I won't say a brand has no value, but a good chunk of that value stems from what the brand represents and the non-marketing aspects of the company behind it.

It's not invincible and it's subject to competition; case in point, Apple's success had to come at the expense of other brands, including Microsoft's.

<br />&quot;<font color="#1C2837"><font size="2">Statistics say 9 of 10 computers run Windows. The other OS you listed (including Linux) are part of that 10%. By simple logic that means 9 of 10 software products are designed for Windows.&quot;</font></font><br /><font size="3"><font color="#1C2837"><font size="2"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"> <br /><font size="3"><font color="#1C2837"><font size="2"><font size="2">I typed up an explanation of why the logic is depressingly defective but I realized that it may reflect a neurological problem, such that you would not understand the explanation.</font><font size="4"> </font></font></font></font><font color="#1C2837"><font size="2">I really do not mean to be snide here, but this is just not right in a very fundamental way.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font><br /><font size="3"><font color="#1C2837"><font size="2"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><font size="3"><font color="#1C2837"><font size="2"><br /></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font><font size="3"> </font><font size="3"><font color="#1C2837"><font size="2">Due to past experiences, I would suggest that if you were not on mind-altering drugs when you came up with this statement, you should see a mental health professional.</font></font></font><br />

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How about maybe logic doesn't work for you? Try to study some probabilities, if you have 9 fingers dirty and you put a random one in your mouth, most likely will be a dirty one. Calling me mental just shows your low IQ, people with good ideas were always called mental by people like you.

<a href="http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp">http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp</a>

Looking at this you can see that most software run on Windows, why would the developers bother to produce software for the other platforms when that extra coverage is so low, especially since porting brings up extra costs. what is so hard to understand?

So I'm using Windows and if, for some reason and there are lots of reasons, I want to change it for something else, none of my programs will run anymore, therefore, in order to keep my programs running, I'm forced to stick with Windows. If in what you guys call free market I would choose one of those low percents, I would simply isolate myself from a huge amount of applications. That is monopoly. The user is practically forced to choose a product not based on the quality of that product but based on the large spread of the trust that sells it.

What would standard OS would mean? It would mean that for example you will access a device using a universal protocol, just like the hardware works, if every video card would have its own standard then obviously we would be forced to use the most wide-spread one, you wouldn't wanna stick with outsiders. Also each OS could add it's own features, just like browsers did, that doesn't mean you can't access a webpage anymore. And if those extra features are good and become popular then adding them to the standard for the well being of everyone is simply natural. If standards would be a bad thing then standards would be forbidden, but they are not a bad thing, they are a good thing, engineering would not be possible without standards, and software is engineering too after all.

Some of you may be experts in laws and such, but based on your common sense, do you really agree with such market dominators? If they are so fair and right as you say, why don't they make their file standards free so every other OS can make compatible software? Maybe because they may lose their position? As in they would lose their market monopoly? People will then switch to what they really like?

"[color="#1C2837"]How about maybe logic doesn't work for you?"

[color="#1C2837"]No, your logic is just really naive and irrelevant. The fingers comparison isn't analogous. I question whether you would understand if I tried to explain it to you. Your intensity is also a red flag.

"Why did Linux fail on the mass market ?"

Linux hasn't failed. Linux isn't measuring these things. People keep saying that it's failed to do this or that or the other -- but it isn't trying. It just IS.

There's no-one giving it strategic goals which it can fail to meet.

Are you trying to say that developers should be forced to support all possible platforms? That would just be awful.

Are you trying to say that developers should be forced to support all possible platforms? That would just be awful.

Or is he trying to say that all platforms should instead be the same, thereby allowing all software to run on all platforms? That would be beyond awful.

People with good ideas were always called mental by people like you.

Uh oh

Okay, I feel a little bad now so I'll discuss it a little at face value.

"[color="#1C2837"]Looking at this you can see that most software run on Windows, why would the developers bother to produce software for the other platforms when that extra coverage is so low, especially since porting brings up extra costs."

[color="#1C2837"]So a given developer has a go or no-go decision on "support platform x".

[color="#1C2837"]The statistics don't have a chance effect like a dice roll...

[color="#1C2837"]If a team is spirited to do such a thing, what they will ask is; will I profit or benefit from this?

[color="#1C2837"]1/10 user share does not translate to a 1/10 chance that the answer is "yes". If the market is large enough that 1/10 is a significant number, than the answer may be "yes" for the overwhelming majority of products.

