Will they lobby for laws that prohibit Linux or make it difficult to install? What actions might they take in the future?
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
SQL Server runs on Linux. Azure supports Linux. The next step is to extend into their own distro, get everyone using it, then drop support for mainstream Linux.
Will it work? Maybe. They’ll have to make Microsoft Linux more attractive than Debian and Red Hat.
What do you think Ubuntu is? Microsoft’s touch in it is so obvious that only a fool would miss it.
systemd anyone?
/s
Exactly what they’re doing right now. What cable companies did. What every dominant business does when something better starts to eat their lunch.
Become increasingly abusive and scummy towards the customers who are left, because they’re either too deeply ingrained, spineless or lazy to change and they’ve already self-selected.
Honestly fine by me. I prefer Linux remain non-mainstream. It has integrity like this. The moment any suits see dollar signs on it, it’s as good as ruined.
I’ll drink to that, my friend.
Salud, cheers, prost, l’chaim!
Work with hardware and software vendors to break linux compatibility.
They’ve been busy doing that for the past 20+ years. It’s been an annoyance, but not really a deterrent.
They cannot do that to every manufacturer, as most of countries are incentivized to not dependent on American or any foreign product.
I can see China or European manufacturer will slowly move from Windows. At least China already learning the hard way from Android-Huawei relationship.
The desktop has been losing market for a while. I feel Windows is already under serious threat (if not already in the minority) when you think about all the devices that mainstream audiences orbit around (phones, tablets, portable consoles, etc), often using the Linux kernel. Only about a third of most website traffic comes from desktops.
Many of the people who frequently use Windows desktop do so because of their job, and often avoid using it outside of work as much as possible, since it feels like… well, work.
Microsoft has been desperately trying to appeal to those other bigger sectors of the pie and has failed every time.
PC Gaming was one sector they had advantage on, yet that has already started to crumble thanks to Valve. I feel that MS will just try to push for integrating their xbox with Windows OS more and more…
I feel it’s a battle with many fronts, since PCs have many uses… so MS is likely to run their typical spiel: copy what the competition are doing and try to centralize/integrate it with their OS in a way that gives them an advantage, as they are famous for doing.
Another sector they can do this is with the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)… they could turn Windows into a frontend for running Linux apps… so if Linux apps became popular, they could try to advertise Windows as the “best” way to run Linux software without losing the full first party support of legacy Windows software.
Hear me out on this one “Microsoft Linux”
Yes exactly. Embrace and extinguish has always been Microsoft’s strategy. They’ll release their own distribution and either make it slower and more complicated than Windows, so that everyone thinks Windows is the better OS, or they’ll make it a cloud OS like Chrome, requiring recurring payments to use Office 365 and everything else.
I see this as the most likely outcome as well. It’s the preferred route, seen all of the place lately. Want to privatize a public service? Cripple the public service enough to “prove it doesn’t work” to convince people privatization is the best option. I suspect most people would switch to Microsoft Linux over something “tech” sounding like Debian or Ubuntu. When the trial of their slowed down and crashy “Linux” comes to an end, Microsoft will offer an easy solution to switch back to Windows.
Already exists as a VM option on azure
Emulation should always be Linux emulating Windows. Windows emulating Linux is just weird.
Its not emulation, it’s a Microsoft distro
Two things, I was under the impression that Azure can emulate a lot of different Linux distro. Second, I thought the hypervisor ran on cut down version of Windows server.
VMs aren’t emulation. Its a full OS running on virtual hardware. Also, yes, azure offers several distros, not just Microsoft’s.
The OS of the bare metal host shouldn’t matter much, if at all, to the guest. If you have a philosophical issue with the hypervisor running under windows I doubt you’d be using azure to begin with.
That makes sense. Thanks.
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It’s a Linux distro that’s called Azure Linux and it looks like it’s based on Fedora if the length of package attribution is anything to go by.
That’s just neutered Ubuntu container
Windows is only 12% of Microsoft’s revenue, and between Mac, Linux and ChromeOS, it really doesn’t have a monopoly anymore on desktop (about 70%). On top of that, desktop usage in general is decreasing, and is already less than 50% of all web traffic.
What I’m saying is that I think it’s safe to say something else will likely “kill” Windows long before Linux ever becomes a serious threat to it.
Windows is only 12% of Microsoft’s revenue
That may be true, but a lot of their profits build on that Windows monopoly. I wouldn’t be surprised if about 80% of their profits depend on Windows.
Do you have a source for that? This chart says otherwise:
Thanks for the chart. 👍
Tomato tomato.
I wrote profits, and from the chart you show, clearly above 50% of their revenue is from Windows and derived products.
Last I heard the profit margin for Windows and Office was around 90%, AFAIK by far the highest of the business. So I’m pretty sure that combined with Server products Search and the part of gaming that is on Windows, it will be very close to 80% of the profits.
Linux has been becoming a “serious threat” for 20+ years now. I’ll wait.
Don’t get me wrong I like Linux a lot. But if you step back and look objectively, it has a lot of issues trying to grow outside the hobby/enthusiast community for the desktop.
I think that linux has a couple of things that might help it grow outside its traditional niche that it hasn’t in the past. Proton has been a major step forward in to the gaming scene. A lot of people are very unhappy about windows 11. The EU in particular is also investing in ways to get out from under American techs thumb due to the geopolitical landscape.
I don’t have too high expectations personally but who knows.
It’s mobile devices that are eroding Windows market share on desktops, not Linux.
Linux already dominates the server space, it runs the internet and super computing, but it will NEVER be a threat to Microsoft on desktops.
Never say never
pays even more to hardware manufacturers to add windows by default, and make drivers windows only.
Secure boot and anti-cheat.
Well the Xbox app that suspends Windows processes is a reaction to this threat. The threat not being Linux in general but SteamOS and Proton specifically. I don’t think anyone imagined it would be gaming that would usher in the era of Linux but it does seem that that will be the case.
Desktop users (except for business) don’t make Microsoft any money, so they probably don’t care.
Make a version of Office that works on Linux natively.
That works on their version of linux.
Why? Office is such shit.
Honestly, ms won’t do anything.
unofficial statement out of Microsoft have Linux VMs overtaking the Windows VMs in Azure.
Why should they worry about losing a once off $1100 sale of a Server 2025 license when they can sell you a 2 CPU 8Gb ram Azure VM for $150 a month? Or $113/m commited for 3 years ($4000 total)
Maybe requiring locking bootloader “for safety” on desktop computers if they want to run windows 12
