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Microsoft Edit

(github.com)
486 points ethanpil | 2 comments | 25 Jun 25 00:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.828s | source
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masfoobar ◴[25 Jun 25 11:13 UTC] No.44375939[source]▶
About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home. From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing special.

I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create a micrsoft specific Linux distro that replaces bash with powershell, or Edit with vim, nano and other choices as well as .NET and Visual Studio Code by developer installs.

Micrsoft could have used this as their default WSL install.

It may not have won the war against typical distro like Ubuntu or Debian but it could have gained a percentage and be a common choice for Windows users - and there are a lot of Windows users!

Microsoft cannot dominate the Linux kernel but it can gain control in userland. Imagine if they gained traction with their applications being installed by default in popular distributions.

This Microsoft Edit is available for Linux, like Powershell is and others. If they had played their cards right -- perhaps -- 10 years ago, their distribution could have been in the top 5 today, all because many windows users use it as their WSL.

Giant companies (like M$) can inject their fingerprints into my personal space. Now, we just need Micrsooft Edit to have Co-Pilot on by default...

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LionEgo ◴[25 Jun 25 13:09 UTC] No.44376906[source]▶
The reason why WSL is a thing is because developers in corps needed a way to run Linux. IT support and techs doesn't know anything about Linux typically and don't want to deal with supporting it. WSL fixes this problem.

Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.

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lpcvoid ◴[25 Jun 25 14:23 UTC] No.44377676[source]▶
Sorry for the snarky comment, but then those devs are simply bad. Windows is legacy, the future is in open source.
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LionEgo ◴[25 Jun 25 23:15 UTC] No.44382675[source]▶
> Sorry for the snarky comment, but then those devs are simply bad

Yes. That is the majority of developers. I had to explain to a dev today (nice enough guy) that he has to actually run the tests.

> Windows is legacy, the future is in open source.

You can claim the future is opensource but the industry has moved towards SAAS, PAAS, IAAS which is even more lock in than using a proprietary OS such as Windows.

So while you might have an opensource OS, many of the programs you use will be proprietary in the worst way possible.

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1. dang ◴[26 Jun 25 10:40 UTC] No.44386049[source]▶
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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2. ◴[28 Jun 25 09:15 UTC] No.44403306[source]▶