New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store
blogs.msdn.microsoft.com
blogs.msdn.microsoft.com
Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely configured ubuntu terminal.
For all of X's warts, its networking protocol works just as intended for this kind of use case.
http://i.imgur.com/9Dx79vq.png
(By the way, there is a color picker when you click a color)
Fortunately there is an "app distinct" option in the settings. You can pick different color profiles for different programs.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=chakra&q=bash+logo&yeg=B&ia=images...
It's all about changing the color palette of the console window, which is kinda a pain, but well worth it.
I use tmux super heavily, so a nice .tmux conf pays off.
Lets you actually make things readable - even pretty if you care to.
The selected box (of the 16) has it's values displayed on the right. Change those numbers to change the color's value.
The radio buttons select which of the 16 colors is the "default" for that setting. So you probably want to leave "Screen background" on black (the first color table entry) and you'd likely want to move "Screen Text" to white, the 16th entry. The popup colors are only really relevant for cmd.exe.
Yes, we're aware that dialog is garbage. I hate it to death. It's high on the backlog.
EDIT: ah just saw that you have your .bashrc in that image, thanks!
ConEmu
As a network engineer it's almost useless to me, ping, traceroute, mtr etc don't work. Neither does ssh tunneling. No ssh server.
Still using Cygwin for those reasons.
These things work, as long as you are not under a firewall. The problem is that currently it doesn't expose anything to whitelist if you do use a firewall, but hopefully they'll sort this out eventually.
SSH server is still iffy, because Windows 10 comes with an SSH server (not OpenSSH), which you'll have to disable. It was very weird to try to SSH into WSL and get a cmd.exe prompt.
Also, once you install opensshd with apt, the server is only active while its terminal window is open (since closing the terminal window kills the WSL init process).
Good tip on disabling Windows own ssh server too, sounds like I need to revisit this stuff see can I get it working again!
Instead, I've got a pretty good setup using Xming (2), a native win32 X server implementation.
In Bash/WSL, I set the DISPLAY variable appropriately and launch my terminal emulator of choice, as well as Emacs.
This setup has worked out to be very fast and stable for me.
1. http://conemu.github.io/en/CygwinMsys.html 2. http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/
%windir%\system32\bash.exe -c "cd ~ && bash"
If you want the nice Ubuntu icon, add this as task parameter:
-icon "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\lxss\bash.ico"
You can then use the ConEmu theme of your choice and the colors are far more readable than with the default console. See default theme for instance:
Shell - http://imgur.com/CeotBpF Neovim - http://imgur.com/HI3u2mA
Stuff like this is making me look at Windows machines again.
When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine. It'll probably be easier and more reliable than installing Ubuntu directly! At that point, web and server devs will migrate en mass from Mac to Windows.
Then they will discover Clang for Windows and that dev tools for Windows in general are actually pretty nice. And, since they are already running their server code on WSL, it becomes much easier and more interesting to get it running in Windows directly. Bang! Huge uptick in open-source server development on Windows.
While I wish Apple got its shit together, I have 0 incentive to move to Windows as a developer. I'd have to find replacements for a lot of small utility apps I take for granted on OS X, and I'd have to cope with the stupid UI Windows shoves down my throat.
explorer shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App
Well, you know, they _already_ are. We don't have to wait for anything. And even cheaper, if you can avoid paying the windows tax ;)
At this point, the Windows platform is a rotting cesspool, the devs focused on it know its growth has stopped (but often are clueless about how to move forward), package management is not a thing, and Microsoft has added so many anti-features that it is a pain in the ass to live with.
Android is frankly another rotting cesspool of Google's making. Where Microsoft & Apple are able to provide years of updates to every model of phone their software runs on (with MS literally working with the same vendors as Google), Google has successfully ensured that outside of Nexus devices, updates occur rarely if ever.
And, of course, VS offers Android and iOS targeting in both C++ and .NET. The C++ info is here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/18/android-a...
No partial compilation if you target Linux. Everything has to be sshed over every time and compiled from scratch.
If you have a linker error,it's not displayed right away, you have to dig through files. These are painful to resolve.
Lots of other problems too, not the least of if you need high performance disk access, you can forget about WSL.
