why not? it’s not like there is any competition.
Microsoft is making more money off Linux with Azure than several red hats combined.Yes, but people find this interesting because historically, Microsoft was actively trying to destroy Linux (look up Halloween documents) and even said that Linux is cancer.
A lot changed after Satya Nadella took the helm. The modern .NET platform is really quite nice, and MS does a lot of
FOSSopen source work.Obviously it’s good to be sceptical, they’re a large corporation and all they want is money, they’re not our friends. They’re just not as draconian as they were in the 90s and the 00s.
Usually FOSS is specifically copyleft licences like the GPL, which Microsoft don’t use. Their open-source stuff tends to be MIT.
While you’re correct, that’s funny because as a developer using a framework like dotNET, MIT gives YOU more freedom. At least for anything statically linked where the GPL code would end up as part of your binary and force you to GPL your own code I believe.
MIT gives YOU more freedom
After years of debate about licenses for my own software (that only I use…), my philosophy has been boiled down to this: MIT for libraries. GPL for programs.
This way, other developers can freely use your library, and your program remains free.
That’s competely sensible if you ask me. Though there’s also nothing wrong with MITing your programs if you want to. By making the source available, you’ve already done plenty for the users.
At least for anything statically linked where the GPL code would end up as part of your binary and force you to GPL your own code I believe.
Anything more lax is fine, so you could also release your code under MIT license if you use GPL modules. Yes, it does force you to release your code but after all it’s a protection for the user. Furthermore, GPL does not mean your software has to be free of charge, you can still sell it as long as you attach the source code for the end user.
I find the distinction that dynamically linking GPL is fine but statically linking it is not to be so ridiculous. That’s obviously just an implementation detail. The only conceivable difference other than the pointless “technuchalley your program contains GPL code now as part of the file” is that you have to do dynamic linking, which is slightly slower. How does the fact that your work is dynamically linked vs statically linked make any difference to the people writing GPL libraries??
I think that’s for LGPL. For GLP any form of linking requires the code to be licensed under GPL, too. The dynamic linking except isn’t that bad of you think about it. It gives you the freedom to update or replace the library at any time. For security critical libs (TLS, GPG, …) that’s a big plus.
Dynamic linking let’s you use an already packaged library that its source you don’t touch.
Static linking means you have to show the source just in case you did some change.
The GPL protects the freedom of the user primarily, not the developer.
Exactly. Debating which of copyleft or permissive licensing is “more free” is always the wrong question. The correct question is "freedom for whom?
The way I like to think of it is that non-copyleft licences are like giving everyone freedom by saying there are no laws - suddenly, you can do anything, and the government can’t stop you! However, other people can also do anything and the government can’t stop them, either, and that includes using a big net to catch other people and make them their slaves. The people caught in the nets aren’t going to feel very free anymore, and it’s not unreasonable to think that a lot of people will end up caught in nets.
Copyleft licences are like saying there are no laws except you’re not allowed to do anything that would restrict someone else’s freedom. In theory, that’s only going to inconvenience you if you were going to do something bad, and leaves most people much freer.
The idea is basically that you shouldn’t be able to restrict anyone else’s freedom to modify the software they use, and if you’re going to, you don’t get to base your software on things made by people who didn’t.
Huh? FSF counts the MIT license as free, though they call it the Expat license they list it as both Free and GPL compatible: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Expat It is also listed as an opensource licence by the OSI.
Thus by definition MIT is a FOSS licence.
That is a good point. Thank you for the correction!
I thought MIT is the “do whatever you want with my code but don’t blame me if it breaks something”-license. Am I misinformed?
FOSSopen sourceThere is no world in which crossing one of those terms out to replace it with the other is valid and not disinformation.
“Free Software” is defined by GNU. “Open Source” is defined by the Open Source Initiative. Those are the only valid definitions of those terms of art.
