Will they lobby for laws that prohibit Linux or make it difficult to install? What actions might they take in the future?
I’m going to go with “nothing”. They blend their numbers but I’d be willing to bet the amount of money they make selling direct licenses is tiny. (Tiny at their scale, I’d take it any day.) The whole OEM business isn’t even huge to them. If they start losing the enterprise market, then I’m sure they would throw down, but you and everyone you know installing Linux would be fine. Have you noticed how easy it is to steal windows and how there seem to be very few repercussions? That says volumes about what they think the revenue potential of that market is…
The desktop has been losing market for a while. I feel Windows is already under serious threat (if not already in the minority) when you think about all the devices that mainstream audiences orbit around (phones, tablets, portable consoles, etc), often using the Linux kernel. Only about a third of most website traffic comes from desktops.
Many of the people who frequently use Windows desktop do so because of their job, and often avoid using it outside of work as much as possible, since it feels like… well, work.
Microsoft has been desperately trying to appeal to those other bigger sectors of the pie and has failed every time.
PC Gaming was one sector they had advantage on, yet that has already started to crumble thanks to Valve. I feel that MS will just try to push for integrating their xbox with Windows OS more and more…
I feel it’s a battle with many fronts, since PCs have many uses… so MS is likely to run their typical spiel: copy what the competition are doing and try to centralize/integrate it with their OS in a way that gives them an advantage, as they are famous for doing.
Another sector they can do this is with the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)… they could turn Windows into a frontend for running Linux apps… so if Linux apps became popular, they could try to advertise Windows as the “best” way to run Linux software without losing the full first party support of legacy Windows software.
Damnit Jim I’m a doctor, not an actor
Some people including me maybe dont want Linux to become popular.
Can we please have something in this world that isnt ruined by the general population? They already ruined the internet -
Scientists really would prefer Linux to stay in the nerd realm.
pays even more to hardware manufacturers to add windows by default, and make drivers windows only.
Hear me out on this one “Microsoft Linux”
Yes exactly. Embrace and extinguish has always been Microsoft’s strategy. They’ll release their own distribution and either make it slower and more complicated than Windows, so that everyone thinks Windows is the better OS, or they’ll make it a cloud OS like Chrome, requiring recurring payments to use Office 365 and everything else.
I see this as the most likely outcome as well. It’s the preferred route, seen all of the place lately. Want to privatize a public service? Cripple the public service enough to “prove it doesn’t work” to convince people privatization is the best option. I suspect most people would switch to Microsoft Linux over something “tech” sounding like Debian or Ubuntu. When the trial of their slowed down and crashy “Linux” comes to an end, Microsoft will offer an easy solution to switch back to Windows.
That’s just neutered Ubuntu container
Make a version of Office that works on Linux natively.
That works on their version of linux.
Why? Office is such shit.
Linux has been becoming a “serious threat” for 20+ years now. I’ll wait.
Don’t get me wrong I like Linux a lot. But if you step back and look objectively, it has a lot of issues trying to grow outside the hobby/enthusiast community for the desktop.
I think that linux has a couple of things that might help it grow outside its traditional niche that it hasn’t in the past. Proton has been a major step forward in to the gaming scene. A lot of people are very unhappy about windows 11. The EU in particular is also investing in ways to get out from under American techs thumb due to the geopolitical landscape.
I don’t have too high expectations personally but who knows.
Work with hardware and software vendors to break linux compatibility.
They’ve been busy doing that for the past 20+ years. It’s been an annoyance, but not really a deterrent.
Which in the precise moment when Linux is a serious threat is not possible since there is no assurance that the hardware vendors would accept, given they now have an alternative.
Cry maybe
Exactly what they’re doing right now. What cable companies did. What every dominant business does when something better starts to eat their lunch.
Become increasingly abusive and scummy towards the customers who are left, because they’re either too deeply ingrained, spineless or lazy to change and they’ve already self-selected.
Honestly fine by me. I prefer Linux remain non-mainstream. It has integrity like this. The moment any suits see dollar signs on it, it’s as good as ruined.
Secure boot and anti-cheat.
That not an option. If Linux is a serious threat it means that a normal people could use it without any problem, with all the common software needed (Office, a browser and few other things).
At this point trying to lock down the PC to have the be able to run Windows is not really an option, people could simply choose to not use Windows anymore and be productive anyway.Only problem are games, but it is probably solvable
My expectation: nothing. At least, nothing on the OS side. I don’t think windows is very important to microsoft strategically.
Nowadays, the way to capture audiences is not so much via a proprietary OS, but via proprietary apps.
And in that sense, microsoft is proceeding exactly as expected: more and more of the windows ecosystem either exists on the web, or is available on linux and macos too.
I can see a future where windows only exists for backwards compatibility, but otherwise:
- dotnet apps run on linux (via dotnet core)
- edge runs on linux
- powershell runs on linux
- visual studio code runs on linux
- most of the rest of microsoft’s suite runs in the web
So what does microsoft need to do once windows collapses in the desktop space? Imo not much, really. Those people and companies that are tied to microsoft products will still be. Only, they might be running them on linux.
Edit to add: I am gonna place a bet that we’re gonna see an official microsoft linux distribution by the end of 2035
it never ceases to be mind boggling that IT in most institutions are still so closely married to windows when it’s clear that the landscape has changed and it makes me suspect that they will be the last bastions of windows dominance.
Businesses live and die by if it broke don’t fix it.
They’re still a non insignificant number of businesses using Cobol applications.
i would put ruby in that category too since it now feels like a fad that i have never seen since. lol
Mostly die.
When?
The question is also what would US government do. You miss the fact that windows-x86 complex is self supporting cornerstone of US soft and economic power, also spying. What will they do to prop up that monopoly?
