"All daemons made when sysvinit was king will work with systemd. It is backward compatible, even with sysvinit scripts (there are some few documented corner cases)"

Yes. But that's completely beside the point.

The problem described is not that old stuff won't work/is portable; the problem is that new stuff, stuff that use fancy systemd-specific parts, are not portable. This means there will be great services, down the road, that people will want to run on other UNIX-like OSes than Linux, like say, FreeBSD or OSX.

Before systemd, this was easy to accomplish. After systemd, you need to write a software abstraction layer that hides the systemd-specific parts. It's a giant problem just waiting to come up and bite someone in the ass.

You are missing the point.

Linux has automatic updates, and a friendly icon pops up saying "We installed stuff on your computer, you should reboot at your convenience."

Windows, on the other hand, installs those updates and then tells me "you have five minutes to quit whatever it is that you are doing before we reboot your computer."

Whoever decided that was a good idea should be shot.

Sorry to hear that. Bitch at your overlords they're holding you back, because that's in essence what they are doing.

Maybe they'll listen once they realise they are the laughing stock of everyone else in the world... :)

All software has holes, but atleast Linux lets me upgrade my machine when I want it to, not force me when I'm right in the middle of something.

I still get those from Windows on a regular basis. It still annoys me. And if you say "Oh but that's so easy to fix, just do xyz" - well, it's dead-easy to fix a lot of things with Linux commandline too. And just as much a valid solution to a given problem. So there. Neither OS is better than the other, but some have more strengths than others.

I still regularly get "need to upgrade reboots" on my Windows machine. It's atleast once a month and always seems to pop up when I'm playing a game of LoL or CS:Go.

Yes, I use my Windows as a Wintendo. Got a problem with that?

If the carriers in the US are not afraid of the coming Android hegemony, then they should be. The rest of the world already is - they've seen that the iPhone and iPod is heading the same way as the Macintosh two decades earlier did. Apple is repeating the same mistakes it did then. Apple will therefore slowly sink below 10% marketshare, just as the WinPhone is now.

And regardless whether you choose to trust an expert with a most impressive track record when it comes to predicting the WinPhone market, well... Your loss. :)

First, if we're talking about getting to the "third Ecosystem" as a measurement of success, then you would need at least 10% of the market. WP is not gaining market share - it is slowly losing it. There are two ways one can gain those kind of numbers, now;

1. Someone creates a consumer phone that is an order of magnitude better than what we have today, extremely well polished, and not based on Android/iOS. Since the bar has been raised ridiculously high the chances of that happening are very slim. Or to put it this way: had the first iPhone hit the streets today, it would've been laughed out of market.
2. Carriers decide "Ok, we need to do something about this Android hegemony or forever be slaves to Google", and decide to take one of the open alternatives and collaborate on making it up to par. However, given the nature of carriers, that would be even more unlikely. Imagine Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint all go together to create a common platform, don't really think so...

Second, the way Tomi compares the smartphone sales numbers seems legit to me. He takes all smartphone unit sales including legacy platforms still being sold today (e.g. Blackberry). If one is to ignore legacy platforms then yes, WP has a greater market share compared to Android and iOS.

Dude, the N9 had glowing reviews from several heavy names, that is irrefutable fact. The N9 was seen as a potential rival to iPhone, that too is irrefutable fact. And it sold like hotcakes in the few countries that released it, even with no future.

Moreover there was no viable path to creating an ecosystem.

Because Elop had killed any chances of it once the N9 hit the ground, yes? It still outsold Lumias once it was released, though.

I gave you details from Kanter. We're done. You obviously have no respect for simple factual refutation, preferring to live in Tomi's world of paranoid delusion even when confronted with data.

That doesn't change the fact that Tomi consistently had the most accurate predictions about current market share of the WinPhone platform and Nokia in and of itself. Or are you saying Windows Phone in reality does not have an installed base of around 3% of the market, today? Despite all the billions thrown at it, despite all the failures that Nokia had going WinPhone exclusive? Are you saying WinPhone did, in fact, consist of more than 2.2% of all phones sold in Q1 2014?

I can't see any chance of WinPhone recovering. Not going to happen. It will be stuck below the 10% threshold for atleast a decade. Android won the mobile war, and any platform that is going to be a serious contender needs to be more open than Android to succeed. Because that is the only way to make a dent in the marketshare.

"MeeGo was a failed product."

No. The MeeGo development certainly had it's troubles not saying it hadn't, but the Nokia N9 was seen as a phone that quality-wise was even better than the iPhone. Maybe not *everyone* thought so, but, a lot of people thought so. Seriously, they compared it to a serious iPhone competitor at the time where iPhone was the gold standard. You can twist that around however you wish, fact is, getting a phone out the door good enough to rival the iPhone is a failure? I'd like to see a few other of these failures thank you very much.

