Will they lobby for laws that prohibit Linux or make it difficult to install? What actions might they take in the future?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7lI2fyyleY&pp=ygUVZmx5dGVjaCBMaW51eCB3aW5kb3dz
spoiler
It’s an Apil fools video. Not real
The desktop has been losing market for a while. I feel Windows is already under serious threat (if not already in the minority) when you think about all the devices that mainstream audiences orbit around (phones, tablets, portable consoles, etc), often using the Linux kernel. Only about a third of most website traffic comes from desktops.
Many of the people who frequently use Windows desktop do so because of their job, and often avoid using it outside of work as much as possible, since it feels like… well, work.
Microsoft has been desperately trying to try to appeal to those other bigger sectors of the pie and has failed every time.
Some others have already said the “embrace, extend, extinguish” but here’s my take on it. Pair it with Secure Boot and TPM 2.0
- Embrace: Secure Boot can already work with Linux, how lucky! This gives them not exactly control, but authoritative denial over your boot process and hardware.
- Extend: This is the part that remains to be seen. If they feel threatened enough by the shift in the gaming landscape, mind you not over losing out on sales or the hearts of gamers or anything, but again control, they may begin to make Linux offerings. A concession to allow an honest to god, thick Office client on Linux would certainly appeal to some. Adobe gets in on that action to back them up with Photoshop and Activision with Call of Duty, etc.
- Extinguish: TPM 2.0. One of the less talked about features of this is remote attestation (“Remote attestation allows changes to the user’s computer to be detected by authorized parties. For example, software companies can identify unauthorized changes to software, including users modifying their software to circumvent commercial digital rights restrictions.” - DRM). We’re already seeing this with CoD on Windows. They’ll allow you to run much requested Windows software on Linux, even provide direct support possibly, but at the cost of not precisely control but authoritative denial. Which still works out to be control in most ways since if you want to use the software and they are to remotely attest, they can also insist that part of that attestation is you running some sort of telemetry or not running software they disagree with.
The reason I think this route is highly likely is because it plays well with uninformed consumers. To the untrained eye it looks like they’re giving ground and actually allowing for broader support of their software while effectively gaining control over the environment once again and removing the biggest benefits of running FOSS on your system.
Also worth noting that they own Github, which puts them in a position to disrupt a huge amount of Linux infrastructure if they ever feel like it. They might also pull some weird move like trying to buy Canonical or something like that.
This is a good point. I’ve been trying to make it clear in a lot of my predictions that Microsoft doesn’t want or even need full control, just enough. They don’t even need to do anything particular here other than continue to manage github with their current level of incompetence.
Was trying to source an article here, wasn’t there just an outage or some other major issue a few days ago? Anyways …
I think what’s missing is the author of pulseaudio and systemd among other “modern” Linux tech (I.e. adopted by many popular distros) is a Microsoft employee.
Well there is the 9/11 change that may be happening soon: https://techrights.org/n/2025/08/26/The_UEFI_9_11_Part_I_Introduction_to_Impending_Catastrophe_Micr.shtml
Its possible a LOT of linux machines wont work after this date.
Fortunately I’m safe from that bc right after I assembled my current PC (even before moving the distro to it; yes, moving, not “installing”), I entered BIOS and disabled secure boot, IPM 2.0 and pretty much everything Spyware related. Only then I booted Clonezilla and extracted from the backup image. Since I had done the same on the old PC in BIOS, that means my Arch was never installed with SB and IPM active.
On top of that the last update of BIOS nearly broke it, so I flashed it back to the more stable version the motherboard came with. And since I have no intention to update BIOS, I’m safe from all that trouble.
Hopefully people who use SecureBoot have plans in place
I just disabled SecureBoot on my end.
I use Secure Boot on all my machines but I just use my own keys with Foxboron’s wonderful
sbctlutility instead of the hacky shim/MOK method most distributions use.Oh, neat! I had no idea something like this existed!
Hopefully!
Another funny thing is that there is speculation because firmware developers…many not actually be checking the dates at all in some cases. Cause that would mean extra work. So its very possible this date comes and goes, nothing happens to cheap devices.
That was based on conversations im seeing in other forums. Not sure honestly.
Either way, we will find out soon!
I believe they just don’t care, since not only is Windows not very profitable anymore, the real money is at businesses. So as long as they sell licenses to businesses (business laptops, etc), but also GitHub Enterprise (yes, Micro$oft also owns GitHub) Microsoft earns enough money that way. And also think cloud (Azure)…
My guess is therefor that the focus on Windows isn’t that big anymore. I just hope more companies and gaming devs/publishes also push native binaries towards Linux.
Agreed
I think Windows is primarily a development environment for Xbox, just as macOS is primarily a development environment for iOS Everything else of value from Microsoft is available via the web/cloud (even Office)
Eventually, Microsoft might even decide that it’s more profitable to abandon Windows completely
office 365 is a fraction of the true power of office. do not even try to compare the two.
MS hasn’t released an Office version outside 365 for 8 years.
365 is Office for them.
I stand corrected. Thanks.
I’ll respect office 365 when it respects recusive power points
I think you’re mixing up Office 365 and Office Online.
Office 365 is a subscription for Microsoft Office that includes access to both the full, more powerful desktop Office applications and the much less powerful Office Online.
