Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Distro Issues A Big Update For November

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Microsoft's CBL-Mariner Linux Distro Issues A Big Update For November

Microsoft yesterday published CBL-Mariner 2.0.20231106 as the newest version of their in-house Linux distribution that is used for a variety of services from Azure to WSL...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/CBL-Mariner-2.0-November-2023

[NovenTheHero]

Is it actually any good or offer anything special?

[NeoMorpheus]

It would be really funny if they release Office for Linux, but somehow, only working on this distro and Ubuntu...

[junkbustr]

Embrace, extend, extinguish...

[ElectricPrism]

Is it actually any good or offer anything special?

Yes, It's good for Microsoft, see quotation below 🡇:

Embrace, extend, extinguish...

[highball]

Embrace, extend, extinguish...

Yep, soon they will have a Windows DE that can be added to a Custom OEM distrobution. Just watch.

[ClosedSource]

Embrace, extend, extinguish...

Honestly, this isn't what's extinguishing Linux. WSL is. You no longer need to replace Windows to run "some" Linux software.

[Danny3]

Honestly, this isn't what's extinguishing Linux. WSL is. You no longer need to replace Windows to run "some" Linux software.

Exactly!
But hopefully WINE will be able to do the same.

[rmfx]

Honestly, this isn't what's extinguishing Linux. WSL is. You no longer need to replace Windows to run "some" Linux software.

You can run some GUI program with it too ?

[ClosedSource]

You can run some GUI program with it too ?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...rials/gui-apps to a certain extent. But you'll need to keep in mind that GUI on Linux is no more than a side effect of Linux being necessary for non-GUI tools. Linux is massive outside GUI and I mean massive by all definitions of the term.

Imagine someone built you a house on your own land. He also added a swimming pool, connections to your local electricity company, sewage system, and everything else you may need. This is analogous to non-GUI Linux and you paid handsomely for it. While he is there, he just happened to be nice to recommend a good brand of Soda because the beverages you offered him weren't so tasty. This is analogous to GUI on Linux.

You can argue that this wasn't the case two decades ago. Free desktop Linux was a promising thing in the gnome 1/2 and kde 2/3 days. But this is no longer the case. Today Linux is as "ebul corporate product" as Windows if not more.

While I am on the topic, there is also another insight I can make. Google basically changed the ecosystem with Android. It led to a more healthy widened view of computing devices. People no longer are "fans" of an operating system. They will just use whatever their computer shipped with as long as it can run a browser, MS Word, photoshop, autocad, their IDE of choice, can print and scan, etc.. etc. If something replaced Windows but offered the same exact things, they won't care what OS it is as long as it doesn't regress their workflow.