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Comment by umeshunni | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. At this point, there isn't much value for Microsoft to hang on to the legacy of Windows - with most of their revenue coming from Azure/Cloud and developer products, it might be time to say goodbye to that legacy and make it subsystem on a modern Linux-based system. That might also be a way for them to become more relevant in mobile devices and platforms.

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The line item in Microsoft's last annual report which encompasses Windows is "More Personal Computing" and shows $10 billion dollars of operating income on $42 billion dollars of revenue.

Windows revenue grew $925 million. Not to $925 million. By $925 million.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/annualreports/ar2018/annualr...

> At this point, there isn't much value for Microsoft to hang on to the legacy of Windows

I would say this move by Microsoft is the exact opposite, because it maintains Windows at the centre of the picture.

Microsoft is basically saying, look you can have all your Linux goodness and best of all you can access all that goodness using your current Windows desktop.

Using WSL2 the between Windows/Linux are very blurred.

Well...having driver and app compatibility going back to Windows 7 in 10 is still a massive pro.

Linux's driver architecture and even app distribution is a fucking nightmare.

Windows is a massive business for Microsoft still.

Eh? ‘Most’ of MSFTs revenue comes from Windows and Office. Isn’t Azure/cloud/server less than ⅓? Not that that’s not substantial, but it’s not most.

Primarily Office business (on premises and cloud) server applications such as SQL and Windows Server, Azure, Windows.

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