> The cracking scene, demoscene and games industry was almost exclusively built on Windows. A lot of that was just as, if not more, advanced as what a Linux programmer does.
I think you mean commodore, or atari. Windows gaming came a long long time afterwards. It is more advanced in some ways but it does not beget OS programmers, like an open source OS does. If OS programmers die out, we're in very deep trouble.
No, while nostalgic, the Commodore and Atari scene were tiny in comparison. Since the mid nineties people have learned graphics programming and reverse engineering primarily on Windows.
It's not like OS programming is going away, but it has always been mostly a university thing.
And you could say we already are in big trouble. Since the ecosystem for multimedia weren't (and isn't) very good on Linux a lot of qualified user software exist on other platforms. Industrial, scientific, medical, music, film etc.
It's important to grok why OS programming "has always been mostly a university thing" in contrast to, say... a business environment that wasn't monopolized by anti-competitive business practices and set back for decades as a result, or maybe a vibrant ecosystem we all grew up wanting to contribute toward and understand deeply with low barriers to entry and a supportive community.
The same could be said for understanding why "the ecosystem for multimedia weren't (and isn't) very good on Linux" and various rounds of the DRM wars.
Microsoft shouldn't be blamed forever for deficits in free software and that's not an argument I'm trying to advance, but it would also be a mistake to overlook their historical influence on when and where certain barriers to tinkering emerged or persisted.
I think that's part of why this triggers a disgust response for some commenters.
Sure. I don't refute that Microsoft is, simplified, evil. That doesn't change the fact that people with positions in the Linux community don't really care about those things. I don't really see any move of note toward that either.
Even when Apple practically gave the Linux distributions an opportunity with the neglect of the Mac Pro. Here you had people who didn't like Windows, disgruntled with Apple, liked unix, wanted a powerful operating system and was overpaying for hardware.
OpenGL isn't that much harder on Linux than on Windows, so where the push for great OpenGL developer tools on Linux? Google and Mozilla gets a lot of credit for supporting open source, so why are there no decent bindings from their respective new languages to their respective 2d libraries (Go/Skia, Rust/Mozilla2d)?
There's kind of a macho attitude in open source that things should be hard. If you can't or don't want to fix it yourself it your own fault. It's great for the people that are happy with that and are invested in it, not so much for the rest of us.
> No, while nostalgic, the Commodore and Atari scene were tiny in comparison
You know, when you obviously have no idea what you are talking about, the wise decision is just not to answer. Both the Commodore and Atari scenes were way bigger than the PC's in the mid 80s till the early 90s. Ask any demoparty goer if you don't believe me.
I'm not talking about pre-90s and I've been to many demoparties. Do you want to refute that the PC demoscene have had a huge impact on the modern games industry? Because if you read my original comment, that is my point.
Oh, and maybe you should read the site guidelines, second paragraph under "In Comments".
First, I was not answering to your "mid 90s" comment. I was referring to that one:
> The cracking scene, demoscene and games industry was almost exclusively built on Windows.
Which is blatantly false. Where do you think Team 17 come from ? A number of their members were recruited on the Amiga demo scene, and that was well before PC gaming was a thing.
And huh, the game industry existed way before PC Gaming. In 1985 the Amiga and the Atari could display animations on screens with 16 to 32 colors in relatively high resolutions, while PCs were stuck in monochrome (just like the first Apple). And oh yeah we had games. Tons of them. Are you trying to rewrite History ?
> Oh, and maybe you should read the site guidelines, second paragraph under "In Comments".
Nowhere did I call you names. I was merely saying you have no idea what you are talking about, it's OK, it happens to everyone. You know, I have been on HN for a while.
You're both talking about two different generations of the demoscene. Bohol oversimplifies the history in the same way you oversimplify the history; you're both tracing it back to the points of reference you're familiar with. That being said, I think a more forgiving interpretation of "The cracking scene, demoscene and games industry was almost exclusively built on Windows." is that the modern state of each scene stems from the mid 90s. I don't believe that would be an entirely false mischaracterization, because Windows' influence has been pervasive on the scene since the mid 90s. In the end, Bohol is looking at it from "when did the greats of today get their start?" and you're looking at it from "when did the greats that influenced the kids in the 90s come from?". At least that's my interpretation of the argument. In a sense, you're both right.
I know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the PC scene from early nineties to today that made up many of the founders and employees at today's games companies. You're have some high horse argument that the scene and games industry started before that, even though the connection at that point is much more unclear. There were of course some overlap, especially people starting out late with commodore, but less than you would think. If it makes you feel better you can insert "modern" or "for the last 25 years" in my previous statement.
And yes I've also been on HN for a while, longer than you if that is your first username.
And that's where your problem lies, since the pre-90s era is far more important historically than the post-90s era (when the idea of a "demoscene" started to die entirely and game development shifted full-force toward massive companies - trends which have only recently begun to reverse beyond very tiny niches).
No? Tiny? I'd love to know which games industry you think came before the games industry on Windows. Did a legion of Windows programmers appear overnight?
Audacity, Bitwig, QTractor and Ardour have made great strides - and that's merely stuff I know about. Userland software is quite beside the point I was making.
Closed-source single OS dominance without an open source alternative would mean much worse trouble than the trouble we are already in. To avoid this, you need OS programmers, many of whom never get to University.
The state of Linux is far more a hindrances for it's success as a learning tool than Windows ever was. I've been using Linux since '98, it's great for learning systems administration or networking. It's however lacking in most of the other areas of computing, those which yourself like many other apparently are quite ignorant of. I learned far more from windows than I ever did Linux, including advanced OS concepts.
That Microsoft is coercing people to use Windows is the favorite conspiracy among Linux evangelists. The reality is that Linux isn't and never was very approachable. You might not be able to dive into the source code of Windows, but at least your not stuck trying to understand yet another build system. At least there are decent learning material so you don't need read the source code or scavenge through mailings list trying to find something other than "why do you want to do that". Or a countless other examples like it.
I like Linux, I do. But you can't have your cake and it too. It's not as good as Windows if you want to have access to all areas of computing. Which is what you want when you teach computers to a wide verity of people.
Maybe you should be more concerned that most ARM devices doesn't have working graphics acceleration for Linux desktop systems.
> No, while nostalgic, the Commodore and Atari scene were tiny in comparison.
Uhh, no they weren't. They were the focus of home computing during that time period. IBM-compatibles running DOS (or, previously, CP/M) were still the purview of businesses needing personal computers.
The reason why BASIC-oriented systems like those of Commodore and Atari are "nostalgic" is because they were ubiquitous in households during their heyday, and contributed heavily to the same memes and tropes of video game design that are being recycled to this day in big-budget games running on Windows 10 64-bat Supreme Home Edition Republic-of-Gamers PC-Master-Race monstrosities with Core i9 processors and NVodia GeFarce 96000000GTXXX 16TB 525600-CLUTA-core EXTREME-GRASS-RENDERING GPUs and all the other baloney that's dominated the thoughts of gamers nowadays.
> Since the mid nineties people have learned graphics programming and reverse engineering primarily on Windows.
By your logic, the concept of the automobile was invented by Toyota when they came out with the Prius.
There's a lot more to the history of video game development, demoscene, etc. than just the 90's; you're leaving out literally half of those subcultures' very nuanced histories chronologically-speaking - and, in fact, opting to leave out probably the most important half.
I think you mean commodore, or atari. Windows gaming came a long long time afterwards. It is more advanced in some ways but it does not beget OS programmers, like an open source OS does. If OS programmers die out, we're in very deep trouble.