Hacker News Reader

Comment by kingo55 | Hacker News Reader

"Embrace, extend, extinguish" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...

Call me a skeptic.

I'm sure that their whole "windows subsystem for linux" revival is actually a long game that started with secure boot.

Give it a couple of years and we'll be unable to boot an unsigned kernel on x86 (as well as arm) at which point the response is going to be "Why do you care? You can boot a linux kernel in windows!"

This may happen for workstations, but I think Linux will continue to be popular on servers. In that context, the cost/benefit of running it on top of Windows won't make any sense. But Windows could very well become the de-facto workstation, even for people who only deploy to Linux servers.

I'm with you here, but you didn't need WSL to boot other operating systems in windows. It's just a VM, that's been possible for some time now.

> You can boot a linux kernel in windows!

That won't fly, but you can always run Microsoft Linux.

So GNU/NT will happen before GNU/Hurd.. :(

I'm pretty sure WSL is because of the number of server-side tools that don't work well in Windows, and that over half of Azure deployments are non-windows. And that in order to make Azure devs happy, supporting Linux without a fully abstracted VM is best.

Also the huge number of developers over the last few decades that switched full time to macOS and claim having a Unix shell was a big reason. You could very easily see that at any major dev conference all the Apple machines (often with at least one GitHub sticker), including Microsoft's own Xamarin conferences (and now that they own GitHub too, GitHub conferences and sticker counts ;).

That's an interesting audience of developers for Microsoft to try to make happy again on Windows.

True enough... and while I tend to use bash on windows for my work laptop, I'm giving Linux another go as my primary OS at home when I refresh my desktop in a few months.

I'll remain a skeptic until they stop treating their Windows customers like children, implementing deliberately deceptive dark patterns and exfiltrating data on a scale that rivals Google and Facebook.

Funny, I posted that phrase not 4 days ago, in response to a suggestion that Microsoft adopt Firefox. I was harshly downvoted, and every reply was along the lines of "that's a not a thing" and "not this tripe again" and "fake news".

Maybe they really have won over skeptics. In any case, there are other demographics on HN than on display in this thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20053303

I'm with you. I'm not won over, and how does the media presume to speak for skeptics? There's 0 evidence that any 'skeptics' have been won over, only that pro-MS people are more pro-MS at this time.

Well, the third part never came, so it's just "Embrace, extend". I'm ok with that.

The third part hasn't come yet. Maybe not ever, but if so, it's because it is too much of a raging fire to extinguish. Time will tell.

Doesn’t Microsoft still control almost 90% of desktops?

OS/2, Commodore, Atari, WordPerfect, Lotus 123, those DOS clones, Novell, BeOS.

They killed Netscape as a company.

Microsoft was a monopoly that certainly did some damage. The only reason they are less feared is because of Google, and because iOS and Android on mobile.

Yeah, I don't know where people get this idea that Microsoft isn't a monopoly anymore. You still can't buy a new computer without Windows on it (unless you trade Microsoft's horizontal monopoly for Apple's vertical one). And the captivity of the audience is evident from the way Windows treats its users these days. Last time I installed Windows it even had the temerity to ask me what kind of ads I wanted in my OS. Not whether I wanted ads - what kind.

I think the cultural shift around Microsoft is connected to a broader cultural shift where software freedom is losing importance. Maybe the old guard that weathered the intolerably closed conditions of the 80s and 90s is dying off, and the new guard, having grown up in an environment where free software is high-quality and plentiful, just doesn't understand what all the fuss is about (not realizing that it was that fuss that got us here today). Or maybe the idealistic countercultural element to hacker culture got swamped by capitalism. All I know is that even as Richard Stallman has never been more right, he's never been less popular.

> You still can't buy a new computer without Windows on it

Yes you can, although you have a much narrower range of machines to choose from. Dell sells machines with Linux preinstalled, and there's always System 76.

Fair enough.

*in any physical store.

In almost all physical stores, I agree. But in my city (yours may have one too), there is an electronics recycler that rebuilds computers, installs Linux, and resells them. They won't be the latest machines, of course, and may not meet your needs, but it might be an option.

I would say that I buy around 90% of my computers from them.

That sounds wonderful. I can honestly say that I stick my head into damn near every store I walk past that has a computer in the Window, and I have never - never - seen one selling a computer with Linux preinstalled (with the minor exception of 2007-era netbooks, which just goes to show what a colossal threat to Microsoft those were). I wish this were not so - I would love to support such a place, with my money and with my time.

(Even if you donated a Linux machine to a thrift shop, I've no doubt they'd wipe it and install Windows 10 in order to make it (in their eyes) saleable.)

Yeah, I guess that I'm spoiled on that front. Should I even mention that they sell almost all sorts of cables and mice for $1 each? They have large boxes overflowing with the things. There are exceptions -- I once had to pay $5 for a 20' long HDMI cable that was still new in the packaging. No, I better not, that would be mean.

The odd thing about when I buy machines from them is that I end up wiping the installed OS anyway -- they install Ubuntu, and Ubuntu and I don't get along very well.

>Doesn’t Microsoft still control almost 90% of desktops?

No, it's more like the high 70s now:

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

But what matters more is that the desktop itself has massively lost market share:

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share

Microsoft is no longer a monopolist. They don't even exist on the main personal computing platform:

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

78.9%.

Let’s just call it 80%

So, they’ve lost 10%.

There’s almost 5% unknown.

The only real competition is MacOS at 13%

They may look smaller because billions of people have smartphones.

Personally, I’d say Windows still rules the desktop.

If you include tablets and smart phones... MS is a MUCH smaller overall market share. Also, imho Chrome(ium)OS is a better option for most users.

That’s why I was very explicit about saying desktop, and explicitly excluding smart phones. It’s almost like you ignored what I said.

Hopefully smart phones evolve to replace desktops by supporting large screens, mice, keyboards, but we are a long way from that.

I understand that... I was only wanting to point out that Desktop platforms are a much smaller slice of the overall pie. Not to mention, chromebooks and similar devices will likely continue to eat into the Windows desktop space.

Yes, I mentioned the billions of smartphones. The prior post gave this link

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Chrome has 1.5% of the desktop. Let me know when Adobe and Microsoft support it.

I’d love another desktop option. Apple is too expensive.

Adobe, MS Office, etc support on a third desktop platform would be a game changer. Heck, I still can’t get MS Access on the Mac.

Windows still rules what's left of the desktop, but their market share has fallen below 80% globally and below 70% in the US.

>So, they’ve lost 10%.

They have lost 18% globally since their heyday when they had ~97%.

Embrace, extend ...exploit?

extend... How have they extended in this case?

They've owned Github for what, less than a year? I think the jury is still out on that one...

> Well, the third part never came

It did in some cases.

In others, well what was the old adage? If at first you don't succeed...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com