32 ms·

Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

470 points by pedrocr 7y ago

1996 7y ago
Dear new corporate overlord, if you want to disprove this, please invest in wine! It is an alternative option that would yield great dividends for both linux and windows user. win32 binaries are just more multiplatform that .net/uwp/the next shiny new thing you will try and fail to spin.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  I think they want to go the HyperV route for this purpose, wine is not really the solution a company like Microsoft would choose (based on their business needs). HyperV based hybrid desktop seems to be much easier to develop, maintain, sell etc.
  - 1996 7y ago
    Easier, maybe, but it will not succeed. hyperv will be the next big shiny thing to fail. Meanwhile, wine keep my old binaries useful - and will keep them long after uwp or whatever shades into obscurity.
    - TomMarius 7y ago
      I kind of agree with you, but that does not change anything about it being the strategy of choice for Microsoft
  - my123 7y ago
    SQL Server for Linux is the Windows version running on the NT user-mode kernel. (see Drawbridge)
- simion314 7y ago
  At least they could make it so there is no more FUD about wine, give Wine a license to reverse engineer or use the existing leaked code as they want.
de_watcher 7y ago
Can add Visual Studio to the Office/DirectX/Outlook/ActiveDirectory section.
- beatle_sauce 7y ago
  Same with document formats: MS Office Open XML instead of just supporting the existing OpenDocument Format (ODF) as open standard.
  - jraph 7y ago
    That is not really related to Linux itself, more to the open source / free software world.
- pjc50 7y ago
  They're sort of heading in this direction with VSCode. I can imagine that VS itself is a non-portable COM-infested disaster area.
  - zvrba 7y ago
    COM is anything but disaster. It's a really nice language-independent component framework. An ABI and marshalling standard, built upon ANOTHER, older, standard -- DCE RPC -- that allows e.g., C++ COM server to talk with Powershell, no extra effort required. As opposed to what you (do not) have on Linux: generating bindings for each scripting language you might want to support, and no standardized way of doing IPC/RPC.
  - garganzol 7y ago
    COM is good and it is anything except disaster. It its raw form, COM is just a small and natural abstraction over plain C interface. Just like a C interface is a small and nice abstraction over plain registers/stack call models of the past. The advent of calling conventions like C was a huge step forward in 1970s. Before that, there was a mad zoo of passing parameters via random CPU registers and praying that you made no mistake and it would work without a crash. COM is no different. IUnknown is just 3 methods (QueryInterface, AddRef, RemoveRef) over a plain C. It immediately brings an ability to use service model design in APIs.
lasermike026 7y ago
Hmmmm, Linux has proven itself on its own. The GPL has done its work. POSIX is a working standard. Linux isn't completely POSIX compliant. I don't think there is much Microsoft can do about it.
guardian5x 7y ago
This article makes it sound like Embracing is a bad thing, because necessarily Extend, and Extinguish will follow. But it doesn't really work that way with Open Source.
- pixl97 7y ago
  Eh, kinda does by extending the standard in a non open way. Then blocking.
- dleslie 7y ago
  Google proved the model for embracing, extending and controlling open source by way of Android and the shift to Google Play Services. Start open and let the walled garden grow within.
  - gowld 7y ago
    How does a not-open-source product control open-source? Anyone can try to build an open source alternative to GPS on whatever hardware they can obtain, using Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Without Google open source, they've have to replicate it's functionality from scratch. If AOSP never existed, Android would still be Android (GPL allows proprietary Android) and would still be as popular as it is. iOS was never open source, and did fine.
    - dleslie 7y ago
      Yes, anyone can make an open source alternative; the point is that the popular system will remain closed and controlled. Free alternatives don't become a threat when you control their implementation target.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      When was the last time a Google-free AOSP fork had a successful handset on the market? We've seen almost nothing but failures: Amazon Phone, Cyanogen, … The market seems to have spoken that Android isn't Android without "Google Play Services" secret sauce, and that's entirely proprietary walled garden.
skohan 7y ago
I don't think it's a particularly good thing for Microsoft to cozy up with Linux, let alone any of the larger tech firms. In particular, I don't think it's great that Microsoft is such a heavy contributor to the Linux foundation. If the people who work on Linux become financially dependent on large tech firms, this creates potential conflict-of-interest. For instance, is it impossible to imagine that as Proton becomes more capable of making the Windows gaming experience portable, there couldn't be pressure to kneecap it in some way at the kernel level? If Ubuntu had dropped 32 bit app support as planned, it would have done just that.
- jrs95 7y ago
  Linux development is already dependent on large tech firms and has been for a long time.
  - skohan 7y ago
    I understand that. I’m saying I don’t think it’s a good thing.
tra3 7y ago
I'm having a tough time drawing a conclusion from this article. In my experience with commercial/open source projects the only reason they are open source is because of some sort of market advantage. Is the author suggesting that Microsoft doing all this OSS work out of the goodness of their collective heart? Corporations are about making money, while that goal and OSS happen to align we'll get open source from Microsoft. The second it stops being strategically relevant: bye-bye.
- de_watcher 7y ago
  Money... Then the conclusion is that you have to be careful when using the word "love" there.
- ppseafield 7y ago
  I think the article takes issue with "Microsoft loves Linux" as a blanket term, where it's more like "Microsoft loves† Linux‡" († supports in only a very specific way because of losing to Linux on the server side.) (‡ Linux as used only for servers. Linux as a desktop OS can still get bent, and we're trying to get devs to abandon it when working on code that deploys to Linux servers.)
gwd 7y ago
> I think all of these would be strategic blunders from the point of view of Microsoft shareholders. But they’re the kind of things you do for love. Otherwise this is just “love” if your standard is abusive one-sided relationships. This is awesome.
raesene9 7y ago
From what I see in general MS like Linux on the server, not so much the desktop. The reason for that is pretty obvious. They want as many organizations as possible to use their cloud platform, for that to work, they need first class Linux server support. On the desktop, they'd prefer people to be using Windows, but they want to ensure that developers who deploy to Linux have a great experience, thus WSL, VS Code et al. With that said, I think there are some groups inside MS who would like to see more desktop Linux support, thus announcements like the Linux Teams client. It's probably a mistake to view MS (or any other v.large corp) as a unified entity. There will be groups inside that corp. with differing goals. You only have to look at MS presence at Kubecon where you'll often see MS staff with Macs or Ubuntu laptops on their stand.
- vrthrowaway 7y ago
  They don't _like_ it, that's the author's whole point. They would obviously prefer that everyone pay for windows server, but they've lost that battle. "Like" is pure marketing. >You only have to look at MS presence at Kubecon where you'll often see MS staff with Macs or Ubuntu laptops on their stand. marketing in a market. I think we (or you and the author, I'm just re-iterating his points) are talking past each other and you probably agree, but his whole point again is that the "Love" is just public facing market strategy.
  - darkcha0s 7y ago
    Just a question-- what would be a path you deem the best? Should Microsoft just work in its silo, while Linux develops in its silo? Should Microsoft not embrace linux? I feel like the 2 strategies mentioned by the author simply let you point to the other one when the first one doesn't grip. I'm always at a loss when these HN posts come about, because I feel like 99% of the hate/sentiment stems from the time Microsoft was actually a shitty company (I'm sure it is still shit in great lengths today, but not comparable to the Ballmer years).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
tyingq 7y ago
"I think all of these would be strategic blunders from the point of view of Microsoft shareholders" It seems to be working well for MS thus far, so I'm curious why the author thinks this.
- winkeltripel 7y ago
  it's referring to the author's suggestions to show authentic love.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    I'm not clear on why that would help shareholders as compared to current course.
juliangoldsmith 7y ago
Microsoft loves Linux because it makes them money. I'm not sure why anyone would expect differently. They won't release products like Office for Linux (though a web interface is possible), and they won't move away from Windows-only APIs. Neither of those actions would have any tangible benefit for the primary users of those produts (Windows users and Windows developers, respectively). Active Directory is so deeply integrated into the Windows stack that it will never come out. You can authenticate Linux clients against AD, but I doubt they'll be writing a Linux AD server any time soon. I'd imagine most corporate mail servers also support SMTP/IMAP, and Office365 has a web client. As far as ActiveSync goes, that hasn't been a thing since 2007.
- conexions 7y ago
  A web interface is already a reality.[1] Work great with Chrome or Chromium. Not a full featured office, but in general very nice. [1]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/office/ndjpnladcallmjemlbaebfadecfhkepb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/office/ndjpnladcal...
  - Longhanks 7y ago
    A Chromium-only extension is not a "web interface".
    - derefr 7y ago
      Sure it is, in the sense that it’s very likely not using any Chrome-specific APIs (Chrome right now has the least exposed extension API surface to regular, non-ChromiumOS extensions) but rather at most being equivalent to an Electron app, where some of the HTML and JS lives and runs on the client rather than on a server. But that HTML and JS still is HTML and JS built for a web-rendering-engine to parse and run, so it should be fully possible to turn this extension into a regular web-app with not very much work. Probably any sufficiently-motivated programmer could do it in a couple of hours, throwing the result in an S3 bucket for anyone to access. (Not sure how well it’d run on other browsers, but we still call regular web-apps where the developers happened to only test it in one specific browser “web interfaces.”)
designium 7y ago
I think the article misses a bigger fight which is between Microsoft's Azure vs. AWS. All what Microsoft is doing is catering to devs who want better tools to deal with servers in the cloud. Imagine this potential tactic: 1. Create great tools such as Visual Studio Code to serve as first point contact with devs of all types and stacks 2. Start creating plugin or easy to integrate dev workflow in those types of tools with Azure 3. Make it so easy and reasonably cost effective that people may start switching away from AWS to Azure I don't think Microsoft is trying to kill or encroach Linux but instead cooping those devs into moving to Azure platform where the market growth is; while still protecting the existing cash cows.
