10 ms·

Don't know anyone's ages here, but is anyone fascinated by the historical implications of this? I started using Linux in the 90's and the talk in the community

Don't know anyone's ages here, but is anyone fascinated by the historical implications of this? I started using Linux in the 90's and the talk in the community at the time was "world domination". It seems to me that's happened--more or less behind the scenes, but it's happened.

gaigepr 11y ago
22. My first distro was Ubuntu 8.04. I remember struggling to get various windows games to work through the use of wine.
noir_lord 11y ago
I'm 35, started using Linux in '97 so I've been around for most of the history. It's quite amazing how Microsoft has changed in that time tbh from "Embrace, Extinguish, Extend" and all the shenanigans they pulled with comparing Win2k vs Linux/Samba and the halloween memo through to submitting code to the kernel, using Linux as a guest in their VM stuff and now using it internally not to mention making .Net a first class citizen (which when it's done will be incredible, I love C# as a language but in Linux land it's not quite their yet compared to on Windows).
- x5n1 11y ago
  They don't have a choice. Linux has already won. Heard of Android? Yeah that's the Linux kernel right there, over a billion mobile devices. Heard of Mac OS? That's a Unix kernel right there. Microsoft makes a proprietary operating system with cumbersome licensing restrictions. Microsoft is 10 years from death if it does not embrace Linux.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    Microsoft is not going to die if it doesn't embrace Linux... that said, they are much more open today than a decade and a half ago. .Net Core is making a lot of progress and has respawned interest in C# cross platform. I think a lot of this is in the light of what happened with Oracle v Google. There's also, XBox itself and Azure, which are key points to the future of MS along with Office, which will now grow to other platforms, as it should have some time ago.
  - pakled_engineer 11y ago
    This assumes tomorrow MS doesn't drop a BSD licensed Android clone of their own and clean up in that market. I thought Facebook was going to die out too then they became defacto telecoms in the developing world through WhatsApp/Internet.Org, and now have a billion users.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
    > Microsoft is 10 years from death if it does not embrace Linux. FWIW, I remember people saying this in 1999 as well...
    - astrodust 11y ago
      Don't confuse "death" with "irrelevance". There are companies out there still shambling along that used to be dominant but are now ghostly memories of their former selves.
    - npsimons 11y ago
      The IBM comparison is really apt. IBM hasn't died, they used to dominate like Microsoft, with all the same underhanded tactics, and they eventually came around. There's also the "culture wars" to consider, where many (myself included) revered IBM for superior alternatives (OS/2), while old timers would just shake their head at anyone trusting them. Now, I shake my head at anyone trusting Microsoft, although they've tamped down their rabid attacks on open source and Linux, and they do offer some things that aren't complete garbage.
      - MaysonL 11y ago
        I used to work with a guy who used to be the DP VP [what's called CIO these days] at the only Fortune 100 firm that didn't have a corporate IBM mainframe (although a subsidiary or two did, IIRC). IBM tried a number of times to get him fired (such tactics as golfing partners of the CEO saying that he was really incompetent, etc.). They played hardball, and probably still do, when they can.
      - scholia 11y ago
        IBM at its peak was much more dominant than Microsoft ever was. Microsoft -- thanks to IBM (via PC DOS and Basic) -- eventually became the IBM of software. But Intel became the IBM of processors, Cisco the IBM of routers, Google the IBM of the web, and so on. IBM was the IBM of everything. Incidentally, Microsoft co-developed OS/2 and there were only three problems with it: (1) you couldn't sell PCs running OS/2 -- IBM tried; (2) you couldn't get software houses to write programs for OS/2 -- except maybe Lotus; and (3) you couldn't get end users to install it. You had to install a whole OS to run OS/2, but Windows installed just like any other DOS program, and you could delete it if you decided you didn't like it.
- DanBC 11y ago
  MS used to really trash open source, with Ballmer calling GPL "cancer". (Although the company pulled back from that extreme). When MS took over Hotmail they got rid of FreeBSD that was running it. But MS have used Unix for years. They released MS IE for Unix. (The only person I know who ever used it was on HN.) Perhaps more bizarre was the Windows Media Player for Unix. Their TCP/IP stack was from BSD for ages (and possibly other stuff. The EULA used to refer to the regents of Berkley.) http://betanews.com/2001/06/18/microsoft-we-use-freebsd/ http://betanews.com/2001/06/18/microsoft-we-use-freebsd/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5182249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5182249
  - dunham 11y ago
    I downloaded and played with IE for Solaris, but I didn't use it for day to day browsing. One interesting thing that I recall from it was that it had .so files that corresponded to each of the windows DLLs. So it looked like they had some sort of framework for porting windows code to Unix.
    - ams6110 11y ago
      IE originated as Spyglass Mosaic, formerly NCSA Mosaic, a unix browser. So it was more like they ported unix code to Windows.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - teddyh 11y ago
        Spyglass did not use any of the code from NCSA Mosaic¹. ① http://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html http://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html
    - thwarted 11y ago
      There used to be a page from the IE for UNIX porting team[0] that talked about the challenges of a direct port. Last I checked, only a copy of the content could be found on a mailing list post[1]. There's some interesting stuff in there. This one always seemed like a weird problem: Global variables in Win32 dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) are visible across processes, so it is important that developers are careful that these globals do not conflict with any variables within the Unix shared libraries. At least in the way it is presented. What does variables in DLLs being visible across processes on Windows have to do with variables in other libraries? Of course they need to be uniquely referenced. [0] http://tech.slashdot.org/story/98/11/17/1624254/microsoft-programmers-on-porting-to-x http://tech.slashdot.org/story/98/11/17/1624254/microsoft-pr... [1] http://www.linux.cz/pipermail/linux/1999-September/051669.html http://www.linux.cz/pipermail/linux/1999-September/051669.ht...
