Microsoft this week released a preview version of Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI, or WSLg, which provides a way to run Linux applications with graphic interfaces on Windows devices.
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"You can use this feature to run any GUI application that might only exist in Linux, or to run your own applications or testing in a Linux environment," explained Craig Loewen, program manager for the Windows Developer Platform at Microsoft, in a blog post.
Man, the tech world is getting weird. Eric Raymond had a pretty interesting take on this last year:
Azure makes Microsoft most of its money. The Windows monopoly has become a sideshow, with sales of conventional desktop PCs (the only market it dominates) declining. Accordingly, the return on investment of spending on Windows development is falling. As PC volume sales continue to fall off , it’s inevitably going to stop being a profit center and turn into a drag on the business.
Looked at from the point of view of cold-blooded profit maximization, this means continuing Windows development is a thing Microsoft would prefer not to be doing. Instead, they’d do better putting more capital investment into Azure – which is widely rumored to be running more Linux instances than Windows these days.
Interesting world we live in.
I'm one good CAD/CAM program away from permanently switching to Linux. Despite the major programs having origins on UNIX, BSD, and Linux the big players in the arena refuse to support anything but MS. It will be interesting to see how fast AutoDesk, Dassault, and the others back track on that refusal when Microsoft kills off windows.
ReplyDelete(Don't bring up FreeCAD, SCAD, LibreCAD, etc. They are all pretty well trash for productive design work.)
Same in the electronic CAD world. While Cadence does run on Linux, it is clunky on Linux. Also, our corporate Microsoft stuff (Office 360, Outlook, etc) doesn't yet work well on Linux, even in a browser.
ReplyDeleteMostly because of Windows domain issues. We're getting closer, though.
As soon as I read anyone calling Windows or Microsoft a "monopoly", I stop, because the author is an obvious dumbass who knows nothing about monopolies.
ReplyDeleteRoy, you might find it interesting to go to Help | About Microsoft Edge, then click the Open Source Software link, scroll down to libpng, and click the show license button.
ReplyDeleteOr possibly not.
Roy,
ReplyDeleteEric Raymond has had poops that have written more code than than most programmers. He is one of the main icons of the Open Source Software movement and a very astute observer of the software marketplace.
In short, he is one of the main reasons that Microsoft isn't more powerful than they are...