lawlessone 7y ago
They'll turn linux in a microsoft app.
- overcast 7y ago
  WSL is already a thing.
- jabedude 7y ago
  I know this is hyperbole, but funny enough you can download "Ubuntu" for WSL from the Windows app store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/ubuntu/9nblggh4msv6 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/ubuntu/9nblggh4msv6.
will4274 7y ago
This blog appears to argue that by bringing some but not all of it's products to Linux, Microsoft is engaging in Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (EEE). That's a tough sell. If you apply the same standard, virtually ever large company that has ever contributed to Linux is EEE-ing Linux because they released some product that doesn't run on vanilla Linux. The bad action in EEE is extending APIs in incompatible ways and then dead ending them - it's hard for me to see how not shipping Office to Linux qualifies.
- simion314 7y ago
  I think the author refers at the fact you release just a bit of functionality for Linux but if you want the full stack you have to use Windows. Like you make .Net for Linux but only some parts, release other tools but not the admin part etc. I would be convinced when MS and Wine project has an agreement so the Wine devs can access the Windows source code.
  - will4274 7y ago
    > I would be convinced when MS and Wine project has an agreement so the Wine devs can access the Windows source code. This is exactly what I'm saying is absurd. Microsoft isn't EEE-ing by not giving Wine devs access to Windows source. There is a difference between not helping and actively sabotaging. Conflating the two is an unfair attack.
    - simion314 7y ago
      The part about Wine is not related, it was about what would convince me that Microsoft "loves" Linux or at least is not intimidated by it. The WSL seems to me as the first part of the EEE and the competition would be fair if Linux could have it's own project Wine supported by Microsoft, as it is now it feels as an exploit, MS can do WSL but Linux and Mac have to struggle with Wine and the FUD around it.
      - zamalek 7y ago
        > Linux and Mac have to struggle with Wine and the FUD around it. What FUD? I don't think I've ever seen someone spread FUD about Wine. Are you referring to the website that lists how well games/apps work with it?
zoechi 7y ago
When I had to deal with Windows 10 recently I got the impression MS has given up on Windows completely. The last notable improvements were introduced in Win XP. Most stuff that came later was just changing the look&view of a few settings windows with the only effect that all consistency was lost and Win looks more like a mess than a Linux desktop where some apps were built for X, Kde, Gnome, ... It was also funny that SQL Management Studio crashed at the same use cases as it did 10-15 years ago. It would be interesting if there were any developers working on anything but cloud at MS the past 10 years.
- Crinus 7y ago
  The last time there was a real UI and UX consistency was with Windows 2000 (or ME, if you want to stay on the consumer side). With Windows XP Microsoft introduced themeable controls but instead of making them available to all applications, they used an opt-in mechanism (based on special EXE resources or manifest files) so even nowadays unless you use that mechanism you get the Win2K era of controls. Even then, with Windows 7 most things were consistent and if you really cared about consistency even with non-themed apps you could always switch to Windows Classic theme (which i always did, not so much because of consistency but also because i just like that theme :-P). Since Windows 8 with the introduction of Metro/UWP/WinUI/WinWhateverNext consistency was thrown out of the Window, without even trying to pretend otherwise (it isn't a coincidence that the UI guidelines for desktop applications in Microsoft's site still use the Win7 theme).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Quite a few really good things came after XP. The new display[0] and sound[1] driver models, the new network[2] stack. [0] Compositing, no longer need to reboot to install new video drivers [1] Centralized per-application volume control [2] VLAN tagging and bridging without third party products Sadly, the thing with the new settings panels and mobile-ified look & feel is true. But that was all post-7. > It would be interesting if there were any developers working on anything but cloud at MS the past 10 years. There are, unfortunately, and they're terrible and keep pushing broken Windows updates and new features nobody asked for.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
tw04 7y ago
I'm not sure I follow what the author is getting at other than "We should hate MS and do our best to not work with them on anything!". First it was "MS breaks compatibility on purpose, screw those guys!". Now it's "sure, they're playing nice but they don't have a product in every market segment we want so they must have some nefarious master plan we haven't figure out yet!" Everytime I hear someone say "just look, they don't support office on Linux!" I ask: and what exactly do you think the market share is of guys who love Linux so much they use it on the desktop, but also would PAY Microsoft for Office vs. just using LibreOffice or Google's office suite? If you think MS hasn't done the math and figured out that solution would never break even much less turn a profit, I guess I'd ask anyone making that claim to show their work. I can tell you unequivocally the thing holding back the average enterprise from moving their entire business to Linux on the Desktop is NOT Microsoft Office, if it were they'd just tell everyone to use Office Online and move on with life. PS: I assume all these Linux on the Desktop guys complaining about not having Office on Linux already are subscribed to o365 and use Office Online exclusively, proving to MS there's demand. Right?
- KingMachiavelli 7y ago
  If Office was available for Linux, some organizations could consider deploying Linux workstations with Office since that's what most users/employees need is basically a browser (100%/users) and the Office suite (50-90%/users). Office Online is severely gimped as noted in the article and is solely to counteract adoption of Google Office.
  - outside1234 7y ago
    What is a good example of it being gimped? I honestly think its better online than the apps themselves.
    - KingMachiavelli 7y ago
      In Office 365 Excel, there is no way to zoom out or in besides the browser's zoom which causes the whole UI to be scaled.
stevbov 7y ago
Why would any Linux shop use SQL Server anyways? Why would they use .NET Core? The only people I know pushing .NET Core are .NET people, not Linux people. My general rule is to never use a technology where your primary platform is a second class citizen. It just makes things a pain: not only could support be dropped in the future because there's no profit in it, its also harder to find answers to problems on the internet.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How is Linux a second class citizen for .Net Core? Have you ever had a problem with .Net Core on Linux that you couldn't find an answer to?
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I've actually had more issues with it in Windows than on Linux/Mac. Though I will say VS proper is much nicer than VS Code for C# development. It will improve. I'd still prefer to use mostly node, which gets its' own ire from the developer community.
  - Nullabillity 7y ago
    - dotnet-cli will try to cache a bunch of junk into its install folder, rather than respecting $XDG_CACHE_HOME, or even just using a plain old dotfile. These days it just generates an annoying warning on each run, but it used to be a hard error. - OmniSharp just plain doesn't work on NixOS, because it hardcodes a bunch of Ubuntu paths. - It seems to support automatically switching between multiple SDK versions, but I've never been able to get that to work.
- lghh 7y ago
  I'm a Linux person who likes .NET Core. I like C# quite a bit, and I don't think Linux is a 2nd class citizen for .NET Core.
  - merb 7y ago
    especially since kestrel is faster on linux than on windows. (well it's slower than iis inProcess, but still)
pksdjfikkkkdsff 7y ago
I can't really follow the article. Too much paranoia, or negativity, I guess. All I care about is having a usable Linux shell and Linux tool on my Windows machine. What else can you expect from Microsoft? Yeah, they are doing it so that people don't switch over to Linux completely. What more can you expect? Is it even Microsoft's job to establish a standard for 3d Graphics and what not? Or is the ball in the park of graphics card vendors and game developers? Why do I have Windows on my machine? I don't fully trust Linux to achieve the same level of power management. I can play games. I have a dual graphics card, which would be a hassle to use on Linux. It would be notebook vendor's job to release Linux notebooks with good power management. Chip vendors to release specs that enable Linux developers to create such drivers. And so on.
- gowld 7y ago
  Why wouldn't an Operating System developer be responsible for providing an interface between hardware developers and applicaton developers?
  - pksdjfikkkkdsff 7y ago
    OpenGL seems to have coexisted with DirectX for a while. I don't know enough about OS development to be able to judge if Microsoft prevented OpenGL from achieving the same performance as DirectX. Given the abysmal security history of Windows, my guess would be that it was possible to get close to the metal as a driver developer, at least in the old days. Also MS couldn't be expected to take care of an interface that works on iOS and Linux. They are responsible for Windows.
xenorplxx 7y ago
Hm. MS started to support React, especially React Native project lately with their react-native-windows and AppCenter, but I honestly have no idea why would they do that instead of going with something like Electron, since they started to invest in Chromium and V8 anyway.
- tracker1 7y ago
  They've done a lot with Electron as well... Github now being a subsidiary of MS. VS Code is really nice, and Teams is decent. I'd be surprised if we don't see new cross platform Office releases based on the Web versions wrapped in Electron in the next couple years.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Office has been heading towards React Native and React Native for Web, according to BUILD talks.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  My impression is that Microsoft sees it as a "¿Por que no los dos?" situation and is investing in both because it makes developers happy to have a choice.
derefr 7y ago
I’m honestly surprised that Microsoft aren’t working with Linux vendors in an attempt to solve Linux problems by more deeply integrating Windows-styled solutions into Linux, such that the Linux client ecosystem becomes more dependent on the Windows infrastructure ecosystem. That’d be the natural Azure-focused equivalent to “embrace, extend, extinguish.” For example, Linux DNS resolution is an arcane mess of upstream components bodged together over decades, about the place where sysvinit was before systemd came along. I could totally see Microsoft releasing some FOSS Linux über-network-client-daemon that combines DNS, NMBD, and Bonjour resolution together (sort of like Apple’s mDNSResolver) in an attempt to “clean up” that mess—where, just by coincidence, parts of the SMB stack begin to seep directly into the operation of the system. Then a subsumption for Kerberos+libpam+GSSAPI that also supports NTLM; etc. until eventually Linux ends up needing to talk to a real Active Directory Domain Controller to boot. Might be Microsoft’s one, might be a Linux FOSS one—either way, it gives Microsoft an advantage. ...but, so far as I can tell, they’re not doing this. I wonder why not?
