←back to thread

Ubuntu on Windows

(blog.dustinkirkland.com)
2049 points bpierre | 1 comments | 30 Mar 16 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
Show context
takeda ◴[30 Mar 16 19:39 UTC] No.11392296[source]▶
Surprised I don't see anyone else mentioning this.

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.

replies(23): >>11392494 #>>11393099 #>>11393276 #>>11393408 #>>11393449 #>>11393546 #>>11393585 #>>11394255 #>>11394392 #>>11395372 #>>11395436 #>>11395525 #>>11395526 #>>11395634 #>>11395700 #>>11395784 #>>11396366 #>>11396861 #>>11397608 #>>11397942 #>>11398467 #>>11398629 #>>11403675 #
1. tw04 ◴[31 Mar 16 16:57 UTC] No.11398629[source]▶
What's the benefit of breaking up compatibility? What's the end-game there? The whole point of this, beyond allowing developers to develop without having to run a VM, is to allow *nix apps to run on Windows. If they break that compatibility... people will just ditch Windows. They don't care about the OS, they care about the apps that run on top.