9 ms·

It would be amazing to see a Microsoft GNU/Linux distro in the future. To be honest it wouldn't exactly be hard for Microsoft to do. Take a Debian base, add wha

by bithush 11y ago

It would be amazing to see a Microsoft GNU/Linux distro in the future. To be honest it wouldn't exactly be hard for Microsoft to do. Take a Debian base, add whatever bits they need to make sure it works nicely in Azure, have an official Microsoft apt repo and they are done. I actually think it will happen. It makes sense for Microsoft to have an official Linux distro that they can offer true support for.

adamnemecek 11y ago
Not linux but close https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
- Ologn 11y ago
  Radio Shack used to sell TRS-80 Model 16 microcomputers running Xenix in their stores to business customers. At least up until the mid-1990s, many local Radio Shack stores were using these machines as their point-of-sale, inventory and financial systems. Xenix in general was the most widely used Unix in terms of installs into the late 1980s.
  - vram22 10y ago
    >Xenix in general was the most widely used Unix in terms of installs into the late 1980s. Interesting, didn't know that ... Because PC hardware was cheaper and more ubiquitous, could be one reason, maybe. On a related note, UNIX became big in India (people used to call it a Unix country) in the mid or late 1980's, per what I've read, because of a government decision on computerization. The Rangarajan Committee (he later became the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, which is like the US's Federal Reserve) recommended use of UNIX as the operating system for nationalized banks' back-office automation, because of its multi-user and multi-tasking nature (and possibly / likely because it was cheaper than mainframes, maybe even because less proprietary). UNIX usage in India took off due to that (thousands and thousands of bank branches in India), and hence many devs and admins developed Unix skills ... I was part of that trend, and benefited from it a lot, professionally, in terms of learning ...
- pjmlp 11y ago
  My first UNIX, a couple of years before GNU/Linux was even a thing.
  - vram22 11y ago
    Cool. My first Unix was some PC-based clone, the name of which I cannot remember now, but was also a while before Linux. Not sure whether it was before Xenix or not, though I used Xenix (SCO Xenix at the time, IIRC, or was it SCO Unix) a year or so later. First Unix's name may have started with E-something. Everex? Not sure. I think I also got to use Interactive Systems' PC Unix (PC-IX?) around the same time as the first one. Soon after, moved to Unix on higher Motorola 680x0 processor based minicomputers, and even a multi-CPU SMP RISC Unix (from MIPS) for a while. Later SVR3 and SVR4. Didn't like 4 though. By then (as I learned later) the UNIX wars had started, and it seemed to be a clunky hybrid of features from the SVR3 and BSD camps. Later worked a good amount on HP-UX too, on their PA-RISC business servers. Liked HP-UX. Pretty stable and powerful OS with a good patch management system and many other features and tools (HP PRM, Glance Plus, Ignite, MC/ServiceGuard, etc.). The hp-ux mailing list was good too - very friendly and helpful people, I helped out others too. Never got to work on Solaris, though, which I regret. I remember I first wrote my selpg utility [1] on a HP-UX box (for a large corp customer, at their request), and then released it on the HP-UX mailing list. Some people appreciated it. [1] http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-article.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-arti... http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text-pages-to-pdf-with.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text-pages-... Good fun doing a lot of systems stuff on those machines for some years.
    - intrasight 11y ago
      "Santa Cruz Operation" yup, that brings back memories...
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Thanks for sharing. I did Xenix, DG/UX, Aix, got my first Linux distribution in the form of Slackware 2.0. Tried to get Coherent before, but could not afford it. Afterwards Red-Hat, Mandrake and SuSE were my favourite ones until I ended up with Ubuntu. At work I also got to use Solaris and HP-UX. My first experience with containers was with HP-UX vaults. However I never managed to leave the worlds of Amiga, Windows and BeOS behind. Specially in terms of Demoscene, IDEs culture, graphics and game coding.
- vram22 11y ago
  Yes, MS has been involved with Unix from much before the recent moves. Possibly a less known fact to some.
  - RyJones 11y ago
    They even shipped IE for Solaris in the 90s! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX
diskcat 11y ago
What would be the point of using microsoft's linux?
- revelation 11y ago
  The same as using a lot of the other Microsoft stuff: you can pay and have someone fix $problem on a deterministic timescale. You can upgrade without having to fear your production system will come crashing down.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    Huh, I've done both of those with Linux for more than a decade. Can you name some features more unique to Microsoft?
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    > you can pay and have someone fix $problem on a deterministic timescale Really? When did MS start fixing bugs for their paying customers in a deterministic timescale? The point about upgrades may be good, but MS has started breaking things on update recently too.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      For years. You open up a crit sit that is tagged as a product defect and they will turn fixes around quickly. If you are strategic to them, they'll fly in people.
- pkaye 11y ago
  Running it on Azure?
- toyg 11y ago
  They could use it as stepping stone for businesses heavily invested on Linux or already having a mix of Linux and Windows: "we guarantee this is the best Linux distribution for compatibility with MS tech (Msad, powershell, Azure, mono etc etc)".