- fermuch 7y ago
  I thought system's resolvd was an attempt to fix all problems with dns resolution. Can you point me how it is not a solution, or how Microsoft could build something better instead of contributing to it?
  - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
    So far, nss works more or less for me, except that .local takes a couple of minutes to resolve # grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf hosts: files mymachines mdns [NOTFOUND=return] resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] dns myhostname
- zymhan 7y ago
  > ...but, so far as I can tell, they’re not doing this. I wonder why not? Because maybe, just maybe, they're a tad bit less evil?
  - DayDollar 7y ago
29athrowaway 7y ago
Use SoftMaker FreeOffice, or SoftMaker Office. It is a pretty nice and performant replacement for MS Office.
- hamsapelea 7y ago
  Google docs works like a charm
magashna 7y ago
"Embrace, extend, extinguish" *nix is too big to really extinguish, but MS can certainly bear hug some cash out of them.
zwieback 7y ago
TBH, Linux as a desktop productivity environment is a small enough market that I wouldn't expect MS to make a big investment there. It's either iOS, Android, Mac or Windows for the average user so MS is trying to stay relevant in those areas by focusing on the server side and Windows client side.
gmaster1440 7y ago
Personally strikes me very much as an article making valid points but generally in bad faith. Microsoft can both begin to change and embrace Linux gradually as they've been doing recently and at the same time have an unsavory past with the ecosystem. If anything, they're willingness to change, however small, should be interpreted generally as a positive shift.
bydl0coder 7y ago
First, desktop Linux sucks, so there's no point of porting anything to it. Second, office suites including MS Office are now cloud-based.
Quarrelsome 7y ago
Was this article really written this decade?
headmelted 7y ago
The author misses the bigger picture completely. Microsoft used to see Linux as competition, and while that might still be true in some ways, it’s largely moot for a couple of reasons. In 2019, Windows isn’t competing with Linux for desktop market share not because Linux poses no threat there, but because the desktop doesn’t matter anymore. Windows, and the desktop operating system as a concept, is competing with the web browser in the enterprise and mobile devices in the retail market (and even then, it’s not really a competition - most casual users gave up computers for smartphones years ago). Viewed in that lens Microsoft genuinely embracing Linux makes a lot of sense - most of their revenue now comes from service contracts, and the one bedrock they’ve always had is their second-to-none developer support. If developers want them some Linux, then by gosh Redmond is going to give them more Linux than anyone else. Maximum Linux for your organisations’ Linuxy needs! Microsoft still has great support for gamers on Windows as an incentive not to check out Wine/Proton and things happening there, but really, when was the last time you paid for a Windows license for home use? One way or another they’ve been literally giving the software away as quickly as they can for years. The future is about services, and that means market share (if users leave because they can get a free OS elsewhere then the license has to go). Likewise, if it gets more developers to stay in the ecosystem, then Linux support it is.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Since when? That's nonsense. Browser and a whole operating system are two different things
  - nonfamous 7y ago
    Chromebooks would like to have a word with you.
  - vegarab 7y ago
    Are they? cough ChromeOS cough
  - DylanDmitri 7y ago
    From user perspective, OS has become a commodity. https://xkcd.com/934/ https://xkcd.com/934/
SimianLogic2 7y ago
I used cygwin to do web development circa 2007/2008. It was a huge pain in the ass and one of the main reasons I switched to Macs. I've been back on Windows for a couple of years now using WSL and it's been pretty great. I'm excited for that integration to get even tighter with WSL2. The broad categories I use professionally are office crap, web dev, and creative tools. Macs used to suck at the first and rule the last two, but they've really fallen behind in the last few years. The new macbook pro looks like a good machine, but I switched to a gaming laptop to get a better GPU and 64gb of RAM. This (2-year-old) machine does everything I need it to do and I'm now at a point where Macs are going to have to do something pretty spectacular to get me to switch back (or have Windows screw up in a comparable way to what Apple has done the last few years). What's the point of all this? I think this article misses the boat pretty badly on who Micrsoft's talking to when it says it loves linux. It's talking to web devs like me who work and deploy to linux, not software philosophers who want to debate the meaning of free. From my point of view, they're doing great right now.
- thom 7y ago
  Could you describe your workflow with WSL?
tracker1 7y ago
It feels like this article is a lot of FUD spreading. MS is a business that likes to make money. At this point, there are developer minded people at the helm, and it makes more sense selling their software and cloud services than chasing negative returns on Windows. I can see that side of it through and through. MS has open sourced huge amounts of resource and platform building code in .Net Core the past several years, and ASP.Net earlier than that. They did buy, and have expanded on the tools from Xamarin not shutter it. I'm not saying they're altruistic in nature, no company is. I will say that their behavior in the community, especially since Nadella took over has been better than any other company of it's size or larger that I can think of. I'm not saying forget or forgive the past, but accept the present. Corporations, despite legalities, are not people. They are made up of people, and a significant portion of management has rolled over in the past decade and the outward facing culture shows that.
- zamalek 7y ago
  > MS has open sourced huge amounts of resource and platform building code in .Net Core the past several years Maybe they're trying to embrace, extend and exterminate open source. /s As far as I can tell, EEE ended during Balmer. Not because he's necessarily a "good guy," but because he genuinely hated everything 'not Microsoft' too much in order to following through with the first step of EEE: embrace. There can't be a consistent "EEE strategy" because that strategy ended (for completely different reasons). If Microsoft has decided to attempt EEE again then, sure, there's something to be worried about. There is certainly one thing that has always been more reliable than Microsoft and EEE: lose if you do, lose if you don't. Microsoft could shut their doors for good tomorrow and there would likely still be people spouting nonsense about how that's actually EEE. > Defend and aggressively expand APIs and technologies where Microsoft leads (e.g., keep DirectX the only first-class API for games) It's curious that Microsoft partners so closely with Unity, then, who provide a way to develop games outside of DirectX.
- blub 7y ago
  You couldn't be more wrong. Since Nadella is at the helm, Microsoft have started to aggressively gather customer data from their desktop OS and many other products, including office. They used to be very decent at this before Windows 10, but they went completely nuts with telemetry. At the beginning they were completely opaque, to the point that a German gov agency had to reverse engineer the communications to see just wtf was being transmitted. More recently the Dutch gov told them to fuck off if they don't cut off the crap and MS was forced to negotiate new privacy terms with them. Anything they have already and will open source pales in comparison to the harms to our privacy, just like for Google. Although Google at least open sources some useful things now and then... .NET is Microsoft's dev platform that no one cares about except Windows devs. It started as a JVM/Java clone and grew into its own product, but for anyone not already all-in on MS tools it makes zero sense to use it when there's so much choice.
50ckpuppet 7y ago
Embrace Extend Extinguish
shmerl 7y ago
While things improved in some aspects (like recent freeing up of exFAT), as a Linux gamer, I still see MS if not outright hostile, then surely by far not friendly when it comes to Linux. Thanks to Phil Spencer, they didn't join the Vulkan working group, and continue pushing their DX lock-in. For Linux it means dxvk and vkd3d are important tools to break it. When MS will start using Vulkan proper, I might change my mind about them being hostile towards Linux. Same applies to other lock-in cases the article mentions.
jeffdavis 7y ago
The technology landscape has changed so much in 20 years. Is this analytical framework still relevant?
gowld 7y ago
Every dollar and every minute of attention you give to proprietary software, hurts open source.
oblio 7y ago
The author is partly right. You shouldn't trust Microsoft. But the landscape has changed. Focusing too much on Microsoft as the sole, main rival of OSS and Linux keeps you tunnel visioning like it's the 90's. And back then Microsoft was huge and overbearing. Now there's many, many other threats to OSS and Linux, several of them bigger than Microsoft. Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook. They're keen OSS contributors, where it doesn't matter for them and keen closed source proponents, where it does matter.
neilobremski 7y ago
Within the company you have to remember that there are greedy executives (as anywhere) built on top of a fatty layer of incurious middle management and mixed in with enthusiastic tech heads. Whether or not the happy chaps working on the Linux support have their work mutilated by the fat cats has yet to be seen ... it's always like this in the beginning of an embrace. And in the meantime I think there's a lot of good being done even if it's just serving as a model for FOSS projects. So as the support fades and the dream dims, there will be things to pop up to continue the legacy. In the meantime, I'm quite happy to see Microsoft participating feverishly. I much prefer that to the alternative of intentionally making my life hell when not using their software / systems.
juped 7y ago
There was more of a case in the 90s, but the fact is that today's Microsoft has a strong open source development presence, and incompatibly embracing and extending was always, even in the 90s, an odious GNU practice that they happily perpetrated against non-copyleft Unix. "FUD" is a mindkilling term, so I won't call this apparently sincere post "spreading FUD", but I will suggest that you try PowerShell Core (MIT licensed) on the platform of your choice.
jasoneckert 7y ago
I'm not too sure what to think of this article. There are some valid points to me made for sure, but intent today isn't as clear cut as it was 20 years ago. For example, almost 20 years ago, I stood in front of a group of mostly sales people in a board room at Microsoft Canada to answer emotionally-charged questions about this "Linux threat" that was looming. Just under a year ago, I sat on a couch at Microsoft with some talented Microsoft developers drinking a custom Americano listening to them talk about how Microsoft recognizes their personal open source and ethical values in a way that makes them love their job. As a Linux developer and geek, it's difficult to hate Microsoft today.
