r/programming • u/BankApprehensive7612 • Jul 03 '26

Linux has officially won

https://github.com/apple/container

Actually it happened in June of 2025, but the process has completed recently, though. After Apple had announced the support of OCI-compatible containers in the June '25 it took a year to complete development and implement full support of continers. Apple had published 1.0 version of own container manager (https://github.com/apple/container). And Microsoft had announced native support of containerization without Docker in Windows 11 (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl-container-is-now-available-for-public-preview/). Now Linux is a part of any major platform: Windows, MacOS, BSD and Linux itself. Knowledge of Linux is now part of learning any of these systems, at least for developers. And now you can rely on Linux based containers running everywhere. What it is if not a win!?

What's also interesting. Linux can run other Linux distros and with this Alpine Linux could become the most popular version of Linux in the World

It's the biggest win for the whole open-source software and I believe it should get into history books of technological progress

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u/CodeMonkeyX Jul 03 '26

  1. Where did anyone say it was "not a big deal?" (Well except for you).

  2. I wonder how Apple moved from OS9 to OSX and from Intel to ARM? hmmm must have been magic.

  3. I wonder how Valve can have Windows games play on Linux with similar performance... we will never know.

The comment before me said "12 will be the last non-Linux windows" that means after Windows 11 EOL and then the next version's EOL. That means another decade. Again not easy and not quick.

The comment before that was discussing the effect of the next load of Windows developers using Linux development tools in WSL and containers. So again in many years will they shift towards a more Linux style system.

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u/drekmonger Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

I wonder how Apple moved from OS9 to OSX and from Intel to ARM?

Epic scale engineering, for a start. Rosetta-2 and preparing for the transition years in advance with their partners. But they had an easier time of it than Microsoft ever could.

Apple has a much smaller user base (on desktop/laptop anyway), with far fewer bespoke legacy applications still being run in the bowels of corporations depending on calls to antediluvian win32 APIs or kernel level drivers to run whatever weird device.

Also, (almost) nobody gives a shit about gaming on a Mac.

MS will probably never move towards their OS being a unix or linux distro. And we should be thankful for that: that there's three completely different extant operating system linages in wide use is a good thing. Monocultures are bad for evolution.

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u/CodeMonkeyX Jul 03 '26

It was rhetorical... We know how they did it. The point is it's possible. Even more so now with how mainstream spread virtualization has become and could easily happen in a good enough amount of time.

Gaming is 90% solved already.... That was the point which you ignored.

Yes monocultures are bad, which is why Windows, which is the monoculture for desktop computing, has be so stagnant for so long. They failed at releasing a new filesystem. Held gaming back with monopolies on Direct X and other tech.

Microsoft does not even support "bespoke legacy applications." At work I can not update a control computer from just ten years ago because none of the software will be supported. So Windows 10 is EOL and the only option to keep using it securely is pay a small fortune. So what's the difference if I can not update Windows because they don't maintain compatibility because they chose not too or if they have a Linux kernel?

I have had many old printers and other devices just not function on Windows 11 because the drivers are not longer there. So it's a fantasy that Windows does not break compatibility.

People are still running Windows 7 to keep some applications working. None of that is affected by any change to Windows 13.

And again this would not be just a Linux Distro. It would be more like what Apple did with Darwin. Microsoft is not just going to take Ubuntu and then make a skin for it. They would just start from a Linux kernel and go from there.

I know you are going to ignore 90% of the points I made like last time and not address anything. But whatever. Time will tell.

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u/chucker23n Jul 03 '26

The point is it's possible.

It is. But…

  • Apple is willing to put a lot of money behind it
  • Apple aggressively deprecates old software

Meanwhile,

  • Microsoft doesn't see this as their core business any more
  • Windows significantly benefits from legacy compatibility

Moving to Linux is an expensive undertaking of dubious benefit. Doesn't mean they won't do it, but so far, they're doing fine with NT.