why not? it's not like there is any competition.
Microsoft is making more money off Linux with Azure than several red hats combined.Yes, but people find this interesting because historically, Microsoft was actively trying to destroy Linux (look up Halloween documents) and even said that Linux is cancer.
A lot changed after Satya Nadella took the helm. The modern .NET platform is really quite nice, and MS does a lot of
FOSSopen source work.Obviously it’s good to be sceptical, they’re a large corporation and all they want is money, they’re not our friends. They’re just not as draconian as they were in the 90s and the 00s.
I was skeptical when Microsoft bought GitHub but since then, they have fully reversed course and even made a formal apology on their historical stance on Linux.
They've even made several additions to the kernel, mostly to support WSL but still.
The rumor is that Microsoft is working on their own distribution.
Windows: What is my purpose?
User: You are a bootloader to install Linux.
Oh my god
"An expensive bootloader at that, but hey you already paid us when you bought your laptop thanks to our decades-old grip on the market, so we could not care less what you do next"
AHEM powershell activation scripts AHEM
Grub
Thought that was what PXE boot was for
While I see an extensive amount of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and do agree that this is the typical logic of Microsoft.
It's obvious this is to try and avoid getting hit with similar monopoly accusations that their competitors are receiving.
"Look, Look!! We support other Operating Systems! We have a guide! We're not a monopoly! See, See!!"
This has way more to do with Azure is their main product and they know what people want to run on the cloud runs on Linux workloads. They've seen their Kuberbetes numbers, they know where the money is
and their OS is becoming an AD + 365 sub selling machine
There's definitely an element of that, but imo their recent embrace of WSL and linux tooling for development is just to try and expand their market share in the software development space. Very few devs develop on windows unless they're game devs, C# devs or working on something else that requires windows/Microsoft tooling, everyone else is on Linux and macOS because windows is bad for developing software.
It's basically an admission that their tooling is bad, but it's fine because you can just run linux development tools on windows now, so please don't switch to Linux fully
Your assertions are not supported by industry analysis.
While this years survey is closed, the results haven’t been published. In last year’s survey, MacOS slightly edged out Linux, moving to second place.
Well, I don't think it's anti-monopoly evidence, but instead a way to intercept a popular search phrase and control the narrative.
You search for "how to download and install linux" in google, and the very top link is the Microsoft page. And the narrative is:
-I just want to get started: Oh, use WSL, that way you are using Windows really, and just a touch of Linux
-I need to use it for real: Oh, then use Azure, you can have us set up those scary Linux instances for you and Microsoft Terminal will hook you right up to those instances
-I really really want to use it: Ok, but remember, you'll lose access to Windows applications, so there are downsides, and also, we are going to make this hands down the scariest looking procedure of the three...I don't think this is the reason. Windows is in no danger of being a monopoly
They just got through the US, EU, and UK courts regarding the Activision/Blizz acquisition. In which they gave up some streaming rights to Ubisoft to appease concerns ragarding game pass monopoly. It's probably on their mind.
I love when people on the Internet say "X did Y quietly" to make it more suspenseful. This doesn't look quiet to me...
What does "quietly" even mean? Didn't take out ads in Times Square?
Also how is this bad?
Not bad, just ironic
I have one dream for Linux. I'm a huge OSS fan and I want to see it thrive.
I think Microsoft should partner with Oracle to make Oracle Linux 9 support all the Microsoft ecosystem. I want AD in Linux. I want Microsoft Word on Linux. Oracle Linux 9 is the obvious successor to RHEL and Microsoft has an opportunity here to build something great.
Lmao just kidding
I was about 90% reading this going wtf is this guy on?
You got me, I had my torch and pitchfork ready and my FOSS-themed chanting was growing louder...
You actually can use Active directory with linux
It’s a huge portion and an important technology Linux or not - doesn’t hurt to learn somethin new especially when it’s helpful
I could see that with Ubuntu since they are already throwing money and dev time to support it. Also DoD is already putting out automated STIGs for it.