talideon 11y ago
They're already done something not exactly unlike that, albeit not for general use: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/09/microsoft_sonic_debian/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/09/microsoft_sonic_debi...
- bithush 11y ago
  Kind of. SONIC is very specialised. It isn't a desktop or server version of Linux for general purpose applications. Also it just happens to run on Debian.
Intermernet 11y ago
My prediction is that they'll continue to work on the recently announced "Windows Subsystem for Linux"[1] and attempt to cover a larger and larger portion of the Linux ABI. If people can develop, and run the majority of Linux programs on Windows, and those programs are competitive in performance, and those programs have MS support backing, then they have a huge win in the enterprise space. Personally, I'm happy to keep providing whatever mix of OS services customers request, but I'm very interested in where this could be going [1]: https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows/ https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-o...
- zeta0134 11y ago
  I think this is an amazing move for Microsoft. If they get the kinks worked out and get it working well on Windows Server, they'll have one platform that can run pretty much all the major enterprise software without virtualization. That's great; it's a way for Linux shops to convert to Windows Server without having to fully commit right away, because they'll still be able to quite easily run their existing stack and leverage their developers who are used to Linux tooling.
  - tluyben2 11y ago
    Why is that good though; why would Linux shops want to convert? In the space I work in companies (including enterprises) like the fact they can do whatever with the source code and that they can audit whatever part they want. MS has that too but not for many clients and you cannot do whatever with it. The freedom in Linux means a lot to a lot of people even if you maybe could get a bit more perf or support from a paid platform. We have people working with VS (a few only) and because of our tooling it works smoothly anyway. I have no clue why you would switch to something paid and closed...
- rgbrenner 11y ago
  It sounds like a rehash of Windows Services for Unix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX What's different this time? My prediction is that it'll languish in obscurity, rarely used, and eventually be discontinued.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
I posted my prediction over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388418 > I think eventually, we'll see Windows transform into a Linux distro with a Windows UI.
- wslh 11y ago
  Windows [kernel] is a very advanced operating system with an incredible wide support for third party drivers. I think the prediction would be more oriented to running them side by side.
  - therein 11y ago
    Yeah they wouldn't just toss away millions of lines of kernel code.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      I recall reading somewhere (can't find it for beans now) that the Windows kernel was a huge mess codewise since many of the original developers have moved on and poor to nonexistent documentation was left, meaning that the modern employees had to basically reverse engineer a lot of the code. Take this with a grain of salt, of course.
      - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
        This isn't super unusual for very old code.
      - mlvljr 11y ago
        Here are some comments from the times of the source code leak: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795 I'd say, the user experience has improved since then overall (meaning the code quality, too, in one of the most practical senses).
        11y ago
brudgers 11y ago
The current iteration of Windows 10 tries to abstract away hardware under a higher level "Windows" layer and mostly get rid of variation between windows for embedded, mobile, and Intel platforms. With the new Bash/Ubuntu feature, I think Windows is moving on to abstract away the operating system. My wild-ass prediction for a Microsoft Linux distribution is one in which Microsoft Windows replaces X-windows. Wayland is already trying to do this because of the perceived security vulnerabilities of X-windows' architecture. In a limited sense, this is sort of an old idea when it comes to nix: there were paid GUI products for layering on top of nix thirty years ago, e.g. Open Look and Motif.
- WhoBeI 11y ago
  That'd be nice. No more dual booting presuming they bring DirectX along. It seems far of though. Microsoft would have to give up a lot of lower level control.
- vram22 11y ago
  Was Motif paid? Edit: Checked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) According to that article, it was, initially. Didn't know.
- PeCaN 11y ago
  What would they gain though? NT is a pretty good kernel with very broad hardware support. If anything, they'd just make NT fully POSIX-compliant. They'd get the same benefit with a fraction of the effort of porting Windows-the-GUI to Linux.
  - yazaddaruvala 11y ago
    > What would they gain? Long term deprecation of their work force? Reduction in operating costs? Why pay people to support / extend a kernel / hardware drivers when Linus will do it for free?
  - asveikau 11y ago
    > If anything, they'd just make NT fully POSIX-compliant. They did this with the POSIX subsystem, and the ability to do this was in mind very early in NT history. They ripped it out in Windows 8, IIRC. I guess it's back.
cyphar 11y ago
> It would be amazing to see a Microsoft GNU/Linux distro in the future. Except it would almost certainly be proprietary and would take away your freedoms. I don't understand why everyone is suddenly giddy about the "new Microsoft". They haven't embraced free software, they've just released a few bits as free software while still keeping the conglomeration proprietary.

