Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Edge on “Linux” Puff Pieces and WSL2 Fake “Linux”

Guest post by Ryan, reprinted with permission from the original

I’m almost hesitant to even mention that this exists, because it’s a nasty thing that even Windows users wish they could uninstall.



But I’ve noticed a lot of (paid-for) chatter about Microsoft Edge on “Linux”.



Microsoft has been on a tear recently, paying off formerly respectable people and sites that I used to read to trumpet their “Linux” products, which are designed because they are good for Microsoft if you use them, not for you.



I have to say that Edge confuses me, however, because it’s missing the only feature in Windows that makes it worth opening. Soon, the Windows version will be the only way to force Internet Explorer’s engine to open in something and display corporate intranet hellscapes.



Other than that, I do have to struggle at who would want it.



"Microsoft has been on a tear recently, paying off formerly respectable people and sites that I used to read to trumpet their “Linux” products, which are designed because they are good for Microsoft if you use them, not for you."Much less dare install a DEB or RPM from the company that, when they packaged R, deleted /bin/sh and turned it into a symlink to bash on Debian (which not only isn’t what the operating system is expecting, as dash is the non-interactive shell for scripting in Debian, and Ubuntu, but will probably be replaced later by the OS again anyway!), and then began deleting files without checking the path of what it was deleting. Instead of figuring out what to do, they just stomp things that get in their way and perhaps corrupt the OS. I’d say it was definitely malicious, but it’s how they treat Windows itself.



At the time they did this, a few years ago, I hadn’t had any direct experience with Debian other than the time I installed 6.0 “Stretch” and didn’t like it much (now I’m using 11 Bullseye and think it’s good.), but I was familiar enough with Debian and Ubuntu style packaging to know what Microsoft was doing was not okay, by glancing at the scripts.



Microsoft is incompetent and evil alright, and I don’t know who would trust them enough to give them repository-level access to their computer so they can push random things like this out at you, along with anything else they feel like.



"Microsoft is incompetent and evil alright, and I don’t know who would trust them enough to give them repository-level access to their computer so they can push random things like this out at you, along with anything else they feel like."In a way, I almost do feel sorry for SJVN because I can only imagine what he’s going through as ZDNet collapses and he’s trying to get those last paychecks in, like many Microsoft shills are now that the company is on its way out but spamming the Web to try to distract, even as they drag his name through the mud hawking broken Microsoft products like WSL2.



Not quite as far gone as ZDNet, OMG Ubuntu! is turning into OMG! MSFT!.



Perhaps germane to the situation we find ourselves in today, consider what happened last time Microsoft “supported” UNIX with a web browser.



I was reading some statements from Steve Ballmer at the time Microsoft was doing Internet Explorer for UNIX.



"Now the kids are all using Chromebooks and Android phones, and they’re both Linux-based."He was speaking (in the late 1990s) about UNIX as if it was this dead thing that they had already slain and that Windows was the future, but they needed IE on every platform to kill Netscape with.



Now the kids are all using Chromebooks and Android phones, and they’re both Linux-based.



With Chromebooks you can install a complete Debian system in a lightweight container and cut your teeth on that in a consequence-free environment. If something horrible happens in the container, even if it’s your fault, you can wipe the container and start over and it does not matter aside from you have to lose the container. The OS itself is not corrupt.



Lenovo explains that you can do that, or install a GNU/Linux distribution that takes over the entire computer. The upside of this? If you’re doing it on a high end model, I suppose that you can get yourself a real computer, forget Chrome OS entirely, and end up using Coreboot firmware and bypassing the Intel/Microsoft cesspit for the PC, uEFI. While, at the same time, you still have a PC. (It would run x86 software because it has an x86 CPU).



"The IE for UNIX port actually was kind of interesting, in how terrible it was."I haven’t tried it. Maybe I will someday. I’d like to blow this Popsicle stand entirely. Not just get rid of Windows. This does not fill me with confidence.



The IE for UNIX port actually was kind of interesting, in how terrible it was.



I’m glad that guy on YouTube did that video.



He even loaded Outlook Express, which came for it. Both Internet Exploder and Lookout! Distress! behaved an awful lot like they did on Windows, at the time, apparently.



(I wonder if the UNIX port of Outlook Express also corrupted its mailbox constantly, like the Windows version….)



I thought it would just be like every other UNIX program where they built it for the version of Solaris or HP-UX that they wanted it to run on, statically linked a bunch of libraries, and it ran for a good long time.



In fact, that can be how GNU/Linux ELF binaries with static linking work today.



