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Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

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Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#251

Post by throw7 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #242
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…

AFAK SAMBA 4 can serve as an AD controller and you probably can run it on Azure. Or even on a Windows server if you want (I used SAMBA client on Windows once).

Kind of. A full AD DC isn't supported by redhat (it's disabled) as the MIT kerberos "port" is incomplete and seems dead.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#252

Post by devnonymous »

devnonymous wrote: post #104
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…

> Everytime I hear someone say "just look, they don't support office on Linux!" I ask: and what exactly do you think the market share is of guys who love Linux so much they use it on the desktop, but also would PAY Microsoft for Office vs. just using LibreOffice or Google's office suite? If you think MS hasn't done the math and figured out that solution would never break even much less turn a profit, I guess I'd ask…

I'm curious as to why I'm being downvoted. Do people disagree with the reasoning or do they disagree about the actual facts of what happened ? I'm OK if you are down voting because you think this has nothing to do with the point being commented on (although I disagree) however if it isn't I'm curious about the reasons.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#253

Post by asveikau »

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…

> putting com interfaces into kernel32.dll

I think I read this claim from you here before. What's up with that?

These days, kernel32 (split off into kernelbase and others in the Vista and Win7 days) mostly has small wrappers to ntdll.

A COM interface is really just a C++ VTable. So the "overhead" of that is basically minimum 3 function pointers and some indirect calls. What is the problem with having a COM object passed to a kernel32 function? Would you have the same objection if it were a (barely any different) function pointer plus an extra pointer for context?

The complaint about manifests maybe made me think this was about WinSXS or something. Which I would agree is engineered kind of poorly, but I doubt it's the worst thing in Windows.

[Disclaimer. I worked as an IC SDE at MS from 2008-2011.]

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#254

Post by [deleted] »

robenkleene wrote: post #155
hamsapelea wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm the average joe is already using google drive rather than office et al. Works on linux and mac better than the office stack works on windows.

I was really surprised to learn that according to Okta’s Businesses at Work 2019 report[1] Microsoft Office is still significantly more popular than G Suite, at least in the workplace: > Office 365 increased its lead and continues to dominate the total pool of apps by number of customers, and it’s growing its active unique users by 55% year over year. I wrote a bit about the report[2]. Another interesting finding is…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#255

Post by qwerty456127 »

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 once tried running MS Office 2007 on Linux with Wine and it worked great, no quirks I could notice. That happened during the days when Office 2010 was new and mos of the people still were using 2007. Some time later I've read 2010 already works fine, tried it and it did. Newer versions probably work ok too as for today. You can use MS Office on Linux and it's hardly a problem (hint: the real problem is Adobe). Why? Because Linux is more safe (that's why I migrated people who use MS Office to it), faster, more cool/convenient/customizable (e.g. I feel like the latest KDE provides "like Mac but even better" experience), more reliable (updates are frequent and never ruin your system) and free (which is a thing in countries with less developed economies).

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#256

Post by Nullabillity »

tracker1 wrote: post #183
Nullabillity wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSSQL's replication is a minefield of ways to screw it up completely.

Not that I disagree... but by comparison, PosgreSQL replication would be a minefield of nuclear bombs without a map.

Not using it for anything super critical yet, but Patroni is pretty much plug-and-play, and becomes transparent to the client once set up. No need to worry about whether your client supports MultiSubnetFailover, or whether you remembered to copy your users manually.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#257

Post by FpUser »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #180
pytester wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Microsoft loves Linux because it makes them money. I'm not sure why anyone would expect differently. I rather thought the point of the article was that Microsoft didn't actually love linux but pretended that it did to stave off irrelevance in markets where linux is kicking their ass (i.e. server). As he said, if they really loved linux and this isn't just another "embrace, extend, extinguish" ploy sugarcoated in PR…

None if the examples given are particularly sensible. Turn Word into a webapp? This has been happening for years, but no web editor can offer even 50% of the functionality offered by Word. Office365 is competitive with GSuite. Drop Win32? That's basically asking Microsoft to commit suicide and destroy all companies who rely on windows to run their software. They were trying to get people to move to UWP, and look how…

DirectX 12 is actually more easy to swallow for the average Joe programmer than Vulcan so maybe it does make sense.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#258

Post by asveikau »

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…

> 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 accounts at former employers I have used a web-based Outlook on Linux and FreeBSD that had some "Office365" branding.

> and they won't move away from Windows-only APIs

This one I don't know why they would ever do. Win32 apps are still driving revenue and customer satisfaction for them. More, I think, than they admit to themselves. Witness they tried to kill Win32 apps in the Windows 8 cycle, and failed. Then kept trying to resurrect the idea of killing Win32, and had to walk it back every time. Surface RT wouldn't do third party Win32 apps. Neither would Windows Store initially. Then they floated a Windows 10 amd64 SKU that couldn't run third party Win32 apps. Nobody wanted this stuff. That legacy is pretty much the only thing that keeps people on Windows.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#259

Post by squarefoot »

Even if Microsoft does really love Linux, I'd rather want to know which Linux they love: a generic one such as any popular distro out there, or rather their own version of Linux, which could be a frankenpenguin where some obscure proprietary technolgy, no matter how small, would magically make their software run "better".

I am 100% speculating, of course, but if I was in Microsoft pants and wanted to kill Linux because it makes essentially impossible to achieve domination in some context (server, embedded, mobile, etc), once realized I can't destroy it for failing many moons ago to understand its potential at step 1 of "first they ignore you..." , the best alternative would be to embrace it, pollute it discreetly injecting closed technology in key areas (all it needs is a key driver or library), port some great software to it with seemingly innocuous strings attached to the proprietary parts that will make it run better or run at all, have its users love my software and get used to it, make its use appealing to business users as well (offering discounted pro support as an example), acquire game companies and port their titles as above, etc. Once I have say the 20 most used apps depend on that closed blob or technology, I'd be ready to roll out my own distro which of course by being the favorite one among "normal" users will be the one dictating other Linux distros future. To make it short, Microsoft will indeed love Linux, although not before making Linux one of their products.

As I wrote, that's pure speculation, but think of it when the first "best run on WSL" Linux software comes out.

Re: Microsoft's “Love” of Linux

#260

Post by FpUser »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #231
FpUser wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, for many users the computer is just where they run a browser Well there is a big difference between MANY and MOST . There is a whole world of creative people to whom browser on a phone just does not cut it.

Percentage of people living on web-apps is > 10%. Linux Desktop is 0.8% according to Statcounter, September 19 Which is the bigger threat?

Why on Earth did you bring LINUX desktop here? Anyways I am done with this Kool-Aid
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