When Linux Spooked Microsoft: Remembering 1998's Leaked 'Halloween Documents'
linux.slashdot.org
linux.slashdot.org
Then in the closing keynote, Gates spoke passionately about how Microsoft would eradicate Linux and crush open source. It was hilarious how out of touch the left hand was from the right hand.
I also made a bit of a splash because I came to the conference with a MacBook. A journalist even wanted to interview me because it was so unusual. I declined.
The best part of the conference was the passes to company store, buying a lot of shwag for dirt cheap and a bunch of OS licenses, which they practically gave away in the store (to run in Parallels of course) lol.
Well, “Embrace” is the first step.
Nitpicking, but it would have been either a PowerBook or an iBook if this was early 2000s. MacBooks were introduced in 2006.
That reminds me of going to a .NET meetup kind of thing at the Microsoft office in Dallas once many years ago, and I came in my Mono t-shirt and my Thinkpad with GNOME and Mono stickers on it. Joseph Hill spots me and comes over to introduce himself. His first words were, "You look like a man on a mission!" :)
Joseph was so cool. There was some guy at Microsoft who was hosting the event, and he was kind of a dick. He kept trying to make jokes about Mono, but most of the people at the event didn't have any idea what Mono was so the only people who knew what he was talking about were me and Joseph.
I remember being a at MS/.Net event a couple of years after Apple released Bootcamp, and Macs was the single most popular brand of laptop I saw at that event.
Anyway - if you are still out there working in Tech Vinod - hope everything is going well.
> Author of "Halloween documents" - analyzing Linux & Open Source software ;-)
Sounds like he’s “embraced” his infamy after all these years :)
If you install LLM stuff or the relatively stable atom clone vscode. You are seeing dependencies that are also maintained by Microsoft.
No issue so far, except when you run a bleeding edge system and realize that all required M$ libs are outdated and either you downgrade or can't use that tool that has that single M$ made python dependency that won't build on a modern system...
More often than not the dependency issue was already reported months ago on their issue tracker, many people put their thumbs up and someone already wrote a patch. No active maintainer to comment, merge and release tho. This is exactly how we don't want our libs managed.
You can run linux on Windows but still can't install a dual boot system with Linux first. IMO that says it all
Personally I still don't trust any open source or close source products from MS or any corporation. There is ALWAYS some strings attached. However, good thing about open sourcing software, is that you can always find alternative version that is compiled by the community or CE edition.
e.g: Use VSCodium instead of VSCode. Use ungoogled-chromium instead of Chrome. Use WebKit instead of Safari
Microsoft hasn't changed its character, only how it presents itself.
MS lost (or rather, made essentially zero head way in) everything except desktop computers.
Microsoft's booming business numbers would like to have a discussion.
$26 billion in quarterly operating income, about to overtake Apple in profit, and practically none of their growth over the past decade has come from desktop computers.
They have an extremely lucrative business across cloud everything these days and it has very little to do with Windows on the desktop.
Over the past decade that Windows desktop has largely been stagnant as a business, their total sales have gone from $78 billion to $218 billion. Operating income was stuck for 6-7 years in the ~$14-$22 billion range (the later Ballmer stagnation years), until after 2015. They'll cross $100+ billion in operating income over the next four quarters. All of that leap has happened from 2016 to now and basically none of it has to do with consumer Windows.
My gut feeling is Microsoft is making money by moving old Active Directory servers into their own cloud offering, Azure. Their revenue is booming because they make more money from hosting a server than selling a Windows / MSSQL / Exchange licence that runs on someone elses hardware. To give them their due, they do it well, facilitating a smooth transition that allows you to move one machine at a time into the cloud, while the patient is still going about their normal business.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't mean the proportion of people / businesses out there running Microsoft software is growing. Maybe it's dropping? I don't know. But if it is dropping, it's going to come to an ugly end in a few decades time.
I mean, would you rather have an OS that turns your computer into a personal space invasion device that helps a multi-trillion dollar megalith monetize your every breath while consuming a huge portion of the performance of your $1,000 personal computer, or would you rather have a lightweight customizable OS that only does what you tell it to do, doesn't cost you anything, and can do almost everything that the other guy can do just as well for free with no tracking?
