
Microsoft Has a Large Presence at This Year's X.org Conference - rbanffy
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsoft-XDC-2020
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pojntfx
Note how they don’t contribute anything to X/Wayland, they only _extend_ it so
that DX12 and other proprietary, Windows-only systems can interact with Linux.
These are anti-features. Like they could also just use Vulkan and be done
with, but they don’t; EEE is in full swing.

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gmueckl
Taking a guess, this seems mostly like a plan to get machine learning
developers back onto Windows as main development boxes. If so, the first
iteration of WSL itself was about web development. The integration of cross
compilation and remote debugging for Linux into Visual Studio points into a
similar direction.

MS seems to accept Linux on servers, but allowing Linux on desktop machines
might actually end up eating a significant chunk of the Windows market share.

~~~
noahl
I think Microsoft's strategy (I work there, but I don't have any special
knowledge of this) is to be the best possible platform for development in
general, not just machine learning. That's why they bought GitHub, and it's
also why they have WSL, remote debugging on Linux, etc. I expect they will go
wherever they think developers want to be to achieve that goal.

I can see this hurting traditional Linux graphics systems and development
tooling, but I think the main dynamic driving this is not proprietary-vs-open,
it's Microsoft's ability to coordinate large numbers of developers, because
they have a massively more united org than random hobbyists.

If you combined all of the efforts of all of the people working on Linux tools
for the past 20 years and got them working on the same thing, it would
probably be an _amazing_ stack, and Microsoft would probably just support it.
Instead, the open source efforts have been scattered among a lot of different
ideas, which means there hasn't been a single windowing toolkit, IDE, or
whatever for people to rally around and all contribute to. And as a result,
Microsoft can show up, get a few hundred people pulling in the same direction,
and have the market-leading product not through any dirty tricks, but just by
putting in more coordinated effort than anyone else.

~~~
donor20
Agreed - I will note however how badly Microsoft has bungled this same story
on Windows itself. They went from a very high productive and unified
development story in mfc/winforms to a super fragmented space.

I am getting going with WPF. (But that was then followed by maybe Silverlight?
Then HTML with bindings?). Now we have been told that UWP is the big future
(basically Windows Phone framework?). Gah! XAML? I mean, we went from a drag
and drop unified and simple and extendable dev experience that was actually
fast to develop into this GUI nightmare - all produced by ONE company with
total command and control over their developers.

It tells you something that google web browser is almost a more stable and
targetable platform than the native Windows platform (chromium / electron). I
mean, that is desparation right there. At least someone was smart enough at
microsoft to just give up on IE even on their own platform!

If QT had a bit of a simpler onboarding flow or linux was more unified I think
there actually is an opportunity to actually be a good standard for line of
business apps that want snappy responsiveness etc. But I just can't believe
how badly Microsoft has screwed up their GUI story for the developers they
claim to care so much about.

~~~
gmueckl
I think you forgot ASP.net, Blazor, Xamarin.Forms and MAUI. UI development
with .NET is just incredibly fragmented.

If Qt had a good bridge to C#, they could probably get a lot of marketshare on
.NET while this confusion lasts.

~~~
pjmlp
Add C++/WinRT to the mix, which dropped the productivity features of C++/CX,
with the team that managed to kill it telling us to just wait for ISO C++ to
catch up, while dealing with IDL files pre-.NET style.

Naturally the reception has been less than stellar and they are finally
acknowledging that waiting isn't not an option and something is being
discussed, however don't expect any improvements in 2020.

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desktopninja
Any time now, "[https://www.lindows.rocks](https://www.lindows.rocks)" will
happen. I hope it has the Lindows Rocks song on it :D

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jankotek
> For XDC2020 there is Microsoft as one of the silver sponsors for the event.

Good for organizers. Dev conferences in Poland are not exactly a gold mine.

