Why is the Third World Running Windows?
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@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@pete-s said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
What type of businesses are we talking about?
There are a lot of areas where Windows is the only game in town.In the third world, Windows being the only game is pretty rare. There is extremely little use of proprietary apps.
If you remove mobile from the equation Windows is close to the only game in town: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share.
Not really. It might be primarily what is used, but it has no advantage as no one uses anything proprietary.
I'm not following you. Are you saying that the software that is used is not Windows specific?
Correct. Mostly they use web browsers, or simple documents. Even if everyone around them uses Windows, they don't need to. This is why Microsoft hates version sprawl. When you have XP, 7, 8 all in use, people are already forced to be non-standard in everything that they do. So common ground is simple things like web and text. In that kind of environment where you can't control your OS, you naturally become OS agnostic.
So even though "Windows" might control the OS space, Windows of a specific version does not. And even a little MacOS would cause big disruption if things weren't agnostic. Since people essentially never get to chose their OS or its version.
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Education may be a part of it. You can easily find missionaries/volunteers who can teach the basics of windows to someone who has never used it. I've tried to get people to just play with Linux and they just don't care to learn.
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@wirestyle22 said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
Education may be a part of it. You can easily find missionaries/volunteers who can teach the basics of windows to someone who has never used it. I've tried to get people to just play with Linux and they just don't care to learn.
If the GUIs are as good as some people claim (I'm not one of them) then why would a user care if they are learning a Windows GUI vs a Linux based one?
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@wirestyle22 said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
Education may be a part of it. You can easily find missionaries/volunteers who can teach the basics of windows to someone who has never used it. I've tried to get people to just play with Linux and they just don't care to learn.
Nothing to learn, you just use it. If people are only willing to teach what isn't good for someone, that's called "an agenda."
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@dashrender said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@wirestyle22 said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
Education may be a part of it. You can easily find missionaries/volunteers who can teach the basics of windows to someone who has never used it. I've tried to get people to just play with Linux and they just don't care to learn.
If the GUIs are as good as some people claim (I'm not one of them) then why would a user care if they are learning a Windows GUI vs a Linux based one?
No one does. There's no need to learn one or the other. If you give Linux to people instead of windows, they will "just use it". Only in America with the mass advertising that "Linux is hard" do people think or believe that they would have to "learn something."
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@scottalanmiller Ok cool. Why would you not buy an IBM server? Im going to look at their offerings today to familiarize myself
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@jmoore said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller Ok cool. Why would you not buy an IBM server? Im going to look at their offerings today to familiarize myself
Does IBM make servers anymore? I though Lenovo took it over? Although that may have just been the IA32 market.
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@scottalanmiller That is another problem we have here. People are allergic to learning. Learning something should be a daily thing. Study of something helps the mind so much.
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@scottalanmiller That´s what we need exactly in Nicaragua, Education! Our Education system at the universities is poor.
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@coliver I believe that's right. Lenovo does the consumer stuff and IBM still makes servers and a lot of software.
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@jmoore said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller Ok cool. Why would you not buy an IBM server? Im going to look at their offerings today to familiarize myself
I worked at IBM, I know the secrets. Even IBM doesn't use IBM equipment. The hardware itself is excellent. But IBM hardware is 100% dependent on a single vendor for supply chain and the same vendor for support and IBM's support is completely incompetent and doesn't care about the customer. IBM ran completely on third party white boxes for normal stuff and Oracle hardware for the critical stuff and never on IBM gear because they knew that they could not trust IBM's support arm to be able to do anything - mostly they would simply ignore customers and not respond at all, even internally.
IBM knows that they can't trust IBM, you'd have to be insane as a "customer" to depend on it. They have you in an extortion position, you can't go to anyone else for help. If they don't respond or don't know what to do, you are screwed.
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@karlita said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller That´s what we need exactly in Nicaragua, Education! Our Education system at the universities is poor.
In the US, too. But the US has far better access to non-university education which is our real secret.
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@jmoore said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@coliver I believe that's right. Lenovo does the consumer stuff and IBM still makes servers and a lot of software.
Nah they handle all of the IA32 servers as well. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/servers/racks/c/racks
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@scottalanmiller Dang that sucks.
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@coliver Ahh ok my mistake then. I saw them offer servers on their marketplace so was going by that.
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@jmoore said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@coliver Ahh ok my mistake then. I saw them offer servers on their marketplace so was going by that.
Lenovo and IBM are completely separate and compete in a lot of spaces. IBM makes no consumer gear, and no end user gear. But Lenovo makes tons of servers. So they overlap a lot.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@pete-s said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
What type of businesses are we talking about?
There are a lot of areas where Windows is the only game in town.In the third world, Windows being the only game is pretty rare. There is extremely little use of proprietary apps.
