Microsoft took over the computing world because they built a really good enterprise management toolset. Say what you will about their shitty business practices both in history and today, both AD and GPO are fucking incredible pieces of software. Microsoft Office and Exchange email are also pretty much the only game in town unless you want to jump to Google which is objectively worse.
Those tools meant that workplaces adopted Windows instead of Mac and Linux and slowly transitioned their Unix servers to Windows. Then people started getting PCs at home, and they didn’t want to learn a whole new OS. Guess what, Windows is also available for home use and does all the same things that your office PC does.
Now that Microsoft has the vast majority of the install base on PCs, it’s not economically viable to develop or troubleshoot software for the other platforms, as you’re putting in a ton of extra time for about 5% of users.
Until Linux can promise ~90% compatibility with all software and they can put out some kind of real competition to AD and GPO, people are going to take the path of least resistance and just get Windows.
both AD and GPO are fucking incredible pieces of software.
AD is really the only way to manage an organization with thousands of endpoints and users.
I have some hope that someone in the EU will develop a competing product now that they’re pushing to get away from Microsoft, but it doesn’t exist yet.
I have to disagree here - you can absolutely run a large organisation on Linux (the Frenchies do it,e.g.).
The issue is the middle ground.
A large company can absolutely invest into what’s needed for that. They might even come out cheaper.
The small to middle companies are the issue. The ones with 1-10 people running their whole IT.
For them, Linux based operations are an issue - there currently is absolutely nothing that is as “one module working well with another” than AD. (Which should please not imply that AD is well designed and working too well). Period.
I have just kicked Microsoft (mostly) out of my company. But that is my personal decision - I am the CEO and we are small enough that I can do most IT support myself or with the help of a small outside company. But boy,did that cost us time and therefore money and still there are drawbacks and things that will not work as smoothly as they did on windows.
I am thankfully able to do that - as I have no external venture capital I have to answer to, have staff that is very tech literate (especially considering that none has an IT background),willing to learn and don’t need software too much that requires windows. (Well,some, e.g. occasionally CAD)
But would I ever recommend that to anyone? Nope.
Definitely not.
the issue with this take is that they have been transitioning their enterprise services to web services. i and others on my team effectually use Microsoft enterprise tooling on Mac and Linux machines.
i don’t think AD has anything to do with desktop Linux adoption?
You’re ignoring 20+ years of how it was the only player when web wasn’t so big as it is today. It was a major reason windows became the default OS in many offices, and as an extension of that, in the majority of homes in the 2000s to 2015. Thus majority of software industry and video gaming companies made their home in windows. Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD, and many other industry software was made to work in Windows first.
There was also the case of Microsoft tilting the playing field by significantly discounting laptop and Desktop OEMs for Windows license keys just to be the sole OS installed on many computers. The concept of a PC was one which was running some version of Windows.
This also lead to another compounding aspect: Piracy of windows software made the windows AD/Server experts of today. Since Linux was free, there wasn’t as much of an intrigue on running it vs. A pirated copy of windows running pirated copy of many software.
Yeah, this is pretty much it.
Microsoft took over the computing world because they built a really good enterprise management toolset. Say what you will about their shitty business practices both in history and today, both AD and GPO are fucking incredible pieces of software. Microsoft Office and Exchange email are also pretty much the only game in town unless you want to jump to Google which is objectively worse.
Those tools meant that workplaces adopted Windows instead of Mac and Linux and slowly transitioned their Unix servers to Windows. Then people started getting PCs at home, and they didn’t want to learn a whole new OS. Guess what, Windows is also available for home use and does all the same things that your office PC does.
Now that Microsoft has the vast majority of the install base on PCs, it’s not economically viable to develop or troubleshoot software for the other platforms, as you’re putting in a ton of extra time for about 5% of users.
Until Linux can promise ~90% compatibility with all software and they can put out some kind of real competition to AD and GPO, people are going to take the path of least resistance and just get Windows.
AD is really the only way to manage an organization with thousands of endpoints and users.
I have some hope that someone in the EU will develop a competing product now that they’re pushing to get away from Microsoft, but it doesn’t exist yet.
I have to disagree here - you can absolutely run a large organisation on Linux (the Frenchies do it,e.g.).
The issue is the middle ground. A large company can absolutely invest into what’s needed for that. They might even come out cheaper.
The small to middle companies are the issue. The ones with 1-10 people running their whole IT. For them, Linux based operations are an issue - there currently is absolutely nothing that is as “one module working well with another” than AD. (Which should please not imply that AD is well designed and working too well). Period.
I have just kicked Microsoft (mostly) out of my company. But that is my personal decision - I am the CEO and we are small enough that I can do most IT support myself or with the help of a small outside company. But boy,did that cost us time and therefore money and still there are drawbacks and things that will not work as smoothly as they did on windows. I am thankfully able to do that - as I have no external venture capital I have to answer to, have staff that is very tech literate (especially considering that none has an IT background),willing to learn and don’t need software too much that requires windows. (Well,some, e.g. occasionally CAD)
But would I ever recommend that to anyone? Nope. Definitely not.
Which pains me to say.
the issue with this take is that they have been transitioning their enterprise services to web services. i and others on my team effectually use Microsoft enterprise tooling on Mac and Linux machines. i don’t think AD has anything to do with desktop Linux adoption?
You’re ignoring 20+ years of how it was the only player when web wasn’t so big as it is today. It was a major reason windows became the default OS in many offices, and as an extension of that, in the majority of homes in the 2000s to 2015. Thus majority of software industry and video gaming companies made their home in windows. Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD, and many other industry software was made to work in Windows first.
There was also the case of Microsoft tilting the playing field by significantly discounting laptop and Desktop OEMs for Windows license keys just to be the sole OS installed on many computers. The concept of a PC was one which was running some version of Windows.
This also lead to another compounding aspect: Piracy of windows software made the windows AD/Server experts of today. Since Linux was free, there wasn’t as much of an intrigue on running it vs. A pirated copy of windows running pirated copy of many software.