I’m not naive, I know a ton of huge enterprises still run huge fleets of windows “servers” but I still find it hilarious that a supposedly serious server OS would default to showing you the weather and ads in the start menu.
And backwards compatibility.
They're really good at it. And I'd say that's the reason Windows is still dominant. There's this unfathomably long tail of niche software that people need or want to run.
They are getting worse at this. I bought a Surface Laptop Studio 2 two years ago. Windows Mail and Windows Calendar, two nice minimalist programs from Microsoft, were actively killed in this time. If you open them, it will redirect you to a new ad-laden Outlook app. If you somehow get a workaround going through the registry, they still fuck with it because the (incredibly simple) UI somehow has network dependencies.
I use MailSpring for email and no longer have a native calendar on my fairly expensive laptop from Microsoft. This is actually what drove me over the edge to switch to Linux for my workstation. Unclear exactly what I'll do for my next laptop but it won't be from MS.
What I'm talking about is, if your widget factory uses some app to calibrate all the widgets which was written by a contractor in 2005, it probably still works fine on Windows 11.
Since M$ is doing away with simple free apps (such as Mail) and forcing users to move to cloud-based expensive apps, you can use FOSS (Free and Open Source) alternatives -- especially the Portable ones (e.g., apps from PortableApps.com) that don't need an install, they can run off a USB drive, and app+userdata can be easily backed up without fuss.
https://alternativeto.net/software/mail-calendar-people-and-...
Couldn't find a decent minimalist calendar program that integrated well with Windows. People say they like OneCalendar but I refuse to use the Windows Store, I even got WSL set up without it lol
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-mail-calendar-feed-reader-a...
But you can also just use it as an email client and ignore the browser part.
Either way, MailSpring works fine for email, and I've recently discovered Fantastical for a straightforward calendar program.
But it's absurd that I have to do this at all. At a minimum, if I buy a laptop, Microsoft should not be able to actively break it without refunding me 100% of the purchase price.
This fact alone throws this commonly held belief to the wind.
Glibc provides binary compatibility to newer versions too.
Shims exist in both, “windows compatibility layer” for example, but pulseaudio can emulate ALSA- and pipewire can emulate pulseaudio and ALSA.
It’s actually a quagmire, but I would contend that either has solid story for backwards compatibility depending on the exact lens you’re looking at. Microsoft is worse than Linux in many ways.
Microsoft sort of only wins in the closed-source, “run this arbitrary binary” race - if you totally ignore the w10/11 UWP migration that killed a lot of win32 applications, but drivers for older hardware are much more long lived under linux.
> Microsoft sort of only wins in the closed-source, “run this arbitrary binary” race
That is actually a big win as some manufacturers only provide binary blob drivers and a lot of commercial software is distributed as binaries only.
To answer your other question though; Any GDI that is not accessible through DirectX- The Contacts API, Timers API, BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service), The inbound HTTP server API, NDF (Network Diagnostic Framework), SNMP.
AllocConsole and ReadConsole are gone, NamedPipes (something I used to use extensively) are gone. Toolbar and Statusbar APIs are gone and direct manipulation APIs for the Desktop.
I mean, I can keep going.
I'm able to run binaries compiled over 20 years ago on the latest version of Windows most of the time. They do require enabling compatibility mode and sometimes installing legacy features.
I don't know, if APIs you mentioned are available in compatibility modes, but at least named pipes can still be enabled.
But Windows is going downhill lately, so backwards compatibility isn't what it used to be. Improving backwards compatibility for running old binaries would make Linux adoption easier. I hope that Linux PCs market share keeps improving to cross the threshold where it becomes an economically viable platform for most of commercial software.
...sorry, what? I use these intensively and they are still available to use.
I still run 30 year old games on Windows and write new software using WPF and WinForms even, and it all "just works", much more so than similar attempts at software archeology on Linux.
It's really too bad that Microsoft is hell bent on shoving ads, AI, and dark patterns everywhere in what could otherwise be a decent boring "it just works" OS.
