[hypervis0r]

> Do you honestly believe that Linus would accept core kernel changes for the sole purpose of supporting Windows on Linux? It would NEVER. HAPPEN.

Kinda off-topic, but, isn't Linus basically a Microsoft here? Does it matter if Linux's forkable and open-source, if nobody ever forks it to do what the community wants instead of what Linus wants? (e.g. stable kernel ABI, Windows support, etc)

> I've got a laptop and desktop that have been running Windows 10 since launch and they work just as well as my Mac does. I've never re-installed any of them, and never had them "go nuts". That story reads like someone who last used Windows98 and thinks it still applies.

I agree so much with this... last time I installed Windows, it was Windows 7 in 2013, haven't touched it since then, and it works perfectly. Of course it requires a bit of maintenance, but what doesn't after so many years.

[andrewflnr]

> Kinda off-topic, but, isn't Linus basically a Microsoft here? Does it matter if Linux's forkable and open-source, if nobody ever forks it to do what the community wants instead of what Linus wants?

Not really. With OSS, what matters is whether the community wants it badly enough. Forking a software project is fundamentally hard, and the payoff has to be big enough. With Microsoft, it doesn't matter how big the community's payoff is. If Microsoft doesn't benefit enough, it ain't happening.

I think the threat of forking is one of those really serious threats that still matters even if no one ever really comes close to doing it. It comes up more often in geopolitics, where military capability still matters even if no one wants to get anywhere close to a war.