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“Run Linux on Windows” Really fascinating seeing this in an official Microsoft ad.

by valine 6y ago

alexmat 6y ago
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. A phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences in order to strongly disadvantage its competitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  "Office documents: In a memo to the Office product group in 1998, Bill Gates stated: "One thing we have got to change in our strategy — allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other people's browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy [sic] Windows." [14]" This explains the Word format. It was a good read!
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  You do realize that was over two decades ago? Almost no one from that time is still working there.
  - Teever 6y ago
    Why would you assume that the corporate culture has changed?
thdrdt 6y ago
It's smart. Give people freedom of choice for their OS and earn most money with services. I'm using .NET on Ubuntu and it just works perfect. So as a Linux user I am now connected to the Microsoft ecosystem. Balmer maybe made a fool of himself while dancing the 'developer developer developer', but he was right.
- kayoone 6y ago
  Balmer can't be attributed for this change in MS strategy though, i am pretty convinced he would never have allowed this, he called Linux cancer after all.
  - temac 6y ago
    I'm not sure Ballmer would not have allowed that. Linux in WSL under Windows is not a threat to Windows; it's absence was beginning to be a threat, as a generation (both of people and technologies) was Linux native and needed (or at least it is way more convenient) it locally to do their work. So it is basically either MS did WSL, or people were going to migrate away. And at least they did WSL cleanly, meaning that they do not rely on proprietary extensions for e.g. Linux projects in VS but simply use ssh. Maybe Ballmer would have wanted to attempt a proprietary lock in (the extend part) -- I'm not sure this would have worked in the context I described, because one important source of the need is people working on remote systems which are real native Linux, so they needed standard things anyway.
  - jszymborski 6y ago
    while that is indeed the quote, I think he primarily was referring to the GPL. (in before the Linux/GNU copy pasta)
julesallen 6y ago
Anybody got any day-to-day practical stories of how this Linux layer generally is? I have the top tier Pixelbook bought on the promise of integrated Linux on secure hardware. In reality it's crap, no FUSE, some GUI programs simply don't run, upgrades can trash your install, sporadic development attention from Google, and my 2015 MBP is an order of magnitude faster (wish I'd sprung for the 16Gb version though). The new MBP without a touchbar would be a great replacement but the Book 3 has caught my attention. Love to hear stories from Mac->Windows refugees.
- fuzzy2 6y ago
  Hm, depends on what you need. WSL1 translates syscalls to NT, it's not a real Linux kernel, so probably no FUSE. Performance is good in general, but it's still NTFS underneath. I use it for SSH and FileZilla, with Debian. No breakage so far, even going from Debian 9 to 10. WSL2 is basically a Linux VM on Hyper-V with some glue involved. It should be possible to make FUSE work there. I haven't really tried WSL2 yet. You'll have to bring your own X server. I use VcXsrv.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    So WSL1 was like a reverse Wine?
    - fuzzy2 6y ago
      Yes, I think that’s a valid way to put it. “is”, though. Because WSL2 is so different, WSL1 will stay, for the time being. You can use both side-by-side.
- pedalpete 6y ago
  I use it for all of my dev stuff, and I like it. I'm mostly a windows user, a few of our devs are heavy gamers, so they appreciate having a windows machine. With WSL, we run our servers in linux, and have browsers open in windows, and running VSCode in windows. The other benefit for us, is with the graphics work we do, and most of our users being on windows, in Chrome or Firefox, we're developing using the software our users are in, while developing in the same server environment our servers run on. It was fidgety to get set-up the first time, but now, that we've got that sorted, it's quite nice.
Flow 6y ago
I wonder if this will end like "OS/2 runs Windows apps better than Windows does"?

“Run Linux on Windows” Really fascinating seeing this in an official Microsoft ad.

by valine 6y ago

“Run Linux on Windows” Really fascinating seeing this in an official Microsoft ad.

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. A phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences in order to strongly disadvantage its competitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

danielscrubs 6y ago
"Office documents: In a memo to the Office product group in 1998, Bill Gates stated: "One thing we have got to change in our strategy — allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other people's browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy [sic] Windows." [14]" This explains the Word format. It was a good read!
colejohnson66 6y ago
You do realize that was over two decades ago? Almost no one from that time is still working there.
- Teever 6y ago
  Why would you assume that the corporate culture has changed?

thdrdt 6y ago

It's smart. Give people freedom of choice for their OS and earn most money with services. I'm using .NET on Ubuntu and it just works perfect. So as a Linux user I am now connected to the Microsoft ecosystem. Balmer maybe made a fool of himself while dancing the 'developer developer developer', but he was right.

kayoone 6y ago
Balmer can't be attributed for this change in MS strategy though, i am pretty convinced he would never have allowed this, he called Linux cancer after all.
- temac 6y ago
  I'm not sure Ballmer would not have allowed that. Linux in WSL under Windows is not a threat to Windows; it's absence was beginning to be a threat, as a generation (both of people and technologies) was Linux native and needed (or at least it is way more convenient) it locally to do their work. So it is basically either MS did WSL, or people were going to migrate away. And at least they did WSL cleanly, meaning that they do not rely on proprietary extensions for e.g. Linux projects in VS but simply use ssh. Maybe Ballmer would have wanted to attempt a proprietary lock in (the extend part) -- I'm not sure this would have worked in the context I described, because one important source of the need is people working on remote systems which are real native Linux, so they needed standard things anyway.
- jszymborski 6y ago
  while that is indeed the quote, I think he primarily was referring to the GPL. (in before the Linux/GNU copy pasta)

julesallen 6y ago

Anybody got any day-to-day practical stories of how this Linux layer generally is? I have the top tier Pixelbook bought on the promise of integrated Linux on secure hardware. In reality it's crap, no FUSE, some GUI programs simply don't run, upgrades can trash your install, sporadic development attention from Google, and my 2015 MBP is an order of magnitude faster (wish I'd sprung for the 16Gb version though). The new MBP without a touchbar would be a great replacement but the Book 3 has caught my attention. Love to hear stories from Mac->Windows refugees.

fuzzy2 6y ago
Hm, depends on what you need. WSL1 translates syscalls to NT, it's not a real Linux kernel, so probably no FUSE. Performance is good in general, but it's still NTFS underneath. I use it for SSH and FileZilla, with Debian. No breakage so far, even going from Debian 9 to 10. WSL2 is basically a Linux VM on Hyper-V with some glue involved. It should be possible to make FUSE work there. I haven't really tried WSL2 yet. You'll have to bring your own X server. I use VcXsrv.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  So WSL1 was like a reverse Wine?
  - fuzzy2 6y ago
    Yes, I think that’s a valid way to put it. “is”, though. Because WSL2 is so different, WSL1 will stay, for the time being. You can use both side-by-side.
pedalpete 6y ago
I use it for all of my dev stuff, and I like it. I'm mostly a windows user, a few of our devs are heavy gamers, so they appreciate having a windows machine. With WSL, we run our servers in linux, and have browsers open in windows, and running VSCode in windows. The other benefit for us, is with the graphics work we do, and most of our users being on windows, in Chrome or Firefox, we're developing using the software our users are in, while developing in the same server environment our servers run on. It was fidgety to get set-up the first time, but now, that we've got that sorted, it's quite nice.

Flow 6y ago

I wonder if this will end like "OS/2 runs Windows apps better than Windows does"?