Microsoft, just go all in: embrace Linux kernel and make a MS GUI on top of it, call it MSLinux or something. It will save time/money along the way I believe.
Wake me when MS offers Linux subsystem for Windows (basically commercial WINE). From what I have read, MS is not actually that interested in improving the Windows kernel anymore unless needed or profitable. Why don't they give up and run windows user space on Linux (or BSD) :)
I'm looking forward to MS just dropping their OS entirely and using linux as their back-end. Basically, Microsoft might be better off creating their own linux distribution running a "microsoft windows" windows manager.
At this point probably the smartest thing which Microsoft could do would be to adopt some Linux distro (perhaps OpenSuSE, which they already have some relationship with) and base all of their future development on top of it. At a stroke this would eliminate many of their security and malware problems, dramatically improving the user experience.
Windows remains prevalent, but at present as a software developer I'm not seeing much of a future for it, other than as a legacy system that I may need to support, and am recommending home and business users to move to other platforms (either Linux or Mac) whenever that's possible.
To be honest, Windows really should just rebase on to Linux. They can make their programs work on linux. But the OS isn't the future for Microsoft when it comes to profits. Their future is software and tooling. I don't follow MS's financials, but I bet their growth with Azure and Linux is far outpacing Windows license keys. I believe they have already indicated that Ubuntu is far more popular than their own server OS. The current and future cash cow is Microsoft making money off developer tooling/infrastructure and their apps.
And honestly, Microsoft isn't doing too bad at tooling. Had you told me 3 years ago I would be developing .NET applications, mostly ASP.Core, on linux, I woulda said you were stoned. But here I am today, cranking out .NET code that runs servers on Linux. And the tooling is pretty good and is just getting better.
MS is going all Oracle-y on us, they'll probably release a full fledged MS Linux distro soon.
(Social game: what will they call it? I'd say something like Unsinkable Linux ;-)
They should also have their own filesystem - ow, right, NTFS. I was thinking they could take another go at the database FS that stalled Vista a decade ago ...
I've been preaching this for years... if MS adopts Linux, ups their GUI effort to create something useful atop Wayland, while providing a seamless way to run Win32 apps until the world migrates to Linux on the desktop helmed by Microsoft, they will completely destroy Apple on short notice.
It would be a major, revolutionary move for Nadella to do this and I doubt he has the heft or charisma to sell this to the board/shareholders, but if Microsoft goes full steam ahead on Linux and dumps Windows, it's buh-bye Apple and everything they ever produced. They can probably even eat into Google's droid pie.
Ditch Win32/NT, port the cash cow called MS Office to Linux and polish a Windows-like GUI atop Linux/Wayland in the best way they can, be it via Qt, GTK, I don't care - just get it done... and set the world ablaze and free.
Bet you they could probably deliver something in under 3 years.
I've always thought that Microsoft's operating systems were the Albatross around their neck. Their apps and systems are OK. Having those available on a superior OS, like Linux would be good for the world, and MS.
Buying canonical would probably be the quickest way.
Sooner or later Microsoft will just build his GUI on Top of Linux and sell that or sell the support like Redhat. That would mean a lot to the computing World.
When .NET runs on more Devices they could just port more and more compatibility.
I think Microsoft should do what Apple did with BSD Unix aka Nextstep and merge it with their old OS.
Microsoft should take the Windows GUI and put it over Linux as a desktop manager. Microsoft could sell the Windows GUI for Linux users that want to run Windows apps.
A win-win solution would be for Microsoft to concentrate its resources on the 'Windows' GUI layer built on top of a GNU-Linux OS.
That would reduce their programmer requirements because they would no longer be working on the OS, but only on the GUI. That is pretty much what Apple did around 20 years ago with OSX. It would also permit them to make new releases every year or so, instead of every 5 years.
Meanwhile the world's open-source resources will maintain the underlying GNU-Linux OS that Microsoft, like every other software company, can freely use.
I will believe Microsoft loves Linux when they decide to drop the development of their buggy NT kernel and starts to build windows on top of the mainline Linux kernel.
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