Originally Posted by
cekim
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Liranan
This has been a wet dream for them for years but there is no way they can extinguish Linux as there is no other OS that can replace it. M$py have no presence in the server market and it's impossible for Win Server to actually become usable on mainframes. Routers, phones, tablets, T.V.'s etc. also can't be made to run Windows as Win RT was a spectacular failure for obvious reasons. The best M$py can do is transform Windows into a proprietary Linux distro, which isn't that unlikely as Linux is more stable than Windows and is the future of computing.
As with all things - there is a spectrum of use-cases and users .
I bet there are an enormous number of "filthy casual" linux users who, if offered, would be happy to run ubuntu or suse WSL alongside their games without rebooting. I think they are very, very close to capturing a large plurality of linux users with a "good enough" solution.
At least right now, the environment is a kludge for real usage:
- need vcxsrv or equivalent Xwindows manager
- $DISPLAY settings generally once you do are wonky
- Xwindows performance is worse than "yawn". It appears to be SIGNIFICANTLY more stable using VcXsrv than things I've used in the past (ming, no-machine, vnc, etc...), but on a 4.5GHz 7980XE, 2x1080ti, I should never have to watch window tiles rendering when I re-size an emacs window... I certainly don't in native linux unless the system is heavily loaded.
It is much more stable - I can finally leave ssh'd -X windows open from a remote machine overnight on local GbE and/or 10GbE. Can't say I've ever had a system that could do that reliably.
- openSSH is "beta" so PKI with no pass-phrase doesn't work and setting up sshd appears to require a little tinkering.
- still can't open MSFT windows-windows remotely on another machine. Until I can - it's a toy to me.
- MSFT needs to get over this idea that they own the WM (explorer.exe) - full, native support of X would resolve most of the above and make a pretty compelling solution. I would not trust it to run long sims and its a resource hog, its disk I/O sucks, but I'm not everyone - see above on that "plurality of users".
However, despite these limitations, it is a LOT closer to actually usable as a unix desktop.
Given that, people who aren't asking as much will be happy with this and use it vs rebooting. Rebooting doesn't sound so bad in principle, but in practice, you always need to do it at the worst times. A computer that is just "there" ready to do your bidding is always more pleasant to use than one that requires you to boot it up, wait, organize your windows, etc...