I have this crazy idea that Microsoft could pull itself out of the "meh" gutter by becoming a Unix OEM again.<p>As a longtime developer, I'm certainly not representative of the general computing population, but I have to think that part of Microsoft's long and painful decline is due to a new generation of computer geeks simply not wanting to use Windows. If Valve can break through the Linux gaming barrier with Steam OS, this could spell the eventual end for Windows as an OS that anyone voluntarily uses.<p>In my (admittedly naive) view, I see legions of young computer hackers who want to write apps, games, and server things. I see them asking the "elders of the internet" what system they should use for programming, and I see them all getting the same answer: "get a Linux box, or at least a Mac if you like it nice and shiny". So they go off and get a Linux box or a Mac. The point is: what they get is a Unix system, and that's what they will come to be familiar with.<p>At some point their parents or friends will ask them what kind of computer they should get. If they don't say "why do you need a computer? Just get a tablet." they'll probably steer them towards a Mac... partly because of the "it just works" reputation and partly because, well, it's a Unix system, and they KNOW this. And so goes the cycle of OS popularity. A large portion of "what tech should I buy" seems to trickle down from the tech geeks in every family or peer group, and as time goes on there will probably be more and more of those.<p>So where does Windows fit into this? Visual Studio is nice but otherwise everything is just... different. It used to be that Windows was "normal" and UNIXy things were a bit different, because everyone "normal" used Windows. Now, that situation is becoming reversed.<p>Personally, I quite like what Microsoft has been doing lately, but no matter how shiny I think their new stuff is , I really don't want a non-UNIX OS on my desktop. I want a normal command line with bash or zsh. I want a homebrew or apt-get package management system, and I want a system where no matter what software package or library I want, I know I can always git clone or untar it, then run ./configure && make && make install.<p>You can kind of get there on windows with SFU and Cygwin, but it still doesn't feel quite right. I think Microsoft could gain a strong second following with the tech geek crowd by committing to a complete POSIX layer, proper fork(), a unified file system, a proper terminal (even though powershell is cool), and an "it just works" philosophy when it comes to GCC and clang and all the open source software and libraries available online. If they can do this before their "windows is for gamers" window closes, I think they can get back a lot of their lost tech geek crowd and then enjoy the reputation and recommendation trickle down that inevitably follows.<p>I have absolutely no evidence to back up this advice; I just know that if Microsoft said "Windows 10 will be a certified UNIX", I would strongly consider replacing my Mac with one of those nice Lenovo Yoga laptops.