With Microsoft Office on Android, Has Linus Torvalds Won?

sfcrazy writes "The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, once said, 'If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.' Microsoft yesterday released one of its cash cows, Microsoft Office, for Android. Since Microsoft has a very vague idea of what users want and is suffering from lock-in, the app is just an Android front end of Office 365 and is accessible only by the paid users. There are already quite a lot of office suites available on Android including Office Pro, QuickOffice and KingSoft, so Microsoft will have to struggle there. Still it's a Microsoft core application coming to Linux. So, it looks like Linus has won."

Comments

I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

Re:I don't know, has he?

[korbulon]

Don't. I know he has.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[poetmatt]

It's a silly question, anyway.

Linus isn't really linux by itself, he just had a critical part to play. The more accurate question would be "is Microsoft losing relevance and marketshare?" to which the answer is yes, and not really a surprise.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Lunix Nutcase]

If they are losing relevance than why would this even warrant a story? How would having even more people using Office be akin to losing relevance? It seems it would be the opposite.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[h4rr4r]

Desktop you are right, Server you are wrong.

Even VMware is using it. Not to mention normal linux server stuff. Windows servers fall into two categories your has to be on windows stuff and windows only shops. The latter are getting less and less.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Samantha Wright]

Well, it's certainly not driving WP8 adoption. (Around here, we tend only to care about OS marketshare.)

Re:I don't know, has he?

[jones_supa]

That's like saying the car's engine is not important as the user is interacting with the steering wheel and pedals. Besides, I bet the user interface elements of Android could also be "replaced fairly easy". Anything can. But Linux plays many important roles in the background of an Android system.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Anonymous Coward]

It uses the Linux kernel, therefore it "is Linux".

It is not "GNU/Linux", if you're a Stallmanite; it uses none of the GNU userland. (Although who the hell ever actually said guhnoo-slash-linux anyway?)

The graphics stack is not X11, but that hardly makes it a different entity.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

The community does the job of fragmenting the Linux community far better than Microsoft or Apple could ever hope to. That's the downfall.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[DeathToBill]

Well, in theory that's true of *any* Linux distribution. Replacing the kernel is not "fairly easy" though. Sure it can be done: Debian are attempting a port that replaces Linux with BSD, for instance. But they've only got as far as a preview release. Moving a whole operating system from kernel to another is not easy.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[armanox]

Same can be said about Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, and Fedora (especially Gentoo and Debian, seeing that we have FreeBSD (and Hurd on Debian) based releases (and some ports of Debian to Illumos)).

Re:I don't know, has he?

[h4rr4r]

Android is as much as linux as debian.
Both can have their kernels swapped if you really wanted.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[tylikcat]

They are losing relevance. But they have a lot of relevance to lose, so expect them to be significantly relevant for a while yet.

(May the Lord Bless and Keep Ballmer - far, far away from us.)

Re:I don't know, has he?

[interval1066]

"has", he's still an active leader in several critical linux code trees and new kernel revs don't go out the door with out his personal approval.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[h4rr4r]

Your assumptions are that hyperV is cutting edge, vs playing catch up.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Grishnakh]

It's more like saying that a car's particular engine isn't important, and you can just replace a Ferrari's V12 engine with a Chevette engine and the driver will barely notice the difference.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[interval1066]

Debian are attempting a port that replaces Linux with BSD...

Uh, why? Where can I read more about this? Sure, there are some things about the BSD kernel I admire (I think its a hell of a lot more straitforward to configure) but I'm curious to know their reasoning.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[kthreadd]

Sure, but what most car users will care about is that there is an engine, not exactly which engine it is or how it's constructed. Some car users might even not know that there is an engine in the car.

I think that this car analogy isn't really that good. More people probably know the basics of how an engine works and why it's needed, than the people that know what an operating system kernel is. Also, some people will buy a car depending on which engine it has but few will buy a phone or tablet based on the kernel.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[kthreadd]

http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

It has been part of the official release for some time now.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[magic maverick]

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. Now you know what to search for, you can find out as much as you ever might need.

As for why: https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_why

Re:I don't know, has he?

[idunham]

You haven't been paying attention, have you?

The Debian kfreebsd-gnu port has been available for a while.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[mlts]

Correct me if I'm wrong (please), but with the recent kernel check-ins, Linux is Android on the ring 0 (or whatever equivalent ARM uses) level. In a twisted way, Android revs are just Linux distros that are specialized, and have special drivers for the SoC stuff that is on phones and devices.

Again, I could be wrong, but this is how it appears to me.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[MightyMartian]

Absolute nonsense. Dalvik and other Android components have been heavily optimized within the Linux kernel and userspace. Yes, I'm sure parts of Android probably are portable, but considering Linux's appeal both for its available source code and its licensing, why would Google even want to waste enormous resources moving it to another OS?

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Archangel Michael]

For the first time in a very long time, Microsoft isn't a "Windows" company. For a brief moment, there was someone who realized that in order to be relevant moving forward, Microsoft will have to stop being a "windows" company. Let see if it stays a "second tier" Office App on Android or if Microsoft makes it world class. That will be the true sign that Microsoft has or has not stopped being a Windows company.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[oGMo]

Disagree. They've been losing relevance for a long time, and we're noticing now that they're struggling to find any relevance. They did have a lot of relevance to lose, as they squandered away what relevance Windows had, trying for markets they were weak in (server) while neglecting markets they were strong in (desktop), all while continuing to be so far behind the curve they just don't get what's going on until it's years too late (mobile).

They might have been a strong player in the game console market, but then they pulled an XBone.

Business is still pretty big, but with Windows losing day-to-day familiarity with users, their last bastion is going to erode quickly as users start asking "why can't we use something else?" I fully expect them to throw billions at trying to find relevance for years to come, though. This all might be foreshadowed by RIM and Blackberry: originally king at business, trying to fit in elsewhere, disrupted by technology they didn't grasp, falling behind, throwing money at trying to stay relevant, while everyone else wants to move on.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also the best feature. In fact, it may be the defining paradox/tension of Linux.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[ackthpt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

Perhaps the more appropriate question would be: Is Microsoft Losing?

The concept of Mature Company and all that entails seems to apply. Microsoft is no longer growing, the are re-aligning and consolidating, while trying to figure where they fit into the future. Up to a few years ago they saw themselves as the future.

buggy whips at fifty paces

Re:I don't know, has he?

[timeOday]

Downfall? Adroid is a "fragment" of the Linux community that has snowballed into a runaway success that now dwarfs the adoption of Linux on the conventional PC desktop and may yet dwarf the number of Windows installs globally. This would not have happened had google not been allowed to take Linux in a different direction and run with it.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[schnell]

Precisely. Linux as a kernel has "won," but Linux as a desktop OS is still far behind. And I think that's what Linus was talking about at the time, Linux on the desktop.

Android is "Linux" to approximately the same extent that MacOS X is "BSD" or "Mach," and I don't think anyone imagines that BSD has "won" because of Office for Mac or that there are 900K iOS apps out there. I think it's much more appropriate to say that if anyone "won" here it's Android, but I think that Linus is smart enough not to try to take credit for what Google has done on top of "his" kernel.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

A fragment of a fragment further segmented and compartmentalized by carriers and hardware makers.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are they becoming, an "Office" company? I think they are going to be just another player on this market as well. There is only so much you can innovate a text editor, after that it just boils down to shuffling buttons and menus around.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[ImprovOmega]

It's like asking what would happen if the oceans started draining? Yeah, it would eventually devastate the oceans, but there's so much water there that it takes forever. For Microsoft to fold up shop would take at least a decade of consistently bad decisions, and even then it would almost have to be willful.

For modern examples of tech companies in decline, consider Blackberry, formerly Research in Motion. Everybody says they are dead in the water, but if you look at it, they still have billions in cash, and probably at least 5+ years of life even if everything goes completely against them.

Or SCO - they limped and legally maneuvered their way into 10+ years of extra life (the last 5 of which have been under bankruptcy protection!) when they should've been dead and gone since at least 2005. No, corporations do not go quietly into that good night. Those that should by all rights be "dead" usually have at least 5+ years of limping along to do.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Sique]

Linux is a kernel. Everything else is just a particular distribution. End of message.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[rullywowr]

This typo-filled summary is nothing more than a lame "nerd-baiting" attempt to rile up the Linux supporters because Microsoft released software dedicated to run on Linux. This is supposed to be chalked up at a "win" for Linus? Yeah I'm sure he really doesn't give two shits. Woo-hoo, I guess we are all supposed to run in the street with penguin costumes now and burn Surface tablets.

The fact is that the world rarely cares what makes the hardware run...the majority of end users just care they can use XYZ app on their device and it works. This entire summary should be modded "-1 flamebait" for trying to rile up the Linux community over nothing.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Sique]

The whole idea of GNU is to allow for fragmentation at will and without asking for permission from previous developers. And for them to incorporate the good ideas you included into your own fork back into their work without asking you in return.

You are stating this as if it was a bad thing.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Sique]

No, as Mac OS X is based on DARWIN, which is a BSD kernel, not Linux.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

A front-end for "cloud" and web based hosted SAAS applications? I don't see it as a win for Linus/x, but a revenue stream for Microsoft.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[g2devi]

True. Even if they do lose the lock on the non-Apple desktop and laptop market, they may still be able to do an IBM and reinvent themselves.

We'll finally know that Microsoft is at the tipping point when the Walmart, Futureshop, Best Buy, Staples, etc all devote floor space to non-Mac and non-Windows laptops and desktops (e.g. Linux, Chromebook, etc) and its common for businesses that currently buy both Macs and Windows start buying these non-Mac and non-Windows laptops and desktops.

We're still a long way from that scenario. But unlike 5 years ago, this scenario seems likely within the next 5 years. Google in particular has done a fantastic job of breaking the Microsoft-Mac hegemony. Whether it will turn into a Microsoft-Mac-Google hegemony or there will be space for other competitors is another story.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[HermMunster]

Eh, not a Windows company? They've had products out for Mac for a long time.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[ImprovOmega]

This all might be foreshadowed by RIM and Blackberry: originally king at business, trying to fit in elsewhere, disrupted by technology they didn't grasp, falling behind, throwing money at trying to stay relevant, while everyone else wants to move on.

