The days when Linux and Windows were enemies are long gone

Aug 1, 2018 12:05 GMT  ·  By

There was a time when Windows and Linux were fierce enemies, and fans of the open-source world simply hated Microsoft’s operating system mostly as a result of the company’s attitude towards OSS.

Needless to say, many described Linux as a Windows killer, as they believed that open-source operating systems were the future of a world without Microsoft.

As we can all see right now, this never happened, and Windows continued to dominate the desktop world in a pretty obvious manner, despite more or less controversial tactics that Microsoft turned to. For example, the last en-masse transition off Windows that I can remember happened in the second half of 2015 when Microsoft released Windows 10 and pushed it as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8.1 users with the highly-criticized Get Windows 10 app.

In the meantime, however, Microsoft has adopted a friendlier approach not only regarding its own users, but also when it comes to the open-source world.

As compared to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who once said Linux was a cancer, successor Satya Nadella believes Linux is worth the love, so he guides the software giant towards a world that makes open-source a key product of its long-term vision.

In the last 12 months or so, Microsoft has fully embraced Linux in a way that surprised many. First of all, Linux is now part of Windows 10, with the Windows Subsystem for Linux allowing users to install a distribution from the Microsoft Store on top of Windows 10.

Microsoft <3 Linux.

This means developers no longer have to dual-boot Windows and Linux, or to use two different PCs, as they can run Linux within Windows 10 and continue their work without leaving Microsoft’s operating system.

Furthermore, Microsoft and its partners in the Linux world had joined forces for a series of improvements that nobody could have imagined back when Steve Ballmer was chief of Microsoft. For example, Microsoft has enabled custom Linux distributions on Windows 10, while Skype was released as a Snap on Ubuntu and Linux Mint. At the same time, Microsoft has invested aggressively in refining Skype for Linux, and at the same time, Visual Studio Code IDE was also released as a Snap on Ubuntu.

Microsoft is also a member of The Linux Foundation, and the company has even recommended Ubuntu as the most popular Linux for cloud.

Judging from Microsoft’s perspective, it’s pretty clear that Linux is no longer considered a rival, but more a close friend that helps the company build products for those who want to be productive in Windows 10.

When looking at market share numbers, there’s no indication that Linux can be a threat to Linux either. For example, the most recent statistics published by NetMarketShare indicate Windows was running on 88.43 percent of the world’s desktop computers last month, while Linux was pretty far behind with just 1.92 percent.

The rankings haven’t changed much from January 2018. Back in the first month of the year, Windows was leading the pack with 87.79 percent share, while Linux was holding a market share of 1.93. The difference has remained comfortable enough for Microsoft not to be concerned about losing the leading spot, and as it turns out, it is on the rise once again.

And this leads us to the main question in the title: can Linux still be considered a rival to Windows 10? Or is it just an alternative that would never pose any threat to Microsoft’s desktop operating system given that the Redmond-based software giant has invested into ways to make it part of Windows 10?

As usual, let us know what you think in the box after the jump.