Don't get me started on debugging through rgdb + vs.
After our evaluation, we simply got Linux machines and VMs (under Windows) for development.
WSL and remote Linux for VS are a great idea, but it looks like they need few patch rounds to be Enterprise ready.
Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere? The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state.
I just don't see why you'd choose a platform that does pants on head retarded shit like making wget open IE 11 rather than downloading the file at a given URL. This isn't rocket science here, I know all the MS people across the water in Redmond & Bellevue can fix this without much work, but apparently worse than non-existent is the best MS can do.
The repairable/upgradable thinkpads are probably better in this regard
The WSL is compelling and to be honest, one of the main reasons I switched to OSX was the command line. Now, I can have a command line and not have to run VM's for 3d stuff, games, and more. Pretty compelling...
It boils down to how much the downtime costs. "Do it all in the Cloud" simply doesn't apply across the board.
With Win10 and WSL (which I've been actively testdriving on my personal hardware) I'd be totally fine to get a Lenovo from BigCorpEmployer. For private use, I won't buy any MBPs anymore anyway for the same reason.
There is no "Windows or linux laptop". There is a bunch of different brands with varying degree of quality. Macbook lasting more than a dell or an acer, maybe. More than a thinkpad or a surface ? Much less so.
And of course you forget about the desktops...Companies are still using a non negligible amount of those.
> Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere?
For the same reason people use a macbook, or virtualize linux (vmware) instead of native installation : Better hardware support, better battery life, better support from your enterprise IT etc... etc...
> The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state.
The thing was available about a years ago, why so much hate? I played with it and to be honest, as developer it already has 90 % of everything i need...
For all their fault and mistakes , one thing that the new Microsoft does really well is to adapt to the new development realities and propose simple and pragmatic solution : VS code , typescripts and now WSL...
and that might be all you need. but for many *nix people, this is no where near enough.
Windows has yet to provide a consistent way how to obtain the OS version across releases. Then we can maybe talk about standardizing apps communications.
I actually have a hard time beleiving some of these comments are even organic... (web and server devs are going to migrate to windows!). What world do these people live in? It's like people live in fantasy land and have forgotten the 90's truth of MS.
Embrace. Extend.
Extinguish.
RMS was and is right. Either the user controls the program or the program controls the user. Microsoft has shown they are only interested in controlling the user, and not in giving the user control.
I say this as a senior sysadmin who has dealt with every aspect of their OS's in production for a long time, and I'm fed up with it. Honestly I think Win8/10 was the final straw for me, for what it's worth.
I've since moved completely off windows to gnu+linux, despite the rough points such as gaming. It's been a freeing experience I wish more people had the guts to be a part of. I'm also heavily considering refusing to support windows systems in general, something I think we should all consider.
On top of this, Microsoft is a smaller fish these days. They've lost mobile, probably forever. They're behind in search, ads, cloud, etc.
So they're, maybe not toothless, but definitely less harmful than they were in the 90's.
For EEE they need to be able to extinguish. They can't extinguish Linux or OSS now, it's basically impossible.
Hate to break it to you, but the Microsoft Store has the same limitations regarding browser engines as Apple's iOS App Store.
Keep in mind they already have a conviction for anti-competitive practices. A second strike would probably be at least in the low billions, especially in the EU.
This project has never been about EEE. It's not about controlling the user. It's the complete opposite. It's all about choice. I like a linux style development environment more than I like Windows style. In my free time I mostly write python applications and do webdev-y stuff, and WSL makes it really easy for me to do that.
But then again, that's just my opinion.
I could do that before with virtualbox. What kind of benefits besides slight speed increases would we see using the posix WSL?
>It's not about controlling the user. It's the complete opposite. It's all about choice.
If I create a prison for you, but then let you choose your cell, do you consider that a valid choice? That's what this is, and I know what you mean but the reality is that windows is a walled garden prison for the user.
>I like a linux style development environment more than I like Windows style.
Then why not dev on GNU+linux?
Also, notice the emphasis on GNU.
So I can have sleep and wifi working properly and working 3D acceleration for Apps and Games.
