Nearly 20 years ago (!), in 2007, I published my first and only book: Microsoft 2.0. It focused on changes I expected at the company in the “Post-Gates” era. What would remain the same and what likely would be different once co-founder and CEO Bill Gates had left the building?
CEO Satya Nadella has not exited the company (yet). But there’s no question that Microsoft and its mission have morphed considerably in the past year or two. I’m not quite ready to christen this the Microsoft 3.0 era, even though Nadella handed the reins of Microsoft’s dominant commercial business to Judson Althoff nearly a year ago.
That decision resulted in Nadella moving into more of a “founder mode” role, allowing him to focus less on the day-to-day work of running the business. (Microsoft historians may recall that Gates made a somewhat similar move back in 2000 when he became Microsoft’s chief software architect.)
While it might not yet be time for Microsoft 3.0, we arguably could be in the “Microsoft 2.5” era. Windows and Office are still around and still play a big role. Microsoft still builds and sells developer tools and databases. But there’s no question that the cloud and all things AI are at the top of the pecking order now.
I’m embarking on a series here at GeekWire that will focus on what matters to Microsoft and, by extension, to its customers, partners, investors, and employees these days. Who are some of the people shaping and leading the company? What are their opportunities and challenges right now?
Over the next few weeks, I will be profiling various Microsoft execs working on plans for Microsoft’s ongoing evolution. Some are company veterans; some are newcomers. I’ll be talking with top execs from Microsoft’s Security, Copilot, Windows + Devices, Xbox, GitHub, and more.
I’m interested in their strategies for Microsoft’s key products and technologies and how they plan to try to turn Microsoft’s ambitious vision into reality. What are their teams building? What do they see as their biggest challenges and opportunities? And where do they see the technologies in their respective areas heading?
I feel like many of us who’ve been keeping track of the biggest tech companies (myself included) have fallen into the trap of blaming or attributing everything a company does to AI. Layoffs? AI is the culprit. Price increases? It’s all thanks to AI. Changing sales strategies? Chalk it up to AI …
But upon further reflection, I believe Microsoft’s strategy is more nuanced than “AI or bust.” There’s no question that Microsoft’s AI ambitions are shaping its goals and tactics. But Microsoft, as a heavily enterprise-focused entity, can’t simply stop supporting products that aren’t built from the ground up with AI (as much as it might like to do so). Nor can it just leave behind customers who aren’t 100% onboard with its AI moves.
Couple those enterprise hurdles with some not-so-popular consumer decisions, like axing 3,200 people in the gaming unit, and Microsoft’s approach to turning the ship looks a lot trickier.
Our Microsoft 2.5 series kicks off Thursday. Stay tuned.
Aurum PropTech is buying Housing.com in a $47.5 million all-stock deal, but the harder test will be integrating its platforms and customer data securely.
Aurum PropTech is buying Housing.com in a $47.5 million all-stock deal, but the harder test will be integrating its platforms and customer data securely.
Whether you're starting a new business venture and need Microsoft Office's help or you just want to get better organized in your personal life, it's a good time to take advantage of this deal.
Whether you're starting a new business venture and need Microsoft Office's help or you just want to get better organized in your personal life, it's a good time to take advantage of this deal.
