Bonum Certa Men Certa

GNU/Linux Circles Ought to Stop Promoting Visual Studio, Which is Neither Cross-Platform Nor Free Software

"In the future, Microsoft wants Windows to run everything, from PCs to phones to cars to appliances. This is a terrifying prospect. If it happens, I'd be far more afraid that machinery everywhere would grind to a halt, planes would fall out of the sky, and civilization would crumble as a result of crummy embedded Windows design than any Y2K problem."

--Paul Somerson, PC Computing



Summary: Media carries on openwashing Visual Studio and perpetuating the illusion that it is not tied to Microsoft Windows

TECHRIGHTS has already responded to the Visual Studio openwash the other day (also mentioned this other openwashing effort), having already warned about it five years ago, earlier this year, and earlier this month. It's not about .NET or Mono, it's about Visual Studio, which is purely proprietary with no imminent opening of anything, not even Visual Studio Code, which some Linux sites foolishly promote [1,2] (there are better programs which are neither from Microsoft nor are proprietary).

IDG has done this promotion of proprietary Visual Studio for platforms other than Windows. It's only towards the end that discrimination against non-Windows platforms is very evident:

The software also can easily hook into Microsoft’s software for managing team projects, Team Foundation Server 2015 and Visual Studio Online, both of which provide the base for a speedy, devops-styled development environment.


Well, this is Windows software. There is no parity at all between platforms. Visual Studio is still a proprietary program for Microsoft Windows, don't let Microsoft paint it as cross-platform, not without a challenge. Microsoft is still aggressively attacking GNU/Linux, it is not playing nice with it.

“Eradicating Windows and slapping Linux on your computer sure isn’t as easy as it used to be,” writes Chris Hoffman this week, alluding to 'secure boot' in UEFI. This is the type of abuse Microsoft promotes (and now escalates further by removing the "on"/"off switch from some UEFI implementations on future computers -- those coming with Vista 10 bundled). As an important reminder, UEFI lockdown is getting even worse, demonstrating that Microsoft hates Linux. With more such headaches on the horizon, affecting anyone wishing to at least try or explore GNU/Linux (not very technical people), Microsoft clearly has lots of hidden hate for Linux. There's no "love", just opportunistic PR. Anyone who actually thinks that Visual Studio will "play nice" with GNU/Linux has clearly not been paying attention (or paid attention only to puff pieces).

Related/contextual items from the news:


  1. Ubuntu Make 0.9 Brings Support For The Arduino IDE And Enhancements For The Microsoft VSC


  2. Install and Run Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu Linux 15.04


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