Every Windows release I compile code straight from a Windows programming book from the 90’s. The only changes I made last time was a few include statements and one define.
New apple-silicon Macbooks also get such good battery life and performance now that if you are switching from Windows to a Unix-y personal computer, is is increasingly hard to not say that you should go to Mac.
I once had to patch uvc to support a webcam that wouldn't work natively on Linux. It would advertise one version of the API but implement another. That didn't affect windows which probably already knew and had proper patched drivers for it.
We can all but wonder why, but my guess isn't that there is some sloppy dev there and windows is just making up for it. It all seems very deliberate to undermine Linux. And it's plausible given Microsoft's bottomless pockets.
So it wouldn't surprise me that these companies are actively hindering Linux compatibility. So much for a free market with open competition.
My experience has been that I can generally just install Linux on a machine and pretty much everything will just work straight away, but with Windows, I have to go and find the relevant Windows drivers to get things like iSCSI working.
I have plenty of printers that have stopped working on Windows over the years, my current Brother laser doesn't have drivers that Windows will allow to be installed anymore. Its fine with Linux, so I just print share it as a generic so the Windows clients can connect.
How do most people log into a server? With a high-res physical touchscreen, or remote desktop?
So let's make a whole bunch of functionality impossible to access, because you have to bump up against a non-existent edge of a windowed remote screen, and literally make the UI not fit into common server screen resolutions at the time. I don't remember if 1024x768 was the minimum resolution that worked, or the maximum resolution that still didn't work. But it was an absolute comedy case.
I want to say that with only the basic VGA display drivers installed, screen resolution was too small to even get to the settings to fix it, but it's been a while and I can't find the info to prove it.
But, to every coin there are two sides:
"I consider this cross-platform idea a disease within Microsoft. We are determined to put a gun to our head and pull the trigger."
I'm not a believer in "the year of linux desktop!?!!?" and all that, but it achieved a level of robustness about 5-10ish years ago that I openly encourage non technical users to give it a try. For the few people that actually did try, they did stick with it.
At this point it is Microsoft's position to lose through quality degradation rather than Linux to openly out wit. There is still a long way to go and MS could turn their boat around but they would have to stop chasing this data scrapping scheme of theirs to begin with. But how addicted are they to that cash flow? They are probably far more interested in keep share holders happy short term than customers long term and that is not a brilliant strategy if you want to have a life time of decades.
Turn the boat around? To where? Nobody would be willing to pay for their product even if they were to start trying to make it appealing.
The price of the windows license has been included in the price of PCs for literally decades now. Every computer you buy with windows preinstalled nets Microsoft a couple dozen dollars.
I’m sure windows will continue to exist and maybe be relevant for at least a decade. But it will be in zombie/revenue-extraction mode from here on.
I think we’re only half joking though, I could see it happening.
There's no need because the Year Of Linux On The Desktop™ already happened and it's called WSL2. Meanwhile, the opposite has also already actually happened: SteamOS + Proton is a distro whose main purpose is to be a launcher for Windows apps on a Linux kernel.
Jokes aside, this chest-thumping is incredibly ironic for those of us who lived through the 1990s-2000s. First it was, "FOSS will eliminate all proprietary software and M$ (sic) will be crushed and Bill Gates will go to the poorhouse. Hooray!" Later, it became "Well, we haven't killed proprietary software but at least Linux / LAMP and Firefox are succeeding at taking down Windows and Internet Explorer. Hooray!" Now it's "Maybe Microsoft will consider switching its kernel to Windows. Probably. Someday. Hooray?" What's the backpedaling of the 2030s going to be?
Windows also comprehensively lost the "exclusivity" moat. Most of popular apps are now cross-platform, because they need to run on Android/iOS/macOS. So desktop Linux is often an easy addition: Slack, Discord, all the messengers, Zoom, various IDEs, etc.
So Linux indeed won to a large extent. Just not in the way people expected it.
