> The future of desktop Linux is a VM under Windows.

Is there really any demand for this though? What Linux gui apps exist that windows users want/need? Enough that Microsoft sees an addressable market large enough to get roi?

The inverse seems to have way more practical use cases that could actually drive revenue - games and legacy business applications (as mentioned in the esr prose).

I got quite excited when I heard about wslG and rushed to install it.

Never used it since. I did have the Linux version of dBeaver installed that way but there is little/no difference just running the native Windows install for that.

The only use I can really think of is doing cross-platform GUI development, but even then MS will say "hey look, native Linux windowing support in WSL" and also "Not yours, no linux version of MAUI for .NET"

Kind of a mixed message.

I use it for running the automated browser tests with my frontend stuff at work. The code is in WSL, and running Cypress or whatever with browsers in Windows with code in WSL seemed to not work. But install Chrome/Firefox in WSL, and it works great with WSLg. Chrome on Linux also attaches to the debugger in VSCode, which doesn’t attach to the Windows version of Edge.

Avalonia is a thing and looks bloody amazing across platforms, so maybe no MAUI is not that big a deal.

Windows now runs Android apps. Isn't Android some kind of a Linux too?

At the risk of being chastised, Android is Linux like chickens are dinosaurs. Technically true, but not very meaningful.

Or better yet, a Windows VM under Linux.

Because Windows is super easy for the vast majority of people to use and desktop Linux isn’t.

Windows deployment isn’t bloated, it just has a ton of actual functionality that real users want and that doesn’t come for free. The UX for the admin is also super nice, with tons of online articles and communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do, as opposed to tell you why what you want is bad.

> Windows deployment isn’t bloated, it just has a ton of actual functionality that real users want and that doesn't come for free

A base Windows installation takes up a lot of space mainly because of Microsoft's compatibility commitments and the implementation strategy it uses to maintain them, and to some extent the way libraries are typically distributed. Neither OS features, nor hardware compatibility, nor the selection of included applications has much to do with that. Microsoft delivers some real value through their compatibility commitment, but it's a different thing than functionality.

> The UX for the admin is also super nice, with tons of online articles and communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do

This is frankly a stunning claim. From local configuration being the hodgepodge of many generations of GUIs to the incompleteness to the painful slowness of completing a task through visual imitation to the fundamental hostility automation to the slowness and incompleteness of PowerShell to the absolutely anarchic nature of software management on the platform, administering Windows machines is a cumbersome, manual mess.

> communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do, as opposed to tell you why what you want is bad.

This is an illusion afforded to those who come to both operating systems with Windows-centric expectations. In this very forum, you can find Windows users who respond to posters who complain about defects that come up with Microsoft's official Windows port of OpenSSH by telling them they never should have tried to use rsync to transfer files between Windows machines.

With any operating system, there will always be people who respond to questions involving solutions that are at odds with the paradigm, strengths, or cuatoms of the operating system with advice to re-think the problem. (And sometimes, they'll be right!)

The UX for the admin is also super nice, with tons of online articles and communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do, as opposed to tell you why what you want is bad.

> You mean the tons of online articles and communities trying to get you to purchase spyware?

Linux has a substantial amount of communities and support, and with systemd things are getting pretty routine there isn't a lot of ways to mess things up like people in Windows communities telling you to reset various windows components by deleting important system files.

I assume you haven’t been new in a while, you should be aware that none of that is true.

Haven't been new? It is absolutely true. Linux has a great community compared to Windows. I think Windows users prefer ignorance over reality.

Some people like me, don't need much except basic shell/terminal from Linux and WSL suits very well here.

>The future of desktop Linux is a VM under Windows

If Microsoft has their way, you mean.

Microsoft already has their way. Any time you boot an alternate OS, it's only because Microsoft deigns to allow it. They're the CA for Secure Boot, and at any time they can forbid disabling Secure Boot in order to qualify for Windows.

…and then immediately get broken up.

I have always found it funny that Microsoft provides a free service to the Linux community which makes them significantly safer, and for their trouble they get no end of shade from that community.

That won’t happen, they might get told to cut it out but they won’t get broken up. Microsoft is so unbelievably too big to fail that their existence is a strategic asset for US national security. SecureBoot isn’t some big ole scandal to cut out Linux, it’s a feature to protect the massive fleet of Windows boxes provisioned by various government agencies that got spun into a consumer feature.

> and at any time they can forbid disabling Secure Boot in order to qualify for Windows.

If regulatory agencies were to let them get away with it - which is a very big “if”.