They may differ in tone and emphasis, but they are compatible: every piece of code that can validly be described as “Free Software” can also be described as “Open Source,” and vice-versa. The notion that there exists code which is “Open Source” but not “Free Software” is false, and anyone pretending that there is such a distinction (e.g. Microsoft’s past attempt at promoting “shared source”) is either misled himself or trying to mislead.
I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, but I just want to make sure we’re all clear on that point.
I’m a bit confused here.
I used to work for a company that published the source code for one of their products. I.e. made it publicly available.
But many of the build tools and build infrastructure were proprietary and internal (not published publicly.)
So I’d say that was open source but not free, since you can’t really build and run it.
Publishing source code is not sufficient to make something “Open Source.” Your company’s thing was better described as “proprietary with source code available.”
No, he doesn’t. That document supports my argument, not yours:
The two now describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values.
I was skeptical when Microsoft bought GitHub but since then, they have fully reversed course and even made a formal apology on their historical stance on Linux.
They’ve even made several additions to the kernel, mostly to support WSL but still.
The rumor is that Microsoft is working on their own distribution.
I mostly agree that what they are doing now is good for FOSS, but I don’t believe that they switched to the good side. Microsoft may support FOSS because they now profit from it, but you shouldn’t forget that they are still spying on their customers and doing other unethical stuff. As any big company, what they want is money and you shouldn’t believe that they are your friends or they want your good. (I’m not saying you think that, but many people idealize companies and forget that all they want is money)
Microsoft is a large, public corporation. They simply can’t be good. Profit as the single motive of their existence ensures that.
Exactly what I mean!
You mean this one?
Maybe?
My understanding is that it’s supposed to replace Windows, while providing native backwards compatibility for legacy apps.
I don’t know enough about mariner to say for sure.
Do they plan to just enhance wine for that?
WSL has been integrated into Windows for a while now. The days you’re referring to are in the past.
Windows: What is my purpose?
User: You are a bootloader to install Linux.
Oh my god
“An expensive bootloader at that, but hey you already paid us when you bought your laptop thanks to our decades-old grip on the market, so we could not care less what you do next”
AHEM powershell activation scripts AHEM
Grub
Oh my Bill
Thought that was what PXE boot was for
While I see an extensive amount of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” and do agree that this is the typical logic of Microsoft.
It’s obvious this is to try and avoid getting hit with similar monopoly accusations that their competitors are receiving.
“Look, Look!! We support other Operating Systems! We have a guide! We’re not a monopoly! See, See!!”
This has way more to do with Azure is their main product and they know what people want to run on the cloud runs on Linux workloads. They’ve seen their Kuberbetes numbers, they know where the money is
and their OS is becoming an AD + 365 sub selling machine
There’s definitely an element of that, but imo their recent embrace of WSL and linux tooling for development is just to try and expand their market share in the software development space. Very few devs develop on windows unless they’re game devs, C# devs or working on something else that requires windows/Microsoft tooling, everyone else is on Linux and macOS because windows is bad for developing software.
It’s basically an admission that their tooling is bad, but it’s fine because you can just run linux development tools on windows now, so please don’t switch to Linux fully
Your assertions are not supported by industry analysis.
While this years survey is closed, the results haven’t been published. In last year’s survey, MacOS slightly edged out Linux, moving to second place.
Why is windows bad for development? Outside of specific languages or IDEs which suck for Windows, why would windows be bad for development?
Start your pc, start the IDE and type away. Docker runs in windows so running databases, redis, rabbitmq, elastic or whatever is not an issue.
In my experience, it’s damn near impossible (or at least used to be. I don’t use windows anymore) to get cli programs to work the way they should. I’d edit the environment variables, logout, login, restart the computer, check the variables again, set the variables again, and after about 20 times windows would go “oh yeah, there’s that compiler you were talking about”. With Linux I just get whatever language/libraries/compiler/interpreter I want and its there. At most I might have to ‘source .bashrc’ or something.
Well, I don’t think it’s anti-monopoly evidence, but instead a way to intercept a popular search phrase and control the narrative.