Microsoft must make 40% of their revenue off of Azure at this point. I would not be surprised if more than 50% of that is on Linux. Windows is probably down to 10% ( around the same as gaming ).
https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
Sure there are people in the Windows division who want to kill Linux and some dev dev folks will still prefer Windows. At this point though, a huge chunk of Microsoft could not care less about Windows and may actually prefer Linux. Linux is certainly a better place for K8S and OCI stuff. All the GPT and Cognitive Services stuff is likely more Linux than not.
Do people not know that Microsoft has their own Linux distro? I mean an installation guide is not exactly their biggest move in Linux?
Do people not know that Microsoft has their own Linux distro?
MS has been at Linux expos since 2004! They started working on SUSE in friggin 2006! I truly don't get the amount of bile and ignorance the Lemmy community has towards them, it's like half these folks are still on 2001-era slashdot, talking about FUD and Micro$oft.
Yeah, Microsoft has been a shit company making mediocre products its whole lifetime, but the amount of unhinged hatred here does not in any way match the present-day company's actions.
The hatred literally stems purely from Windows 10 and 11.
They are products engineered so expertly to frustrate you in such a distasteful way it's downright offensive to anyone who has used any other operating system. It's genuinely a marvel of human engineering.
Microsoft contributes to Linux and other open source projects in many ways, including financially. The cynical among us believe it's for the same reason Google contributes to Mozilla. Legally it's harder to prove you're an evil monopoly if you financially support your competition. Microsoft's involvement in Linux only became noteworthy after their 2001 Antitrust suit.
I got radicalized by Slashdot. But I don't regret it.
Also, if you spend any amount of time around the Linux Kernel Mailing List, there's no shortage of microsoft.com email addresses involved and contributing here and there.
Great source, but it also shows they make 23% off office. Together with Windows, that's over 30% of their revenue.
Office doesn't work on Linux, so it really doesn't make financial sense to push Linux
My perspective is that it's there so it shows up on search results for "installing Linux" and recommends WSL over bare metal. At least that's how I understand the wording.
But who knows.
True. Dont trust that company. They may invest 1% of their money into WSL now, but its for making the "Linux" experience so good there literally is no reason for many anymore, to really switch.
Indeed, it's to contain the "Linuxification" of the developer community.
Before WSL, any developer dealing with backend development almost had to install Linux to have a vaguely decent development environment to align with what they get to use on the servers. While they were dragged into that world by their requirements, they may find that the packaging and window management is actually pretty cool. There reluctance to venture out of the Windows world transforms into acceptance and perhaps even liking it.
Now with WSL, those Windows desktop users say "I just need to click a distribution in the Microsoft Store and I'm golden and don't have to deal with that scary Linux world I don't know yet.".
I've repeatedly have people notice I'm running a Linux desktop when I'm presenting and off hand say "you know you can just run Linux under Windows, you don't have to endure Linux anymore". They seem to think I'm absurd for actually preferring Linux when I can get away with it.
I think they are all in on wsl
Thank you.
Ways Lemmy is already feeling like modern reddit: Instead of link to an article, we get screenshot of a post with a screenshot of the article.
Old habits die hard
This is a thing about huge companies. They can only ignore alternatives at their own peril.
The Windows team probably prefers you don't ever install Linux even though they wised up and created WSL (so they don't lose developers to Linux desktop the way they lost creative designers to Mac).
The other teams? VSCode, Office 365, Azure, GitHub, Bing, Skype, etc wisely DGAF what your OS is - just that it's supported so you can use it.
WSL has actually been part of Windows in one form or the other since the very first NT, initially because US state contracts required a "supports POSIX" checkbox and the implemented just enough to be able to tick that (and, consequently, it sucked), it's also why NTFS has a POSIX mode for filenames. It was definitely a very unloved stepchild during the Gates/Ballmer years, back when MS was pushing Windows servers. Nowadays they have their own Linux distro to do server stuff, the whole company strategy shifted, Windows isn't an anchor point, any more, their corporate support contracts are. In a sense they're trying to be SAP for small companies (for SAP values of "small". MS itself is a small company on the SAP scale). That is cloud-supported, which has some (but not gigantic) synergy with their gaming arm.
