When I first got my Chromebook I didn't like it. After getting to know it better, I love it. I recently used the feature where you can have your chromebook go back to it's original factory condition and it actually worked to get rid of a lot of malware and buggies. Considering it's the low cost of it, it is outstanding.
It is really just a cell phone without the phone part. And they are the ultimate in disposable computers. When they break, do not bother to fix it just throw it away and buy a new one.
With a better browser and some simple protection installed, you really won't have to worry much about malware and buggies. Use a Linux desktop and use the default Firefox browser on it, and install ublock origin and/or ghostery to block a lot of crap, including privacy-invading trackers. You can put Linux on any laptop or desktop; it's as universally compatible as Windows. It is also what Chrome OS is based on. And actually, you can use Chrome or its open source cousin, Chromium, on a Linux system also. I just would not recommend Chrome because of how abusive it is becoming. See this article: Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s web browser has become spy software https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...become-surveillance-software-its-time-switch/
It is nowhere near as "universally compatible" as Windows. Not even close. And no, I am not using any variant of Chrome. The problems with this OS and memory are legendary. It will literally suck up every bit of RAM given time until your system crashes. A few years ago when a company I was working for was trying Chrome-Chromium tablets for VOIP, we literally had to have them reboot 2 times a day. Literally over time they because worthless without a hard reboot.
I beg to differ. Find me a PC that you can't install Linux onto. In fact, Linux supports many more platforms than Windows does at present. Linux, mind you, not Chrome OS, which is merely based on Linux. I use Chromium very seldomly. My #1 browser is Firefox, and I'd recommend it to anyone on any platform.
I was not talking about hardware, but about software. There is a reason there is more software for Windows than any other OS. You can make an OS that can run on anything ever made, that is worthless unless there is software to take advantage of that. There is a reason that Linux will likely never break into widespread use, it is not friendly to the majority of users.
There are very friendly distributions, and there is at least one company now selling their own systems with Linux pre-installed. It is System76. Certainly Linux remains weak at present where professional-oriented, high-end software is concerned. Pros will know whether they can use Linux or not. I make it work for me, but I don't need more than a PDF reader and MS Office to do what I do, typically. It is a fantastic system for basic use, though. Most of what we do these days is done online, usually through a web browser, and there are no shortcomings in using Linux for those applications. On top of that, there are commercial offerings available that can really sweeten the deal, such as Spotify and Steam. A friendly distribution such as Ubuntu, Mint or System76's Pop!_OS is no harder to install and use than Windows 10. All that there is to keep people on Windows instead of one of those distributions at this point is existing familiarity with Windows and an unwillingness to learn something new, even when it is something simple that offers advantages, starting with absolutely no cost to use. They all feature some kind of software center application that is much like the "store" apps on Mac OS and Windows 10 which features quite a wealth of free, open source software in a very user-friendly format that is both browsable and searchable. And it really is a wealth of software. There are applications to do just about anything, and many of them are very robust. All that keeps Linux off of the desktop at this point is a lack of awareness among users, a lack of impetus on their part to learn a new system and make the switch, and a lack of commercial effort (marketing) to correct the former two issues. The distributions themselves are excellent desktop operating systems with no major flaws, even in user-friendliness. If you doubt that, give it a try. Try one or more out in a virtual machine or on a spare real machine. Can't hurt.
And we have had LINDOWS, and many others that came before it. Look, no need to convince or sell me of anything. My first OS was UNIX back in the 1970's on mainframes. What keeps any UNIX clone off of desktops is the same as it has always been, software. Ultimately it is software that determines what OS people will use. And when it comes to Linux, the problem is that there is no "one ring to rule them all". Sure, if all you want to do is visit web pages and make simple documents, almost any version of Linux is fine. But most people want to do other things as well. Download and edit videos from a video camera, play Quake or The Sims, use the new Crochet Pattern program their friend told them about so they can make and save their patterns, use it to test and program their new Remote Control for their airplane, and 10,000 other things. And Linux as I said is a fragmented mess. There are dozens of different versions floating around, a lot of them completely incompatible with each other. "Ohhh, here is a neat program, but it is for Ubuntu, and I use Mandrake. And here is another program for something else, it wants Red Hat only." Yea, that is Linux. Yea, my server uses Mint, I have BSD on a laptop in my closet. And as great as it is for many things, it will never break out into the user arena as many have dreamed simply because it is to fragmented to ever do so. Because most users do not want to do more then download a program or insert a disk, press a button, and have it work. Period. Hell, in January every year when I was still the tech at a computer store, we had customers that would come in to get the newest version of Norton. They actually paid us $15 just to install a program they could do themselves. And when they wanted their OS upgraded, they came in and had us do it for them. That is a huge percent of the computer users out there. Not the power users who get into doing this stuff, most people are completely lost if anything does not work right. Ask them their OS, and all they know is "Windows", and can not tell the difference between Memory and Storage. And you expect them to keep straight which distro they are using?
Quake is open source and ported many times over to *NIX systems. But more importantly, Steam is not only Linux-native, but allows Windows games to run via its own Wine implementation called Proton, and it works pretty damn well. And yeah, most people are largely ignorant about the computer hardware and software they use. Like I was saying before, if Linux were given the kind of marketing treatment that Windows gets, it could easily replace Windows and people would be none the worse for it, because it's so easy and pleasant to use these days.