"No it hasn't. Marketshare is up in virtually every market vs. 3 or 6 months ago. And certainly hugely up vs. 2 years ago."

Right, keep on living in denial, don't really care.

Some markets may be bigger than others, but you are seriously overlooking the global picture. Global 2014 Q1 market share of new devices showed Windows Phone at a 2.2% market share total. Early 2014 Q2 for the global picture reports does not improve these numbers much - in fact, seems to have flatlined. Windows Phone can sell at most 5-10 million units a quarter - and the market itself is growing, not shrinking.

No, Windows Phone has a long, hard, and winding road to go before it can become a serious contender for third Ecosystem. As has all the other emerging platforms (Tizen, Firefox, Ubuntu and Sailfish OS). And the old ones (at this point only blackberry remains).

"There was a huge drop in Symbian marketshare 6 months before Elop came on as CEO. Causes cannot happen temporally before effects."

Yes, Symbian was an aging OS that needed replacement - and there was a replacement in the works, with a clear migration path, Meego. However, at Nokia, Symbian was still alive and well, albeit the writing was on the wall. Take a look at these three pictures:

http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...

And the article in full, in case you're interested: http://communities-dominate.bl...

The data points are rather damning. Sales do not lie. Would Nokia have collapsed as much as it did, had it stuck with Meego or switched to Android? No. They might've lost a bit of market share, but it would have paid off quite handsomely, especially with Meego. It is quite clear that it's the choice of the WinPhone platform that is the culprit, here.

Why they choose WinPhone I do not know. They go from a clear upgrade path for their users to no upgrade path for their users, along with the infamous "Burning platforms" memo, and then expect their customers won't jump ship? Sorry, not happening.

It doesn't matter what you think - WinPhone will have a hell of a hard time to reach even double-digit market share. Right now it's flatlined. Everyone thinking otherwise are either: a) delusional, b) have a vested stake in seeing Windows Phone succeed, or c) has been fed with Snake Oil by their advisors.

What's really, really sad though, is that we've traded the IBM monopoly for the Windows monopoly, and now the Windows monopoly for the Android monopoly.

Yes, Android has passed iOS in both market- and mindshare - and there are no other viable competitors. Free software blew it - again! :(

Except it isn't. Tomi has rather damning evidence in his wall of text:

The FACT is, that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told Nokia shareholders - and I quote - "Indeed, Microsoft did buy the Skype company as part of the ecosystem that comes with Windows Phone and Windows. The feedback from operators is they don’t like Skype, of course." Elop went on to explain why carriers/operators hate Skype " (because) it could take away from revenues."

This is spoken by Elop himself. Why do you think Nokia fell from being twice as large as it's biggest competitor to completely fall out the top ten in mobile in a mere three years? It's called Windows Phone, and nobody wants a windows phone!

The problem is not that retail does not carry WinPhone. The problem is that carriers - e.g. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc - Will not subsidize windows phones, and they started this ever since the Skype purchase. That is what is meant by the "carrier boycott". Oh sure they will sell those phones, but only at full price. Why is this a problem? Well, "you want this winphone for $49 a month or this androidphone for $29 a month?" is a serious problem because Joe Sixpack doesn't care about Android or Windows, he will take the cheapest alternative.

Is this a fixable problem? No, it is not. Skype is now an integrated part of Microsofts Cloud strategy. So this means Microsoft has to choose between Skype or Mobile.

Please do note that carriers do not wish to support technology that will one day make them a "mere data channel". Carriers have built their business on exclusive services in their own networks. By subsidising Windows phones, they are funding technology which will make them obsolete one day. Sure they are only delaying the inevitable, but that's how they roll.

Because of the Carrier boycott.

Windows Phone will most probably never see double digit market share. The reason? Skype. Microsoft owns Skype, the single biggest threat to current carrier revenue. The Skype/VOIP revolution will happen, but if you were a carrier, would YOU invest in technology that would kill you off, long-term?

Tomi Ahonen has a rather complete rant about this topic from late 2012, and very little has changed since then.

Sony Xperia Z Compact? It's 4.3 rather than 4 inches but other than that seems to fit your bill...

They also don't spread to more than maybe 10-20 000 people at most. Really big ones get maybe 100 000 views.

Compare that to blockbusters that often gets viewed by 10 million people or more.

Economics of scale - they do scale. A lot.

Well, higan (formerly bsnes) comes extremely close, with very few known bugs in it's SNES core (other cores not as good though). :)