If your main problem with the Microsoft Store is that you get too many relevant results when you search for apps, good news: Microsoft is officially launching Microsoft Store Ads, a way for developers to pay to get their apps in front of your eyes when you go to the store to look for something else.
Exactly what Windows needs – more ads.
Sure. Why not. Not like Windows users can or want to do much about it anyway. A bit late to the party.
Ahhh… the Microsoft Store.,the place where you go to grab some Gameloft games (if you are interested in them) and never visit again. You see, Microsoft never learns. They failed to learn how a well-curated store and a set of good services can make users gravitate towards an OS. Did I mention the Steam Deck has sold 1 million units already?
Yes, you did mention Steam Deck. Though why you would bother is a mystery.
steam deck surpassed 1 million sold in the first7 months, before general availability was even a thing. it is about to pass the apple II as the second most sold computer of all time. still m’s to go to dethrone the c64 though
Do you have any solid numbers on that? I am trying to find solid numbers but can’t.
The obvious problem with those figures is that the distinction between a single computer and a series of computers is entirely up to the person putting the list together.
So for example lists often put the Sinclair Spectrum in there at ~5 million, despite coming in 9 different varieties, but usually leaves out the Raspberry Pi, which topped 10 million in 2016, and goodness knows how many they’ve sold now.
Its a fun but silly game because there’s no good way of deciding it. Same name? Same chip and memory and break-out board? Back compatibility?
Regardless of which measure you use though, neither the Apple ][ nor the Steam deck are even close to the second best selling computer of all time.
You know a million units for a portable console is kind of pathetic right? Still worth waiting to see if Valve releases a version 2. Really, the main reason they are going with the reserve first, then production run formula is because they know there isn’t really that much interest and it’ll fade away once everyone that wants one has one, like 3D televisions.
… winget …
Ironically, winget is also a Microsoft product.
There seems to be two completely independent, or rather competing forces inside Microsoft.
One tries to squeeze users as much as possible, even surpassing their older tactics.
The other wants to embrace open source, and sell online services (Azure), and tools as a business.
(ignoring xbox, etc, only for the desktop).
Trying to compete with Google on their app store being full of junk now I guess.
Linux has its downsides but I haven’t looked back since switching to it almost 20 years ago. Can’t wait for the day I can run PostmarketOS on my phone, and leave Android behind too.
Desktop Linux has one problem when it comes to app stores: It doesn’t have any. Unless you consider pre-installed repositories to be app stores, when in reality they are more like that feature in Add/Remove programs in Windows that lets you add and remove Windows components and bundled apps.
Except Steam Deck obv.
Sorry no your are wording is wrong. Desktop Linux does have app stores they mostly are horrible and mostly not installed by default.
Steam and itch.io come to mind for paid for applications.
Flatpak flathub and snapcraft are basically app stores with no application sales system.
Linux desktop does have app stores just none come installed by default in most cases and most of the Linux app stores are targeted at games not general applications.
I wouldn’t say flathub is horrible. There are even commercial repositories I have seen for various distros where comapnies give you a serial number set up so you can ‘apt install’ from their closed repo for updates.
The thing with the way Linux has historically done things though is very good. Package everything, get maintainers for them, and keep them up to date / secure within the OS structure. With the above editions of commercial repos, you can mix in proprietary software. The problem is, developers are the most lazy people and complain about all the different distros… even though for the most part if you packed for about 4, you cover 90% of them… and most have tools to automate package builds these days.
No, it’s an immensely stupid idea. It’s the reason why you have to wait for the latest version of VLC to be “packaged” by the maintainers instead of grabbing directly from the developer’s site or have the developer upload it to some app stores themselves (without having to wait for some middleman needed to “package” it). It’s also the reason LTS versions of distros stop getting new apps when a new LTS comes out.
Meanwhile, Windows 7 was getting new apps all the way up to its end-of-support date, 10 years later.
But the fact the repository system makes it even harder for proprietary developers gives some FOSStards in critical positions in the Dekstop Linux stack giddy feelings.
“But I need to see teh source to be sure it links to secure libraries!!!” No you don’t, this is the developer’s job,
Proprietary developers hate having to package the same app multiple times and test on multiple distros and distro versions. It doesn’t add anything to the product and is a real chore. It’s not about laziness, it’s about the fact it’s a stupid hurdle Windows doesn’t have (where you pick a minimum version and that’s it) and that the developer doesn’t need. Which is why Steam OS will become the default distro and Steam the default app vending mechanism for Desktop Linux (and repos will become like that thing in Add/Remove programs that lets you manage OS components and bundled apps plus handling updates for OS components and bundled apps like Windows Update does). And win32/win64 will become Desktop Linux’s stable API (save for OS components and bundled apps).
kurkosdr,
Well, It’s actually an extremely helpful way to distribute and update software long before other platforms did it. However it is true that the versions on offer aren’t always the version you want. There are repos that offer faster releases, but they’re less stable. Every repo has their own policy for which versions they host. For most users and applications, this works ok, but I agree there are times when you’d want a specific version or variant that you cannot get through official repos.
