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I suspect that this is a side effect of work they are doing trying to build up their capabilities with Azure. I think the long game is to try to support docker containers that are built against Linux natively on Windows. The other interpretation is still in line with the move toward containerized services: I think they want to make it easier to build a containerized app on windows and deploy it on k8s/docker swarm/etc.

Apple has been losing their darling reputation among developers, and I think MS sees an opportunity to bring a lot of people back over who might otherwise try to make a go of Linux. If they can offer a plausible story for developing and deploying applications from windows I think it would drive more business in the cloud and enterprise areas; at the same time having more developers around on the platform will continue to ensure that they have the software to keep consumers from migrating to iOS/Android/ChromeOS type devices.

They want you not to install Linux, but keep using Windows. That way, apart from using their OS, you may end up using the rest of Microsoft software: Edge, Office, Outlook, OneDrive, etc. That wouldn't happen if you used Ubuntu.

What I don't understand is why Canonical thought that shrinking their user base would be good for their business.

In the long run, Canonical might have been the trojan horse Microsoft needed to demolish Linux from within.

As developers, we're all enthusiasts of the WSL and how we don't need to dual boot, run VMs etc. any more. But in the process, we may end up giving less love to our once beloved DEs. This in turn creates a negative feedback for Linux desktop adoption. Also, less bare-metal installs means less bugs discovered and ironed out in the kernel too, less incentives for developers to release drivers, etc. so in the long run it's going to hurt Linux much more.

This can go the other way as well. If developers can target WSL and run on both Linux and Windows it increases their user base. This could end up making it easier for users to move away from Windows since one of the big hurdles is software compatibility.

If it is a Trojan horse, it does seem to be a partnered one that works both ways. WSL is the easiest "Hey Developers, Try Ubuntu" experience Canonical could hope for. No virtual machines to wrestle, no boot CDs to awkwardly try to boot on machines that no longer have CD-ROMs: push a couple buttons, install an app.

This increases their user base. Every time you install WSL & Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, you are getting a full Ubuntu distribution.

The only user base that shrinks is the Linux Kernel user base; Ubuntu and Linux are two separate concepts, and WSL demonstrates that they are in fact fully separable.

Well, I always thought Ubuntu was "Linux for human beings". It seems it's now "Bash for Windows users".

I don't think this business model will last much longer, though ;-)

As does UbuntuBSD, of course.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11415985

Don't forget Visual Studio. Visual Studio debugging Linux applications via WSL is really cool.

> I do believe MS has changed.

As a general rule, businesses will play nice when they have to (because of competition, public opinion, or government regulation), and they'll be ruthless where they can get away with it (due to monopoly status, high barriers of entry, poor regulation, etc.).

If you believe anything about a company, believe that. No company is fundamentally good or evil.

Now... corporations do have internal cultural that biases their ethical decision-making (positively or negatively) and various factors (inertia, founder effect) which slow down the rate at which they adapt their ethics to a new set of market/regulatory conditions. So perhaps you can trust/predict a particular company for the short-term.

They want to attract developers.

One reason why it was so easy for Linux developers to switch to OSX was that they had a mostly-compatible shell environment.

I see a free or nearly free "developer edition" of Windows 10 incoming. It won't have some of the enterprise-y features (bloat) of existing enterprise editions, but it will be capable, feature-rich, free (maybe you'll have to somehow demonstrate that you're a developer) - and most importantly it will be free of the creepy shit. And then they'll be well positioned to drink Apple's milkshake, as far as developer-mindshare.

>it will be free of the creepy shit

That's far too optimistic.

Why? Developers are a small minority of MS's users, and MS gains way more in terms of adoption and opinion-shaping from being on the good side of devs than they gain from the (unusual, unrepresentative) data that comes from spying on them.

And since devs tend to overlook how "civilians" experience computing, (when's the last time you turned off your ad blocker?) if devs receive a non-creepy version of Windows, that'll be that many fewer influential people trying to hold MS's feet to the fire wrt privacy.

Because the message would be "use only dev version of Windows, other versions are creepy shit".

"I do believe MS has changed. They don't seem to be the conniving organisation they once were"

I think this ex-Microsoft employee might disagree with you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFbAqICUJo

Could you add a brief summary of the video for those who prefer text for bandwidth (digital or cognitive) reasons?

sure. The guy in the video is a popular youtube personality; his name is Jerry Berg. He is an ex-Microsoft employee who worked on Windows and had access to Microsoft's internal SQL servers used to collect problem reports. He makes a few points in the video.