"I thought it would just be like every other UNIX program where they built it for the version of Solaris or HP-UX that they wanted it to run on, statically linked a bunch of libraries, and it ran for a good long time."However, IE for UNIX statically linked UNIX ports of Windows operating system bits, and if you patched Solaris a little bit here and there, IE wouldn’t run, and worse, might even cause Solaris itself to crash, as it eventually does in the video.



(In another attempt, it merely aborted, telling him that he had “too many operating system patches” and it wasn’t going to try to run. It has to be just the right amount of patched and not patched. Not patched too much, or too little, you know. Just the exact amount of patched Microsoft was using when they built it. How robust!)



To put that in perspective, Solaris was one of the most reliable operating systems of the time, and Microsoft managed to crash something that could run for months or years without trouble…..with IE.



How is that relevant now? They have a “Linux” web browser. I’m sure it’s absolutely great. 😉



Joey at OMG! MSFT! says so. 😉



We have literally dozens of web browsers for GNU/Linux that are either Free and Open Source, or at least won’t trash the entire OS and open a backdoor for Microsoft, who does disreputable partnerships with the NSA to put backdoors into everything they’ve built since at least Windows 98, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.



They helped Donald Trump build the cages, and now they want on your computer after you already got rid of their stinking spyware operating system? Hard pass.



Which brings me to WSL2, Microsoft’s fake Linux product.



Whether it works very well or not (and the performance is much lower than bare metal GNU/Linux, but that’s outside the scope), running production workloads in WSL2 is a bad idea because you’re just exposing yourself to the well known instability and ransomware and other problems inherent to the bad design of the Windows system itself. Why do it?



Plus, if you use Windows the way Lenovo set it up, you’ll probably lose more data to Microsoft’s backdoored Bitlocker “encryption” going haywire all the time than you will to anything else. Why wait for ransomware?



But with Microsoft’s “Spam Spam Spam Spam!” vikings at ZDNet and OMG! MSFT! Joey, and others, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it may work out okay for you if you don’t work your way through the Googlebomb propaganda they’ve set up and remember what kind of crap Microsoft pushes on us.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Against Outsourcing of Sites and E-mail
Software Freedom is great, but it is not enough if you let someone else do it 'for you'
Drew DeVault: People Talking About My Attack Site (Against the Founder of GNU/Linux) is "Spam"
"Spam on sr.ht mailing lists"
"Oppose the Fascist"
what the founder of GNU/Linux said
Halloween, All Saints Day & Swiss citizenship
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
Shout-out to Christine From FOSSForce
Who noticed our short story
Apple's MacOS Shows Us the Vision of Computing That GAFAM Has for Us (Digital Prisons)
Freedom means "we the people" should be in control, not people being controlled by corporations (contemporary slaveowners)
 
