I'd say something implementing the ideas of NixOS, i.e. immutable versioned systems and declarative system definitions, is poised to replace the current deployment mess, which is extremely fragile.
With NixOS, you can upgrade without fear, as you can always roll back to a previous version of your system. Regular Linux distributions, macOS, and Windows make me very nervous because that is not the case.
> I'd say something implementing the ideas of NixOS, i.e. immutable versioned systems
NixOS isn't immutable, things aren't mounted read only. AFAIK, it can't be setup that way.
> With NixOS, you can upgrade without fear, as you can always roll back to a previous version of your system. Regular Linux distributions, macOS, and Windows make me very nervous because that is not the case.
The store is immutable in the functional programming sense, as the package manager creates a new directory entry for each hash value.
Backups could be an option, but it is much better to have a system where two computers are guaranteed to be running the exact same software if configuration hashes are the same.
In other OSes, the state of your system could depend on previous actions.
> Regular Linux distributions, macOS, and Windows make me very nervous because that is not the case.
I'm personally only really nervous when updating Linux distributions. Besides security updates it usually hardly matters or is noticeable on macOS/Windows (well besides the random UX changes..).
Ideally there would be a usable security first os based on something like sel4 with a declarative package system for slow to change mission critical appliances.
In NixOS, you have a bootloader to load your OS. Unless you botch your bootloader, you can't paint yourself into an unbootable state. If one system configuration doesn't work, you reboot and choose the prior one before the OS begins to load in a menu displayed by the bootloader.
This is also true of most regular Linux setups. Except that in those, you can only choose the kernel. Hence, if you have broken other parts of your configuration, your system might not be bootable. So the safety net is much thinner.
Because you just want stuff to work and couldn't care less about the ideology part?
Also no feature parity (it's not about Windows being "better" than Linux or the other way around, none of that matters) there are not out of the box solutions to replace some of the stuff enterprise IT relies in Windows/etc. which would mean they'd have to hire expensive vendors to recreate/migrate their workflows. The costs of figuring out how to run all of your legacy Windows software, retraining staff etc. etc. would be very significant. Why spend so much money with no clear benefits?
To be fair I'm not sure how Apple figures into this. They don't really cater to the enterprise market at al..
Why? Both things seem pretty tangential. Poorly written software exists or can exist on any platform, just like the IT infrastructure wouldn't somehow automagically become robust if they just switched to Linux.
When I took a Linux course in college I had an old laptop that I installed Linux on. However, for some reason my wireless card wouldn't work. I mentioned it to my professor and the next day he told me "It's actually quite simple, you just have to open up the source code for the wireless driver and make a one line change."
Maybe things have gotten better, but I think that's why people use Mac. It's POSIX but without having to jump through arcane hoops.
The problem with the linux desktop was usually that most hardware companies were either not spending any time/effort on non-windows drivers/compatibility or when they did it was a tiny fraction of the effort that went into working around bugs in the windows driver API's.
Today with the failure of windows in both the mobile and industrial control space we now see vendors actually giving a damn about the quality of their Linux drivers.
Today the main factor keeping the enterprise marked locked on windows is the fat clients written around the turn of the millennium, and that's as much a problem for mac adaptation as it is Linux adaptation.
The macs are slick well designed devices that speaks to a huge segment of the consumer market so will eventually find the way into the high cost niches where no specific dependency on legacy software exists but they are too expensive and inflexible to replace all of the wintel system so for Microsoft and it's partners to have their license to screw over the enterprise sector revoked Linux(or FreeBSD) will have to play a role too.
Things have definitely gotten better. I remember the painful years. My most recent Ubuntu install on a new laptop was about 3 years ago. As someone who has used Linux as the daily driver for more than a decade (and dual booted as a second OS for another decade) I was pleasantly surprised that everything just worked! I think that was a first
It was an HP from Costco, not something special sold with Linux. My wireless worked, dual monitors just worked, even the fingerprint reader that I never use. I remember sitting there thinking "I didn't have to fight anything?" Hopefully that becomes the norm, maybe it is - I haven't needed a new laptop yet.
Because for some people (certainly not all), their objection is not to a "corporate" OS, but to the specific things Microsoft does that Apple does not.
