Hell Has Froz….errm…The Future is NOW!!
Listen, I never thought I would see the nirvana of having Lindows box working well on my own personal machine. I shouldn’t have doubted the open source community and Microsoft’s ambition to be an all-in-one inclusive/open platform of choice.
Really, it shouldn’t be surprising. Let me explain: Satya Nadella’s philosophy both personally and professionally is all about inclusion. That can easiest seen by looking at one of his first acts as CEO unlocking MS Office for free on iOS devices. It doesn’t stop with tech. In his book Hit Refresh and in numerous interviews, Nadella talks also about extending the idea of inclusion to ever aspect of Microsoft.
“Diversity and inclusion is huge. It obviously starts by having a workforce that is diverse but inclusion is a cultural piece that we all have to work on every day. Inclusion shows up in every meeting, starting with me” — Satya Nadella
So, human-level inclusion + tech inclusion = the wonderous utopia of Linux + Windows co-existing in the same unicorn ranch? Not quite (BUT we’re close!).
Exhibit A: GUI within a GUI
Windows 10 gave a fresh (some call it “vintage” since it harkened back to Windows XP) coat of paint to our venerable desktop operating system. That coat of paint allowed us to test out newer features like Live Tiles along side some of the good ole’ familiar elements like the Start Menu that didn’t take up a whole screen and “modern/universal” Windows apps that coexisted with those tried-and-true Win32 applications like Solit...I mean…SQL Server we all love. :-)
[ENTER Linux] MORE GUI-goodness!
Now, you can run Windows 10 and Linux side by side on the same machine inside your Windows session without any additional 3rd party software. What Steve Ballmer famously called “a cancer”, Linux has been the open-source alternative to Windows for more than three decades. The former Microsoft CEO viewed Linux as Microsoft’s public enemy #1 for many years. Only when Satya took the reigns at Microsoft did inclusion of technologies, approaches, and customer preferences become one of the principal strategies for developing new software.
We’re now seeing some of the most exciting times for software development. It’s very heartening for this humble geek to see some of the old technological segregations crumble before us like the Berlin Wall. All of this barrier breaking work was ushered in by a self-stated inclusive and empathic CEO at the head of the world’s largest software maker. I think we’re seeing the beginnings of something big and I can’t wait to see more!