Those have worked for properly for as long as I've been using GNU/Linux (5 years or so).
> working 3D acceleration for Apps and Games.
I believe those also work, but I don't play games that often so I wouldn't know.
Furthermore, most of the useful parts of nix tend to come from places other than gnu-based APIs. Languages like python, for example, are nicer under nix, but use few if any gnu-isms. Web frameworks and applications by extensions are more *nix friendly, but it's a rare example that restricts itself to Linux only. Sticking with just gnu and/or linux ends up being much more of a burden than it's worth.
well, those are the first two 'E's of the picture, if this is the case. with the latest edition of Windows 10 (S, i think?), microsoft have already prepared the stage for the third.
WSL doesn't look to be "extending" Linux; in fact, it's all about providing the exact ABI Linux itself provides, and running Linux applications and operating systems without requiring any porting. There are no e.g. WSL-only syscalls exposed to Linux applications, such that Linux applications would benefit at all of being aware of WSL or targeting it. As far as the code running under WSL is concerned, it's just POSIX.
To me, that's actually a strategy strangely opposed to classical Microsoft EEE: this move commoditizes the Windows platform. There are many developers who will now see Windows as "just another POSIX", and will experience less of the unique, Windows-only parts of the platform, making them less locked into Windows as a whole.
There's no plausible end-goal here where Windows would ever be given mindshare as "the Linux," in order to start on the "extend" phase. In fact, more likely, Windows IT people will be enabled and encouraged to switch to "standard" services like nginx instead of IIS, or Postgres instead of MSSQL—at which point they'll realize they've eliminated all Windows lock-in and they're now free to leave the ecosystem!
Yet.
...that your comment is basically just FUD?
I'm not saying your wrong! But your comment is, clearly, intended to make people feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Microsoft, the Windows platform, what MS may choose to do in the future, etc. And you don't have any particular factual claims to back it up (classic FUD tactic), just an appeal to authority ("as a senior sysadmin") and some handwaving about events that took place long before most of us were actually in the workforce. I mean, I'm the oldest dev on my team, and I was a teenager when the Halloween Documents were published.
We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn't abuse their power if they could, but you know...what power? And how does WSL provide them an opening? At this point, I'm much, much more concerned about Facebook than Microsoft, and I think the onus is on MS critics to explain exactly what they fear. And no, chanting "embrace, extend, extinguish" is not an explanation.
Apologies for not taking the time to sit down and list all the ways MS has been bad for the FOSS world and the user. For someone who references the halloween documents and the hn userbase in general I think most of this should be mostly obvious and not need specific hand-holding. As for your accusation of fud, fud by defnition is about false or disinformation in combination with the appeal to fear. I'm basing my comments off true information, and not using the fallacious appeal to fear but instead telling how proprietary systems do affect people.
> just an appeal to authority ("as a senior sysadmin")
A key point to the appeal to authority issue is that it isn't inherently a fallacy, and only becomes one with used in an informal fallacy, which I did not. In rhetoric establishing authority is an important (but often overvalued) aspect of argument. As a senior sysadmin, this makes my propositions more likely, but not logically certain. Not a fallacy at all.
> handwaving about events that took place long before most of us were actually in the workforce.
What does the date of these actions have to do with the issue at hand? The four principles of software freedom are still not met by MS, and that's just as relevant today as it was 20 years ago.
> We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn't abuse their power if they could, but you know...what power? And how does WSL provide them an opening?
Where do I begin? First of all, we don't really live in such a different world. Fundamental principles of software freedom have been the same since the 80's when they were first brought up, (though they have been refined somewhat). Second, not only would MS abuse their power, but they already have and do! As for what power, I don't know how you can be serious and ask such a question. Instead of ranting I will just give you a good link to read. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.en.html
> At this point, I'm much, much more concerned about Facebook than Microsoft
This is a logical fallacy. We aren't talking about FB. I'm concerned about it too, but to handwave away MS issues in this way is not conducive to honest intellectual conversation.
> I think the onus is on MS critics to explain exactly what they fear.
We have, for years at that. See above gnu.org link for a start.
> And how does WSL provide them an opening?
You mean other than replacing a gplv2 kernel with a closed source proprietary one?