1. In the Terms & Conditions, Microsoft claims they get your IMEI number from mobile connect devices as part of their telemetry and then go on to say it's not PII (Personally Identifiable). Jerry explains how this is not true and explains how Microsoft through corporate partnerships can eventually link your IMEI data back to logs previously collected.

2. Jerry explains that there are two levels in the new Windows Creator program: A basic level and another, I forget what he called it, more verbose level. Jerry explains that 90% of the telementry data you might think is in the more verbose level is collected at the basic level. Kind of a moot point.

3. If you have turned off telemetry collecting features such as cortana and edge, by upgrading to Windows10 creator, these features are re-enabled and Microsoft says this is a bug but Jerry claims it's intentional.

These were the salient points I recall from the video. If you get a chance to view, I suggest giving it a watch. It's interesting.

Although he makes some good points, I would encourage some healthy skepticism over claims and statements made by ex-Microsoft employees about a company that has changed significantly in the 3 years since he was sadly laid-off.

I know this because until I returned to Microsoft last year ... to help modernize the Windows Console, and deliver Bash on Windows ... I too was an ex-Microsoftie having left the company in 2010 after 10 years as an MSFT employee.

This company has changed and improved A LOT during my 6 year absence and, while yes, we have a lot yet to improve, I can attest that our intentions are genuine, credible and increasingly transparent, to the point that we recently published details on the telemetry that Windows collects and aggregates (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/micro...) and we even provide a site where you can go and manage/clear your privacy data (https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/)!

Most of what he said didn't happen on 3 devices I updated yesterday

Has Microsoft made any inroads into the embedded space? Maybe embracing Linux is part of a long term strategy to becoming a player in the IoT/embedded space.

Windows 10 IoT Core has been added to several prominent refrigerators.

This statement made me giggle :-)

> What is it that MS is actually trying to do?

They're trying to prevent Windows from becoming the COBOL of operating systems.

My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel. They can keep Windows 10 going for a few years yet (maybe up to 5?). That will give them time to work on cross-platform .NET, so new development will be an easy switch, and good quality Win32 emulation, which will be built someway on the work done on Wine.

>My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel.

Windows 10 is the last version of Windows that Microsoft is making. It will be continuously updated instead of new versions being released.

I find it very hard to believe that 10 the last version of windows.

You don't have to believe it, that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft has been saying it for two years though:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ver...

Apple was on OS X for awhile.

There is an ancient story about an old ship with all its parts replaced and the question was when does it stop being the old ship and become a new ship? If Windows has a Linux kernel, is it still Windows? I guess Windows is whatever Microsoft calls Windows?

Windows started on the DOS kernel, so switching to a new kernel wouldn't dismantle the whole product.

Although I don't see a reason why NT should be inferior to Linux from Microsoft's perspective.

Windows NT is a completely different kernel, so was 9x. So Microsoft actually changed kernels at least twice.

DOS had no kernel - it was just a bunch of code that ran on top of a bunch of PC-compatible hardware. There was no separation between kernel-space and user-space.

You are applying an overly restrictive definition to something that is just the nut analogy, which is a vague analogy that does not imply "spaces".

MS/PC-DOS, and DR-DOS, were not just "a bunch of code" and had a definite structure when it came to operating system design. They comprised the basic disc operating system, the basic input/output system (incorporating built-in and loadable device drivers), the command processor, and the housekeeping utilities.

* https://superuser.com/a/329479

The kernel of (386 Enhanced Mode) DOS+Windows analogous to the Windows NT kernel being discussed here is the VMM and the VxDs, with krnl386.exe as a distinguished Extended DOS program running in the distinguished system VM.

* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dos-windows-boot-process.html

What do they have to gain using the Linux kernel? As WSL shows running Linux userland applications on the Windows kernel is perfectly feasible, however, running Windows applications on a Linux kernel (aside from GPL nightmares) is a different story. The two architectures are quite different, but NT was built from the start to support different 'personalities' (cf. the OS/2 and POSIX subsystems).

Running Windows applications on a Linux kernel doesn't involve any GPL nightmares, what makes you think this?

MS already has a Windows subsystem for Linux (they are using it in the MSSQL Linux port).

Changing Windows to use the Linux kernel would require integrating the Linux kernel into Windows somehow. That's where the GPL comes in.