I grew up a linux kid. The world to me would be saved if everything ran linux and everyone resisted microsoft and windows in general! Or at least that’s what I thought at the time. Microsoft used to be the bad guy, though they did try and redeem themselves later, they still had some shady business practices in the late 90’s and early 00’s. I had found my way to rebel against the system, and that was to never use windows unless I absolutely had to.

Nowadays, Windows is that operating system you have to use for work or is on an old PC you might still use because it also is your gaming rig. But there aren’t nearly as many full time windows users anymore. Apple came back with a vengance and has captured a ton of market share in the last 20 years and Google came into existance as well in that time which brought us a ton of market share on chromebooks and android. Microsoft’s competitors have increased and it seems that Microsoft still has a pretty good hold on the corporate market.

Google surpassed microsoft with the browser (to which Microsoft conceeded and made their next gen browser based off of Google’s web technologies). Apple and Google surpassed microsoft with the cell phone (to which Microsoft conceeded and made an android smart phone). Linux surpassed microsoft in the server arena (to which Microsoft conceeded and made the Windows Subsystem for Linux). Apple holds a strong majority of the tablet market (to which Microsoft is at a great battle with it’s Surface computers). And Amazon surpassed microsoft in the cloud server market (to which Microsoft is at a great battle with its Azure offering). Nintendo surpassed microsoft in the gaming arena (to which microsoft released XBox cloud gaming compatibility with all apple products and android products).

Microsoft isn’t really holding on to much dominance any longer except for Windows which they keep developing. Windows has reached version 11 now and most people aren’t using it. Microsoft never really captured the upgrade path for customers. Either it wasn’t inticing enough to upgrade or it would flat break your system if you did. Windows 10 is pretty much the most popular still because of its stability and installation base.

I’ve personally not needed to interact with a windows machine outside of work for over a decade now. I used to keep a windows box around because it was my main machine for things that I couldnt’ do outside of windows. Which was basically tax and accounting software and since I needed a development machine, it sufficed for the time. Since I never fully embraced the windows world, I tried to not be tied to it anymore than I had to. Using windows was something I actively loathed at the time.

Throughout the years I’ve given gifts of computers to family and friends. For years it was always chromebooks as they were relatively disposable and functioned for almost everything you’d need a computer for. They’re also “what the kids are using” these days in schools as well, so the children of the gift receiver will be able to educate their parents on how to actually use the device. It was great, and I still recommend chromebooks, but I do everything I need to do on an iPad, so that’s my technology gift go-to now. You can usually pick up an ipad for ~$325 and it will run all of the things that iPads can run.

I’ve built one windows machine, and that was an experiment on what it would actually take to fully license and build a Microsoft PC from scratch. At the time I was testing a VNC initiator program that when you clicked it, it would relay your screen back to me. This was how I was able to maintain the PC for my parents as well as meet the needs to not have any pirated software on the machine at all. It was expensive to say the least and when you took all of the pieces of hardware and software and put them together the cost of a mac wasn’t really that much further away.

Personally I’ve used every operating system that you can get your hands on. I used to test operating systems, just to learn their installation process and to see what was available in whatever shiny new system that came out. I’ve been a fan of linux on the desktop for a very long time, but realize that it never really made it mainstream. The closest thing to linux on the desktop that I’d recommend is a chromebook. Then again, I’d personally tell you to get an iPad to do whatever it was you were trying to accomplish.