22 ms·
Long story, short: 1. Realize the world is moving beyond Windows 2. Cede mobile OS to Android/iOS, that battle is lost. 3. Realize, next great revenue stream
by Bamafan 8y ago
Long story, short:
1. Realize the world is moving beyond Windows
2. Cede mobile OS to Android/iOS, that battle is lost.
3. Realize, next great revenue stream is the Cloud (Azure).
- devereaux 8y agoRegarding #1, eventually I expect Microsoft to release their own Linux distribution and keep Windows as a GUI. I would not be surprised if their failed project Astoria was reused to run android apps on that.
- evv 8y agoIt would be make me so happy to see WINE supported as the first-class way of running Windows software.
- cptskippy 8y agoI would be surprised if that was the approach Microsoft took, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a supported way of running Windows Apps emerge. This could be used as a way to maintain backward compatibility in Windows as it evolves in the future.
- devereaux 8y agoI would fully expect them to buy Codeweavers should they do that. Win32 binaries running on Wine is one of the best option for desktop software. It's funny how it is like the polar opposite of UWP, but it just work and I guess that matters more than technical beauty.
- acct1771 8y agoValve (Steam) are doing this.
- VRay 8y agoSpeaking as an OS engineer who's worked on both kernels a lot, Windows is way better under the hood for low-latency, responsive end user stuff than linux Then again, WinMo 7 was way faster and more responsive than Android at the time, and look how that turned out..
- zozbot123 8y agoThe PREEMPT_RT patchset (sometimes confusingly referred to as RT-Linux) is slated to improve the kernel quite a bit wrt. "low-latency" and "responsive" workloads.
- kokey 8y agoI'm not sure why this is such a problem in Linux, where latency is really not such a big problem in Darwin/MacOS/iOS.
- dralley 8y agoArchitected for throughput instead of latency.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoOne costs a lot to maintain, another doesn't.
- grumpydba 8y ago> Speaking as an OS engineer who's worked on both kernels a lot, Windows is way better under the hood for low-latency, responsive end user stuff than linux Still it's probably a lot cheaper to fix some latency issues on linux that to maintain your whole kernel. The main issue with linux is the GPL for drivers, a long with kernel API instability.
- zozbot123 8y ago> The main issue with linux is the GPL for drivers That's the main benefit with Linux. OEM drivers on MS Windows are a shit show, even on Windows 10.
- nailer 8y agoWindows is a pretty good kernel, GNU/Windows (aka WSL) effectively feels like Linux, with some drawbacks mainly NTFS being very slow (which Microsoft are aware of and working on - see https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425272829 https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...).
- eknkc 8y agoYeah I remember reading this particular comment when it was new. It mostly feels like “ok guys this is the best we get out of this” to me though. If they do not go with a different approach, the filesystem will always be an issue with WSL. I planned ditching my mac in favor of WSL. Due to MBP hardware issues and the fact that a git status would take 10x time drove me away. I wish it was good enough though.
- blinkingled 8y agogit status maybe 10x slower on WSL than native Linux - I wonder how much slower it is than macOS - in my brief use macOS filesystem never felt anywhere near Linux fast to me.
- eknkc 8y agoNever been bothered by it in practice but good question. The newish filesystem (apfs) feels faster in daily use so your experience might be outdated by now.
- avtar 8y agoI keep a Debian VM around with Samba exporting my ~/src directory to the Windows host. That way it’s possible to avoid file system issues while still being able to use editors and other tools (Adobe CC apps in my case).
- nailer 8y agoAnyone tried ext3 or 4 on Windows?
- saosebastiao 8y agoWhy would it need to be Linux? I love linux, but mostly because it works well and is open source. I'd love for a big tech company to put their weight behind SEL4. That would go a long way for Microsoft: formally proven security, tiny footprint, good performance, etc. It's something that has massive potential for super computers all the way down to IOT. It just needs a proper ecosystem behind it. Or maybe buy QNX off of Blackberry and make it open source again. That would also be nice.
- Kye 8y agoMicrosoft already has a lot invested in Linux support. They're not going to switch to something with a fraction of the community and ecosystem even if it has a lot of good qualities.
- kokey 8y agoI think as long as Microsoft holds onto Windows tightly the better bet in the future will always be a Linux or UNIX-like OS. Like many other things, the thing that works more like evolutionary systems tend to prevail. Linux might be the dominant race of the UNIX ancestry tree at the moment, but it may not retain that dominance and the thing that will overtake it will probably come from the same UNIX evolutionary roots, e.g. the BSD side where FreeBSD, Darwin, MacOS and iOS came from or the other Linux side branches like Android and Chrome, or somewhere less unexpected. The only way Windows tree OSes will prevail over this is if they allow more branches to evolve, even open source parts of it. User interfaces tend to do better if owned by an organisation with a concentrated purpose and commercial vision, but the stuff under the bonnet seems to do a lot better from being more open and evolutionary.