They're also not really consumer-oriented anymore, at least not going by their price. Apple has been focusing on niche "pro" markets of late. Linux is the way to be. All Chromebooks will also be Linux laptops going forward Google has announced that all new Chromebook devices will be Linux ready. https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-chromebooks-will-also-be-linux-laptops-going-forward/
As the acronym itself states clearly.. Wine Is Not an Emulator. And like I just said, there can be no "marketing treatment" for LINUX, because there is no one "LINUX". It is a hundred different forks, spoons, splits, and variants that cover everything from CP/M and XENIX to OSX and what runs on your smart phone. There is no one OS, there is no one thing to market. Yea, I have been having this argument actually since the 1980's when some XENIX fanatics were swearing that by the mid-1990s it would replace MS-DOS as the operating system everybody used. And for those that do not know, XENIX was a Microsoft made port of AT&T UNIX, and actually ran their servers for decades (from 1980 until the early 2000's when it was finally replaced with Win2K server). However, in 1987 Microsoft sold their code and rights to SCO, the Santa Cruz Operation. This then went from being known as XENIC, and became SCO UNIX. Today it is known as the SCO Group. Another part of the organization was split off as Tarantella, which was later bought by Sun (which was then bought by Oracle). But the simple fact, is, at one time LINUX (through XENIX) was given that kind of marketing. In the mid-late 1980's a lot of people were expecting XENIX to supplant MS-DOS. But that never happened, the users simply ignored the nifty UNIX that could be run natively on X86 systems. Not unlike how most ignore it today.
Macs have been overpriced tools for fanbois for about 30 years now. Mac is more of a cult than anything else. They are also a lawsuit happy egotistical monopoly that resents anybody else even trying to compete against them. Hell, on at least 2 different occasions they have authorized clones to be made, then turned right around as they were about to reach the market and cancelled the clone agreement. And do not even get me started on the multiple partnerships they have had with Microsoft, Intel and IBM and then turned right around and screwed their partners over after taking their money.
I know they had clones for a while in the 90s. Were there two occasions during that time, or is there one I'm not aware of? I remember seeing the Motorola StarMax 5000 in a catalogue and drooling over it back in the day. It had a 604e CPU while I was stuck with a cheap Performa with a gimped 603 CPU. I often felt that it was actually slower than a 68040-based Mac.
There were several. Power Computing was one of the most well known, purchasing a license in 1995 to clone the Mac OS 7. Then in July 1997 that was cancelled and shortly afterwards Power Computing went bankrupt. All in all, over 30 companies (including the StarMax by Motorola) were given licenses to clone the Mac, which were cancelled by Apple once Jobs returned. One of the programs was the Pippin. A consortium between Apple and Bandai to make a multimedia PC - game console, millions were sunk into the project. Bandai acquired facilities in Canada and Japan to make the machines, and they even reached licensing agreements with companies in Norway and Korea. And other companies like Pioneer, Hitachi, and more were preparing to hop on board and make their own Pippin compatible machines (Pippin was conceived as a standard like VHS or DVD not a single product by one manufacturer). And this was another casualty of the return of Steve the Great. Bandai never recovered form the losses around this console and was eventually absorbed by Namco. And it even goes back to 1985, when Apple licensed their ROM and OS for the Apple II to be used in the Diamond Computer (later Diamond Multimedia) TrackStar series. An ISA "computer on a card", this was to allow IBM compatibles to run Apple II software. This was still a strong seller when in 1993 Apple ended the agreement and the system was cancelled (which then prompted them to go all-in in the emerging video card market).
And it is still emulation, not running native. Emulation is never as good as native, and never will be. Given a choice between native and emulation, native is always the best solution. And software must be modified and hacked to work in LINUX if it was made for another platform (like Windows). Remember, I am not a neophyte, I know all about LINUX, the programs that work on it, and the hoops that have to be done to do so. And offering emulation will never crack into the market if it is easier to just run the original code natively.
There is a lot that is native also. Valve's games, such as CS:GO, are Linux-native. SCS's truck simulator games are native. A ton of other games are also, but outside of Steam you don't see that many yet. There have been notable exceptions, such as Unreal Tournament, X-Plane and Quake, and even Heroes of Might & Magic III as I recall, but by and large you have to look to Steam to find Linux-native commercial games. But there are quite a few there, and I have quite a few. The vast majority of my Steam library is native (multiplat to run on Linux, Windows and Mac, in fact). Now, as for the quality of emulation, it varies. A title that is officially supported by Steam's Proton will run at least as well as on Windows. I've even heard that games may run better that way, because this is API emulation. It's not like emulating an entire other OS to make it work or hardware platform to get these things working. They pipe DirectX calls through OpenGL or Vulkan, and things run very nicely. I've also got Blizzard's Battle.net launcher running through plain Wine, but there quality does vary and suffer a bit. It always helps to have a commercial effort behind software, such as we get with Steam and Proton. But at least that exists today, and there are many games, both native and otherwise, that run just fine. And no, the software itself is not being hacked or modified to work on Linux. I don't know why you would say that. The Windows games are not modified to work; Wine/Proton handles all of that.
I think they mean like Tivo did the Linux DVR... people loved it and had no clue they were using Linux most people don't care what they use, as long as it's easy to use
In this I agree. As I said, they just "want it to work". Most do not even seem aware that MAC has been using LINUX for almost 2 decades. But once again, it is not really LINUX. Very few programs written for Mac (if any) work on Linux, and the same for the reverse. But Mac is likely the closest that LINUX will ever get to being "mainstream". Of course, it is also basically a tightly controlled dumbed-down version of LINUX, which behaves more like Windows of 10 years ago then LINUX does.
