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Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

What about all of the other companies who have built useful Linux tools over the years? Probably quite a few more useful than this.

I'm sorry but I just don't believe that Microsoft is good for Linux. Although Linux has only a tiny fraction of the market, it's still one of the few competitors to Windows. They are competitors. MS does not try to help Linux out of the goodness of it's heart. They do it despite themselves or for PR or in an effort to try to mitigate Linux in some way. If possible they would like to eat Linux up, incorporate a version into Windows. This is not because they want to help Linux adoption. It's to try to keep developers, who would otherwise run Linux, inside of Windows.

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I don't like Microsoft.

I tried this tool.

It was extremely useful.

I read its source code. I didn't find anything compromising.

I added this tool to my toolbox. Excellent work by Microsoft.

You see how I can have a personal opinion yet use a great tool that helps me?

> Although Linux has only a tiny fraction of the market

It has a significantly larger install-base than Windows. Which market are you referring to? My DVR runs Linux, my TV runs Linux, my phone runs Linux, heck even my car's infotainment unit runs Linux. Windows is only on PCs and Laptops these days.

> They are competitors. MS does not try to help Linux out of the goodness of it's heart.

Microsoft no longer views Linux as a competitor but an opportunity. They're making plenty of money off of Linux's back via Azure and SQL Server licensing.

Microsoft views its future as largely in digital services. The advantage to that for them is that it isn't tied to the Windows platform, so they continue to profit when people have a mobile device or a Chromebook.

> If possible they would like to eat Linux up, incorporate a version into Windows.

They already have that via Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which aside from being the worst name ever, is a full Ubuntu running in the user's context that interoperates (kinda) with Windows.

Microsoft is a cloud provider and mobile is king. This whole Windows vs. Linux competition for desktop is very old thinking. Microsoft makes money providing Linux servers, so they support Linux. It's pretty simple.

True, people forgot that 40% of Azure VMs are running Linux.

Microsoft nowadays says something close to 50%. I guess the container technologies also change a lot in that space.

Azure Kubernetes Service doesn't even support Windows containers yet - they launched only supporting Linux, with Windows supposedly coming later.

So, in others, a public-traded, for-profit organization is engaging in activities to broaden adoption of their products?

A few more thoughts. Microsoft doesn't view Linux as a competitor. Why would it? It has less than 1% of the global desktop share. You could maybe argue that Linux is a competitor to Windows Server, but then again, I'd counter with the claim that people who user Server are probably going to use Azure, which runs on Linux and offers users the ability to spin up Linux vm's. Microsoft views Linux as a tool. Their competitors are Google, Apple, IBM, and Oracle.

Also, your last 2 statements just make no sense. They have incorporated Linux into Windows via the WSL with Suse, Ubuntu, Kali, and Debian. They have done so pretty much to entice people to use Windows over Linux. I'm not sure how this is bad? They can't force developers to use Windows. Going back to what I said, a company is improving it's product to attract new users. Why should they care about Linux adoption? That's not their business model.

Someone isn't old enough to remember the Halloween document.

Or too old to interpret the world in terms of heroes and villains.

I am more than old enough. I also know the original documents are 20 years old at this point, and the world has changed since then. If Microsoft is running an EEE campaign against Linux, it's not very effective considering over half of Azure is linux.

Seriously, grow up. Microsoft is a publicly traded for profit organization. They're not embracing Linux and free software out of the "goodness of their heart" but because there's compelling reasons to. Russinovich literally said they transition because of "practical business reasons". They're not out to get your desktop or your phone. Their aim is Azure. They want people building stuff on Azure. Would they like you to build on Windows? Of course they would that means more money. However, they ported VS to macOS, released a multiplatform code editor, and pushed SQL server onto linux. They're realized the OS is nothing but a tool.

That's a very personalizing argument.

No, MS does not "try to help Linux out of the goodness of it's heart."

(a) its a corporate - corporates don't have hearts

(b) even individuals usually have an ulterior motive for their actions. Perhaps by helping Linux, we get some personal ego boost from seeing our own name on the contributor's wall. Or perhaps when Linux wins, the market for our Linux skills grows.

Whatever, no-one does anything much out of the pure goodness of their hearts.

This. They run millions of Linux systems in Azure and need well known tools for it. So they ported ProcDump to Linux. And open sourced it, because customers may also need it.

They needed some grip on developers to promote Azure. So they hand out VSCode and .NET Core.

Microsoft needs to earn money. The simplest ways to keep or acquire customers is with good toys.

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