This looks to me like typical Microsoft strategy that they utilized a lot 25 years ago.
1. when not leader in given market, make your product fully compatible with competitor
2. start gaining momentum (e.g. why should I use Linux, when on Windows I can run both Linux and Windows applications)
3. once becoming leader break up compatibility
4. rinse and repeat
Happened with MS-DOS, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and others.
Gave this a long look and my main beef is that I couldn't possibly do anything on a Windows Machine in its' current state. Linux isn't just about running apps - there's a philosophy behind the system. Users first!
As long as Microsoft continues to disrespect the rights of users in regard to privacy, data-collection, data-sharing with unnamed sources, tracking, uncontrollable OS operations (updates, etc) - I will never go near it.
I find it especially offensive that ex-open source and ex-Linux users (working for Microsoft) have the audacity to come on here and try to sell this as a 'Linux on Windows' system when most of what makes Linux special (respect for the user) has been stripped away.
It's like giving a man who is dying of thirst sea water.
Most comments here appear to be positive and that's fine... whatever. To anyone reading this... please don't sell your souls and the future of software technology for ease of use and abusive business practices. /rant
The thing is, from an "open source" perspective, what they're doing is great and totally legit. From a free software perspective, it has a lot of potential to be suspicious and troubling. If all you care about is "the best technology; yay" rather than user freedoms, your concerns are moot.
There's a stereotype that the open source people are practical but don't care about political issues and the free software people hate everything proprietary with a passion, but of course that's not always the case. Big companies like Microsoft aren't monocultures. They have some really amazing people, even if not everyone is perfectly enlightened. The path to more user freedom is allowing those good people to continue to push technology in the right direction. This is a step toward more freedom.
Many of us don't just use one computer. I use every OS on different desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, servers, and consoles. They might not all be equally free, but I only need one to be fully free to know that I have freedom that can't be taken away. Even for those who don't have a fully free system, the most important thing in my opinion is that the option always exists. If they aren't served by proprietary software, they have somewhere to go.
GNU won against all odds. It's here to stay, proliferating across so many devices. I'm happy to welcome people who might not have ventured outside Windows into the family!
Are they? When did Microsoft's EEE strategy benefit the user and lead to the best technology? IE6? JScript? ActiveX? J/Direct? MSN Messenger?
That's a good point. Its all about having real options (freedom to move) and minimal switching costs. That said, I'm still concerned about a possible Trojan Horse scenario here whereby Linux on Windows is the hook to try and get people into the proprietary Windows dev tools (Visual Studio etc.) and checked into the Azure "roach motel" cloud (easy to check into, hard to check out).
> Big companies like Microsoft aren't monocultures. They have some really amazing people, even if not everyone is perfectly enlightened.
Microsoft most definitely has some amazing and talented people, but I disagree with you about culture: the culture of any company is undoubtedly set from the top down (the founders or directors). Please do not be so naive to think Satya Nadella does not set the culture at Microsoft, (hierarchical in nature). This isn't to say there may not be some fiefdoms within a company as large as Microsoft, but there is an overarching culture and it comes from the top.
> Many of us don't just use one computer.
This is probably true for some, but some people might only be able to afford one computer. One scenario I can see which might be appealing to a developer, as of this announcement yesterday, is using a MacBook with Apple's Boot Camp to partition the internal drive such that one could have as many options as possible (OS X on one partition, and Windows 10 with Linux on the other).
> GNU won against all odds. It's here to stay, proliferating across so many devices. I'm happy to welcome people who might not have ventured outside Windows into the family!
It would be really cool to hear what RMS (Richard Stallman) thinks about this. I wonder if he's be up for an AMA on Reddit to address this seemingly earth shaking announcement by MSFT?