They just realized that an Azure subscription will generate far more revenue (as in “several orders of magnitude” more) than selling licenses or even OS subscriptions to final users. This was by design. The current CEO doesn't care what happens to Windows as long as it supports his quest for infinite profits.
So the Embrace-Extend-Extinguish continues....
They're having issues with step 3 on Linux
Where I'm from, Triple E is something spread by mosquitoes.. something about it just attracts blood suckers I guess
Linux is omnipresent in serverspace, while Windows Server is used for AD and nothing else. I would say that the usual aproach is moot here.
More like:
1 - embrace it in the cloud 2 - profit madly 3 - extend 4 - profit more
It makes me chuckle that people think Microsoft actually wants to extinguish Linux. I mean, the Windows division sees it as a competitor to be vanquished I guess. Over at Azure though, it is the golden goose.
How many years will you people keep parroting this? Show me the extinguish part already...
Wouldn't it happen by now considering how much MSFT/corporate influence Linux already has?
Great! Then now you're ready to install Microsoft Edge on your fresh new linux installation: https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge/pool/main/m/microsoft-edge-stable/ 🤡
It comes with bing search pre configured for you so you don't have to look for the settings, we also hid them so you don't accidentally switch to duckduckgo because we believe Linux users shall experience the full potential of our services even out abroad on another OS
For all two people who genuinely use edge on Linux, it's still a more private experience than Windows. Regardless, more power to them
If only they stop overwriting boot loader.
Install linux second and create a second boot partition. most distros will probe foreign os and add a grub chainloader entry from grub to windows boot partition. windows never lnows about the other boot partition
Why wouldn't they? Windows 10+ is a great development machine and Microsoft knows that a lot of developers develop with Linux. WSL is great for all parties - including Linux
I, too, have had the audacity to say WSL is useful on this community and it was also met with down votes. Purists hating and gate keeping, and then they wonder why Linux isn't more popular.
WSL may be fine for a Windows user to get some access to Linux, however for me it misses the vast majority of what I value in a desktop distribution -Better Window managers. This is subjective, but with Windows you are stuck with Microsoft implementation, and if you might like a tiling window manager, or Plasma workspaces better, well you need to run something other than Windows or OSX.
-Better networking. I can do all kinds of stuff with networking. Niche relative to most folks, but the Windows networking stack is awfully inflexible and frustrating after doing a lot of complex networking tasks in Linux
-More understanding and control over the "background" pieces. With Windows doing nothing a lot is happening and it's not really clear what is happening where. With Linux, it can be daunting like Windows, but the pieces can be inspected more easily and things are more obvious.
-Easier "repair". If Windows can't fix itself, then it's really hard to recover from a lot of scenarios. Generally speaking a Linux system has to be pretty far gone
-Easier license wrangling. Am I allowed to run another copy of Windows? Can I run a VM of it or does it have to be baremetal? Is it tied to the system I bought with it preloaded, or is it bound to my microsoft account? With most Linux distributions, this is a lot easier, the answer is "sure you can run it".
-Better package management. If I use flatpak, dnf, apt, zypper, or snap, I can pretty much find any software I want to run and by virtue of installing in that way, it also gets updated. Microsoft has added winget, which is a step in the right direction, but the default 'update' flow for a lazy user still ignores all winget content, and many applications ignore all that and push their own self-updater, which is maddening.
The biggest concern, like this thread has, is that WSL sets the tone for "ok, you have enough Linux to do what you need from the comfort of the 'obviously' better Microsoft ecosystem" and causes people to not consider actually trying it for real.
I'm by no means a purest but I've found WSL... More annoying than using Linux as is. Network oddities, random programs not functioning and just generally subpar as is.
Yea anyone who says wsl is good is a windows user and shouldn't try to administer Linux systems.
If you are going to use Linux on windows just use virtualbox
To be fair, WSL2 is actually a pretty decent system if you still need to have Windows installed for one reason or another.
