> I think the actual Linux market share is higher. I know a lot of enterprises that have switched to Linux (for reason completely unrelated to the os itself).
So they switched to Linux because well, not because it's Linux. Funny :-) You probably meant : they switched to Linux for none of the reasons HN's readers like Linux (open, free, people-like-us, etc)
> Maybe I am a linux hermit, but you guys really abide this shit?
Didn't Ubuntu do something like this with search in the past? These companies love to cream off whatever extra income they can get. Turning operating systems into services, with their increasing reliance on expensive cloud data centers is only going to make the problem worse.
>My biggest complaint is lack of Linux support, which is abominable since Linux is the most widely used OS on the planet, but what can you do?
Linux is not the most widely used desktop OS - that is windows by a long shot and that is the segment that matters here. Why would a software maker invest the time and effort in catering to a negligible slice of the desktop OS market?
> And that means less devs switching fully to linux to struggle with drivers and co. meaning less solutions there, so even more devs stay on windows and just use the Linux goodies.
Isn’t the fact that Linux is still more of a headache an argument for using a product from a company that has a profit motive to provide a good user experience?
> Linux was an insignificant percentage of their user base but a majority of their support tickets.
It may be majority of their support tickets, since many ports are a pretty crappy job. Does it start up? Let's ship it and call it a day. Sometimes not even that (see also Witcher 2 for Linux drama).
For many projects, if they would provide the same quality/effort for their majority platform, whey would go under.
> Likewise, with the GUI software I'm writing, 'Defining Linux support' is something that is not worth doing given that there are tons of distros out there and by selecting one or two distro's there will always be an endless amount of people asking to support X distro or Y distro.
There was a major game developer (sadly forgetting the name) who decided to support Linux as a test around 2018ish. The Linux users were only a few percent of their users but ~20% of the support tickets. They said never again.
> With the absence of telemetry, how do you know Linux is doing just fine?
I look at Linux-focused communities on Reddit, Hacker News, etc (there’s always a good rant about Linux’s shortcomings).
But that would, you know, mean you actually need to pay competent people that can understand the discourse and engage with the community, something you guys clearly don’t give a shit about (have you ever seen the Microsoft Support forums? It’s a disaster).
> many users will simply reject their proprietary software on principle.
Yes, because we've grown tired of companies abusing their relationships with customers: abandoning products and leaving them useless, charging more and more for the same or less levels of support, removing features, suing users for repairing their own property... The list goes on. Sure, similar issues can happen with FOSS, but at least you have some recourse if the creators disappear.
> Also worth noting that the largest contributor to the Linux kernel is... Microsoft.
Yes, but only now. And only because they did what they could to kill Linux, and they still lost. That former behavior is the kind of thing we like to never be an issue in the first place.
> I don't yet support Linux because out of thousands of users, only 2 people have emailed about Linux support (probably both from HN!).
That's certainly not the trend. Evernote has even released a Linux app after all these years. And for good reason - the Chromebook market. Hey is another.
I think I found your problem. While Linux is big here on HN, all Linux users probably represent .001% of their paying customers.
In other words, it makes no business sense for them to do anything to retain you.
reply