The ironic thing is that core Linux is more geared towards audio than core Windows. With Windows it's an after thought. Maybe Windows 10 will fix it (not holding my breath). If you want a smooth experience with your hardware Linux has it. Linux has great DAW's and great hardware support, but sure no way near as extensive as windows - but it is pretty damn good! That makes Windows no 1 here, but really Windows is VHS and Linux is Betamax. Linux is superior, it is OPTIMIZED for music.
 
I participated in the UK general election this year, and the same old boring faces got in. The main reason is because people were not prepared to vote for radical parties that could make change, instead they voted for other parties in order to get another party out.... And once again we are at the status quo. Nobody is thinking out the box. Now if everybody voted for what they actually believed in we could have seen a different result.
 
Linux is an operating system to believe in, it's all there. Vote Linux! Make it mainstream like it is in the server market.

I totally agree, sharke but there is a bit of a paradigm difference between the inventive folks writing for Windows and those tinkering with Linux.
 
With the Windows kids they are writing INTO and for Windows which remains static. Aside from creating changes within Windows settings you are stuck with the main OS.
 
With Linux distros the OS itself can be built to task because it's open source. So you only add what is needed and leave off the rest (however the other beauty of Linux is if you REALLY need to add something you can reach out and grab it from the repositories).
 
So, yeah... that's not as appealing to those who want to use their systems for multiple things but for those who have a system set up specifically for audio and have other rigs to do their general stuff being able to have all your hardware/software ONLY worrying about the music is an awesome prospect.
 
Also that doesn't mean that system has to be totally useless for other things like gaming or whatever. You can keep your Linux audio install on one partition for when you are working on audio and then a Windows partition to do everything else. Of course some people like to bounce around on the same system but myself I actually keep my laptop in my DAW room as I work so I can go nuts on it surfing the tubes and generally screwing around as I work on the DAW which is just running Sonar.
 
I'm a little weird though I guess and we are a society of convenience but I personally like that compartmentalization of my resources and attention. Keeps me on task and I don't have to worry as much about my more frivolous computer adventures screwing up my music machine.
 
Meh. Just blathering... as usual. ;-)

Doktor Avalanche
Linux is an operating system to believe in...

Like the tooth fairy? 
 
 

sharke
I don't think the profit motive is a bad thing when it comes to software development. When you have a coherent team of full time developers working in close proximity with each other under a unified design strategy with a steady stream of cash, you're going to end up with a far more polished and usable product. 

 
So many people misunderstand open source. Many of the products have paid developers. My last big coding job was working for a big open source firm in Silicon Valley, I got paid well and you can download most of the code for free. Opensource much as MS and Apple would dislike it... is the future... Look how Google is handling it... Then again MS has codeplex so they acknowledge it as well.
 
How many of us are being paid to test Sonar here? How many people are supplying feedback for free. Only this week I noticed somebody writing a utility to help us identify projects... for free.. Open Source products are often better than their competitors. 
 
Even Cakewalk is opening up... they've offloaded some of their code (Mackie Control) and they are adopting open source style feedback with their community. There may be a day where they will open up their code but of course not any time soon. If they did.. this they would just give away basic core version, and sell an enhanced version and support.... like they all do.. The big advantage would be they would get many developers fixing issues for free and larger adoption.

Doktor Avalanche
Linux is an operating system to believe in...

sharke
Like the tooth fairy? 

 
Exactly, however this tooth fairy actually exists.

sharke
The thing is, there are just as many (if not more) Windows users who are endlessly curious and inventive too. There's a huge amount of free open source software available for Windows. I don't know exactly what % of the market Windows has worldwide but I'm pretty sure I've read it's somewhere in the region of 90%. 

The following is from NetMarketShare.com as of April 2015. I think one reason why Microsoft wants to offer a free upgrade is obvious is you look at the market share of W7 vs. 8.1 vs. XP. Perhaps they don't want Windows 7 to become the "tube amp" of operating systems that people just want to keep using and using and using. If they're ever going to move past it, they need to get more people on board.
 

