- They seem to be comfortable shipping that as the default WSL for a few years and this would allow them to integrate even deeper. - Ubuntu is one of the main systems people use in cloud based environments; including Microsoft's own Azure where it and other linux distros are more popular than Windows Server. Taking control of Ubuntu would allow them to take full control of that stack. The goal here would be to offer an alternative to the likes of Oracle and IBM for enterprises and make sure Azure retains its competitive edge over cloud platforms offered by those two. IBM just bought Red Hat; and Oracle ships its own Red Hat derivative. - On premise "cloud" is becoming a big deal. Owning Ubuntu, which is a player in that space too, would enable MS to make Azure on premise a better product.
The Desktop application market at this point is mostly split between creative tools and developer tools. MS is big into the latter and most of that targets Linux already. Creative tools are basically Adobe and similar companies. Most of those target Apple and MS. Finally there's office, which mostly already works in a browser. I doubt they are in a hurry to produce a Linux desktop version. It's a lot of work for basically no big return on investment. They already struggle with keeping the OSX version relevant.
Finally, there are games. PC Games are big drivers for MS Windows sales. It's what keeps home owners buying windows computers with the windows license. While in decline for years, that's still a lot of money for MS. Without gaming, they'd have been bleeding more users to Apple and Linux for years. Of course XBox is still Windows based. I'd say this is the main thing that is keeping Windows Desktop alive. So, I don't see them walking from that any time soon. They might however, transition X Box to a subscription based streaming service at some point. Various companies are already piloting solutions for this (Google, Amazon, NVidia). Linux might make sense here but it would require tight integration with hardware and software. I'd say forget about MS even attempting to support that at the level they currently support Windows. But, I wouldn't discount it for a future iteration of XBox though.
Much rather against apple and chromebooks and they cannot buy them. So I doubt they do not buy cannonical because of fear of regulators.
ChromeOS is supposedly 6% of the desktop market share according to stat counter that I believe confusingly includes desktop/laptop under the same grouping. I'm guessing that about nobody is running chromeOS on a desktop so a reasonable guess is that their share of the laptop market is could easily be 10ish percent.
This would leave windows with somewhere between 70% and 80%
Red Hat and its enterprise focus would have been a better fit than the much, much smaller Canonical, so there's no reason to believe that MS would consider buying Canonical.
But I would gladly pay Microsoft to have a wine like thing that supports a broader range of software better, because I prefer Linux to Windows.
AFAIK main revenue for MS is Azure and Office360, not Windows.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/windows
Windows 10 Home starts at $130, Pro is $200, and the business licenses start at $300. Given how much of Windows market share comes from business use, it’d be surprising they weren’t making a lot of money there. Since they’re a public company it’s easy to confirm that, yes, selling the most popular operating system in the world is profitable:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2020-Q2...
Even when Windows detected that the license was fake, it basically didn't do anything. Some occasional messaging and a black background was the worst of it. I figure Microsoft understood that pressure on not-rich home users would just beef up its competition.
You can use it, sure. But between the watermark that is always on top and lack of being able to customize the OS I wouldn't want to use "free windows".
Aside from that they are a an open source project, working on a open/libre alternative. Some people in the project certainly have issues with Microsoft, others don't.
*unless the games you play are online games with Anti-Cheat.
And it's funny you bring up anti-cheat, because my biggest success using Wine was Battlefield 2, which actually ran more smoothly on my machine under Linux than Windows, but then I tried to get online, and learned a harsh lesson.
The caveat is largely that not all games are solved by this [0], and the official Valve whitelist needs to be turned off in settings to use it for all games, but even with these it's still a marked improvement in Quality of Life and barrier to entry for running Windows games on Linux.
I'd give it a go if you have time/inclination. I can recommend it as someone who is now Linux only as a result of this.
[0] - www.protondb.com
Proton was a dramatic change for me. A few clicks to enable Proton for a particular game, and then it just seamlessly runs and works. Granted, not all games do (check ProtonDB) but all the games I've wanted to play for the last couple of years have worked. I'd say Proton is the most significant thing to ever happen for Linux gaming support, and it did more for me overnight than many years of trying with Wine.
Modern multiplayer games with anti-cheat are mostly broken, some popular ones like Rainbow Six Siege are impossible to play. But if you mostly play other games, give Proton a try.
Isn't Wine more like a hack?
Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? isn't it doing to solve problems that Wine tries to challenge once it supports crossplatform GUI? (so basically once MAUI is released)
* I'm not talking about Avalonia GUI framework which already exists and is crossplatform.
Not more so than Windows.
> Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? isn't it doing to solve problems that Wine tries to challenge once it supports crossplatform GUI?
No. .NET Core and Wine does not solve the same problem.
.NET Core only allows you to run applications written for .NET, which isn't most applications.
It’s a very nice tool, but the two dominant and old GUI frameworks for windows require win32 api for a bunch of stuff the last time i looked and there’s no getting away from it.
it is "A cross platform XAML Framework for .NET Framework, .NET Core and Mono."
So that is in a realm of possibility.
That said: (AFAIK) Both run on Wine in some versions.