Microsoft may or may not “love” the tiny subset of users who run Linux-based desktops and are unwilling to use web applications. But that doesn’t mean they don’t “love” Linux as a foundational technology of modern computing.
People always talk about “the year of the Linux desktop” (and not always ironically!) but honestly, whether a random person can play 4k Netflix on their Linux laptop is like 0.1% of why Linux matters in the world.
You're being disingenuous. Linux users are users of Linux and software that runs on Linux.
In the context of service deployment, this clearly refers to users who need to deploy Linux VMs to run software that runs on Linux.
The kernel is irrelevant. This use case clearly refers to Linux distributions, which nowadays probably means Debian or a Debian-based distro. So obviously in this context a Linux users means someone who needs to deploy a Debian-based distro on VMs to deploy and run software on it. In fact, more often than not when people refer to running Linux they are actually implying that they need to deploy and run software on a specific ecosystem, such as a combination of a package manager, package repository, service manager, and even f Directory tree layout.
This is not a way of life or a cult. It's a technical requirement that must be met for people to do their job.
That's exactly the point I was making. People who run Debian-based desktops are a tiny subset of that group. Hell, I have a Linux desktop and not even I run Debian.
You may have been able to get away with that kind of broad generalization a decade ago (actually mo -- that's not true, AWS and Canonical's push to cloud started MORE than a decade ago. Google too. Let's call it 15 years ago), but that is certainly not the case now.
And frankly, I think putting Linux users in a box where only FOSS drivers are allowed (even though Nvidia GPUs are doing much of the best work for CUDA) and to use it you have to be lock-step with an ideology that very few people will ever be able to be "pure" enough to follow completely (assuming they want to follow that ideology in the first place), does the Linux ecosystem a major disservice.
I would posit that the vast majority of developers and end-users who access and use Linux on a daily basis are doing it at least in part through a cloud service -- whether its a cheap VPS or a large cluster of machines.
*Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on Azure. These are my thoughts and do not represent those of others. I primarily use a Mac but have been playing with/arguing about Linux for 20 years -- going back to when I was 15 years old. I also use WSL on Windows.
I have mixed feelings about closed-source blobs tainting my kernel. AMD did a terrific job open-sourcing their driver stack. I use Nvidia for deep learning out of necessity but I resent it, as I'm completely locked into X11 because they can't be assed to implement GBM. Nvidia has also gotten a stranglehold over the DL and HPC markets with CUDA, causing a chicken-and-egg problem where OpenCL isn't well supported because none of the cards that require it have serious power, and it's not worth AMD putting lots of money into the HPC market because it's locked into CUDA.
NVidia needs Linux more than Linux needs NVidia (imagine competing on HPC while running Windows-only!) And yet, they contribute nothing to the kernel and stymie efforts towards unified standards like GBM.
it's shades of DirectX all over again. that's the problem with tainting.
People that go through the trouble of installing Linux on a Desktop Machine, where Windows or MacOS was probably pre-installed, will either dual boot or use Linux exclusively. If they dual-boot, they will probably just use Office on the non-Linux System and not care.
But if they use Linux exclusively they will very probably care about the freedom and control Linux brings.
Then I switched jobs, they gave me a new MacBook that doesn't run Linux so I use osx.
Ten years ago I cared about privacy, now I feel like that ship has sailed. My own privacy is not that important. The privacy of my fellow citizens is gone. I mourn it kind of, but you can't close Pandora's box.
Another category is people who installed it themselves because they like it better, but for non-ideological reasons. Like, a large chunk of programmers feel much more comfortable on Linux than Windows.
(I’m not sure what to make of your point about dual booting — it’s hard to believe anyone would “not care” about having to do a full reboot every time they wanted to do something as common as view an office document. Now “let me finish reading that interview candidate’s resume” goes from something I can alt-tab to while compiling into an ordeal of saving all my open work, rebooting, downloading and opening and reading it, rebooting again, reopening all my work...)
The other day there was a thread on HN about which laptop is great for Linux. Tons of people recommended Lenovo, a guy from Redhat said it's even the brand that's used internally and I got a little depressed and smh. Nobody mentioned superfish. Those glorious days of Linux are gone.
Superfish was on Ideapads, and it was bundled Windows software.
While both are by Lenovo, they are separate product lines.
Ideapads are in market segment, that is extremely price sensitive, but not quality-sensitive. If the competition would cost 10 bucks less, it would be a huge win for them, so everyone tries to minimize price while preserving margins as much as possible.
In the end, these devices do ship with Windows, which has privacy problems anyway.
All this is moot, when you put Linux on it, which was the context we were talking about.
It does, but those are "theoretical" in comparison to the degree Lenovo stooped on, it doesn't excuse Superfish at all. Windows isn't a free for all platform, yet.
> All this is moot, when you put Linux on it, which was the context we were talking about.
_That_ time. I'll copy a response I provided two months ago as Lenovo on HN has become a seriously annoying groundhog day for me:
I can't know that whatever harmful and irrational environment that led to Superfish in IdeaPad won't affect ThinkPads in the future. Even in the most generous understanding where IdeaPad is a different, physically separate branch of the company, and Superfish was an act of incompetence and not outright malice I can't be expected to keep up with the insider intrigue of the company to notice any changes that could negatively affect me. More importantly, leadership is still responsible for setting irrational environment that lead to Superfish, whatever that environment was. This is a multi-billion dollar company, there is no excuse for such incompetence.
Was superfish stupid mistake? Yes, it was. Does it mean you should condemn the company for the rest of eternity? Probably not.
Perhaps there is some boundary that shouldn't be crossed. You seem to be arguing there isn't.
Perhaps global and successful companies should exercise some due diligence and have a department that would control quality and firewall wacky ideas.
Perhaps we as CEs should hold companies responsible so that they stop perpetuating never ending shenanigans that this industry is known for. If even we don't boycott bad actors how can we expect normal users to do it.
> Does it mean you should condemn the company for the rest of eternity? Probably not.
If they showed some contrition perhaps? Name and fire entire chain of people responsible for it and donate a year of their net income to foreign FOSS organizations - in ideal world the company should've gone bankrupt, so the penance should be hard. Then I'd be more ready to believe them they would do better in the future.
You seem to be talking about a subset of Linux users. And then a subset of that subset who find cloud apps as bad as vegetarians may find meat.
Linux users often choose Linux because they want to be in control of their data and devices, cloud services are about giving control of that away to companies.