Mark my words: Windows will become a Linux distro that includes a good compatibility layer that people will take advantage of in other distros, and this will mark the year of the GNU + Linux desktop

Dumbest take of 2025, I'm calling it early.

Not "he's just autistic" or "it was a Bellamy salute?"
I knew Lemmy was Linux centric, but I didn't realize just how much lmao
- Wrong thread?
- All instances I've seen of "he's just autistic" on Lemmy were sarcastic and were making fun people actually arguing that was a valid excuse on other platforms.

Mark mine: Microsoft and Windows will be promoted by government and people will lap it up. Linux will be vilified and this will be accepted by the public, at least in the USA.

Eh....I don't see it.
I think the more common response would be "What's Linux?"

Yeah that's not going to happen.

However, I think Windows will become more and more tied to the Microsoft cloud offerings.

Very much this. I can see one potential future Microsoft product being something that is to be installed on a thin client PC sold to consumers for cheap. It will run not much more than a browser in which all apps will load from Microsoft servers, and all storage will be on the Microsoft cloud. And if you miss a monthly payment they'll basically hold all your files for ransom until you start paying again.
I can practically hear the Microsoft execs making some very unsavoury noises about that idea.
As for (admittedly somewhat weak) proof they're headed in this direction: Wordpad is a useful small program that would easily fit onto a thin client and there'd be room for documents created by it on the limited storage available. It has to have some storage for browser cache after all.
Wordpad was recently cancelled, and users urged to use Word instead. Which is not free of (further) cost like Wordpad was.
- Windows Chromebook
- That's not too far from Windows S edition. That more closely mimics the smartphone model, but still allows the Windows app store.
  Wordpad is much more easily explained: They don't want to maintain it anymore, since that costs money. It was also cannibalizing sales of Word, and often left users frustrated. Frankly, it's weird that they maintained it as long as they did.
  Now, solitaire becoming a subscription, that's a blatant cash grab.
- Imagine having to PAY to write some prettified text. Killing off some basic and essential software that literally every operating system has seems like such a smart move towards OS dominance /s
Windows subsystem for copilot
Windows will become more and more tied to the Microsoft cloud offerings.
imagine spending thousand of dollars on hardware only to have dependencies in NSA data center for your own safety, of course
Truly feel the ultimate goal is to make Windows itself a subscription model

So animals evolve towards being crabs, operating systems evolve towards being linux distros?

Animals evolve towards being crabs? Wait, hold on with the linux stuff. Lets circle back to the core concept of this premise.
......crabs?
- https://www.npr.org/2024/09/18/1200121022/crab-evolution-science-history

I have marked your words “incorrect”

This won't happen, there is a lot of industrial software that digs it's fingers deep into windows subsystems that wine does not support. Even popular commercial, like adobe, cannot run on wine correctly

At this point I'm not even sure Microsoft knows how some of those sub systems work, they just migrating ancient code bases and patching it enough to make it work again on the new compilers.

So windows kernel will exist untill everyone else leaves.

Move your workflow away from windows, if you can, as Microsoft doesn't care enough about their userbase.

This is why there's still Windows XP running major systems.
Windows kept changing anyway so maybe it's possible that'll still happen and people just get left with legacy OSs
a lot of industrial software that digs it’s fingers deep into windows subsystems that wine does not support. Even popular commercial, like adobe, cannot run on wine correctly
I'd be more inclined to believe that these things are so difficult (nearly impossible) to get to work under wine due to some eldritch connection deep into the bowels of windows subsystems so old that current devs don't even know what they do... IF it weren't for the fact that a lot of them have fully functioning MacOS versions out there running. Maybe I'm a conspiracy theorist, but I fully believe a LOT of these big commercial software companies are ACTIVELY working to fight their own software being compatible with Wine - actively spending time, money, and effort to block Linux compatibility (completely negating the usual answer of "it's too expensive to support Linux when so few customers use Linux").
Naa, I was a Windows kernel dev for Intel a decade ago. We had guys that knew different parts of the kernel. Microsoft engineers know the kernel well. They have to, they have engineers from different companies fixing bugs and making changes. I had my contact for the parts of the kernel I was responsible for and other engineers had their contacts. You have to think, some of these engineers at Intel have been working on the same subsystem for twenty+ years.
So windows kernel will exist until everyone else leaves.
Yeah, that's what he is eluding to. Microsoft keeps adding to Azure Linux. One day, there will be a Windows user land for Linux, i.e. Win/Linux instead of GNU/Linux. It will be much cheaper to run a Win/Linux distro in the cloud than full Windows. Most users just use the browser anyways. Anybody that actually needs a program not supported by the Win/Linux distro can fall back to the full Windows. Eventually everything will be supported on Win/Linux. Plus, WoW64 is already a translation layer for 32bit Windows applications and there are others and have been others over the years. A translation layer to run legacy Windows software would be nothing new for Microsoft.

There's a Jon Lajoie song called "Radio Friendly Song". There's a moment in that cong where he's describing the (as of 15 years ago) modern trend of radio friendly songs being the same garbage every song. And the feeling one has thinking that every time a new song is released you would think the general public would eventually reject the same 4 cord note progression in every song. Then, he belts out a line that I wish were isolated, and could becomd a meme onto itself. He's singing about how you would think the public wojld eventually reject these songs, and follows that up with "BUT YOU WERE WROOOONG!!!!"

