Linux love hits Windows 10 19H1 amid a second round of zombie slaying In a busy week for Windows Insiders, Fast-Ring fans got a fresh build of Windows last night, hot on the heels of a new preview of the Windows Admin Center. You say 19H1, I say 20H1, let's call the whole thing off Having sent Skip-Ahead testers into the future with a 20H1 build of Windows 10, Microsoft has now shared the Linux …
The four digit and four character ones are easy. The first two digits just happen to be the last two digits of the year. In case of four digit codes, the second set of two digits specifies the official month of release, usually one short of actual release. In case the third character isn't a digit, it is always an "H", with the number following specifying which half of the year.
Those five digit codes are confusing, exactly why Microsoft likes to throw them in the mix.
So how will you feel a few years from now when Microsoft announce the next version of Windows will be Linux+Wine?
That would mean that MS would have removed one of the biggest hurdles to WINE in the first place, which would be the lack of complete documentation about the APIs, especially for DirectX. If MS would do that, maybe even submitting patches to the project (which would have to be thoroughly checked out by the senior WINE devs first-- this is Microsoft, after all, and they can never be trusted to have dropped embrace-extend-extinguish), WINE could really make some great strides, with the non-gaming Windows hold-back titles like Photoshop and Office working in Linux seamlessly.
While I do share in the suspicion that Microsoft desperately wants out of the OS business, I'd have a hard time believing this in particular would ever happen. Then again, I would have had a hard time believing MS would cancel work on their own browser rendering engine and replace it with Chromium, yet they're doing just that.
I liked it better when MS hated Linux too, since they seemed to spare that hate for their own users back then. The time when Linux was bad, mmkay, saw releases like XP and 7, with one or the other regarded by many as the high-water mark for Windows.
Now that they love Linux, supposedly, they seem to hate Windows users, especially non-corporate users. The behaviour of MS has been appalling since Nadella came on board, with MS using the Windows Update system to distribute out-and-out malware on several occasions. They've successfully grown an entire crop of Windows users who now fear Windows Updates more than garden-variety malware they may encounter out there on the web.
Having Linux be a real alternative to the Windows hell would be the opposite direction from what MS is taking now. They're making being a Windows-using consumer as horrible as they can, in particular by forcing them to use an OS that serves the needs of Microsoft more than the owner of the PC in question, and Linux with Wine would be the opposite of that.
If it came to pass, I'd be thrilled by it, cautiously. WINE would benefit from Microsoft's input, and the Linux setup I use (which includes WINE) would get better, while the influx of Windows-using "n00bs" (sorry, I hate the term, but I can't think of something that captures the attitude better) into the Linux world that so many graybeards fear probably wouldn't happen, since they would stick with the new Windows itself rather than venture out into the wilds of "real" Linux distros. It's open source, so if MS ever did get control of any one aspect of GNU/Linux as a whole, forks would definitely occur.
If it did ever come to pass, I think it would be because MS sincerely wants to get out of the Windows business and offload development costs to whatever ends up bearing the name "Windows", not because they're trying to use sneaky means to destroy a competitor. Linux commands 2% or so of the desktop PC market, so it's not really much of a threat. Their monopoly is built on vendor lock-in, and even helping WINE for a short time would put a spotlight on the notion that there are, in fact, alternatives to Windows.
If they saw Linux with WINE as a real threat, FUDding in the usual Ballmerian fashion would seem to be a better strategy. The odds that they can get enough control over any FOSS projects of note to invoke the third and final phase of "embrace, extend, extinguish" seem very slim, and even if they did, a fork would appear, and most likely that fork would begin to be seen as the real "main" fork by everyone except Microsoft. The whole system is designed not to be controllable by any one corporate giant.
>>That would mean that MS would have removed one of the biggest hurdles to WINE in the first place, which would be the lack of complete documentation about the APIs, especially for DirectX. If MS would do that, maybe even submitting patches to the project (which would have to be thoroughly checked out by the senior WINE devs first-- this is Microsoft, after all, and they can never be trusted to have dropped embrace-extend-extinguish), WINE could really make some great strides, with the non-gaming Windows hold-back titles like Photoshop and Office working in Linux seamlessly.<<
This is Microsoft today.
It would still not be well-documented, and wouldn't work any better than it does today. It would also require connection to an online auth server before trying to function--said server would have worrying amounts of downtime.
The whole system is designed not to be controllable by any one corporate giant.
Isn't that the point of MS buying a seat on the board of the Linux Foundation? To put obstacles in place long before they're needed, so that eventually, in order to be called "Linux", it must be blessed by Redmond and if not, would be considered rogue?
Microsoft's involvement in Linux seems to me to mean that it's inevitable that the entire OS will have to be forked at some point and called something else as well. They've already dealt Linux a body blow by associating it in some minds as "something that runs on Windows". Some folks probably think Microsoft developed it themselves or at least, that Linux used to be something dirty that hackers used but now Microsoft has cleaned it up and it runs on Windows, is safe.
It would make perfect sense for Microsft to spend the time making an API that would run windows programs on Linux.
Then it could let OS development go to the linux community, who are better at it anyway, and concentrate on flashy guis and marketing bloatware and other excrement, which is its true Forte.,
Yes, what really Linux needs badly are application developers able to deliver usable desktop applications, instead of that ugly mess which ensures it won't go anywhere past the 4% of desktops... because users needs applications - who spend their days just tinkering with an OS??
But maybe the issue it's the Linux OS development is an ugly mess too when it comes to GUI development, with X being really outdated, lacking a consistent, well designed GUI widget set, and many other needed elements, (i.e. good, usable fonts)? And maybe something that would work on different distro with full backward and forward compatibility?
No surprise most GUI development under Linux is made in Java - and no surprise Android had to adopt it as well to deliver something usable.
"So how will you feel a few years from now when Microsoft announce the next version of Windows will be Linux+Wine?"
Totally and completely uninterested. Why use an imitation when you can already use the real thing? Free, under my control and more importantly free from snooping.
How do you think that MS is going to make money out such a system?
How do you think that MS is going to make money out such a system?
Nobody who buys Windows cares what happens under the hood, it could be Windows NT, Linux, or a hamster in a wheel. What's important is the APIs look the same from the outside and Windows software they have still runs as usual.
Wrong. Windows users expect good OEM drivers and not some FOSS s**t because GPL activists believe IP and patents are bad - the reason Apple has its own drivers layer.
Nor they would like API are routed to some other kernel calls that actually doesn't work exactly in the same way. When it does come to font rendering, for example - or the different semantics of low-level features like threading or the like.
Face it - the only good GUI alternative to Windows is macOS, not Linux - until freetards don't understand that or they remove the roadblocks to good GUI software, or they'll never be relevant on desktop systems.
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