RIM, whether they like it or not, is transitioning into a services company. They made an incredibly shrewd move with the Mobile Device Management platform formerly Blackberry Fusion, now rebranded Universal Device Service. They allowed existing Blackberry customers to migrate licenses for all of 2013 for free to the new platform and use those licenses to manage not only Blackberry 10 devices (naturally) but also iPhone/iPad and Android devices. This made an incredibly strong cost/benefit argument for existing customers faced with increasing pressure to allow corporate iPhones and Androids to just keep using Blackberry to manage them. This helps Blackberry (the company) ensure a consistent revenue stream from MDM licensing even if you're using a competitors product.

The switch to ActiveSync for messaging will also help take the load off of their servers, allowing them to shrink their infrastructure saving even more money, and whether the phone ends up being popular or not (it's a pretty solid device, just very few apps as yet), they have a viable path forward for the future. They were already a trusted name in the MDM market with a great deal of penetration with their old devices. The leveraged that pretty hard and I think it will be their saving grace going forward.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

Again, depends on the application. Fragmentation in the consumer space just confuses the consumer, what Microsoft and Apple do well, begrudgingly, which also has its cons, is present a uniform experience to the consumer.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[GigaBurglar]

I think he meant in the OS dept. Locking users into proprietary software is all Microsoft will soon have left.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is very good (I have at least 6 devices that use it), and I don't have any fair complaints against it. However the fact remains that there ARE comparable kernels out there that android could make use of that would provide similar levels of performance. FreeBSD, for example. Or if google wanted to license a closed source kernel there would be a variety of options. I don't know why Linux was chosen for Android, but it's likely because it provides the best hardware support and was the easiest to build into such a system. Switching Linux out for FreeBSD wouldn't be like putting a chevette engine in a Ferrari, it would be like replacing a ford V8 with a chevy V8. It would be different underneath, and perhaps a hard swap to do, but not really noticeable if all the hardware works.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Futureshop/Bestbuy, have Chromebooks on the shelves, ready to be bought. I know, I bought my Chromebook at Futureshop.
I doubt they are selling many of them, the sales drone had trouble finding one for me. (The boxed units were two rows away from the display models.)

Re:I don't know, has he?

[MightyYar]

They also have a games division, a phone division, and a bunch of other stuff... but the fact is that most of their money is either directly made from Windows, or from a product anchored by their Windows desktop monopoly. I suspect that even their Mac sales are mostly from people who need to stay compatible with their Windows-using colleagues/customers.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[gmuslera]

In absolute terms, Linux won, as is "the most used OS across all computer devices in absolute numbers. Now, if you focus your attention in a particular area could not be as used there as in the global average, but those areas seem to be losing relevance each day, in part by the growing market of cellphones/tablets for doing things that used to require a desktop computer, the Microsoft election of Windows 8 for everything, and maybe more recent, in the lack of privacy (that for enterprise data could be a killer) implied in Microsoft solutions, specially the hosted ones like Office 365.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[MightyYar]

That's like saying the car's engine is not important as the user is interacting with the steering wheel and pedals.

That's true to a large extent, though, isn't it? Sure if you put a really crappy one in there people would notice, but there are other "engines" available that are nice, too. I know there is a port of Android to the FreeBSD kernel, and Apple seems to do pretty well with a Mach derivative.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[serviscope_minor]

That's the downfall.

The downfall of a system that has grown steadily sine it was new? The downfall of a system that powers almost every large supercomputer, a large fraction of web servers and a huge number of embedded devices? Oh and not to mention Linux (the kernel) now powers the majority of smartphones and tablets too!

You do realise that without the "community fragmentation" it would have achieved none of those things.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[aliquis]

It's more like saying that a car's particular engine isn't important, and you can just replace a Ferrari's V12 engine with a Chevette engine and the driver will barely notice the difference.

Regardless we're talking OSes, not cars.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[LordThyGod]

Linux is very good (I have at least 6 devices that use it), and I don't have any fair complaints against it. However the fact remains that there ARE comparable kernels out there that android could make use of that would provide similar levels of performance. FreeBSD, for example. Or if google wanted to license a closed source kernel there would be a variety of options. I don't know why Linux was chosen for Android, but it's likely because it provides the best hardware support and was the easiest to build into such a system. Switching Linux out for FreeBSD wouldn't be like putting a chevette engine in a Ferrari, it would be like replacing a ford V8 with a chevy V8. It would be different underneath, and perhaps a hard swap to do, but not really noticeable if all the hardware works.

What's the mobile track record of the "other" kernels? I am admittedly ignorant of phones running bsd*. It seems there is a long track record of Linux being adapted to mobile devices, so there isn't quite as much re-inventing the wheel. And since most vendors are doing their own builds, they have access to a large developer and engineering community and the collective knowledge of such communities. Over and above that, Google's infrastructure has always been Linux and they probably have a boatload of top notch Linux engineers on board already. So while the changing of the engine makes sense theoretically on one level, its pretty stupid on the practical level.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[aliquis]

Linux itself is a very non-critical part of Android. It's just the kernel. It can be replaced fairly easy. Users never interact with it directly. The user interface elements are much more important. Linux is just a comodity. A very good comodity, but still a comodity.

Everything is non-critical and can be replaced by something else. Easily proven by the multiple phone and tablet oses out there. Doesn't mean all that much though.

As for the user interfaces they are also easily replaced.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[TemporalBeing]

Eh, not a Windows company? They've had products out for Mac for a long time.

Technically they've had Mac products longer then they've had Windows products. But that's not the point.

The point is that over 20 years ago, Microsoft went from being a general software company (with products on Mac, DOS, etc) to a software operating system (ie, Windows) company supported by various general software products, some of which continued on other platforms. The ball has now swung back and the operating system portion of the business is now shrinking in at least importance if not also market share and revenue, so they once again have to morph the company into something else, only they don't really know what yet - Ballmer is going for Devices and Services with his latest restructure, but we'll see if that holds.

Noteably their devices tend to be really good for the most part; it tends to be the software on the devices that suck. I wouldn't trade my MS keyboard and mouse for anything; but I don't run Windows. Kin and Zune are either the exception or they flopped due to being so closely tied to the Windows ecosystem, etc; I never used either so can't say.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[TemporalBeing]

FYI - HyperV may be making inroads, but mostly because it gets sold with most all Windows Server licenses if buyers are not careful. It's a bundling thing and you have to pay attention to not get it if you don't want it. Don't forget, HyperV came about only after MS bought VirtualPC to try to get into the Virtualization business - after Linux already had KVM, Xen, and several other viable options.

Comparatively, VMware is considered the market master when it comes to Virtual Environments and they've got the most infrastructure out there to drive sales and train staff.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[TemporalBeing]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

Perhaps the more appropriate question would be: Is Microsoft Losing?

The concept of Mature Company and all that entails seems to apply. Microsoft is no longer growing, the are re-aligning and consolidating, while trying to figure where they fit into the future. Up to a few years ago they saw themselves as the future.

buggy whips at fifty paces

Micrsoft hasn't really grown since the late 1990's or early 2000's in several aspects.

In terms of Stock, they've been relatively flat since about 1999, and as a result only started paying dividends a few years ago to try to appease stockholders since they could no longer buy and sell to make a few easy bucks.
In terms of employees, they've had some major rounds of layoffs (>1000) in the last few years so they've actually shrunk.
In terms of market, they've stagnated and are having a harder and harder time getting people to buy new versions of Office and Windows.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[phorm]

"trying for markets they were weak in (server) while neglecting markets they were strong in (desktop)"

And a lot of that because the current market doesn't expect you to be consistent, you have to grow and grow. Thus do you hear about companies that turned a 15% increase in profit but suddenly stock suffers because investors are expecting 20-25%.

Greed.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[rauno]

No. The Kernel is Mach with Darwin On top.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[tylikcat]

Ballmer's push towards hardware and services seemed aiming at just such a reinvention.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[rullywowr]

A front-end for "cloud" and web based hosted SAAS applications? I don't see it as a win for Linus/x, but a revenue stream for Microsoft.

This. Especially seeing as it only works with a monthly subscription paid to Microsoft.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[oGMo]

RIM, whether they like it or not, is transitioning into a services company.

I wonder if this is the route we will see MS take. As relevant to the story they've already been doing Office as a service (most likely to compete with google), though I don't know how good or useful this is. I'm sure they could be doing this for other businessy/enterprisey products. Mostly they need to figure out they really aren't a leader or top dog, and focus on what they can do well, not try to compete with everything poorly. I doubt without a culture change (starting at the top) this will happen, though. MS has seen everyone as a competitor that needs shut down from day 1, so this would require huge sweeping change.

I fully expect to see BingBook+ before this is all over though, years after even Google stops caring about social networking.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[ron_ivi]

Re:I don't know, has he?

No. Microsoft won.

Microsft gets a growing market in which to sell their products (for >$0) to replace their existing shrinking market; and meanwhile Linus gets $0 for each of those units shipped with both Office and Linux.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[smittyoneeach]

Indeed, and I live in an area with the traffic to bolster your point.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[poetmatt]

this is it in a nutshell. HyperV is being sold free to attempt to gain marketshare, it doesn't mean anyone cares. While HyperV has some nice things, they aren't things that vmware doesn't already offer and/or do.

The average MS based company is like this for a virtual environment: 90% vmware 5% hyperv 5% azure.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Ravaldy]

Your comments are not based on facts unless your only speak of the PC market.

Numbers speak for themselves. Their SMB and SME products have seen a huge increase in sales. The game console is a continuing to grow and XBox one isn't suppose to be DRM so I don't believe they've lost anything yet. Up until the release of Windows 8 Mobile they didn't have much of a shot at the mobile market but that is changing. Their numbers in the mobile market are growing monthly. They also have the office suite at the consumer level that is doing well.There are many other branches such as MS Dynamics that I don't believe are included in their SMB/SME revenues.