By what definition? FUD is literally just the words "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt." Nothing about those words requires the thing being referred to to be false or disinformation.
Less pedantically, propaganda/astroturfing doesn't need to be a lie or an exaggeration or anything of the sort, to serve its purpose. You get just as much of an effect from selectively highlighting some true facts while downplaying others.
The irony the parent is referring to is that you are highlighting some facts about Microsoft [which support the story you wish to tell] while downplaying others [which do not], and so your comment serves as effective anti-Microsoft propaganda (i.e. "FUD") whether or not every statement in it is true.
> As for what power, I don't know how you can be serious and ask such a question.
Likely because—at least if they live in SV—it's almost assuredly true that almost nobody the parent knows uses Microsoft products any more. They have no cultural power, in the sense of having control of cultural influencers. They might still have a large foothold in the enterprise, but—unless there is a massive resurgence—that foothold will die exactly one generation of IT people from now, when nobody of the new generation will have bothered to learn the Windows stack.
> We have, for years at that. See above gnu.org link for a start.
You are not debating charitably here. There is a difference—and you know it—between "what you fear" in a general, ideological sense; and immediate fears of what can and is likely to happen given the current landscape.
The parent poster is asking the latter: what about the current Microsoft—without reference to history, without knowledge of history—do you fear?
Win10 and how it was shoved hard down everyone's throat -- and how it had taken upgrade liberties away from the vast majority, while adding unstoppable telemetry.
Is 18 months too much history for a 40 year old company?
We'll, I must say I preferred them actually.
- the close button on my upgrade prompts didn't mean yes.
- clippy didn't send my files keystrokes and speech online on its own
- candy crush saga equivalents didn't just install on their own
- applications that I installed weren't deleted by the OS
- the computer didn't restart on its own because of updates, closing all ssh sessions and killing processes with days of work.
- etc.
> Microsoft has shown they are only interested in controlling the user, and not in giving the user control.
Is very well supported by their recent we'll-do-everything-possible to get Win10 on people's machines, force upgrades, forced (and ultra comprehensive, but mostly secretive until a month ago) telemetry.
> We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn't abuse their power if they could, but you know...what power?
They have spent the last year and a half abusing their power of Win7 updates to force people into Win10, which takes away the power that people had to resist the Win7->Win10 upgrade. If you missed that, we truly do live in different worlds.
From their POV, regular and forced windows updates are the best way to ensure we don't have XP-like situations, where people just keep running out-dated software with horribly exploitable browsers. This creates a maintenance nightmare for software developers. Could you imagine running a 16 year old piece of software, refusing to upgrade to a newer-one but still expect security updates? And Windows 7 is well on it's way to become the 'next XP', it's almost 8 years old now...
However, Microsoft is in it for themselves. Not for the public good, not for the people who want to keep running their old system, not for the developers. Furthermore, whoever bought win7 was guaranteed support until 2020.
Your siding with Microsoft in 2016 is siding with "we already got the customer's money, now let's try to do the easiest thing for us rather than keep our promises; use dark patterns if we need, because it is easier to get forgiveness than permission". I am sorry, but I disagree with this attitude.
Third-party HTML and JavaScript engines are banned in the Windows Store, so can someone explain how this uneven enforcement of their own rules is ethical?
Consider this quote[1] from a Microsoft spokesperson on May 9:
> Windows Store apps that browse the web must use HTML and JavaScript engines provided by the Windows Platform. All Windows Store content is certified by Microsoft to help ensure a quality experience and keep your devices safer.
[1]: http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-wont-be-allowed-o...
*Arbitrary is harsh, they did a lot of heavy lifting to get Windows, but it's still early and still rough imo.
Alternatively, when I use Windows now I'll get both PowerShell and a full Unix environment. For my development work so far, none of those arbitrary drawbacks have stopped WSFL from being a champ. On the plus side, I don't constantly have to edit configuration files after every update because my wireless card/window manager/etc broke.
I was talking about my home workstation.
When you have Intel wifi you'll have to enable the non-free repo, and that's about the extent of it.
