Microsoft Releases Its Own Open-Source Process Monitor For Linux

All warnings, when not heeded, are worthless. You're certainly right about that.


Wrong market. FOSS desktop apps have nothing to do with it. Of course the vast majority of FOSS projects would never fall for Microsoft's trap, out of principle if nothing else. I'm not worried about them.

Commercial non-FOSS apps is what I'm talking about. Specifically 1. enterprise database, middleware, and monitoring 2. commercial video/film/3D production, and 3. technical/scientific CAD/CAM modeling and simulation. These are all the big $$$ markets for proprietary commercial software on Linux.

As a single data point, my rather small employer spends nearly 1 $Million annually on licensing Oracle products that run on RHEL. And around $200k annually on RHEL licenses. Imagine for a moment what happens when Oracle decides that running on WSL is "better" so they no longer support running on RHEL, only on WSL. A business has a choice to make - either migrate from RHEL to WSL - or migrate from the suite of Oracle enterprise products, to some alternative that works with RHEL. The former is a far simpler move, so it's guaranteed this is what they'll do. The downstream effect is that those $200k in RHEL licenses are no longer needed, so we stop paying Red Hat. Since all the enterprise apps now run on WSL instead of Linux, developers no longer need Linux laptops or Linux cloud instances, so that revenue dries up too. It has a cascading effect.

Don't believe that it could happen? Just look at the recent history between Oracle and HPE when Oracle decided suddenly they would no longer support HP-UX. Almost overnight, HP-UX market share disappeared. HP laid off their engineering staff, development stagnated, and there hasn't been any significant development of HP-UX since v11.31 was released in 2007.

The Linux kernel is not a hobbyist project any more, it is mainly developed by paid developers from the large corporations that sell and support Linux or profit indirectly from it (e.g. Red Hat, SUSE, IBM, intel, etc). It doesn't take too much imagination to envision what would happen to the future development of Linux if all the $$$ dried up suddenly because all the enterprise customers moved away from Linux to WSL. This is not paranoia, this is a very real potential future, and it has happened many times before to other operating systems. Linux is not immune to this.

This is true, and MS is a threat for healthy competition, as it desires to do a vendor lock-in.

LInux, as a dominant server OS, isn't a monopoly game by its own, because it doesn't do any vendor lock-in, and resulting setup can be composed of many alternative software for each task, because Linux eco-system philosophy focuses on common standards/protocols,...

However, the current king of the EEE strategy is Google. See Android and Google Apps (G Suite - GMail, Calendar, Hangouts,...). This Google end-user eco-system is quite a vendor lock-in, currently. And, it all started by offering of a free email solution with good UX.

[visualblind]

Why? we already have htop ... and the only thing htop is missing is disk usage like nmon

Not quite sure, but I just wanted to mention atop. From all of the lightweight top-like and heavier-weight system monitors (glances etc.) I've seen and tried, atop has been my favorite. I wanted to mention it because I don't see it mentioned enough. It's in all of the major repo's.

[torsionbar28]

You can call it as you wish. I refer to it as lamentations. What I am asking you is: What is you - what is anybody going to do about it? And if the answer is nothing, what is your so-called "reminder" worth in the end? I'm just curious . . .

All warnings, when not heeded, are worthless. You're certainly right about that.

But what would those products be? Most Windows users have no need for native Linux applications on their system - popular open-source applications like LibreOffice, VLC, Firefox and Krita are already available in native versions - the people using WSL are likely a small group of system admins, computer enthusiasts and programmers. How is them using WSL for specific tasks going to seriously undermine the Linux ecosystem?

Wrong market. FOSS desktop apps have nothing to do with it. Of course the vast majority of FOSS projects would never fall for Microsoft's trap, out of principle if nothing else. I'm not worried about them.

Commercial non-FOSS apps is what I'm talking about. Specifically 1. enterprise database, middleware, and monitoring 2. commercial video/film/3D production, and 3. technical/scientific CAD/CAM modeling and simulation. These are all the big $$$ markets for proprietary commercial software on Linux.

As a single data point, my rather small employer spends nearly 1 $Million annually on licensing Oracle products that run on RHEL. And around $200k annually on RHEL licenses. Imagine for a moment what happens when Oracle decides that running on WSL is "better" so they no longer support running on RHEL, only on WSL. A business has a choice to make - either migrate from RHEL to WSL - or migrate from the suite of Oracle enterprise products, to some alternative that works with RHEL. The former is a far simpler move, so it's guaranteed this is what they'll do. The downstream effect is that those $200k in RHEL licenses are no longer needed, so we stop paying Red Hat. Since all the enterprise apps now run on WSL instead of Linux, developers no longer need Linux laptops or Linux cloud instances, so that revenue dries up too. It has a cascading effect.