- hga 11y ago
  Don't forget Halloween Memo X, along with as I remember stuff from GrokLaw, which revealed that Microsoft funneled 86 million to SCO when it was litigating SCO v. The Open Source World. (Especially bogus because SCO knew in advance they didn't have the rights to UNIX(TM), but I doubt Microsoft knew that.) I'll bet that by itself had consequences.
  - valarauca1 11y ago
    When Microsoft sold the Xenix license to SCO it took its payment in stock. Mircosoft owned ~25% of SCO during these legal battles.
    - hga 11y ago
      Huh, I don't remember that, especially if those were the two different SCOs. The first, the Santa Cruz Operation, was OK ignoring some quality issues, and they are the organization that Microsoft got 25% of through that transaction in 1987. Much later, in 2001, this happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation#Asset_sale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation#Asset_sal... And Caldera, which renamed itself in the next year to The SCO Group, got all of the original SCO's assets but Tarantella. Not sure what happened with Microsoft's ownership of the original SCO, but I don't remember through the years of SCO v. The World that Microsoft had a large ownership stake ... which would have been major. Instead, per http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween10.html http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween10.html and my memory of Groklaw ..., well, here's ESR's first summation paragraph: There you have it. At least a third of SCO's entire market capitalization, and their entire current cash reserves, is payoffs funnelled from Microsoft. Their 10Qs reveal that every other line of cash inflow is statistical noise by comparison. The brave new SCOsource business model is now clear: sue your customers, shill for Microsoft, kite your stock, and pray you stay out of jail. I also seem to remember some Microsoft related deal involving the purchase of Novell SUSE? licenses, although now I can't remember if The SCO Group directly benefited from it. Microsoft earned this part of its bad reputation, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's purchases from the company in part ended with Windows XP prior to that (of course, it helped that Vista was long delayed and awful). Supporting Microsoft back then was unconscionable.
osullivj 11y ago
Yes, Linux has dominated the commodity server space. Look what happened to Sun & Solaris. But what about the desktop? Back in the late 90s there was much talk of how the Linux desktop would take over, KDE vs Gnome etc. IBM and Sun backed Open Office, Andy Herzfeld launched Nautilus. And then it didn't happen. MS still owns the business desktop with Windows & Office. And MS still has a big chunk of the consumer desktop, though Apple has taken a lot of it with MacOS.
- organsnyder 11y ago
  The desktop market is still mostly Windows & MacOS, but if we instead look at client devices in general, Microsoft is losing quite badly: Android (running a Linux kernel) and iOS (BSD-derived, like MacOS) have almost all of the market share, with Windows struggling to make much of a dent.
- frik 11y ago
  With a proper open source Web based Office alternative, MS Office would loose a lot of customers.
  - hga 11y ago
    Unless Microsoft ruins Office, I can't see it happening. I believe it would take a seriously funded company to implement all the needed features (sure, no one uses all the features of Word, but each uses a different vital set of them), prove that, oh, Excel was safe to run your company/trading on, and provide support.
  - r3bl 11y ago
    From my own perspective, both LibreOffice and Google Docs are both more then capable enough. I know that LibreOffice is primarily a desktop application, but it has a not-so-perfect remote web interface since version 3.5. But, for filling out forms and keeping the design as it is, I'm currently using a web interface of Office 365. It's a bit annoying to use it at the moment (you can't get rid of the constant "Install Word on Your Device" messages and you first have to upload your document on OneDrive before you can edit it), but it gets the job done.
snnn 11y ago
I'm 29, started using Linux in 2003 when I just bought my first PC.
ChrisArgyle 11y ago
I couldn't disargee more about Microsoft's current place in tech markets. They've lost quite a lot of weight since their 800lb gorilla days in the 90s. They used to exploit their dominant market position to replace de-facto standards with their own: kerberos "extensions", creating ActiveX instead of just implementing NPAPI, removing JNI from the MS JVM. But they can't do that any more. They lost too much ground under Ballmer. Now they're nearly tripping over themselves promoting their cross-platform tolerance. Run Linux in our cloud! Run our apps on all the platforms! Sync/connect our apps/devices to any service! Source: Age 34, started with Linux in '97 (Slackware 3.2)
- WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  Yeah, it's so surprising that Microsoft didn't implement the "Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface" (which was just for web browses) or other interfaces that weren't build for Windows.
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    Not only was NPAPI developed by a rival company, it was specific to browsers. ActiveX allowed features from any (Windows) application to be embedded into any other (Windows) application, not just browsers. It was a strictly more general framework and thus a better option for Microsoft. What really screwed things up was, security was not one of the foremost considerations when designing ActiveX because it was conceived for the desktop world. So it was horribly insecure when applied to arbitrary content downloaded over the web.
- thwarted 11y ago
  I couldn't disargee more about Microsoft's current place in tech markets. They've lost quite a lot of weight since their 800lb gorilla days in the 90s. You are aware that the "World Domination" being referred to was talk of Linux's World Domination, right? So you're not disagreeing, you're supporting the observation that Linux eventually dethroned the 800 lb gorilla and that the 800 lb gorilla is a shadow of what it once was.
- cbd1984 11y ago