oaiey 7y ago
Microsoft loves Linux ... On the Azure Cloud. And nothing else. This strategy was only discussed in this context and nowhere else I assume. So do not interpret more in it than what is said. Microsoft earns money. What does not earn Money is not supported.
Havoc 7y ago
nah. MS was dangerous in windows era. And had another go at that with their docx shenanigans. ...but in cloud era their teeth are just as long/short as google/AWS in my opinion. No more win32 .exe home turf advantage. That said I consider all 3 clouds dangerous in a sense.
JackRabbitSlim 7y ago
An anti-MS article full of FUD, Delicious. If anyone is embracing, extending and extinguishing its Redhat's giant lovecraftian eldrich horror starting at Pid 1 as it's tentacles spread across the (user)land to incite madness and crush the life out of system administrators.
fearface 7y ago
I love Linux, but I hate Linux Desktop.
ausjke 7y ago
Microsoft "loves" linux because it failed to beat Linux with FUD etc. Microsoft to me is the cancer to the OSS, why not just admit that you had never, and will never love Linux, you are simply doing all these for financial purposes solely, which is totally fine --- just don't ruin the "love" word, it's so awkward. Life is too short to be cheated multiple times, I will never trust Microsoft since I switched to linux fully 15 years ago.
yarg 7y ago
With regards to Linux, Google seems like a far bigger danger. Have a look at the "locking-in manufacturers" section of https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on.... In a more general sense, cloud computing is the biggest danger to Linux, since it allows companies to allow access to forked versions without needing to distribute source - this is why the AGPL exists. There's also potential for bad faith actors to utilise closed source build tools to distribute releases that are technically opensource - but that cannot be built by anyone but the distributor.
fortran77 7y ago
The quote at the end of this piece is misattributed. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/
ClumsyPilot 7y ago
I am getting the impression the author is fighting yesterday’s war and on top of that has not been following what's going on in windows/.Net development lately. There has been a large-scale effort to open-source and port chunks of Windows and .Net Framework WinForms 'the win95-style UI' https://github.com/dotnet/winforms https://github.com/dotnet/winforms WPF 'the Vista-style UI' https://github.com/dotnet/wpf https://github.com/dotnet/wpf WinUI3 'the Modern-style UI' https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml Windows Communications Foundation https://github.com/dotnet/wcf https://github.com/dotnet/wcf And more stuff I am not aware of. Judge as you wish, but if you are going to discuss the topic, they are important.
- int_19h 7y ago
  None of the UI frameworks have been ported.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    Efforts like Avalonia and Uno platform enjoy a level of support from MS, and Microsoft produces Xamarin Forms to enable Xaml-based cross platform development. Microsoft themselves have stated that it's a requested development, but they have not yet figured out a sensible way forward.A lot of effort was invested and I feel accusing them of ill will is unfair. Meanwhile Linux UI/Graphics situation is a mess and Avalonia developers struggle with it. The same flexibility that makes Linux a good as embedded/server, makes it a horrible target for client application development.
squarefoot 7y ago
Even if Microsoft does really love Linux, I'd rather want to know which Linux they love: a generic one such as any popular distro out there, or rather their own version of Linux, which could be a frankenpenguin where some obscure proprietary technolgy, no matter how small, would magically make their software run "better". I am 100% speculating, of course, but if I was in Microsoft pants and wanted to kill Linux because it makes essentially impossible to achieve domination in some context (server, embedded, mobile, etc), once realized I can't destroy it for failing many moons ago to understand its potential at step 1 of "first they ignore you..." , the best alternative would be to embrace it, pollute it discreetly injecting closed technology in key areas (all it needs is a key driver or library), port some great software to it with seemingly innocuous strings attached to the proprietary parts that will make it run better or run at all, have its users love my software and get used to it, make its use appealing to business users as well (offering discounted pro support as an example), acquire game companies and port their titles as above, etc. Once I have say the 20 most used apps depend on that closed blob or technology, I'd be ready to roll out my own distro which of course by being the favorite one among "normal" users will be the one dictating other Linux distros future. To make it short, Microsoft will indeed love Linux, although not before making Linux one of their products. As I wrote, that's pure speculation, but think of it when the first "best run on WSL" Linux software comes out.
- vorticalbox 7y ago
  Linux is the kernel and when in a distro is linux/gnu. So in this case Microsoft loves the kernel not the desktop environments
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  To be fair, this sounds just like Google's strategy with Android.
campfireveteran 7y ago
0. Embrace 1. Extend 2. Extinguish (or at least Exhaust Energy on Extraneous complexity through Engineering design-by-committee feature creep) (But never Excellent Enginerding, unless trying to gain status at a conference.)
ogre_codes 7y ago
How on earth can you have any kind of meaningful conversation about Microsoft's Linux strategy and not even mention Azure? Microsoft's Cloud service is one of their fastest growth businesses and Linux is a huge piece of that.
JeremyNT 7y ago
Data point: MS teams disables all of Teams' A/V features for Linux users based on browser user agent. If you use chromium and spoof your UA as if you were using Edge/Windows, said features work. [1] Microsoft is what it is - a very large company with various business units with differing priorities. I do feel like they are much improved from the bad old days, where they seemed to enact a company-wide strategy aimed at actively sabotaging Linux. In the face of that, I suppose indifference is an improvement, and their "we love linux" marketing is at least an admission that Linux support is a consideration for some elements of their business. [1] https://github.com/meetfranz/franz/issues/1095 https://github.com/meetfranz/franz/issues/1095
- my123 7y ago
  A proper Microsoft Teams port for Linux is coming by the end of this year. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16911565-linux-client https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su...
  - JeremyNT 7y ago
    I wonder if they will stop disabling features for the chrome UA if/when they release their electron app on Linux? One could hope...
sova 7y ago
Tremendous. Well written and well played. If there are two facets to divide and conquer (in this case, play along until you can conquer and conquer right away) Microsoft is certainly doing their best to fulfill the Caesarian commandment. Thanks for revealing this very snide practice, clearly if their intent was an embrace of OSS there would be much revamped in the base layers of their offerings. Yet, here we are. The number of life-seconds lost to Microsoft greediness is likely measurable and might even out-exceed the wealth of shrewd and pernicious altruists like Billy G. Not to be nefarious with this comment, but to assume that propaganda is honest is to wonder why the propaganda has to exist in the first place.
dabbernaught420 7y ago
"I fucking love open source!" - Microsoft If this doesn't make you want to use the term 'free software' I don't know what will.
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wooptoo 7y ago
The whole reason for doing WSL2 was running Docker on Windows, which is currently one of the development "killer apps". AFAIK in the previous implementation they could not get Overlayfs to work properly.
simonblack 7y ago
The only 'Loves' that Microsoft has are 'Love of Control' and 'Love of Money'. If you ever trust Microsoft, you have only yourself to blame when you get hurt. That's been true for at least 25 years, and I don't see it ending any time soon.
throwaway8291 7y ago
I'm in the camp of moving my stuff out of GitHub (thankfully so many nice options, like GitLab, gitea/gogs, and of course sourcehut) because the only reason I do not hate Microsoft is that I was able to avoid any of their tech successfully for the past 15 years. In it for the money, and gone if there's nothing more to capture. Simple story. That's exactly how something like a community does not work.
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elldoubleyew 7y ago
I would love to see MS release a version of Windows that is built on Linux but with a custom GUI to look and behave like Windows. They could even add support for Windows apps through WINE to make it _feel_ like a native experience. Especially if they are willing to dedicate additional resources to better hardware optimization for WINE* I have always hated Windows because I grew up on UNIX-like systems, whenever I want to do something non-trivial involving the OS I tend to get lost and give up pretty quickly. But I don't mind Windows GUI from a UX perspective, and I would be interested in running a "Linux-Windows" *I am not sure what MS official stance on WINE is, however I would imagine that supporting it is likely in their long-term best interests.
rcarmo 7y ago
I’m going to add a data point here: I work at Microsoft and my primary e-mail client is... Firefox. The Outlook web UI is so good these days that the UX for mail, viewing attachments and booking meetings is much, much better than the native app (which I only use for ensuring I have an offline database when traveling). And yeah, I use WSL extensively, and work from a Mac at home. There is a lot more to the story than the article covers.
zzo38computer 7y ago
It seems possible to me that they may make Office usable from web browsers on non-Windows systems (probably with a few features missing, some of that just due to the limitation imposed by the web browser anyways), but probably not a native Linux program. I do not expect them to drop Win32 and DirectX; however, maybe later they might make a few contributions to ReactOS (although probably not enough). What they say about Active Directory I suppose may be done in the way mentioned in that article, seems not very unlikely to me. I do not really think Microsoft "love" Linux all the way, although it seem to me they do "love" Linux more than they used to, at least.
JohnL4 7y ago
Oof. All these Linux-on-desktop replies. (1) The web is (slowly) destroying MS on the client-side. Sure, there's a ton of existing WinForms/WPF stuff now, but I think new development is on the web. (2) Linux is destroying MS on the server-side. It is simply impossible to beat the price (both AMZN and MS offer Linux images at half the price of Windows images). So, where does that leave MS? Competing with AMZN in cloud infrastructure. They have the technical chops and maybe other-than-1st mover advantage gives them a chance to present a cleaner experience, although it ain't easy being sandwiched between AMZN and Digital Ocean/Netlify. I think even Blazor is a stretch, dependent on the maturity of WASM, but... requiring devs to switch from React/Angular? And competing with whatever else moves to WASM. Of course MS loves Linux. It'd be stupid not to. (For now.)