by bithush 11y ago

adamnemecek 11y ago

Not linux but close https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix

Ologn 11y ago
Radio Shack used to sell TRS-80 Model 16 microcomputers running Xenix in their stores to business customers. At least up until the mid-1990s, many local Radio Shack stores were using these machines as their point-of-sale, inventory and financial systems. Xenix in general was the most widely used Unix in terms of installs into the late 1980s.
- vram22 10y ago
  >Xenix in general was the most widely used Unix in terms of installs into the late 1980s. Interesting, didn't know that ... Because PC hardware was cheaper and more ubiquitous, could be one reason, maybe. On a related note, UNIX became big in India (people used to call it a Unix country) in the mid or late 1980's, per what I've read, because of a government decision on computerization. The Rangarajan Committee (he later became the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, which is like the US's Federal Reserve) recommended use of UNIX as the operating system for nationalized banks' back-office automation, because of its multi-user and multi-tasking nature (and possibly / likely because it was cheaper than mainframes, maybe even because less proprietary). UNIX usage in India took off due to that (thousands and thousands of bank branches in India), and hence many devs and admins developed Unix skills ... I was part of that trend, and benefited from it a lot, professionally, in terms of learning ...
pjmlp 11y ago
My first UNIX, a couple of years before GNU/Linux was even a thing.
- vram22 11y ago
  Cool. My first Unix was some PC-based clone, the name of which I cannot remember now, but was also a while before Linux. Not sure whether it was before Xenix or not, though I used Xenix (SCO Xenix at the time, IIRC, or was it SCO Unix) a year or so later. First Unix's name may have started with E-something. Everex? Not sure. I think I also got to use Interactive Systems' PC Unix (PC-IX?) around the same time as the first one. Soon after, moved to Unix on higher Motorola 680x0 processor based minicomputers, and even a multi-CPU SMP RISC Unix (from MIPS) for a while. Later SVR3 and SVR4. Didn't like 4 though. By then (as I learned later) the UNIX wars had started, and it seemed to be a clunky hybrid of features from the SVR3 and BSD camps. Later worked a good amount on HP-UX too, on their PA-RISC business servers. Liked HP-UX. Pretty stable and powerful OS with a good patch management system and many other features and tools (HP PRM, Glance Plus, Ignite, MC/ServiceGuard, etc.). The hp-ux mailing list was good too - very friendly and helpful people, I helped out others too. Never got to work on Solaris, though, which I regret. I remember I first wrote my selpg utility [1] on a HP-UX box (for a large corp customer, at their request), and then released it on the HP-UX mailing list. Some people appreciated it. [1] http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-article.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-arti... http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text-pages-to-pdf-with.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text-pages-... Good fun doing a lot of systems stuff on those machines for some years.
  - intrasight 11y ago
    "Santa Cruz Operation" yup, that brings back memories...
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Thanks for sharing. I did Xenix, DG/UX, Aix, got my first Linux distribution in the form of Slackware 2.0. Tried to get Coherent before, but could not afford it. Afterwards Red-Hat, Mandrake and SuSE were my favourite ones until I ended up with Ubuntu. At work I also got to use Solaris and HP-UX. My first experience with containers was with HP-UX vaults. However I never managed to leave the worlds of Amiga, Windows and BeOS behind. Specially in terms of Demoscene, IDEs culture, graphics and game coding.
vram22 11y ago
Yes, MS has been involved with Unix from much before the recent moves. Possibly a less known fact to some.
- RyJones 11y ago
  They even shipped IE for Solaris in the 90s! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

diskcat 11y ago

What would be the point of using microsoft's linux?

revelation 11y ago
The same as using a lot of the other Microsoft stuff: you can pay and have someone fix $problem on a deterministic timescale. You can upgrade without having to fear your production system will come crashing down.
- greglindahl 11y ago
  Huh, I've done both of those with Linux for more than a decade. Can you name some features more unique to Microsoft?
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  > you can pay and have someone fix $problem on a deterministic timescale Really? When did MS start fixing bugs for their paying customers in a deterministic timescale? The point about upgrades may be good, but MS has started breaking things on update recently too.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    For years. You open up a crit sit that is tagged as a product defect and they will turn fixes around quickly. If you are strategic to them, they'll fly in people.
pkaye 11y ago
Running it on Azure?
toyg 11y ago
They could use it as stepping stone for businesses heavily invested on Linux or already having a mix of Linux and Windows: "we guarantee this is the best Linux distribution for compatibility with MS tech (Msad, powershell, Azure, mono etc etc)".

talideon 11y ago

They're already done something not exactly unlike that, albeit not for general use: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/09/microsoft_sonic_debian/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/09/microsoft_sonic_debi...

bithush 11y ago
Kind of. SONIC is very specialised. It isn't a desktop or server version of Linux for general purpose applications. Also it just happens to run on Debian.

