• Microsoft Creates Its Own Version of Linux For The First Time, Launches Azure Sphere OS

• Microsoft Announces Linux-Powered "Azure Sphere" IoT Platform

• Windows 10 apps on an open-source OS? ReactOS gains experimental support for latest Windows software [Ed: Developing using FOSS to help run proprietary software]

  ReactOS is a free and open-source, Windows-compatible OS that looks similar to Windows XP -- now with experimental support for Windows 10 software.

• Microsoft releases its first Linux product

  Well, it's finally happened. Microsoft has released a product containing its own Linux kernel: Azure Sphere. It's not MS-Linux or Linux Windows, but it's still remarkable.

  Azure Sphere is a software and hardware stack designed to secure edge devices. It includes microcontrollers, "Azure Sphere Security Service" and, the really interesting component, the Linux-based Azure Sphere operating system.

• Global businesses descend on Columbia for Open Source 101 Conference [Ed: Microsoft is pretending to be a FOSS leader. In reality, Microsoft is blackmailing and bribing against FOSS. It just pays for false perceptions.]

• Microsoft Open Sources Its First File Manager [Ed: Openwashing Windows by worthless, 'toy' code is not atypical from Microsoft, which did something similar with DOS almost 3 decades late.]

• Open-Sourced Windows File Manager Gets New Life on Windows 10 [Ed: Why would anyone use such an ancient thing? This is just a stunt to help the openwashing of a proprietary system that's spying on users 24/7.]

• Microsoft Might Start Showing Ads in Windows 10 Mail App

  The latest update for the Mail app in Windows 10 appears to include something that nobody expected: a small ad in the lower left corner that recommends users to “Get Office 365.”
  By the looks of things, only a small number of users get this new button in their Mail app, judging from this discussion on reddit. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to trigger the ad to show up, but the Get Office 365 banner is only displayed when the left pane isn’t collapsed.

  Mail doesn’t show any banner on Windows 10 for me, even after updating to the latest version of the app, which is 17.9126.21425.0 and was released today.

• Office 365 Services Hit by Outage, Outlook, Skype, OneDrive Down - April 6, 2018

  Microsoft’s Office 365 is down once again, with users in Europe reporting issues connecting to their accounts. Services like Outlook, Skype, and OneDrive are currently not available.
  While Microsoft hasn’t released a statement to acknowledge the problems, DownDetector seems to point that several European countries are affected. Parts of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, and Latvia are most affected.

  Somewhat surprising is that Microsoft’s Office 365 service health page claims “everything is up and running” with all services that users indicate to be down, including Outlook, OneDrive, and Yammer said to be running properly.

  Some users reveal that Exchange clients work correctly, and only the web access appears to be impacted by the outage. Others point out they’re not able to login to Skype and their password is being refused. Several said that they can send emails but not receive anything.

• Office 365 goes down across Europe, again

  Users attempting to access Office 365 email are reportedly being greeted with an 'AADSTS90033' error message, alongside the unhelpful warning: "Service is temporarily unavailable. Please retry later."

  The AADSTS90033 error message is typically displayed under normal circumstances when a user cannot get a token from Azure for the services they need to access.

Google’s Chromebooks accounted for 59.6% of mobile computing shipments in the kindergarten through 12th grade market in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to Futuresource Consulting. By comparison, Windows accounted for 25.6% and iOS comprised 10.6% of shipments.

Among the reasons tech giants are scrambling to get their gadgets into schools: It’s a big business opportunity. The education technology market is expected to reach $252 billion by 2020, according to a report published by education-focused technology conference host EdTechXGlobal and advisory firm IBIS Capital. But there’s potential upside even after students leave the classroom and turn into fully-fledged consumers, too. “It gets people using your technology young,” says Avi Greengart, research director for consumer platforms and devices for GlobalData. “The hope is that they stick with it.”