14 DAY TRIAL // Once described by Microsoft as “a cancer,” the Linux world has become a key focus for Microsoft these days, especially as part of the company’s transformation started shortly after Satya Nadella took over the CEO role from Steve Ballmer.
With Nadella at the helm of the company, the software giant has made it very clear that “Microsoft loves Linux,” and this message has been reiterated pretty much with every single occasion.
At some level, this makes perfect sense, as Microsoft has become more interested in developers, and in their turn, developers are often deeply committed to the Linux ecosystem.
But for a company that stood so firmly against Linux, this is quite a change of mind. And not only that Microsoft likes Linux, but even Steve Ballmer, the former company leader who used the cancer phrase, thinks the open-source world is worth the love.
These days, instead of fighting against Linux, Microsoft wants to make this platform its own ally in a struggle to transform Windows 10 in the operating system for virtually everything and everyone.
Linux now runs on top of Windows 10 thanks to a feature called Windows Subsystem for Linux, and several super-popular distributions are available in the Microsoft Store, including Ubuntu. Microsoft joined forces with quite a lot of Linux companies, and a substantial share of Linux developers are now using Windows 10 thanks to the improvements mentioned above.
However, Windows 10 is far from becoming the operating system for everyone, as Microsoft itself hopes. And the most recent blunders that the software giant produced on its own show once again that an alternative to Windows 10 does exist, and that alternative is Linux.
Sure, many people think switching to Apple is the right way to go given the somewhat more user-friendly approach, but the overall costs of this transition is what pushes more people to Linux. Apple continues to build devices that are way too expensive for a significant share of computer users, so it’s either Windows or Linux for many out there.
One of those blunders that made some users look beyond Windows is the October 2018 Update fiasco. Launched on October 2 with much fanfare, Windows 10 October 2018 Update, also referred to as version 1809, was pulled only a few days later after Microsoft discovered a critical bug which might have caused the removal of user files stored in libraries.
The next few weeks were all about further bugs discovered in Windows 10 version 1809, and this update eventually turned out to be one of the buggiest releases in a long time.
As a result, I’ve seen quite a lot of people praising the world of Linux, and some of our readers told me this is something you don’t see happening on distributions like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Of course, there’s no flawless operating system out there, but for many users, the Windows 10 version 1809 fiasco was just too much to continue using Microsoft products.
Statistics, however, don’t seem to indicate that an en-masse migration to Linux is happening right now, though there’s actually a chance that more users are actually exploring such a switch in the coming months. Linux isn’t exactly the right operating system for everyone, as it’s the case of gamers, for instance, but on the other hand, it serves quite a wide array of purposes with advanced functionality you don’t find on Windows.
Getting in touch with users is always the best way to receive feedback on a certain product, service, or trend, and because Microsoft has such a hard time getting Windows right, you are definitely the ones that should help guide the company towards its final goal of making Windows the best OS for everyone.
Why did you give up on Windows and switched to Linux? What does Microsoft need to do to win you back? Is there any Linux feature you’d want to see on Windows?
Let us and Microsoft know what you think in the box below.