You search for “how to download and install linux” in google, and the very top link is the Microsoft page. And the narrative is:
-I just want to get started: Oh, use WSL, that way you are using Windows really, and just a touch of Linux
-I need to use it for real: Oh, then use Azure, you can have us set up those scary Linux instances for you and Microsoft Terminal will hook you right up to those instances
-I really really want to use it: Ok, but remember, you’ll lose access to Windows applications, so there are downsides, and also, we are going to make this hands down the scariest looking procedure of the three…I don’t think this is the reason. Windows is in no danger of being a monopoly
They just got through the US, EU, and UK courts regarding the Activision/Blizz acquisition. In which they gave up some streaming rights to Ubisoft to appease concerns ragarding game pass monopoly. It’s probably on their mind.
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In exchange, FF uses Google search by default. So they’re also getting direct value from the deal.
Maybe their Linux distro will use bing.
And they’ll bake in ads to the desktop.
Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux Distros, already did that.
Or are we just hating on Windows?
I love when people on the Internet say “X did Y quietly” to make it more suspenseful. This doesn’t look quiet to me…
What does “quietly” even mean? Didn’t take out ads in Times Square?
Microsoft must make 40% of their revenue off of Azure at this point. I would not be surprised if more than 50% of that is on Linux. Windows is probably down to 10% ( around the same as gaming ).
https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
Sure there are people in the Windows division who want to kill Linux and some dev dev folks will still prefer Windows. At this point though, a huge chunk of Microsoft could not care less about Windows and may actually prefer Linux. Linux is certainly a better place for K8S and OCI stuff. All the GPT and Cognitive Services stuff is likely more Linux than not.
Do people not know that Microsoft has their own Linux distro? I mean an installation guide is not exactly their biggest move in Linux?
Do people not know that Microsoft has their own Linux distro?
MS has been at Linux expos since 2004! They started working on SUSE in friggin 2006! I truly don’t get the amount of bile and ignorance the Lemmy community has towards them, it’s like half these folks are still on 2001-era slashdot, talking about FUD and Micro$oft.
Yeah, Microsoft has been a shit company making mediocre products its whole lifetime, but the amount of unhinged hatred here does not in any way match the present-day company’s actions.
I got radicalized by Slashdot. But I don’t regret it.
The hatred literally stems purely from Windows 10 and 11.
They are products engineered so expertly to frustrate you in such a distasteful way it’s downright offensive to anyone who has used any other operating system. It’s genuinely a marvel of human engineering.
Microsoft contributes to Linux and other open source projects in many ways, including financially. The cynical among us believe it’s for the same reason Google contributes to Mozilla. Legally it’s harder to prove you’re an evil monopoly if you financially support your competition. Microsoft’s involvement in Linux only became noteworthy after their 2001 Antitrust suit.
Great source, but it also shows they make 23% off office. Together with Windows, that’s over 30% of their revenue.
Office doesn’t work on Linux, so it really doesn’t make financial sense to push Linux
Also, if you spend any amount of time around the Linux Kernel Mailing List, there’s no shortage of microsoft.com email addresses involved and contributing here and there.
So the Embrace-Extend-Extinguish continues…
They’re having issues with step 3 on Linux
How many years will you people keep parroting this? Show me the extinguish part already…
Where I’m from, Triple E is something spread by mosquitoes… something about it just attracts blood suckers I guess
More like:
1 - embrace it in the cloud 2 - profit madly 3 - extend 4 - profit more
It makes me chuckle that people think Microsoft actually wants to extinguish Linux. I mean, the Windows division sees it as a competitor to be vanquished I guess. Over at Azure though, it is the golden goose.
Wouldn’t it happen by now considering how much MSFT/corporate influence Linux already has?
My perspective is that it’s there so it shows up on search results for “installing Linux” and recommends WSL over bare metal. At least that’s how I understand the wording.
But who knows.