Where they hurt is in the PC market because the consumers have changed what types of devices they buy, not because they wanted to move away from MS.

Microsoft is a large company that is deeply rooted in many businesses. Saying that it isn't relevant is saying that there is a replacement for their solutions. At the moment I don't see a replacement for businesses like the one I work for. So until someone comes up with a nicely packages solution for SMB/SME, MS will be relevant.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Ravaldy]

I see lots of users buying the Z10 and I know a few going for the Q10. Lots of people on this site thinking they see all and know all predicted the fall of RIM. Large companies with huge talent on their side don't disappear overnight. Especially not in a vast market like this one.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[MSG]

Besides, I bet the user interface elements of Android could also be "replaced fairly easy". Anything can.

That's not a fair comparison. Linux's interfaces mostly conform to a documented standard that is already implemented by other kernels. Therefore, it should be a relatively small task to replace one kernel with another kernel that already exists and implements most or all of what is required. (I'd imagine that there would be additional drivers requried)

There is no existent alternative implementation of the Android userland. Replacing it would require a lot of engineering. It would not be easy.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[lgw]

Word is the least interesting part of Office. It solves a problem that few people have any more: editing a document for printing. Word was important during the era of "desktop publishing", starting when home printers became decent, and ending when people stopped handing around printed paper as a way to communicate.

The important Office products are PowerPoint and Excel. There are no good competitors for either. And while I wouldn't want to edit either on my phone, being able to project a slideshow or spreadsheet from one's phone will be really big deal for years to come.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Cenan]

There is only so much you can innovate a text editor, after that it just boils down to shuffling buttons and menus around.

Really now? That sounds eerily familiar, like something once said about 640k's worth of system memory! I think the last decades have shown us, contrary to your stated belief, that innovation in software happens in directions we can't quite predict. In fact, it's a recurring thing here on /. to bring up the most hilariously stupid predictions of supposedly smart people - in IT.

Oh, and office applications are much, much more than text editors. LibreOffice, MS Office and the likes are all bundles of neat and not so neat software, surprise surprise - for the office.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[cusco]

Rather wonder why they think that MS is weak in the server market. Hosted Internet-facing web servers, possibly, but every organization that I have ever worked with, including huge universities, the Coast Guard, and massive hospital chains, down to an accountant's office, were mostly if not completely Windows servers. There is no management system even close to Active Directory and Group Policies in any other operating system, no file system ACL equal to NTFS, and no groupware system that comes anywhere near the ubiquity of Exchange. MS is not going to have real competition in the server space until its competition addresses those needs.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[ConceptJunkie]

That's the thing, though. They can use those billions... tens of billions... to throw monkey wrenches at their competitors and will be able to disrupt the industry for many more years. And I don't mean disrupt as in the way the iPhone, iPad or Android disrupted the industry by driving the market into new territories with interesting new products (which Microsoft has utterly and very visibly failed to do despite several attempts in the past few years) but by being their usual evil, monopolistic selves.

The less relevant they become, the more desperate they will become and the more they will be willing to cause harm to their customers, their competitors' customers and the technology industry to regain the relevance they so foolishly tossed away. Microsoft has been a 900-pound gorilla for decades and the industry has eventually managed to survive and innovate despite their stranglehold on marketshare. Now they are an _injured_ 900-pound gorilla. Things are going to start getting ugly.

We know what they were capable of in order to get on top and stay on top... how much more will they be willing to perpetrate in order to try to avoid their inevitable decline?

Re:I don't know, has he?

[TechyImmigrant]

>The important Office products are PowerPoint and Excel. There are no good competitors for either.

There are many perfectly serviceable competitors for PowerPoint and Excel, both free and proprietary.

What there is no effective competition for is Visio. Visio is far and away the most effective technical drawing tool. Nothing comes close. It is the reason I use Office. I can write words and make slides on any platform, but I can't get the smartshape automation of Visio anywhere else.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Tough Love]

in order to be relevant moving forward, Microsoft will have to stop being a "windows" company

And with its evil air supply cut off, Windows can slowly die in palliative care.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[ConceptJunkie]

"For Microsoft to fold up shop would take at least another decade of consistently bad decisions, and even then it would almost have to be willful."

There, FTFY. I couldn't help myself.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Tough Love]

So what are they becoming, an "Office" company?

XBox company. Too bad the console market is imploding.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[ConceptJunkie]

And that adds up to hundreds of millions of users _not_ using Microsoft or Apple products. That's success by any definition.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm waiting to be able to install HURD on my phone.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Tough Love]

Linux kernel would be more analogous to the car's engine, drive train, suspension, electrical system, cooling system and locks. Android is the upholstery, headlights, door handles, and faceplate on the radio.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Tough Love]

Haha, you are funny. You do know that Google extensively hacked the Linux kernel to make it do what they want in terms of memory management etc? What do you suppose the lead time would be, just to repeat that on BSD? Among countless other "little" details.

No, don't you tell me, it will just be random. Let somebody who knows what they're talking about answer.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[cusco]

Ah, yeah. Let me know when Linux has a domain management system 1/4 as useful as Active Directory, or which allows administrators to control workstations in the field as tightly as Group Policy. To my knowledge NTFS is still the only file system approved for Pentagon computers with highly classified data, since none of the alternatives have ever passed their tests. And sure Exchange is crap, but the only alternative that has come even close in functionality was the abomination that was Lotus Notes. There are thousands of admins who would replace Exchange in an instant if there were an alternative, but there really isn't.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Alternate Interior]

Omnigraffle. Far and away the best app I've used for flowcharting on any platform. Its autolayout blows Visio out of the water. It's outline view is great. Different people will have different uses for Visio, but for everything I need, Omnigraffle is loads better.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[H0p313ss]

No.
The Kernel is Mach with Darwin On top.

Correct, Mach kernel that also borrowed some of the BSD code with a BSD userland.

Anyone who tries to call OSX BSD is missing the point. Some of the software comes from BSD, but the kernel is not.

Sique, every time you repeat that nonsense angels weep and go on to kill puppies and kittens in their frustration.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[lgw]

There are many perfectly serviceable competitors for PowerPoint and Excel, both free and proprietary.

People who live and die by the PowerPoint sales presentation don't agree. I can't stand slideware myself, so I don't have a strong opinion, but people I know who make and show presentations all day (and have good reasons to use non-MS products) say there's just no comparison. SmartArt automation is a big part of it, I'm guessing.

Similarly, unless you just need a spreadsheet calculator, I haven't seen anything that stands with Excel - certainly the online spreadsheets like the Google Docs one don't come anywhere close. I use Excel as my drawing program (if you make the cells square, it's great for the kind of drawing you do on graph paper), which nothing else seems good at, but mostly there's this whole culture of "spreadsheet programmers" who only know Excel/VBA (seriously, no other languages or training, but spend days on VBA programs).

Re:I don't know, has he?

[The Cat]

Oh, it can be replaced?

Fair enough.

Replace it then.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Dorkmunder]

and let us not forget Lync which is now a billion dollar business for them.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[gerardrj]

Chevette is probably pushing things, as the argument wasn't about new vs antiquated, but different options of new and modern. So go ahead and put a Toyota V6 in the Ferrari. Most drivers wont notice the difference. In day to day use I doubt even Ferarri owners stomp on the pedal and do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds very much. I regularly see people driving exotic cars: Bentley, Aston Martin, Ferrari, etc. And they drive them just the same as every other car on the road just plugging along with traffic.

So yes... 98% of the time I bet, if you could mimic the V12's sound, the Ferarri owner would not notice the downgrade to a smaller engine.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[The Cat]

Butthurt.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[oreiasecaman]

Operating System = Kernel + userland. So no, Linux by itself ain't a OS

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Will.Woodhull]

It is not so much that MS has been losing relevance. It is much more that they have been throwing relevance away

You would have thought that MS would have learned their lesson when they changed their GUI so that it was easier for the casual user (around 95% of the market) to migrate to Ubuntu or some other Linux than to upgrade their WinXP. But no, MS in its grand vision and overarching wisdom chose to make even more changes to the interface until they now have Win8, which only works some of the time, and has the amateur free network of family and neighborhood gurus stymied about how to even get to the various settings, let alone how to change things so the actual users can do something useful on their new computers.

MS is destroying itself by being too clever. If the company had been as smart as it was clever, it would have continued to improve the performance of WinXP rather than trying to compete with it with crappy new products.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Zlotnick]

Finally! A name for this phenomenon. I was going to call it "NPR headline writing style," but "Betteridge's law of headlines" will do fine.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[erice]

RIM, whether they like it or not, is transitioning into a services company.

I wonder if this is the route we will see MS take.

Why not? It's the standard progression for large tech companies in decline. Services are an effective way to extract profit from established mind share when products are fading. The big iron companies have all gone down this road.

Control Data, which survives as Ceridian, a pure services company
Unisys, which used to make mainframes is now an IT services company
DEC merged into Compaq into HP which has threatened to turn pure services
IBM still makes products but service revenue dominates

Re:I don't know, has he?

[mjwx]

It's a silly question, anyway.

Linus isn't really linux by itself, he just had a critical part to play. The more accurate question would be "is Microsoft losing relevance and marketshare?" to which the answer is yes, and not really a surprise.

So the question isn't "Has Linus won" rather it's "Is Microsoft losing".

The sad thing is, a lot of users are just swapping the old benevolent tyrant (Microsoft) for a new sadistic tyrant (Apple).

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Grishnakh]

I never said anything about new vs. antiquated. Ferraris had V12 engines back in the 70s and 80s, when the Chevette was new. I really meant "good" vs. "crappy", and as far as I can tell, most other kernels are definitely crappy compared to Linux in many ways, especially in the context of embedded mobile devices. A lot of people seem to like FreeBSD for instance, but good luck installing that on any kind of mobile device and getting good performance from the UI; that OS was never optimized for low-latency use and it doesn't have a lot of device driver support. Or there's HURD; I don't think I need to go into much detail about how that wouldn't exactly work well on a cellphone in its present state. Even the proprietary stuff isn't all that great; I worked with Nucleus Plus once and it seemed like basically an overpriced piece of crap to me; ok maybe for some simpler embedded devices but definitely not suited for anything as complicated as a modern Android 4.1 device.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Stormwatch]

British English. I agree that it sounds wrong, but it's how they say it.