- 20190129 8y agoPerhaps Google Fuchsia[0]? I hope not. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia
- pjmlp 8y agoLooking at the embedded market OSes, everyone is pretty keen in moving away from Linux into RTOS, mbed, NuttX, Tizen IoT, RIOT, eventually Fuchsia, .... Who knows which ones will survive, however they all have two things in common, they aren't GPL based and just enough POSIX to keep C and C++ happy. Additionally some of them do have stable ABI for drivers. Linux's long term victory might be constrained to the server room, and even there it is debatable, given the increase in managed runtimes for micro-services, which could even be running bare metal for what I care.
- pjmlp 8y agoThey already have their Linux distribution, it just doesn't run on the desktop. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-sphere/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-sphere/ However on what concerns the desktop, I am betting more on GNU/Windows.
- 20190129 8y agoI just hope one day they add regular expressions to Excel.
- int_19h 8y agoWSL came out of Project Astoria.
- ksec 8y agoAt the rate things are going, may be Microsoft will even open up their Windows kernel, leaving many of the Windows user land and UI proprietary.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoYeah, those help. But it was ultimately recognizing which pie was shrinking and which pie is growing - and is still growing. MS is a software company. Now that they've remembered that, it's producing results.
- karmakaze 8y agoI'm not really seeing software, more services including Azure and online versions of apps and even Windows as a subscription. I'm sure there's lots of consulting in there too.
- luckydata 8y agoMicrosoft doesn't do consulting but has an enormous partner ecosystem.
- freeone3000 8y agohttps://www.microsoft.com/en-CA/enterprise/services?activetab=pillars%3aprimaryr13 https://www.microsoft.com/en-CA/enterprise/services?activeta... we kinda do? Microsoft Consulting Services is directly from us, though the extensive partner ecosystem is also important for smaller customers.
- pacaro 8y agoWell, there is Microsoft Consulting Services, so it isn’t quite such a simple picture. But it is true that they haven’t gone down the IBM path.
- luckydata 8y agoIt's a drop in the ocean though, I'm aware there's is a little of that but if you look at revenues you can say that without being too wrong. The in-house stuff is mostly a function designed to enable customers better more than a way to squeeze money out of it. It doesn't even crack the billion dollars (it's around 300M last time I checked). But yeah, I should have known that given the crowd on hacker news I should have protected my statement from the "actually..." crowd.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nostromo 8y agoThe problem is they are no longer best-of-breed for any of their markets, except maybe Office. Microsoft doesn't break out Azure revenue, but by all accounts it's quite small compared to AWS. And Office is very much under threat. If you work with young people you'll notice they tend to prefer G Suite apps over Office - most likely because Google has done a great job getting their software into schools.
- king_magic 8y agoUh, Azure revenue, by many accounts, is greater than AWS: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/10/29/1-microsoft-beats-amazon-in-12-month-cloud-revenue-26-7-billion-to-23-4-billion-ibm-third/#39c070312bf1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/10/29/1-microsof... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-tops-amazon-in-q1-cloud-revenue-6-0-billion-to-5-44-billion-ibm-third-at-4-2-billion/#3b3145d95d4b https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-... And sorry, G Suite is a joke compared to desktop Office for serious work. It doesn't matter what the youngin's prefer, what matters is what gets (or facilitates getting) real work done in the enterprise, which generally revolves around Excel and PowerPoint in some fashion.
- nostromo 8y agoMicrosoft includes a bunch of non-Azure products under their cloud revenue. And they do it to confuse people and falsely claim they're outpacing AWS, which as you just proved, works.
- GVIrish 8y agoWhy shouldn't Office365 be counted in cloud revenue? "Cloud Revenue" doesn't exclusive mean IaaS or PaaS.
- techfoolery 8y agoBecause SaaS isn't cloud computing. SaaS is essentially a fully available software application that you don't run on your own machines. There's similarities, but key differences that you can easily look up to better understand. Hence part of why most aren't huge fans of including O365 to claim Azure's bigger than AWS.
- stareatgoats 8y agoTo me it was more interesting to get a glimpse of Satya Nadellas thought process: > "as a CEO you need to create that continuous balance between the multiple constituents [that] is the real job" and > "Ultimately, if we don’t want to have a race to the bottom, we need to have some laws and regulations that govern how participants in the marketplace can make sure we don’t do things that have unintended consequences." and more. One might argue that thinking like this can be obtained in a two-day management course, or an afternoon with the corporate head of PR - still, many leaders don't even seem to understand the benefit of putting such into words, let alone use it as guiding principles.
- whatshisface 8y ago>still, many leaders don't even seem to understand the benefit of putting such into words, let alone use it as guiding principles. What you're looking at is a second-generation CEO. Nadellas was bred through the executive training program of an established organization, having received many two-day management courses, and he knows that an afternoon with the PR group is a good idea. This is in contrast to Gates and Balmer, which were first-generation "founder" CEOs.
- Torwald 8y agoCompare this to Steve Jobs second turn at Apple, in the same short format: 1. Realize Windows has won the PC war. 2. Improve the Mac by calling Next the Mac. Grow the Mac's market share year after year. 3. Concentrate on the next big thing. Ipod, Iphone, Ipad, etc What does that give us? The question why Microsoft is unable to integrate their mobile OS strategically into their Cloud, in order to grow both. (The Mac's growth is also due to iPod and the iOS devices.)