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Comment by chithanh | Hacker News Reader

That is not the point. The point is by employing dark patterns, Microsoft makes it progressively more difficult for normal users to switch away from Microsoft.

Want to switch default browser? Adding yet one more step to stop you.

Want to boot other operating system? Now you have to go to UEFI setup and change boot settings.

etc.

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It is the point, it is like arguing to switch away from Spectrum, C64, Atari, Amiga, Acorn,.... back in the day.

PC only got out of control, because Compaq was clever on their reverse engineering process, and IBM failed to uphold their ownership.

Want to run Linux? Why go through the hassle of some Linux OEM when you can just keep Windows and run WSL?

This is exactly my problem with all of this. Microsoft makes a way to run Linux desktop programs on Windows, meaning that they DO care about the market share that _desktop_ Linux represents. At the same time, they make steps to make running actual desktop Linux OSes as inconvenient as possible, which incidentally makes WSL appear more and more convenient every time.

At this point, the simplest explanation is malice.

What they care about is the market share of the developers that buy Apple devices to develop UNIX applications, and couldn't care less about Linux itself, and are now not happy with the direction macOS is going.

WSL focus on Linux, because the Linux kernel ABI is the new POSIX.

Well yes. Strategically, it makes all kinds of sense for them to force people who want to run Linux into their walled garden. Sure, you can run Linux, as long as it's safely contained inside Windows, an approved version, and preferably running something that requires Windows above you (e.g. DirectX inside WSL being a thin shim).

However, what makes sense for Microsoft may not be in our best interest.

It always was. There wasn't a day in the history of Microsoft that they were aiming for a level playingfield.

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