Re: WSL keeps getting better, and it's because Microsoft is finally admitting where developers want to be

On Mon, 6 Jul 2026 09:33:11 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> On 4 Jul 2026 18:23:24 GMT rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> <https://www.xda-developers.com/wsl-keeps-getting-better-and-its-
because-microsoft-is-finally-admitting-where-developers-want-to-be/>
>> 
>> It must leave a sour taste.
> 
> Honestly, I'm not sure if there any any 'Softies left who get invested
> in the ol' team-sports tribalism; it's been nigh-on 15 yrs. since Satya
> gutted the old guard, and nothing about Win11 gives any suggestion of a
> development staff who're actually invested in the end product. Old-
> school freenix die-hards might well be the only ones still carrying the
> torch for that rivalry, at this point.

There may be a few hiding in the closets but it is a different company 
under Nadella.  With the revenue up 17% year over year I doubt many are 
questioning his leadership.

Azure, Teams, Office, LinkedIn, and CoPilot are cash cows. MS isn't 
forthcoming about the product mix but the guess is Windows 11, bot OEM and 
enterprise sales, are about 10%. 

It's more than WSL. VS Code is very popular and is cross platform. Purists 
can use Codium or Cose OSS. I did find that since Codium doesn't use the 
MS repository for extensions, not all are available. I did add them to get 
the CircuitPython extension but it had problems so I went back to Code.

Dotnet is available on Linux. The ability to create desktop GUIs isn't 
there yet but ASP.NET works fine. I haven't installed it but SQL Server is 
available on Linux too. 

Ballmer's dog in the manager approach didn't work. I'm reaching but I 
think there may be a cultural implication. Indian culture doesn't lend 
itself to the One True God syndrome.