470 points by pedrocr 7y ago

1996 7y ago

Dear new corporate overlord, if you want to disprove this, please invest in wine! It is an alternative option that would yield great dividends for both linux and windows user. win32 binaries are just more multiplatform that .net/uwp/the next shiny new thing you will try and fail to spin.

TomMarius 7y ago
I think they want to go the HyperV route for this purpose, wine is not really the solution a company like Microsoft would choose (based on their business needs). HyperV based hybrid desktop seems to be much easier to develop, maintain, sell etc.
- 1996 7y ago
  Easier, maybe, but it will not succeed. hyperv will be the next big shiny thing to fail. Meanwhile, wine keep my old binaries useful - and will keep them long after uwp or whatever shades into obscurity.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    I kind of agree with you, but that does not change anything about it being the strategy of choice for Microsoft
- my123 7y ago
  SQL Server for Linux is the Windows version running on the NT user-mode kernel. (see Drawbridge)
simion314 7y ago
At least they could make it so there is no more FUD about wine, give Wine a license to reverse engineer or use the existing leaked code as they want.

de_watcher 7y ago

Can add Visual Studio to the Office/DirectX/Outlook/ActiveDirectory section.

beatle_sauce 7y ago
Same with document formats: MS Office Open XML instead of just supporting the existing OpenDocument Format (ODF) as open standard.
- jraph 7y ago
  That is not really related to Linux itself, more to the open source / free software world.
pjc50 7y ago
They're sort of heading in this direction with VSCode. I can imagine that VS itself is a non-portable COM-infested disaster area.
- zvrba 7y ago
  COM is anything but disaster. It's a really nice language-independent component framework. An ABI and marshalling standard, built upon ANOTHER, older, standard -- DCE RPC -- that allows e.g., C++ COM server to talk with Powershell, no extra effort required. As opposed to what you (do not) have on Linux: generating bindings for each scripting language you might want to support, and no standardized way of doing IPC/RPC.
- garganzol 7y ago
  COM is good and it is anything except disaster. It its raw form, COM is just a small and natural abstraction over plain C interface. Just like a C interface is a small and nice abstraction over plain registers/stack call models of the past. The advent of calling conventions like C was a huge step forward in 1970s. Before that, there was a mad zoo of passing parameters via random CPU registers and praying that you made no mistake and it would work without a crash. COM is no different. IUnknown is just 3 methods (QueryInterface, AddRef, RemoveRef) over a plain C. It immediately brings an ability to use service model design in APIs.

lasermike026 7y ago

Hmmmm, Linux has proven itself on its own. The GPL has done its work. POSIX is a working standard. Linux isn't completely POSIX compliant. I don't think there is much Microsoft can do about it.

guardian5x 7y ago

This article makes it sound like Embracing is a bad thing, because necessarily Extend, and Extinguish will follow. But it doesn't really work that way with Open Source.

pixl97 7y ago
Eh, kinda does by extending the standard in a non open way. Then blocking.
dleslie 7y ago
Google proved the model for embracing, extending and controlling open source by way of Android and the shift to Google Play Services. Start open and let the walled garden grow within.
- gowld 7y ago
  How does a not-open-source product control open-source? Anyone can try to build an open source alternative to GPS on whatever hardware they can obtain, using Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Without Google open source, they've have to replicate it's functionality from scratch. If AOSP never existed, Android would still be Android (GPL allows proprietary Android) and would still be as popular as it is. iOS was never open source, and did fine.
  - dleslie 7y ago
    Yes, anyone can make an open source alternative; the point is that the popular system will remain closed and controlled. Free alternatives don't become a threat when you control their implementation target.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    When was the last time a Google-free AOSP fork had a successful handset on the market? We've seen almost nothing but failures: Amazon Phone, Cyanogen, … The market seems to have spoken that Android isn't Android without "Google Play Services" secret sauce, and that's entirely proprietary walled garden.

skohan 7y ago

I don't think it's a particularly good thing for Microsoft to cozy up with Linux, let alone any of the larger tech firms. In particular, I don't think it's great that Microsoft is such a heavy contributor to the Linux foundation. If the people who work on Linux become financially dependent on large tech firms, this creates potential conflict-of-interest. For instance, is it impossible to imagine that as Proton becomes more capable of making the Windows gaming experience portable, there couldn't be pressure to kneecap it in some way at the kernel level? If Ubuntu had dropped 32 bit app support as planned, it would have done just that.

jrs95 7y ago
Linux development is already dependent on large tech firms and has been for a long time.
- skohan 7y ago
  I understand that. I’m saying I don’t think it’s a good thing.

tra3 7y ago

I'm having a tough time drawing a conclusion from this article. In my experience with commercial/open source projects the only reason they are open source is because of some sort of market advantage. Is the author suggesting that Microsoft doing all this OSS work out of the goodness of their collective heart? Corporations are about making money, while that goal and OSS happen to align we'll get open source from Microsoft. The second it stops being strategically relevant: bye-bye.

de_watcher 7y ago
Money... Then the conclusion is that you have to be careful when using the word "love" there.
ppseafield 7y ago
I think the article takes issue with "Microsoft loves Linux" as a blanket term, where it's more like "Microsoft loves† Linux‡" († supports in only a very specific way because of losing to Linux on the server side.) (‡ Linux as used only for servers. Linux as a desktop OS can still get bent, and we're trying to get devs to abandon it when working on code that deploys to Linux servers.)

gwd 7y ago

> I think all of these would be strategic blunders from the point of view of Microsoft shareholders. But they’re the kind of things you do for love. Otherwise this is just “love” if your standard is abusive one-sided relationships. This is awesome.

raesene9 7y ago

From what I see in general MS like Linux on the server, not so much the desktop. The reason for that is pretty obvious. They want as many organizations as possible to use their cloud platform, for that to work, they need first class Linux server support. On the desktop, they'd prefer people to be using Windows, but they want to ensure that developers who deploy to Linux have a great experience, thus WSL, VS Code et al. With that said, I think there are some groups inside MS who would like to see more desktop Linux support, thus announcements like the Linux Teams client. It's probably a mistake to view MS (or any other v.large corp) as a unified entity. There will be groups inside that corp. with differing goals. You only have to look at MS presence at Kubecon where you'll often see MS staff with Macs or Ubuntu laptops on their stand.

vrthrowaway 7y ago
They don't _like_ it, that's the author's whole point. They would obviously prefer that everyone pay for windows server, but they've lost that battle. "Like" is pure marketing. >You only have to look at MS presence at Kubecon where you'll often see MS staff with Macs or Ubuntu laptops on their stand. marketing in a market. I think we (or you and the author, I'm just re-iterating his points) are talking past each other and you probably agree, but his whole point again is that the "Love" is just public facing market strategy.
- darkcha0s 7y ago
  Just a question-- what would be a path you deem the best? Should Microsoft just work in its silo, while Linux develops in its silo? Should Microsoft not embrace linux? I feel like the 2 strategies mentioned by the author simply let you point to the other one when the first one doesn't grip. I'm always at a loss when these HN posts come about, because I feel like 99% of the hate/sentiment stems from the time Microsoft was actually a shitty company (I'm sure it is still shit in great lengths today, but not comparable to the Ballmer years).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

tyingq 7y ago

"I think all of these would be strategic blunders from the point of view of Microsoft shareholders" It seems to be working well for MS thus far, so I'm curious why the author thinks this.

winkeltripel 7y ago
it's referring to the author's suggestions to show authentic love.
- tyingq 7y ago
  I'm not clear on why that would help shareholders as compared to current course.

juliangoldsmith 7y ago

Microsoft loves Linux because it makes them money. I'm not sure why anyone would expect differently. They won't release products like Office for Linux (though a web interface is possible), and they won't move away from Windows-only APIs. Neither of those actions would have any tangible benefit for the primary users of those produts (Windows users and Windows developers, respectively). Active Directory is so deeply integrated into the Windows stack that it will never come out. You can authenticate Linux clients against AD, but I doubt they'll be writing a Linux AD server any time soon. I'd imagine most corporate mail servers also support SMTP/IMAP, and Office365 has a web client. As far as ActiveSync goes, that hasn't been a thing since 2007.

conexions 7y ago
A web interface is already a reality.[1] Work great with Chrome or Chromium. Not a full featured office, but in general very nice. [1]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/office/ndjpnladcallmjemlbaebfadecfhkepb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/office/ndjpnladcal...
- Longhanks 7y ago
  A Chromium-only extension is not a "web interface".
  - derefr 7y ago
    Sure it is, in the sense that it’s very likely not using any Chrome-specific APIs (Chrome right now has the least exposed extension API surface to regular, non-ChromiumOS extensions) but rather at most being equivalent to an Electron app, where some of the HTML and JS lives and runs on the client rather than on a server. But that HTML and JS still is HTML and JS built for a web-rendering-engine to parse and run, so it should be fully possible to turn this extension into a regular web-app with not very much work. Probably any sufficiently-motivated programmer could do it in a couple of hours, throwing the result in an S3 bucket for anyone to access. (Not sure how well it’d run on other browsers, but we still call regular web-apps where the developers happened to only test it in one specific browser “web interfaces.”)

designium 7y ago

I think the article misses a bigger fight which is between Microsoft's Azure vs. AWS. All what Microsoft is doing is catering to devs who want better tools to deal with servers in the cloud. Imagine this potential tactic: 1. Create great tools such as Visual Studio Code to serve as first point contact with devs of all types and stacks 2. Start creating plugin or easy to integrate dev workflow in those types of tools with Azure 3. Make it so easy and reasonably cost effective that people may start switching away from AWS to Azure I don't think Microsoft is trying to kill or encroach Linux but instead cooping those devs into moving to Azure platform where the market growth is; while still protecting the existing cash cows.

