When you think Microsoft you probably don’t think sense of humor. And yet, I’m convinced that Microsoft is going to do a very specific very funny thing within our lifetimes.

In 2017 I predicted that most programmers would lose their employer <-> employee bargaining power in the next 15-25 years. This was a pretty controversial take 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 the credit, so I’m posting my prediction publicly while everyone still thinks it’s ridiculous:

I predict that within 15 years Microsoft will discontinue Windows in favor of a Windows themed Linux distribution.

Sound crazy? Hear me out.

Even people who choose to daily drive Windows agree with this statement. Nobody looks forward to new Windows releases. If you’re a Windows user and you’re not complaining, you’ve likely internalized Windows bugs as just “what computers are like.”

Explorer.exe is preventing Windows from shutting down.

Over the past 20 years, I’ve gone through phases of daily driving Linux, macOS, and Windows. People had their favorites, and Windows was always the most jank, but for much of this time all three OSs were viable options for getting things done.

The reality is that Microsoft no longer has the expertise in house (or the incentive) to maintain Windows, never mind make improvements to it. As a professional programmer, I no longer consider Windows a viable option for serious work.

I think there’s some good stuff happening at the kernel level, but it’s squandered by everything that’s built on top of it. Heck, you can’t even use it to give a slideshow without risking Windows Update deciding to reinstall your whole OS mid presentation! Ask me how I know.

Sure, you can try to trick Windows into turning off the features you don’t like. Good luck. Daily driving Windows in 2025 means playing cat and mouse with Microsoft. You try to get your work done, Microsoft tries to stop you.

If you’re a programmer who’s used to Windows and you think I’m being overly harsh, I encourage you to spend a couple weeks in any other operating system.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Linux is famously not user friendly. However, while the Windows user experience has been declining in quality, Linux’s has been getting better.

Is it a great experience for non technical users? Not really. But I mean, is Windows?

Don’t get me wrong, non technical people aren’t going to be installing Linux on their own any time soon. They’re not installing Windows either though–it’s just what comes on their computer.

I don’t honestly think most normal people would notice if someone replaced their Windows installation with KDE Plasma or GNOME or something. So long as their files and desktop background didn’t change, they’d just think that the Windows 11 update they’d been trying to dodge finally installed without their consent and moved a few buttons around.

At least if you have an AMD card.

Gamers as a whole haven’t realized this yet, but they will. There are distros popping up focused on being good for gaming, I personally boot into Linux rather than Windows when I want to game despite having both installed, as an engine developer I’ve found AMD + Linux to be the best combo for input latency whereas Nvidia + Windows is the worst.

PC gamers love to go all out for their hobby. It’s a point of pride. And good for them–IMO being willing to go all out for a hobby is a cool personality trait. Once the PC gamers catch wind of the fact you can get mild perf improvements, no more auto updates, lower input latency, and some tech cred points just by booting into a free operating system…is the burden of proof still on me?

There’s also a lot of money riding on Linux as a viable gaming platform because of Valve. The Steam Deck runs Linux, and ships with a compatibility layer Proton (based on Wine) that lets it run Windows games.

This sounds slow, but it’s not. Wine famously stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It is, in fact, not an emulator–it’s just an alternate implementation of win32 and friends. An alternate implementation could be slower or faster; in practice it’s a wash because 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. It’s a good thing, because shipping native binaries for Linux is a nightmare–this post is a prediction about Microsoft, not Linux propaganda, Linux has its issues too.

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

I think it’s pretty safe to say that Valve sees PC gaming’s dependence on Windows as a liability to their business model. The business function of the Steam Deck isn’t to generate revenue, it’s to push Proton, and the business function of Proton is to mitigate dependence on Windows.

Fair enough, right?

“Normal” people don’t tend to spend a lot of money on PCs. You can get a lot done on a smart phone 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 the gamers start moving over to Linux, stores will start selling prebuilt machines with Linux installed and marketing them towards gamers. Normal people who want a fast PC for cheap and aren’t sure what to get will pick up a gaming PC like they do today, but instead of a Windows machine with a bunch of crapware preinstalled, it’ll be a Linux machine with a bunch of crapware preinstalled.

Businesses will hold out on making the switch out of fear of breaking compatibility with the rare but important remaining native productivity tools. And then…

Microsoft will eventually cave and do the funniest thing imaginable: they’ll ship a Windows themed Linux distro that can run Windows executables out of the box using Wine, and discontinue support for Windows proper.

They’ll make a half hearted attempt to keep some vendor lock in by building in special integrations with their SaaS stuff or by patching Wine and refusing to upstream it, but it won’t really work because nobody really likes Microsoft software anyway.

There you have it. Microsoft doing the funniest thing imaginable. If I’m wrong, you can laugh at me in 15 years.