gaigepr 11y ago

22. My first distro was Ubuntu 8.04. I remember struggling to get various windows games to work through the use of wine.

noir_lord 11y ago

I'm 35, started using Linux in '97 so I've been around for most of the history. It's quite amazing how Microsoft has changed in that time tbh from "Embrace, Extinguish, Extend" and all the shenanigans they pulled with comparing Win2k vs Linux/Samba and the halloween memo through to submitting code to the kernel, using Linux as a guest in their VM stuff and now using it internally not to mention making .Net a first class citizen (which when it's done will be incredible, I love C# as a language but in Linux land it's not quite their yet compared to on Windows).

x5n1 11y ago
They don't have a choice. Linux has already won. Heard of Android? Yeah that's the Linux kernel right there, over a billion mobile devices. Heard of Mac OS? That's a Unix kernel right there. Microsoft makes a proprietary operating system with cumbersome licensing restrictions. Microsoft is 10 years from death if it does not embrace Linux.
- tracker1 11y ago
  Microsoft is not going to die if it doesn't embrace Linux... that said, they are much more open today than a decade and a half ago. .Net Core is making a lot of progress and has respawned interest in C# cross platform. I think a lot of this is in the light of what happened with Oracle v Google. There's also, XBox itself and Azure, which are key points to the future of MS along with Office, which will now grow to other platforms, as it should have some time ago.
- pakled_engineer 11y ago
  This assumes tomorrow MS doesn't drop a BSD licensed Android clone of their own and clean up in that market. I thought Facebook was going to die out too then they became defacto telecoms in the developing world through WhatsApp/Internet.Org, and now have a billion users.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  > Microsoft is 10 years from death if it does not embrace Linux. FWIW, I remember people saying this in 1999 as well...
  - astrodust 11y ago
    Don't confuse "death" with "irrelevance". There are companies out there still shambling along that used to be dominant but are now ghostly memories of their former selves.
  - npsimons 11y ago
    The IBM comparison is really apt. IBM hasn't died, they used to dominate like Microsoft, with all the same underhanded tactics, and they eventually came around. There's also the "culture wars" to consider, where many (myself included) revered IBM for superior alternatives (OS/2), while old timers would just shake their head at anyone trusting them. Now, I shake my head at anyone trusting Microsoft, although they've tamped down their rabid attacks on open source and Linux, and they do offer some things that aren't complete garbage.
    - MaysonL 11y ago
      I used to work with a guy who used to be the DP VP [what's called CIO these days] at the only Fortune 100 firm that didn't have a corporate IBM mainframe (although a subsidiary or two did, IIRC). IBM tried a number of times to get him fired (such tactics as golfing partners of the CEO saying that he was really incompetent, etc.). They played hardball, and probably still do, when they can.
    - scholia 11y ago
      IBM at its peak was much more dominant than Microsoft ever was. Microsoft -- thanks to IBM (via PC DOS and Basic) -- eventually became the IBM of software. But Intel became the IBM of processors, Cisco the IBM of routers, Google the IBM of the web, and so on. IBM was the IBM of everything. Incidentally, Microsoft co-developed OS/2 and there were only three problems with it: (1) you couldn't sell PCs running OS/2 -- IBM tried; (2) you couldn't get software houses to write programs for OS/2 -- except maybe Lotus; and (3) you couldn't get end users to install it. You had to install a whole OS to run OS/2, but Windows installed just like any other DOS program, and you could delete it if you decided you didn't like it.
DanBC 11y ago
MS used to really trash open source, with Ballmer calling GPL "cancer". (Although the company pulled back from that extreme). When MS took over Hotmail they got rid of FreeBSD that was running it. But MS have used Unix for years. They released MS IE for Unix. (The only person I know who ever used it was on HN.) Perhaps more bizarre was the Windows Media Player for Unix. Their TCP/IP stack was from BSD for ages (and possibly other stuff. The EULA used to refer to the regents of Berkley.) http://betanews.com/2001/06/18/microsoft-we-use-freebsd/ http://betanews.com/2001/06/18/microsoft-we-use-freebsd/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5182249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5182249
