The Semi-decade of Linux

[GreyGeek]

[jglen490]

Saw a similar story here; maybe a different approach to the subject, but interesting nonetheless.

[GreyGeek]

Interesting video.

Many a Windows fanboy mockingly asks "Is it the year of Linux yet?". Oblivious to the migration to Linux by a host of corporations, countries, governments, militaries and super computers, little did they realize that the the year of Linux was achieved on Nov 16, 2016, when Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation. Almost two years later, on June 4, 2018, Microsoft purchased GitHub for $7.5 Billion. GitHub is a web based collection of open source git repositories. GitLab is also a collection of git repositories. "With GitLab you can set and modify people’s permissions according to their role. In GitHub, you can decide if someone gets a read or write access to a repository. "With GitLab you can provide access to the issue tracker (for example) without giving permission to the source code. This is obviously great for larger teams and enterprises with role-based contributors." -usersnap.com

Shortly after Microsoft purchased GitHub Google's Alphabet, which had many of its projects on GitHub, invested $100 Million into GitLab. As you might expect, GitLab saw a large increase in users that had abandon GitHub after Microsoft bought it. GitLab also moved off of Microsoft's Azure Clound and onto Google Cloud.

IBM bought Red Hat for $34 Billion.

But, back to Microsoft and its spots:

As TechRights remarked, "Is the 'Microsoft loves Linux' charm offensive targeting enough gullible people to actually be effective?"

SJVN thinks Microsoft has changed its spots. I believe that it has only changed its methods. He wouldn't be the first journalist to succumb to propaganda and/or money. The list is long. Anyone remember Laura DiDio, Peter Galli, Mary What'sHerName, etc?

I have been avid anti-Microsoft since I read that article in Dr Dobbs Journal, in 1999, the year I switched to Linux, about how Win3 refused to load on DR-DOS5. So, the Dr Dobbs staff used a binary editor and located the place where DR-DOS was detected (deliberately) and replace all those instructions with NOOP's. They then proceeded to install Win3 and reported that it ran without problems.

Since then, Microsoft's history of behavior can be described more accurately as scoff-law rather than as a good neighbor. Mr. Rodgers they have not been and, I believe, neither are they now, regardless of what SJVN or several developers, including Linus, think. Most recent adopters of Linux are too young to remember all the dirty tricks and may not understand the danger.

I notice that libmonno-cli-dev is in the repository, along with its 157 dependencies. It is compatible with most of .NET 1.0 and 1.1, so many .NET (things coded in C#, etc), will run on Mono with little or no effort, or so the claim is. I've never used it because the license disclaimer MS wrote didn't cover all elements of the .NET copycat, especially the GUI parts. Thankfully, the actual .NET is not in the repository, yet. An API that was responsible for the BSOD on the ceiling of the Bird Nest in the Beijing Olympics and the BILLION $ crash of the London Stock Exchange isn't good enough to be in any distro's repository.

I've commented before on the Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2), presenting Linux as a command line environment. Want to scare a newb away from a REAL Linux distro? Just show them the WSL CLI and let them flounder therein. Most Windows users, especially the Joe and Sally Sixpack versions, if they can muster the technical know how to activate WSL, may play with it for a few minutes and never summon it, or be curious about Linux, again.

The Fortune 1000, our government, our military and Microsoft are saving a fortune, or making huge profits, by taking advantage of Linux. MS is using it as their servers for Azure, as are most other, if not all, Fortune 1000 companies. All of them are creating various FOSS API tools to create front ends (GUI's) to interface with their data and servers. Linux now runs US Warships and airplanes. Most cars use Linux for their systems and displays. The list goes on and on and on.

MS and many of the larger corporations are donating to and became members of the Linux Foundation. Nothing wrong with that. Microsoft has switched to online access via micro-payment to their most profitable applications: Office365, Skype, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online, Microsoft Forefront, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting. There could be other offerings.

After MS bought Skype they changed the P2P bandwidth protocol to a central server protocol using Azure servers running Linux. On each server is a copy of "Legal Intercept", their patent pending software which allows any "3rd party" to monitor chat, calls and video between any Skype users. When MS bought it I stopped using it.

As proof of Microsoft's reform the ZDNet article writes:
"In 2019, Microsoft dumped its proprietary Edge browser for a new open-source version, which is based on Chromium. It also is releasing its Teams groupware program on--believe it or not--desktop Linux. Microsoft has also strongly hinted that the rest of Office--via Office 365 I'm sure--will be showing up on Linux. Microsoft also has its own Linux distribution, Windows SubSystem for Linux 2.0, which runs in concert with Windows 10.

