7 ms·

Microsoft is becoming a corporation of goodness? (Windows Subsystem for Linux, now that)

akerro 10y ago
lol nope. Azure is now another MS-made way of vendor locking software: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/07/microsoft_herds_users_to_azure_by_killing_vm_conversion_tool/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/07/microsoft_herds_user... >(Windows Subsystem for Linux, now that) That's also another monopolistic practice: 1. Not leader on a market 2. Make yourself compatible with the leader Examples include linux-subsystem, addon compatibility of Chromium, Firefox in EDGE.
- NhanH 10y ago
  Assuming that they are NOT evil, how would their actions be different? Or is this a damn if you do, damn if you don't?
  - icebraining 10y ago
    It's more "damned if you did".
    - Bromskloss 10y ago
      "Damned if you done did it."
  - Longhanks 10y ago
    They are reimplementing the Linux kernel in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It's easy for them, since they have access to the Linux kernel source code. The wine project or ReactOS reimplement NT and some of the WinAPI. However, they get no support at all from Microsoft. They could support those. That would be a gesture of good faith, in my opinion.
    - akerro 10y ago
      Completely agree, AMD, Nvidia support opensource, like by publishing their hardware spec for free, contributing to Linux kernel. Google does it somehow with GSoC and releasing tons of libraries. But really Microsoft? Did they do anything meaning? Did I miss anything? All they do is good PR and suits behind our backs.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Since when are the NVidia specs available?!
        akerro 10y ago
        Since Linus told them fuck you https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2013-September/014480.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2013-Septembe...
      - zxcvcxz 10y ago
        They just take take take from open source and give the bare minimum back.
      - profquail 10y ago
        To name a few: * Haskell * F# * TypeScript * Orleans * Roslyn * Naiad * Chakra
      - willtim 10y ago
        Microsoft research have contributed significantly to advancing the state of computing going back to the early 90's. So sounds like you have missed a lot.
    - orf 10y ago
      They are not re-implementing the kernel, they are doing a clean room (I.e no looking at the source) implementation of the system calls Linux supports.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  >That's also another monopolistic practice: 1. Not leader on a market 2. Make yourself compatible with the leader Is this not, like, what half of the companies in the world do? If you were launching a new browser, would you not look to make it addon compatible with popular platforms? Of course Microsoft is playing catch-up! And where they are in the lead, they sorta leave it (look at C#). But I'm wondering what exactly you expect from any company, in general. I'll agree that Azure is a mess. A complete disappointment, especially since Dave Cutler's name was on it. Probably has some cool core tech, but what a pain to deal with, and expensive, too! Azure is more aimed at getting traditional companies paying MS monthly direct, vs their long chain of licensing for onprem. They'll make a lot of money. But against GCE? No contest.
  - icc97 10y ago
    Genuine question - is Azure a mess? Have you got any articles you'd recommend? I'd generally heard good things about it.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      In short, yes. The portals are a wreck. Every time I, or anyone I know, uses it, they are pissed off. It's just needlessly "Metro" and confusing. It's terribly slow, too. Machines take forever to startup. Their SSD story is a joke (requires special machine types on pre-sized arrays, instead of just a switch). It's far more expensive (2x to 10x GCE last I checked, depending on machine size). The networking is bizarre - all machines in a "service" share an IP. So their recommendation is to put SSH on different ports like 221, 222, 223, to get to a specific machine. Just silly. I really, really wanted to like Azure; it'd be good for AWS to have real competition. And I am very biased against Google. But GCE is just so superior. I suppose to see for yourself, try setting up a 3 node SSD Elasticsearch cluster on Azure and GCE. With GCE my experience is that it'll take significantly less time, even if you already know Azure and GCE.
nowprovision 10y ago
They are moving in the the right direction, but sometimes it seems one step forward and then two steps back. They were a gold sponsor of OpenBSD in 2015 but no sponsorship in 2016 yet http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html. Also on their own OS a recent experience of installing SQL Server Express shows are still very capable of inflicting pain and #clicknext arthritis.
ekianjo 10y ago
Yeah if you forget on purpose they act as patent trolls at the same time with Android, and try to make every file format incompatible with the previous versions just to ensure you keep being locked in in their products. And keeping a monopoly on PCs by having Windows installed by default everywhere. Oh, and the forced windows 10 upgrade. Is that all good for you?
- NicoJuicy 10y ago
  Forced free upgrade. You don't want to know how much money they are losing with it, all because they want a shift to a newer OS. Which makes their platform more future proof.. Yes, it's forced, no doubt. But if i were Windows, i'd rather have a lot of people a free upgrade ( and unknowing users forcing to upgrade), then leaving everyone in the Windows Vista erra :)
  - userbinator 10y ago
    They are not losing any money, because Windows 10 is undoubtedly adware. It's "free" because you are the product, and they don't even try to hide this fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053622 (a default install of Win10 communicates with third-party domains of well-known ad-serving/analytics/tracking companies.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352 http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses-windows-10s-start-menu-to-display-ads/ http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses-windows-10... http://www.extremetech.com/computing/204595-lock-screen-ads-on-windows-10-bring-us-closer-to-a-nightmarish-capitalist-dystopia http://www.extremetech.com/computing/204595-lock-screen-ads-...
    - yuhong 10y ago
      They aren't losing much money because most Windows sales are OEM sales. I recommend that you read this: https://hal2020.com/2013/03/07/what-if-microsoft-had-done-windows-8-differently/ https://hal2020.com/2013/03/07/what-if-microsoft-had-done-wi...
mtgx 10y ago
No. They do it for the same reason Google usually open sources stuff - to their own benefit. This is to give Azure a boost in customers and image, not because Microsoft "wants to help FreeBSD" or whatever. That only happens indirectly.
jeswin 10y ago
That pales in comparison to their hostility towards Open Source. They are maneuvering desperately to remain relevant among developers, but at the same time they're happy to appear on behalf of Oracle to claim that APIs are copyrightable. It would be in the best interests of the developer community to ignore them until they mend their ways.
- curt15 10y ago
  >They are maneuvering desperately to remain relevant among developers, but at the same time they're happy to appear on behalf of Oracle to claim that APIs are copyrightable... ...while reimplementing Apple's proprietary iOS frameworks (https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC).