I had a friend ask me about installing a distro the other day. I told him to buy a Linode/DO box or use WSFL instead of finagling with hardware. My Dell XPS 13 is sold _as_ a Linux machine, and there aren't drivers for everything.
Things like bpf if you're doing performance profiling Ready access to PMCs (The Intel PMC stuff is a pain in the ass to get working in Windows, because you have to build a signed driver for MSR access) without paying the $900 for vTune Access to perf
There's really no way to do performance engineering on Bash/WSL
The Fedora support definitely has me excited. Will try it out on my home computer before making the real jump.
Using Windows to write software that runs on Ubuntu servers is not really much harder than using a Mac to do the same thing. You have to use a VM either way.
By the way, I like Powershell so much I installed it on my Macbook Pro.
Why did you bring this comment here? Is your hope to convince other people, or to reaffirm your decision to yourself?
It seems off topic.
For example, the integration with VSCode :
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25033
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/24967
But both teams, WSL and VSCode, are very, very responsive. I'm pretty sure in a couple of months everything will be fine.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/64xyd7/nix_package_m...
Still free to upgrade
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/windo...
[1] http://www.stardock.com/products/start10/ [2] http://www.classicshell.net/
On my first attempt I agreed to a prompt to download updates to the installer; it then told me I needed to have a key to continue.
So I started again without downloading the updates, and I could install and activate without a key.
I also appreciate the fact that it "boots" instantly (i.e. you don't have to turn it on or off like VM) and that it works out of the box with every up-to-date W10 computer (great if you need to get something done on a computer that is not your own).
While the Pro version won't necessarily save you entirely from this, it goes a long way towards giving the user more freedom (at additional cost, of course).
I think they are supposed to be non transferable as well (can't transfer to a new PC)
One limitation I am aware of is that you can only license / activate one system at a time and I had to call MS to get the key unlocked after upgrading my gaming system.
[1] https://www.kinguin.net/category/19429/windows-10-profession...
I continue to be impressed with the progress the WSL team has made. The usable open source development environment on top of a kernel that can correctly drive all the various peripheral in the box is so very useful to me.
Running on a VM means running on emulated devices, running in a Userland host means running on native devices. WSL is to windows as Wine is to Linux.
A really trivial example is the buffer cache. On a Linux kernel it will take big chunks of memory to buffer disk blocks that it has read and dirtied. When run in a VM it continues to have that behavior so for a given disk you have two sets of disk caches, one in the VM and one in the host kernel. Twice the cache with half the management smarts.
A compatabilty layer generally takes away the kernel's role. Is that the case here?
Don't want to speak for them though so let's see
On the one hand, they really seem earnest about wanting to make Windows 10 appealing to people like me who fled Windows for Unix-alike systems long ago. And steps like this show that they're not just addressing that at a shallow level, but are willing to dig deep to make it happen, which is sincerely encouraging.
But then on the other hand, they insist on loading Windows 10 up with privacy invasions you can't disable and ads in deeply inappropriate places like Windows Explorer, which is just a huge buzz-kill for the exact type of person who the other stuff is so clearly meant to appeal to. Which gives the whole effort a real Keystone Kops aspect.
It feels like there's different groups inside MS that are working from fundamentally incompatible premises, and Nadella either isn't willing or isn't able to wrangle them into all pulling in the same direction. I guess it's an improvement over the Microsoft of old to see the company's basic orientation go from "competent evil" to "incompetent good," but when you consider how few good things there are in the universe it's always sad to see a potential new one kneecapping itself.
I totally agree that it's massively inappropriate, but I do think that most people are imagining third-party advertising which is not what's happening - a lot of people might not consider the current situation to be an "ad" necessarily since it is pushing a subscription for OneDrive, a Microsoft product that you already have installed. It's more of an in-app purchase kind of offer.
So who cares..
In an operating system I paid $100 for. Unacceptable.
MS definitely didn't make it easy to get it to stop harassing you.
There is still one absolutely heinous crime though - your system comes preinstalled with Minecraft and Candy Crush (and a couple other bullshit softares), and if you uninstall them, Windows 10 will automatically reinstall them. You have to do esoteric shit in the registry editor to disable this. It infuriates me.