If you remove mobile from the equation Windows is close to the only game in town: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share.
Not really. It might be primarily what is used, but it has no advantage as no one uses anything proprietary.
I'm not following you. Are you saying that the software that is used is not Windows specific?
Correct. Mostly they use web browsers, or simple documents. Even if everyone around them uses Windows, they don't need to. This is why Microsoft hates version sprawl. When you have XP, 7, 8 all in use, people are already forced to be non-standard in everything that they do. So common ground is simple things like web and text. In that kind of environment where you can't control your OS, you naturally become OS agnostic.
So even though "Windows" might control the OS space, Windows of a specific version does not. And even a little MacOS would cause big disruption if things weren't agnostic. Since people essentially never get to chose their OS or its version.
I think where I part ways with you is the assumption that the majority of people only need a browser or a few basic apps that come already packaged in Linux. For the majority of the people the majority of the time I would agree, but it is not trivial for a non technical person to track down a good "whatever" application. The largest reason for this is because the articles out there on the internet are focused on a Windows majority. If I do a search for best "whatever" without adding Linux to my search (which most users would not know to do) I'll get Windows options mostly with a sprinkling of MacOS. Even if I were to put Linux in the search, there are always issues with acquiring the package (apt/yum/dnf/pkg), making sure that the package works without needing to recompile a dependency because my wireless drivers only work with a particular kernel version, etc.
Linux has come a long way, but for a business I don't think it is there yet as a desktop, particularly in an environment where there are even fewer resources than in the first world.
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@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
@pete-s said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
What type of businesses are we talking about?
There are a lot of areas where Windows is the only game in town.In the third world, Windows being the only game is pretty rare. There is extremely little use of proprietary apps.
If you remove mobile from the equation Windows is close to the only game in town: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share.
Not really. It might be primarily what is used, but it has no advantage as no one uses anything proprietary.
I'm not following you. Are you saying that the software that is used is not Windows specific?
Correct. Mostly they use web browsers, or simple documents. Even if everyone around them uses Windows, they don't need to. This is why Microsoft hates version sprawl. When you have XP, 7, 8 all in use, people are already forced to be non-standard in everything that they do. So common ground is simple things like web and text. In that kind of environment where you can't control your OS, you naturally become OS agnostic.
So even though "Windows" might control the OS space, Windows of a specific version does not. And even a little MacOS would cause big disruption if things weren't agnostic. Since people essentially never get to chose their OS or its version.
I think where I part ways with you is the assumption that the majority of people only need a browser or a few basic apps that come already packaged in Linux. For the majority of the people the majority of the time I would agree, but it is not trivial for a non technical person to track down a good "whatever" application. The largest reason for this is because the articles out there on the internet are focused on a Windows majority. If I do a search for best "whatever" without adding Linux to my search (which most users would not know to do) I'll get Windows options mostly with a sprinkling of MacOS. Even if I were to put Linux in the search, there are always issues with acquiring the package (apt/yum/dnf/pkg), making sure that the package works without needing to recompile a dependency because my wireless drivers only work with a particular kernel version, etc.
Linux has come a long way, but for a business I don't think it is there yet as a desktop, particularly in an environment where there are even fewer resources than in the first world.
None of that stuff exists in the third world. It just doesn't. And for exactly the reasons you state... how often things don't work on Windows. You can say that LInux is "hard", but however hard it is, Windows is "harder." Apps are harder to get, harder to get working reliably, harder to update, harder to secure, harder to acquire.
but the point is that in teh third world, there aren't proprietary apps. People can't afford them, get them, or support them. They can't, it's not an option 95% of the time. So because they cannot exist, they don't.
Leaving "any OS installed" as workable, since they are forced across the board to function with the lowest common denominator.
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@kelly said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
. The largest reason for this is because the articles out there on the internet are focused on a Windows majority. If I do a search for best "whatever" without adding Linux to my search (which most users would not know to do) I'll get Windows options mostly with a sprinkling of MacOS.
Totally true, except that application acquisition isn't a normal thing in third world markets. That's a very first world approach to computing today. We think of using the computer as a platform for acquiring new apps. But Chromebooks have shown that that's not needed most of the time, no apps available at all. In the 3rd world, essentially no one is out getting video games, looking for specialty apps, etc. And if they are, they are stumped because they don't control their Windows version and patches, so have MORE issues getting things working on Windows than on Linux because updates and versioning is so problematic.
Windows seems reasonable from an American context, because we are used to controlling versions. Once you can't do that and you are forced to use "whatever you have", getting working Windows apps is quite hard.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why is the Third World Running Windows?:
... getting Windows working is quite hard.
I've FTFY.
