{"id":253581,"date":"2026-05-23T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T15:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T19:35:07","slug":"a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"A Linux distro once got too close to Windows, and Microsoft came for it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it\/\">A Linux distro once got too close to Windows, and Microsoft came for it<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it\/\">https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-23 15:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.makeuseof.com\">www.makeuseof.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Back in 2001, a tiny startup launched an operating system called Lindows. It was a genuinely ambitious idea: take Linux, add on a compatibility layer for Windows apps, and then sell the resulting OS for cheaper than Windows itself. The name was both a pitch and perhaps the seed of its eventual downfall. Microsoft noticed immediately, and started a two-and-a-half-year legal battle that threatened to unravel one of Microsoft&#8217;s most valuable trademarks altogether.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"what-lindows-actually-was\">\n                        What Lindows actually was<br \/>\n               <\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"a-linux-distro-designed-to-poach-windows-users\">\n            A Linux distro designed to poach Windows users<br \/>\n    <\/h3>\n<p>        Credit:\u00a0Abhishek Kumar Mishra\/MakeUseOf | Microsoft<\/p>\n<p>Founder Michael Robertson (who already sold MP3.com to Vivendi Universal for $372 million) started Lindows in San Diego in August of 2001. His main goal was to create a Linux distribution that could run major Windows apps without forcing users to leave Linux entirely to do so. Lindows used Wine for this task, a compatibility layer that&#8217;s still in use today that translates Windows API calls into Linux compatible equivalents on the fly. Wine was around since 1993, but Linux users had to configure it themselves, the idea here was more of a turnkey solution: install Lindows and your Windows apps just&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Linux distro once got too close to Windows, and Microsoft came for it https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/a-linux-distro-once-got-too-close-to-windows-and-microsoft-came-for-it\/&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.makeuseofimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wm\/2026\/05\/close-app-from-system-tray-on-windows.png?w=1200&h=675&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-253581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253584,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253581\/revisions\/253584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}