Windows 8 OEM specs may block Linux booting

Could be -- it sounds like a possible "tie-out" (a variation on tie-in). AFAIK There haven't been many tie-out cases, but as antitrust litigator George Gordon [1] put it a few years back, "The term “tie out” is often used to refer to arrangements in which a license prohibits a licensee from dealing in and/or developing competing, noninfringing technologies. [Footnote omitted] Such arrangements have been found to be intellectual property misuse and could form the basis for an antitrust claim as well." [2]

If MS were to do something like this, I imagine Gary Reback [3], its nemesis in previous antitrust battles, would be all over it ....

[1] http://www.dechert.com/george_gordon/

[2] http://www.dechert.com/library/Analyzing%20IP%20License%20-%...

[3] http://www.garyreback.com/garyreback.html

"There fore all means of getting things done on a windows machine for a developer have to go somehow through a set GUI's to get work done programatically."

This alone is enough to discard anything you say about this topic. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Everything in Windows is programmable, through a standard object model, and the facilities to put them into any program are standardized, too.

"Which is not easily possible with windows, heck using those tools on windows is big pain."

Windows != Unix. If you are a bricklayer and you get into gardening, would you complain that your concrete mixer doesn't work well for shoveling a garden? Unix tools on Windows is a crutch for people who refuse to adjust to the environment they're in (or as a band aid for a quick and dirty port of Unix functionality).

"tools like DBus. Sockets et al are vastly superior in UNIX than windows."

Windows != Unix. The concurrent tasks model in Windows is based on threads, not process spawning. Don't take your Unix prejudices to Windows when you write software for Windows. Are you seriously suggesting there are no working ipc mechanisms in Windows? There are vast amounts of functionality to do so, and on a much deeper level than just 'pipe text from one process to the next' (i.e., a proper object model that can be used to share code written in several languages and with which you can pass objects and not just text).

"Lack of multiuser login,"

WTF are you talking about? Have you ever seen a Windows box since Windows 95?

"Registry is a pain on Windows, I don't have to worry about those hassles on UNIX."

What? Are you saying you prefer 25 different file formats, spread out in non-standard ways, without a standardized layout? Or are you saying that editing Apache config files with sed and awk is a good idea? If so, you're clearly off your rockers. Of course you can hack together something that 'mostly works', but at least with the registry you have a standard format, standardized and cross-language APIs and a (more or less) standard organization of data.

Now I'm not defending the implementation of the registry; it has outlived its design. But being against the idea is lunacy - why do you think the Gnome guys realized in the early 2000's that they needed something similar?

UNIX is about being generic. Yes, it means Apache and Varnish have different config file formats. But it also means that I already have the tools I need to automate my configuration so I don't have to care.

(Yes, Windows is programmable. But when you start having to compile software to automate your deployment, it becomes engineering and becomes a task of its own. Compare this to a quick command-line oneliner, and you'll see why people prefer UNIX. Engineering is about knowing how much you need to get something accomplished. Sometimes you do need to write highly-advanced configuration software. But other times, you don't. Windows doesn't give you that choice.)

== Will not block Linux or any other OS booting. Secondly anti-trust cases would kill MS if they would block any other OS, so they won't.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/20/reengineering-...