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Microsoft .NET Core 2.0 For Linux Released; Redhat Will Bundle Microsoft's .NET (zdnet.com)
Billly Gates writes: Microsoft recently released Visual Studio 15.3 for Windows and Visual Studio 7.1 for Mac with .NET core 2.0. In addition to porting Microsoft Code and SQL Server to Linux, they have ported .NET. Redhat will bundle .NET in their software offerings instead of relying on Mono. .NET core is Microsoft's open-source .NET platform which is not based off Mono and available for Linux, Mac, and Windows here.
Long time Linux users will have seen exactly what's been happening: Linux has been slowing discarding its UNIX heritage, and has been becoming more Windows-like for a while now.
During its early years, we saw Linux tend to imitate Solaris, and to a lesser extent the other commercial UNIXes. But as they've faded away, we've seen Linux become more and more Windows-like.
Linux-oriented desktop environments like KDE and GNOME were the most obvious examples. They were clearly inspired by Windows, rather than UNIX desktop environments like CDE or NeWS or IRIX Interactive Desktop. GNOME 3 resembles the Windows Metro ideology.
Systemd has really accelerated the process. It brings ideas like binary logging and a monolithic architecture from Windows to Linux, for example. These are ideas that totally contradict with the traditional UNIX way of doing things.
Now the availability of .NET Core on Linux makes it even more Windows-like.
People familiar with FreeBSD and Solaris will see the differences clearly. Linux used to be a lot more like them than it was like Windows. But if you use a modern Linux distro today, it'll often feel closer to Windows than it will to FreeBSD or Solaris.
This is why we've seen so many long time Linux users move away from Linux, in favor of the *BSDs or macOS. When these people starting using Linux, often back in the 1990s, they used it because of how it adhered to the UNIX way of doing things. But now that so many modern Linux distros don't do this, these users have had to find better alternatives. So now they use FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, or NetBSD, or DragonflyBSD, or macOS. All of those OSes provide a much truer UNIX-like experience than Linux tends to these days.
I have been unimpressed by a number of apps written in mono recently (mainly 3D printer related stuff) as there seems to be no common versioning or even awareness of the different distros, what package management systems they may have or what the commonly installed and stable versions of any libraries may be.
You get these big ugly lists of instructions, usually telling you to uninstall all existing instances of mono and/or mono-based libraries and install the one specific version which their project will run with, then download 3 or 4 other dependencies from other projects (none of which give you a simple way to get the specific version of their project which is required) and then you have to fudge things around to bypass things provided by your resident package management system. Then the app prolly doesn't work anyway, or has the most primitive UI you have seen in years.
Ok, I know that a real Linux user has traditionally been prepared to edit configs and make files, build a few things from outside of their package management, and handle conflicting library dependencies without blinking, but I don't see why mono and .Net core projects had to take a huge backward step and make us mess around the way used to with Linux 15 years ago. I just expected if we were going to bring in all that bloat then it should at least have made things smoother to manage, or better looking, or something modern.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Microsoft started off reselling Xenix which later became Santa Cruz Operations (SCO), we know where that went.
Microsoft partnered with IBM on development of OS/2 from 1985-1989 then split up in 1990 when Windows 3.0 took off, but later they released the first version of Windows NT (originally named NT OS/2) which at the time had a few error dialog boxes still referring to OS/2. Dave Cutler of VMS fame led the team that developed Windows NT (some suggest WNT is a play on VMS++) . Where are VMS and OS/2 used today?
Microsoft partnered with Sybase, then split the partnership in 1993 retaining a copy of the source code and released SQL Server which was identical to Sybase 4.2. Where's Sybase today?
In 1995 Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosiac and released it as Internet Explorer. There was an "auditing dispute" and MS paid Spyglass $8 million. Where is Spyglass today?
Microsoft licensed Java from Sun then immediately added Windows specific extensions to it. McNealy, being absolutely rabid over beating Bill Gates sued and won, so Microsoft created the Windows only .Net platform and for a while renamed their Java version as J++. Of course now Sun is gone but that was due to Sun, not Microsoft.
In 2005 GO filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft alleging MS developers stole technology after signing an NDA. In 2008 Microsoft's Tablet PC was found to infringe on GO's patents. Where's GO today?
So I read this and I see Microsoft continuing in the embrace, extend and extinguish model.