Windows 8, the post-PC world, and Linux: Microsoft will prevail
The heir to Windows' desktop dominion? Uh, no. — Since the very first reveal of Windows 8, some critics have called the operating system a fatal move for Microsoft. They call it a blunder so large in its abandonment …
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands at the end of a year-long argument about Windows 8. IDC opened it by calling the OS 'largely irrelevant' to traditional PC users in December 2011; by mid-2012 the critique had hardened into an Innovator's Dilemma framing — Microsoft sacrificing its desktop franchise to chase tablets — and August brought the sharpest version yet with PC Magazine's take on the Metro redesign as a massive mistake. Against that backdrop, Ars Technica's contrarian case is that the critics have the direction wrong: whatever Windows 8's flaws, Microsoft's installed base and developer gravity mean it prevails over Linux in the post-PC world.
The counterweight is Microsoft's own record outside the desktop: coverage through 2012 has repeatedly flagged that its mobile comeback is looking terrible, which is precisely why the Linux question matters — if the tablet and device layer slips away, the heir to Windows' dominion is not obvious.
First-order effects
- Microsoft launches Windows 8 into a skeptical analyst consensus — IDC's irrelevance call, the Dilemma critique, the Metro backlash — so the immediate stakes are narrative: whether OEMs and enterprise buyers read the launch as renewal or retreat.
- Linux advocates get a direct challenge: the article argues the open-source stack loses the post-PC contest to Microsoft's ecosystem, forcing the Linux camp to answer on tablets and consumer devices rather than servers.
Second-order effects
- OEMs hedging between Windows 8/RT and Android or other Linux-based alternatives now face a clearer fork — backing Microsoft's unified desktop-plus-tablet bet versus riding cheaper Linux-derived stacks — and their split decisions will shape pricing on touch hardware.
- If Microsoft holds the enterprise desktop while pushing the same interface onto tablets, competitors like Apple and Android device makers must compete for the corporate refresh cycle rather than ceding it, raising the value of Windows-compatible peripherals and management tooling.
Third-order effects
- The deeper question the piece frames is whether desktop incumbency transfers to the post-PC layer at all: if it does, platform competition consolidates around two or three ecosystems with Microsoft intact; if it does not, the PC-era monopoly becomes a shrinking annuity rather than a springboard.
- Either outcome pressures regulators and enterprise buyers who built procurement around a single dominant OS — a fragmented or re-contested device market changes licensing leverage, support costs, and the lock-in assumptions of a decade of IT planning.
The trend: The post-PC transition is turning into a contest over whether desktop incumbency — Microsoft's above all — can be carried into tablets and devices, or whether Linux-derived platforms finally get an even field.