Microsoft To Distribute Their Own Version of BSD/Linux

Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog
NEW YORK — April 1, 2010 — Today, CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft would be releasing their own version of the Linux operating system in twelve months.
After years of calling the Free Software movement “communists”, threatening them with patent suits, deprecating Free Software and coercing foreign governments to ship useless, broken Microsoft software packages with hardware programs aimed at helping poor people get access to the Internet, Ballmer actually used a copy of GNU/Linux and said, “Hey, Free Software is really pretty darn good, I think Microsoft could really make a lot of money with it.”
Ballmer was particularly impressed by the ease of use of emacs, and said that its power and flexibility reminded him of Excel. "These are the only two software products I have found where you can make a complete simulator of a CPU or solve the Towers of Hanoi without leaving the program," said Ballmer.
Based on the Linux kernel, the Microsoft operating system will have user-level code taken from the BSD distributions so Microsoft will not have to ship any sources other than for the kernel. “This will allow our hardware partners to do all the work of writing device drivers and porting the Linux kernel, yet still allow Microsoft to put in the useless extensions, changes and bloat-ware to the system that will force people to pay Microsoft obscenely large amounts of money for breaking standards,” said Ballmer.
Ballmer acknowledged that this had been a successful Microsoft strategy in the past, and pointed to Microsoft's successes to corrupting Kerberos, JAVA and Internet Explorer. “Well, two out of three successes is not bad,” said Ballmer, reflecting on Internet Explorer's shrinking share of the browser market.
When asked if his competitors would be able to take advantage of Microsoft being forced to make the sources for the kernel available, Ballmer shrugged and said “Who cares about the kernel? If people wanted a fast, stable, scalable operating system they would not have been buying Microsoft products for years.”
Microsoft has not made any statements about final pricing and availability, but they said that they were thinking of a multi-tiered pricing model that charged per user, per CPU core, per Gigabyte of memory, per disk drive and somehow also considered a customer's religion and sexual orientation. Microsoft product management complained that they needed an eight-dimensional model to fully describe their pricing structure, and their staff was having problems with the origami needed to represent this model.
When asked why it would take almost a year to put together this new product, Ballmer pointed out that Microsoft's one software engineer had been really busy patching Internet Explorer lately, and they had to allow him a week of rest before starting this new, major project.
Recognizing that Free Software people like cute, fuzzy or feathered animals (and blowfish), Ballmer announced the adoption of the African Penguin (Spheniscus demersus) as the distribution's official mascot, and the donation of a billion dollars of Microsoft VISA licenses to the penguin habitat to protect them from viruses.
“I felt that the African Penguin represents the essence of Microsoft, and I feel a personal relationship with this bird,” he said.
Reporters noted that the unofficial name for the penguin is “Jackass”, because of their call which sounds like a donkey braying.
Comments
comments powered by DisqusIssue 268/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
LibreOffice 7.5 has Arrived and is Loaded with New Features and Improvements
The favorite office suite of the Linux community has a new release that includes some visual refreshing and new features across all modules.
-
The Next Major Release of Elementary OS Has Arrived
It's been over a year since the developers of elementary OS released version 6.1 (Jólnir) but they've finally made their latest release (Horus) available with a renewed focus on the user.
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta Is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.
-
Vanilla OS Initial Release Is Now Available
A stock GNOME experience with on-demand immutability finally sees its first production release.
Nice!
Boring jokes
Yes, it is an April Fool's joke
http://www.networkworld.com...nlt_daily_am_2010-04-01#slide1
md
April 1st's Joke
It's just a April 1st's Joke isn't it?
Imagine, Microsoft lauching a Linux distro, porting their M$ Office other top-softwares...just in our sweetest dreams!!!
It would be nice...but unfortunatelly, it was just the best joke today!
Here in Brazil we would say "Maddog é um Fanfarrão" (something like Maddog is a Big Joker). Very very very funny, indeed!
Well...as I said, it was funny...good to begin a tough day here in Brazil.
My best regards, Mr. Maddog!
FabioTux®