Before the year 2025, when Windows has switched from the NT kernel to the Linux kernel, we will all ask "What exactly is Windows?" (in the spirit of Theseus' ship) and "Is this outcome really Linux on the desktop/laptop?" (in the sprit of No True Scotsman)
To avoid too much theory lol, my perspective is that MSFT views Windows as the trademarks and the 30+ years of backwards compatibility layers (e.g. Direct3D, WinAPIs, etc), and everything else is already expendable (kernel, drivers, etc). Meanwhile, the (slow?) migration to ARM and Web(Electron + derivatives included) will deprecate the compatibility layers too.
FWIW, I think people will still only develop "for Windows" not develop apps "for all Linux distributions", the same way people develop "for iOS/macOS" not "for all *BSD distributions".
MSFT reduces developers and costs because kernel costs become "a relatively large corporate donation" (tiny compared with the reduced developer salaries) and drivers are created by hardware companies instead. Meanwhile, MSFT increases revenue through Azure, consumer services like gaming, consumer electronics (e.g. VR, Surface, etc), enterprise sales "for the support/compatibility", and increased adoption/street-cred given its now "Linux on the desktop, laptop, AR/VR and tablet". Its simply a no-brainer for MSFT.
This is not a new idea: found one of my responses from 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11390719. There is a parent comment describing Windows as "just another Linux distribution", albeit it'll 1. be the most deployed Linux distribution by a lot and 2. continue to have a closed-source UI toolkit (e.g. Cocoa on macOS).
> Before the year 2025, when Windows has switched from the NT kernel to the Linux kernel
> continue to have a closed-source UI toolkit (e.g. Cocoa on macOS).
The comparison isn't apt. macOS can use BSD licensed programs because it's allowed to create derivative works that are closed source. Anything constituting a derivative work based on the Linux kernel has to be open source because of the GPL's virality.
So unless you think Microsoft will be willing to keep all their custom software restricted to userland (requiring basically everything else to be GPL) it seems extremely unlikely that this will happen. Microsoft is going to want to continue developing an operating system, not merely a Linux distribution.
Obviously I'd love to see it happen, but I find it extraordinarily unlikely for these and other reasons (backwards compatibility? Continuity with previous sysadmin tools?)...
> Microsoft is going to want to continue developing an operating system
I'm not so sure. I don't think MS sees itself as primarily a OS company. I think it sees itself as primarily an applications company, and the Windows OS (and before that, MS-DOS) was historically the best way to get everyone to use their applications. (It was a great help, of course, to have IBM basically hand them the PC software market, not once but twice--but I think if IBM had had their s*t together and had made OS/2 solid and workable sooner, MS might never have developed Windows.) But the Windows OS itself I think has always been expendable if MS could find a way to get everyone to run MS Office applications, .NET applications, etc. (and now Azure applications) without it. This might be the way that finally happens.
> backwards compatibility? Continuity with previous sysadmin tools?
If then can make Linux run on a Windows kernel, they can also make Windows run on a Linux kernel. All they need is a compatibility layer for all the Windows APIs. And MS is certainly no stranger to compatibility layers.
Wouldn't it be easier for MS to just open-source the NT kernel instead of making the big shift to Linux? I can't think Windows' internals (if they ever get exposed) could have been inferior to Linux in any way.
Networks effects. Microsoft doesn’t want to recreate a 20 year old organization/community that has been built on primarily donations. No company or large group of people is going to donate the same levels of dev-hours to the NT kernel.
It’s just simpler to have a team or two of in-house devs contribute those improvements from NT to Linux.
To avoid too much theory lol, my perspective is that MSFT views Windows as the trademarks and the 30+ years of backwards compatibility layers (e.g. Direct3D, WinAPIs, etc), and everything else is already expendable (kernel, drivers, etc). Meanwhile, the (slow?) migration to ARM and Web(Electron + derivatives included) will deprecate the compatibility layers too.
FWIW, I think people will still only develop "for Windows" not develop apps "for all Linux distributions", the same way people develop "for iOS/macOS" not "for all *BSD distributions".
MSFT reduces developers and costs because kernel costs become "a relatively large corporate donation" (tiny compared with the reduced developer salaries) and drivers are created by hardware companies instead. Meanwhile, MSFT increases revenue through Azure, consumer services like gaming, consumer electronics (e.g. VR, Surface, etc), enterprise sales "for the support/compatibility", and increased adoption/street-cred given its now "Linux on the desktop, laptop, AR/VR and tablet". Its simply a no-brainer for MSFT.
This is not a new idea: found one of my responses from 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11390719. There is a parent comment describing Windows as "just another Linux distribution", albeit it'll 1. be the most deployed Linux distribution by a lot and 2. continue to have a closed-source UI toolkit (e.g. Cocoa on macOS).