Re: I don't know, has he?

[TechyImmigrant]

No. Should I?

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Kalriath]

I think you'll find to a corporate, it's Outlook and Project that are irreplaceable. And naturally, fucking Access.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Kalriath]

Actually, I think their Mac sales are actually because their Mac products are rather good. They're written by a completely different division who did things like resist the ribbon much longer than their Windows counterparts did.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Tough Love]

Nobody gives a crap about NTFS ACLs, what are you smoking? The rest of those islands of suck will erode when the air supply is cut off.

Ah, yeah. Let me know when Linux has a domain management system 1/4 as useful as Active Directory, or which allows administrators to control workstations in the field as tightly as Group Policy. To my knowledge NTFS is still the only file system approved for Pentagon computers with highly classified data, since none of the alternatives have ever passed their tests. And sure Exchange is crap, but the only alternative that has come even close in functionality was the abomination that was Lotus Notes. There are thousands of admins who would replace Exchange in an instant if there were an alternative, but there really isn't.

Don't you know that enterprise is switching in droves to Gmail, now isn't that enough to get you steamed? And there's plenty more where that came from. Face it, Microsoft's model of the enterprise belongs to the last century and the talent that had any hope of changing that jumped off the ship long ago.

You're a perfect example of the state of denial that keeps you guys steering straight ahead at the iceberg :-)

Please don't stop just because you know I'm watching, this is fun.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[kermidge]

re innovate a text editor

You should see SuddenView. It's almost a paint program for words; each line is its own format, among other things, and its _fast_. It's the most radical text editor I've seen. Designed and written by Rod Coleman originally for the Atari ST. For anyone who does a lot of writing, especially for a living, it can be one hell of a helpful tool. I met Rod at an Atarifest in '91 where he demo'ed SuddenView, and yes, consider this a plug, if you want, because for what it is and what it lets you do, it's freaking awesome.

http://www.sudden.net/view/

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Cenan]

Played around with it a bit, seems to be straight to the point of "what can we do with text editing". Awesome :) Thanks for the link, plug or no plug.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[MightyYar]

I love the fact that they kept their file menus in addition to the ribbon - it is such a "fuck you" to the other Office division. In all fairness, it would look absurd to have a blank file bar across the top of the screen on their Mac product. At least with Windows they can reclaim the screen real estate.

As for quality, their Mac BU has been uneven. Sometimes you get a pretty good release like 2011. Sometimes they do something like strip out VBA and make you wonder why it is you are using Office at all. Entourage was an embarrassment compared to Outlook on the PC. And of course they abandoned IE completely, which is a shame because that always made it hard to use some intranet sites.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Sique]

That's fine with me as there are enough puppies and kittens out there.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Sique]

No, the Kernel is XNU, which is a derivate of the Mach 3.0 kernel with an BSD-API, with the BSD process model, BSD inter process communication, the BSD file system and BSD network stack. It's thus a hybrid Mach/BSD-kernel.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[cusco]

Cloud solutions are appropriate in some situations, but many industries, such as insurance, healthcare, energy distribution, major military contractors, and the like, are required to have complete control over their records at all times. They can't hand them over to a third party that they can't control. Even then, MS is one of the major suppliers of cloud-based services, and Azure is the single most popular cloud programming environment.

I don't particularly like the MS hegemony, but since I refuse to cover my ears and sing "La la la la la, I can't hear you!" when evaluating solutions for my customers I realize that they're still the best game in town. Like I said, get back to me when there are adequate integrated replacements for AD, Group Policies and NTFS and we'll talk, until then you're doing your employer/customers a disservice rejecting products just because you dislike the manufacturer's management.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[cusco]

Really? I knew that Lync/Communicator was popular, but no idea it was anything like that.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[H0p313ss]

That's fine with me as there are enough puppies and kittens out there.

Heartless bastard! Won't somebody think of the puppies and kittens?

Re:I don't know, has he?

[lsatenstein]

There is a good working beta by a Chinese company that has engineered a clone of windows 2007 for, of course, Windows, and Linux. I have run the Linux version and while it still has a way to go, it works for whatever a unilingual person would do with excel, word, powerpoint, etc.

The bug I encountered was incorrect spacing for a accented character. For some characters it put a space character before and after the correct display. Company is called Kingsoft.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[kermidge]

I'm glad you found it interesting. I've been trying to tell people about this since '91. There's one huge caveat, tho: for someone who wants to really try it, the catch is that there is stuff to learn; until one has incorporated the keyboard shortcuts (and mentally mapped them to functional use of formatting, manipulation, and the like) it's not going to get them the speed and versatility desired.

I spent an hour a day for just over a week and still had a ways to go. External events intervened and unfortunately I haven't revisited the program.

Anyway, over the years everyone I've talked to who spent the effort to learn it just as one might with touch-typing, for instance, all swore by it for using it as it's intended. I talked with several developers at the time who used it in conjunction with another program called EdHack (a text editor that let one edit anything - including RAM and disk sectors - of any size (chunks limited to available RAM on one's system) for much of their work.

EdHack was interesting because the ST's OS on ROM was shadowed into RAM; if one didn't like something one could edit it in memory to see what happened before committing a change to code for further testing.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[akh]

That looks a lot like Nedit (for X11). Mouse handling seems pretty similar. Sounds like SV predates Nedit though. Cut my teeth programming on the ST, don't know how I missed SV (mind you, GFA Basic had a pretty nice IDE for the day).

Re:I don't know, has he?

[DeathToBill]

Go learn the language, you fucking American.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

So?

Re:I don't know, has he?

[kermidge]

Indeed; I had one of the last versions of GFA, I think, 3.5u or somesuch. Very nice language I thought, run interpreted, compile for export and standalone. From my feeble attempts at Mark William's C, GFA had a lot of similar stuff. Although it could get confusing I like that one could deal with several levels, TOS, GDI, AES. While the verdammt event_multi was set up with all the fancy GUI stuff, one could even get down to bare metal in the functions and subs if needed. And agreed, the IDE was clean, simple, easy to use, and if memory serves let one customize it a bit as well. I certainly wasn't very good at it but I miss trying to use GFA. For that matter, I miss my STs also; I really have to get some emulators up and running.

GFA was becoming my favorite after Shepardson Basic on the 800. Btw, re the rev A lockup, I called Atari and spoke with an engineer who gave me the location to poke to reset the line counter - so no more lockups right in the middle of writing code. Rather than try to remember how many lines of code I'd done, a very smart friend helped me write a little routine that executed during the VBI to reset the pointer - a counter would keep track of the number of deleted lines and then issue the poke before the lock up limit. Just had to remember to run the usr call in immediate mode at the start of every coding session.

I've never seen Nedit. --fifteen minutes later-- Well, now I have. I installed it on my Ubuntu desktop. Looks very old fashioned. Also looks very good; I just took a quick gander at preferences and it looks as though I could spend some time in there all by itself. Neat. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[kermidge]

Dunno, man, that stuff's over my head. I don't know exactly what Rod does or if he's made source available.

I figure that in the main folks will use the tools that are known to them, that are reasonably congenial with their wonts, and serve to accomplish their needs, whatever those tools might be.

Obligatory

[scarboni888]

No.

Let me be the first to say...

[Zontar The Mindless]

!!!YES!!

WINNING

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it's something distinctly American or what but having a broader choice of operating systems and software that can run on a variety of them means WE WIN.

Linus didn't win the game...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the game changed and Microsoft is losing this one.

Mod summary -1 troll

[AmiMoJo]

Linux already "won" - his goal was to create a Unix-like OS and it became incredibly popular. As far as I am aware he has never shown much interest in getting MS Office for it, or for market share.

Nice try creating animosity where there is none. The summary is full of typos and weasel-words. I'm not huge MS fan but the summary is full of bias in an attempt to turn a mildly interesting story into a flamewar or hatefest.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[Dishwasha]

Yes, a better question is, is that still the benchmark that Linus uses for determining success? Something tells me....no.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[cervesaebraciator]

Linux is bigger and more important than 'beating' Microsoft. Sure, many of us go through the puerile stage of trying to win people over from Windows, but that usually ends when maturity teaches us two things: first, to be content having free as in freedom software we can use; second, not to volunteer ourselves for tech support by telling giving friends and relatives unsolicited advice to make significant changes to their computers.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[Sique]

Actually, Linus' stated goal was "world domination".

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[aliquis]

Yes, a better question is, is that still the benchmark that Linus uses for determining success? Something tells me....no.

It's pretty unnecessary to ask the question today anyway.

So is 2013 the year of the Linux desktop? Rather irrelevant. Many good desktops out there, not everyone agree on which one to use though, some "adequate" or good software to pick from, decent drivers more so if you pick Nvidia or Intel.

But what really matters is that tablets are supposed to sell more than desktops soon and that more of those likely run Android than Windows. That most smart phones use Android and there's a whole freaking bunch of those sold.

So yeah. Maybe Linux didn't took over the desktop. But it's sure taken over smartphones and tablets for now.

And as for the desktop we've had a good UNIX (trademark or not) based desktop for long. So it could be done. The problem with that specifical one is that it's got other limits which make it less than perfect.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[Malor]

OK, I'm going to delurk for this one.

Sometime in 1998, I attended a talk Linus gave in Silicon Valley. It was, I gather, his usual thing: he just answered questions, he didn't really have a speech. I don't remember how the subject came up, exactly, but he started talking about his goals for Linux.

He said, approximately, "I'm going to take over the world." And the audience laughed. "You think I'm kidding, I know you do. But I'm not. I'm going to take over the world." And I will tell you this: he meant it. There was a sharp look in his eye; an uber-geek at the height of his technical power, knowing that what he was doing was going to change everything. He knew it sounded ridiculous, but he was being absolutely honest, not joking in the slightest. He intended to dominate everything with his operating system.