It has completely changed my workflow on my work computer and kept me from going insane since my company only allows windows. Having the separate VM I can still use all native Linux tooling and docker-ce is great.
True, for some uses.
If you only need command line use, it's fine. I personally strongly prefer the environment in, say, Linux distribution running Plasma, but if you are fine with Windows applications, then fine.
If you need GUI Linux... WSLG can kind of sort of get you there, but it sucks. So if you live with any Linux GUI application for significant periods of time, then you'll want to strangle WSLg and it's weird behaviors. VcXsrv can help on this front.
If you are like me and find dnf+flathub an appealing strategy for installation and update of software, you like Plasma desktop management, then Linux 'for real' is the way to go.
I mean, if you need an all-up system and you’re stuck on windows… virtualbox still works great afaik. You’ll probably need to fiddle with settings to get stuff like PCIe passthrough working for GPGPU workloads, but afaik it’s quite doable. Sure, there’s a bit of slowdown, but if IT straight up doesn’t let you use another OS on the bare metal… that’s probably the best you’re gonna be able to do.
Or, if you’re sick of the perf hit you get running docker crap on non-linux hosts, you can pick up a used SFF/USFF box from eBay and set that up as a remote docker host for executing stuff there. You might also have to set up your “offload box” to tunnel through your work machine if your projects are hitting internally hosted repos and resources, but you can get it to work if you fool around with it enough.
Link to post: https://mastodon.social/@Linux_Is_Best/111202901396633888 Link to Microsoft guide : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linux/install
Thanks, that's one of my pet peeves, posting a screenshot of a post without a link to the source.
if you can't beat them join'm!
lolFOSS ftw✌️
Another thing they have "slipped" in recently is Linux (only Ubuntu for now) support in Microsoft Intune.
This change will make it possible to run Linux in a Microsoft cloud/azure workplace.
Which is one of the things that people seem to forget about with Microsoft when they think that them pushing Linux is some nefarious plot to kill Linux and get everyone on Windows. At this point, it's like 12% of their total revenue. Not insignificant, but they're likely going to see far more growth pushing products related to Azure, which most instances are going to be running some sort of Linux VMs.
Microsoft saw the writing on the wall a while ago, and knows that the desktop and even embedded environment is a small slice of the computing pie. They would obviously still prefer to own 100% of that, but they also saw that there's a finite number of users and devices that'll use Windows, while there's effectively an infinite number of things that people can put on their cloud services. Even if it has to be a "competing" OS, they're making a shitton of money regardless.
The thing is, I don't think a guide is really needed to install Linux. Most of it is pretty straight-forward. (The only tricky bit that comes to mind is making the USB that you've put your distro on bootable. That probably isn't obvious; and it might not be obvious how to get your computer to boot from a USB anyway if you've never done it before.)
Anyway, the way I see it, Microsoft's guide is more about how you can use Linux while still having Windows. If someone is searching for "how do I install Linux?" Microsoft would obviously prefer the answer to involve something that preserves Windows. First preference: WSL, second preference: Virtual Machine, third preference: dual-boot. And after that, you're on your own.
third preference: dual-boot.
Does that mean they're gonna stop eating grub? Becouse I won't dual boot let alone allow windows near my hardware till it stops eating grub
I wouldn't count on it... From Microsoft's point of view, dual booting works as long as you install Windows first - which probably suits them just fine.
Doubt it
The thing is, I don’t think a guide is really needed to install Linux. Most of it is pretty straight-forward. (The only tricky bit that comes to mind is making the USB that you’ve put your distro on bootable. That probably isn’t obvious; and it might not be obvious how to get your computer to boot from a USB anyway if you’ve never done it before.)
It's been awhile since I installed a Linux distro...Have some of them improved guidance related to allocating disk space on install? I remember that was one of the parts that I wasn't entirely confident I'd handled properly the last few times I did so. Something something swap, something /, and the like.
