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> If tools like this come to Linux, it'll make it significantly easier for many organizations to start complying with these mandates. You said a lot more than

> If tools like this come to Linux, it'll make it significantly easier for many organizations to start complying with these mandates. You said a lot more than you probably intended. Microsoft created the Microsoft-loving, Linux-hating trade press in the 90's. Consultancies fell into line, and started pushing the theory to uncritical IT management that if you had a computer connected to the corporate network, it had to run a virus scanner. Period; full stop. Regardless of operating system. I've never met anyone in corporate IT who actually does the math, and determines whether a particular threat vector is worth the cost of the preventative measure. The philosophy in the 3 Fortune 250's I've worked for has been: if it exists, it must be purchased/used/applied. In the 90's, yes, every WINDOWS computer connected to the corporate network needed the corporate AV running on it. Linux? Mac? Not so much. Even if they managed to get compromised, the chance that they would infect a neighboring computer were very small. These odds didn't justify the expense or the hassle of needing them to slaved into the corporate AV solution, no matter how much Microsoft diverted attention away from the very special problem that Windows has always posed from a security standpoint, how much they paid the trade press to paper over it, and how much they partnered with consultancies to push that line. They didn't care about the mainframe, did they? They didn't care about the Unix workstations, either. But Linux? It was the devil. We have come full circle. Microsoft is trying their hardest to astroturf the message that WSL enables a lot of development workflows for which Windows has been a poor choice of late, and this requires them to "love Linux." So now Microsoft MUST release their Defender product for Linux, in order to be taken seriously BY THE VERY CULTURE THEY CREATED. As a guy who run Linux on the desktop for 19 years, and got my corporate IT (in the 90's) to consider Linux all the way to the point of them looking into a virus scanner for it (finding that Symantec didn't support it, and dropping the idea), the irony here is both delicious and sickening at the same time. As I keep saying, I'll believe Microsoft "loves" Linux they day they create Office and an AD client for it.

