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That's a fair distinction. I suspect it would mostly mimic the way things played out with Android & ChromeOS. A corporation made the most polished and usable Li

That's a fair distinction. I suspect it would mostly mimic the way things played out with Android & ChromeOS. A corporation made the most polished and usable Linux distros ever, and it split down the exact lines you mentioned: - The OSS Faithful, who mostly ignored it and didn't count it toward "The Year of the Linux Desktop" - The normal folks, who use it without knowing anything about the underlying Linux baseline This distinction is baked into the design of the OSS movement. The goal is to build usable computing that doesn't depend on a corporation (though alliances may be made at times when incentives align), and any corporate encroachment is fairly seen as antagonistic to those goals. All that being said, none of this really serves Microsoft. They have a fantastic OS kernel and hardware support already (even if they throw crappy UX on top of it), and their chief differentiator is their long tradition of backwards compatibility. This locks enterprises and users into their ecosystem, and pushing a Linux distro would only give customers an opening to look elsewhere.

masfoobar 1mo ago
> All that being said, none of this really serves Microsoft. They have a fantastic OS kernel and hardware support already (even if they throw crappy UX on top of it), and their chief differentiator is their long tradition of backwards compatibility. This locks enterprises and users into their ecosystem, and pushing a Linux distro would only give customers an opening to look elsewhere. It has to serve Microsoft one way or another. They have changed their tune with Open Source since 2010 (ish) A number of their software/tools have eventually supported Linux as well as Windows. dotnet is a great example of this. dotnet core was released around 2016. Why did they do that? My guess is because of Azure to increase their user base. The option for a Linux VM as well as Windows. Personally I do think they have a 'master plan' within the world of Open Source. It might not be to eradicate it but to gain a monopoly over it. I think they have accepted they cannot beat Linux in an simple OS/Kernel war. However, they can control Linux with everything else needed for it to be usable. With the amount of money Microsoft can throw at it, they "could" run tactics for users to use Powershell instead of Bash. To use SQL Server instead of MySQL/MariaDB/Postgres. To use dotnet instead of Java/Go. This can be done without people realising its orchestrated by Microsoft. This sounds laughable to a typical linux guru but we are getting closer the "the year of the linux desktop" and many that do switch are pure Windows users. If Microsoft play their tactics well, these people will want to take their Windows knowledge with them rather than learn the linux way. This brings us back to WSL. Microsoft made it extremely easy to install Linux thanks to WSL. You think how many IT users there were that only used Windows all their career. Since WSL that number has shrunk a lot! Imagine them using Linux for the first time via WSL:- "Oh.. awesome. I can still use Powershell! I wonder if I can install SQL Server. Probably can with Docker! Microsoft have made it rather easy for me thanks to their own distro. I might use this distro when I create a VM in Azure next month" We shall see.

masfoobar 1mo ago

> All that being said, none of this really serves Microsoft. They have a fantastic OS kernel and hardware support already (even if they throw crappy UX on top of it), and their chief differentiator is their long tradition of backwards compatibility. This locks enterprises and users into their ecosystem, and pushing a Linux distro would only give customers an opening to look elsewhere. It has to serve Microsoft one way or another. They have changed their tune with Open Source since 2010 (ish) A number of their software/tools have eventually supported Linux as well as Windows. dotnet is a great example of this. dotnet core was released around 2016. Why did they do that? My guess is because of Azure to increase their user base. The option for a Linux VM as well as Windows. Personally I do think they have a 'master plan' within the world of Open Source. It might not be to eradicate it but to gain a monopoly over it. I think they have accepted they cannot beat Linux in an simple OS/Kernel war. However, they can control Linux with everything else needed for it to be usable. With the amount of money Microsoft can throw at it, they "could" run tactics for users to use Powershell instead of Bash. To use SQL Server instead of MySQL/MariaDB/Postgres. To use dotnet instead of Java/Go. This can be done without people realising its orchestrated by Microsoft. This sounds laughable to a typical linux guru but we are getting closer the "the year of the linux desktop" and many that do switch are pure Windows users. If Microsoft play their tactics well, these people will want to take their Windows knowledge with them rather than learn the linux way. This brings us back to WSL. Microsoft made it extremely easy to install Linux thanks to WSL. You think how many IT users there were that only used Windows all their career. Since WSL that number has shrunk a lot! Imagine them using Linux for the first time via WSL:- "Oh.. awesome. I can still use Powershell! I wonder if I can install SQL Server. Probably can with Docker! Microsoft have made it rather easy for me thanks to their own distro. I might use this distro when I create a VM in Azure next month" We shall see.