Learning to love Linux
The early days of Microsoft put it at loggerheads with the growing open source movement, but things are different now.
Microsoft and its flagship Windows OS have a troubled history with Linux and open source. When Bill Gates penned his ‘Open Letter to Hobbyists’ in 1976, he complained about the rampant software piracy taking place in early hobbyist communities – particularly that of the Altair Basic interpreter, which he’d co-created. At a time before open source initiatives like the GNU and Linux projects, his opinion was clear: “Are people who copy software any different than those who copy records and books?”
Twenty-two years later, one of the leaked Microsoft Halloween Documents (see box) focused on how the tech giant viewed its rival OS, even showing grudging respect: “Linux represents a best-of-breed Unix, that is trusted in mission critical applications, and – due to its open source code – has a long-term credibility which exceeds many other competitive OSes.”
Publicly, of course, Redmond disavowed Linux and open source altogether. In 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously said: “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” Gates even described the open source GPL (GNU Public Licence) as “Pac-Man-like”.
Ballmer later backed down from taking such a hard line on Linux. This may have been due to Microsoft’s commitment to releasing open source software in the intervening years. This included introducing .NET Core in 2014 – an open source, cross-platform successor to the .NET Framework.
In 2015, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even went as far as putting up a slide proclaiming “Microsoft loves Linux”. The company has released Linux versions of popular programs like SQL Server and Microsoft Teams. There’s even a dedicated repository wherein users can install select Microsoft tools via Apt and Yum. Crucially, users can also now make use of WSL2 to run Linux kernels in a lightweight VM.
Today the gods of Redmond are proud members of the Open Source Initiative and have made Linux operating systems available for their Azure Cloud Services. The company joined the Linux Foundation at its top-tier Platinum membership level in 2016.
In 2020, Microsoft president Brad Smith admitted in an interview with ZDNet: “Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century.”
According to the Open Source Contributor Index, Microsoft is now the second largest contributor to open source behind Google, with 4,649 active projects. In October 2023, for the first time, Microsoft went so far as to provide specific steps on its support pages on how to install Linux directly on a PC via dual boot. And since 2009, Microsoft has been contributing to the Linux kernel via the non-profit, Outercurve Foundation.
However, Windows is still based on the proprietary NT Kernel. Users make use of closed-source apps to manage data on Microsoft’s own NTFS filesystem.
Microsoft’s Damascene conversion to being a cheerleader of open source could also just be motivated by expectations of Azure customers, who mostly favour Linux and related workflows. After all, while Linux desktop’s market share continues to climb, it still is under 4% versus 73% for Windows.
It’s also likely that Windows desktop usage will climb even further with WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android), which offers users a way to run Android apps from within Windows. What was traditionally a perk of Chromebooks may soon become commonplace on all Windows devices.
Once again, this raises the spectre of whether what is good for Microsoft is necessarily good for Linux and open source. The best way to answer these questions is through careful understanding of exactly how far Linux has encroached into the Windows desktop.