I believe that, at the time, he thought of "the world" as being "the desktop". That was the center of computing back then; servers were rare, and the Internet was pretty young, but everyone had desktops. Linux was never really intended as anything except a desktop OS, at least in the beginning. But that early code was so amazingly reliable, compared to what Microsoft was offering, and so incredibly cheap, compared to what Sun was offering, that it ended up pressed into server duty. It was the accidental server; it fell sideways into that role, and ended up being one of the best solutions on offer, simply by the virtue of a clean design and good code.

So, here we are, fifteen years later. And, you know what? Linus *did* take over the world in most respects. But he didn't do it how I believe he expected to; I'm pretty sure he thought he would break the Windows monopoly directly, and take over everyone's home computers. But Microsoft has largely managed to defend itself there. Rather, Linux turned into an ecosystem, and it went around Microsoft, growing into many other markets. You still don't see it on the desktop, but it is absolutely ubiquitous everywhere else. Chances are quite good that any reasonably prosperous household in the First World is running Linux somewhere, possibly in multiple devices. They may even be running more Linux than they are Windows, without even realizing it. And if you use the Internet, you're talking, at least somewhat, with Linux machines. It's in phones, it's in tablets, it's in routers, it's in servers, it's in supercomputers. It's everywhere except the desktop.

Honestly, I think it would have continued to make inroads even there, but the GNOME team and Canonical went nuts chasing tablets, burning their existing users and giving them a horrible desktop product, trying for imaginary tablet customers that never materialized in any significant way. Ubuntu Linux, in 2010, was an outstanding desktop OS, and three years later, it still hasn't regained that usability, discoverability, and just general functionality again. If those desktop teams hadn't lost their collective minds, I think Linux would be doing well, even in the center of Microsoft's power.

That, however, didn't happen. None of the assaults on the Microsoft desktop fortress have ever been successful. Microsoft still rules there. But Linux is either a major player or completely dominant in every other computing market that's developed in the last fifteen years. And the advent of cheap-as-potato-chips computers, like the Raspberry Pi, will only increase that effect, as new markets arise, and Linux is adapted to fit them.

So, no, Linux has not won in the way that Linus originally intended. That battle was lost, decisively. But he and the kernel devs have thoroughly won the larger war.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[UnknowingFool]

Er what? Although Minix was not open source at the time it was free to university and academics (Torvalds was a student at the time). Torvalds based his orignal Linux design on minix but it had major differences like a monolithic kernel. He posted it as a "free minix-like" on forums to describe his kernel. I don't think his goal was not to pay for it (as he didn't have to) but to make one himself. He did use minix as the OS while building Linux until it became mature enough on its own.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[Tharkkun]

Linux already "won" - his goal was to create a Unix-like OS and it became incredibly popular. As far as I am aware he has never shown much interest in getting MS Office for it, or for market share.

Nice try creating animosity where there is none. The summary is full of typos and weasel-words. I'm not huge MS fan but the summary is full of bias in an attempt to turn a mildly interesting story into a flamewar or hatefest.

A lot of it's popularity is due to the downfall of Sun Microsystems. Without their demise Linux users would have less of a reason to even exist.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[cheesybagel]

Actually Linux is part of the reason for the downfall of Sun. In the early 1990s Sun and the other UNIX vendors sold a lot of RISC workstations and servers. Eventually with the release of the Pentium Pro and Windows NT Microsoft started clawing back on that workstation market and server market. You probably do not remember but back then you had UNIX World magazine, of all places, claiming UNIX was dead and Windows NT was going to be the next big thing. Then Linux and the WWW happened. Had it not happened Microsoft would have dominated the server market. The price was always going to be the downfall of the expensive proprietary UNIX RISC platforms.

According to his definition, sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus defined what would be winning, and then it happened, so he wins according to his definition.

I think he will really have won when more people are using a Linux distribution (including Android) than a Windos OS. We are getting there.

Re:According to his definition, sure

[tylikcat]

I think the interesting case is increasingly Apple, not Microsoft. (Though whether Cook can keep momentum is an important question. If he's Apple's Ballmer, well, we may well yet have the year of linux as a primary workstation.*) What does the BSD kernel really mean? In the academic space, it means that for many domains Microsoft is becoming increasingly irrelevant, because so many of the good tools (and the tools you don't have to pay for) are coming out of a unix world, and can be made to run on Macs without that much hassle, and Windows it just a royal pita.

On the other hand, when it comes to oppressive control of an environment, Apple is about as non-open as you are likely to get.

* I tried to make myself say "Linux on the desktop" but it was hard to type with the laughing.

Re:According to his definition, sure

[AdmV0rl0n]

I'd agree. But Android isn't getting there. Its kind of worse. If our computing ethos is to simply change one moniker (Microsoft) for (Google) and revert to a single user OS (windows 95) >> Android - and to go back to pretty much the worst security landscape imaginable (Hi Android circa 2013) - I'm sat here trying to establish that I've not just seen us move totally side ways and not forward.

Whats next I ponder - a google 'trustworthy computing moment?'

Maybe people are happy that MS has taken the hit and that Linux is on top (or is establishing itself there) - but I'm sat here thinking that most malware is pushed from Linux servers, and that things must be different than just clapping Linux wins for the sake of Linux wins..

I'm not writing this as an MS fan either, just as someone who look at the current state of things as being pretty fucking dire as they stand..

Re:According to his definition, sure

[marcosdumay]

Google isn't on a cruzade to destroy all free software on the planet. If MS loses, we win.

Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[TWX]

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

So, this is a win in the same sense that the Spruce Goose flew.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[PPH]

So what you are saying is that both Linus and Richard Stallman won.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[h4rr4r]

You can pretty easily add that stuff to android.
My phones and tablets are doing just that.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[samkass]

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

So, this is a win in the same sense that the Spruce Goose flew.

If you're really being pedantic, and really want to start the flame war that you seem to be encouraging, "Linux" is the name of both the kernel and the original operating system, and some other organization has attempted to rename it to put their own brand in it more recently. Someday we may know it at MIT/BSD/GNU/Canonical/RHEL/Linux if that trend keeps up. Or we could just call it what the person who created it called it, and if GNU wants a GNU/whatever OS, they can release a distro with their name on it.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Thank you!

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

No, he's saying that Linus won ( Android has Linux), Stallman did not ( Android does not have GNU userland).

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[intermodal]

No, I'm not aware of Office being a GNU-inclusive distribution. Unless of course someone convinces Google Play to run on GNU-using Linux systems and serve Android apps to regular Linux. In which case, yes, Linus and Richard both win.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[jones_supa]

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

Actually he's won using that definition too. The Linux kernel has virtualization code from Microsoft already.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[invid]

So what you are saying is that both Linus and Richard Stallman won.

No, Google won.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[h4rr4r]

Same for debian, they already have a BSD based version. Is Debian Linux or not?

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[AmiMoJo]

Stallman is probably more interested in this move than Linus is. On the one hand I imagine he is annoyed that MS Office is proprietary and the dominant format, but on the other hand he must be pleased that GNU code and free software in general is now powering so many devices. In fact the majority of computers and complex embedded systems are running free software now, in part.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[interval1066]

So, this is a win in the same sense that the Spruce Goose flew.

Naw, Hughes flew the Goose once then shelved both it and himself for the rest of his life. Linus, although living in a small house in Portland (or wherever) and only coming out to rant at his developers like a maniac, actually gets out and about to shout at the world, and Linux is flying in shops all over the world, so, no, its not at all like the Spruce Goose.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[jawtheshark]

I don't think you understand Stallman. He will not be happy until all software on all devices is Free Software. (Free as in Freedom) I'd even expect him to see this as a failure or an affront to the Free Software movement.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[Sique]

If we really want to be pedantic, the operating system is the kernel and the drivers, and everything else is an application. In my CS course (long, long ago), an operating system was defined as "the program that manages all computing resources and makes them available to the applications". There are some special applications coming with most operating systems, and they are called "shell" (and can be a command line or a GUI or whatever you want to use), whose task it is to allow a user to start, control and stop applications, but they are not part of the operating system.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[TWX]

I have to wonder how accurate that really is.

What it comes down to is where the platform ends and the applications begin, and I don't think that Stallman or any other even-remotely-credible free software advocate would deny that there is a value in commercial applications, so long as they reduce vendor lock in.

A good analogy would be that the platform is the road, and the applications are the vehicles that can drive on it. The intent being to avoid toll roads or roads that exclude vehicles because of their brands or manufacturers.

I don't know the man though, and I admit that I well could be incorrect.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[TopherC]

Google's role in Android is an interesting one. The majority of Android is open-source. Most devices have a few closed-source components from the manufacturer such as EGL libraries (glue between Android's surface composer and Linux framebuffer devices), maybe wifi firmware, some few other small libraries too and of course the various bloatware that's usually nice to get rid of. Google's closed-source contributions are their apps (play store, browser, maps, email clients, etc) which are not internal Android components and all of which have non-Google alternatives.

In addition to the Linux kernel Android includes bionic C libraries and a variety of userspace daemons and utilities that are open-source and maintained by other companies. One can put things like busybox (GPL) and glibc libraries on an Android device. From a technical perspective the bionic C libraries are just inferior to the GNU equivalents. But the licensing makes it a lot less tricky for other companies to work with and so their inclusion in Android could be thought of as a clever industrial/political/marketing maneuver.

Since most of Android is covered by an Apache license, what keeps it from forking? Maybe just the fact that Google still develops it heavily. Everyone want's the latest "official" version on their own device, and I think that's the market force that drives a large amount of the code merging efforts today. Maybe it really is Google's product, not because it actually is but because people continue to perceive it that way.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[jon3k]

How most people use it doesn't matter. What matters is how Linus uses it. Which, technically, this isn't even really "written for". It's actually written for Android using Android APIs, the kernel doesn't really matter much. I think it's a stretch to say this is written "for Linux" in any sense, even strictly referring to the kernel.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[Blaskowicz]

I wondered WTF you are talking about with "bionic", bionic means neural implants or robotic hand attached to your body or whatever. You probably need to capitalize that, word, i.e. the Bionic C libraries.

