I imagine WSL doesn't really affect most Linux desktop users and it really only impacts those that used full-blown VMs for dev work on Windows anyway.
I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux) for work.
Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of Microsoft and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant to Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the market. Both ChromeOS and macOS are more direct competitors to Windows.
Why would they work to extinguish a non-competitor for a product that has taken a backseat from all of their other products? It just doesn't make sense.
> I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux) for work.
I was dual booting Linux. I find WSL perfect for this because I can basically have different distributions with a lot of common tools stored in a windows folder. It’s perfect!
>Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of Microsoft and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant to Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the market.
If it's not their breadwinner then they should port over their office suite and the Windows API to Linux.
If it's not their breadwinner then they should port over their office suite and the Windows API to Linux.
How much do you think it would cost to port Office to Linux? How many extra Office licenses do you think they'd sell? Given your estimates of these two numbers, do you think Microsoft would turn a profit off of Office for Linux.
Anyway they've already 'ported' a decent subset of Office to Linux in form of Office365
This isn't helping your argument. Why would they do that? Again, Linux is comparatively irrelevant at 1% market share. It's not worth the cost, which is why most games don't have Linux ports.
I'd argue the opposite... Although I'm changing jobs in a few weeks, WSL2 has allowed for a push towards Linux/Docker usage and a significant uptake for new development. This is in a historically mostly Windows environment... if it weren't for WSL, it would still all be windows.
The shift in open development of .Net Core/5/6 has been nice too. I absolutely love the Remoting extensions/tooling for VS Code as well. I can edit/terminal on remote systems with ease. All of these things have made actually building/deploying to Linux servers a pleasure.
I jokingly say that Windows is one of the best Linux Desktop distros at this point, and there's some merit to that claim. I have the new terminal set to my WSL environment as default, spend most of my time in VS Code using WSL and Docker. Of course, I'm also switching my personal desktop back to (only) PopOS in a few weeks, also bought an M1 Macbook.
I'm not tethered to Windows in any meaningful way, but the water is pretty nice. It's crap like in TFA that causes me to not want to stay in the Windows pool.
