[Info-vax] Vax Station 4000 VLC

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/25/2018 5:39 PM, David Wade wrote:
> On 25/12/2018 19:25, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 12/25/2018 9:16 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> On 12/25/18 8:41 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>>>> Yes, but I long for the old desktop-to-datacenter days.
>>>
>>> You mean like Windows and Linux both have.
>>
>> Microsoft and Apple make money on desktop products.
>>
>> But nobody else does.
>>
>> Linux desktop survives due to volunteers. Linux server
>> make money but not desktop.
>>
>> It requires thousands of developers top maintain
>> a competitive desktop environment.
>>
> 
> I am not not sure that you need thousands of developers. I note from
> 
> https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2017/10/2017-linux-kernel-report-highlights-developers-roles-accelerating-pace-change/ 
> 
> 
> that there were 4,300 who contributed, from 500 companies, but most 
> commonly these were device driver commits....

Yes. But the Linux kernel is hardly a desktop environment.

On top of that you need to add X.org, GTK, some
window manager, support in browser both render engine
and JIT JS engine, some mail program, maybe LibrOffice
etc..

>> MS can afford to pay thousands of developers
>> for desktop products as they make billions selling
>> desktop products.
>>
> 
> Again I am not sure how many core windows developers there are. I would 
> be very surprised if there were more than a few hundred. I suspect that 
> there are more in hardware producing device drivers.

I believe a lot of those are done by the HW vendors.

I don't know about MS. But guesses on the internet for the Windows
team size (including IE but excluding Office) goes around 2500-5000
(developers, testers and their managers).

>> Linux doesn't sell desktop products, but can rely
>> on volunteers to keep things working.
> 
> I don't think there are many working for free. Pretty sure the server 
> code is just re-used in the desktop...

Kernel: yes.

But the server guys don't need graphics, X, browser,
email (client) etc..

Arne