Though I don’t think it’s even called Office 365 anymore, but I don’t respect MS enough to bother to Google what they’re calling it now.
I agree
But how many paying customers need features that are not in the online/cloud versions of Office?
Sure this is a shrinking number of people?
the same could be said about libreoffice, but the only reason I gave Microsoft money for office was for dealing with specifically the edge cases where a document won’t work with other word processing programs. The browser based ms office is comparable to Google docs, usable 98% of the time.
not only is Windows not very profitable anymore, the real money is at businesses.
Hear me out, this is exactly why they care. Windows as a product isn’t profitable anymore, but as a market share it is. Apple has always enjoyed their locked down ecosystem and Google is trying to completely block side loading on devices we already largely don’t have control over the bootloader. It’s no secret Microsoft has been seething with jealousy for years.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
You’re a soulless corporate ghoul, how do you make those numbers work for you? Why do you think they have the absolute gall to tell you to throw your computer out and get one that supports TPM 2.0? Why do you think there are still so many people willing or not that will swallow that bitter pill that’s Windows 11?
I’m not trying to call you out in particular here or anything, but I think it’s foolish to assume they don’t
I agree with you.
Everyone who is saying that windows isn’t profitable or no longer an important part of microsoft’s business strategy is just a parrot succumbing to the snowball effect.
Microsoft already lost the home OS battle when people switch their main devices to smartphones with iOS or Android.
The question is also what would US government do. You miss the fact that windows-x86 complex is self supporting cornerstone of US soft and economic power, also spying. What will they do to prop up that monopoly?
M$ is switching to defense and surveillance software. Once they failed to force their crap OS into the phone market, they knew their monopoly days were numbered on the PC. They are hoping to lock in devs on GitHub, but it looks like that might backfire with their overt push for CoPilot use.
How exactly do they hope to lock devs in github??? That’s absurd, there’s no way they can achieve that. I can always take my projects elsewhere and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.
Yea, but will anyone else find it?
They will, if you change the links and share them with at least your users.
How exactly do they hope to lock devs in github??? That’s absurd, there’s no way they can achieve that. I can always take my projects elsewhere and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.
I can’t tell if you’re joking? If not, what do you think “lock-in” actually means?
It doesn’t mean that it is impossible to leave, it means that there is substantial switching cost. And, that is certainly the case for github-hosted projects: all active contributors need to make a new account somewhere else, issues and discussions need to be migrated, CI workflows typically need to be rewritten, and good luck finding something that gives as much free compute for CI as github does. Yes, it’s easy to mirror a git repo onto another service, but github is much much more than just git repo hosting and each of their features have their own switching cost.
Also, OP actually said “lock devs in” rather than “lock projects in” - I actually am forced to have a github account if i want to contribute to projects which refuse to move their issues off of it 😢 … and the difficulty in creating new accounts anonymously these days prevents me from contributing to several things (lemmy, for instance) which i otherwise would.
If not, what do you think “lock-in” actually means?
That they’ll lock you out of your repo without access to manage it, maybe? Or threaten you to make your software inoperable in Windows, if you don’t comply? IDK, they can always think of sonething but if they think I don’t already have full copies of my projects on my computer, they’re deeply mistaken. 😂
in the computing context, “lock-in” is shorthand for vendor lock-in.
I’d wager they have enough resources to stave it off for as long as possible, and when they can’t do that anymore they will have a strategy for making money off of their “services” in the linux space.
Microsoft is part of the cabal at this point. Businesses give it money because they’re expected to.
Secure boot and anti-cheat.
That not an option. If Linux is a serious threat it means that a normal people could use it without any problem, with all the common software needed (Office, a browser and few other things).
At this point trying to lock down the PC to have the be able to run Windows is not really an option, people could simply choose to not use Windows anymore and be productive anyway.Only problem are games, but it is probably solvable
Work with hardware and software vendors to break linux compatibility.
They cannot do that to every manufacturer, as most of countries are incentivized to not dependent on American or any foreign product.
I can see China or European manufacturer will slowly move from Windows. At least China already learning the hard way from Android-Huawei relationship.
They’ve been busy doing that for the past 20+ years. It’s been an annoyance, but not really a deterrent.
Which in the precise moment when Linux is a serious threat is not possible since there is no assurance that the hardware vendors would accept, given they now have an alternative.
Add more spyware, isn’t that the de facto mentality of Microsoft? Add more spyware so they can force you to buy more crap, al for the “greater good”. Oh yeah, and most likely try and take over secureboot with some Microsoft crap allowed only, “for to protect the children”.
Make a version of Office that works on Linux natively.
Why? Office is such shit.
That works on their version of linux.
Linux has been becoming a “serious threat” for 20+ years now. I’ll wait.
Don’t get me wrong I like Linux a lot. But if you step back and look objectively, it has a lot of issues trying to grow outside the hobby/enthusiast community for the desktop.
I think that linux has a couple of things that might help it grow outside its traditional niche that it hasn’t in the past. Proton has been a major step forward in to the gaming scene. A lot of people are very unhappy about windows 11. The EU in particular is also investing in ways to get out of American techs thumb due to the geopolitical landscape.
I don’t have too high expectations personally but who knows.
pays even more to hardware manufacturers to add windows by default, and make drivers windows only.