Else, that's an instructive read.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[i]

I do not agree with your definition of a operating system. I rather prefer the definition as written at http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm :

"The primary architecture of an operating system comprises the following seven areas:

        Resource allocation
        Process creation, control and communication
        Symbol resolution and linkage
        Data descriptor schema
        Data management
        Program run-time environment
        Communication with external systems, devices, and emulators."

" By contrast, the secondary architecture is an open-ended list that evolves throughout the lifetime of the system. Whereas the primary architecture is one and cannot be subdivided, the secondary architecture can come in an endless variety of sizes and capabilities. Some examples of the secondary facilities include:

        Editors
        Command interpreters
        HLL [High-Level Language] compilers and interpreters
        Query facilities
        Formatting/presentation facilities
        Application development facilities
        Information/HELP facilities
        Program analyzers
        Data validity checkers
        Migration aids
        Various design aids
        Etc., etc., etc."

No.

[codl]

This already came up when Microsoft bought Skype and continued maintaining the Linux version for a few months. This is not news-worthy in any way.

A webapp is a webapp is a webapp

[VGPowerlord]

It seems silly to conflate this with Microsoft making products for Linux.

This is just an app that's a wrapper for a web app. The same web app you can already run on Desktop Linux.

Besides which, last I checked this wasn't a free webapp and was, in fact, a way for Microsoft to milk more money out of companies that would have otherwise only had to pay Microsoft for each Office license once. Now it's a monthly fee.

The fact that it also works on other OSes is just a "bonus."

Re:A webapp is a webapp is a webapp

[3vi1]

You forgot Poland.

And Skype.

Re:A webapp is a webapp is a webapp

[recharged95]

Bingo.

Folks, the game changed a long time ago with web and mobile apps.

Linux is still a desktop OS, it does what it does well. Android is a bandaid compared to a true mobile OS.... which doesn't exist yet (or did as in PalmOS/variants). Or none has presented itself until I can run a freaking google search without a 2GHz quadcore processor.

Re:Huh?

[kthreadd]

Android is not Linux. Linux is a kernel not the OS.

That's why some say GNU/Linux.

the only thing

[CAIMLAS]

The only thing that O365 - a closed web platform available only to those who pay a subscription - on Android means is that users lose.

Re:the only thing

[93 Escort Wagon]

Now Android users can have the same experience iOS users have had for a couple months - swearing at their phones, wondering why Microsoft bothered to release such a neutered product!

I'm sure Linus is having a piece of cake in celebration...

Yes, what a great victory

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft totally lost, they only made HUNDREDS of BILLIONS in revenue over the years.

Totally showed that Linus guy..

Re:Yes, what a great victory

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft totally lost, they only made HUNDREDS of BILLIONS in revenue over the years.

Totally showed that Linus guy..

That's one narrow, shallow definition of "victory" you've got there. Has every victory you've ever had required monetary gain?

Re:No, it's not really Linux

[kthreadd]

The Android open source project is free software, but no one really knows about the binary blobs the device makers and carriers ship to you.

Very few actually run Android, most run some of its forks.

Excuse me, you're late to the party

[nashv]

Microsoft has already released several applications for Android, as is evidenced here https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Corporation. I still cannot find any thing for Microsoft Office, except maybe Onenote.

MSN Messenger for Android was released in 2012.

Re:Excuse me, you're late to the party

[oodaloop]

Amazing! It's almost as if you didn't even read TFS.

Re:Excuse me, you're late to the party

[squiggleslash]

I still cannot find any thing for Microsoft Office, except maybe Onenote.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officehub

Re:Excuse me, you're late to the party

[ProzacPatient]

Microsoft Team Foundation Server?

Re:Excuse me, you're late to the party

[squiggleslash]

I know (sort of, it's a wrapper FWIW, slightly different but not much) - but I wanted to indicate what app is the subject of this article.

FWIW this also answers the whole "But it's Android so not GNU/Linux which we all call Linux because Stallman's a dirty smelly hippy" crap - the web version of Office works great under Firefox under Ubuntu.

No

[SCHecklerX]

Only if you consider a nice platform being poisoned by that software winning.

not really

[slashmydots]

If anything, this benefits MS. They've hopefully learned and adapted to:
Use semi-monopoly to force stupid crap that customers don't want down people's throats = less money, benefits the competition by losing sales
Give people what the market research says they actually want = more money, hurts the competition by losing them sales

If this is the beginning of them pulling their heads out of their asses, this is not good for Linux at all.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people also eat their own toe jam, so there's that.

No, Linus is not making Linux to win

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Linus has seen Wargames and knows that sometimes
the best way to win is not to play the game

He does it just for fun.

Linux hasn't won anything.

[sjwt]

Android Inc has shown what many of us have always said. If the OSS moment got around to making user friendly easy to use stuff, it will take off. All your forking and hiding behind the command line are just killing you. Installs are getting better, much better, but still the amount of work someone has to do is too steep a learning curve for your Average joe to be able to setup and maintain a general Linux system. In the old days it used to be said someone with an Average IQ could EITHER remember the road rules, or be able to program a VHS recorder timer.

Re:Linux hasn't won anything.

[meta-monkey]

Which is what Ubuntu is for.

Re:Linux hasn't won anything.

[SuricouRaven]

It also helped that Android had a major corporation behind it, and a lot of manufacturers committed. Companies able to lean on hardware developers and demand that they release decent-quality drivers.

Most of the problem people have with installing linux distros, just as has always been the case, stems from hardware compatibility issues. You install the distro, then find that your sound card isn't supported, or that the video card is but the drivers are terribly buggy, or that the UEFI boot process on the firmware was only properly tested booting Windows and has compatibility issues with anything else. And woe betide you if you want to get your printer working. Linux is rare enough on the desktop that there is just no economic reason for hardware manufacturers to invest the resources into linux support, and this will remain the case until a major OEM makes a serious commitment and has the purchasing power to make it happen. Just as happened for servers already.

Re:Linux hasn't won anything.

[The Cat]

Crying butthurt FUD

Re:Linux hasn't won anything.

[goarilla]

You seem to think the OSS movement makes free software for "average joe". This is not true, they do it for themselfs. Often the command line solves a propblem
consistently and thoroughly. Pragmatism wins here over a "We need a gui" application.

Re:Linux hasn't won anything.

[Crosshair84]

That's really funny.

Ubuntu is on par with Windows 98, nothing more. Like windows 98, drivers sh*t themselves for no reason when you apply updates. Support for USB devices is hit and miss. Configuration often relies on editing config files manually or CLI. Can't play full-screen video worth a damm. Though to be fair. Windows 98 had a much more reliable audio subsystem.

The only thing is has over Windown 98 is that the UI is nicer looking. But then again, Windows 98 was made to run on 166 mhz processors.

For 20 years the market has spoken, people would rather steal Windows than use your product for free. In any other business people would be trying to figure out what they are doing wrong and trying to fix it. In the Linux community it's decades of denial and refusal to actually compete with Windows or OSX.

Google took Linux, told Linus and company to go fornicate themselves, and did in a couple of years what they should have done 20 years ago. Make a reliable, user friendly product.

A good strategy

[davidbrit2]

It's easy to win when you can declare your own victory conditions.

Re:Huh?

[Zontar The Mindless]

I hereby invoke the Fifth Meme of Slashdot.

("You must be great fun at parties.")

Possibly, but ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... more likely, since this is just a rehash of what's available for Windows and iOS, it's more substatively a reflection of Microsoft's pathological fear of change, driven by the company being managed by individuals unwilling to confront their own mortality. "Hope I die before I get old ..."

Office for Linux

[Cyb0rg1]

Office for android is a start, however I would really like to see a native Office port to desktop Linux. It would convince a lot of people, including myself, to jump ship from Windows and move over entirely to Linux.

Re:Office for Linux

[meta-monkey]

I think that would be great, too, so long as Microsoft provides the source code. Until then, they can cram it.

Re:Office for Linux

[tlhIngan]

Office for android is a start, however I would really like to see a native Office port to desktop Linux. It would convince a lot of people, including myself, to jump ship from Windows and move over entirely to Linux.

It's not office for android. It's Office365 for Android.

There's a HUGE difference. Namely, Office365 is cloud-based. Once you absorb that, the strategy behind Office for Android and the earlier Office for iOS is clear - because those documents are in the cloud, they may need final tweaking while on the road or whatever, and you can use your phone or tablet to edit the documents live (it's in the cloud).

Thus Office for iOS and Office for Android are meant to sell more Office365 subscriptions because otherwise you'd only be able to use it on a PC.

Take a look at Best Buy sometime - you'll find a strong deemphasis on the regular boxed version of Office (Office 2013), but Office365 is everywhere. Likewise, Office for Mac 2011 is hard to find, yet the Mac section will have piles of Office365 cards.

And yes, if it means something, Microsoft will release Office for Linux as well, if it means they can sell more Office365 subscriptions.

Remember, Office365 is cloud-based and you pay yearly (around $80?) for the ability to use Office in the cloud. It is NOT a native version, and none of the Office for Android, Office for iOS will work WITHOUT a subscription to Office365.

And Microsoft is heavily pushing Office365 for obvious reasons. The only non-Cloud versions of Office are regular Microsoft Office 2013 (Windows), or Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 (OS X), which you pay once and that's it, and they work offline. And beyond those two versions, you won't see those ported to iOS or Android or Linux anytime soon.

Basically, Microsoft knows that if you're going to offer something in the cloud, it helps to make it available for as many platforms as possible. Of course, they probably won't kill their bread and butter by porting the real Office to Linux, but they might make a native Office365 version of it.

Semantics

[tuppe666]

Linux maybe the kernel, but the whole point of why Richard Stallman never had any luck persuading others with his then very valid point that it should be GNU/Linux, was Linux was such a important, significant, and difficult part of the OS that naming it anything else was stupid (and plain just not as catchy).