I did a Mint install a few weeks ago, and I'd say that if you want to preserve some existing OS (i.e. dual boot), then it isn't super easy. You have to tell it what new partitions you want - and therefore you have to know something about what partitions you should have. The good news is that you don't actually need any swap or home partition. You can just put it all on one partition - but I don't think it's obvious what to do.
On the other hand, if you aren't trying to preserve something you already have, you can tell the installer to just go with all the defaults, and then you don't have to know anything about it.
Note: Microsoft's guide doesn't mention any of that detail. It basically just says to follow the instructions of the installer.
And after trying Linux inside windows and then inside a VM and realising it runs like shit, they'll be convinced windows is better, but they've been deceived.
You're so right! I feel like I always need to try two programs and I am never doing it often enough to actually remember which works.
Has hell frozen over already?!
Pretty sure the exact opposite has been happening (vaguely gestures at everything)
I mean, why not do that, from their perspective. Linux has been around for a long time and Windows still maintains market share. They don't feel threatened at this point, so might as well have the explanation of how to install Linux be a subtle ad for Windows.
honestly it's a great ad for windows. i've been running debian exclusively for years, and even when i got my new laptop last year, i found dualbooting to be too difficult to set up, so i ended up getting an OEM restore stick from lenovo, then just nuking everything and installing ubuntu (back on debian now). if their guide is useful, i will instal windows and finally be able to play MTG Arena again (and a thousand other games)
Magic: The Gathering Arena? That has a platinum rating on proton DB so should work just fine on any modern Linux distro, like thousands of other games. No need for a dual boot unless you have one of a few problematic games.
Let me just check out the window real quick. There may be flying pigs.
It makes sense. Over half of the Azure VMs are running Linux so there clearly is a demand for it despite the last 30 years of MS actions.
So Linux is an end state utopia of software? Never thought Ballmer was based
I mean, to be fair, that article is over 20 years old by now.
After 20 years, lots of people grow out of their mistakes and become wiser.
Ballmer is not one of these people.
but the Linux crowd, in the world of Prez Steve, are communists.
But it's kinda true though, at least in spirit? Red Hat obviously not though.
I kind of hoped Redhat was going to reverse uno IBM there for a bit, fuck was I wrong...
OS is really not making them money anymore. One thing that helped apple make a comeback was intel hosts and encouraging dualbooting and software to run your windows on mac.
Windows OS is one of the biggest misses in the company's history. The money lost on Zune pales in comparison to the missed opportunities of making NT the go-to dev platform.
People like Mac OS better. The most popular user OS in the world is Android. Cloud is Linux. Microsoft knows they have to play nice because they are so far behind there's no point in competing how they used to.
Man, I do miss my Zune though. That thing was ahead of its time in some ways
It's really fascinating to see this in my lifetime. I thought of Microsoft as this computing giant growing up, and now they're more of a cloud services company with an office product side business.
And then there's this weird desktop thing called Windows with some niche uses in gaming and enterprise, shipping by default on a platform that's increasingly not relevant to regular users.
Well, it's making them plenty of money, but they pretty much get that money no matter what (from the device manufacturers when they sell hardware, and from businesses afraid to have their software entitlement coupled to the accident of their hardware).
Now it's a game of using that guaranteed footprint to bolster the recurring revenue services (OneDrive, Office, Azure). They still get the money for however the copy got there, but also use the copy to launch folks into recurring revenue options.
Great, does it still stomp over the MBR when you try to dual boot? Fix that first.
don't use mbr, it's dead like legacy bios
But it's a legacy computer!
It wasn't published September 29th, it was updated then.
It was published back in March. All these pages are on github where this can be verified: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/linux/commits/main/docs/install.md
Will Microsoft stop to undermine hardware interoperability with their sucky API, closed implementation and co ?
I don't mind Windows as long as the hardware platform remains "open"
well windows is the reason why some laptops don't have s3 sleep anymore
I know, that's why I am totally cold to any of their "opensource" contribution. Most are not useful to non Windows system, Microsoft is getting more than doing.
- Vscode? really
- .Net Core? who cares?
