and the money hungry beancounters started moving to faux open source licenses like shared source. But Microsoft had nothing to do with that either other than simply surviving long enough for it to happen.

> "Because Windows is now widely regarded as a pile of shit..."

People eat at McDonalds and drink coffee at Starbucks by the millions every day. It all might be shit but being consistent has a value of its own.

A massive amount of computing - especially outside of western & corporate offices - has moved to mobile. It's pretty wild as a developer who learned the trade when everything ran windows to now to target users who do their jobs with only a phone and don't even own what we historically call a "computer". Eventually those windows binaries and IIS apps will die as well, and MS has given up on Windows serving all those requests. They've done an amazing job of moving their business away from the OS in my view.

Oh I'm sure a lot has, but there is still a ton of Windows-only software out there. All those commercial tools engineers use to study the power grid are almost always Windows-only (at least the 10 major vendors I can think of off hand). I'm sure many other industries are similar. Also, all user laptops at a lot of corporations are Windows-only. It's changing of course, but not quickly.

And those mobile devices are managed with Intune/Azure.

HN has a blind spot for companies bigger than their startups. They don't realize how much large corps rely on AD/AAD/M365. For the vast majority of companies anything other than Windows/MS is a non-starter. This shit comes up in every single MS related submission.

This. _Didn't see it therefore it doesn't exist_.

Office computers are a niche. A big niche, but still a niche: probably 500 million world-wide. Meanwhile there are 4.88 billion smartphone users.

> Windows is essentially only relevant for running PC games today.

That, and running 73% of the world's desktops. [1]

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

> The intensity of feeling within the Linux community towards Windows and Microsoft back then was intense.

Remember that Microsoft didn't really have an OS that didn't suck yet. Windows as we know it today did not exist, it was still Windows NT 4 and no directory. SQL Server 7 was released in 1998, but until that rewrite it was a product produced in large part another company (Sybase).

Exchange Server (~1996) was the first product Microsoft developed from the ground up to replace an awful product and it was wildly successful, even before real Windows/AD landed in 1999. SQL Server eclipsed Exchange as the flagship product around 2010 or so.

Macs were super popular on Ivy League campuses in the 1980's. Some schools sold Macs to students for $1,000 that retailed for $2,500. Some of the current Fedex Business Centers started as Kinkos locations that rented time on Macs by the hour.

Microsoft changed the education landscape when they offered most of their commercial products for 10% of retail. They also do this for 501c3 non-profits. I believe _students_ get a different discount (~50%).

Office and Copilot are free for students afaik. Windows used to be as well, not sure about the current state of things.

Outdated or not, that mindset was inappropriate then and it's inappropriate today. Granted I don't necessarily expect kids in college to know how to behave, but it isn't cool to be a dick to people just because they use one OS or the other. It's especially sad when you consider that these are a bunch of nerds, who know what it's like to be a social outcast, and then turn around and inflict that on one of their own.

Fair enough, but this isn't about how cool it was that there were warring factions. There were reasons that the divide existed, and most of the reasons involved the behemoth Microsoft throwing its weight around and trying to bully the world of technology. People who ran Windows were seen as complicit, and in some ways, they actually were.

Especially at the time, saying that both sides were obviously bad people because they had a beef with each other is a little like saying the Dark Side and the Jedi should have just stopped being assholes to each other. It's not that simple.

It wasn't exactly like that. It was cliquey but it wasn't like the crisps and bloods or anything.The windows people were typically either baffled by the Linux people or curious about them. There was a bit more attitude from the Linux side I think, but we're talking more about being sarcastic and mocking rather than hostile. These are late 90s CS students we're talking about here, they were a polite bunch generally.

The idea you could make value judgements about a person based on the operating system on their computer was obviously crazy, even at the time. That said, I think some people genuinely believed Microsoft was evil and people who used/bought their software were irresponsible. A bit like the way environmentalists might look at someone who drives a 6 litre V8 around the suburbs I guess. I personally find it easier to understand the environmentalist and never could get too worked up about "M$ WinBl0wz" but I am pretty sure there were people who felt it was their moral duty to boycott interaction with Microsoft users. However crazy that sounds when written down.

I was one of those Linux evangelists back in the 90s. Tried to get all the undergrads in my CS program migrated to Linux back in the day. Fun times.

I had a professor firmly in the Linux camp. Whenever he had to touch a computer running windows he wore gloves and goggles just like people working in biohazard environment would dress. I found it amusing rather than antagonistic. It was also a great conversation opener to discuss pros and cons of Linux.

It's largely been replaced by tedious factional infighting. Particularly from younger Linux users.

Waaay too many folks (particularly in places like Mastodon) make "using Linux" the majority of their personality. They live and breathe Linux. Fighting to ensure that "Winblows" users understand that Arch Linux is *THE ONLY WAY!*

God forbid if you use a distro they don't then you're subjected to endless pithy criticism from on high about "well you wouldn't have this problem if you just used my distro!"

I remember when I was in school (2006), if you wanted to be cool you had to use xmonad, mutt and irssi.

And of course an IBM Thinkpad T42.

xmonad started in 2007.

REAL programmers are always off by one for some reason ;)

assume one of you starts counting at zero, so you're both right.

https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ then

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