I can foresee each PC manufacturer having its own Linux distro and MSFT being dead.
Lenovo OS
Samsung OS
Acer OS
Dell OS
Google already did it with Chrome OS.
Adobe, Nvidia and the game makers will have to port. So will MS Office if it still exists.
I will take this bet lol.
Love Linux but it will never get above 10% user base on the desktop no matter what happens. MS simply would not allow it.
Kinda reminds me of Endless OS getting a foothold in parts of Asia. MS started to give Windows for free there and wiped them out.
I remember when IBM, Kodak, Xerox, AT&T, US Steel and GM were invincible.
None of those were/are even in the ballpark of being as powerful as MS is. MS has their hand in every pot imaginable
Why should the Linux OS help further enrich major manufacturers when the Zorin OS is developed by only two people?
Everyone has seen that MS has begun to adopt the Linux kernel, right now as an add on to powershell. What most people miss is that the majority of servers running the web aren't Microsoft... they're Linux of some fashion or another. Most are headless (no desktop).
Why is this important? Have you noticed MS branching out to be competitors to Amazon and Google? Hardware as a service, Software as a service, Infrastructure as a service on top of what they already do?! They make more with * as a service than they ever did with the OS.
Here are my thoughts of the future of MS.... they are attempting to iron out the Linux kernel in powershell. Once that is done, essentially, you can run Linux applications on windows... there is so much more they don't have to do. Now drop the windows registry and implement the kernel, and now they don't have to work on an OS. Port the applications they make to work in the Linux kernel (we're already seeing this... Edge anyone? ) and they will not have to change anything but the DE and possibly add a feature or two. That's so much less time working on an OS that will be managed for free, with just enough differences to still need their OS to run software.
MS is going from a multi billion dollar company with a few thousand workforce to a multi billion dollar company with double the workforce and they don't have to pay half of them.
Red Hat is trying to snag the market also with systemd.... who gets there first and has all the applications that everyone wants to use is who will be on top.
I don't see why others don't see the logical progression as it stands.
I often think this...
You do realize that MS is worth 2.5 TRILLION dollars right?
They could buy and sell all of those companies at any point in their history combined.
You must be young, LOL.
Apologies, but I must endorse this.
These alone, were giants of epic proportions. IBM does not get as much press as MS nor is it a Trillion dollar company these days. But it is showing steady growth and stability and remains a $60billion giant, still.
And AT&T in its heyday dwarfed Microsoft.
And lets not forget Standard Oil.
You do realize that MS is worth 2.5 TRILLION dollars right?
They could buy and sell all of those companies at any point in their history combined.
This is mostly due to economics. How the money flows.
Apple is worth almost as much as MS at over $2 trillion. It holds a much smaller portion on computing. It charges more money for its product.
What is relevant is a matter of control that the company has.
And AT&T in its day, had a near perfect monopoly of the likes MS has only ever had drool drenched dreams about.
If you can’t understand the sheer power of MS nothing is going to change your mind.
MS literally controls tremendous amounts of virtually any industry you can name.
AT&T never dreamed of having the power MS has.
At this point we have reached a Standard Impasse of "I believe differently".
Only Evidence Based arguments should be provided at this point forward.
2.5 TRILLION dollars.
The entire phone industry isn’t worth that much and never has been. Please quit trying to compare apples to oranges.
If you don’t understand that MS can literally buy anybody who dares threaten them there isn’t anything I can tell you.
Either way, believe what you want 
I did not compare apples to oranges. Instead, I compared Apple to Microsoft and neatly and deftly defeated your entire claim:
A few examples of Microsoft getting excluded from the market by competition are Windows Phone and EdgeHTML.
That is entirely irrelevant. (100%)
Companies like we have today HAVE NEVER EXISTED before. Look at the growth of MS over 13 years. The companies y'all are trying to compare to them are nothing to MS
Companies do not just do one thing anymore. MS has their hands in virtually everything. They literally control large percentages of the media
Honestly kind of sad that is the only things that come to mind with how many businesses MS is in. Kinda different when you consider they are going against other trillion dollar businesses though.
I am not saying they are immune to other epic size businesses. But none of the manufactures that OP mentioned would ever go against MS to such a degree.
