Yes, it's annoying, but it's not app compat. And dual-boot is pretty far outside the mainstream, I don't blame them for not building out other boot loader detection and integration. Other bootloaders change frequently, and windows install discs come out maybe every two years. It's better to have consistent behavior (windows install WILL wipe your MBR) than sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and when it doesn't work everyone says it worked for me, etc.

> I don't blame them for not building out other boot loader detection and integration.

It's not that they even try. Not even a little. Last time I installed Windows on real metal, it didn't even warn the other operating system would no longer boot. Microsoft probably has an internal policy to consider installing Windows is an upgrade.

it's so far out the mainstream, that people have been doing it regularly for 20 years now.

Grub is old enough to attend Junior High. Lilo would be in grad school. they both have windows compatability. Microsoft not reciprocating is evidence of their intent.

"People" in this instance is a handful of special edge cases compared to the majority of computer users, even if we're only looking at people that build their own computer, or hell, even just looking at only linux users. Dual booting is a minority. Yes, you CAN do it. Linux has made it easy. Great! But not many DO.

Nobody gives hell to every other OS manufacturer that will clobber our current bootloader configs. That means more than OSX, btw.

FreeBSD used to (maybe still does?) clobber the boot loader too. Do they also have mustachios that they evilly twirl?

On the other hand, Windows runs on 85 - 90 percent of desktop machines, whereas FreeBSD's market share on the desktop is probably below 1%. (This is not a judgement on FreeBSD's quality as a desktop system, I have used it myself for about two years and was very happy with it. But compared to Windows, its market share on the desktop is tiny.)

For better or worse, there is a difference between a system used by a tiny minority of people (again: on the desktop) and a system that practically has a monopoly on the (corporate) desktop and that is developed and sold by a company that has a history of anti-competitive behavior. (And to be fair, I get the impression that things have begun to change at Microsoft since Nadella became CEO. But that still does not erase history.)

That other hand and its callbacks to anti-competitive behavior and whispers of monopolies don't have much bearing on anything unless you are prepared to substantiate exactly how this behavior impacts the market share of other competitors. (I wish you luck on that very, very long row to hoe.)

Meanwhile, even that "good behaving" Linux distro will happily remove Windows's boot record in favor of GRUB's, rendering the system reliant on a component that breaks if you want to remove Linux (and most people are way more likely to want to remove Linux than to remove Windows!). Hardly neighborly behavior in and of itself. And yet, I'm still not seeing a reason to cast aspersions on GRUB or Linux distros, nor am I seeing those twirly mustachios on their faces.

No OS gives much of a damn about anything else running on the computer. Claims to the contrary are literally farcical and the pseudo-damages it could theoretically cause to the easily bruised are silly.

> No OS gives much of a damn about anything else running on the computer.

Most Linux distros (the ones I have used, at least) will detect an existing Windows installation and put a corresponding entry into GRUB's menu. Linux has been able to access data on Windows partitions for many, many years.

I agree that the boot loader issue probably has at most negligible impact on the adoption of Linux (or any other OS for that matter). I am just saying that in light of Microsoft's history one may feel inclined to judge them differently.

Personal attacks, which this crosses the line into, are not allowed on HN.

This might be an Appeal to Dehumanization (I just created a new fallacy), but I consider about 75% of the people on HN to be legitimate people. the remaining reek of sockpuppetry. I felt the grandparent was a sockpuppet, and am treating the account as a dataset for future encounters.

I should be more mindful of the fact that there's (potentially) a human being behind the account I'm treating like an astroturfer. I can see why you considered this a personal attack.

If you want to name a new fallacy, name the bias where people are more likely to think someone is astroturfing or a shill when they disagree with them. That's a common one, and it's definitely against the rules on HN to go there without evidence. An opposing opinion is not evidence.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR...

one would assume the Hasty Generalization[1] fallacy would suffice.

When, do you think, does a rhetorical device fall into the realm of propagandizing?

1. http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/hasty-generalis...

Propaganda? You're confusing a love for the English language and a little command of rhetoric with something vastly different, chief.