Disinformation About Election Outcomes Even Before Any Election Outcomes (or Election/Voting!)
seeding doubt about election outcomes
[Meme] The 2024 'Info Bros'
And prehistoric googling
Computers Getting Worse (for the User) Over Time
This is like Windows-ism coming to "Linux" through the hardware
[Meme] How NOT to Vote
Another form of (mostly-unspoken-of) election interference
An LLM Inside a 'Search' Engine Means That Companies Tell You What They Want, Not What Web Pages to Visit
The future of 'googling' things might be as unreliable as using Social Control Media as a source of information
Google's Debt Has Increased and 'Cash on Hand' Fell by 22.27% This Past Year
These are the numbers that the corporate media intentionally leaves out
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 04, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 04, 2024
There's a Reason Why Techrights is Turning 18 and Tux Machines Will Turn 20.5 Next Month
I started advocating GNU/Linux when I was a teenager
Techrights Has a Long History of Fighting to Expose 'Team Mono' or Microsofters Inside GNOME
Never downplay the malice of Microsoft and its operatives
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: Halloween Over, Intention and Implementation, Bookmark Syncing
Links for the day
Microsoft Lost Nearly Half of Its 'Cash Reserves' This Past Year
Is Microsoft (MSFT) the next Intel (INTC)?
The Year Isn't Over Yet, There Will be More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs
Nowadays Microsoft just tries to conflate/equate its energy waste with "value"
The Corporate Media Blasted Bitcoin for Destroying the Planet and Must Do the Same to Incite the Public Against the 'Great Rigging of Wall Street' (Under the Guise of "AI", the Latest Gold Rush)
"AI" is the next "metaverse" (trailing by a few months)
[Video] Richard Stallman is Back to Halo and Gown (in Peru) With 2+ Hours of a Public Talk
The globetrotting Richard Stallman gave many talks at the end of last month
Going Strong Against the Wind
the abuse serves to emphasise or affirm the importance of what we do
Links 04/11/2024: Squashing More Software Patents and Taiwan at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2024: Typing vs Writing and a Smol (Net) Pub
Links for the day
Links 04/11/2024: LibreOffice Had Adopted PeerTube, "Hey Hi" Hype is a Threat to the Energy Grids (Worse Than Fake-Coins)
Links for the day
[Meme] Social Control Telescreens With Microphone
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Not Boycotting Apple (Yet)?
"Apple Forces The Signing Of Applications In MacOS Sequoia 15.1"
statCounter This Month: Android Has Nearly Become Twice as Big as Windows
If it happened, it would be an unprecedented milestone
Why Technical Sites Need Not Make Political Recommendations or Endorsements
Except perhaps when it's for some purely technical role, e.g. FCC chief
[Meme] Apple Freedom
Freedom is... the ability to purchase as many 'i' things as you want
"Active" as in One URL, One Emoji, and 4 Words in One Week
Diversity community in Fedora
Apple Vision Pro Has Failed, Just Like "Metaverse"
Vision Pro lacks software
Things That Can Improve Election Integrity
the first two relate to "tech"
Rigging Elections is Difficult, Cheating a Little is Not
Avoid social control media, it is the biggest rigger of all
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"
On throwing stones in a glass house
Our Stance on Electronic (or Digital) Voting Machines
The simple activity of voting and counting ballots does not require thousands of complex machines with hundreds of millions of transistors and hundreds of millions of lines of code
Microsoft and "Retrospective Re-writing of History..."
in YouTube anyone can make stuff up (as one goes along)
This Coming Week
Go exercise your right to vote
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 03, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 03, 2024
Reddit is (Still) Lying and Faking
Don't fall for this phony idea that the above sites are grassroots or edgy; they're not
GNU/Linux Users Are Not Cheaters
The bottom line is, most cheaters use Windows
Links 04/11/2024: FCC, Broadband Industry Spar Over Net Neutrality; Software Patent Squashed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Official MyGemini.Space Announcement
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Election Thoughts, Plagiarism, and LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 03/11/2024: Deere 'Right to Repair' (RoR) and "Threads Bans Anyone For Mentioning Hitler"
Links for the day
[Video] "El Movimiento del Software Libre y el Sistema Operativo GNU" by Richard M. Stallman
The footage is a bit jittery (taken with a phone apparently, and there's no tripod available), but the sound is OK and the words (in Spanish) are comprehensible
Android at New Highs (47%), Windows at New Lows (24%), Suggests Latest Data From statCounter
So the market share of Android is about double that of Windows
[Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Spanish (in Peru Last Week)
Alternative URLs too
The Media Focuses on the Wrong Scandal
The real scandal at MIT was Gates
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Fantasy Life Day and Worship
Links for the day
[Meme] Write Us Drivers and GTFO!
When you realise sanctioning BRICS devs goes against the community
Decommissioning Copper Lines Makes Us Less Safe
We've essentially degraded the robustness or reliability of critical systems
Life of an Addicted Lolicon Who Can Also Code
Personal blog as an open diary
[Meme] Reporting Crime is Not a Crime
Obviously!
Manchester Party for Techrights
If you choose to come, of course we'll cover the cost of the food and treats (but not travel)
Privacy is Not a Crime (in Places Where It is a Crime the Regime is Typically Very Rogue)
Also, criminals lack "privacy rights" to hide their crimes from the public
GNU/Linux "Market Share" in Lebanon More Than Doubled in a Few Months
Maybe it's a reaction to something? Assassination in Haret Hreik was in July.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 02, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, November 02, 2024
Nearly 40 Years Without Security Incidents
People who use Windows have come to sort of "accept" that security incidents are part of life or "normal"
[Meme] The Streisand Effect
Simon says, don't bother trying to suppress facts
Streisand Effect at IBM?
Trying to silence your workers isn't the best approach. It only makes colleagues even more curious.
Microsoft is a Gift That Keeps Giving (Future Stories to Techrights)
Microsoft has been trying to silence me using dirty tricks for nearly 20 years
Elon Musk Has Trashed Twitter for Ideological Reasons (and Propping Up Trump in Exchange for Financial and Political Favours Once in Public Office)
In case you didn't leave Twitter already, consider the fact that Twitter's (or "X"... whatever!) future is uncertain
Wall Street Has Demoted Intel, Seeing There May be No Future to Intel
Intel's loss isn't a loss to us
Free Software Licence Compliance is About Security Too
Linux as de facto proprietary off-the-shelf platform