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Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

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Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#81

Post by samlevine »

Spooky23 wrote: post #56
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…

AD will be gone in the 2030 timeframe. Kerberos can’t survive in untrusted networks, and products like Azure AD and Okta are far more profitable, especially since the license that pays for AD (ie windows, even for Linux clients), is required anyway!

Another point worth mentioning is that as we move towards zero trust by default, AD getting replaced by Azure AD is a logical step towards that goal.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#82

Post by gnode »

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…

I think the only way in which "Microsoft loves Linux" can be scrutinised is: does a successful Linux ecosystem help or harm Microsoft.

That it forms part of their business model is not enough, if Microsoft would prefer dominance of its proprietary technologies.

Conceivably, the future of Microsoft's business model may be where development and maintenance of Windows / the NT kernel is deemed burdensome and not critical to their business, and Windows becomes a premium Linux distribution with legacy subsystems.

Using Linux at work, I'm indirectly a Microsoft customer, using Office 365 and Azure (an expanding portion of their business), yet the investment in Windows desktop is lost on me, and unnecessary to retain my business.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#83

Post by excursionist »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #65
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…

Because Microsoft makes some of the best tools for developers. Because sql server is a fantastic product that has basically no real equivalent on the market. And funnily enough, I always feel that .Net core primary platform was Linux and not windows. Same for visual studio code, and I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, new sql server features won't appear first on the Linux version. And actually it's somewhat t…

> Because Microsoft makes some of the best tools for developers.

What are some of these tools besides VSCode, and what makes them 'the best'?

> Because sql server is a fantastic product that has basically no real equivalent on the market.

What makes SQL Server so much better than, say, PostgreSQL or MariaDB?

> And funnily enough, I always feel that .Net core primary platform was Linux and not windows.

Why?

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#84

Post by baybal2 »

headmelted wrote: post #71

The author misses the bigger picture completely. Microsoft used to see Linux as competition, and while that might still be true in some ways, it’s largely moot for a couple of reasons. In 2019, Windows isn’t competing with Linux for desktop market share not because Linux poses no threat there, but because the desktop doesn’t matter anymore . Windows, and the desktop operating system as a concept, is competing with th…

Since when? That's nonsense. Browser and a whole operating system are two different things

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#85

Post by DayDollar »

zymhan wrote: post #67
derefr wrote: post #42

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…

> ...but, so far as I can tell, they’re not doing this. I wonder why not? Because maybe, just maybe, they're a tad bit less evil?

Beeing evil is expensive. All that empire structure is necessary to get people to be cooperative again.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#86

Post by silverfox17 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #56
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…

AD will be gone in the 2030 timeframe. Kerberos can’t survive in untrusted networks, and products like Azure AD and Okta are far more profitable, especially since the license that pays for AD (ie windows, even for Linux clients), is required anyway!

Kerberos is designed for untrusted networks.. and Azure AD is just AD hosted somewhere else. Same problems.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#87

Post by Nullabillity »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #65
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…

Because Microsoft makes some of the best tools for developers. Because sql server is a fantastic product that has basically no real equivalent on the market. And funnily enough, I always feel that .Net core primary platform was Linux and not windows. Same for visual studio code, and I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, new sql server features won't appear first on the Linux version. And actually it's somewhat t…

> Because Microsoft makes some of the best tools for developers.

NuGet constantly fails silently when trying to restore packages.

Visual Studio is an editor built primarily around a folder tree, with no competent way to navigate that tree without constantly losing your place. It's also the only IDE that I have used where I just had to give up trying to find the application logs.

> Because sql server is a fantastic product that has basically no real equivalent on the market.

MSSQL's utter incompetence makes MySQL's `utf8` troubles look like small potatoes. For example: the `uniqueidentifier` type doesn't have a defined endianness, meaning that there is no guarantee that two languages reading the same cell will produce the same UUID string.

SSMS is an unusable hog. There is just no nice way to put it.

SQLCMD must have been designed by people who have never actually used a CLI.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#88

Post by tracker1 »

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…

I wouldn't say they'd never do an Office on Linux... If you look at how they've been leveraging web tech and Electron for VS Code and MS Teams, I'd be very surprised if we didn't see an Electron based version of Office in a couple years. Electron has an amazing cross platform appeal for developers and MS has taken advantage of that. Not to mention managing to write applications under Electron that don't suck (though memory usage is high). And despite high memory usage, Office has never been that nimble in terms of ram use anyway.

As for AD, Azure's hosted services for this may well see more inroads into Linux, and I know a LOT of people/companies that would be beyond happy to use MS account management with a cleaner Linux integration.

I won't be using these things at home any time soon, but in a corporate space, MS would be a welcome and cost saving change compared to what is out there on Linux currently.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#89

Post by samlevine »

elFarto wrote: post #79
Spooky23 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AD will be gone in the 2030 timeframe. Kerberos can’t survive in untrusted networks, and products like Azure AD and Okta are far more profitable, especially since the license that pays for AD (ie windows, even for Linux clients), is required anyway!

> Kerberos can’t survive in untrusted networks... Wasn't Kerberos designed to work in untrusted networks?

It was, but Active Directory wasn't. If you put your DCs on the Internet you're asking to get hacked.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#90

Post by Nullabillity »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #70
Foobar8568 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Microsoft makes some of the best tools for developers. Because sql server is a fantastic product that has basically no real equivalent on the market. And funnily enough, I always feel that .Net core primary platform was Linux and not windows. Same for visual studio code, and I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, new sql server features won't appear first on the Linux version. And actually it's somewhat t…

isn't Postgres an equivalent?

Not really, Postgres actually works.
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