Flatpak resembles the windows model insofar as allowing developers to host their own packages in a decentralized manor.. This can be more flexible than managed repos, however it also comes at the cost of more bloat and fewer dependencies being shared between programs. Without management of the repos, dependencies are less likely to get timely security updates. It’s all about hitting a balance and there isn’t a magic bullet, even windows software faces similar challenges and many users don’t update their software regularly.
Please don’t resort to name-calling. I gotta agree with the FOSS guys on this one, there are many reasons that having source is more ideal. Anyway I assume you’re strictly referring to the distro’s official repos. This is not really a limitation of the technology. Many developers distribute their proprietary software as DEBs & RPMs in the exact same fashion they would a windows MSI. Some including microsoft even host their own full blown linux repos, which you can add alongside your disro’s repos, though personally I prefer flatpaks to 3rd party repos.
Yes, that’s a fair point. Supporting multiple linux operating systems can be annoying.
I don’t agree that this problem is limited to linux, not by a long shot. At work we have to use several VMs to test across several variations of windows. Microsoft isn’t great at backwards compatibility unfortunately. Whether it’s .net or msvc redistributables, Microsoft seems to enjoy updating them to intentionally break 3rd party software on older versions of windows such that it reports “this software is not compatible with this version of windows” even though everything it does is compatible…grr!
I’ll share an anecdote relating to this. We lost a potential client relating to the fact that we tested our product on the latest version of MS edge & windows, but they were using an older version of windows & browser and it made us look bad because we didn’t test it. Arguably they should be using the latest software like we were, but in fairness to them many large companies have thousands of users and update on longer planned intervals to reduce their support burden.
Another product I’m currently supporting uses microsoft security APIs to establish secure communication. The API itself is stable, but the actual protocols can be changed by microsoft and there are breakages. We have to do a lot of regression testing across many versions of windows to make sure things go smoothly for our users.
I’m not an apple developer, but not long ago there was an article about apple breaking the loader’s environment variables just for the ARM architecture. This meant that software that used to build everywhere could stop working on ARM in some versions of macos.
So my point here isn’t to gripe about any specific issue, but only to illustrate these kinds of problems crop up everywhere and having to work around OS quirks is just part of our job.
But none of these are pre-installed, which is what matters. Except Steam Deck obv which has Steam
So these two can’t fulfil the “store” part of the term “app store”.
–But none of these are pre-installed, which is what matters. Except Steam Deck obv which has Steam–
There is more than steamOS in Linux distributions that comes with steam preinstalled. Steam has not got universal support.
–So these two can’t fulfil the “store” part of the term “app store”.–
https://discourse.flathub.org/t/situation-report-new-flathub-website-work-app-verifications-logins-etc/2259/9
Flathub is not cannot fulfil the store part. Default Flathub does not but beta branch does. There are legal and security and application validation bits that have to be complete to enable all the store functionality. Flathub has never forbid in application purchases.
kurkosdr the full store part of flathub started in 2022. Flathub is likely to the the first fully functional appstore on Linux commonly installed. Due to being sandbox by flatpak design that handles lots of the other problems.
One thing about flathub once it worked out we could end up with multi parties starting their own new flatpak based appstores or porting theirs to flatpak technology. So the path this is on is very different to the apple, google and microsoft appstores.
Flathub is close enough these days, but honestly I don’t care? 99% of software with high attack surface is from the distros’ own repos, and the proprietary stuff I need or like runs in Wine.
Is it ideal? No. But for me, a stable, reliable, and ad-free desktop OS that I can work and communicate on is much more of a “killer app” than anything I could get in the Apple/Microsoft/Google app stores. I don’t necessarily recommend it for tech novices, but for me it works.
@kurkosdr
Don’t let lack of ads fool you. In actually believing what you wrote. On why more people chose to use ads instead of not being confronted with that. Beats me. Likely some GNU/Linux distro should do more ads. For people to migrate with more ease to something they are more familiar with. That is if they ever chose to do that. But for most Windows with ads is good enough. So no real need for that. I guess.
Yet another reason for me to financially support the ReactOS project.
Seriously. Though I kind of want the ultimate goal of ReactOS to be one that scales well from old hardware to new (should be able to cover anything that could run Windows 95 through to Windows 10/11. Nothing sucks more than actually trying to set up a Retro machine and then having to remember how much Win9x sucks, and the limitations of an unsupported operating system.
No, this is not a good reason to throw money at an impossible task. Redirect it to a more obtainable one, support an open source dev maintaining critical libraries. Do something useful with it. IMHO. Don’t ever expect ReactOs to ever come close to replacing windows for any but a very niche usage.
Can’t help but think about this in the context of the layoffs in tech. Not sure what the real solution is. Companies exist to grow revenue and generate profit. When that doesn’t happen, layoffs. They hire too much, and some of their projects are silly bs that will never generate revenue or make any difference to any real user. This seems like a middle manager response to save jobs. No real power to prevent it, but can pitch it to the team as job saving. So Eh, all the ap stores suck now. I need to write an app that just searches, and ranks good apps on the stores independent of the app store’s own ranking. But how to make it worth while? Any clues? I myself would never pay for such a thing, nor would I stand any kind of ads. I guess it would be a labor of love only. Not sure I have time for those these days, sigh.