Windows: What is my purpose?
User: You are a bootloader to install Linux.
Oh my god
“An expensive bootloader at that, but hey you already paid us when you bought your laptop thanks to our decades-old grip on the market, so we could not care less what you do next”
why not? it’s not like there is any competition.
Microsoft is making more money off Linux with Azure than several red hats combined.Yes, but people find this interesting because historically, Microsoft was actively trying to destroy Linux (look up Halloween documents) and even said that Linux is cancer.
A lot changed after Satya Nadella took the helm. The modern .NET platform is really quite nice, and MS does a lot of
FOSSopen source work.Obviously it’s good to be sceptical, they’re a large corporation and all they want is money, they’re not our friends. They’re just not as draconian as they were in the 90s and the 00s.
While I see an extensive amount of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” and do agree that this is the typical logic of Microsoft.
It’s obvious this is to try and avoid getting hit with similar monopoly accusations that their competitors are receiving.
“Look, Look!! We support other Operating Systems! We have a guide! We’re not a monopoly! See, See!!”
I’m reminded of Google’s financial support for Firefox, so as to dissuade the idea that they are a monopoly
In exchange, FF uses Google search by default. So they’re also getting direct value from the deal.
The performance speed between WSL, virtual machines, and bare metal Linux has become so close that few developers choose this method due to the overhead of needing to restart (reboot) your device any time you want to switch between the operating systems.
And there’s the attempt at discouraging you from going bare-metal.
I doubt that “few developers choose this” is true.
Great! Then now you’re ready to install Microsoft Edge on your fresh new linux installation: https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge/pool/main/m/microsoft-edge-stable/ 🤡
It comes with bing search pre configured for you so you don’t have to look for the settings, we also hid them so you don’t accidentally switch to duckduckgo because we believe Linux users shall experience the full potential of our services even out abroad on another OS
For all two people who genuinely use edge on Linux, it’s still a more private experience than Windows. Regardless, more power to them
I mean, why not do that, from their perspective. Linux has been around for a long time and Windows still maintains market share. They don’t feel threatened at this point, so might as well have the explanation of how to install Linux be a subtle ad for Windows.
I love when people on the Internet say “X did Y quietly” to make it more suspenseful. This doesn’t look quiet to me…
What does “quietly” even mean? Didn’t take out ads in Times Square?
You could not live with your own OS. Where did that bring you?
Back to meMicrosoft must make 40% of their revenue off of Azure at this point. I would not be surprised if more than 50% of that is on Linux. Windows is probably down to 10% ( around the same as gaming ).
https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
Sure there are people in the Windows division who want to kill Linux and some dev dev folks will still prefer Windows. At this point though, a huge chunk of Microsoft could not care less about Windows and may actually prefer Linux. Linux is certainly a better place for K8S and OCI stuff. All the GPT and Cognitive Services stuff is likely more Linux than not.
Do people not know that Microsoft has their own Linux distro? I mean an installation guide is not exactly their biggest move in Linux?
I think Linux community is holding on hate and toxicity towards Microsoft and their software, you can even see it in comments to this post. Like lemmy is holding on hate towards Reddit (there is even Reddit community to share your anger). So if Microsoft somehow proves that they doesn’t deserve hate they are getting, Linux community will be shaved.
Youre talking about a huge megacorporation like a person. Oh no poor billy is getting bullied by a few nerds who use a different operating system.
wat? it’s a corporation, the hate is 100% warranted.
just because google’s eclipsed them to become the current worst thing ever, it doesnt mean MS isnt a blood sucking monster. if they were in the right position, they’d still be fucking us over.
…doesn’t mean MS isnt a blood sucking monster.
Bill Gates hatred of mosquitos finally clicked for me. He’s getting rid of the competition!
Why wouldn’t they? Windows 10+ is a great development machine and Microsoft knows that a lot of developers develop with Linux. WSL is great for all parties - including Linux
I, too, have had the audacity to say WSL is useful on this community and it was also met with down votes. Purists hating and gate keeping, and then they wonder why Linux isn’t more popular.
WSL may be fine for a Windows user to get some access to Linux, however for me it misses the vast majority of what I value in a desktop distribution -Better Window managers. This is subjective, but with Windows you are stuck with Microsoft implementation, and if you might like a tiling window manager, or Plasma workspaces better, well you need to run something other than Windows or OSX.
-Better networking. I can do all kinds of stuff with networking. Niche relative to most folks, but the Windows networking stack is awfully inflexible and frustrating after doing a lot of complex networking tasks in Linux
-More understanding and control over the “background” pieces. With Windows doing nothing a lot is happening and it’s not really clear what is happening where. With Linux, it can be daunting like Windows, but the pieces can be inspected more easily and things are more obvious.
-Easier “repair”. If Windows can’t fix itself, then it’s really hard to recover from a lot of scenarios. Generally speaking a Linux system has to be pretty far gone
-Easier license wrangling. Am I allowed to run another copy of Windows? Can I run a VM of it or does it have to be baremetal? Is it tied to the system I bought with it preloaded, or is it bound to my microsoft account? With most Linux distributions, this is a lot easier, the answer is “sure you can run it”.
-Better package management. If I use flatpak, dnf, apt, zypper, or snap, I can pretty much find any software I want to run and by virtue of installing in that way, it also gets updated. Microsoft has added winget, which is a step in the right direction, but the default ‘update’ flow for a lazy user still ignores all winget content, and many applications ignore all that and push their own self-updater, which is maddening.
The biggest concern, like this thread has, is that WSL sets the tone for “ok, you have enough Linux to do what you need from the comfort of the ‘obviously’ better Microsoft ecosystem” and causes people to not consider actually trying it for real.
