Will they lobby for laws that prohibit Linux or make it difficult to install? What actions might they take in the future?
MS already doesn’t have a monopoly in any meaningful sense anymore.
- https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-200901-202507 - in early 2009, almost 95% of web usage was from Windows, by now it is at around 28%, no longer even the most popular OS, which is now Android around 42%
- https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202507 - even looking only at the desktop and ignoring the shift to mobile devices, Windows fell from ~95% to ~72% during the same time period, mostly losing to macOS but more recently also Linux
Windows isn’t the main way Microsoft makes money anymore anyway…
I’m going to go with “nothing”. They blend their numbers but I’d be willing to bet the amount of money they make selling direct licenses is tiny. (Tiny at their scale, I’d take it any day.) The whole OEM business isn’t even huge to them. If they start losing the enterprise market, then I’m sure they would throw down, but you and everyone you know installing Linux would be fine. Have you noticed how easy it is to steal windows and how there seem to be very few repercussions? That says volumes about what they think the revenue potential of that market is…
They are already lobbying for stupid shit, and coordinating deals with manufacturers.
It’s mobile devices that are eroding Windows market share on desktops, not Linux.
Linux already dominates the server space, it runs the internet and super computing, but it will NEVER be a threat to Microsoft on desktops.
Never say never
The desktop has been losing market for a while. I feel Windows is already under serious threat (if not already in the minority) when you think about all the devices that mainstream audiences orbit around (phones, tablets, portable consoles, etc), often using the Linux kernel. Only about a third of most website traffic comes from desktops.
Many of the people who frequently use Windows desktop do so because of their job, and often avoid using it outside of work as much as possible, since it feels like… well, work.
Microsoft has been desperately trying to appeal to those other bigger sectors of the pie and has failed every time.
PC Gaming was one sector they had advantage on, yet that has already started to crumble thanks to Valve. I feel that MS will just try to push for integrating their xbox with Windows OS more and more…
I feel it’s a battle with many fronts, since PCs have many uses… so MS is likely to run their typical spiel: copy what the competition are doing and try to centralize/integrate it with their OS in a way that gives them an advantage, as they are famous for doing.
Another sector they can do this is with the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)… they could turn Windows into a frontend for running Linux apps… so if Linux apps became popular, they could try to advertise Windows as the “best” way to run Linux software without losing the full first party support of legacy Windows software.
They will adapt.
Embrace, extend, extinguish. They will become Linux.
In all seriousness, if you look into how windows manages its security now, it leverages virtualization to essentially run windows inside of a hypervisor. At some point in the future, the legacy windows kernel is going to just be another virtual machine running side by side with Linux and the hypervisor will probably run their HyperV tech on top of a Linux (compatible) kernel.
Then they will say that you need their version of Linux to run specific hardware and software.
EEE
Adapt and fight. Linux is the dominant OS for everything, so Windows started to support it (wsl) so they don’t loose developers. Secure boot worked as a moat for a while and the MS monopoly on OS keys is still an obstacle. Linux works better on ARM than Windows, so obviously Qualcom Laptops have a locked down bootloader. They will continue to lock themselfes into the future with money and development resources.
Damnit Jim I’m a doctor, not an actor
Hear me out on this one “Microsoft Linux”
Yes exactly. Embrace and extinguish has always been Microsoft’s strategy. They’ll release their own distribution and either make it slower and more complicated than Windows, so that everyone thinks Windows is the better OS, or they’ll make it a cloud OS like Chrome, requiring recurring payments to use Office 365 and everything else.
I see this as the most likely outcome as well. It’s the preferred route, seen all of the place lately. Want to privatize a public service? Cripple the public service enough to “prove it doesn’t work” to convince people privatization is the best option. I suspect most people would switch to Microsoft Linux over something “tech” sounding like Debian or Ubuntu. When the trial of their slowed down and crashy “Linux” comes to an end, Microsoft will offer an easy solution to switch back to Windows.
Already exists as a VM option on azure
Emulation should always be Linux emulating Windows. Windows emulating Linux is just weird.
It’s a Linux distro that’s called Azure Linux and it looks like it’s based on Fedora if the length of package attribution is anything to go by.
Its not emulation, it’s a Microsoft distro
Two things, I was under the impression that Azure can emulate a lot of different Linux distro. Second, I thought the hypervisor ran on cut down version of Windows server.
VMs aren’t emulation. Its a full OS running on virtual hardware. Also, yes, azure offers several distros, not just Microsoft’s.
The OS of the bare metal host shouldn’t matter much, if at all, to the guest. If you have a philosophical issue with the hypervisor running under windows I doubt you’d be using azure to begin with.
That makes sense. Thanks.
deleted by creator
That’s just neutered Ubuntu container
pays even more to hardware manufacturers to add windows by default, and make drivers windows only.
Make a version of Office that works on Linux natively.
That works on their version of linux.
Why? Office is such shit.
It is (unfortunately) their primary foothold into the market. Microsoft also knows this which is why some many other projects at Microsoft have been killed and absorbed by the Microsoft office team. They have a cannabalistic corporate culture. Its clear that at Microsoft the only threat to Microsoft… Is Microsoft… No one else on the radar registers.
Linux has been becoming a “serious threat” for 20+ years now. I’ll wait.
Don’t get me wrong I like Linux a lot. But if you step back and look objectively, it has a lot of issues trying to grow outside the hobby/enthusiast community for the desktop.
I think that linux has a couple of things that might help it grow outside its traditional niche that it hasn’t in the past. Proton has been a major step forward in to the gaming scene. A lot of people are very unhappy about windows 11. The EU in particular is also investing in ways to get out from under American techs thumb due to the geopolitical landscape.
I don’t have too high expectations personally but who knows.
Exactly what they’re doing right now. What cable companies did. What every dominant business does when something better starts to eat their lunch.
Become increasingly abusive and scummy towards the customers who are left, because they’re either too deeply ingrained, spineless or lazy to change and they’ve already self-selected.
Honestly fine by me. I prefer Linux remain non-mainstream. It has integrity like this. The moment any suits see dollar signs on it, it’s as good as ruined.
Work with hardware and software vendors to break linux compatibility.
They’ve been busy doing that for the past 20+ years. It’s been an annoyance, but not really a deterrent.
They cannot do that to every manufacturer, as most of countries are incentivized to not dependent on American or any foreign product.
I can see China or European manufacturer will slowly move from Windows. At least China already learning the hard way from Android-Huawei relationship.
Which in the precise moment when Linux is a serious threat is not possible since there is no assurance that the hardware vendors would accept, given they now have an alternative.
Secure boot and anti-cheat.
That not an option. If Linux is a serious threat it means that a normal people could use it without any problem, with all the common software needed (Office, a browser and few other things).
At this point trying to lock down the PC to have the be able to run Windows is not really an option, people could simply choose to not use Windows anymore and be productive anyway.Only problem are games, but it is probably solvable