lawlessone 7y ago

They'll turn linux in a microsoft app.

overcast 7y ago
WSL is already a thing.
jabedude 7y ago
I know this is hyperbole, but funny enough you can download "Ubuntu" for WSL from the Windows app store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/ubuntu/9nblggh4msv6 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/ubuntu/9nblggh4msv6.

will4274 7y ago

This blog appears to argue that by bringing some but not all of it's products to Linux, Microsoft is engaging in Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (EEE). That's a tough sell. If you apply the same standard, virtually ever large company that has ever contributed to Linux is EEE-ing Linux because they released some product that doesn't run on vanilla Linux. The bad action in EEE is extending APIs in incompatible ways and then dead ending them - it's hard for me to see how not shipping Office to Linux qualifies.

simion314 7y ago
I think the author refers at the fact you release just a bit of functionality for Linux but if you want the full stack you have to use Windows. Like you make .Net for Linux but only some parts, release other tools but not the admin part etc. I would be convinced when MS and Wine project has an agreement so the Wine devs can access the Windows source code.
- will4274 7y ago
  > I would be convinced when MS and Wine project has an agreement so the Wine devs can access the Windows source code. This is exactly what I'm saying is absurd. Microsoft isn't EEE-ing by not giving Wine devs access to Windows source. There is a difference between not helping and actively sabotaging. Conflating the two is an unfair attack.
  - simion314 7y ago
    The part about Wine is not related, it was about what would convince me that Microsoft "loves" Linux or at least is not intimidated by it. The WSL seems to me as the first part of the EEE and the competition would be fair if Linux could have it's own project Wine supported by Microsoft, as it is now it feels as an exploit, MS can do WSL but Linux and Mac have to struggle with Wine and the FUD around it.
    - zamalek 7y ago
      > Linux and Mac have to struggle with Wine and the FUD around it. What FUD? I don't think I've ever seen someone spread FUD about Wine. Are you referring to the website that lists how well games/apps work with it?

zoechi 7y ago

When I had to deal with Windows 10 recently I got the impression MS has given up on Windows completely. The last notable improvements were introduced in Win XP. Most stuff that came later was just changing the look&view of a few settings windows with the only effect that all consistency was lost and Win looks more like a mess than a Linux desktop where some apps were built for X, Kde, Gnome, ... It was also funny that SQL Management Studio crashed at the same use cases as it did 10-15 years ago. It would be interesting if there were any developers working on anything but cloud at MS the past 10 years.

Crinus 7y ago
The last time there was a real UI and UX consistency was with Windows 2000 (or ME, if you want to stay on the consumer side). With Windows XP Microsoft introduced themeable controls but instead of making them available to all applications, they used an opt-in mechanism (based on special EXE resources or manifest files) so even nowadays unless you use that mechanism you get the Win2K era of controls. Even then, with Windows 7 most things were consistent and if you really cared about consistency even with non-themed apps you could always switch to Windows Classic theme (which i always did, not so much because of consistency but also because i just like that theme :-P). Since Windows 8 with the introduction of Metro/UWP/WinUI/WinWhateverNext consistency was thrown out of the Window, without even trying to pretend otherwise (it isn't a coincidence that the UI guidelines for desktop applications in Microsoft's site still use the Win7 theme).
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Quite a few really good things came after XP. The new display[0] and sound[1] driver models, the new network[2] stack. [0] Compositing, no longer need to reboot to install new video drivers [1] Centralized per-application volume control [2] VLAN tagging and bridging without third party products Sadly, the thing with the new settings panels and mobile-ified look & feel is true. But that was all post-7. > It would be interesting if there were any developers working on anything but cloud at MS the past 10 years. There are, unfortunately, and they're terrible and keep pushing broken Windows updates and new features nobody asked for.
ClumsyPilot 7y ago

tw04 7y ago

I'm not sure I follow what the author is getting at other than "We should hate MS and do our best to not work with them on anything!". First it was "MS breaks compatibility on purpose, screw those guys!". Now it's "sure, they're playing nice but they don't have a product in every market segment we want so they must have some nefarious master plan we haven't figure out yet!" Everytime I hear someone say "just look, they don't support office on Linux!" I ask: and what exactly do you think the market share is of guys who love Linux so much they use it on the desktop, but also would PAY Microsoft for Office vs. just using LibreOffice or Google's office suite? If you think MS hasn't done the math and figured out that solution would never break even much less turn a profit, I guess I'd ask anyone making that claim to show their work. I can tell you unequivocally the thing holding back the average enterprise from moving their entire business to Linux on the Desktop is NOT Microsoft Office, if it were they'd just tell everyone to use Office Online and move on with life. PS: I assume all these Linux on the Desktop guys complaining about not having Office on Linux already are subscribed to o365 and use Office Online exclusively, proving to MS there's demand. Right?

KingMachiavelli 7y ago
If Office was available for Linux, some organizations could consider deploying Linux workstations with Office since that's what most users/employees need is basically a browser (100%/users) and the Office suite (50-90%/users). Office Online is severely gimped as noted in the article and is solely to counteract adoption of Google Office.
- outside1234 7y ago
  What is a good example of it being gimped? I honestly think its better online than the apps themselves.
  - KingMachiavelli 7y ago
    In Office 365 Excel, there is no way to zoom out or in besides the browser's zoom which causes the whole UI to be scaled.

stevbov 7y ago

Why would any Linux shop use SQL Server anyways? Why would they use .NET Core? The only people I know pushing .NET Core are .NET people, not Linux people. My general rule is to never use a technology where your primary platform is a second class citizen. It just makes things a pain: not only could support be dropped in the future because there's no profit in it, its also harder to find answers to problems on the internet.

scarface74 7y ago
How is Linux a second class citizen for .Net Core? Have you ever had a problem with .Net Core on Linux that you couldn't find an answer to?
- tracker1 7y ago
  I've actually had more issues with it in Windows than on Linux/Mac. Though I will say VS proper is much nicer than VS Code for C# development. It will improve. I'd still prefer to use mostly node, which gets its' own ire from the developer community.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  - dotnet-cli will try to cache a bunch of junk into its install folder, rather than respecting $XDG_CACHE_HOME, or even just using a plain old dotfile. These days it just generates an annoying warning on each run, but it used to be a hard error. - OmniSharp just plain doesn't work on NixOS, because it hardcodes a bunch of Ubuntu paths. - It seems to support automatically switching between multiple SDK versions, but I've never been able to get that to work.
lghh 7y ago
I'm a Linux person who likes .NET Core. I like C# quite a bit, and I don't think Linux is a 2nd class citizen for .NET Core.
- merb 7y ago
  especially since kestrel is faster on linux than on windows. (well it's slower than iis inProcess, but still)

pksdjfikkkkdsff 7y ago

I can't really follow the article. Too much paranoia, or negativity, I guess. All I care about is having a usable Linux shell and Linux tool on my Windows machine. What else can you expect from Microsoft? Yeah, they are doing it so that people don't switch over to Linux completely. What more can you expect? Is it even Microsoft's job to establish a standard for 3d Graphics and what not? Or is the ball in the park of graphics card vendors and game developers? Why do I have Windows on my machine? I don't fully trust Linux to achieve the same level of power management. I can play games. I have a dual graphics card, which would be a hassle to use on Linux. It would be notebook vendor's job to release Linux notebooks with good power management. Chip vendors to release specs that enable Linux developers to create such drivers. And so on.

gowld 7y ago
Why wouldn't an Operating System developer be responsible for providing an interface between hardware developers and applicaton developers?
- pksdjfikkkkdsff 7y ago
  OpenGL seems to have coexisted with DirectX for a while. I don't know enough about OS development to be able to judge if Microsoft prevented OpenGL from achieving the same performance as DirectX. Given the abysmal security history of Windows, my guess would be that it was possible to get close to the metal as a driver developer, at least in the old days. Also MS couldn't be expected to take care of an interface that works on iOS and Linux. They are responsible for Windows.

xenorplxx 7y ago

Hm. MS started to support React, especially React Native project lately with their react-native-windows and AppCenter, but I honestly have no idea why would they do that instead of going with something like Electron, since they started to invest in Chromium and V8 anyway.

tracker1 7y ago
They've done a lot with Electron as well... Github now being a subsidiary of MS. VS Code is really nice, and Teams is decent. I'd be surprised if we don't see new cross platform Office releases based on the Web versions wrapped in Electron in the next couple years.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Office has been heading towards React Native and React Native for Web, according to BUILD talks.
WorldMaker 7y ago
My impression is that Microsoft sees it as a "¿Por que no los dos?" situation and is investing in both because it makes developers happy to have a choice.

derefr 7y ago

I’m honestly surprised that Microsoft aren’t working with Linux vendors in an attempt to solve Linux problems by more deeply integrating Windows-styled solutions into Linux, such that the Linux client ecosystem becomes more dependent on the Windows infrastructure ecosystem. That’d be the natural Azure-focused equivalent to “embrace, extend, extinguish.” For example, Linux DNS resolution is an arcane mess of upstream components bodged together over decades, about the place where sysvinit was before systemd came along. I could totally see Microsoft releasing some FOSS Linux über-network-client-daemon that combines DNS, NMBD, and Bonjour resolution together (sort of like Apple’s mDNSResolver) in an attempt to “clean up” that mess—where, just by coincidence, parts of the SMB stack begin to seep directly into the operation of the system. Then a subsumption for Kerberos+libpam+GSSAPI that also supports NTLM; etc. until eventually Linux ends up needing to talk to a real Active Directory Domain Controller to boot. Might be Microsoft’s one, might be a Linux FOSS one—either way, it gives Microsoft an advantage. ...but, so far as I can tell, they’re not doing this. I wonder why not?

