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Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

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Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#41

Post by Crinus »

zoechi wrote: post #27

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 tha…

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).

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#42

Post by derefr »

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?

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#43

Post by outside1234 »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #38
tw04 wrote: post #28

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, th…

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.

What is a good example of it being gimped? I honestly think its better online than the apps themselves.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#45

Post by wayneftw »

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #17

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 in…

At one time, Manjaro Linux came with Microsoft Office pre-installed. The apps were built with python jade application kit with embedded webviews that take you to the online version - https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/manjaro-ms-office-online...

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#46

Post by simion314 »

1996 wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#47

Post by derefr »

Longhanks wrote: post #40
conexions wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/ndjpnladcal...

A Chromium-only extension is not a "web interface".

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.”)

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#50

Post by merb »

lghh wrote: post #35
stevbov wrote: post #29

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 inte…

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.

especially since kestrel is faster on linux than on windows. (well it's slower than iis inProcess, but still)
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