jjice 6y ago
I wonder how much work would have to go into porting Office to Linux. My first thought is that since they've had it on MacOS for years now, it (hopefully) uses some portable UNIX libraries, but who knows. Linux still has a pretty small desktop market, and those who are on Linux are already used to (Libre|Open)Office or GoogleDocs. I'd like if Office came to Linux for the purposes of getting more people to potentially switch, but I don't know if it would be worth while for them financially. Adobe too. Man would it be fantastic to see Adobe add support. Same thought pops in my head: they're already running on UNIX, how much would be required to port to Linux? Probably more than I expect.
- aruggirello 6y ago
  Porting? Who talked about porting? Why do you (and they) voluntarily ignore 20+ years of Wine? 99% of the (few) Windows programs I still routinely use work perfectly fine under Wine. I can even run my old Windows 3.1 (16 bit) stuff on 64 bit Ubuntu, which I couldn't run on Windows 10. Heck when I was a Linux newbie, I was amazed to find Windows programs that didn't support Windows XP links were nicely following Ext symlinks! Office doesn't play nice on Wine? Seriously, if Valve can get stuff working on Proton that requires DRM, DirectX etc. it doesn't look like fixing existing issues to make Office work 100% under Wine is beyond reach for Microsoft. Heck, we're talking about the same corporation capable of giving us the WSL! > Adobe too. And Autodesk too.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    Recently, I was using Mikrotik Winbox for the first time under Ubuntu. I was shocked how easy it was to make it run (apt install wine-stable, wine winbox.exe) and how well it worked.
  - TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
    > Porting? Who talked about porting? Why do you (and they) voluntarily ignore 20+ years of Wine? Indeed. I was happily using Codeweaver's Crossover product to run Office 2000 (on RedHat 6.2 with Ximian Desktop, IIC) before Microsoft realized this loophole produced a flawless experience, and then changed the binaries to purposely frustrate this solution going forward. Nothing every worked quite right after that. Eventually, Evolution had a usable Exchange integration, and OpenOffice wasn't completely useless, so I simply stopped caring.
zdragnar 6y ago
Endpoint protection- aka enterprise antivirus / hacking- has become a very big market over the past few years, And linux is a massive player in the server and cloud space. They would be fools to ignore it, no other conspiracy needed.
raghava 6y ago
> As I keep saying, I'll believe Microsoft "loves" Linux they day they create Office and an AD client for it. Exactly. Everything else is just a marketing gimmick. They don't even support interoperability between OOXML, thus crippling every other "enterprisey" user who might want to have usable content/data between their co-workers who might be using Windows MS-Uservoice has ~500 comments on this topic since 2018, and no word from MS till now. [ https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/35191867-linux-support?page=26&per_page=20 https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/sugges... ] Guess they figured out WSL is an easy ticket to - paint the picture that "MS <3 linux! Techbros, dont'cha see! Yeah!" - thus counter the "Hard for Ubuntu/Fedora/Linux users to use MS Apps!" argument by going "Know what, Ubuntu is within Windoze! No need to dual boot now! Wow! Such advancement!" and find a way to safeguard and maximize license/OS-aaS revenue - no need to ever invest in interoperability for OOXML and such defined standards (this is a great lesson they have learnt from the LDAP-MSAD story) - no need to bother much the "situation" of dual-boot - now there's a better way, by saying, "you could run Linux within, with full native suppirt, and no need to go out-of-band from your corporate security and compliance baselines! So much win, ya'see!" Look beyond the gimmicks, and one could see it's just the same objective - just a different approach now. Not just "Windows on every desktop" but rather, "all data-processings units in the world to directly be leading in one way or other to cause some kida revenue flow for MS"
ohthehugemanate 6y ago
I mean, they are in the middle of rewriting Office to use react native, specifically for cross platform compatibility. And Teams already has a linux client. Regarding AD clients, what are you looking for that's not well covered by LDAP clients and all the AAD connection capabilities built into Azure? AKS runs RBAC based on bindings to AAD. Certainly for any server workloads, AD integrations are well covered. Perhaps the clarification Yu out need is, microsoft loves Linux on the server. They don't particularly care about linux on the desktop.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> As I keep saying, I'll believe Microsoft "loves" Linux they day they create Office and an AD client for it. Microsoft is a company, suggesting a company "Loves" anything is a misnomer. I say this because I sort of disagree here, but only kind-of. Microsoft embraces ("Loves") the parts of Linux which are compatible with Microsoft's strategy. Linux on Azure is getting quite huge, it's the difference between Azure existing as a profitable business for Microsoft and Azure being a cost center. Microsoft does a fair amount to embrace Linux on the server, they support Docker, they do a lot of work with Node, and have a fair number of people onboard doing Linux specific stuff. Linux AD & Office are only really important to desktop deployments and Microsoft has zero strategic interest in the Linux Desktop. If Microsoft were to port Office & AD to Linux Desktop, it would be an act of charity. If Microsoft is doing charity work, there are a lot of projects I'd like to see them invest in before AD and Office on Linux.
- deeter72 6y ago
  I believe porting MS Office to Linux would be a death sentence as all companies would install Ubuntu and Office and call it a day.
  - pbar 6y ago
    And interrupt their mostly nontechnical employees’ productivity to learn a new OS, for a negligible cost savings? Good luck getting that past a board of directors.
  - kchr 6y ago
    And lose all endpoint control at a whim? Not gonna happen.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > a death sentence For Microsoft? Windows has been on decline in importance at Microsoft for some time. For Windows? Nah, too many Fortune 500 businesses rely on software running on Windows for day to day operations. While it's hard to see from the consumer/ web/ developer side of the world, Win32 still dominates. Lots of vertical industry specific software which won't be replaced for quite some time.

jjice 6y ago

I wonder how much work would have to go into porting Office to Linux. My first thought is that since they've had it on MacOS for years now, it (hopefully) uses some portable UNIX libraries, but who knows. Linux still has a pretty small desktop market, and those who are on Linux are already used to (Libre|Open)Office or GoogleDocs. I'd like if Office came to Linux for the purposes of getting more people to potentially switch, but I don't know if it would be worth while for them financially. Adobe too. Man would it be fantastic to see Adobe add support. Same thought pops in my head: they're already running on UNIX, how much would be required to port to Linux? Probably more than I expect.