fermuch 7y ago
I thought system's resolvd was an attempt to fix all problems with dns resolution. Can you point me how it is not a solution, or how Microsoft could build something better instead of contributing to it?
- sam_lowry_ 7y ago
  So far, nss works more or less for me, except that .local takes a couple of minutes to resolve # grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf hosts: files mymachines mdns [NOTFOUND=return] resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] dns myhostname
zymhan 7y ago
> ...but, so far as I can tell, they’re not doing this. I wonder why not? Because maybe, just maybe, they're a tad bit less evil?
- DayDollar 7y ago

29athrowaway 7y ago

Use SoftMaker FreeOffice, or SoftMaker Office. It is a pretty nice and performant replacement for MS Office.

hamsapelea 7y ago
Google docs works like a charm

magashna 7y ago

"Embrace, extend, extinguish" *nix is too big to really extinguish, but MS can certainly bear hug some cash out of them.

zwieback 7y ago

TBH, Linux as a desktop productivity environment is a small enough market that I wouldn't expect MS to make a big investment there. It's either iOS, Android, Mac or Windows for the average user so MS is trying to stay relevant in those areas by focusing on the server side and Windows client side.

gmaster1440 7y ago

Personally strikes me very much as an article making valid points but generally in bad faith. Microsoft can both begin to change and embrace Linux gradually as they've been doing recently and at the same time have an unsavory past with the ecosystem. If anything, they're willingness to change, however small, should be interpreted generally as a positive shift.

bydl0coder 7y ago

First, desktop Linux sucks, so there's no point of porting anything to it. Second, office suites including MS Office are now cloud-based.

Quarrelsome 7y ago

Was this article really written this decade?

headmelted 7y ago

The author misses the bigger picture completely. Microsoft used to see Linux as competition, and while that might still be true in some ways, it’s largely moot for a couple of reasons. In 2019, Windows isn’t competing with Linux for desktop market share not because Linux poses no threat there, but because the desktop doesn’t matter anymore. Windows, and the desktop operating system as a concept, is competing with the web browser in the enterprise and mobile devices in the retail market (and even then, it’s not really a competition - most casual users gave up computers for smartphones years ago). Viewed in that lens Microsoft genuinely embracing Linux makes a lot of sense - most of their revenue now comes from service contracts, and the one bedrock they’ve always had is their second-to-none developer support. If developers want them some Linux, then by gosh Redmond is going to give them more Linux than anyone else. Maximum Linux for your organisations’ Linuxy needs! Microsoft still has great support for gamers on Windows as an incentive not to check out Wine/Proton and things happening there, but really, when was the last time you paid for a Windows license for home use? One way or another they’ve been literally giving the software away as quickly as they can for years. The future is about services, and that means market share (if users leave because they can get a free OS elsewhere then the license has to go). Likewise, if it gets more developers to stay in the ecosystem, then Linux support it is.

baybal2 7y ago
Since when? That's nonsense. Browser and a whole operating system are two different things
- nonfamous 7y ago
  Chromebooks would like to have a word with you.
- vegarab 7y ago
  Are they? cough ChromeOS cough
- DylanDmitri 7y ago
  From user perspective, OS has become a commodity. https://xkcd.com/934/ https://xkcd.com/934/

SimianLogic2 7y ago

I used cygwin to do web development circa 2007/2008. It was a huge pain in the ass and one of the main reasons I switched to Macs. I've been back on Windows for a couple of years now using WSL and it's been pretty great. I'm excited for that integration to get even tighter with WSL2. The broad categories I use professionally are office crap, web dev, and creative tools. Macs used to suck at the first and rule the last two, but they've really fallen behind in the last few years. The new macbook pro looks like a good machine, but I switched to a gaming laptop to get a better GPU and 64gb of RAM. This (2-year-old) machine does everything I need it to do and I'm now at a point where Macs are going to have to do something pretty spectacular to get me to switch back (or have Windows screw up in a comparable way to what Apple has done the last few years). What's the point of all this? I think this article misses the boat pretty badly on who Micrsoft's talking to when it says it loves linux. It's talking to web devs like me who work and deploy to linux, not software philosophers who want to debate the meaning of free. From my point of view, they're doing great right now.

thom 7y ago
Could you describe your workflow with WSL?

tracker1 7y ago

It feels like this article is a lot of FUD spreading. MS is a business that likes to make money. At this point, there are developer minded people at the helm, and it makes more sense selling their software and cloud services than chasing negative returns on Windows. I can see that side of it through and through. MS has open sourced huge amounts of resource and platform building code in .Net Core the past several years, and ASP.Net earlier than that. They did buy, and have expanded on the tools from Xamarin not shutter it. I'm not saying they're altruistic in nature, no company is. I will say that their behavior in the community, especially since Nadella took over has been better than any other company of it's size or larger that I can think of. I'm not saying forget or forgive the past, but accept the present. Corporations, despite legalities, are not people. They are made up of people, and a significant portion of management has rolled over in the past decade and the outward facing culture shows that.

zamalek 7y ago
> MS has open sourced huge amounts of resource and platform building code in .Net Core the past several years Maybe they're trying to embrace, extend and exterminate open source. /s As far as I can tell, EEE ended during Balmer. Not because he's necessarily a "good guy," but because he genuinely hated everything 'not Microsoft' too much in order to following through with the first step of EEE: embrace. There can't be a consistent "EEE strategy" because that strategy ended (for completely different reasons). If Microsoft has decided to attempt EEE again then, sure, there's something to be worried about. There is certainly one thing that has always been more reliable than Microsoft and EEE: lose if you do, lose if you don't. Microsoft could shut their doors for good tomorrow and there would likely still be people spouting nonsense about how that's actually EEE. > Defend and aggressively expand APIs and technologies where Microsoft leads (e.g., keep DirectX the only first-class API for games) It's curious that Microsoft partners so closely with Unity, then, who provide a way to develop games outside of DirectX.
blub 7y ago
You couldn't be more wrong. Since Nadella is at the helm, Microsoft have started to aggressively gather customer data from their desktop OS and many other products, including office. They used to be very decent at this before Windows 10, but they went completely nuts with telemetry. At the beginning they were completely opaque, to the point that a German gov agency had to reverse engineer the communications to see just wtf was being transmitted. More recently the Dutch gov told them to fuck off if they don't cut off the crap and MS was forced to negotiate new privacy terms with them. Anything they have already and will open source pales in comparison to the harms to our privacy, just like for Google. Although Google at least open sources some useful things now and then... .NET is Microsoft's dev platform that no one cares about except Windows devs. It started as a JVM/Java clone and grew into its own product, but for anyone not already all-in on MS tools it makes zero sense to use it when there's so much choice.

50ckpuppet 7y ago

Embrace Extend Extinguish

shmerl 7y ago

While things improved in some aspects (like recent freeing up of exFAT), as a Linux gamer, I still see MS if not outright hostile, then surely by far not friendly when it comes to Linux. Thanks to Phil Spencer, they didn't join the Vulkan working group, and continue pushing their DX lock-in. For Linux it means dxvk and vkd3d are important tools to break it. When MS will start using Vulkan proper, I might change my mind about them being hostile towards Linux. Same applies to other lock-in cases the article mentions.

jeffdavis 7y ago

The technology landscape has changed so much in 20 years. Is this analytical framework still relevant?

gowld 7y ago

Every dollar and every minute of attention you give to proprietary software, hurts open source.

oblio 7y ago

The author is partly right. You shouldn't trust Microsoft. But the landscape has changed. Focusing too much on Microsoft as the sole, main rival of OSS and Linux keeps you tunnel visioning like it's the 90's. And back then Microsoft was huge and overbearing. Now there's many, many other threats to OSS and Linux, several of them bigger than Microsoft. Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook. They're keen OSS contributors, where it doesn't matter for them and keen closed source proponents, where it does matter.

neilobremski 7y ago

Within the company you have to remember that there are greedy executives (as anywhere) built on top of a fatty layer of incurious middle management and mixed in with enthusiastic tech heads. Whether or not the happy chaps working on the Linux support have their work mutilated by the fat cats has yet to be seen ... it's always like this in the beginning of an embrace. And in the meantime I think there's a lot of good being done even if it's just serving as a model for FOSS projects. So as the support fades and the dream dims, there will be things to pop up to continue the legacy. In the meantime, I'm quite happy to see Microsoft participating feverishly. I much prefer that to the alternative of intentionally making my life hell when not using their software / systems.

juped 7y ago

There was more of a case in the 90s, but the fact is that today's Microsoft has a strong open source development presence, and incompatibly embracing and extending was always, even in the 90s, an odious GNU practice that they happily perpetrated against non-copyleft Unix. "FUD" is a mindkilling term, so I won't call this apparently sincere post "spreading FUD", but I will suggest that you try PowerShell Core (MIT licensed) on the platform of your choice.

jasoneckert 7y ago

I'm not too sure what to think of this article. There are some valid points to me made for sure, but intent today isn't as clear cut as it was 20 years ago. For example, almost 20 years ago, I stood in front of a group of mostly sales people in a board room at Microsoft Canada to answer emotionally-charged questions about this "Linux threat" that was looming. Just under a year ago, I sat on a couch at Microsoft with some talented Microsoft developers drinking a custom Americano listening to them talk about how Microsoft recognizes their personal open source and ethical values in a way that makes them love their job. As a Linux developer and geek, it's difficult to hate Microsoft today.

oaiey 7y ago

Microsoft loves Linux ... On the Azure Cloud. And nothing else. This strategy was only discussed in this context and nowhere else I assume. So do not interpret more in it than what is said. Microsoft earns money. What does not earn Money is not supported.