A new GNOME extension called Simple-taskbar does a pretty good job of giving GNOME 50 a taskbar and start menu very much like the ones from Windows 11. It's so new that it's still not listed on the GNOME Extensions website – at the time of writing, it's still under review. We built it and installed it, and it works. This single extension merges GNOME's built-in panel (across the top of the primary screen) and what it calls the "dash" – the icon bar down the left side – into a single taskbar, styled like Windows 11: icons centered, a Start menu with columns, a search box, and so on. The handy feature here is to have all this in a single, integrated extension. There are already other extensions to do some of this, such as Dash to Panel, whose development is now sponsored by Zorin OS. It doesn't provide a Start menu replacement, though. For that, you need another extension, such as Arc Menu. Like many things in Linux, this sort of tool needs the user to do a little manual config. There is also a risk with this kind of DIY GNOME customization using lots of extensions. Extensions are tied to specific versions of the GNOME desktop – so, for instance, the new Simple-taskbar only supports GNOME 50. If you add lots of extensions and then upgrade the underlying OS to a new version, meaning a new version of GNOME, there's a significant chance that the extensions won't work any more – you may even be unable to log in. Zorin OS takes Ubuntu and does this for you, and the result sells – that's how the company can afford to sponsor extension developers. We rather like Zorin OS as a distro, especially its handy Zorin Appearance accessory, which it showcases on its homepage. If you don't need the customization and just want a Windows 11-like look, last year we looked at AnduinOS, which does this to a stripped-down Ubuntu. At the end of last month, the project released version 2.0, based on Ubuntu 26.04. Another tactic, of course, is to fork the whole of GNOME and change it to make a whole new, more Windows-like environment. Back in 2011, Linux Mint 12 offered MGSE, a set of Mint GNOME Shell Extensions to make GNOME 3 more Windows-like, but by 2013 that became the Cinnamon desktop. Since its launch in 2011, Mint has also offered the MATE Desktop, a fork and continuation of GNOME 2. There are multiple ways to keep GNOME but make it look Windows-like. Even the GNOME ecosystem recognizes the need. Early versions of GNOME 3 offered GNOME Fallback mode, intended for machines that didn't support hardware 3D rendering. GNOME dropped that mode with version 3.8, but two alternatives emerged: GNOME Classic, which uses GNOME Shell extensions, and GNOME Flashback, a continuation of the panel-and-Metacity-based Fallback environment. This is still around and maintained. For instance, Ubuntu 26.04 uses GNOME 50, and includes the packages for GNOME Flashback version 3.58.0. It's installed by default on some distros – in Debian 13 it's a standalone desktop – but on Ubuntu, you must manually install it. You'll probably want to put back the network icon – it's an easy graphical way to manage Wi-Fi connections and so on. All you need is one command: sudo apt install -y gnome-session-flashback network-manager-gnome Log out, or reboot, and on the login screen, you can now use the cogwheel button at the bottom right to choose to log in to the new GNOME Flashback session. By default, Flashback has a GNOME 2 and MATE-style two-panel layout, but if you hold down the Alt key while right-clicking the controls on the panels, you can open a context menu that allows you to move (or remove) them. We moved the Menu Bar control to the beginning of the bottom panel, the Indicator Applet Complete control to the bottom right, and the Show Desktop button to the end, and that's it: a basic classic Windows-style layout. You can place panels on the left or right screen edge. The snag is that the controls on them don't reorient accordingly, which renders vertical panels unusable. That's completely faithful to GNOME 2 at least. There are some small oddities – you need to use GNOME's session applet to shut down or log out, for example. However, it's usable, and it uses no GNOME extensions at all, so in our testing it's unaffected by OS upgrades. It uses the Metacity window manager: this is an X11 environment, and it will pull in X.Org as a dependency. This does mean it works fine in VMs without 3D acceleration, a more relevant benefit today than its original role of supporting very low-end hardware. Flashback's appearance varies between releases – the version in Ubuntu 24.04 had a more GNOME-like, softly rounded look. In the current version of GNOME Flashback, it has an old-fashioned 2D look, which we rather like, but it's also much more customizable: it behaves rather like a drastically cut-down Xfce, and MATE users should find it familiar too. We were surprised but happy to discover the improved customizability in Flashback in GNOME 50. The old GNOME Wiki is coy when it comes to Flashback releases, and doesn't list version 3.58 at all. The banner at the top redirects users to the GNOME handbook instead, but that doesn't contain any mention of Flashback whatsoever. This is still a desktop based on GNOME. Flashback doesn't magically give apps running under it proper title and menu bars or anything like that – but