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This confusion is both astonishing, given the length of time GNU has been around. Yet it is also understandable, for many there's a missing distinction between

This confusion is both astonishing, given the length of time GNU has been around. Yet it is also understandable, for many there's a missing distinction between GNU vs Linux project vs FreeBSD etc etc. The GNU operating system website explains the distinction pretty clearly on its home page. https://www.gnu.org/home.en.html#More-GNU https://www.gnu.org/home.en.html#More-GNU I often wonder why Microsoft doesn't just bite the bullet and adopt Linux as the kernel for Windows.

zxcvcxz 10y ago
>I often wonder why Microsoft doesn't just bite the bullet and adopt Linux as the kernel for Windows. Linux doesn't have the massive data collection apparatus that Windows 10 does. If they released an OS with the Linux kernel + NSA, there would be no reason to use it over some other Linux distro. Microsoft makes a lot of money from selling and analyzing your data. The main purpose of Windows at this point is the data collection tools.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  This got downvoted, but aside from the snarky remark, it is a good point that Windows' main profit these days is probably data collection - or at least it's heading that way.
  - Analemma_ 10y ago
    It got downvoted because it's blatantly untrue, as is your comment. Windows' profit comes from licenses, same as it always did - the W10 upgrade was free for personal copies, but business users still pay, as do people who buy a new computer. The idea that Microsoft is making a big chunk of its money through data selling is baloney.
    - lucb1e 10y ago
      So you're saying they gather all that personal data for... no reason whatsoever? There have been so many threads on HN about Windows 10's privacy invasive settings, and here I'm being told they do no such thing?
    - zxcvcxz 10y ago
      Well how do you know it's baloney if you can't trust Microsoft? If they aren't selling it then I'm sure they're just handing it over to the NSA and god knows what other world governments, which is even worse. It's just a matter of time until there's a massive data breach/leak and all of Microsoft customer data is on public display.
ygra 10y ago
> I often wonder why Microsoft doesn't just bite the bullet and adopt Linux as the kernel for Windows What is to gain? It's not like the Windows kernel is bad or useless. You'd have to redo the Windows API on top of a kernel that works very differently. Any gains here are marginal and there's a lot of cost involved.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  It's not like the Windows kernel is bad or useless. The NT kernel is pretty darn good, so long as it's not polluted with things that don't belong in it. It shares a lot of heritage with the VAX kernel. A lot of the same people worked on both. If you don't molest it, the NT kernel can (and does) run ultra high reliability things like RAID arrays.
  - ryao 10y ago
    RAID is not very reliable. Here is an example that I tried the other day in MD RAID 1. I made a 2-disk array, zeroed it, wrote a sector of garbage at 1MB into one disk directly, cleared caches, ran a scrub and did not see any warning about the inconsistency. It relies on the drive firmware to verify the low level formatting parity, so things like misdirected writes (which my writing garbage was meant to simulate) go undetected. There are plenty of other problems too, but that is just one example. Anyway, at scale, you can count on RAID to be unreliable. If you want something reliable, use ZFS.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    VAX was the hardware, VMS was one of the OSs that could run on it.
ryao 10y ago
> I often wonder why Microsoft doesn't just bite the bullet and adopt Linux as the kernel for Windows. What does the Linux kernel offer them to merit the pain of doing that? Also, why the Linux kernel in specific instead of adopting any of the other kernels intended to provide a UNIX environment such as XNU, FreeBSD's kernel, Illumos' kernel, etcetera? They have the technology to switch in the form of drawbridge. Whether they have sufficient incentive to do that or that one option is more desireable than another is another story.

zxcvcxz 10y ago

>I often wonder why Microsoft doesn't just bite the bullet and adopt Linux as the kernel for Windows. Linux doesn't have the massive data collection apparatus that Windows 10 does. If they released an OS with the Linux kernel + NSA, there would be no reason to use it over some other Linux distro. Microsoft makes a lot of money from selling and analyzing your data. The main purpose of Windows at this point is the data collection tools.

lucb1e 10y ago
This got downvoted, but aside from the snarky remark, it is a good point that Windows' main profit these days is probably data collection - or at least it's heading that way.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  It got downvoted because it's blatantly untrue, as is your comment. Windows' profit comes from licenses, same as it always did - the W10 upgrade was free for personal copies, but business users still pay, as do people who buy a new computer. The idea that Microsoft is making a big chunk of its money through data selling is baloney.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    So you're saying they gather all that personal data for... no reason whatsoever? There have been so many threads on HN about Windows 10's privacy invasive settings, and here I'm being told they do no such thing?
  - zxcvcxz 10y ago
    Well how do you know it's baloney if you can't trust Microsoft? If they aren't selling it then I'm sure they're just handing it over to the NSA and god knows what other world governments, which is even worse. It's just a matter of time until there's a massive data breach/leak and all of Microsoft customer data is on public display.

ygra 10y ago

> I often wonder why Microsoft doesn't just bite the bullet and adopt Linux as the kernel for Windows What is to gain? It's not like the Windows kernel is bad or useless. You'd have to redo the Windows API on top of a kernel that works very differently. Any gains here are marginal and there's a lot of cost involved.

stcredzero 10y ago
It's not like the Windows kernel is bad or useless. The NT kernel is pretty darn good, so long as it's not polluted with things that don't belong in it. It shares a lot of heritage with the VAX kernel. A lot of the same people worked on both. If you don't molest it, the NT kernel can (and does) run ultra high reliability things like RAID arrays.
- ryao 10y ago
  RAID is not very reliable. Here is an example that I tried the other day in MD RAID 1. I made a 2-disk array, zeroed it, wrote a sector of garbage at 1MB into one disk directly, cleared caches, ran a scrub and did not see any warning about the inconsistency. It relies on the drive firmware to verify the low level formatting parity, so things like misdirected writes (which my writing garbage was meant to simulate) go undetected. There are plenty of other problems too, but that is just one example. Anyway, at scale, you can count on RAID to be unreliable. If you want something reliable, use ZFS.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  VAX was the hardware, VMS was one of the OSs that could run on it.

ryao 10y ago

> I often wonder why Microsoft doesn't just bite the bullet and adopt Linux as the kernel for Windows. What does the Linux kernel offer them to merit the pain of doing that? Also, why the Linux kernel in specific instead of adopting any of the other kernels intended to provide a UNIX environment such as XNU, FreeBSD's kernel, Illumos' kernel, etcetera? They have the technology to switch in the form of drawbridge. Whether they have sufficient incentive to do that or that one option is more desireable than another is another story.