I get the daily newsletter from Code Project. In today’s issue, there’s an item titled " Microsoft gives unexpected tutorial on how to install Linux" (Microsoft documents how to install Linux • The Register). This article links a Linux installation tutorial offered by Microsoft. Who would have ever expected to see such a thing? Not me, and that’s for sure.
The Microsoft article is targeted at GNU/Linux newbies. It describes the various ways GNU/Linux can be installed (although they never refer to it properly (they simply call it “Linux”, as do most Windows oriented entities). While the ‘Linux installation tutorial’ from Microsoft is somewhat self-serving in that the virtualization methods it describes include using wsl2, Azure, or Hyper-V to create a virtual machine for GNU/Linux, Virtual Box and VMware are mentioned almost as an afterthought. The information provided is exhaustive and complete almost to the point of overloading the reader with detail, potentially discouraging him/her from continuing on. It also fails to mention the Q4OS Windows installer, which in my opinion may be the most performant and easy installation option short of bare metal.
If you’re interested, read the article and the linked Microsoft tutorial for yourself, then please add your thoughts. I’d be interested in what my fellow GNU/Linux enthusiasts think about Microsoft’s relationship with ‘Linux’,
I read through the article here.
I consider it to be very interesting.
Most interesting of all is the fact that it´s part of Microsoft´s web-presence.
That one in particular struck me as odd:
Create a bootable USB drive to install bare-metal Linux
[…]
Select install options.
[…]
You may also need to specify whether to erase the disk in the case that this Linux distro will be the only operating system[…]
Really?
A Linux distro as the only OS?
Are these words written by a Microsoft author?
To even consider people would be inclined to use anything else than their “holy cow” WIN…
I´m flabbergasted. Who would have thought…
I find the entire concept very interesting in deed! It makes me wonder what this, combined with all the other changes we’ve seen at Microsoft may be leading toward. Many possibilities come to mind, but I won’t go into them now. I’ll have to give this new thought path some time to become more concrete before I can understand where I think things may be going .
O.k., you´re certainly right there.
However I haven´t been following any of those changes. Sorry.
I´m all-Linux now (and have been for quite a while ).
Quite so.
Please let us know when you´ve come up with anything in that respect.
I´m sure everybody in the forum will be very interested.
That’s certainly one possibility although, I find that MS tends to do things their own way so perhaps they’ll continue that trend and develop their own distro based on the kernel they now use for Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (wsl2), with their own desktop environment, perhaps based on Windows 11 or something similar. Then again, that may be too aggressive, even for them.
Meh… as for how I read it:
Option 1: install Linux in Windows (WSL)
Option 2: install Linux in the cloud (VM, documented for MS Azure)
Option 3: install Linux in Windows (VM, documented with MS Hyper-V)
Option 4: Create a boot disk (dual boot with Windows)
… once you’re in your Linux environment… do your updates and check out the Microsoft products…
In my opinion, this is a feeble effort at damage control: if we can keep them on Windows, at least we can maximally keep them into the MS ecosystem. It’s not like there isn’t already plenty of documentation on this topic out there.
It is , after all, called “Windows”, and it did start out as a Window Manager for DOS.
however
the one part of Windows that is really valuable is the hardware drivers, and that is , I think, part of their microkernel, not their gui.