And everyone that tries to force GNU/Linux via NDK, discovers that not everything Linux is supported.
However, while those web apps might run on Linux (or not, if it uses DRM like all those streaming providers), they increasingly only run in Chrome.
If anything, they invested into the opposite: possibility to run Linux binaries on top of Windows kernel.
It seems like the Windows team has been freed to add features that they want rather than adding features that fit into a narrative.
WSL, pre-installing git, adding POSIX aliases to PowerShell, iPhone/Android integration, PowerShell/.net/VSCode/Edge on Mac/Linux, not making Office on Mac complete afterthought shit on purpose, etc.
Microsoft's standards for quality keep going down hill. Windows 11 does not even allow the moving of the task bar from the bottom of the screen. Microsoft is end user hostile just like Google.
The quality has gone done hill. Windows Embedded / IoT is often used to run your ATMs or some form of industrial automation. Windows actually has a real-time OS (RTOS) mode for just this.
The company I work has planned to replace Windows with Linux for future products and even moving active products to support both Windows and Linux during the transition. Only products that will stay on Windows will be legacy that are near EOL.
Personally, I would never use Windows OS for future products and solutions in these environments. Nor would I use it for network / server based solutions.
Funnily enough, opening their stack to Linux probably made it easier to sell licenses for everything except Windows, since now you don't have to commit to a potentially unfamiliar hosting environment. Even SQL Server runs on Linux now.
Azure is still running on Hyper-V afaik for instance.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2025-Q3...
IIRC Windows is considered “more personal computing.” It looks like that also includes:
> Search and news advertising, comprising Bing (including Copilot), Microsoft News, Microsoft Edge, and third-party affiliates
So, maybe that’s where they get their enshittification revenue.
But yeah, the Azure company should be worried about associating with this unfortunate legacy Windows thing.
I have this impression from years of using both Windows and linux servers in prod.
Windows 11 has some really legitimate improvements that make it a really solid OS.
It’s not surprising that Microsoft isn’t focusing on Windows as a server OS as they don’t expect anyone to deploy it in a new environment. They know it has already lost to Linux and that’s why .NET Core is on Linux and Mac, why WSL exists, etc. Azure is how Microsoft makes revenue from servers, Windows Server is a legacy product.
The whole “server OS has the weather app installed” thing is pretty irrelevant since enterprises have their own customized image building processes and don’t ever run the default payload. It’s really not worth Microsoft’s time to customize the server version knowing that their enterprise customers already have.
Microsoft knows the strength of Windows lies in the desktop environment for workstations, casual laptop use, and gaming systems, and it is excellent at all those things. They’ve delivered a whole lot of really nice and generally innovative features to those spaces. Windows has really nice gaming features, smartphone integrations including with iPhones, even doing some long-overdue work on small details like notepad and the command line.
I don’t find that windows has forced me to cloud or done anything like that.
Have you tried performing a fresh Home install recently without command line hacks? It's now impossible for a normal person to set up Windows without creating a MS account, forcing them to dip a toe into their cloud service connectivity and facilitate taking the next step towards paying them. They don't "force" you, but they sure will nag you incessantly about it, plopping that shit in Explorer, the Start Menu, tossing One Drive in the menubar at startup, shoving it in your face on login after a big update, etc. It's a pathetic cash grab everywhere you look.
- I have had my Microsoft account connected since early in the Windows 10 days so that I can use my Xbox library. For my personal use case it doesn't really bother me that I have to login. Sure, most competing commercial OSes don't straight up force you to login, but as an example I never really used my Mac laptop without the Apple ID logged in because it has some pretty clear benefits and essentially no discernible downsides. It has some downsides that mostly boil down to what-if scenarios and thought experiments. To me, Microsoft forcing you to login with an account is not a big deal in the context of commercial paid software with a paid license. I can certainly understand why it might be a big deal in a different context. I can certainly see why my own Linux laptop is more appealing to not have this requirement. However, I specifically use Windows for a lot of commercial stuff - Steam, Xbox, etc. Being logged in was going to happen anyway, at least for me.