True. Dont trust that company. They may invest 1% of their money into WSL now, but its for making the “Linux” experience so good there literally is no reason for many anymore, to really switch.
Indeed, it’s to contain the “Linuxification” of the developer community.
Before WSL, any developer dealing with backend development almost had to install Linux to have a vaguely decent development environment to align with what they get to use on the servers. While they were dragged into that world by their requirements, they may find that the packaging and window management is actually pretty cool. There reluctance to venture out of the Windows world transforms into acceptance and perhaps even liking it.
Now with WSL, those Windows desktop users say “I just need to click a distribution in the Microsoft Store and I’m golden and don’t have to deal with that scary Linux world I don’t know yet.”.
I’ve repeatedly have people notice I’m running a Linux desktop when I’m presenting and off hand say “you know you can just run Linux under Windows, you don’t have to endure Linux anymore”. They seem to think I’m absurd for actually preferring Linux when I can get away with it.
I think they are all in on wsl
This is a thing about huge companies. They can only ignore alternatives at their own peril.
The Windows team probably prefers you don’t ever install Linux even though they wised up and created WSL (so they don’t lose developers to Linux desktop the way they lost creative designers to Mac).
The other teams? VSCode, Office 365, Azure, GitHub, Bing, Skype, etc wisely DGAF what your OS is - just that it’s supported so you can use it.
But depending on the software (looking at you Teams) they GAF which browser you use.
teams is just a web page, the app is electron
They rebuilt a whole new version, it’s using webview2 now.
That is not better.
WSL has actually been part of Windows in one form or the other since the very first NT, initially because US state contracts required a “supports POSIX” checkbox and the implemented just enough to be able to tick that (and, consequently, it sucked), it’s also why NTFS has a POSIX mode for filenames. It was definitely a very unloved stepchild during the Gates/Ballmer years, back when MS was pushing Windows servers. Nowadays they have their own Linux distro to do server stuff, the whole company strategy shifted, Windows isn’t an anchor point, any more, their corporate support contracts are. In a sense they’re trying to be SAP for small companies (for SAP values of “small”. MS itself is a small company on the SAP scale). That is cloud-supported, which has some (but not gigantic) synergy with their gaming arm.
They just realized that an Azure subscription will generate far more revenue (as in “several orders of magnitude” more) than selling licenses or even OS subscriptions to final users. This was by design. The current CEO doesn’t care what happens to Windows as long as it supports his quest for infinite profits.
ironic, a FOSS kernel killing windows in the name of profit
Thank you.
Ways Lemmy is already feeling like modern reddit: Instead of link to an article, we get screenshot of a post with a screenshot of the article.
Old habits die hard
Great! Then now you’re ready to install Microsoft Edge on your fresh new linux installation: https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge/pool/main/m/microsoft-edge-stable/ 🤡
It comes with bing search pre configured for you so you don’t have to look for the settings, we also hid them so you don’t accidentally switch to duckduckgo because we believe Linux users shall experience the full potential of our services even out abroad on another OS
For all two people who genuinely use edge on Linux, it’s still a more private experience than Windows. Regardless, more power to them
Embrace, extend, and extinguish
It makes sense for Microsoft to support Linux though…
They tried their hardest to kill Linux under Steve Ballmer but now they’re moving (or in reality have moved) to a model where Xbox and cloud are their main income-generating industries. The former is unrelated to Windows/Linux and the latter is frankly more dependant on Linux than it is on Windows - Microsoft have been supportive of Linux through Azure for years now and it doesn’t exactly make sense for them to be developing two different operating systems, so it’s not far fetched to imagine they’ll drop
DOSNT as a backend for windows entirely in the future and move to a Linux backend, with Windows just being a closed source DM with tracking etc added on.This covers embrace & extend, but I don’t think the extinguish part makes sense - sure they may add features the FOSS community disagree with, but at worst we’re in a similar position to where we are now with things being released separately for Linux and Windows
I think you mean NT, not DOS. DOS stopped being the backbone of Windows in 2000/XP.
