Using Linux (the kernel) to pull off such proprietary lock-in is going to be difficult because of the kernel's GPLv2 license (although, Tivoization is still an available tactic).
Using the Linux desktop (which is what you seem to be talking about), on the other hand, to pull of such proprietary lock-in is going to compete directly with Windows's desktop market share; which is why I think Microsoft will never push the Linux desktop in an Embrace-Extend attempt.
As for desktop linux: microsoft has four versions of linux userland in its app store for desktop, published by Microsoft. Windows provides drivers and boot - that's its value-add.
In the context of the GPL, "Tivoization" refers specifically to the practice of blocking modifications to the running software without breaking the copyleft requirements of GPLv2 (and similar) licenses. Sure, Microsoft could that here, but hasn't so far. And while I'm not inclined to believe they'll do the right thing, I don't see or suspect them doing the wrong thing yet.
> Microsoft's model here is to tack on those bits and charge. It's not some secret ploy, it's in the article.
I did not allege any secret ploy. And from what I read, there's no mention of any charges (yet).
> published by Microsoft
Which distros exactly? As I recalled (and just verified), Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, and Debian are published by Canonical, SuSE, and Debian, respectively.
> Windows provides drivers and boot
Not adequately enough, one could argue. No graphics, no raw devices, last I checked.
Something like ... freedom lock-in? I'm not sure I see how EEE can be without some form of lock-in. A trap is necessarily required for the "Extinguish" step to work.
There's a button in the settings to remove it all: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17085/windows-8-res...
It's the same problem on Linux... sudo {apt-get install,pacman -S,whatever} $blah and now have fun setting up and restoring everything in /etc/, ~/, /var, ~/.config/, etc. to just like it was before.
%UserProfile%\{Desktop,Documents,Music,Pictures,Videos,...}?
I'm not sure if it will work for software though, it tends to require random setup like registry changes and would also require reinstallation. Which may be difficult if it was pay-to-install software of if the original vendor is defunct.
Is $HOME an environmental variable? It's certainly exposed as one. Same here.
> Will there be multiple settings of it?
Will there be multiple settings of $HOME? You can certainly set it to a different value for some program, but does that mean you have multiple settings of it? Same here.
> Hopefully if the user's data is all in one subdirectory tree and I could cope.
"Hopefully" the same is true when you do the same on Linux and cope there?
> I'm not sure if it will work for software though, it tends to require random setup like registry changes and would also require reinstallation. Which may be difficult if it was pay-to-install software of if the original vendor is defunct.
...what? You explicitly asked about saving "user's own data" and not "installed software". The entire point of your comment was that you wanted to wipe the software while keeping the user data. So I gave you a solution for keeping the user data that let you wipe the software. Now you complain it doesn't work for migrating installed software?!
I think they want to disentangle the user's installed software from the OS, rather than disentangling the software from the data.
Huh? /home on Linux contains user software now? That's literally the example he gave for this on Linux...
If a Linux system has proprietary software installed, you'd probably also have to copy /usr/local and/or /opt. Hopefully it would be statically linked or supplying any share libraries it needed but I suppose there's no guarantee.
> Somebody [who] just asked me to help fix their Windows laptop
to saving
> software installed in my home directory (stuff I wrote or at least compiled myself)
This person asking you for help with a slow Windows computer (this person is yourself?) also compiles and installs his own software in his /home? So you keep his /home in an effort to keep his software... because somehow he doesn't know how to reinstall Windows? But anyway...
----------------------------------------
> There's a missing step after reinstalling the OS of running one of more apt-get commands to reinstall the software. Windows doesn't have apt-get of course.
Chocolatey, or just run the .MSI/.EXE...
> I do tend to have software installed in my home directory (stuff I wrote or at least compiled myself) and generally it would still work after replacing the OS.
I do tend to have software installed in my D:\ drive (stuff I wrote or at least compiled myself) and generally it would still work after replacing the OS.
> Missing shared libraries could break it, but it's not the sort of software where that's an issue.
Missing shared libraries pretty much never break those on Windows... there's literally only 2 shared libraries that a large fraction of programs need (Visual C/C++ runtimes) and those are installed by practically any program you try to install so you won't even notice.
It still baffles me that people see that as a negative. "Any fool can use a GUI". Yes, that's .. that's why GUIs are popular. They make things easier to use without having to know the details behind them.
It has an app store, and it has an installable package manager - https://chocolatey.org/
Sorry if I gave the impression that I don't care about the software the user installed themselves. Well, actually I don't, but the user themselves may care.
On Windows the user profile location is read from the registry (if you care: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList) which is on the disk (if you care: %SystemRoot%\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM) and %UserProfile% is set for that, and %UserProfile% is presumably an environment like any other. It's up to each bit of software whether it cares about such things.
> On Windows I get confused with "administrator" vs "all users" vs "current user" vs "some other user" that an organisation is using for some reason. It seems like stuff can end up in different places.
On Linux I get confused with /root vs /usr/share vs /var vs ... vs ~/ vs ~some-other-user/ that an organization is using for some reason. It seems like stuff can end up in different places.
I can't say I see what's so amazing about the Linux and so awful about the Windows near-equivalents here.
Otherwise it may be similar in principle, just somewhat user-unfriendly in the Windows version. /etc/passwd is a bit easier than HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
You don't. You also don't on Linux either. Copying /opt or /usr/local will restore neither the user shortcuts nor the config files in /etc, for one (er, two). Nor any system-related configurations like services that need to run at startup. Or a ton of other miscellaneous things that I can't list here off the top of my head but which will inevitably always come up.
And it's a practical deceitful comparison when such a small fraction of the software you (er, the person-whose-computer-you-were-trying-to-fix, remember?)'d have installed falls in this category. The vast majority of Linux software is open- and installed via a package manager for which you can't even do what you just suggested. Yeah, maybe you'll somehow keep 3 proprietary programs just by copy-paste or something. Now have fun setting up the 50 other non-"proprietary" packages you had installed all over again just like you would on Windows.