- As far as being nagged to pay, use Edge/Bing, or buy cloud stuff from Microsoft, all of that has been extremely easy to dismiss permanently. I have not needed to use any power user tools or scripts.
- It's an outdated notion that OneDrive is tossed in the menu bar forever. In Windows 11, OneDrive can be uninstalled entirely like a standard app. When I open my Start Menu and search for "OneDrive," nothing comes up besides an obscure tangentially-related system setting. It's literally not there.
- Sure, various new things have been presented to me along with new updates, like Copilot and the like, but I have been forced into none of it. When I visit Settings > Apps > AI Components, nothing is installed. When I type "Copilot" into the Start Menu, nothing comes up besids Windows Store search suggestions (apps I have not installed) and a keyboard key customization setting. Copilot is literally not there.
- I think there’s actually a good argument that upsells like OneDrive/Copilot (again, in my experience easy to dismiss once a year and uninstall permanently) that solve complicated problems for the median user (secure backups, document storage, AI assistant) is a decently tasteful way to fund a commercial operating system. All of that stuff is optional, and I can just say no, while paying for annual point releases (e.g. Mac OS X) kinda sucked.
Sure, Microsoft seems to have some great developers behind Windows and those developers are improving the underlying operating system. The trouble is that Microsoft is also using Windows to push their other products. Coming from a Linux environment, I find that pushiness unbearably crass.
On top of that, Windows' main strength has always been application support. I don't even know if that is relevant anymore with commercial developers shifting to subscription models (for native applications) and web based applications (for everything else). The latter makes Windows nearly irrelevant. The former makes open source more desirable to at least some people.
I've also noticed that things appear to flipping when comparing Linux to Windows. I can take a distribution that is intended for desktops, install it, and expect almost everything to work out of the box. It doesn't seem to matter whether it is printer or video drivers or pre-installed applications. Meanwhile, I'm finding that I have to copy drivers to a USB drive and drop to the command line to get something as simple as a trackpad or touchscreen to work under Windows. Worse yet, I've had something similar happen with network adapters. Short of bypassing the OOBE, a Windows installation will not complete without a working network adapter and Internet connection. Similar tales can be told for applications: there is a never ending stream of barriers to climb to get software to install ("look, we care about privacy since we are asking you half a dozen questions about what you're willing to share," while ignoring dozens of other settings that affect your privacy) or prevent advertising from popping up. You don't deal with that nonsense under Linux.
I don't know what the future of Windows is. I don't much care, as long as I get to use the operating system I want to use in peace. That seems to be much more true today than it did 20 years ago.
Many other programs do still open the standard file dialog directly, but even there, the local drive amd directory hierarchy is hidden behind a folded "This Computer" node in the tree view that is itself below the fold most of the time.
The median Office user is using it at work and your employer doesn’t want you saving documents in places you will lose them.
Ditto for universities and schools that provide 365.
Server and LTSC SKUs don’t do that :)
For them, getting you using onedrive is a (huge) step towards getting you to pay them for more storage using onedrive, and to also allowing them to use their advantage as the OS provider to get you using features that both keep you from moving away from Windows and keep you from moving to dropbox or another cloud competitor that normal consumers commonly use. For example, onedrive desktop sync tied to your Microsoft login, so you can log into a new system and have it put your preferences and files in place.
Having more data to monetize people is useful, but I would bet that they value the the lock-in of integrated services far more, as that's where they can possibly grow (by offering more services once you're less likely to leave), and growth is king.
It's the same thing Google does (and Samsung also attempts to do with their custom apps and store) with Android, but at the desktop level. Apple is able to do it for both desktop and mobile.
In my experience thats just not true. Microsoft's client OSs like Win 11 and 10 include these consumer-oriented "features" [1] but they're not present on servet versions of Windows.
[1] I agree that the weather widget etc is annoying, even though it is easy to disable.