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Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

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Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#321

Post by jankotek »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #299
smacktoward wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They won't release products like Office for Linux Because the market for desktop Linux applications is too small to be worth considering. The whole reason they "love Linux" now is because Linux on the server gained too much market share for them to realistically oppose. They had to find a way to make money in that market that didn't involve somehow boiling an ocean of Linux machines. So they did. Windows is still o…

Would it be too crazy to think Microsoft could one day adopt Linux as their core for their OS though? They could probably implement the Win32 API as an API for a distro much like Wine does (but much better and from scratch) and keep those portions proprietary. This allows their OS to run on more platforms than Windows ever has. Much like how Edge is now Chromium based. Nothing is stopping them from making Linux serve…

Wine is actually more compatible with older apps than Win32 implementation in Win10. Better alternative would be to extend Wine.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#322

Post by dcolkitt »

int_19h wrote: post #268
asveikau wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They won't release products like Office for Linux This one I don't really understand why not. Presumably Office for Linux would still bring in revenue. Just not the additional indirect revenue of a Windows license. > (though a web interface is possible), I am not totally familiar with the "Office365" brand and what it includes, but I get the impression some browser based stuff already works on Linux. In work accoun…

Don't forget the expense of porting it in the first place, and then maintaining it after.

> maintaining it after

This is the real elephant in the room. Despite all their other flaws Microsoft has an excellent record of maintaining their software well after release. Particularly when it comes to their core products like Office or Windows. WIN32 programs or XLS files from 30 years ago still work on the latest versions.

If Microsoft didn't have this commitment, then porting Office to Linux as an experiment might be worth it. Even if there's a 10% chance it takes root, that's good revenue. But even if only a small base of users bought Office Linux it, Microsoft's reputation would require them keep maintaining it for decades.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#323

Post by tracker1 »

blub wrote: post #226
tracker1 wrote: post #76

It feels like this article is a lot of FUD spreading. MS is a business that likes to make money. At this point, there are developer minded people at the helm, and it makes more sense selling their software and cloud services than chasing negative returns on Windows. I can see that side of it through and through. MS has open sourced huge amounts of resource and platform building code in .Net Core the past several year…

You couldn't be more wrong. Since Nadella is at the helm, Microsoft have started to aggressively gather customer data from their desktop OS and many other products, including office. They used to be very decent at this before Windows 10, but they went completely nuts with telemetry. At the beginning they were completely opaque, to the point that a German gov agency had to reverse engineer the communications to see ju…

Windows isn't great... It's a single product of many from a very large company, and one that other than the assigned computer at work, I don't typically use. Beyond that, I don't mind the telemetry so much, though their decision to emphasis telemetry over test labs and staff is irritating.

Also, been a few hours since I read TFA, but isn't even a focus of TFA.

They aren't locking their services and much new software into windows, and aren't using windows to leverage other things in ways that don't make any sense.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#324

Post by dredmorbius »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #232
stiray wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have dumped windows completely after spending some time on windows 8 (fyi: system level developer, but... Well i did my share on aix, hpux, solaris, linux, vms too, but I did love windows... Before the age of manifests, putting com interfaces into kernel32.dll,...) What troubles me THE most on linux is interoperability of applications, there is literally nothing replacing microsoft "office" (not a product Office) s…

> Exchange, Outlook, Sharepoint, Lync (Skype for business) integrated into Office mesh... They have great product. After a multi-year hiatus of using Windows (because my customers were running mostly on Linux, Mac OS or did BYOD), on my current industrial/research project I'm back to using Office (Skype for Biz, Outlook for team comm and partially Sharepoint, Excel and even PowerPoint (!) for spec docs) on Windows VM…

The stumbling block at this point (and quite frankly, for most of time) for Linux / Unix office suites hasn't been features. It's been OEM bundling/tying, enterprise bundling/tying, and a "good enough" widespread and effectively universal userbase / skillset.

In establishing standards, diversity is a weakness, unfortunately.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#325

Post by judge2020 »

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…

Office online is already a thing and available for free https://products.office.com/en-us/free-office-online-for-the...

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#326

Post by simonblack »

The only 'Loves' that Microsoft has are 'Love of Control' and 'Love of Money'.

If you ever trust Microsoft, you have only yourself to blame when you get hurt. That's been true for at least 25 years, and I don't see it ending any time soon.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#327

Post by at-fates-hands »

jacquesm wrote: post #291
at-fates-hands wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the market for desktop Linux applications is too small to be worth considering. I would also add in there are other open source options that are compatible and work well with MS Office now. Libre Office and Open Office are two such examples. I can now write my resume in either or and save it in a docx format, send it to a recruiter and then they can open it with MS Word without any issues.

The bigger competitor for Word and the rest of the office suite is not Libre or Open Office but Google Docs. It's cross platform and does away with local file storage, which is a security risk and a data loss risk.

Good call.

I haven't used Google Docs in a long time and had forgotten about them.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#328

Post by asveikau »

dcolkitt wrote: post #322
int_19h wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the expense of porting it in the first place, and then maintaining it after.

> maintaining it after This is the real elephant in the room. Despite all their other flaws Microsoft has an excellent record of maintaining their software well after release. Particularly when it comes to their core products like Office or Windows. WIN32 programs or XLS files from 30 years ago still work on the latest versions. If Microsoft didn't have this commitment, then porting Office to Linux as an experiment m…

To echo what you were saying, binary distribution on Linux is indeed tough.

A while ago I needed to experiment with an old file format, and I found a Linux binary of a proprietary tool from the 90s. It linked to libc version 5 (from before the Linux world adopted glibc). It would have been complicated to get it running.

I found a Windows binary of the same tool. Put it on a Win10 VM I had for other purposes. No issues.

Stable binary ABI of userland is something the Linux world doesn't do well. Win32 and COM are really good at this.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#329

Post by my123 »

JeremyNT wrote: post #285

Data point: MS teams disables all of Teams' A/V features for Linux users based on browser user agent. If you use chromium and spoof your UA as if you were using Edge/Windows, said features work. [1] Microsoft is what it is - a very large company with various business units with differing priorities. I do feel like they are much improved from the bad old days, where they seemed to enact a company-wide strategy aimed a…

A proper Microsoft Teams port for Linux is coming by the end of this year.

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su...

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#330

Post by Spooky23 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #302
noinsight wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the distinction of internal and external networks is eroding. Read about zero trust networking.

That's not a trend we're interested in following. You bring your own device? Fine, it's on the guest network that is treated like the internet as far as our services are concerned. This isn't rocket science.

If your services are internet accessible and secure, what is the distinction between your trusted internal network and the internet?

The answer is usually that legacy apps, SMB, Voip, and printing require trust derived from the network.

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