That was fixed in Creators Update: it now remembers uninstalled default applications.
I tried Ubuntu on Windows 10, and found it too wonky. I switched over to running Xubuntu in VirtualBox!
It feels like there's different groups inside MS that are working from fundamentally incompatible premises
It's always been like this.
When friends want to use my desktop I change my DE to XFCE for a sec. I also still use the XFCE login screen (because it's easy to install, it works and you get per-user DE defaults).
That's exactly how it is.
Some divisions change faster than others. And some old reputations are very hard to shake. But Microsoft isn't the company it used to be. There are other companies filling that role now. Example: Even though all you ever hear about is "Windows is spying on me!" I can name three big tech companies that probably know more about you than Microsoft does.
The 90's are over.
Yes. I have much more control* over what google and facebook can spy on. MS as the platform owner has the ability to spy on everything.
*Except for on android, fuck google now in particular.
I won't comment on Android. I already got ripped to shreds above by trying to bring up the point that mobile is completely locked into two major players that act exactly like Windows 10.
While this may change at any operating system update (It did for Win7 in a supposedly "security" update), my Mac seems to want to talk to Apple only to get AppStore updates, whereas Windows machines in my office want to talk to a lot of servers at Microsoft, and do so with hard coded IPs, and weird process names. Can you point to an Apple equivalent of this list? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/micro...
My browser has a strict policy that tells Google, Facebook and Amazon exactly what I allow it to; that sometimes causes things to malfunction, and I can live with that. Can you tell me how to do that with Win10?
Oh, and, no, Fedora, Arch and even with Ubuntu's worst blunder in this respect, do not spy on me even 1:10000 as Microsoft does.
Pretty certain that this Dilbert strip was based on Microsoft too, Dogbert's "Battlin' Business Units" management philosophy:
But, it wasn't anywhere close to enough of an importance for Microsoft to abandon their data collection system just to go "all the way" with the whole open source thing. It seems like their privacy model is more important to them than whatever an open source model could bring them.
But damn, if I'm going to pay for my OS I want ZERO data collection and the option to never use stuff like Cortana (opt-in). And if that's too much to ask, why don't they release a more expensive Windows 10 Tinfoil Edition? You would still have to trust MS but at least you would have the legal right to dispute it (if they decide to do something shady).
I'm using Android and I have the same concerns about it. I gave my Lumia away because it doesn't have the apps that I need and, again, I had the same concerns. My time is limited so I have to pick my battles. Mobile is a lost cause.
So I decide to give feedback about one of the two desktop OSs that I use (Windows and Linux). I don't give a shit if Apple/Google is going to make you insert a coin every hour to use the OS, I would still complain to MS if they decided to do the same.
I don't even know exactly what's your point. Feel free to ask if I write Microsoft with a $.
My point, exactly, is that Microsoft is just another tech company these days. They're not the Evil Empire. At best, they are one of Many Evil Fiefdoms.
I understand that people are up in arms about data collection. And I understand that Microsoft tends to bungle any kind of public messaging about data collection. I'm just pointing out that every mobile OS, at least, collects tons of data.
And do you write Microsoft with a $? :)
> I understand that people are up in arms about data collection. And I understand that Microsoft tends to bungle any kind of public messaging about data collection. I'm just pointing out that every mobile OS, at least, collects tons of data.
Why do you keep talking about mobile when the subject of this thread and my original comment is about Windows Desktop OS? Should we talk about IoT too?
> My point, exactly, is that Microsoft is just another tech company these days. They're not the Evil Empire. At best, they are one of Many Evil Fiefdoms.
You're triggered because I mentioned the word "trust"? When data leaves your computer, it's all about trust. I don't trust anyone so I don't want my personal data leaking in the first place. Most of the time ("like in mobile") there's no viable, realistic, practical alternative.
If the money I paid for my Windows license is not enough they need to rethink their pricing. That's all I'm asking. Allow me to pay for my privacy. I would quietly leave your ecosystem if I could but congratulations, you have me locked in because of my job and certain network effects.
I'll happily concede this thread and apologize for having brought it up. I really wasn't trying to start a fight. I was trying to give what I thought was an analogous example.
Thank you for that bit of history.