alt Hacker NewsMicrosoft has spent over a decade swimming against their users interests at this point and during that time frame Linux has been improving its desktop and improving kernel performance. We are now at the point where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is dangerously close on performance with none of the privacy invasion and anti user features. Its pretty late in the game for them to start trying to switch back to producing an Operating system users actually want. Users refusing to switch from Windows 10 should have been that wake up call.
I don't think Microsoft can pull this off, I think as mindshare is shifting it will continue to do so and its going to take Microsoft a long time to row back and right now its only talking about doing some minor things. Now Nvidia is developing the drivers on Linux seriously there is every chance this transition snowballs and nothing Microsoft does will be enough.
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Normal people can not install an OS. Aside from like 3 ThinkPads on Lenovo's website, you can't really buy Linux pre installed on a computer.
This is about the MacBook Neo coming for the budget laptop market. At 500$ it's an easy choice.
> where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is
> dangerously close on performance
sometimes more performant.
> its going to take Microsoft a long time to row back
They won't actually move back to a user-focused OS at all. It's nice for them to declare they will, but their culture and business pressures will prevent any kind of sustained effort. (Their users aren't their customers.)
OS was twice made irrelevant by the browser and mobile. AI assistants will make the OS about as important to the average user as the BIOS.
Are the Linux graphics drivers actually worse, though? I thought it was widely agreed that the open-source user-space drivers, e.g., in Mesa, are actually very good these days.
Yes. This. Too little too late MSFT.
And it really comes down to $MSFT. If the stock keeps dropping, how long do you think any real commitment to “quality” for a boring, low(no?) revenue product will last? Very little when the ad/partner revenue really starts flowing for “ai focused metrics” that can directly tie to windows surveillance (ie recall).
I really hope you're right. The challenge with Linux still seems to be practicalities -- like in particular, does Zoom run well on most distributions?
Reports seem to be of system crashes and degraded performance. I imagine there are lots of 'it works for me' stories, but think: for Linux to eat into Windows user market share (which I would greatly support), critical things like Zoom have to work at least as reliably as on Windows. For nontechnical users who would never figure out which incantations to type into the terminal to fix it -- because they have their next meeting in 15 minutes.
So are you predicting that 2026 will be the year of “Linux on the Desktop”?
I really wonder how much of an impact these AI tools are going to have on the Linux ecosystem. Seems like huge potential advantage brewing over proprietary OSs. Look how fast Omarchy came together and improved…it’s phenomenal.
I wish you were right, but Microsoft has a lot of money they can throw at the problem. Right now they don't care about Windows because their money comes from Azure. There are a few concerns here: if people _really_ moved away from Windows that would actually threaten the Azure ecosystem. Further, since Microsoft doesn't care to make a profit (with Windows) they could also just throw resources at Windows because it supports their Azure business. Microsoft can hire talent if they need to and turn the ship around.
Absolutely. Fuck them.
I am curious whether they will "suddenly realized" this after the community feedback process they initiated because they supposedly care so much about their users. Then, out of nowhere, they discovered that users do not want to be spied on or treated as the product. They just want to use their fucking operating system in peace without Microsoft constantly forcing its own products on them.
I wonder when that realization came and why. Maybe they started losing market share to Apple or users just prefer phones to pc even more?
Linux works about as well on the desktop as it did in 2003 - if you know what you're doing, you can make it work, and if not, you can still run a browser but most things won't work for you.
Linux is better than Windows on the desktop because Windows got worse, not because Linux got better.
Unless you mean for gaming. That was Valve's exit strategy from Windows.
Much of big tech became Product leaders running amok. Somehow It shifted from users know best to "Product" knows best.
I think this all stemmed everyone wanting to be Apple except no one actually achieved it and now we have 3 different versions of the audio control panel in Windows, the start button is somehow in the middle of the screen, and windows search no longer searches your PC.
Deleting "Product" might save windows, short of that, I am doubtful.