- dunham 11y ago
  I downloaded and played with IE for Solaris, but I didn't use it for day to day browsing. One interesting thing that I recall from it was that it had .so files that corresponded to each of the windows DLLs. So it looked like they had some sort of framework for porting windows code to Unix.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    IE originated as Spyglass Mosaic, formerly NCSA Mosaic, a unix browser. So it was more like they ported unix code to Windows.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - teddyh 11y ago
      Spyglass did not use any of the code from NCSA Mosaic¹. ① http://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html http://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html
  - thwarted 11y ago
    There used to be a page from the IE for UNIX porting team[0] that talked about the challenges of a direct port. Last I checked, only a copy of the content could be found on a mailing list post[1]. There's some interesting stuff in there. This one always seemed like a weird problem: Global variables in Win32 dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) are visible across processes, so it is important that developers are careful that these globals do not conflict with any variables within the Unix shared libraries. At least in the way it is presented. What does variables in DLLs being visible across processes on Windows have to do with variables in other libraries? Of course they need to be uniquely referenced. [0] http://tech.slashdot.org/story/98/11/17/1624254/microsoft-programmers-on-porting-to-x http://tech.slashdot.org/story/98/11/17/1624254/microsoft-pr... [1] http://www.linux.cz/pipermail/linux/1999-September/051669.html http://www.linux.cz/pipermail/linux/1999-September/051669.ht...
hga 11y ago
Don't forget Halloween Memo X, along with as I remember stuff from GrokLaw, which revealed that Microsoft funneled 86 million to SCO when it was litigating SCO v. The Open Source World. (Especially bogus because SCO knew in advance they didn't have the rights to UNIX(TM), but I doubt Microsoft knew that.) I'll bet that by itself had consequences.
- valarauca1 11y ago
  When Microsoft sold the Xenix license to SCO it took its payment in stock. Mircosoft owned ~25% of SCO during these legal battles.
  - hga 11y ago
    Huh, I don't remember that, especially if those were the two different SCOs. The first, the Santa Cruz Operation, was OK ignoring some quality issues, and they are the organization that Microsoft got 25% of through that transaction in 1987. Much later, in 2001, this happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation#Asset_sale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation#Asset_sal... And Caldera, which renamed itself in the next year to The SCO Group, got all of the original SCO's assets but Tarantella. Not sure what happened with Microsoft's ownership of the original SCO, but I don't remember through the years of SCO v. The World that Microsoft had a large ownership stake ... which would have been major. Instead, per http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween10.html http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween10.html and my memory of Groklaw ..., well, here's ESR's first summation paragraph: There you have it. At least a third of SCO's entire market capitalization, and their entire current cash reserves, is payoffs funnelled from Microsoft. Their 10Qs reveal that every other line of cash inflow is statistical noise by comparison. The brave new SCOsource business model is now clear: sue your customers, shill for Microsoft, kite your stock, and pray you stay out of jail. I also seem to remember some Microsoft related deal involving the purchase of Novell SUSE? licenses, although now I can't remember if The SCO Group directly benefited from it. Microsoft earned this part of its bad reputation, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's purchases from the company in part ended with Windows XP prior to that (of course, it helped that Vista was long delayed and awful). Supporting Microsoft back then was unconscionable.