- Github? hem
- WSL ? who cares? Better using a VM
- Naturally, zero contribution to Proton
Even the laptop surface lineup is reverse engineered by the community.
The performance speed between WSL, virtual machines, and bare metal Linux has become so close that few developers choose this method due to the overhead of needing to restart (reboot) your device any time you want to switch between the operating systems.
And there's the attempt at discouraging you from going bare-metal.
I doubt that "few developers choose this" is true.
Windows does run bad in virtual machine, but in linux with zen and qemu
Actually, the guide doesn't mention how to dual boot, it's how to install Linux bare metal as the only os.
Otherwise they wouldn't have removed the possibility to easily boot Linux from the windows boot manager instead of grub
I've heard talks that after each Windows update, you have to restore Grub config.
Not the case with me. Had dual boot for some time and never had to fix it... 🤷
I think people misspeak, windows puts the windows bootloader first after some updates
Is this a new issue? I have never experienced this before either
I've heard rumors or memes about it. Never had to fix grub after Windows update. Maybe it's the thing of the past and Microsoft simply fixed this behavior.
But when last time i fixed grub - it was when I renamed disks in Windows, which are actually BTRFS Linux partitions, mounted in Windows using WinBTRFS driver. It somehow changed UUIDs in Linux. This is unrelated, but still wanted to tell 😅
I've had it happen a few times over the years. It probably depends on your drive configuration and it doesn't happen with every update. But the last time was one too many for me and I kicked windows off my main system.
This happens to me all the time, any fixes?
I think it's because I have Windows and Linux on separate drives.
What Windows version and edition are you using? Also, your GRUB is installed in BIOS or EFI mode?
I am on Win11 professional edition I think, EFI mode...
Pretty sure this means Linus won.
Embrace ...
Extend (WSL)...
not impressed, wanna see how to single boot linux and put windows in virtual machine as a guest
Quietly. Lmao. There headlines.
https://dotnet.social/ mastodon guide next
I wonder if this is due to antitrust law reasons. Already low Linux market share + secure boot having made installation even harder does not set a good precedent for Microsoft.
A Microsoft lawyer could definitely argue in front of a judge that they not only don't block it, they actually have a public guide on how to do it. Which may knock down an opposing argument a notch or two.
Just make sure you host every thing you develop on azure and we gucci! Oh and get Office 365!
Aren't Office Suite apps not even released for Linux? I feel like I remember having to use the web based apps, and not by choice
That's why the guide teach you how to dual boot, not entirely replacing windows partition with Linux.
Thread the needle
Source?
Big step in the right direction for Microsoft :)
This is a long time coming TBH. It hasn't made sense for at least 10-15 years for Microsoft to still be trying to "win" against Linux. To me when I see it it seems weird. It's like your old grandpa who still talks about the "japs" when he sees someone driving a Toyota.
Linux runs most of the smartphones in the world, and a BSD fork runs the rest. It's done. No one is going to deploy Windows Server 2023 edition to run their web services unless something's gone pretty badly wrong. We're all focused on AI and cloud computing now, and have been for some time.
The most critical thing a business can do to remain successful is recognize and adapt to the new reality.
Microsoft should have made a guide on how to install ReactOS instead
Or how to stop windows from randomly overwriting grub.
I think Linux community is holding on hate and toxicity towards Microsoft and their software, you can even see it in comments to this post. Like lemmy is holding on hate towards Reddit (there is even Reddit community to share your anger). So if Microsoft somehow proves that they doesn’t deserve hate they are getting, Linux community will be shaved.
Youre talking about a huge megacorporation like a person. Oh no poor billy is getting bullied by a few nerds who use a different operating system.
Microsoft's entire business success was taking someone else's work, building on it, then once they found any level of success they used anti-competitive business practices to become a mega corp and stay that way. The founder is still alive and profiting from the company.
There is no point in our lifetimes when MS won't deserve hate for everything they have done, even if there is a begrudging acceptance that they have made changes that make them appear more welcoming to competition.
