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My personal crazy theory is that Microsoft is distancing itself from the windows platform and moving towards a more Unix based system. I suspect that Microsoft
by fhood 11y ago
My personal crazy theory is that Microsoft is distancing itself from the windows platform and moving towards a more Unix based system. I suspect that Microsoft is finding that moving forwards on their original platform is untenable in the long run, and that a Unix like system will improve their product and also be cheaper to develope and maintain. I might be overly optimistic though.
- Touche 11y agoI think that's wishful thinking, at this time they are translating Linux syscalls to the Windows equivalent. This adds maintenance burden, it doesn't remove it. Now if they were to have a dual kernel I could see the argument that they are sunsetting the Windows kernel.
- tacos 11y agoMicrosoft's ongoing, massive internal investment in the NT kernel speaks for itself. They already ship multiple kernels. And they ship software that runs on multiple kernels. SQL Server on Linux is announced. Most of the chatter here does not relate to where the puck is headed.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y agoConsidering a lot of Windows says admin types can't even program in Powershell (IME) I can't imagine a lot of people wanting to learn BASH (and probably Perl, Pyrhon, etc)
- skc 11y agoHell of an assumption there. How many Windows sys admins are there in the world what percentage of them do you know?
- tacos 11y agoThe success of GitHub's shell, native versions of Python and Perl, plus MSYS and warty Cygwin prove that there's demand. This is a better solution for many of those cases. Giving more people access to common code and frequently-updated, open-source utilities -- how can you find fault with it?
- wslh 11y agoLink to a recent discussion about this topic in HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11412225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11412225 Basically, take a look at the Windows Internals book and the new security isolation mentioned here https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#battle-of-the-skm-and-ium-how-windows-10-rewrites-os-architecture https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#battle-of-the-... and you will quickly realize that Windows is a different beast with its own plan.
- glhaynes 11y agoMicrosoft is distancing itself from the windows platform and moving towards a more Unix based system. I suspect that Microsoft is finding that moving forwards on their original platform is untenable in the long run People have been predicting this since at least NT 4.
- xutopia 11y agoThat's postdicting. I never heard anyone say that ever.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- KirinDave 11y agoI'm not so sure they want to actually ditch their internals. Most people agree that in terms of a secured environment for Desktops with users who just have 0 education, Win10 and even Win8 were surprisingly robust. Which is not to say there weren't a ton of issues. It's just that we've seen historically how bad it could be and it was nowhere near that bad.
- norswap 11y agoWindows NT is quite sound technology. At least the kernel. On the other hand... the kernel doesn't matter. It's the userland that poses problems most of the time. In in this domain, Microsoft is much much ahead of any *nix except OSX (in my opinion, MS is ahead of Apple as well, just not by as wide a margin).
- khattam 11y agoHow is OS X better in userland than Linux?
- bitwize 11y agoThey will never do that; the NT kernel has a strictly better design than any Unix. What they have built is a Wine-like compatibility shim for Linux binaries. This is a have your cake and eat it too move. Microsoft has noted well how Web devs have basically migrated en masse from Linux to the Mac, and want a piece of the action. The carrot will be running Visual Studio while keeping your Linux stack on your dev box.