The media plays along (more like advertising than journalism and Microsoft's advertising budget for magazine space certainly plays a role)

Does this look like a Microsoft ad or an actual article? They also promote listening devices down at the bottom.

Summary: Microsoft keeps buying ad space in magazines, compromising their integrity and tarnishing brands such as "Linux" (making it look like merely a component available with Vista 10)

"Microsoft EDGE, the browser that's better and safer than Chrome," a reader of ours joked, having sent us the above photograph. "Or else, steal the Chrome rendering engine, add-in hooks to the underlying OS then rename it Microsoft EDGE. Have these people no shame?"

"What kind of "Admin" uses that toy? That's like selling a rickshaw to truck drivers..."Remember that it has KHTML roots (KDE) -- a topic we covered here about a decade back.

"Computer mags at the local WHSmith," as our reader noted, show more of the same pattern. "See image," he wrote. "See also the front page of 'Admin' magazine: "Windows Subsystem for Linux". If you can't steal Linux then at least you can steal mindshare :]"

In Microsoft's very own words [PDF]: "Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!"

Here's the latest pile:

Nowadays, with WSL, they use that "Linux" thing to offer more Windows 'features' while tying them to the underlying spying machine. Shades of AWS in the server space...

Look closely at the top pick:

Yes, WSL. What kind of "Admin" uses that toy? That's like selling a rickshaw to truck drivers... ⬆