aruggirello 6y ago
Porting? Who talked about porting? Why do you (and they) voluntarily ignore 20+ years of Wine? 99% of the (few) Windows programs I still routinely use work perfectly fine under Wine. I can even run my old Windows 3.1 (16 bit) stuff on 64 bit Ubuntu, which I couldn't run on Windows 10. Heck when I was a Linux newbie, I was amazed to find Windows programs that didn't support Windows XP links were nicely following Ext symlinks! Office doesn't play nice on Wine? Seriously, if Valve can get stuff working on Proton that requires DRM, DirectX etc. it doesn't look like fixing existing issues to make Office work 100% under Wine is beyond reach for Microsoft. Heck, we're talking about the same corporation capable of giving us the WSL! > Adobe too. And Autodesk too.
- vetinari 6y ago
  Recently, I was using Mikrotik Winbox for the first time under Ubuntu. I was shocked how easy it was to make it run (apt install wine-stable, wine winbox.exe) and how well it worked.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  > Porting? Who talked about porting? Why do you (and they) voluntarily ignore 20+ years of Wine? Indeed. I was happily using Codeweaver's Crossover product to run Office 2000 (on RedHat 6.2 with Ximian Desktop, IIC) before Microsoft realized this loophole produced a flawless experience, and then changed the binaries to purposely frustrate this solution going forward. Nothing every worked quite right after that. Eventually, Evolution had a usable Exchange integration, and OpenOffice wasn't completely useless, so I simply stopped caring.

zdragnar 6y ago

Endpoint protection- aka enterprise antivirus / hacking- has become a very big market over the past few years, And linux is a massive player in the server and cloud space. They would be fools to ignore it, no other conspiracy needed.

raghava 6y ago

> As I keep saying, I'll believe Microsoft "loves" Linux they day they create Office and an AD client for it. Exactly. Everything else is just a marketing gimmick. They don't even support interoperability between OOXML, thus crippling every other "enterprisey" user who might want to have usable content/data between their co-workers who might be using Windows MS-Uservoice has ~500 comments on this topic since 2018, and no word from MS till now. [ https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/35191867-linux-support?page=26&per_page=20 https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/sugges... ] Guess they figured out WSL is an easy ticket to - paint the picture that "MS <3 linux! Techbros, dont'cha see! Yeah!" - thus counter the "Hard for Ubuntu/Fedora/Linux users to use MS Apps!" argument by going "Know what, Ubuntu is within Windoze! No need to dual boot now! Wow! Such advancement!" and find a way to safeguard and maximize license/OS-aaS revenue - no need to ever invest in interoperability for OOXML and such defined standards (this is a great lesson they have learnt from the LDAP-MSAD story) - no need to bother much the "situation" of dual-boot - now there's a better way, by saying, "you could run Linux within, with full native suppirt, and no need to go out-of-band from your corporate security and compliance baselines! So much win, ya'see!" Look beyond the gimmicks, and one could see it's just the same objective - just a different approach now. Not just "Windows on every desktop" but rather, "all data-processings units in the world to directly be leading in one way or other to cause some kida revenue flow for MS"

ohthehugemanate 6y ago

I mean, they are in the middle of rewriting Office to use react native, specifically for cross platform compatibility. And Teams already has a linux client. Regarding AD clients, what are you looking for that's not well covered by LDAP clients and all the AAD connection capabilities built into Azure? AKS runs RBAC based on bindings to AAD. Certainly for any server workloads, AD integrations are well covered. Perhaps the clarification Yu out need is, microsoft loves Linux on the server. They don't particularly care about linux on the desktop.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> As I keep saying, I'll believe Microsoft "loves" Linux they day they create Office and an AD client for it. Microsoft is a company, suggesting a company "Loves" anything is a misnomer. I say this because I sort of disagree here, but only kind-of. Microsoft embraces ("Loves") the parts of Linux which are compatible with Microsoft's strategy. Linux on Azure is getting quite huge, it's the difference between Azure existing as a profitable business for Microsoft and Azure being a cost center. Microsoft does a fair amount to embrace Linux on the server, they support Docker, they do a lot of work with Node, and have a fair number of people onboard doing Linux specific stuff. Linux AD & Office are only really important to desktop deployments and Microsoft has zero strategic interest in the Linux Desktop. If Microsoft were to port Office & AD to Linux Desktop, it would be an act of charity. If Microsoft is doing charity work, there are a lot of projects I'd like to see them invest in before AD and Office on Linux.

deeter72 6y ago
I believe porting MS Office to Linux would be a death sentence as all companies would install Ubuntu and Office and call it a day.
- pbar 6y ago
  And interrupt their mostly nontechnical employees’ productivity to learn a new OS, for a negligible cost savings? Good luck getting that past a board of directors.
- kchr 6y ago
  And lose all endpoint control at a whim? Not gonna happen.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > a death sentence For Microsoft? Windows has been on decline in importance at Microsoft for some time. For Windows? Nah, too many Fortune 500 businesses rely on software running on Windows for day to day operations. While it's hard to see from the consumer/ web/ developer side of the world, Win32 still dominates. Lots of vertical industry specific software which won't be replaced for quite some time.