That is the opposite of what I want to happen. I want them to release Windows (NT) under a free license, not to start basing Windows on Linux.
NT isn’t even a bad kernel, it’s everything around it that’s the problem.
I’m not sure they’ll succeed in extinguishing linux. But I do get the worry, especially with WSL.
What I am more worried about is them potentially extinguishing git via their control of github. In particular, with their github cli tool and such >.<
Why wouldn’t they? Windows 10+ is a great development machine and Microsoft knows that a lot of developers develop with Linux. WSL is great for all parties - including Linux
I, too, have had the audacity to say WSL is useful on this community and it was also met with down votes. Purists hating and gate keeping, and then they wonder why Linux isn’t more popular.
WSL may be fine for a Windows user to get some access to Linux, however for me it misses the vast majority of what I value in a desktop distribution -Better Window managers. This is subjective, but with Windows you are stuck with Microsoft implementation, and if you might like a tiling window manager, or Plasma workspaces better, well you need to run something other than Windows or OSX.
-Better networking. I can do all kinds of stuff with networking. Niche relative to most folks, but the Windows networking stack is awfully inflexible and frustrating after doing a lot of complex networking tasks in Linux
-More understanding and control over the “background” pieces. With Windows doing nothing a lot is happening and it’s not really clear what is happening where. With Linux, it can be daunting like Windows, but the pieces can be inspected more easily and things are more obvious.
-Easier “repair”. If Windows can’t fix itself, then it’s really hard to recover from a lot of scenarios. Generally speaking a Linux system has to be pretty far gone
-Easier license wrangling. Am I allowed to run another copy of Windows? Can I run a VM of it or does it have to be baremetal? Is it tied to the system I bought with it preloaded, or is it bound to my microsoft account? With most Linux distributions, this is a lot easier, the answer is “sure you can run it”.
-Better package management. If I use flatpak, dnf, apt, zypper, or snap, I can pretty much find any software I want to run and by virtue of installing in that way, it also gets updated. Microsoft has added winget, which is a step in the right direction, but the default ‘update’ flow for a lazy user still ignores all winget content, and many applications ignore all that and push their own self-updater, which is maddening.
The biggest concern, like this thread has, is that WSL sets the tone for “ok, you have enough Linux to do what you need from the comfort of the ‘obviously’ better Microsoft ecosystem” and causes people to not consider actually trying it for real.
well about networking: windows proxy settings just work transparently, while on linux it’s just a config option that applications may or may not respect (vpn still works perfectly, but not proxy)
True, though I’m mostly invested in the kernel networking behaviors, rather than having a nicely standardized place for proxy settings so that applications have a logical place to go.
It’s a fair criticism that in userspace, proxy settings have been not standardized and also TLS certificates are similarly a bit messy.
Just in case a Windows user sees this, install WingetUI and your update flow will be fixed.
Of course the problem is that wingetui isn’t there by default, isn’t integrated to Windows Update, no matter what, WinGetUI basically becomes yet another tray icon, alongside a half dozen other auto-updater tray icons that various vendors added since there’s no integrated facility to rely upon.
So sure, it’s a bandaid on winget, but it’s still awkward and the ecosystem is a mess. Compared to Linux where a distribution will have, in the box, an extensible central update facility maybe serving two different types of repositories (e.g. apt and snap, or dnf and flatpak).
I’m by no means a purest but I’ve found WSL… More annoying than using Linux as is. Network oddities, random programs not functioning and just generally subpar as is.
Yea anyone who says wsl is good is a windows user and shouldn’t try to administer Linux systems.
If you are going to use Linux on windows just use virtualbox
Windows 10+ is a great development machine
If doing Windows development, I agree. WSL is a nice “I would like to have a Linux-like environment without losing Windows or running a full-blown VM” measure. This idea has existed for a long time with things like Cygwin, but at the end of the day, a natively-ran Linux distro will be considerably better for many development stacks than WSL.