The fact that it is used together with a whole host of userlands....Android perhaps the most viable and widespread hitting 900,000,000 install base is simply an aside. Its set to dethrone Microsoft this year.

The fact that I benefit on a GNU/Linux desktop from the work google do elsewhere in their Chrome/Android OS is the wonderfulness of Linux's choice of GPL as a tit for tat licence.

 

Genius...

[Real1tyCzech]

Guess what?

Microsoft didn't release Office for Android.

They released Office Mobile for Office 365.

What you imply is that they released an office suite for Android, when in fact, they merely released an Android client for Office 365 users.

As much as you might care to think one is pretty much the same as the other, you would be wrong. This app is not for editing office documents on your mobile device. It is for Office 365 users to view items synced to their cloud....nothing more. It cannot even access items on your mobile device...

Re:Genius...

[synapse7]

I hope they didn't put to much effort into that convoluted pile. If you actually need to edit office docs and must do it from a tablet or can't get to a desktop, I"ve had good results with the kingsoft office suite, it is quite amazing for free.

Re:Genius...

[Real1tyCzech]

The kingsoft app is an app for actually working with Office files.

This ain't that...

  This is not an Office Application like Kingsoft....it's a tool for Office 365 users. Nothing more. So yeah, obviously it fails miserably at being something it ain't. :)

Re:Genius...

[dimeglio]

It's still a Microsoft application.

Re:Huh?

[RabidReindeer]

Android is not Linux. Linux is a kernel not the OS.

That's why some say GNU/Linux.

Technically, this one's Android/Linux.

Haven't seen much GNU on my Android device, but the Linux is definitely there.

If by win...

[frozentier]

If by "win" he means Bill Gates will finally get even richer off a Linux app, then sure he won.

Everybody can finally go home now.

[jovius]

A well executed decoy by the allies of Linus succeeded to lure MS to make a wrong move after about 20 years in this epic battle! The ambush took MS by surprise because of the lack in their intelligence about the quotes of Linus. Whew I'm glad it's over!

So what's in the future of Slashdot after all this? The currently still low burning Distro Wars?

Re:Huh?

[jedidiah]

The part of the system that people interact with is GNU.

It's just like MacOS isn't Unix. It's more like System 6 with a Unix kernel underneath. Even if you think it's all only OpenStep now, it's still Openstep, not Unix.

Yeah, the little details matter.

Linux was always that last remaining missing part of GNU.

Re:Linus might have won but users lost

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

You realize we are talking about office suites on Android, right?

This is libreoffice on android

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/LibreOffice_on_Android

To sum up: we have "a fairly horrific, bolts and all, barely usable (even with keyboard and mouse) office suite on your tablet"

Re:Huh?

[tylikcat]

Hm.

Actually, I think Linux is the community. (I mean this quite seriously.) And as such, Android has some overlap with linux, but isn't quite the same thing, either.

But still, I think we all win.

Does it matter?

[bigman2003]

The whole idea of 'winning' or 'losing' is misguided. The whole idea of marketshare being an indicator of quality is also misguided. I am an admitted Microsoftie. I'm on a Surface tablet right now. My Windows phone is sitting next to me. I've got an Xbox, subscription to Office 365, etc. I'm all in. The phone market has really taught me a lot. I used to carry an iPhone, but I was never really impressed with it. Eventually I switched to Windows and I was much happier (with my phone). A lot of people look at my phone as a lesser product. They'll send me links to articles predicting the demise of Windows Phone, or articles describing the horrible marketshare. But guess what? None of those articles...or the low marketshare...or the possible impending demise make me think less of my phone. Not at all. They have no impact on how I feel about the technology in my pocket. So the point is- I feel that others should do the same. Ignore the marketshare (unless you are an investor or developer) ignore the articles written by the hacks (Motley Fool is determined to bash Microsoft 30 times per day) and just use the technology in the way it was intended. Don't get emotionally invested in someone else's business. Microsoft put (a decidedly strange version of) Office on Android because they want the money. It has nothing to do with either satisfying, or challenging the fanboys. It has to do with money. That is what companies do. Apple had a horrible marketshare in the desktop OS market. It didn't mean they had an inferior product, just a less popular one. Getting emotional about this is silly.

Re:Huh?

[kthreadd]

It's just like MacOS isn't Unix. It's more like System 6 with a Unix kernel underneath. Even if you think it's all only OpenStep now, it's still Openstep, not Unix.

Apple used to ship a UNIX distribution that was like that called A/UX. System 6 UI, UNIX underneath.

Pyrrhic victory...

[osu-neko]

...the apps is just an Android front end of Office 365 and is accessible only by the paid users.

More such victories and we are undone.

office 365 is the end of office

[Dan667]

microsoft is trying to force everyone onto it and it will only take one major system failure for people to abandon office. The cloud is just mainframes all over again and the problems have not changed. No one cares about your data as much as you do.

Re:office 365 is the end of office

[SuricouRaven]

Microsoft is pushing for subscription services because they realised their greatest competitor is themselves from five years ago. Look how long it took to get people off of XP. They reached the point where their software was 'good enough' that no-one has a compelling reason to upgrade to a new version, and the loss of a perpetual upgrade cycle ruins the whole business model.

Re:office 365 is the end of office

[iggymanz]

mainframe worked (and still work) very well, it is a wonderful architecture for a large businesses internal data.

the cloud is not reliable, has unverifiable security, and may even leave one without legal venue and is a terrible place to store internal data

Re:No, it's not really Linux

[interval1066]

Android is collecting all your data, that's why it's free. Linux is truly free, unlike Android.

Unless you root your phone, which is easily done, so no, not in my case.

Re:Libreoffice

[interval1066]

Exchange. There's a buttload of professional infrastructure out there that relies on exchange as its underlying communication and automation infrastructure, so those shops/offices are locked in. 90% of the legal offices out there use exchange, I'm fairly certain.

Re:No but Google did

[interval1066]

Even with stats showing that most people use Android?

So what does this lead to?

[UDChris]

So Microsoft creates an App for a tool that leads back to an MS server that runs...(bet it's not Linux).

So by the poster's remarks, who really wins? The guy who gets MS to create a web app that runs on a Linux mobile device, or the guys who get you to use your Linux mobile device to access your docs on a Windows server?

This app is incompatible with all of your devices

[nogginthenog]

I'm guessing it's this:

Office Mobile for Office 365

Nexus 4, Nexus 7 & ZTE Blade here but doesn't support any of them?

because Windows phones are D U M B

[Thud457]

hmmm...
"Use a smartphone?
You're already using *nix."

Re:Linus might have won but users lost

[SuricouRaven]

Tablets aren't really used for working on. That's what ultrabooks are for. Tablets are great content consumption devices: Video, books, a little web browsing. But how many people use them for serious work?

Re:Huh?

[kirkc99]

A link, for those who haven't seen it... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

MS Won't get it

[EmperorOfCanada]

MS will just try to use this as a tool to lure people back to the MS fold instead of seeing it as an opportunity to expand into new markets. I suspect that MS has two competing fears. One is that people who go to Android are never coming back and eventually one of these Linux compatible office suites will be an equal (While things like Open Office are good enough for many they still aren't good enough for say Accounting Pros). So by sticking an Office placeholder they can contain their traitorous users into still sticking with MS Office.

The other competing fear is people will just never come back and simple forget that MS was ever a part of their life. In the past there were PC (MS) people and Apple people. Each identified with their tribe and cast aspersions at the other. But now with tablets and huge mobile phones becoming people's primary computers they probably don't even know what OS they are using. They click on icons and things happen. So if MS wants a future in this world they need to just make products for other operating systems that people want. This might prove to be too painful for MS in that they would be sacrificing their OS dominance.

Looking at the new XBox I don't think that MS is capable of thinking about not abusing any advantage they have.

So my prediction is that any efforts to put office on Android won't actually work for the hard core users of Office like say Accountants. But this can all get a whole lot unpredictable. MS office for Mac seems fine, yet I have never seen someone using it in a expert user scenario. Also I think that when Apple first came out with the Intel Macs the dual boot feature was a huge selling point even though in the end most users just went with the Mac OS. The dual boot gave people the confidence to make the leap.

It wasn't really that long ago that I was arguing that Novell sucked, that the OS 9 sucked and wasn't going anywhere, and that XP was buggy as hell so I was going to stick with NT. All of this is in flux and the very ground we think is so solid could turn out to be ice with summer coming. The company that I am looking for is the one that turns your cell phone into a temporary laptop. That is that you take your phone and connect it to a fold up screen and keyboard for occasional laptop like use. Then you throw the folding thing in your backback and your phone in your pocket and keep going. The key is to make the whole thing non proprietary in that it needs to connect to any phone not just the model A3243. That way you can keep switching phones while keeping the foldy thing for years and years.

Won what?

[Tarlus]

Linus has won what, exactly?

If it's about who's making the most money, which is certainly what Microsoft is trying for, let's examine the details. Microsoft receives royalties for every Android phone sold. Linus receives nothing. Microsoft wins. Given the demand for Office, Microsoft would have no trouble generating revenue by releasing a suite for Android. They've already proven they have no problem releasing their software for competing platforms if it's profitable. They've proven this with Office for Mac. Cha-ching, Microsoft wins.

But if this isn't about money? Suppose it's about principals, or getting Microsoft to bend its knee to the open source community. I won't be the first nor the last to say that Microsoft will not release an open source Office suite. So that can't be it. Their acknowledgement of other operating systems? They've developed software for Apple platforms for decades, so that can't be it either. Their acknowledgement of a product using Linux? They've had Linux virtualization solutions in place for a very long time, so that can't be it.

Again, I ask. Linus has won what, exactly? A bet?

Re:No, it's not really Linux

[alex67500]

Android is collecting all your data, that's why it's free. Linux is truly free, unlike Android.

Unless you root your phone, which is easily done, so no, not in my case.

Actually, what you did was probably install a rom compiled by someone else, so you still have no idea what it does. The correct answer is: you haven't a clue...

Re:Huh?

[Sique]

Android uses Linux as its kernel. Thus, yes. Android is more than just Linux, you could call it Dalvik/Linux if you want. But Android definitely includes Linux.