Intermernet 11y ago

My prediction is that they'll continue to work on the recently announced "Windows Subsystem for Linux"[1] and attempt to cover a larger and larger portion of the Linux ABI. If people can develop, and run the majority of Linux programs on Windows, and those programs are competitive in performance, and those programs have MS support backing, then they have a huge win in the enterprise space. Personally, I'm happy to keep providing whatever mix of OS services customers request, but I'm very interested in where this could be going [1]: https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows/ https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-o...

zeta0134 11y ago
I think this is an amazing move for Microsoft. If they get the kinks worked out and get it working well on Windows Server, they'll have one platform that can run pretty much all the major enterprise software without virtualization. That's great; it's a way for Linux shops to convert to Windows Server without having to fully commit right away, because they'll still be able to quite easily run their existing stack and leverage their developers who are used to Linux tooling.
- tluyben2 11y ago
  Why is that good though; why would Linux shops want to convert? In the space I work in companies (including enterprises) like the fact they can do whatever with the source code and that they can audit whatever part they want. MS has that too but not for many clients and you cannot do whatever with it. The freedom in Linux means a lot to a lot of people even if you maybe could get a bit more perf or support from a paid platform. We have people working with VS (a few only) and because of our tooling it works smoothly anyway. I have no clue why you would switch to something paid and closed...
rgbrenner 11y ago
It sounds like a rehash of Windows Services for Unix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX What's different this time? My prediction is that it'll languish in obscurity, rarely used, and eventually be discontinued.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

I posted my prediction over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388418 > I think eventually, we'll see Windows transform into a Linux distro with a Windows UI.

wslh 11y ago
Windows [kernel] is a very advanced operating system with an incredible wide support for third party drivers. I think the prediction would be more oriented to running them side by side.
- therein 11y ago
  Yeah they wouldn't just toss away millions of lines of kernel code.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I recall reading somewhere (can't find it for beans now) that the Windows kernel was a huge mess codewise since many of the original developers have moved on and poor to nonexistent documentation was left, meaning that the modern employees had to basically reverse engineer a lot of the code. Take this with a grain of salt, of course.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      This isn't super unusual for very old code.
    - mlvljr 11y ago
      Here are some comments from the times of the source code leak: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795 I'd say, the user experience has improved since then overall (meaning the code quality, too, in one of the most practical senses).
      - 11y ago

brudgers 11y ago

The current iteration of Windows 10 tries to abstract away hardware under a higher level "Windows" layer and mostly get rid of variation between windows for embedded, mobile, and Intel platforms. With the new Bash/Ubuntu feature, I think Windows is moving on to abstract away the operating system. My wild-ass prediction for a Microsoft Linux distribution is one in which Microsoft Windows replaces X-windows. Wayland is already trying to do this because of the perceived security vulnerabilities of X-windows' architecture. In a limited sense, this is sort of an old idea when it comes to nix: there were paid GUI products for layering on top of nix thirty years ago, e.g. Open Look and Motif.

WhoBeI 11y ago
That'd be nice. No more dual booting presuming they bring DirectX along. It seems far of though. Microsoft would have to give up a lot of lower level control.
vram22 11y ago
Was Motif paid? Edit: Checked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) According to that article, it was, initially. Didn't know.
PeCaN 11y ago
What would they gain though? NT is a pretty good kernel with very broad hardware support. If anything, they'd just make NT fully POSIX-compliant. They'd get the same benefit with a fraction of the effort of porting Windows-the-GUI to Linux.
- yazaddaruvala 11y ago
  > What would they gain? Long term deprecation of their work force? Reduction in operating costs? Why pay people to support / extend a kernel / hardware drivers when Linus will do it for free?
- asveikau 11y ago
  > If anything, they'd just make NT fully POSIX-compliant. They did this with the POSIX subsystem, and the ability to do this was in mind very early in NT history. They ripped it out in Windows 8, IIRC. I guess it's back.

cyphar 11y ago

> It would be amazing to see a Microsoft GNU/Linux distro in the future. Except it would almost certainly be proprietary and would take away your freedoms. I don't understand why everyone is suddenly giddy about the "new Microsoft". They haven't embraced free software, they've just released a few bits as free software while still keeping the conglomeration proprietary.