We feel we must ask: couldn't this have been done as a kernel personality instead?

And risk insanity when you hit the limit on multiple personalities with [1]so many distributions available?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

We already know their choice would be an in-house built Linux distribution or Ubuntu. Either would be quite smart of Microsoft.

I don't have a W7 instance I could try this on but the download link in the Which article appears to work in that it downloads an exe file.

I would expect existing Win7 machines are either folks who will not change at all, or for El Reg readers are machines kept on win7 for a very good reason so no desire to change them and not used for web/email/running anything downloaded/ sort of cases.

My SiL has a W7 machine and uses nothing beyond the web browser (including email) and Excel. A few months ago she had a look at W10 & decided it would be too different for her to upgrade.

Win10 is undeniably a different operating system. And it has a version that is numerically higher than the previous release.

I just don't understand why it is continually referred to as an "upgrade".

It was the case that an in-place upgrade of an activated W7 or W8 installation would work and activate. A clean install wouldn't activate initially, but round about 2016 they changed that and any valid retail or OEM W7 or 8 key could be used to activate it (not a volume license one, although an in-place upgrade from a volume licensed W7 install did work).

Not tried any of the above for ages, so can't say whether or not it actually has stopped working.

I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't gone the whole hog and made Windows entirely free - or at least, free for personal use.

As with Google and Chrome, the OS these days is mostly just a framework into which you can bolt your other chargable services into, ideally with a large dusting of adverts atop.

MS have sort of made Windows free for personal use, if you install Windows 10 and don't put in a product key at all to activate, it will still function perfectly well, getting security updates and even feature updates. The only way you would even notice it wasn't activated is a watermark in the bottom right of your desktop and you are unable to set a background image.

Ive had a Windows 10 VM set up like that for a couple of years and unless MS change something in the future it appears it will carry on working without activation, and if they do change it I will probably just nuke the VM as i use Linux as my daily driver now.

Windows Server does pretty much the same

There was a completely free version for a while, Windows 7 with Bing or something like that IIRC. I had a cheap little tablet connected to the TV running it for a while.

It's only natural that WSL 3 should be a Windows add-on for Linux - something similar to Wine.

Downvoted because 15 years on. and WINE is pretty much as good as it was on day 1.

Two weeks ago I wouldn't have given a ****. Then I wasted a day trying to install .NET under WINE with zero success. Despite trying everything the internet could suggest.

[Author here]

> Then I wasted a day trying to install .NET under WINE

Your words, not mine.

Mine are here:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/17/dotnet_6_ubuntu/

Wine cannot install the CTL Office apps (so far as I've found anyway - spent several days fiddling with it trying to get it to work), which is a pretty major issue these days.

[Author here]

> Wine cannot install the CTL Office apps

What is CTL Office when it's at home?

Typo - should have been CTR - Click-to-run - basically the installation method used by all recent versions of MS Office (so far as I remember Office 2016 was the last one which had an MSI installer which Wine may have been able to use).

Malfunctioning under WINE?

:)

Wine is far better now than it was on day one.

Today it can run quite a number of games very well.

This is how I use it, via the Lutris wrapper.

I was thinking that - WSL is a reverse wine. They should have called it ENIW instead - "Enabling New systems In Windows"

I know how to enable a new system in Windows !

It's called FORMAT C:

"Perhaps recommending Chrome OS Flex as a replacement for macOS is a step too far even for Microsoft just yet."

It's possible they're trying to edge their business to a Microsoft equivalent of this - it's just that they expect you to run their web services rather than Google's and don't really mind if you do that from Linux.

Has anyone checked in on Steve Ballmer?

Must be hard for him to see this Linux cancer so widespread at Microsoft.

[Author here]

> Must be hard for him to see this Linux cancer so widespread at Microsoft.

Nah, not really.

Don't be deceived by the surface chrome. Look through the shiny layer of hype and focus on what's underneath.

Windows doesn't interoperate with GRUB. Install Windows on a box with Linux and Linux won't boot any more. Linux can mount Windows partitions, but Windows can't mount Linux partitions. It will cheerfully offer to format them, though.

Microsoft loves Linux like a boa constrictor loves rats. Look, it's hugging its little furry friend!

It's just embracing it... and extending it.

Don't you mean "embrace and engulf"? Because that's always been the Microsoft way.

Microsoft once had a strategy they called " [1]Embrace, extend, and extinguish ", which became a catchphrase for many people.

(See also IBM's ' [2]FUD ' for an earlier example)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt

That's not " once had ", it's " has and still deploys ". Just look at all the Linux "support" and see where that is leading.

Overly fat leopard, spots and so on..

