Linux is an operating system, similar to Windows, but with many different versions due to the nature of being open source and fully customizable. To install Linux, you must choose an install method and choose a Linux distribution.
So that’s a thing.
Linux is an operating system, similar to Windows, but with many different versions due to the nature of being open source and fully customizable. To install Linux, you must choose an install method and choose a Linux distribution.
So that’s a thing.
However, the practice of calling the Microsoft system, Linux, is just a mistake.
I’d like to ask you please to make the small effort necessary to call the system Microsoft/Linux, and that way to help us get a share of the credit.
By this point anyone that doesn’t understand that Microsoft is a services company (like all tech companies trend to, As Stallman Intended) with an OS section is a decade late to the party.
The Linux-Microsoft war only exists on the minds of GNU/Linux users.
Parodper,
Actually, microsoft were vehemently anti-linux throughout most of their existence. It’s only when it was clear that microsoft was loosing the services war that microsoft dialed back their anti-linux agenda.
Today microsoft has adapted and promotes linux & FOSS insofar that you can run it on windows or using their data center offerings. As far as the “war” goes, it might be over but then again many people still remember the old microsoft where embrace, extend, extinguish was microsoft’s dark strategy and maybe people are still wary that microsoft hasn’t truly given up it’s old ways.
Yeah, some people tend to anthropomorphize companies, and like to imagine themselves as being in the early ’00, when EEE was still a thing.
Parodper,
I’m certainly guilty of speaking this way myself. It’s happened several times even in the post you responded to. But I want to clarify that it’s more of a literary device for me. Saying “microsoft were vehemently anti-linux” is really meant as a stand in for “the people running microsoft were vehemently anti-linux”. I don’t mean to literally anthropomorphize the company, but many of us learned to speak this way and don’t do it consciously.
Honestly I think a big reason this stopped was the antitrust suit, the provisions of which ended not that long ago. Coincidentally or not, Microsoft has resumed some questionable tactics of using their OS monopoly to promote their browser. So have microsoft changed or will they do the power plays again if the opportunity arises? It’s hard to know for sure because they are good at playing the long game.
Personally I’m quite worried about the secure boot situation where most linux users are actually booting linux via microsoft’s secureboot keys. Even though most x86 computers allow owners to disable secure boot, windows no longer requires this to be the case and I find it alarming that microsoft have this power over so many computers by default. I worry about what could happen if a sufficiently ruthless CEO decided to exercise that control in a power play. And mark my words if it happens, it will be in the name of protecting users, which is the go-to excuse for more restrictions.