Re:No but Google did

[jameshofo]

I was referring to the narrative that since Microsoft released software for Android Linus won. Pointing out with the title that Google really builds and controls the SDK to a point and that Microsoft has released Office on Mac's for a long time, before windows in fact, http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Office. So if Office is the measure of making it, isn't apple on top? Or more to the original point, this isn't really a good metric since "it's just on android". Now Office running without wine on a desktop Linux distribution, where Microsoft actually has a large market share would be impressive. Microsoft has never done well with mobile, and continues to do bad, they've just started caring about it because its starting to displace full blow desktops.

Yeah but but but yeah wait yeah

[GigaBurglar]

But but Android is only BASED off the Linux kernel yeah yeah but but.

Re:Won what?

[iggymanz]

Linux has won in the smartphone space, over half of devices globally run it. As for your worry and concern about money such as royalties, if money is your game points for success at life then you are a loser and your heroes are losers. As a general truth, those with the most of it finance wars, famine, genocide and cause 80% of human misery

MS knows exactly what THEIR core customers want

[Twillerror]

"Since Microsoft has a very vague idea of what users want" ... BS

Do you own a truck? If you don't and don't want one you wouldn't tell Ford and Ram(Dodge) what they should put in their trucks.

Excel is the Grep\AWK\Sed of the enterprise\business world. Not all of it, but a large percentage. The fact of the matter is there is a whole lot in your life that was built with the assistance of Word, Excel, and hell even PowerPoint. You think the construction company that built the building your in uses VIM to manage there shit.

Slashdot in general does not get this. I'm sure there are plenty of desktop support guys on here who do. Google docs is great an I use them all the time, but it's a tinker toy to some of the more advanced features in Excel that most people haven't even heard of.

Throw together a pivot table with a slicer and then see me in the morning. Take a look at stock symbol DATA for tableu...there is a world outside of compilers, web servers, and VIM people.

You can't tell me you haven't heard a iPad guy tell you he wishes he had Excel on there.

MS has done okay with the XBox. I think the phone and tablet is a catch 22 for them. If they don't do it people will wonder why. If they do people will wonder why.

Just extending vendor lock-in to a new platform

[hAckz0r]

This is nothing more than a front end to Microsoft's vendor-lock-in engine running in the cloud.

.
You pay a $10 a month fee to have Microsoft control your access to your own documents. While I have not used it, I can not imagine being able to do anything on a mobile phone via the web that would be worth the price. And don't even think of trying to install it on a tablet, you are not allowed. Microsoft probably thinks that a person with a tablet might actually expect to be able to do something with it, and wanting money for nothing they thought it easier to just deny tablets. Like that's really going to make me want to buy one of their tablets. Dream On!

Requirements:
* A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to use this app. Qualifying plans include: Office 365 Home Premium, Office 365 Small Business Premium, Office 365 Midsize Business, Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4 (Enterprise and Government), Office 365 Education A3 and A4, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 University, and Office 365 trial subscriptions
NOTE: If you don’t have an Office 365 subscription, you can buy Office 365 Home Premium from http://www.office.com./ With Office 365 Home Premium, you also get the latest version of Office for up to 5 PCs, Macs, and Windows tablets - and an additional 20 GB of SkyDrive cloud storage and Skype world minutes***.

* Requires a phone running Android OS 4.0 or later.

* Microsoft Office 2013 on a PC is needed for features like recent documents and resume reading.
**Office 365 account and setup necessary. Data connection required. Storage limits and carrier fees apply.

Re:Just extending vendor lock-in to a new platform

[H0p313ss]

Which actually makes in inferior to what Apple has got with the current iCloud beta.

Not that inferior necessarily means you lose, let's not forget VHS vs. Betamax.

Re:Won what?

[eek_the_kat]

Money buys the smartphones that run linux?

Re:False assumption alert!

[sjwt]

Not framing itself with one set of goals is *the* fault, and if the linux community doesn't give a damm, why is it every year they seem to announce 'THIS is the year of the Linux desktop'.

The NSA cares

[marcosdumay]

No one cares about your data as much as you do.

Don't be so sure. I bet the NSA cares quite a big deal about keeping your internal documents.

Re:Huh?

[MightyYar]

Huh.

That translates to

[Anonymous Coward]

!YES

Re:Huh?

[UnknowingFool]

Technically OS X is more BSD than Unix. But really does that matter to you if it's not the legacy Unix of yesteryear. Those legacy Unixes which had their share of problems.

Remember the old internet

[phorm]

Remember the internet in the early days? Where you could generally get email without spam, join deep discussions without trolls, and download stuff without being sued?

Do we really *want* Linux to be an OS that wins over all the Windows users? Sure, there will still be stuff for geeks, but how much will cool development and hacks be drowned out by requests for new fancy widgets or lame bug reports from people who don't have the understanding or patience to try things out themselves? What happens when all the fun stuff is eclipsed by the quest for "moar moneys!"
I'm happy to see things like Steam on Linux, but I DO NOT want Linux to replace Windows.

Re:Remember the old internet

[colinrichardday]

But how much money would there be to deal with such requests?

Re:Remember the old internet

[phorm]

One of the nice things about FOSS is that not everything is about money. There's a cost, but oft-times it is in time and effort rather than cash.

Re:Remember the old internet

[colinrichardday]

Yes, but providing customer support isn't as fun as programming.

The real question is: Who cares?

[MMC Monster]

Doing a poll of the general population around me, not a single one of them uses any office suite on their phones.

Now, it's a biased sample. Almost half are iphones, almost half are androids, and there are a couple "dumb" call phones. None of them have a Windows 8 phone. (I like to call that 'Biased towards reality'.)

Most of us get Microsoft Office files. But the email reader either opens the files natively or can shunt it to a simple document viewer to open the files in a read-only mode.

The point is that having office (either Microsoft Office or any other office suite) on a cell phone is overkill. Even on a tablet computer. It's not until you have a real keyboard (and, likely, a mouse) are you going to make "office-type" documents.

Seeing as how ...

[PPH]

... the code is owned by the community, we all have won.

I don't even have to read the article

[poofmeisterp]

I can tell you right now that the release of MSO to the Droid is one of those nifty tactics to generate false failures, sortcomings, and unsafe situations that make people want to find a "more secure device" that "addresses these problems or never had them".

Funny how an ad of the latest MS tablet device will appear at just the right moment.

I'm not joking.

Linus Wins!

[Darinbob]

Linus wins the game! Time to delete the character and reroll a new OS.

Lol.

[Grog6]

If Ballmer is more fun to you than Linus, You can't come to any of My parties.

You would Not fit in.

rofl.

Why would Linus (as opposed to Linux) have won?

[YoungManKlaus]

I mean, was he in some sort of cage-fight with Ballmer all this time or something?

Still some mopping up to do

[Tough Love]

Microsoft still occupies the business desktop and needs to be ejected. There are way too many entrenched Exchange mail servers than is good for the economy. Some standards body damage needs to be undone. A few things. Otherwise, yes, we won, and a big fuck you to Microsoft for being an unsporting competitor.

Re:Won what?

[iggymanz]

yes, money is useful for thing. But lust for impractically large piles of the stuff by sociopaths causes problems

Re:Huh?

[colinrichardday]

I can install GNU software on Windows 7. Should I call it GNU/Windows 7?

Ok

[The Cat]

Commence the Butthurt!

What baloney

[Trogre]

So this looks like Microsoft have released Android Office 365 viewer, so we can read documents on our Android devices. Just like the other zillion hillion office apps out there.

Can people not grasp the notion that some of us might want to actually edit documents on our tablets? Sure, the tablet platform lends itself much better to consuming content than creating it, but there are many cases where the ability to edit, say, a spreadsheet in a mobile context would be very useful. Stocktakes and financial meetings immediately come to mind.

Re:No, it's not really Linux

[interval1066]

Speak for your self.

With Dice in charge...

[Rob_Bryerton]

With Dice in charge of Slashdot, has Slashdot's head disappeared up it's own asshole?

Article author is misguided

[readingaccount]

In another article for example, the guy gives (among other reasons) the excuse that he won't use Office on Android because Microsoft works closely with the NSA to give access to your documents. Though he's clearly an Android fan and of course, the NSA wouldn't never work with Google (willingly or otherwise) to obtain Google Docs files or access to your actions linked to Google accounts would they.

The guy is a free-software fanboy (says so in his bio on the site). It's really disappointing that there don't seem to be many free-software advocates who can think clearly and are not emotionally so caught up in things that they can't objectively see such obvious hypocrisy in their words. It's one of the things that pushes me away from Linux - I don't want to end up like them.

Re:Huh?

[Dogtanian]

That's why some say GNU/Linux.

Some people also eat their own toe jam, so there's that.

The name " toe jam" neglects the important contribution of sock fluff to the overall substance. I therefore encourage the use of the term "Toe/Sock Jam".

Thank you.

Re:Huh?

[colinrichardday]

I have GNU emacs on my Win 7 partition. Does that count?

How silly

[cundare]

Did Apple "beat" Microsoft when MS released Office for the Mac OS?

Many would argue the converse.

Re:False assumption alert!

[goarilla]

Because the people who utter that announcement are heard and reacted to by people like you. And you enlarge it even further.

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes

[bjoswald]

Although Office for Android is just a hollow shell of its Windows equivalent, the thought of Ballmer signing off on its development (before throwing some chairs, of course) makes smile from ear-to-ear.

Capitalist thinking

[MarkW.Shelby]

Since when has 'opening your product or software up to a wider user-base' ever been considered 'losing?' This action will not lose them a single customer. if they gained even one user then M$ is a winner. This doesn't mean Linux is not a winner. Linux fans have such a difficult time thinking like a capitalist. No idea why it is so difficult! The same Euro-centric individual could own a Popsicle stand on his own street corner. When faced with capitalism on a level that personally impacts him he can 'get it.' He's out for himself... but translate that same philosophy to a corporate level and the same Euro-phile goes all socialistic. I'll just never understand it...