Go and Windows

[trilobit]

I'm sure - like me - some of you read somewhere before that Bill Gates was an avid go-player when he was younger. So I always wondered why is go not a preinstalled game on windows operating sytems like chess is for ages? It can't be too much trouble for a big company like MS to program a small go program. I always wondered how the western go world would change if go was preinstalled on every windows pc. Even better, lets imagine it even having an integrated online mode, how cool would it be. I wonder how many people would try the game, how many would stick to it, how many of them would become serious players. Am I the only one wondering about this? Was there an AGA initiative to contact microsoft or even Bill Gates?

[oren]

He's an even more avid bridge player, but you don't see it installed either.

I imagine it's just keeping hobbies and work separate.

[jenson]

Think based on the majority, Chess is still a more popular choice?

Though I would second the idea of Pre-installed Go client :-p

[jenson]

Think based on the majority, Chess is still a more popular choice?

Though I would second the idea of Pre-installed Go client :-p

[jenson]

But there's been a lot of Go game clients available out there which is good enough to install for both offline and online games and studies.

[Boidhre]

They removed the chess program from Windows 8. They've been trimming things for a while now.

[moyoaji]

Actually, chess wasn't even included by default until Windows Vista. (And has been removed from Windows 8)

If your Windows XP or older computer came with chess, it was installed by the computer manufacturer, not because Microsoft included it.

Now, I personally would love to see go be included in Windows but that isn't likely.

[jenson]

We're actually spoilt with choices nowadays thus no longer feasible to Pre-install any Chess or Go client nowadays :-p

[Mike Novack]

This also represents some mild confusion between "operating system" and various packages of applications bundled with it as part of the installation. What is perhaps trivially obvious to 'nix users is that there is even a difference between "operating system" and "windows manager" that MS users and Mac users don't realize. That's because Windows and the various Mac OS's come with just one windows manager while most 'nix distributions come with several allowing the user to choose which one is preferred. In other words, Windows and mac users "see" their windows manager as the operating system but it really isn't.

[trilobit]

Of course you are right, but those application bundles were still provided by microsoft and ended up on most consumer pcs. But like someone mentioned with all those app stores, nowadays people have easy access to a big variety of games, so preinstalled probably don't matter much anymore. Still would have been interessting to know, what kind of impact it would have had.

[wineandgolover]

I'd much rather a clean OS free of bloat than to have all the game options in the world.

OS's run computers. Apps run on OS's.

I like my OS's lean, and I'll choose my own apps.

[vpopovic]

I think it would be great to have go app distributed with Windows.
Not because that would be the best client in the world but just because it would be a huge promotion of go.