then neither can any combination of GNOME extensions, and that includes environments built around them such as Zorin OS or AnduinOS. If you want to stay close to the GNOME mainstream in most distros, but want a more traditional desktop, we suggest checking out Flashback. Room for improvement? For reconfiguring your desktop quickly to look like existing OS layouts, most distros do have an equivalent to Zorin Appearance – but only if you're using Xfce. This desktop has an optional add-on called Panel Profiles that does the same, although sadly, it doesn't help with plugins such as the Docklike taskbar, Whisker menu, or Xfdashboard. A KDE version of Xfce's Panel Profiles would be a huge win, and something like it for Flashback would really help too. We don't know if GNOME is accepting contributions to the Flashback session; it seems reluctant to mention Flashback at all in its current documentation. The Flashback GitLab does show that it's in active maintenance, though. Development of the MATE desktop is slow. It's two and a half years since the last new version. But then the team has an entire codebase to maintain that was abandoned by its own creators. Porting the functionality of MATE over to the GNOME Panel in Flashback, and replacing a few of GNOME's bundled apps with tradition Gtk ones, such as Linux Mint's XApps, would result in a much more familiar and usable desktop with a smaller maintenance burden. It's a possible future for those who remain disenchanted with GNOME Shell. ®
October 2026 is shaping up to be a busy month for administrators as it heralds the end of several big products, along with the retirement of components that could mean sleepless nights for the ill-prepared. After the demise of Windows 10 in October 2025, sysadmins might have hoped for some respite from Microsoft's ax, but 2026 will see the demise of more beasts. First, there's the end of support for Office LTSC 2021, which means everything from Access 2021 to Word 2021 is for the chop. A move to LTSC 2024 is required to keep the support lights burning, or - and we don't doubt that this is Microsoft's preference - a switch to Microsoft 365. M365 isn't a great option for organizations steering clear of the cloud. The on-prem version is very much a snapshot of where things were at release (although security patches keep flowing). Speaking of on-premises, Windows Server 2022 will drop out of mainstream support on October 13, 2026. Extended support will linger until 2031. Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro reach the end of the road on the same date. Windows 11 23H2 for enterprise and education will get until November 10 to tidy up their affairs. As for the more minor products? Publisher 2021 will wrap up decades of the Microsoft Publisher brand in October. First appearing as a desktop publisher for Windows 3.0 in 1991, it has had an inexplicably long life, which will come to an end once and for all in a few short months. And unlike the rest of the Office 2021 LTSC suite, there won't be anything to replace it (or its annoyingly proprietary file format). There are also services due for the chop that might cause headaches for those that fail to prepare. Entra ID Sign-In risk policies, formerly known as Identity Protection, is being retired on October 1, 2026. Microsoft wants admins to migrate to Conditional Access, and make sure their policies cover user and sign-in risk. Not done the update? Then risk protection will go away after the retirement date. A Register reader remarked, "Given how many orgs use O365 I can't see how disabling sign-in protection might go wrong." October 2027 looks quieter, with only SQL Server 2017 gasping its last. However, with the coming October loaded with already announced terminations, getting the corporate house in order well ahead of time would be prudent. ®
BrianFagioli writes: Canonical has launched the Enterprise Store as part of Ubuntu Pro, giving organizations a way to manage Ubuntu software distribution in restricted networks, behind firewalls, and in air gapped environments. The on premises proxy sits between devices and Canonical software stores, allowing companies to cache downloads, control software revisions, and manage snaps and charms without requiring every system to connect directly to the internet. The Enterprise Store is designed for organizations with strict security requirements, including regulated industries and environments where predictable software updates and audit controls are important.
The company behind the disk space analyzer TreeSize has irked some users by no longer offering support or updates for perpetual licenses beyond their maintenance period unless customers subscribe. Further frustration has come from JAM Software's long-standing policy of not providing license keys or installers to TreeSize perpetual license holders after that support period ends.
Since 2025, JAM Software has been transitioning most TreeSize editions to subscription models. Today, it sells perpetual licenses only for personal use, which include 12 months of updates, support, and “downloads of older versions, and your license,” plus the option to extend the support period. TreeSize currently has "no plans to discontinue the sale of perpetual licenses for TreeSize Personal," product manager Hendrik Christ told Ars Technica.
