This isn't true at all. The ENTIRE industry had to re-invent itself MANY times - and MANY companies failed and have long since shutdown. Microsoft on the other hand has survived - and not only maintained backwards compatibility but embraced new technologies - and is doing so at a breakneck pace today.
Microsoft research is a top notch research company. Microsoft is also a large, if not the largest, contributor to Linux & Open source.
Horror stories aren't unique to Microsoft... The industry of the 80s/90s and early 2000s was something i'd never want to go back to - but its also something i suffered through and that suffering didn't matter what OS you ran. If you chose Irix it sucked paying 600 bucks for MEDIA to update your OS, if you ran HPUX it sucked having to buy a support contract to update your OS, if you ran Solaris, you were proud of solaris - but it wasn't until sun embraced open source that it really took off because we didn't have to buy a compiler that cost hundreds of dollars if not thousands to license.
Meanwhile, Windows has TurboC, TurboPascal and tons of stuff - and open source gnu started taking off and linux came around and the world started getting better for everyone- opportunity opened up - we crossed the chasim from 8 bit to 16 bit to 32 bit and 64bit and Windows has maintained a level of compatibility second to none to support all that legacy.
They're working hard to compete - Windows "S" mode is windows without the ability to stall win32 - its "Store mode" - it could go a LONG way into making it "suck less" from legacy cruft but by and large the market and developers are refusing to support it - which is odd considering they NEED to support the store model for official chromebooks, android apps or ios marketplaces.
>I always hear things like this. What exactly are they contributing though?
Their employees contribute tons of code to the kernel and they're a premium partner in the Linux foundation paying Linus's salary. They contribute to the kernel, hadoop, mesos, k8s, they contribute to gcc, heck they let you run linux on windows now with Linux subsystem and have official partnerships with redhat, suse, ubuntu. They also open sourced C#, they contribute to jenkins, so much mroe.
>As far as I can tell, if you want to run a legacy Windows app, you're more likely to be successful running it in Wine on Linux.
no sane person would do that. Just run it in compatibility mode on Windows 10.
> Their employees contribute tons of code to the kernel and they're a premium partner in the Linux foundation paying Linus's salary....
Linus wasn't starving before MS became a platinum member of the Linux Foundation.
> They contribute to the kernel, hadoop, mesos, k8s, they contribute to gcc, heck they let you run linux on windows now with Linux subsystem...
Right, so as far as I can tell most of their contribution are likely to be things to make their linux subsystem work better. Which has very little effect on me.
> >As far as I can tell, if you want to run a legacy Windows app, you're more likely to be successful running it in Wine on Linux.
> no sane person would do that. Just run it in compatibility mode on Windows 10.
Mentioning sanity and running Windows 10 in the same breath?
Where do people like you come from? 20-year grudges, personal biases and so much hate/spite for something you know literally nothing about and would never use... Why?
Chromebooks are great. Windows 10 is great. My Macbook is great. We have TONS Of great computing devices and choices today. Use an iphone, use an android, use a stick phone, i don't give a crap.
What i do get appalled at is all this hate, misinformation and projection of personal biases and preference as "matter of fact".. its bull crap and ya know it.
What do I literally know nothing about? I spent way too many years using Windows (not knowing any better), so I know more about it than I care to. I'm not sure how mentioning Wine's capabilities is hate in any case. But I'm happy to learn about whatever I may be mistaken about.
Edit: Ah, I realise what the 'hate' remark is about, my comment about Windows 10 and sanity. Here's my Windows 10 story - I was installing it on a 'game box' (since repurposed as a Linux workstation) off of a usb stick. In the middle of the installation, it complained about some sort of missing drivers (in a very opaque fashion). I wrote down the information and went off to the Internet for help, figuring, it's easy to help for Linux issues, so Windows issues like must be even easier, given its wide-use. But nothing I found made any difference. Until I came across a suggestion somewhere to unplug the usb at that point in time and plug it into another usb slot. I thought "that's silly and will never work". Of course, that was the solution. Note: it didn't matter which usb port it was plugged into initially, so it wasn't a 'usb3 drivers missing' issue or anything like that. For whatever reason, at that point in the installation, unplugging the usb and replugging it in made Windows 10 'see' the drivers. I spent way too many hours on such a silly (and still to me opaque) problem. Thus I don't really associate Windows 10 with sanity. (And I won't mention my experience with the official Microsoft Store and malware.)
Microsoft research is a top notch research company. Microsoft is also a large, if not the largest, contributor to Linux & Open source.
Horror stories aren't unique to Microsoft... The industry of the 80s/90s and early 2000s was something i'd never want to go back to - but its also something i suffered through and that suffering didn't matter what OS you ran. If you chose Irix it sucked paying 600 bucks for MEDIA to update your OS, if you ran HPUX it sucked having to buy a support contract to update your OS, if you ran Solaris, you were proud of solaris - but it wasn't until sun embraced open source that it really took off because we didn't have to buy a compiler that cost hundreds of dollars if not thousands to license.
Meanwhile, Windows has TurboC, TurboPascal and tons of stuff - and open source gnu started taking off and linux came around and the world started getting better for everyone- opportunity opened up - we crossed the chasim from 8 bit to 16 bit to 32 bit and 64bit and Windows has maintained a level of compatibility second to none to support all that legacy.
They're working hard to compete - Windows "S" mode is windows without the ability to stall win32 - its "Store mode" - it could go a LONG way into making it "suck less" from legacy cruft but by and large the market and developers are refusing to support it - which is odd considering they NEED to support the store model for official chromebooks, android apps or ios marketplaces.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.