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Comment by dathinab | Hacker News Reader

- lock down of PC software to the Microsoft app store, probably roughly at the same time apple also tightens a lock down on macOS

- more anti competitive steps to make installing desktop Linux on consumer hardware hard while arguing you could just use WSL and it's "for your security" and they are not anti Linux because they embrace Linux on servers

- trying to kill Valve, there should only be Windows games and only through the Windows app store

- maybe retrying mobile if Google doesn't do that well

- probably even more anticompetive email nonsense in the sense of "who needs emails providers beside a few giants (like gmail)"

- probably trying to make proper (by then) modern 2FA not work on linux due patend or drm issues, trying to make it hard to log in anywhere in the web with a native linux system

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> lock down of PC software to the Microsoft app store, probably roughly at the same time apple also tightens a lock down on macOS

Nothing is locked down. UWP and win32 are funcionally equivalent with sparse registration. If you decide to publish to the store anyways, you can even use your own payment provider and keep 100% comission.

> more anti competitive steps to make installing desktop Linux on consumer hardware hard while arguing you could just use WSL and it's "for your security" and they are not anti Linux because they embrace Linux on servers

Isn't WSL a win-win for the Linux-community and Windows-users alike? WSL2 and WSLg make Linux desktop apps more accessible than ever.

> trying to kill Valve, there should only be Windows games and only through the Windows app store Xbox Game Studios games are released on Steam.

I could go on, but you get the point.

it's not about what is done now, it's a response to the parents comment of "what will happen if microsoft becomes much more powerfull and market dominant again"

i.e. it's all hypothetical speculations about the future under a given assumption of development which might never happen

> Linux desktop apps more accessible than ever.

yes but it also removed the need to use Linux and could be extended with features Linux doesn't have => i.e. it could be used for the good old embrace, extend, extinguish strategy Microsoft loved to use in the

> yes but it also removed the need to use Linux

And is it a problem for user? Or anyhow a bad thing? Why not advocate for FreeBSD for example?

Do you honestly think that Microsoft is scared of Linux taking over the desktop?

It never was about emotional things like being scared.

It's about eliminating competition and especially preventing potential future competition, it's about maximizing control and power to the most you can without losing otherwise (due to e.g. law regulations lost consumer trust etc.). It's just a game of numbers and future prospect.

Just the fact alone that Valve has Linux as a form of "escape hatch" if Microsoft locks things down more. With a bit of "future potential" (Valve Gaming console which is more then "just" the Steam Deck) is enough for Microsoft to take actions like that from a purely calculative perspective.

And Linux Desktop _has_ future prospect, maybe not in context of how currently most Linux desktops are but prospect anyway.

I mean Linux desktop has a lot of additional challenges:

- like _massive_ fragmentation through every layer of components and users, often with a lot of more emotional then technical opinions

- much smaller financial resources etc. (the companies which invest are either small (e.g. System76) or are not focused on desktop Linux (e.g. Canonical, Red Hat, Valve))

- a lot of money is flowing into server Linux hence all decisions tend to be focused on the server aspect thing things which are negative for desktop Linux and can not be configured away. (Through also a lot of "accidental" improvements and maintenance.)

but even with all this challenges Desktop Linux is quite usable, actually for some people _more_ usable then Windows. The main problem is normally not missing functionality or hardware support but fragmentation. Fragmentation making it a bad deal to support Linux as a software vendor (getting better through Valve, Flatpack and Snap), fragmentation wasting dev resources, fragmentation making system management/hardware support harder, etc. As well as there not currently being too much monetary reason to invest into 1st party desktop Linux support (Valve is a special case, System76 is small).

But non of the reasons which make people not use Desktop Linux are fundamental, and under the right conditions _one specific_ Linux Desktop could become highly successful. It's very unlikely but it's still possible, hence there is reason to make sure it's not possible.

Microsoft already owns the desktop and I don't think they consider Linux a threat.

macOS would be a a better contender but I don't think they consider that a threat, also.

In fact, Windows is starting to weigh less and less in overall Microsoft strategy. Windows mattered when all we had were desktops but now they have lots of cows they are milking.

I won't be surprised if in the future Microsoft will find that it isn't worth to pay for the development of Windows and will release it's own Linux distribution. It would be quite a disappointment for me, but certainly possible.

> but even with all this challenges Desktop Linux is quite usable, actually for some people _more_ usable then Windows.

I've tried since 23 years ago to use Linux as a desktop but it failed repeatedly. I even have it installed on a separate disk on my home PC but I seldom boot it.

> they consider that a threat, also.

In the hypothetical scenario from above it doesn't need to be a thread, just having the potential to become one can be enough. I mean why shouldn't you remove potential future threads when you easily can do so now but can't once they become a thread?

> I've tried since 23 years ago to use Linux as a desktop but it failed repeatedly. I even have it installed on a separate disk on my home PC but I seldom boot it.

and other do not fail, I know even some quite non technical people who do use it daily and there are docents of steam deck users, too

I am glad Linux desktop didn't fail for others. Maybe they enjoy fixing broken stuff, configuring things repeatedly and tinkering with it. And maybe they don't miss software that doesn't run on Linux.

I am busy and I want to use software, not tinker with the OS. The OS should just work. And since software I use both professionally and personally doesn't run on Linux, it wouldn't bee good for me even if the experience was smooth.

On the server side I use Linux a lot. Most stuff I develop runs on Linux.

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