lol nope. Azure is now another MS-made way of vendor locking software: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/07/microsoft_herds_users_to_azure_by_killing_vm_conversion_tool/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/07/microsoft_herds_user... >(Windows Subsystem for Linux, now that) That's also another monopolistic practice: 1. Not leader on a market 2. Make yourself compatible with the leader Examples include linux-subsystem, addon compatibility of Chromium, Firefox in EDGE.

NhanH 10y ago
Assuming that they are NOT evil, how would their actions be different? Or is this a damn if you do, damn if you don't?
- icebraining 10y ago
  It's more "damned if you did".
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    "Damned if you done did it."
- Longhanks 10y ago
  They are reimplementing the Linux kernel in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It's easy for them, since they have access to the Linux kernel source code. The wine project or ReactOS reimplement NT and some of the WinAPI. However, they get no support at all from Microsoft. They could support those. That would be a gesture of good faith, in my opinion.
  - akerro 10y ago
    Completely agree, AMD, Nvidia support opensource, like by publishing their hardware spec for free, contributing to Linux kernel. Google does it somehow with GSoC and releasing tons of libraries. But really Microsoft? Did they do anything meaning? Did I miss anything? All they do is good PR and suits behind our backs.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Since when are the NVidia specs available?!
      - akerro 10y ago
        Since Linus told them fuck you https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2013-September/014480.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2013-Septembe...
    - zxcvcxz 10y ago
      They just take take take from open source and give the bare minimum back.
    - profquail 10y ago
      To name a few: * Haskell * F# * TypeScript * Orleans * Roslyn * Naiad * Chakra
    - willtim 10y ago
      Microsoft research have contributed significantly to advancing the state of computing going back to the early 90's. So sounds like you have missed a lot.
  - orf 10y ago
    They are not re-implementing the kernel, they are doing a clean room (I.e no looking at the source) implementation of the system calls Linux supports.
MichaelGG 10y ago
>That's also another monopolistic practice: 1. Not leader on a market 2. Make yourself compatible with the leader Is this not, like, what half of the companies in the world do? If you were launching a new browser, would you not look to make it addon compatible with popular platforms? Of course Microsoft is playing catch-up! And where they are in the lead, they sorta leave it (look at C#). But I'm wondering what exactly you expect from any company, in general. I'll agree that Azure is a mess. A complete disappointment, especially since Dave Cutler's name was on it. Probably has some cool core tech, but what a pain to deal with, and expensive, too! Azure is more aimed at getting traditional companies paying MS monthly direct, vs their long chain of licensing for onprem. They'll make a lot of money. But against GCE? No contest.
- icc97 10y ago
  Genuine question - is Azure a mess? Have you got any articles you'd recommend? I'd generally heard good things about it.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    In short, yes. The portals are a wreck. Every time I, or anyone I know, uses it, they are pissed off. It's just needlessly "Metro" and confusing. It's terribly slow, too. Machines take forever to startup. Their SSD story is a joke (requires special machine types on pre-sized arrays, instead of just a switch). It's far more expensive (2x to 10x GCE last I checked, depending on machine size). The networking is bizarre - all machines in a "service" share an IP. So their recommendation is to put SSH on different ports like 221, 222, 223, to get to a specific machine. Just silly. I really, really wanted to like Azure; it'd be good for AWS to have real competition. And I am very biased against Google. But GCE is just so superior. I suppose to see for yourself, try setting up a 3 node SSD Elasticsearch cluster on Azure and GCE. With GCE my experience is that it'll take significantly less time, even if you already know Azure and GCE.

