In enterprise land, managing Windows endpoints is an exponentially larger PITA for the very reason that Microsoft can’t even secure their own OS by default or design, and spend more time shoehorning more surveillance and telemetry into OSes than actually improving them. As “traditional” enterprises increasingly move away from on-prem Active Directory and GPOs in favor of MDM policies and SSO providers, the traditional Microsoft central stack becomes more of a liability than an asset.
From a manufacturing perspective, Microsoft is arguably one of the worst partners you could have - especially if your product has to be operated offline or in restricted modes. I’ve spent two weeks trying to debug kiosk mode on W11 creating wildly inconsistent logon times compared to W10, and this is just the latest wrinkle in a year of triage and wildfires directly caused by trying to use online-first Microsoft kit in offline-only products. I’ve spent my entire year banging on about how Linux solves much of our product line issues, but the old guard is coasting until retirement with no drive or incentive to change until after they’ve left - a cohort that’ll be 90% gone by 2030.
Then you add in the waves made by gaming companies and communities on the platform, and an increasing focus on the OS by developers worldwide seeking to free themselves of Microsoft and Apple taxes, and the memory shortage/AI bubble driving a need to operate with less capable machines, and at the very least it’s plausible that Linux does indeed become the de facto OS.
Really, the only things effectively holding back wider adoption are:
* User experience remaining wildly inconsistent between Linux distros and Windows machines. Enterprise distros don’t focus on bridging that gap at the moment (they’re more aligned to Mac or Unix users migrating to Linux), but I’d be shocked if there isn’t a direct Windows-alike by 2030 with Enterprise support options.
* Endpoint management remains a bugbear for MSPs and Enterprise teams precisely because Linux wasn’t engineered for non-technical usability so much as security. As more distros bake in support for Ansible or other endpoint management schemes out of the box, and more sweatshop-tier technical talent gain experience in Linux, this is going to gradually become a non-issue. The infinitely harder sell will be convincing businesses they don’t need stupid automated scores and algorithms like Microsoft shoehorns into M365, as those are privacy and security (and thus, legal) risks.
* Linux is software-secure but not hardware-secure, as in anti-theft or recovery mechanisms. Businesses want parts-pairing so we can better detect or identify intrusions, as well as remain compliant with the bevvy of frameworks and standards out there that mandate strict hardware controls. This is what mandates Windows and Microsoft tooling in a lot of environments, as they expose and utilize these controls by default. That said, Linux is also making major inroads in addressing these issues, and I expect them to be at or better than parity with Windows long before 2030; it’s also not fair to begrudge Linux about this, since a lot of it comes from Microsoft trying to kneecap competition.
Folks like to point to the gaming situation and say that’s why Microsoft will kill Windows, but I say the opposite: businesses want to kill Windows to save on costs, and will take the first affordable off-ramps they come across. A RHEL/SUSE/Ubuntu Enterprise distro that is immediately compatible with most Windows binaries and is backed with documentation and support will devour Microsoft’s lunch.
In enterprise land, managing Windows endpoints is an exponentially larger PITA for the very reason that Microsoft can’t even secure their own OS by default or design, and spend more time shoehorning more surveillance and telemetry into OSes than actually improving them. As “traditional” enterprises increasingly move away from on-prem Active Directory and GPOs in favor of MDM policies and SSO providers, the traditional Microsoft central stack becomes more of a liability than an asset.
From a manufacturing perspective, Microsoft is arguably one of the worst partners you could have - especially if your product has to be operated offline or in restricted modes. I’ve spent two weeks trying to debug kiosk mode on W11 creating wildly inconsistent logon times compared to W10, and this is just the latest wrinkle in a year of triage and wildfires directly caused by trying to use online-first Microsoft kit in offline-only products. I’ve spent my entire year banging on about how Linux solves much of our product line issues, but the old guard is coasting until retirement with no drive or incentive to change until after they’ve left - a cohort that’ll be 90% gone by 2030.
Then you add in the waves made by gaming companies and communities on the platform, and an increasing focus on the OS by developers worldwide seeking to free themselves of Microsoft and Apple taxes, and the memory shortage/AI bubble driving a need to operate with less capable machines, and at the very least it’s plausible that Linux does indeed become the de facto OS.
Really, the only things effectively holding back wider adoption are:
* User experience remaining wildly inconsistent between Linux distros and Windows machines. Enterprise distros don’t focus on bridging that gap at the moment (they’re more aligned to Mac or Unix users migrating to Linux), but I’d be shocked if there isn’t a direct Windows-alike by 2030 with Enterprise support options.
* Endpoint management remains a bugbear for MSPs and Enterprise teams precisely because Linux wasn’t engineered for non-technical usability so much as security. As more distros bake in support for Ansible or other endpoint management schemes out of the box, and more sweatshop-tier technical talent gain experience in Linux, this is going to gradually become a non-issue. The infinitely harder sell will be convincing businesses they don’t need stupid automated scores and algorithms like Microsoft shoehorns into M365, as those are privacy and security (and thus, legal) risks.
* Linux is software-secure but not hardware-secure, as in anti-theft or recovery mechanisms. Businesses want parts-pairing so we can better detect or identify intrusions, as well as remain compliant with the bevvy of frameworks and standards out there that mandate strict hardware controls. This is what mandates Windows and Microsoft tooling in a lot of environments, as they expose and utilize these controls by default. That said, Linux is also making major inroads in addressing these issues, and I expect them to be at or better than parity with Windows long before 2030; it’s also not fair to begrudge Linux about this, since a lot of it comes from Microsoft trying to kneecap competition.
Folks like to point to the gaming situation and say that’s why Microsoft will kill Windows, but I say the opposite: businesses want to kill Windows to save on costs, and will take the first affordable off-ramps they come across. A RHEL/SUSE/Ubuntu Enterprise distro that is immediately compatible with most Windows binaries and is backed with documentation and support will devour Microsoft’s lunch.