Microsoft Joins The Linux Foundation As A Platinum Member

[aht0]

Nokia's CEO came from MS and went back to MS. It was pretty obvious he had his former's employers agenda in mind while being CEO of Nokia.I also remember a news story from earlier times where Google had refused Nokia from letting it use Android in it's phones.

I still think people went to what worked better for them. Symbian was pretty effin limited to what you could do with it. For example, you wanted to go running, okay. Endomondo app existed, now you'd like to listen to music while running? Forget it. Pick one or the other. 2 apps at once and phone gave up on one. (Nokia 5530 Expressmusic). Half the web sites crashed while browsing because phone did not have enough memory available etc. Pi*sant issues like this make people jump ship.

[starshipeleven]

Google had refused Nokia from letting it use Android in it's phones.

Impossible, Google has no control over who uses Android, that's the whole point of it. Letting OEMs think they control the device by giving out the OS for free, when in fact Google dominates and monetizes the ecosystem with the Play Store.

This is something that MS didn't grasp even now, an OS lives or dies on its application ecosystem, not on its own merits.

I still think people went to what worked better for them. Symbian was pretty effin limited to what you could do with it. For example, you wanted to go running, okay. Endomondo app existed, now you'd like to listen to music while running? Forget it. Pick one or the other. 2 apps at once and phone gave up on one. (Nokia 5530 Expressmusic). Half the web sites crashed while browsing because phone did not have enough memory available etc. Pi*sant issues like this make people jump ship.

Dunno, I was not a smartphone very early adopter but I can say that low ram and similar limitations did plague Android too until like 2012.

That device cited seems to have 128 MiB of RAM (total) and Android with that would have been worse, basically a "toy smartphone".

Hell, I wasn't able to browse decently on a Xperia Sola (2012) that had 384 MiB usable (the rest were dedicated to GPU and video decoders, total was 512 MiB) until I made a swap file on the SD card, although it could multitask for music+other app.

[aht0]

Impossible, Google has no control over who uses Android, that's the whole point of it. Letting OEMs think they control the device by giving out the OS for free, when in fact Google dominates and monetizes the ecosystem with the Play Store.

This is something that MS didn't grasp even now, an OS lives or dies on its application ecosystem, not on its own merits.

Dunno, I was not a smartphone very early adopter but I can say that low ram and similar limitations did plague Android too until like 2012.

That device cited seems to have 128 MiB of RAM (total) and Android with that would have been worse, basically a "toy smartphone".

Hell, I wasn't able to browse decently on a Xperia Sola (2012) that had 384 MiB usable (the rest were dedicated to GPU and video decoders, total was 512 MiB) until I made a swap file on the SD card, although it could multitask for music+other app.

As far as I can remember that phone, 128Mb was actually RAM and "HDD" combined. Which also limited you from installing more than handful of apps into phone. More apps you had, less well it ran. And running Symbian did bite like 85Mb away from it immediately leaving whatever left for your use.. It had micro-SD slot but running anything from sd card was sluggish at best.

Then there was the issue with app certificates expiring. Can't remember if certificates expired in one year or two, but the time window was very short and sometimes you wanted some esoteric app, found it finally from net and could not run it because of expired certificate it was signed with.

[k1e0x]

.....

[Danny3]

No, the point of linux foundation is that they grow their pockets by paying for linux development. As already explained by others, MS is into cloud services now, and this means they have to support and run linux or BSD too for customers (or in their own infrastructure, see their switches), and that will be a significant part of their cloud businness.

Most other companies in there use or target linux in (some of) their products.

Only outlier is jpMorgan, which I don't know why are there but are (very probably) paying Linux because they need it somehow.

Thanks for explanation, but I only care about my side, the user side of Linux where Linux is at 1% adoption
Excuse me, but when I hear that someone is taking money for being behind something that is at 1%, I think they're taking the money for nothing.
So where is this Linux development?
I don't see it.
Some people might not care about this 1% but I think hardware manufacturers care when they don't make drivers for Linux, laptop vendors don't support Linux well, game developers don't make games for Linux.
Say what you want but I think Microsoft payed to keep it at 1% forever.
Nobody joins their enemy/competitor to help it!

[MartinN]

Win95/98/98SE/NT3.5x/NT4/ME/2000 were literally identical barring different colorization and slight facelifts.

95/98 and 98SE and probably ME as well were glorified graphical MS-DOS shells, similar to Windows 3.1..or worse, Norton Commander, SideKick, etc. The real change in Windows came with the NT releases and onward which saw a brand new kernel, and as I understand it, a very well written, disciplined kernel by people with UNIX and VMS experience. So the NT kernel in and of itself is a stellar piece of work, probably same way as Solaris' kernel was, if the rumors are true.. People who had seen the actual code said nothing but superlatives about how well it had been written. It's the other "garbage" piled on by vendors that screwed up Windows, more than anything else and their infinite desire for backward compatibility....(and the green)

So to say that they were identical save for the coloring/facelifts, is rather weak. The switch to NT was paradigm shifting. Similar to the OS 9 to OS X shift.

[starshipeleven]

Thanks for explanation, but I only care about my side, the user side of Linux where Linux is at 1% adoption
Excuse me, but when I hear that someone is taking money for being behind something that is at 1%, I think they're taking the money for nothing.
So where is this Linux development?
I don't see it.

Linux powers most embedded devices (routers and network devices, NAS, media centers, smart TVs, decoders, most IoT, Android stuff), and is also very common in servers. It has the overwhelming majority in supercomputers. Contributions to linux kernel are done at like 80% by paid programmers working for some company, MS included. https://itsfoss.com/facts-linux-kernel/

Desktop Linux is not a main target of the Linux kernel project, give or take.

Some people might not care about this 1% but I think hardware manufacturers care when they don't make drivers for Linux, laptop vendors don't support Linux well, game developers don't make games for Linux.

There are plenty of server or (custom) computing applications that run only on linux (and are certified only to run on Red Hat's RHEL). All network equipment and most embedded stuff has closed-source drivers for linux (obviously) and they DO care that the performance is good enough with them, some also have open drivers too.

Say what you want but I think Microsoft payed to keep it at 1% forever.
Nobody joins their enemy/competitor to help it!

A centerpiece of Microsoft's "post-windows survival strategy" is Azure, a cloud services/server provider, and there they must run linux VMs there as customers are likely demanding linux there and they can't simply say "no" or they get a "lolwtf gtfo" answer.

Microsoft is after money first and foremost, doing OS wars isn't its main goal (mostly because PC sales are shrinking). If they get money off renting and doing support on linux VMs in their Azure cloud provider, they aren't competing with Linux, but using it as a source of income.

[starshipeleven]

95/98 and 98SE and probably ME as well were glorified graphical MS-DOS shells, similar to Windows 3.1..or worse, Norton Commander, SideKick, etc. The real change in Windows came with the NT releases and onward which saw a brand new kernel, and as I understand it, a very well written, disciplined kernel by people with UNIX and VMS experience. So the NT kernel in and of itself is a stellar piece of work, probably same way as Solaris' kernel was, if the rumors are true.. People who had seen the actual code said nothing but superlatives about how well it had been written. It's the other "garbage" piled on by vendors that screwed up Windows, more than anything else and their infinite desire for backward compatibility....(and the green)

So to say that they were identical save for the coloring/facelifts, is rather weak. The switch to NT was paradigm shifting. Similar to the OS 9 to OS X shift.

1. he is talking of the UI
2. [citation needed]