"Linux can mount Windows partitions, but Windows can't mount Linux partitions. It will cheerfully offer to format them, though."

Sure Windows can mount Linux partitions, but you need 3rd party software for that.

But I'm sure you knew that already.

I'm sure the billions he got from M$ will make that easy. Assuming he notices once he's finished doing the monkey dance that made him such an insufferable prick.

Before I get deluged with down votes, hear me out: While I abandoned Windows years ago *because I can* I’ve never pushed Linux onto anyone unless they demonstrated a certain technical prowess.

However, last week the 16 year old son of a friend managed to trash the hard disk in his computer, so I suggested that a cheap SSD would resurrect his machine. I then asked what programs he needed to run, and to my amazement it was simply Chrome. Youtube, Google Docs, Discord, Twitter and Spotify was the extensive list he gave me, and all ran in the browser quite happily.

So, as an experiment, I put Linux Mint on said SSD, downloaded Chrome and that was that. Within 30 minutes all was working and he’s not moaned about anything. Everything just worked (Beer for the Minty devs) and he’s happy with the speed improvement gained from the SSD and lack of antivirus bloatware.

Now, I remain as amazed as the next person, but to see him just get on with it as if nothing happened is quite astounding. He just treats is as an appliance, like his Nintendo Switch or Android phone, and it was no big deal as long as he had the browser he was used to. I was tempted to put ChromeOS on the machine, but TBH I couldn’t be arsed. Linux is easy enough IMO.

Assuming he’s typical of many young adults in the education system, I do wonder if Micros~1 need to have a rethink.

While I abandoned Windows years ago *because I can* I’ve never pushed Linux onto anyone unless they demonstrated a certain technical prowess.

I've done it a couple of times. When someone said "why it doesn't look like windows?" I just said "It is a new one" and that was that.

They don't play games or anything like that. Chrome was really enough in terms of apps.

Two people even said that they thought Chrome is Windows (as in person stares at empty desktop and asks me "how do I open Windows"? I say "what do you mean?" and she says "You know the internet?")

Pretty much my experience as well.

Yes, some folks need MS Office for exacting work-compatibility reasons, other need Photoshop or the odd special package, but for most folks they can work on a tablet or phone fine so really if they get a recognisable web browser they are sorted, maybe Libre Office as well. Just add uBlock Origin and they are amazed at how less crappy the experience is!

"While I abandoned Windows years ago *because I can* I’ve never pushed Linux onto anyone unless they demonstrated a certain technical prowess."

I too abandoned Windows years ago but I have pushed people on to Linux - dozens of them. Just one has been a refusenik - I no longer service his system.

Most of my converts are grannies and grandads with zero to no technical prowess - Mint just works. Two people do have very occasional printer problems. Some people call and worry why nothing has gone wrong with their laptop or PC and ask if I'll go round and give it a look over (yearly service?). All I'll usually do is clear out some old kernel files so it looks like I'm doing something :-)

Some people will try and tell you that this is the portent of a change in direction at Microsoft.

It's not though, this is just more evidence that Microsoft is so big, that whole departments therein have opposite priorities.

MS seems to have lost the plot in recent years. They have fantastic ideas which they share with great enthusiasm, and then end up scrapping or delivering an extremely crappified version of what they originally outlined. Sometimes they even release a version or two so that once they scrap the idea they allow us the bitterness of having had a brief chance to see something great.

I'm sure it started out much earlier but the first example I can recall is Windows Home Server, which had a fantastic way of just chucking in a bunch of disks, regardless of size, and combining them into a single volume which included some level of redundancy as well. Then they released WHS2 which did away with the JBOD volume and enforced much stricter limits on the types of disks that could be included. I am still inconsolable about the loss of Windows Phone... the writing was on the wall when they abandoned the consistent square tile-based UX and started sticking circles everywhere because that's what Facebook and Apple were doing for profile pics. Astoria would have been magical, being able to run Windows, Linux and Android apps side by side. Now we get to incur the overhead of a VM, and WSA is inexplicably restricted to a handful of obscure regions (at least the Pope can run Android on his Windows machine in the Vatican City if he wants to) and a tiny number of large countries. MS is developing MAUI, a single-codebase cross-platform development framework based on their own .net technology, and yet they have rebuilt their flagship Outlook product from scratch as a trash web app wrapped in a bundled browser.

The one (and possibly only) reason to adopt Windows 11 is the Weyland graphics support through WSLg - this works because it is more3 like a Docker container than a full-fat VM.

WSL2/g is the foundation for the Windows Subsystem for Android. that is still bubbling its way to release

> In other news, Hell freezes over and pigs fly...

Classic, my friends. You have my deepest respect! I'm putting a copy of this article on my wall!