Petition for Linux
Comments
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Linux's Market share is growing, Soon it will overtake Mac OS, by my estimate, somewhere in the next 5 years.
That is at best an oversimplification of reality, and at worst, an outright untruth. Linux desktop usage is around 3%, depending on who's numbers you use.
No matter how optimistic you might be, that's NOT the path to overtake Windows and MacOs in 5 years.
Could Native Instruments offer Linux options one day? Sure. But then you have to hire more people. You have to pay more people. You have to pay for the health care, vacation, and unemployment benefits for more people. And everything becomes more complicated, and THAT makes everything take longer to do. You don't like the current 6+ week gap between releases of Komplete Kontrol? Well surprise! Agile doesn't really work on a 2-week cycle, no matter what the hypnotists try to tell you. Even if you magically found the funds to pay for all the people you wanted to hire, that gap between releases would probably still DOUBLE. Because you know, the devs and beta team now have to test yet another OS for every patch and tweak. And suddenly, debugging user problems and issuing hotfixes now becomes even more complicated.
And one last thing. Can you imagine how much BIGGER the MK3 launch mess would have been if we had yet ANOTHER OS in the mix? It probably would have been the end of all humankind, what with all the pitchforks and torches people would be bringing to the forum. Plus, we'd all be deaf from the wailing and gnashing of teeth!
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lol….not going to happen…
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Sorry Bif but this is a petition thread, not a debate. People are posting here to add their voice for it, not be told by other people it won't happen in their opinion.
Throughout human history people have always said something is impossible, that it can't be done, or won't happen.
Then time proved them wrong.And I'm sorry to call it out on you Bif but, I never mentioned overtaking windows, I said Mac. only 4 years ago that number was sitting between 1.5% and 2% 'Depending on who's data you used' then in the last 2 years it jumped another 1-2%. it doesn't need a math genius to do an average of 1.5 x 5 = 7.5 + 2 to total 9.5% assuming the low number and that is ignoring the potential exponential growth curve and seating it at a more steady incline. sure. reaching 15% market share in 5 more years is a bit optimistic, but if we forget about why people are switching and just look at the numbers, 5% is still millions of people. In 10 years, most machines will be running ARM or some variation.
And lets not forget about the e-waste problem. All those macs out there that are getting cut off from support when they're still usable machines is a huge waste. Better to load them up with something else that keeps them running longer, since Intel didn't really innovate in a meaningful way over the time span of those product releases, they're still perfectly usable and serviceable machines.0 -
Also, PSA I just found out today that Mixxx Finally fully supports the Kontrol S4 Mk3 with working jog motors, Under Linux - So once Mac OS 11/Big Sur falls off the table with software support I'm gone. My next hardware purchase will be a dedicated mixer, so if that happens before I can afford to drop around 1K on a big mixer, then it looks like Linux and Mixxx are now a viable alternative 😎
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Well then, it seems you have a plan. That's all anybody can ask for. Best of luck!
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"Could Native Instruments offer Linux options one day? Sure. But then you have to hire more people. You have to pay more people. You have to pay for the health care, vacation, and unemployment benefits for more
people."You don't need to add native Linux compatibility to all NI products. Linux/Wine does a pretty good job at handling stuff. It's mostly Native Access 2 that's the issue. Just make Native Access 2 run on Linux/Wine so people can stop using Native Access 1 as a workaround, which doesn't even download the latest version of Kontakt anymore. Can't do it? Hire an Electron/React freelancer from India for a week and he'll get the job done. It's not a number of people problem, it's a mindset problem.
"Linux desktop usage is around 3%, depending on who's numbers you use."
That's a pretty useless statistic. The market share of zero carbon footprint planes for long distance flights is 0%. The only reason Linux doesn't have a bigger market share in music production yet is because companies like NI are slow in offering functioning products for it, even though cross-platform tech stacks have been available for years. One doesn't need to be a genius CEO to see the chicken and egg problem here and to realize who needs to act first to get the ball rolling.
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Hire an Electron/React freelancer from India for a week and he'll get
the job done. It's not a number of people problem, it's a mindset
problem.Also an oversimplification. There is no magic pill. It's just not a thing. In fact, it might be exactly the opposite. "Farming it out" has been done in IT for decades and decades. Occasionally it works. Most of the time, however; SOMEBODY gets burned. Just look at all the issues with the MK3, which most certainly was not soldered together in the basement of the Native Instruments headquarters.
Haven't the customer had enough of a hard time in recent years?
Example: You farm it out to some "freelancer from India for a week" as you say. He's not going to get it done in a week. It's just not going to happen, because his work needs to go through all the same process as your regular team's work does.
Oversimplifying is really tempting, and for that reason, we just shouldn't do it. There are risks to everything you do or don't do. And if you don't have expertise and wisdom regarding the part of the world you might farm something out to, then you're just being gullible and asking for trouble.
Ignorance of cultures, norms, and customs will make you susceptible to being scammed, ripped off, and just being taken advantage of.
As I said, NI can choose to do something or not. One day, they might decide to go Linux. But right now, we've all experienced way too much trouble with NI software of late. There's just not enough resources to add another platform. And by that, I mean that there are not enough employees to provide support and fix bugs. And if you ask me, the customer base just does not have enough risk tolerance left for more failed launches.
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"Linux desktop usage is around 3%, depending on who's numbers you use."
That's
a pretty useless statistic.You say it's useless, but then your argument below talks about zero carbon airplanes for long distance flight…which does nothing to actually make or even mildly support your point.