And I hear that line everytime someone says something blatently wrong, I hear just that line of the song. I wish it were on youtube, isolated so a 3 second soundbyte so I could just post it when I see something like that.

Because readkng you say that Microsoft in 2025 will turn Windows into a Linux distro.......

"But you were wrooooong!!!"

Jon lajoie and I grew up in the same neighborhood (at the same time).. Legend
- Wow. That's a great story. Now show me your genitals, your genitals. Show me your genitals....YOUR GENITALIA!!!
And here's the link to it
OP is just MC Confusing.

Well, yeah: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Nothing to extend/extinguish. UNIX existed first, and has a very different use-case. Linux shares that history.
NT was developed from DEC Alpha, which came well after Unix (so learned some lessons from it). I don't see it being inferior to Unix/Linux, but different.
Both have strengths and weaknesses.
One area that Linux really beats Windows is the IoT/embedded/low power devices. The NT kernel just has too much built in.

I'm have whatever he's having

I don't think they would bother doing that much work at the core of the operating system. They are too busy playing with the UI and cloud integrations they don't care about the algorithms the kernel runs on and they have a better driver situation currently anyway. I don't see the route to this.

buddy there's a better chance of trump transitioning than this

I think it will become an entirely cloud based OS with a thin client booting the machine straight into their Edge browser. Pay as you go operating system that never leaves their Azure walled garden. Google's Chromebooks were just ahead of their time. As Spock said: "it's Linux Jim, but not as we know it".

It can happen if Microsoft decides not to spend money on making a new kernel because they will need one eventually. But a compatibility layer? Why would they not make it exclusive to Windows?

I don't think it's guaranteed that Linux will be a viable kernel in a future where NT's forced to be abandoned unless it's simply because Microsoft refuses to maintain it. Linux is older than NT, so if age alone killed kernels, it'd die first. I think it's a pretty safe bet that Linux can be kept viable for a long time, so if Microsoft wanted, they could keep NT viable for a long time.
- I heard there were some issues with NT so I assumed it'd die well before Linux (if Linux doesn't kill itself in the next 2-3 years of course).

Doubt.

Wasn't there a button in that game where the detective just starts punching? I mean, I'm not saying that would be the appropriate reaponse to this take, but I'm also not NOT saying that would be the appropriate response to this take.

I think this is actually possible. The (terribly inconvenient and piecemeal) change from Control Panel to Settings has involved making a lot of the Windows configuration options accessible through PowerShell and .NET (which is actually a good thing - it makes it much easier to administrate a system remotely via command prompt vs RDP, and it makes it easier to configure the system programmatically). It's not complete yet, but I could see that in the future the Windows user environment is entirely built on top of .NET, at which point you could theoretically run it on any OS that supports .NET.

Except that would be negative not positive. Microsoft is all about making lots of money and measuring KPI.
- I dunno, I think they make more from server and that tech stack is still likely to be proprietary as hell. And Linux doesn't really have anything that could adequately take the place of Active Directory and group policy (I mean, you could, but it would be a ton of work getting it up and running at a similar level). They could also still sell their OS with the promise of everything working the same as people are used to out of the box.
  But I don't think they'll go that direction, at least not for a while
- While I get the Microshaft hate, it's still a major part of enterprise computing and it's not going away anytime soon. Both the .NET platform and .NET Core are open source, so rebuilding Windows on them would necessarily make it a more open system, which could only be a good thing.

This is exactly what MS has been doing. They will have a “preview” edition of “new windows” sometime in the next 5 years that is built entirely on GNU/Linux with a port of the windows shell on top.

It's already partially there with WSL. Still has a long way to go. But it isn't completely rediculous.

Isn't that kinda the opposite? I thought WSL was just the ability to just run linux cli stuff on a machine running windows
- as far as I understand it's more like a VM. But yeah it's quite literally the opposite of what OP suggested.
- Yea, it's an API, just like POSIX was decades ago. (Though more advanced, it's been decades after all). .

If Windows becomes a Linux distro that might save their share in normal desktop usage.

So I don't see it happening.

They don't care about their users.

Lpt: guess as many crazy things about the future as possible and some will turn out true, then you can be a prophet

Maybe I could see that for Windows server. As more of that market moves to azure, the os matters less.

I've heard rumors that the dom0 equivalent in their azure virtualization platform is now Linux based. They still use an in house hypervisor, but may have moved to Linux as the management stack.

It's a long shot, but if Microsoft were moving anything at all, it would be the server product given it actually struggles in market share.

On the desktop, they just don't have much reason. They barely evolve the NT kernel so it doesn't cost them a huge amount. The Linux approach to drivers would completely mess up their driver ecosystem. With the world of modern standby, windows pretty much gave up on long term suspend and instead hibernates, Linux refuses to even try to hibernate with secure boot. The features a Linux kernel brings to the table just do not matter to the windows desktop market. It would be a giant migration expense for no benefit compared to their current strategy of just hosting a Linux kernel as a virtualization guest.

I mean I would love to use a Linux oriented desktop management instead of Windows shell, but it's abundantly clear that would be non negotiable for Microsoft, so I'd end up still stuck with my least favorite part of the windows experience even if the kernel were Linux

That’s some strong copium

No it isn't. It's actually an old theory. Back when Microsoft started their "MS Loves Linux" propaganda, this was the rumour. With all the stuff coming out with .Net, PowerShell, and other tools quickly supporting Linux, that seemed like what was happening.
Actually, that did kindof happen, which is what Azure Linux is, but without the extensive compatibility layer.