nowprovision 10y ago

They are moving in the the right direction, but sometimes it seems one step forward and then two steps back. They were a gold sponsor of OpenBSD in 2015 but no sponsorship in 2016 yet http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html. Also on their own OS a recent experience of installing SQL Server Express shows are still very capable of inflicting pain and #clicknext arthritis.

ekianjo 10y ago

Yeah if you forget on purpose they act as patent trolls at the same time with Android, and try to make every file format incompatible with the previous versions just to ensure you keep being locked in in their products. And keeping a monopoly on PCs by having Windows installed by default everywhere. Oh, and the forced windows 10 upgrade. Is that all good for you?

NicoJuicy 10y ago
Forced free upgrade. You don't want to know how much money they are losing with it, all because they want a shift to a newer OS. Which makes their platform more future proof.. Yes, it's forced, no doubt. But if i were Windows, i'd rather have a lot of people a free upgrade ( and unknowing users forcing to upgrade), then leaving everyone in the Windows Vista erra :)
- userbinator 10y ago
  They are not losing any money, because Windows 10 is undoubtedly adware. It's "free" because you are the product, and they don't even try to hide this fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053622 (a default install of Win10 communicates with third-party domains of well-known ad-serving/analytics/tracking companies.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352 http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses-windows-10s-start-menu-to-display-ads/ http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses-windows-10... http://www.extremetech.com/computing/204595-lock-screen-ads-on-windows-10-bring-us-closer-to-a-nightmarish-capitalist-dystopia http://www.extremetech.com/computing/204595-lock-screen-ads-...
  - yuhong 10y ago
    They aren't losing much money because most Windows sales are OEM sales. I recommend that you read this: https://hal2020.com/2013/03/07/what-if-microsoft-had-done-windows-8-differently/ https://hal2020.com/2013/03/07/what-if-microsoft-had-done-wi...

mtgx 10y ago

No. They do it for the same reason Google usually open sources stuff - to their own benefit. This is to give Azure a boost in customers and image, not because Microsoft "wants to help FreeBSD" or whatever. That only happens indirectly.

jeswin 10y ago

That pales in comparison to their hostility towards Open Source. They are maneuvering desperately to remain relevant among developers, but at the same time they're happy to appear on behalf of Oracle to claim that APIs are copyrightable. It would be in the best interests of the developer community to ignore them until they mend their ways.

curt15 10y ago
>They are maneuvering desperately to remain relevant among developers, but at the same time they're happy to appear on behalf of Oracle to claim that APIs are copyrightable... ...while reimplementing Apple's proprietary iOS frameworks (https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC).