It's super weird people are bitter about things that happened almost two decades ago. Much less there was no war. I think Ballmer said some mean words about Linux and Microsoft sued Lindows for infringement and won. After the rename to Linspire Microsoft actually worked with them on compatibility. The whole Windows v Linux "war" is completely contrived by some fans of Linux as some holy war.
That completely glosses over the actual behaviour of Microsoft, and ignoring the kinds of career, business, project, and reputational damage those tactics did.
MS’s attacks on open source, open formats, and free software impacted and still impact democracies, developing nations, general computing capabilities, and create vast market inefficiencies. Looking at it as pure tech misses the forest for the trees. The corruption of the Office OpenXml process alone is a daily pox on the developing world. The tax impact of those entanglements is recurrent, and frequently hurts education and healthcare.
Also: if someone got burnt by some industry jerks and have had to deal with the fallout for decades, “it was 20 years ago” completely misstates the problem. Some BS was started 20 years ago, sure, but with daily crap-bowls that needed to be eaten every day in between. Entire careers have fallen into those cracks, armies of IT staff forced into suboptimal and broken workflows to satisfy decisions based on establishing and abusing monopolies.
Breaking a spine, even years and years ago, impacts the every day. Bitterness can be well deserved with an understanding of what was lost.
You're just throwing out a lot of vague statements. You're not helping your case. What specifically did Microsoft do to open source, open format and free software? You're making some huge accusations that Microsoft made some decision that impacts democracies today. Such as?
How is Open OfficeXML a daily pox? Why not use ODF if it's such a disease?
Fallout from what exactly? Again this vague language is not helpful. What exactly was lost 20 years ago?
> As early as 2002, a court rejected Microsoft's claims, stating that Microsoft had used the term "windows" to describe graphical user interfaces before the product, Windows, was ever released, and the windowing technique had already been implemented by Xerox and Apple many years before.[4] Microsoft kept seeking retrial, but in February 2004, a judge rejected two of Microsoft's central claims.[5] The judge denied Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction and raised "serious questions" about Microsoft's trademark. Microsoft feared a court may define "Windows" as generic and result in the loss of its status as a trademark.
> In July 2004, Microsoft offered to settle with Lindows.[6] As part of this licensing settlement, Microsoft paid an estimated US$20,000,000 (equivalent to $33,294,574 in 2024), and Lindows transferred the Lindows trademark to Microsoft and changed their name to Linspire.
> completely contrived by some fans of Linux
I mean there are absolutely some fanboy fantasies of grandeur here but I don't think it's the "fans of Linux" who are delusional mate.
I'm not sure why you jumped to the conclusion that meant a literal war. Of course there was no literal war. And Microsoft did not do everything it could kill Linux and OSS. That is some serious revisionist history. Instead of speaking in generalities like "Microsoft hates Linux" maybe use actual examples and facts.
I'm not sure why you say that's revisionist, your quotes line up with what I said.
Appreciate you calling me delusional for not echoing vague statements to make an OS a victim.
> I'm not sure why you say that's revisionist, your quotes line up with what I said.
What you said:
> Microsoft sued Lindows for infringement and won.
What actually happened:
> Microsoft feared a court may define "Windows" as generic and result in the loss of its status as a trademark
> Microsoft offered to settle with Lindows
> Microsoft paid an estimated US$20,000,000
How is taking someone to court for trademark infringement, and then resorting to paying them $20M dollars to settle because the Judge is about to invalidate your trademark "winning"?
Samsung made DeX at some point for the exact same purpose, but that's a Samsung special.
Google already has this in their Pixel phones (8+). Plug a Pixel into a standard laptop dock (may need to enter dev settings and tick the "force desktop mode" toggle) and you're welcomed by pretty much exactly this UI.
No. I thought about that, but decided it would be too much of a hassle to maintain, plus it becomes legally problematic with non-FOSS, non-abandonware profiles (i.e. modern Windows and MacOS.)
Instead, for many profiles, it provides a link to the OS’s website (or archive.org) where you can download the installation media.
Edit! Memory unfuzzed: It was Workplace OS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_OS
reply