What is keeping you on Windows?

SteamBoxReading the news recently I stumbled across a story announcing that Adobe will be releasing Photoshop for Google Chromebooks. From initial reports this is a version that would be streamed from their cloud servers. This would allow people to have a low powered PC, tablet, or phone and still run the full featured version of the application. The technology is similar to what Steam has been doing with their “in-home” streaming feature. With the in-home streaming you are able to have one computer that runs Windows games and would be considered your gaming server. You can then use a low powered PC/Mac that would be connected to your television to play the game somewhere else in your home. If you have a gamepad this will be routed through the network and does not need to be connected to the gaming server box. I have tested the feature at my home and was very surprised at the quality of the picture. There is minimal lag and the sound/video is near perfect. If Adobe can accomplish this over the internet and have no lag or display misrepresentation, they will be  opening up their market base quite a bit.

What applications are you still using that are keeping you tied to the Microsoft Windows operating system? For me Photoshop is one of the only applications I use that won’t run on Linux. My gaming library for Linux has been growing by leaps and bounds. As of October 2014 I have 181 Linux supported games in my Steam library. With the in-home feature I can play any of my games on my Linux machine.

I would still prefer native Linux support and not require streaming over the internet. Perhaps if they see a large enough user base from the Linux community they will realize that the investment is worth it. A quick look at the statistics for Humble Bundle sales disproves the myth that people use Linux because they are cheap and don’t want to pay for anything. The average dollar amount donated toward a Humble Bundle is always higher than those of Mac or Windows. On average for all of the Humble Bundle sales up until early October 2014 the average donation for Linux users was $9.36, for mac it was $7.50, and for Windows $5.63.  Linux donations are $3.46 higher than the cross-platform average. To see the latest statistics you can view them at cheesetalks.twolofbees.com/humble/.

On average for all of the Humble Bundle sales up until early October 2014 the average donation for Linux users was $9.36, for mac it was $7.50, and for Windows $5.63.

My question still remains. What keeps you on Windows? LibreOffice has done an excellent job of creating a Microsoft Office replacement, Evolution and Gmail have replaced Exchange and Outlook, and essential applications like Chrome run just as well, if not better, on Linux than on Windows. How much is left? Perhaps your favorite anti-virus client may never make it to Linux. I’m sure we all miss our copy of QEMM memory manager from DOS 6 days. I currently run Linux on my Laptop, Linux on my iMac, and Windows on my gaming machine. I would love to format my Windows box and throw Linux on there as soon as all of my essential applications are converted or replaced. We are all already missing out on Windows 9, but, wouldn’t it be great to be able to skip Windows 10 as well?

About Brian Aldridge

I am a software developer and podcaster. Catch me weekly on Infection - The Survival Podcast at https://infectionpodcast.com

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