> Last update to Windows Linux subsystem makes you feel like running Linux natively. It's a huge step and it will only improve.
As long as the system collects and exfiltrates data without me explicitly allowing this, and does OS updates just before somebody wants to give a presentation, it is not the feel of running Linux. The feeling of running Linux is the user being in control of his/her device and his/her data. A 1990 MS DOS installation is closer to that feeling than any recent Windows.
Unfortunately that is true. I am not optimistic that it will change, but it is miles better than Apple in this regard.
Community should put more pressure on Microsoft to change these anti-patterns.
> Ubuntu on Desktops, RedHat on some corporate servers, Debian on others, Pine in VM's, raspberian on rpi's, openwrt on routers, Android on mobile phones, yada, yada, yada
Ubuntu is the WSL posterchild that might eventually get acquired by Microsoft.
Red Hat is IBM nowadays.
Android might just be running on Fuchsia in a near future, and Linux kernel is not exposed to userspace, so it is pretty much irrelevant what Android runs on.
BSD, NuttX, RTOS, Azure RTOS, Green Hills, QNX, Zephyr, Harmmony OS, yada, yada, yada
Microsoft already had the opportunity to bid for Red Hat and didn't so there's little reason to think they'd be interested in the much, much smaller Canonical.
I doubt Shuttleworth would consider selling anyway, least of all to Microsoft.
Considering Windows runs on pretty much any x86 configuration, it’s pretty impressive. Some obscure configurations can have problems with Linux due to lack of drivers, but Windows manages.
So, one can argue that the quality of Windows is changing, but building an operating system is no easy task. And Microsoft’s commitment to backwards compatibility is quite an achievement.
I just can't help but point out how much more hardware Linux supports out of the box than Windows... is this actually your real life experience or are you just saying this because it's the common wisdom? Excepting the absolute bleeding edge for hardware the kernel has a ridiculous number of drivers built in. I've far more frequently had to find random graphics or network drivers in order to get Windows to install than Linux. Plus Linux supports all that non-amd64 hardware too? The latest Office doesn't even install on Windows 7, nor 32-bit hardware.
I don't mind, really, Windows 7 isn't even supported anymore. But Linux would install without a second thought and run the most updated version of almost everything (excepting things like packages not compiled for arm yet or something). Saying Windows should get lots of credit for backwards compatibility feels a little disingenuous when compared to Linux... which actually still runs on hardware from the 90s.
> The latest Office doesn't even install on Windows 7, nor 32-bit hardware.
When people talk about Windows backwards compatibility they're mostly referring to running on apps on a new OS, not new apps running an old OS. I bet you could get very old versions Microsoft Office running on Windows 10. I've run Visual Studio 6.0 on a Win10 machine no problem. And yeah linux nowadays has a lot of drivers included with the kernel (I've bene shocked at some of the supported hardware) but vendor provided drivers of often super outdated. I have a decent chance trusting old driver binaries to run on windows. On Linux you likely have to be a driver developer yourself to just to get some vendor's driver source for an old 2.X kernel to compile, let alone run.
It's kind of off topic so this'll be my last comment about it but I accept your point that backwards compatibility means running old software on a new OS. I was incorrect.
It has been a very, very long time since I've run into hardware that I had any incentive to install vendor provided drivers for in order to get a computer running with Linux, with the exception of VMWare kernel modules and NVidia drivers, but Nvidia cards still run with noveau so the computer will still work so that you can get the proprietary drivers. And VMWare is proprietary software, so that's no surprise.
I just have not done it for actual hardware other than Nvidia graphics cards in at least a decade. Maybe I've gotten lucky in the hardware I've bought or something, but I haven't had any drivers broken badly enough that I even would file a bug report except for my Nvidia proprietary driver that is buggy as heck.
But I accept that my experience is also an anecdote.
Two things Windows excel compared to Linux: WiFi driver and sound driver. Even recent laptops come with Realtek WiFi that could be hit or miss with Linux.
Of course Windows excel in apps backward compatiblity better than Linux (it's not about hardware). You can't just run old Linux games CD. You would have a better time using Wine with Windows version of the game.
Windows development stack is the closest to Xerox PARC workstation ideas across Interlisp-D, Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar, and the best desktop OS in security by default given all processes put in place after XP SP2, so yeah quite good.
Interesting. Ok, I've been off the Windows eco system for decades but I clearly remember my relief at not having pretty much daily BSODs, broken updates, etc, not to mention all the malware.
