🪟 Prediction: Microsoft Is Going To Do The Funniest Thing Imaginable

When you think of Microsoft you probably don’t think of a sense of humor. And yet, I believe that Microsoft is going to do very specific things Very Strange thing in our lifetime.

In 2017 I predicted that most programmers would leave their employers in the next 15-25 years. <-> Employees will lose bargaining power. It was quite controversial at the time and I never wrote about it publicly, so it’s hard to claim too much credit for being right.

This time I want credit, so I’m posting my prediction publicly while everyone still thinks it’s ridiculous:

My guess is that within 15 years Microsoft will discontinue Windows in favor of Windows themed Linux distributions.

Feeling crazy? Listen to me.

Even those who choose to run Windows daily agree with this statement. No one is waiting for a new Windows release. If you’re a Windows user and you’re not complaining, you’ve probably internalized Windows bugs as “just how computers are.”

Explorer.exe is preventing windows from closing.

Over the past 20 years, I’ve gone through the stages of running Linux, macOS, and Windows on a daily basis. People had their favorites, and Windows was always the most useful, but for the most part all three OSes were viable options for getting the job done at the time.

The reality is that Microsoft no longer has the in-house expertise (or incentive) to maintain Windows, let alone improve it. As a professional programmer, I no longer consider Windows a viable option for serious work.

I think there are some good things happening at the kernel level, but whatever is built on top of it is doomed. Heck, you can’t even use it to give a slideshow without risking Windows Update deciding to reinstall your entire OS mid-presentation! Ask me how I know.

Of course, you can try to trick Windows into turning off features you don’t like. May you be successful. Running Windows every day in 2025 means playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Microsoft. You try to get your work done, Microsoft tries to stop you.

If you’re a programmer accustomed to Windows and you think I’m being overly harsh, I encourage you to spend a few weeks in another operating system.

It does not have to be this way.

Linux is famously not user friendly. However, while the quality of the Windows user experience is declining, Linux is getting better.

Is this a good experience for non technical users? Not necessary. But I mean, Windows?

Don’t get me wrong, non-technical people are not going to install Linux themselves in the near future. However they are not installing Windows – it is simply whatever comes on their computer.

I honestly don’t think most normal people will care if someone replaced their Windows installation with KDE Plasma or GNOME or something. Until their files and desktop background changed, they just thought that the Windows 11 update they were trying to avoid was finally installed without their consent and a few buttons were moved around.

At least if you have an AMD card.

Gamers as a whole haven’t realized this yet, but they will. Distros that focus on being good for gaming are popping up, I personally boot into Linux instead of Windows when I want to play games despite having both installed, as an engine developer I’ve found AMD + Linux to be the best combo for input latency while Nvidia + Windows is the worst.

PC gamers love to go out for their hobbies. This is a matter of pride. And good for them – IMO being willing to do anything for your hobby is a good personality trait. Once PC gamers are aware of the fact that you can get a mild full fix, no auto updates, low input latency, and a few tech credit points just by booting into a free operating system…is the burden of proof still on me?

It’s because of Valve that a lot of money is being spent on Linux as a viable gaming platform. Steam Deck runs Linux, and comes with a compatibility layer Proton (based on Wine) that lets it run Windows games.

It sounds slow, but it’s not. Liquor famously means wine is not an emulator. In fact, it’s not an emulator – it’s just an alternative implementation of Win32 and friends. An alternative implementation may be slower or faster; In practice this is useless as games make minimal use of these APIs.

Valve also ships the Steam Linux runtime to mitigate some of the challenges of shipping native software for Linux. This is a good thing, because shipping native binaries for Linux is a nightmare – this post is a prediction about Microsoft, not Linux promotion, Linux has its issues too.

So why did Valve choose to ship Linux when almost all games on Steam already run on Windows, and very few support Linux natively? In fact, why ship the hardware at all? Steam is already a money printer.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that Valve views PC gaming’s reliance on Windows as a liability to its business model. Steam Deck’s business function is not to generate revenue, it is to advance Proton, and Proton’s business function is to reduce dependency on Windows.

Fair enough, right?

“Normal” people don’t spend a lot of money on PCs. You can do a lot more on a smartphone or tablet, or a cheap Windows laptop. If they want to spend more they either buy a MacBook, or they buy whatever the gamers are buying.

Once gamers started moving towards Linux, stores would start selling prebuilt machines with Linux installed and marketing them to gamers. Normal people who want a fast PC on the cheap and don’t know what to get will choose a gaming PC like today, but instead of a Windows machine with a lot of crapware pre-installed, it will be a Linux machine with a lot of crapware pre-installed.

Businesses will avoid switching for fear of breaking compatibility with the rare but important remaining native productivity tools. And then…

Microsoft will finally get the hang of it and do the funniest thing: They’ll ship a Windows-themed Linux distro that can run Windows executables out of the box using Wine, and drop support for Windows.

They’ll make a half-hearted attempt to keep some vendors locked out by creating special integrations with their SaaS stuff or by patching Wine and refusing to upstream it, but that won’t really work because no one really likes Microsoft software.

There you have it. Microsoft is doing something more fun than you can imagine. If I’m wrong you can laugh at me in 15 years.