Don't believe that it could happen? Just look at the recent history between Oracle and HPE when Oracle decided suddenly they would no longer support HP-UX. Almost overnight, HP-UX market share disappeared. HP laid off their engineering staff, development stagnated, and there hasn't been any significant development of HP-UX since v11.31 was released in 2007.

The Linux kernel is not a hobbyist project any more, it is mainly developed by paid developers from the large corporations that sell and support Linux or profit indirectly from it (e.g. Red Hat, SUSE, IBM, intel, etc). It doesn't take too much imagination to envision what would happen to the future development of Linux if all the $$$ dried up suddenly because all the enterprise customers moved away from Linux to WSL. This is not paranoia, this is a very real potential future, and it has happened many times before to other operating systems. Linux is not immune to this.

[Kemosabe]

It's not lamentations over something in the past. It's a reminder to not forget the past, but more importantly, it is advice for the future. Microsoft is losing the server market, and badly. Even on Microsoft's own cloud platform Azure, Linux makes up >50% of the hosted instances. Yes, Windows is the minority market share even on Microsoft's own public cloud! They will do anything and everything they can to turn the tide.

Do not trust Microsoft, do not assist them, do not integrate with them, because in the end, they want to replace Linux with WSL. The day when commercial applications require WSL, is the day Linux dies.

You can call it as you wish. I refer to it as lamentations. What I am asking you is: What is you - what is anybody going to do about it? And if the answer is nothing, what is your so-called "reminder" worth in the end? I'm just curious . . .

But what would those products be? Most Windows users have no need for native Linux applications on their system - popular open-source applications like LibreOffice, VLC, Firefox and Krita are already available in native versions - the people using WSL are likely a small group of system admins, computer enthusiasts and programmers. How is them using WSL for specific tasks going to seriously undermine the Linux ecosystem?

That's just one part of a puzzle,... It's not an exhaustive list, but only a concept applied on one specific technology, and it's not worth the time to list all parts in a post of some forum...

However, I'm not Microsoft's strategist on monopolization, and there definitely are much more strategies in MS's arsenal,... But, if I were one, then I wouldn't reveal my nefarious intentions and plans, in order to keep people blind and don't see it coming.

[Cattus_D]

I wouldn't be surprised, if lots of open-source projects would be extended with DirectX-based-AI assistance, and therefore these applications would be fluently working only on Windows/WSL, but not on pure Linux.

But what would those products be? Most Windows users have no need for native Linux applications on their system - popular open-source applications like LibreOffice, VLC, Firefox and Krita are already available in native versions - the people using WSL are likely a small group of system admins, computer enthusiasts and programmers. How is them using WSL for specific tasks going to seriously undermine the Linux ecosystem?

[DanL]

Whether you like the message or not, it is just as relevant today as it was 20 years ago. Microsoft's track record speaks for itself in this regard.

are you saying that referring to EEE is being paranoid?

If Microsoft has been EEE'ing for 20 years, they're taking their good, old time or they really suck at it. Or maybe, just maybe, there's no way they can ever stamp out FOSS.

[torsionbar28]

Sure, it might be an EEE strategy. But why can they do this in the first place?
Because everybody is complaining, nobody has even remotely a clue how to counteract and there is no authority which could implement this strategy. So let's all fall back to lamentations in some forums . . .

It's not lamentations over something in the past. It's a reminder to not forget the past, but more importantly, it is advice for the future. Microsoft is losing the server market, and badly. Even on Microsoft's own cloud platform Azure, Linux makes up >50% of the hosted instances. Yes, Windows is the minority market share even on Microsoft's own public cloud! They will do anything and everything they can to turn the tide.

Do not trust Microsoft, do not assist them, do not integrate with them, because in the end, they want to replace Linux with WSL. The day when commercial applications require WSL, is the day Linux dies.

[gbcox]

I fully expect Microsoft will, in the next few years, do what Apple did years ago and switch their kernel. MS will use Linux due to how active development is. With their strategy of cloud services, it really makes no sense for them to maintain the expense of writing and maintaining their own kernel. I think they are just waiting until they can get all the pieces they need built for a smooth transition and some level of backwards compatibility.

Good theory... many folks I know have been saying the same thing. Windows will become a DE, much like KDE or GNOME. That way they'd have the best of both worlds. They've gotten some good press on what they've done with Edge, so why not. Here's an article talking about it: https://www.computerworld.com/articl...-on-linux.html

[Kemosabe]

Sure, it might be an EEE strategy. But why can they do this in the first place?
Because everybody is complaining, nobody has even remotely a clue how to counteract and there is no authority which could implement this strategy. So let's all fall back to lamentations in some forums . . .