Specially now that Asus, Razor, Lenovo are getting into the same space with Windows 11 devices.
After all Proton is all about running Windows games.
MS has always been about forcing subpar tech with shady tactics, and they are very good at it.
Microsoft got much more diversified since than it seems.
I have configured password protection for my UEFI settings (so that a potential attacker could not easily disable Secure Boot, for example) and GIGABYTE's UEFI implementation requires that password for the boot manager as well. In other words, when booting using this setup, I need up to three passwords: 1. UEFI password, 2. Disk encryption password, 3. User password.
Hence I use systemd-boot to set BootNext and reboot into the Windows boot loader.
Another reason for having a bootloader is that you may have more entries than the built-in manager can handle, for example if you can boot into automatic snapshots.
Each operating system has its files in their respective directories on ESP, and each operating system registers its own boot entries pointing to bootloader in these directories. With UEFI, there's nothing to overwrite, except setting the default entry.
That's not an issue, since you can both easily boot non-default entries and change, what the default entry is.
So it does what is expected from any boot loader. Installing grub does the same.
> And since their installer does not add other OSes to the Windows bootloader automatically
Which is fine; you should not chainload windows from grub either. Use ntldr for booting windows.
> you have to either change your UEFI settings
Exactly, you can change the default boot entry in your UEFI settings.
Or after POST, press a button on your keyboard for one-off boot change.
---
So what was the complain, again? Some people not using UEFI boot manager in a way it is supposed to be used?
You don’t need a dual boot. You don’t need windows today. In a sense that’s what the Halloween papers predicted. I don’t have a single windows device. Apple for phones and work laptop, system76 for home laptop.
IMO the dual boot example just shows how little they actually care and always cared.
However my whole family is on linux only and on the rare occasion where they need to run some weird software they prefer dual boot to VM, because easier or because old machine.
Long time Kubuntu user dual-booting with GRUB, never experienced this.
I have UEFI enabled and both OS's on separate physical drives.
If not, please share the instructions on how you installed Linux first, and Windows second, because I'd really like to know.
One question - did you shrink partition from the front, or from the back of the disk?
Usually Windows has to be in front of the Linux, so if it's from the back, I'd really have to try that!
As far as I know the order never actually mattered as long as Windows could have a primary partition. The newer GPT system doesn't have such a distinction or low limits (Windows is limited to 128 partitions per disk; I think Linux can handle more).
IBM would not own Red Hat today if not for this memo. The fear and uncertainty that rippled the industry, right up through vendor selection made it harder, riskier and more frustrating to choose and make use of Linux than it should have been. Take notes.
Ironically Aix is the only big iron UNIX that still matters today.
Open source today is basically a bone yard for building commercial apps and SaaS, and a hobby shop for advanced technical users who can DIY.
There are open source alternatives to the proprietary big ones, but they’re all just “ok” at best - and most of them aren’t.
E.g. DAWs like Cubase or Live vs Ardour, MS Office vs LibreOffice, Mathematica vs SageMath (which does have some of its own strengths though)
Just read the comments on any Linux news site about systemd. I promise it will be hilarious. "Microsoft trying to take over Linux", "Pottering is a secret MS agent to undermine Linux", "Microsoft infesting Linux with BSODs", ... it goes on and on and on
Honestly, even if Microsoft had tried, it couldn't have done a better job at enraging the Linux folks than systemd did :-D
1: I'm personally not a fan of Pulse Audio, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't his decision to enable it in Ubuntu by default when it was still pretty broken, and holy shit I had like 12 backups of my working asoundrc at the time because configuring ALSA was such a pain, so PA was not in any sense gratuitous; it solved real problems.
Just want to add that even if he just took the job to troll with us, it still shows that his principles were never far from theirs anyway, even if he was genuine at first.
"What Killed the Linux Desktop"
https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html
Nowadays, after getting Xamarin acquired by Microsoft,
I was in the University of Texas back then CS dept (1996). We had some presentations from Red Hat and Microsoft. Microsoft pitch was that Linux was like a doggie under the Christmas Tree. Fun present that will pee all over the place.