Havoc 7y ago

nah. MS was dangerous in windows era. And had another go at that with their docx shenanigans. ...but in cloud era their teeth are just as long/short as google/AWS in my opinion. No more win32 .exe home turf advantage. That said I consider all 3 clouds dangerous in a sense.

JackRabbitSlim 7y ago

An anti-MS article full of FUD, Delicious. If anyone is embracing, extending and extinguishing its Redhat's giant lovecraftian eldrich horror starting at Pid 1 as it's tentacles spread across the (user)land to incite madness and crush the life out of system administrators.

fearface 7y ago

I love Linux, but I hate Linux Desktop.

ausjke 7y ago

Microsoft "loves" linux because it failed to beat Linux with FUD etc. Microsoft to me is the cancer to the OSS, why not just admit that you had never, and will never love Linux, you are simply doing all these for financial purposes solely, which is totally fine --- just don't ruin the "love" word, it's so awkward. Life is too short to be cheated multiple times, I will never trust Microsoft since I switched to linux fully 15 years ago.

yarg 7y ago

With regards to Linux, Google seems like a far bigger danger. Have a look at the "locking-in manufacturers" section of https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on.... In a more general sense, cloud computing is the biggest danger to Linux, since it allows companies to allow access to forked versions without needing to distribute source - this is why the AGPL exists. There's also potential for bad faith actors to utilise closed source build tools to distribute releases that are technically opensource - but that cannot be built by anyone but the distributor.

fortran77 7y ago

The quote at the end of this piece is misattributed. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/

ClumsyPilot 7y ago

I am getting the impression the author is fighting yesterday’s war and on top of that has not been following what's going on in windows/.Net development lately. There has been a large-scale effort to open-source and port chunks of Windows and .Net Framework WinForms 'the win95-style UI' https://github.com/dotnet/winforms https://github.com/dotnet/winforms WPF 'the Vista-style UI' https://github.com/dotnet/wpf https://github.com/dotnet/wpf WinUI3 'the Modern-style UI' https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml Windows Communications Foundation https://github.com/dotnet/wcf https://github.com/dotnet/wcf And more stuff I am not aware of. Judge as you wish, but if you are going to discuss the topic, they are important.

int_19h 7y ago
None of the UI frameworks have been ported.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  Efforts like Avalonia and Uno platform enjoy a level of support from MS, and Microsoft produces Xamarin Forms to enable Xaml-based cross platform development. Microsoft themselves have stated that it's a requested development, but they have not yet figured out a sensible way forward.A lot of effort was invested and I feel accusing them of ill will is unfair. Meanwhile Linux UI/Graphics situation is a mess and Avalonia developers struggle with it. The same flexibility that makes Linux a good as embedded/server, makes it a horrible target for client application development.

squarefoot 7y ago

Even if Microsoft does really love Linux, I'd rather want to know which Linux they love: a generic one such as any popular distro out there, or rather their own version of Linux, which could be a frankenpenguin where some obscure proprietary technolgy, no matter how small, would magically make their software run "better". I am 100% speculating, of course, but if I was in Microsoft pants and wanted to kill Linux because it makes essentially impossible to achieve domination in some context (server, embedded, mobile, etc), once realized I can't destroy it for failing many moons ago to understand its potential at step 1 of "first they ignore you..." , the best alternative would be to embrace it, pollute it discreetly injecting closed technology in key areas (all it needs is a key driver or library), port some great software to it with seemingly innocuous strings attached to the proprietary parts that will make it run better or run at all, have its users love my software and get used to it, make its use appealing to business users as well (offering discounted pro support as an example), acquire game companies and port their titles as above, etc. Once I have say the 20 most used apps depend on that closed blob or technology, I'd be ready to roll out my own distro which of course by being the favorite one among "normal" users will be the one dictating other Linux distros future. To make it short, Microsoft will indeed love Linux, although not before making Linux one of their products. As I wrote, that's pure speculation, but think of it when the first "best run on WSL" Linux software comes out.

vorticalbox 7y ago
Linux is the kernel and when in a distro is linux/gnu. So in this case Microsoft loves the kernel not the desktop environments
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
To be fair, this sounds just like Google's strategy with Android.

campfireveteran 7y ago

0. Embrace 1. Extend 2. Extinguish (or at least Exhaust Energy on Extraneous complexity through Engineering design-by-committee feature creep) (But never Excellent Enginerding, unless trying to gain status at a conference.)

ogre_codes 7y ago

How on earth can you have any kind of meaningful conversation about Microsoft's Linux strategy and not even mention Azure? Microsoft's Cloud service is one of their fastest growth businesses and Linux is a huge piece of that.

JeremyNT 7y ago

Data point: MS teams disables all of Teams' A/V features for Linux users based on browser user agent. If you use chromium and spoof your UA as if you were using Edge/Windows, said features work. [1] Microsoft is what it is - a very large company with various business units with differing priorities. I do feel like they are much improved from the bad old days, where they seemed to enact a company-wide strategy aimed at actively sabotaging Linux. In the face of that, I suppose indifference is an improvement, and their "we love linux" marketing is at least an admission that Linux support is a consideration for some elements of their business. [1] https://github.com/meetfranz/franz/issues/1095 https://github.com/meetfranz/franz/issues/1095

my123 7y ago
A proper Microsoft Teams port for Linux is coming by the end of this year. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16911565-linux-client https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su...
- JeremyNT 7y ago
  I wonder if they will stop disabling features for the chrome UA if/when they release their electron app on Linux? One could hope...

sova 7y ago

Tremendous. Well written and well played. If there are two facets to divide and conquer (in this case, play along until you can conquer and conquer right away) Microsoft is certainly doing their best to fulfill the Caesarian commandment. Thanks for revealing this very snide practice, clearly if their intent was an embrace of OSS there would be much revamped in the base layers of their offerings. Yet, here we are. The number of life-seconds lost to Microsoft greediness is likely measurable and might even out-exceed the wealth of shrewd and pernicious altruists like Billy G. Not to be nefarious with this comment, but to assume that propaganda is honest is to wonder why the propaganda has to exist in the first place.

dabbernaught420 7y ago

"I fucking love open source!" - Microsoft If this doesn't make you want to use the term 'free software' I don't know what will.

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wooptoo 7y ago

The whole reason for doing WSL2 was running Docker on Windows, which is currently one of the development "killer apps". AFAIK in the previous implementation they could not get Overlayfs to work properly.

simonblack 7y ago

The only 'Loves' that Microsoft has are 'Love of Control' and 'Love of Money'. If you ever trust Microsoft, you have only yourself to blame when you get hurt. That's been true for at least 25 years, and I don't see it ending any time soon.

throwaway8291 7y ago

I'm in the camp of moving my stuff out of GitHub (thankfully so many nice options, like GitLab, gitea/gogs, and of course sourcehut) because the only reason I do not hate Microsoft is that I was able to avoid any of their tech successfully for the past 15 years. In it for the money, and gone if there's nothing more to capture. Simple story. That's exactly how something like a community does not work.

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elldoubleyew 7y ago

I would love to see MS release a version of Windows that is built on Linux but with a custom GUI to look and behave like Windows. They could even add support for Windows apps through WINE to make it _feel_ like a native experience. Especially if they are willing to dedicate additional resources to better hardware optimization for WINE* I have always hated Windows because I grew up on UNIX-like systems, whenever I want to do something non-trivial involving the OS I tend to get lost and give up pretty quickly. But I don't mind Windows GUI from a UX perspective, and I would be interested in running a "Linux-Windows" *I am not sure what MS official stance on WINE is, however I would imagine that supporting it is likely in their long-term best interests.

rcarmo 7y ago

I’m going to add a data point here: I work at Microsoft and my primary e-mail client is... Firefox. The Outlook web UI is so good these days that the UX for mail, viewing attachments and booking meetings is much, much better than the native app (which I only use for ensuring I have an offline database when traveling). And yeah, I use WSL extensively, and work from a Mac at home. There is a lot more to the story than the article covers.

zzo38computer 7y ago

It seems possible to me that they may make Office usable from web browsers on non-Windows systems (probably with a few features missing, some of that just due to the limitation imposed by the web browser anyways), but probably not a native Linux program. I do not expect them to drop Win32 and DirectX; however, maybe later they might make a few contributions to ReactOS (although probably not enough). What they say about Active Directory I suppose may be done in the way mentioned in that article, seems not very unlikely to me. I do not really think Microsoft "love" Linux all the way, although it seem to me they do "love" Linux more than they used to, at least.

JohnL4 7y ago

Oof. All these Linux-on-desktop replies. (1) The web is (slowly) destroying MS on the client-side. Sure, there's a ton of existing WinForms/WPF stuff now, but I think new development is on the web. (2) Linux is destroying MS on the server-side. It is simply impossible to beat the price (both AMZN and MS offer Linux images at half the price of Windows images). So, where does that leave MS? Competing with AMZN in cloud infrastructure. They have the technical chops and maybe other-than-1st mover advantage gives them a chance to present a cleaner experience, although it ain't easy being sandwiched between AMZN and Digital Ocean/Netlify. I think even Blazor is a stretch, dependent on the maturity of WASM, but... requiring devs to switch from React/Angular? And competing with whatever else moves to WASM. Of course MS loves Linux. It'd be stupid not to. (For now.)