[brudgers]

The current iteration of Windows 10 tries to abstract away hardware under a higher level "Windows" layer and mostly get rid of variation between windows for embedded, mobile, and Intel platforms. With the new Bash/Ubuntu feature, I think Windows is moving on to abstract away the operating system.

My wild-ass prediction for a Microsoft Linux distribution is one in which Microsoft Windows replaces X-windows. Wayland is already trying to do this because of the perceived security vulnerabilities of X-windows' architecture. In a limited sense, this is sort of an old idea when it comes to nix: there were paid GUI products for layering on top of nix thirty years ago, e.g. Open Look and Motif.

[overgard]

> perceived security vulnerabilities of X-windows' architecture.

I wouldn't really call them perceived, they're really really major. Sharing uncleared video memory across processes can expose a lot.

[WhoBeI]

That'd be nice. No more dual booting presuming they bring DirectX along. It seems far of though. Microsoft would have to give up a lot of lower level control.

[PeCaN]

What would they gain though? NT is a pretty good kernel with very broad hardware support.

If anything, they'd just make NT fully POSIX-compliant. They'd get the same benefit with a fraction of the effort of porting Windows-the-GUI to Linux.

[asveikau]

> If anything, they'd just make NT fully POSIX-compliant.

They did this with the POSIX subsystem, and the ability to do this was in mind very early in NT history. They ripped it out in Windows 8, IIRC. I guess it's back.

[yazaddaruvala]

> What would they gain?

Long term deprecation of their work force? Reduction in operating costs?

Why pay people to support / extend a kernel / hardware drivers when Linus will do it for free?

[vram22]

Was Motif paid?

Edit: Checked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)

According to that article, it was, initially. Didn't know.