What would Microsoft be then?
A life-sized stuffed toy dog?
And then it grew up into a smart, eager adult.
* The Halloween Documents didn't seem to be a fluke of behavior, but a bit of leaked evidence of an established executive culture of ruthlessness, paired with forward-looking strategic thinking (or "long cons"). This leaked bit of internal thinking is also consistent with the public history of brazen behavior, like backstabbing partners.
* Does anyone think that apparent corporate culture changed dramatically due to the brief fuss over the leaked Halloween Documents? Or would we normally assume that they kept devising and executing on other underhanded tactics? And have never been given a reason to change that culture?
* Plot twist: Early on in Linux popularity rise, MS's public behavior looked like they wanted to point to Linux and some kinds of open source as competition. And then, later, MS publicly appeared to be promoting some open source, to claim that some new MS proprietary moves (which some MS customer shops were concerned about, having been bitten before) weren't as proprietary lock-in as they'd otherwise look. So, multiple times, it publicly appeared that MS was doing a delicate dance of promoting open source. (More recent moves that might be related seem less clear, or haven't played out yet.)
* Everyone heard about FUD and EEE, as well as using legal proceedings to sabotage threats, but it would be reasonable to assume that any company that practiced these might also have additional tactics in their toolbox.
+1 insightful
Otherwise it was on service provider to collect whatever software the customer is using and charge for it. And if you don't, prepare for a hefty fine. Windows of course provides SIL infrastructure to do just that, but all that implies server has to be configured in some way.
And then the price for the licence ofcourse...
I really like Windows Server OS, but the effort it puts on part of service provider - no wonders everyone wants and offers to deploy Linux.
That is not a server OS.
And I would assert it is Linux based instead of another firmware RTOS, because of licensing and yeah, if you want to be pedantic Windows was never designed to fit into the firmware of a network card.
If you want to be pedantic, nor was the linux kernel.
There are lots of stuff running a "Linux kernel" that have little to no resemblance to a default build from upstream.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-b...
When not AWS, it is Azure, so the performance isn't that bad to start with.
Also AWS and GCP aren't running cloud instances of game consoles (which also use a variation of Windows), GCP one (Stadia) powered by Linux was a failure, nor are they running an AI service being used by millions of folks around the globe.
Not bad.
Even their main weapon (API) now is holstered.
https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/chapters/10.16997/b...
Every industry seems to have gone through a similar cycles where the free has been a threat to the commercial products.
This is hilariously out of touch. Software is one of the very few industries where marginal costs of production are essentially zero. Almost everything else besides oft-derided ‘content’ requires the expenditure of variable costs (materials, energy, labour) to produce. It’s well-known that in the limit of a perfect competition environment (think scissors, white t-shirts, socks, pencils, plate glass, & cetera) sales price is driven down towards the marginal cost (variable costs) of the most efficient producer, eliminating profit.
Very few other categories of things have seen their sales prices be driven towards actual zero. In fact I’m hard-pressed to think of any.
Maybe music and video entertainment as a counter example?
Agree with everything you said though.
Free is a temporary attack vector, but with open source its a permanent attack vector.
I’m very doubtfull of that. How would a free car manufacturer work? Which free watch offering threatened the commercial industry? When did free construction threaten commercial offerings?
Free construction has a similar fate, which is why planning permission is more difficult than it has ever been.
> Free construction has a similar fate, which is why planning permission is more difficult than it has ever been.
This is new to me. Planning permissions are difficult because the rulling class makes their money from owning property, and thus they prefer to keep the housing supply thight, and their wallets thick. They would do this even if the cost of construction would have increased. (Which it often did.)
As long as house prices rise fairly consistently, if you can raise additional capital chances are good it will give you better return to keep accumulating more land than use the capital to finance construction on land you already own.
I'd really like to see heavy taxation on underutilized land (insufficient to only go after unused land because then they'll just plonk down something cheap and low-density and rent it out until the time is right for something bigger.
That FOSS software is given gratis is a happy byproduct of it being libre and having zero cost to copy.
"open source" cola for example is not free to manufacture, so it has some cost associated, though you could make it yourself if you had the means.[0]