In other words, as Linus Torvalds told me at the Linux Plumbers Conference earlier this year: "The whole anti-Microsoft thing was sometimes funny as a joke, but not really. Today, they're actually much friendlier. I talk to Microsoft engineers at various conferences, and I feel like, yes, they have changed, and the engineers are happy. And they're like really happy working on Linux. So, I completely dismissed all the anti-Microsoft stuff."

Remember, "embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors. Apple did something similar when they exploited FOSS developers to create their Darwin OS. Safari is a Cocoa application. It uses Apple's WebKit for rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore (based on Konqueror's KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (originally based on KDE's JavaScript engine, named KJS). Note that despite creating the "Apple Public Source License" and its reliance on FreeBSD, KDE and other open sources, you won't find a more tightly locked garden than that which Apple has created. Have you ever installed any of the only known FOUR apps that was available through the Apple Public Source License? Neither have I. The APSL is a joke. Apple's Walled Garden is locked tight. IF you own a Mac or an iPhone you know what I'm referring to.

Is Microsoft following in Apple's footsteps?

[TWPonKubuntu]

Hmmm... Watched the zdnet video... I'm not convinced that MS has changed its modus operandi.
I'm not inviting those who believe in a 'new' MS to attack my point of view. I am simply stating what I feel after 30+ years of computer usage. Hence, I don't use Windows anymore and I keep my firewalls up for all things Microsoft. YMMV

[shag00]

And right you both are. The Linux phone will be available soon, at a very good price I am led to believe.

[Don B. Cilly]

I've had a Linux phone for over a year now
Except, as I've recently said in another thread,

"I have an old Nexus 5 with Ubuntu Touch on it, and it works just fine, except for two things:
- It has Unity and therefore is quite annoying.
- It can't have whatsapp (due to Fakebook restrictions, not code itself - it was working and they had to forcibly scrap it) so I don't really use it because everyone and their granny whatsapps me and I can't tell them to install Telegram."

Still, it was cheap enough. Some €40 for the Nexus and €0 for the software

You can actually have Plasma on a mobile device, except it's a lot more complicated to install, and it's not really a "phone", it's pretty much just a mobile hacking device.

[shag00]

I would have sworn Nexus phones were Android. Maybe it was once... I am talking about a couple of new phones that come out of the box with derivatives of mainstream linux.

[Don B. Cilly]

Not only Android, full Google.
They have the Achilles heel, though. The USB port

So you just get the UBports flasher, inject it in there, and... Bob's just married your aunt you have an Ubuntu phone.

[EDIT] My Nexus:

[kubicle]

I would have sworn Nexus phones were Android.

They were/are, but you could put ubuntu touch on them (if you wanted to).

EDIT: Ah, Cilly beat me to it

[shag00]

Smart phones are great gadgets and there are a few killer apps out there that make them a must have. For me, the killer app is Google Maps. In fact if the rest of Google just disappeared I would not loose any sleep but this one app is just so powerful that it drives me to spend hundreds of US$ every few years. There are also thousands of BS apps out there and thanks to Xmas I can now lay claim to having downloaded one. My son in some form of a fit spent the best part of US$100 on a coffee mug that uses an app to work. I could not help myself, I wanted to know how a coffee cup benefited from an app. Well, it doesn't really but you can set the temperature that the the contents will not fall below and, and wait for it, it will send you a message that the cup contents have reached that temperature.

Anyway, back to your phone, or linux phones in general, I would get one if they had Google maps.

[Don B. Cilly]

They were/are, but you could put ubuntu touch on them (if you wanted to).

You still can

[GreyGeek]

I bought an iPhone 6+ on Dec 27, 2014. Two years ago it began showing signs of "Touch Disease", Apple's euphemism for their poor engineering. It gradually got worse and by the middle of this summer my iPhone was essentially unusable. I saw an unlocked Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 on Amazon for $185.00. So, I gave it a whirl. I took the sim chip from my iPhone and plugged it into the Redmi. It and its GUI interface works beautifully. The Redmi features Android 9.0 Pie. I had never used an Android phone before and didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised! The phone was graphically beautiful and operates intuitively. It's speaker is great. It's battery is 4,000 mAh and lasted me for about 30-35 hours between charges. With 32 GB of Internal RAM and 8 core it is blazingly fast. I stuck in a 256GB external SD chip for extra memory.

As fate would have it I had to change service providers from a GSM vendor to a CDMA vendor, and they featured a Samson Galaxy S10, also running the Android 9.0 Pie. The difference between it and the Redmi is night and day (besides the S10's price of $800 or $650 or $600). The S10 is, IMO, a complete pile of junk, and it also puts handcuffs on me to protect that junk. It's speaker stinks. So, I carry two smartphones with me. The S10 I use solely to answer and make phone calls when I am outside the range of an Internet connection. On my Redmi I've installed the Google Dialer, which is a very good VIOP phone service, free for calls in the US. I use my Redmi most of the time.