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Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

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Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#351

Post by JeremyNT »

my123 wrote: post #329
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...

I wonder if they will stop disabling features for the chrome UA if/when they release their electron app on Linux? One could hope...

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#352

Post by cwyers »

dredmorbius wrote: post #344
philwelch wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re citing things that happened almost 20 years ago if you’re talking about Solaris and BeOS.

Precisely my point. The tiger rarely changes its stripes.

Microsoft isn't a tiger, it's a group of people. There is some continuity, but the people making those decisions are not the same people making those decisions now.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#353

Post by yellowapple »

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 doubt they'll be writing a Linux AD server any time soon

They don't need to. Samba exists; nothing stopping Microsoft from sending in patches.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#354

Post by yellowapple »

dredmorbius wrote: post #314
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…

Microsoft have an established track record of offering, then withdrawing, MS Office for alternate platforms (or refusing to offer it at all). I seem to recall that there was an Office version for Sun Microsystem's Solaris, which is 99.99...% of the way to a Linux variant. That was killed. (This may have been MSIE or an Exchange-compatible email client, I'm researching this still.) OSX is better supported, though for…

> This may have been MSIE

Indeed it was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#355

Post by keithnz »

ripley12 wrote: post #154
Nullabillity wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

> SSMS is an unusable hog. ...huh? SSMS (plus the free Red Gate SQL Search addin) is hands-down the best DB tooling I've ever used. If you're aware of similarly full-featured equivalents for Postgres (or any other RDBMS), I'd love to hear about them.

have you tried DataGrip? I went from SSMS to DataGrip for most of my database work. SSMS is still better for management of the SQL Server instance, but for database work, DataGrip is a lot nicer than SSMS (and SSMS is a lot nicer than a LOT of other tools for other RDBMSs)

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#356

Post by filmgirlcw »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #287
onei wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see an Electron based Excel appearing. Excel is pretty much the best spreadsheet application that exists in terms of performance. Using Electron would likely kill that to the point that no one would use it. The browser based versions of Office applications fall short when you start pushing them hard already - they're fine for light editing, but I wouldn't use them for anything substantial.

I can very much imagine a Goole Stadia but for real apps rather than games, where you are interacting with a video stream rather than the app itself.

That already exists. Citrix was doing this a decade ago - VMware too. I think Office was even one of the apps Citrix used to demo its thin client plan when Chromebooks first launched. Honestly, containerize it (for easy spinups), and if you have the bandwidth, a lot of apps would probably be really great run fully remote.

Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop earlier this year that is basically a cloud version of Windows 10 (or 7) or Office, that’s designed to be used like Stadia.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on any of these projects

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#357

Post by innocenat »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #275
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…

> 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.

Yeah, until you encountered complex script and East Asian script.

As a Linux user I still maintain a Windows VM precisely for MS Office. On Linux, WPS Office is much better at handling these scripts though.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#358

Post by galkk »

stiray wrote: post #130
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 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…

> Sharepoint

Sharepoint is an abomination, always was and always will be. It's not something that you'd use voluntarely.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#359

Post by briffle »

dredmorbius wrote: post #314
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…

Microsoft have an established track record of offering, then withdrawing, MS Office for alternate platforms (or refusing to offer it at all). I seem to recall that there was an Office version for Sun Microsystem's Solaris, which is 99.99...% of the way to a Linux variant. That was killed. (This may have been MSIE or an Exchange-compatible email client, I'm researching this still.) OSX is better supported, though for…

I ran IE (I think it was 3.0) on an HP-UX workstation back around the millennium.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#360

Post by ghaff »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #335
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…

>Because the market for desktop Linux applications is too small to be worth considering. // If MS Office were available for Linux the market for Linux applications would grow, massively IMO (assuming it worked properly). Which is of course a reason MS wouldn't do that, because why move MS Office users to Linux when you're currently selling $Billions of OS to people who only want to use MS Office.

Increasingly people don't care about productivity suites running locally. Office 365 and Gsuite work just fine with Linux.
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