If only they stop overwriting boot loader.
Install linux second and create a second boot partition. most distros will probe foreign os and add a grub chainloader entry from grub to windows boot partition. windows never lnows about the other boot partition
The thing is, I don’t think a guide is really needed to install Linux. Most of it is pretty straight-forward. (The only tricky bit that comes to mind is making the USB that you’ve put your distro on bootable. That probably isn’t obvious; and it might not be obvious how to get your computer to boot from a USB anyway if you’ve never done it before.)
Anyway, the way I see it, Microsoft’s guide is more about how you can use Linux while still having Windows. If someone is searching for “how do I install Linux?” Microsoft would obviously prefer the answer to involve something that preserves Windows. First preference: WSL, second preference: Virtual Machine, third preference: dual-boot. And after that, you’re on your own.
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I wouldn’t count on it… From Microsoft’s point of view, dual booting works as long as you install Windows first - which probably suits them just fine.
I prefer having Windows safely tucked away on a virtual machine where it can’t hurt anything.
You know that could be interpreted as a challenge.
Doubt it
I personally haven’t seen windows do that in many many years (last time I saw it happen was with windows XP, though I haven’t ran dual-boot system with every windows since then, just some).
In my dual-Linux setup though, one keeps trying to get over the other in every minor update.
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You have to install Windows first, then your Linux distro.
Doing that has solved all my problems with Windows being a douche
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Those are (made up) problems that might arise after you’ve already installed it; and I doubt Microsoft’s guide says much about them.
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Umm… I really don’t know why you’re coming at me with some sarcastic anti-linux shit right now. All I said was that it was pretty easy to install. I didn’t say or imply that it was problem free. As for the problems being ‘made up’, I made a reasonable assumption that GRUB doesn’t care what day of the week it is - and so what you described was hypothetical only.
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While I agree with you, the issues described are definitely not made up. Linux tends to remove proprietary drivers on every update and the open source drivers for Nvidia still fail with a lot of hardware.
this only happens if you install proprietary drivers manually and not through the software center (or package manager for the cli folks) on almost every given linux distro
this is why no sane linux user recommends installing download scripts from websites, you rely instead on your package manager to handle everythingI never installed any driver in any way other than the software center and it happened to me in every single update for several years until I finally bothered to search how to configure the update process to stop doing it (last month).
Multiple machines, distros, DEs, you name it. None of them ever not had this problem.
The thing is, I don’t think a guide is really needed to install Linux. Most of it is pretty straight-forward. (The only tricky bit that comes to mind is making the USB that you’ve put your distro on bootable. That probably isn’t obvious; and it might not be obvious how to get your computer to boot from a USB anyway if you’ve never done it before.)
It’s been awhile since I installed a Linux distro…Have some of them improved guidance related to allocating disk space on install? I remember that was one of the parts that I wasn’t entirely confident I’d handled properly the last few times I did so. Something something swap, something /, and the like.
I did a Mint install a few weeks ago, and I’d say that if you want to preserve some existing OS (i.e. dual boot), then it isn’t super easy. You have to tell it what new partitions you want - and therefore you have to know something about what partitions you should have. The good news is that you don’t actually need any swap or home partition. You can just put it all on one partition - but I don’t think it’s obvious what to do.
On the other hand, if you aren’t trying to preserve something you already have, you can tell the installer to just go with all the defaults, and then you don’t have to know anything about it.
Note: Microsoft’s guide doesn’t mention any of that detail. It basically just says to follow the instructions of the installer.
Ou can dual-boot with the default options, but iirc if you want to choose how much of your Windows partition you want to use you have to do it manually. Haven’t done it in ages though so I could be wrong
And after trying Linux inside windows and then inside a VM and realising it runs like shit, they’ll be convinced windows is better, but they’ve been deceived.
You’re so right! I feel like I always need to try two programs and I am never doing it often enough to actually remember which works.
