MS really, really don't care about Linux on PCs
In line with the vast majority of people on Earth.
They're far more bothered about getting certifications for secure platforms for lucrative gubmint contracts, I should imagine.
As a business manager, why would you ever give a crap about expending any engineering effort on stymying the installation of an OS that's run by 1% (2% on a good day) of users?
So they've exercised their patents? So what? Google do that, despite their "don't be evil" bollocks strapline. Apple do that all the time. As does every company with a patent lawyer.
You assume they're not "doing something" when in fact for the past few years they've been considerably diversifying their boring invisible stuff, like the Exchange platform (there's nothing better for tedious corporate messaging), their Azure cloud wossname (right up there with Amazon S3) and making metric fucktons of money out of Office with the 365 subscription offering (millions of subs sold, very well received, excellent vee eff emm), not to mention that SQL server continues to be less annoying than Oracle to manage (even if Oracle does have an performance and flexibility edge, although I'm going to have to admit that I've studiously avoided databases of all kinds for the past five years or so), and Visual Studio is what a lot of programmers like to use. I'm going to cautiously say that SharePoint is a good thing, because they sell lots of it, but our work SharePoint site is a massive pain in the arse and I hate it.
Acting as though MS are The Evil Empire when you've got a world that has Apple and Google in it - both of whom do a great deal to lock you into their ecosystems - is a bit weird tbh.
And SAP. Jesus. SAP.