[color="#1C2837"]We can see plainly by looking at, for example, the number of applications on Android and iOS, the proportion of abandonware, the growth rate of these figures, the sales figures of each platform and lastly the dollar sales of apps on those platforms (a far more important figure) and see there is almost no correlation whatsoever.

[color="#1C2837"]Android trounces iOS in unit sales but not in app availability, in fact a higher proportion of apps released on Android are abandoned. The opposite case is true with app sales; Android app sales would suggest a much lower app count than is reality if the same logic were applied. But in any case, if you pick either, or even WebOS or Windows Phone, chances are good that you'll have everything you need, even though they're small fries in comparison.

[color="#1C2837"]With me so far?

[color="#1C2837"]Then we come to the second point which is fundamentally different but very important.

[color="#1C2837"]Let's say most web browsers are for Windows. That's simply, flat-out irrelevant. If someone has a go or no-go decision on "use Linux", and is just a little flexible, all they need to know is, "is there software that meets my needs on Linux?" And a lot of times the answer is yes. There is Firefox, Chrome, Konqueror (which is geneologically related to Safari). There are all the printer drivers you need. There's e-mail clients.

[color="#1C2837"]For many purposes, you're pretty much set with Linux, except for special cases. Games, for example, of which there were a few. Back in the 90s, a company called Loki Games actually took a crack at porting a lot and even got some good deals to do so. I even got to do volunteer beta testing for them. Sam Latinga who developed SDL (for a Mac emulator project) worked there and they used it.

[color="#1C2837"]Again, there are dramatically less games on Linux than a simple assessment of OS proliferation would suggest. The same is true for Mac though not as bad. In both cases, the go or no-go decision is usually "no".
[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]what is so hard to understand?"

[color="#1C2837"]The whole topic, which is more complicated than 3rd grade math.

[color="#1C2837"]So let's move to a case study; you.

[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]I want to change it for something else, none of my programs will run anymore, therefore, in order to keep my programs running, I'm forced to stick with Windows ... [color="#1C2837"]The user is practically forced[color="#1C2837"]"

[color="#1C2837"]I would make the case that this is false.

[color="#1C2837"]Once upon a time it was; I used Linux in the 1990s where you only had Netscape 4 (and Lynx, KFM, etc.) and most websites didn't work. You couldn't browse substantial chunks of the internet.

[color="#1C2837"]But then Phoenix (now "Firefox") came along, and Flash jumped on board to support it, and web developers flocked to it, and suddenly the statistical dominance of IE didn't mean shit anymore and nowadays you can browse the internet problem-free on Linux. Hell, I even used the internet on IRIX thanks to software spillage (a puny community of devoted fans maintain a ports collection from Linux.) Then Sun ported Java and StarOffice (now OpenOffice) and you could read Word docs and os on and so on.

[color="#1C2837"]Meanwhile, there are projects like Wine, WineX (now "Cedega") and Crossover that let you run actual, individual programs made for Windows, and it works.

[color="#1C2837"]You posit that the government should step in and mandate formats, but the reason all of the above is the case is in fact partially due to private ("free market"?) standards organizations which all these software projects (including Microsoft's) participate in. That's how the web works, for one thing, and for another, anyone can step up to the plate and start reverse engineering and make things work. That's why you can use a lot of hardware on Linux. When I first used it, I remember catching that the ethernet driver (for a DEC Tulip) had the developer's e-mail address at NASA.

[color="#1C2837"]The whole spirit of Linux and open source is decentralized, everyone steps up to the plate and makes it happen and gets it done.

[color="#1C2837"]We can also look at Wine, for example, which handles Windows executable formats, dynamic linking and provides a clone of the Windows standard libraries and APIs that permit a Windows program to run without emulation on Linux.

[color="#1C2837"]From all this, I would suggest that the vast majority of software actually does work on Linux, in spite of its (probably much less than) 1/10 "market" share.

[color="#1C2837"]In summary, having used Linux, FreeBSD and Mac, I would suggest that they're at least 95% usable and that you simply don't actually care enough to switch, or you have some emotional need for an authority to approve of it, like Microsoft or the United States federal government.

[color="#1C2837"]On a final note, when I used it as my "daily driver" I just used game consoles for most play and I bought and paid for several games from Loki to support their efforts.

Yay! Yet another linux versus windows thread! And yet nothing has been solved!?!??!?!?!?
What's next on Days of our GameDev.Net?!??!?!??!?!?

Stay tuned!