As perpetual-license maintenance periods expire, customers are discovering that extending support now generally requires subscribing to software they already own the right to use.
Swedish VPN vendor Mullvad is facing a backlash from some customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson personally donated SEK 5 million (£385,000, $519,000) to the controversial populist Örebropartiet, which is running in Sweden's national elections for the first time. Berntsson has this week published a blog post explaining the donation, alongside posts titled "Immigration," "Political individualism," and "Moral individualism." Before that, he had not posted since 2019. The flurry of posts follows weeks of customer criticism over the donation – for example, Finnish blog Moonwriting's post "I'm done with Mullvad." Another blog, Unutterable, is more direct: "Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership." The Hacker News discussion thread about the donations has reached a remarkable 1,784 comments so far. Mullvad was co-founded and is still jointly owned and run by two CEOs, Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Its name, as reflected in the company's logo, is Swedish for "mole." It also offers the Mullvad Browser, a privacy-enhanced fork of Firefox ESR co-developed with the Tor Project. Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman ("The Flame") revealed the donation in its story "High-profile techie gives millions to the Örebro Party." In a post on X, the company said it was devoted to freedom of speech and tolerance, saying: "It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't." The Örebro Party began as a local party and later expanded across Örebro County, but is now contesting Sweden's 2026 parliamentary election. Its English-language Wikipedia page offers a summary for readers outside Sweden. It has a mixture of left-leaning and hard-right policies. It wants to make preschool, public transport, and dental care free of charge, reduce politicians' pay, and calls for a 30-hour working week. However, it also advocates for sharply reduced immigration and what it calls "large-scale remigration" – policies intended to encourage or compel immigrants to leave Sweden. By Swedish standards, Berntsson's donation was unusually large: DonationWatch lists it separately in its Swedish political funding data. Flamman reports that it was the largest single private donation to any Swedish party in 2025, and on its own represented 72 percent of the party's income for the year. The Register has approached Mullvad for comment. ®
In this episode of the podcast, host Paul Roberts interviews Nishawn Smagh of the firm GreyNoise Intelligence about the findings of their State of the Edge report, an analysis of GreyNoise data on risks stemming from compromised edge devices such as broadband routers, VPN gateways, smart home devices and more. Shawn and Paul talk about how attackers are turning edge devices into their favorite entry point, and strategies for organizations to counter the growing risk of compromised edge devices.
WHO, ME? Regrets? We've had a few. And so have many readers of The Register, who we try to help by getting their stories of workplace mistakes off their chests every Friday in a reader-contributed column we call "Who, Me?" This week, meet a reader who asked to be Regomized as "Johnny," who told us he was once hired as a Visual Basic developer, a job he thought was beneath him. He got on with things anyway, until he was given a new project that he decided to write in C# despite that language being new at the time. "To my satisfaction, it handled everything the customer required," Johnny told The Register. But then he hit trouble. A complex string manipulation routine that determined how tasks were routed started to glitch. "About half the time, it worked perfectly. The rest of the time, it failed completely," Johnny wrote. "I stepped through the code repeatedly, checking every transformation, every condition, every variable – but nothing stood out as wrong." He therefore started making small and random changes in the hope it would flush the bug into the open. One of those changes broke everything, so Johnny reverted it – and after that the glitch magically disappeared. "I compared versions, searched for differences, retraced my steps – and found no reason," he told The Register. "To this day, I have no idea what caused it or why it disappeared." Over time, the incident faded from Johnny's memory. Several years later, Johnny was still at the company and had climbed the career ladder to become a senior developer. "One day, the support team escalated an issue to me: an intermittent bug that no one could solve. I agreed to take a look," he said. His first step was to look for comments in the code to understand the intent of whoever wrote this piece of software. "Scrolling through the header, I found the author's note originally written by myself and felt an immediate sense of dread," he told Who, Me? That sense was prescient because the comment read: "Dear future Johnny, I am very, very sorry." Have you written code that came back to haunt you? If so, click here to send us an email to share your story. We promise to handle it carefully so contributing won't haunt your career. ®
Login