osullivj 11y ago

Yes, Linux has dominated the commodity server space. Look what happened to Sun & Solaris. But what about the desktop? Back in the late 90s there was much talk of how the Linux desktop would take over, KDE vs Gnome etc. IBM and Sun backed Open Office, Andy Herzfeld launched Nautilus. And then it didn't happen. MS still owns the business desktop with Windows & Office. And MS still has a big chunk of the consumer desktop, though Apple has taken a lot of it with MacOS.

organsnyder 11y ago
The desktop market is still mostly Windows & MacOS, but if we instead look at client devices in general, Microsoft is losing quite badly: Android (running a Linux kernel) and iOS (BSD-derived, like MacOS) have almost all of the market share, with Windows struggling to make much of a dent.
frik 11y ago
With a proper open source Web based Office alternative, MS Office would loose a lot of customers.
- hga 11y ago
  Unless Microsoft ruins Office, I can't see it happening. I believe it would take a seriously funded company to implement all the needed features (sure, no one uses all the features of Word, but each uses a different vital set of them), prove that, oh, Excel was safe to run your company/trading on, and provide support.
- r3bl 11y ago
  From my own perspective, both LibreOffice and Google Docs are both more then capable enough. I know that LibreOffice is primarily a desktop application, but it has a not-so-perfect remote web interface since version 3.5. But, for filling out forms and keeping the design as it is, I'm currently using a web interface of Office 365. It's a bit annoying to use it at the moment (you can't get rid of the constant "Install Word on Your Device" messages and you first have to upload your document on OneDrive before you can edit it), but it gets the job done.

snnn 11y ago

I'm 29, started using Linux in 2003 when I just bought my first PC.

ChrisArgyle 11y ago

I couldn't disargee more about Microsoft's current place in tech markets. They've lost quite a lot of weight since their 800lb gorilla days in the 90s. They used to exploit their dominant market position to replace de-facto standards with their own: kerberos "extensions", creating ActiveX instead of just implementing NPAPI, removing JNI from the MS JVM. But they can't do that any more. They lost too much ground under Ballmer. Now they're nearly tripping over themselves promoting their cross-platform tolerance. Run Linux in our cloud! Run our apps on all the platforms! Sync/connect our apps/devices to any service! Source: Age 34, started with Linux in '97 (Slackware 3.2)

WorldWideWayne 11y ago
Yeah, it's so surprising that Microsoft didn't implement the "Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface" (which was just for web browses) or other interfaces that weren't build for Windows.
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  Not only was NPAPI developed by a rival company, it was specific to browsers. ActiveX allowed features from any (Windows) application to be embedded into any other (Windows) application, not just browsers. It was a strictly more general framework and thus a better option for Microsoft. What really screwed things up was, security was not one of the foremost considerations when designing ActiveX because it was conceived for the desktop world. So it was horribly insecure when applied to arbitrary content downloaded over the web.
thwarted 11y ago
I couldn't disargee more about Microsoft's current place in tech markets. They've lost quite a lot of weight since their 800lb gorilla days in the 90s. You are aware that the "World Domination" being referred to was talk of Linux's World Domination, right? So you're not disagreeing, you're supporting the observation that Linux eventually dethroned the 800 lb gorilla and that the 800 lb gorilla is a shadow of what it once was.
cbd1984 11y ago