Microsoft Makes Open-Source Windows Forms, WinUI, WPF

[ryao]

Is it useful for anything on Linux?

I doubt it. This code only works on Windows. Maybe it might help Wine, but the benefits there seem marginal at best.

[rgloor]

Told ya, years before... Microsoft is going to turn Windows into a Linux distro... It is cheaper, and they are still going to hold a monopoly of the desktop OS industry if they play their cards right....

Funny.... is what I also said to many in quite while.

So beside Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc. there will also be something like Windows Desktop (WDL - Windows Desktop on Linux) :-)

[Britoid]

Pretty soon now, Microsoft is going to abandon the Windows Kernel and move Windows 10 rather seemlessly onto the Linux kernel and a Wayland display server. I can assure you that it will happen fairly soon and that Microsoft is going to implement the Windows look/feel on Wayland, it will look like the current UI but the underlying architecture will be Wayland and Linux. This will include an improved NTFS driver for Linux and the Win32/64 and DIrectX code being ported over to Wayland rendering backend, ensuring compatability for Windows apps on the new Linux based Windows. There is also going to be a driver compatability layer for using Windows drivers on Linux.

It will be a fairly seamless transition therefore.

Microsoft is doing this to make better use of its developer resources by moving to Linux, it can unburden itself form Windows kernel maintenance. This is also why it is moving to Chromium as well. Windows will contribute developer resources now to developing and improving Linux and Chromium and can share development costs with other companies that also use this code.

Microsoft is already making contributions to the Linux kernel to show that this is indeed happening and the future of Windows is Linux.

I puked in my mouth.

Microsoft will never switch its main kernel to Linux, Microsoft bends over backwards to maintain backwards compatibility at kernel level, the complete opposite of Linux.

Their Linux contributions are solely to enable them to get Linux software running on top of their platform be it Azure or the NT kernel. They have zero interest in switching to Linux and this is just another iteration of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. We are in the Embrace stage at the moment.

EEE is over. Microsoft makes a lot of money off cloud services now, in order to remain competitive it needs to make its ecosystem as easy to access as possible.

Microsoft just figured it makes more money off embracing open-source than attacking it. It's great for PR too.

[Guest]

My opinion (that is worth one eurocent) is: is this step toward the Opensource world the opposite of the result they want to reach?

[mhartzel]

The article here says that microsoft is going to use only the rendering engine of Chromium not the whole package:

[coder111]

EEE is over in areas where Microsoft is weak and unable to do EEE any more.

The moment Microsoft starts dominating in some area and EEE becomes profitable/possible again, EEE will be back.

Microsoft was using underhanded tactics as recently as 2008 (bribing ISO to get OOXML passed as standard). And AFAIK Windows license still prohibits selling systems capable of dual-boot. It's going to be a while before I trust them, if ever.

EEE is over. Microsoft makes a lot of money off cloud services now, in order to remain competitive it needs to make its ecosystem as easy to access as possible.

[cl333r]

"Separately making the rounds today is how Microsoft is reportedly abandoning their Edge web-browser in favor of developing a new solution based upon Chromium." --> Can you give us a source for that, please?

Yeah, this is by far the biggest news in the article, wondering why is it a footnote if it's true?

[cl333r]

That's actually great news towards the diffusion of client-side dotnet. Looks like, C# is becoming a real alternative to Java desktop applications in the next few years.

Java on the desktop is pretty much dead and has always been, if C# takes its place no one will notice.

[cybertraveler]

i think it is sad to see Microsoft abandoning their EdgeHTML and Chakra JavaScript engine and building a browser on Chromium (Blink engine and V8 JavaScript engine).
This will result in a stronger ownership of the web by Google and Chrome. This is bad for innovation, diversity and security.
Also Chromium needs to be an big, complicated, abstraction to run on all platforms, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, etc. With Edge Microsoft can tightly integrate it with the Windows stack and the technology of the Windows platform to make a fast, secure and resource effective browser.

I had the same thoughts.

I don't use Edge & wouldn't, but I loved the fact there was a compatible and performant alternative to Chromium & the Firefox engine that was being used by millions of people.

I was also sad when Opera stopped using the Presto browser engine.

Would be great of Microsoft and Opera Open Sourced their old browser engine tech so it could be built on and maintained by others.

[jacob]

Is it useful for anything on Linux?

Presumably for Wine?
Or to facilitate porting Windows apps to Linux?