Hell, I don't even use Windows as a primary platform; I'm typing this from a Mac while I'm (quite literally) waiting to meet a guy to sell my Surface Pro 3 that I never use. I'm just not impressed by rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me silliness and knee-jerk, irrational fear. I don't trust Microsoft any more than I trust any company. But I don't rely on the fears of fifteen years ago to evaluate the current state of the world, either.

I think you and I have a vastly different definition of propaganda. I considered your post to be information or ideas methodically spread to promote or injure a cause, movement, nation, etc. In this case, the cause and movement would be "microsoft is still evil, do not forget." do you disagree that your post fits the definition under these constraints?

As you used it twice in this thread, I'm going to add "mustache twirl" (or variation) do my dictionary of rhetorical devices used to make an attack seem like less of an attack. it's very effective at disarming someone that calls it out. Thanks for this.

This is limited to BIOS-based booting, and there isn't really a whole lot of choice there. There's no standardised mechanism for bootloader configuration in the BIOS world, so you have the choice of either:

(a) overwriting the existing MBR, or (b) knowing how to configure every single third party bootloader, or (c) not booting

In the UEFI world, the Windows installer won't overwrite any files it didn't install.

UEFI brings with it all kinds of other lovelies though.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIyOTg

Kinda reminds me of the issues Linux has run into with ACPI, and here are some lovely emails from Torvalds regarding that:

http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/acpi.html

That's not the same thing as application compatibility.

I don't see how those two things are in any way connected. The point they were making is that you might even be able take a Windows 3.1 app (but definitely a Windows 95 one) and run it on Windows 8.

Actually, you can't do Windows 3.1: Microsoft ripped out the Win16 subsystem in Windows 7.

They didn't. You can still enable it in 32-bit Win10 I think.

I wonder if Solaris ABI compat is actually older than the Windows stuff. Solaris to this day maintains binary compat with older releases and, for example, a 32-bit fopen() will fail once you open 255 streams because that was the limit in the ancient ABI. Everyone using Solaris at one point or another has probably hit this and it caused some issue, but Sun^H^H^HOracle refuses to make modern operation the default, all in the name of ancient binary compat. That's a bit more hardcore than optional support you can enable.

16-bit compatibility only exists in the 32-bit version, no longer in the 64-bit one. Same as every x64 version since XP64.

This is because in 64-bit mode the CPU can no longer handle 16-bit code. It's all AMD's fault...

And it should. Seriously, there are are less than 2% of users using Linux on the Desktop. Now a fraction of these users dual boot. Microsoft is a business, and it's bad business to spend money you could be using to make your product better to ensure that you play nice with every possible bootloader out there.

Most people that are capable of installing Linux (or some other Unixoid system) are probably capable of reinstalling GRUB (at least with a little help from a search engine of their choice).

But if you try to get your parents to give Linux a try, because their laptop ends up infected with some virus every other month, this does not help.

Which makes me think: What about dual-booting two Windows installations? This is probably a very rare scenario, especially with virtualization, but what if I was developing, say, device drivers and wanted to check my driver works both on, say, Windows 7 and 8/8.1? Does the Windows installer put my other Windows installation in the boot menu automatically? (Honest question, I have never tried this and probably never will.)

I wouldn't recommend linux if your parents keep getting malware. Wipe the PC, and set yourself up as the admin. Create a base user account for your parents, and RDP in to their machine to install programs for them. Or get them to use a tablet. The other option is to set them up with a mac. If they stay within the App Store, they're pretty safe.

I triple boot Windows XP, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 32bits in my gaming computer.

Grub shows a single Windows entry on its boot menu.

Then you see Windows 7 and 'Previous Windows version' in a text mode menu.

Thanks for the info!

OS/2 is perhaps not the best example, as early on it was a MS/IBM collaborative project. And even afterwards it had the economic backing of IBM. So if MS got overt about it, there would likely have been a lawsuit.

There is less risk of such from Linux. Even at their current size, RH is a flea next to MS.

That OS/2 2.0 fiasco used to be my favorite topic and I do have bad things to say against MS about it.

> really difficult

You only need to reinstall grub/lilo. It's possible to even use Windows bootloader.

I think it just stopped happening with UEFI and Win10.

With the caveat that UEFI has its own can of worms...