The market share of zero carbon footprint
planes for long distance flights is 0%.The only reason Linux doesn't
have a bigger market share in music production yet is because companies
like NI are slow in offering functioning products for it, even though
cross-platform tech stacks have been available for years.Companies like NI are all consolidating. Music software, instrument, effects, and even IRL instrument makers are all consolidating, and some retail outfits are closing stores and merging with other entities. Or being bought out.
Pretty much nobody is looking to expand into more platforms. I don't have access to their accounting, but I don't need that to see what they're thinking publicly.
One doesn't
need to be a genius CEO to see the chicken and egg problem here and to
realize who needs to act first to get the ball rolling.Well, there ARE Linux-based music software products. They are niche, however. Why don't we see THEM taking over the market?
When Native Instruments sees a benefit to Linux, then we will see Linux products. But right now, they kind of have their hands full with Windows and Mac. And neither of those is working all that smoothly for everybody at this time.
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It's astounding to me that people keep bringing this up. Your powers of observation are enough to tell you that market demand drives product, regardless of country, political orientation, or anything else. Why do you think China invested heavily in cultivating it's battery industry and electric car manufacturing starting a decade ago so they could be a dominant player in the world market based on upcoming DEMAND…not ideology.
Even at 3% that's hardly a demand referendum. What's drawing investment dollars these days is anything associated with AI. Even Apple jumped on that ship this last week. That's not about current demand, that's projection for future demand and they were very late jumping on board by comparison across the industry. No one is clamoring for a new operating system unless it has some relevance to AI…which has nothing to do with Linux.
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Good points, every one of them. The thing to do would have been for Native Instruments to wait a whole 'nother 12-18 months before releasing KK MK3 and its attendant software. To be honest, we could still be making great music with Komplete 15, 16, and 17, even with our old MK1 and MK2 devices, and even with NKS 1 and VST2 still everywhere.
But that didn't happen; KK and the MK3 were forced into the marketplace long before they would really be ready. We've all had to follow the orders of senior leadership. While also knowing that senior leadership is not willing to take on board the good advice we're all trying to give them.
Still hoping to see things fixed and old features re-added, and refusing to consider a new hardware+instrument device until we get back a significant portion of the things we lost.
======== AI…or "aye-aye-aye caramba!"
As an investor, I'm fully exposed to everything AI now. Surprise, so are you! Not by choice, no. Buy a company that makes air conditioning equipment, and you'll find out that they're building units now for big data centers. Because AI. Buy a company that makes electrical monitors, and you'll find out that they're building sensors now for Nvidia's GPUs, which are supposedly going to give us all "Intelligence".
But really, I don't think we've thought through what it means to "be AI". What we really need is more "Common Sense Intelligence", so can we do that first?
I would just be happy for Siri and Alexa to be a little bit less like incompetent employees. I don't need them to make all my decisions for me, write my homework, make my tea, and wipe my butt too.
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I think the basic problem with AI, especially for investors, is I'm not sure they're all very clear on what AI consists of at this point. Because AI today only consists of Generative Intelligence, it really can't adapt and make decisions dynamically to make dramatic improvements based on changes in it's environment. So improvements can only come in the same way as it does with standard programs through "re-training" the AI. Sounds a lot like software updates to me….
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I always wonder why naysayers like to jump on threads totally unrelated to them. If you don't use Linux, be happy and go make some music on your established system. This is a "Linux Petition" thread, not a "What do Windows/Mac users think of Linux" thread, and for sure not an "AI is the future" thread.
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yes, but you are pestering non Linux users with a petition that does not apply to 97% of the users here.
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Because at the core of any "Linux Petition" is the BUSINESS case for doing so. No one in their right mind allocates money for a project on a whim. They examine market dynamics such as expected growth markets like AI, market share, market growth, potential for future growth, etc. No one in their right mind takes on an expensive project without a good business case for it. Their stockholders would never agree without a decent case for an ROI on that kind of expense.
If you want to make a case for Linux that's up to you to provide realistic projected numbers, not "pie in the sky" dreams. Sorry if that sounds to you like naysaying, but the market is the market regardless of what you like or prefer.
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In addition to what Chris and Dragon say in their responses above, the Linux question DOES affect Windows and Mac users. A lot! Native Instruments has neither the staff, the money, nor the "banked up goodwill" to take on a 3rd OS platform, while still keeping up the pace on all the updates we HAVE been seeing in various products the last 3 to 4 months.
Adding Linux support requires a different level of expertise. I know. My past teams have supported Windows and Linux, and they're so different that you very rarely have a person able to support both platforms with equal expertise. 99.9% of my teams were Windows people OR Linux people with a couple of folks who could do some limited things in their "2nd language OS". But I sure didn't have any "master of all" team members. On top of that, there's MacOS expertise that people have to have.
And then there's that that lack of banked up goodwill thing. There's an army of people just on this forum who are super angry with NI for releasing the KK MK3 too soon. Some of those people are counting the months now! And then there are those who are even MORE angry that the fixes aren't coming fastly and furiously enough for their tastes. Some are even threatening to leave the NI ecosystem. The days are gone when humans were made for sticking it out through hard times.
Adding a third OS platform seems like a really bad way to get yourself overwhelmed to the point where you're being accused even more of giving "customer no service". But maybe a fast way to sink the whole ship, if that's what the true intent is.
I say let's get some wins under our belts for a few years. Like maybe 3 years of no Native Access "won't update" or "stuck on reloading" disasters, 3 years of no crazy crashing white-screen firmware update experiences in KK, and maybe 3 years of steady Maschine support too. We need to start winning before we start trying to build a whole new ship.
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