Yup this is the popularism thing going on. It's not the product it's how many use it. Now check the server market share and the tablet market share, that's just desktop which is becoming increasingly irrelevant. BTW MS makes most of their money in the server market.

Whoaa...
This thread has gone pretty far into the weeds from the original post. It is worth noting that the article posted by the OP said nothing about a subscription model or any other way to monetize "windows as a service." A more germaine article by a professional Microsoft follower is here: 
https://redmondmag.com/articles/2015/04/01/subscription-model.aspx
 
What may be more important to Windows users, especially those who depend on drivers and support for things that may be considered specialty items by the average user (DAW's and audio hardware?), is that you will likely not have the option to stand pat when you find a version that works well for you. Currently I have a machine that runs Windows 2000 because it will still run a photo scanner that I bought before the company dropped support for newer windows versions. These are fully licensed, fully functional versions for which no security updates are required as they are not connected to anything. The often repeated statement that Windows 10 would be free to users who keep Windows automatic updates running strongly suggests to me that it will require periodic reauthorization. If you elect not to stay up-to-date it is quite possible that you will not be able to run at all. And given past history it is conceivable that some new patch or "feature" will break an existing relationship with something truly useful in your system. That could represent a significant hidden cost even to "free."

Doktor Avalanche
Yup this is the popularism thing going on. It's not the product it's how many use it. Now check the server market share and the tablet market share, that's just desktop which is becoming increasingly irrelevant. BTW MS makes most of their money in the server market.

The desktop versus tablet market share will probably stabilize. There is a limit to how "irrelevant" desktops become, largely because tablets are good for one thing and desktops another. People like working with large screens that are directly in front of them, especially if they're going to be working for any long period of time. Looking down at a small tablet screen for hours on end is just going to give you eye strain and a stiff neck. To say that desktops are becoming "increasingly irrelevant" is pure spin. 

irvinMost of us don't want or need to know how the car engine operates. Most of us don't want to drive stick-shift. We want a car that only needs steering and braking, accelerating. That's why fully automatic cars are overwhelmingly more popular than stick-shift, regardless of which one is technically better. .

While here on the eastern side of the Atlantic manual transmission is overwhelmingly more common. In the UK and most of Europe if you pass your driving test in an automatic you aren't even legally allowed to drive a manual until you pass another test in a manual so pretty much everyone learns to drive in a manual. Only around 1/5 cars sold in the UK are automatics and that's the highest market share they've ever had.

In the UK we've lots of narrow, winding roads, hills and urban areas with narrow streets. Like the rest of Europe we've historically tended to go for smaller engines in a relatively high state of tune while the US historically went the other way.

The UK/US gearbox differences arose because each meets the local requirements best, plus the familiarity factor. Had the UK, for example, gone down the 1950s US road of big V8s and straight 6s in a low state of tune while having huge local oil resources (the North Sea oilfields weren't being tapped back then) then maybe we'd also drive automatics and vice versa, but that didn't happen.

It's the same with operating systems. Historical familiarity counts for a great deal and favours Windows, and Windows, so long as the hardware is powerful enough, does a good enough job at many things. It's only people like us who want Windows to do things it wasn't designed for like low-latency audio that have to get involved in the inner workings. Windows great entry point into the home market was that for years and years you could borrow a set of Windows disks from work or a mate and install it on your own PC with no need to pay anyone anything at all. So people got used to Windows so choose Windows. And once a product has market dominance it has a huge advantage because people will tend to pick the market leader simply because the market leader "must be the best, right?"

Whether Windows would do as well if it went to a rental model is an interesting question. Personally I have my doubts. I'm not sure people wanting a computer at home would choose another OS instead though, I suspect they may simply cease buying desktop computers and switch to iOS/Android tablets which can already do a great deal of what home PC owners mostly want to do apart from resource-hungry games.

The corporate world may or may not stick to a rental Windows. That would be down to cost/benefit analysis, but the "MSDOS/Windows PC in every home" market Bill Gates talked of years ago might cease to exist.