Ubuntu on Windows

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.

Even more surprised that no one seems to recall that they did exactly this back in the day. There was a version of the NT4 kernel that could run Unix programs. "Great, the program selection of Unix with the stability of windows!" people sneered, but still there was a market for it.

But that was a whac-a-mole, probably for getting boxes checked for whatever it is that audit departments did before sarbanes oxley. That they've gone with linux here shows that their focus is mainstream developers. Consider - it their main focus here had been EEE then BSD would have been a far better starting point. The GPL is far more restrictive than the BSD license. The one major area where linux wins over BSD is in drivers and that's irrelevant here. Apart from drivers and package management, BSD is a better platform. They could have found (or bought) a partner in the NetBSD community to do the Canonical stuff.

Now some here would respond to this as - well - what they've done just shows how big the conspiracy is and how far it extends! There's never a full comeback to that. But I think there's a more straightforward explanation.

The straightforward explanation would be this. Windows is no longer relevant in the way it once was - the cloud is the new platform, and people use tablets and phones. And - a lot of developers hate Windows. OSX has emerged as the dominant developer desktop.

They've realised some combination of this, and formed a company directive, "make developers love us".

Even if it means giving developers non-Windows platforms to work with. Like dot net for linux. Or MSSQL for linux. Or free Visual Studio for linux. Or linux that runs on a Windows kernel. Making a solid effort to do linux for azure. And basically giving away Windows as a desktop. Whatever. The things developers need, they're trying to do that. They want to be where the developer are. They're putting their back into it.

The business case is the kind of vague thing that startups take - find some users, make them love us, and then we'll work out how to make money from it.

Imagine the first reaction in the Redmond office when someone read out the feedback post asking for vi and apt-get. Groans all around. But someone in that room responded to the laughter with an "I know, I know" smile and asked, "OK, but what would it take?" And then everyone perked up, and had some fun with the conversation. And they came up with this. And someone saying "shit, we /could/ do that, and it would be amazing!" The people who were in that room will remember that as a career event.

I think it's cool. I want to play with it.