4 ms·

The "wheel" is 40 years old. It's a great wheel, it's doing a hell of a job. But with 40 years of perspective, maybe it actually can be re-invented better witho

The "wheel" is 40 years old. It's a great wheel, it's doing a hell of a job. But with 40 years of perspective, maybe it actually can be re-invented better without carrying around a pile of legacy back-compatibility needs.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
> The "wheel" is 40 years old. It's a great wheel, it's doing a hell of a job. But with 40 years of perspective, maybe it actually can be re-invented better without carrying around a pile of legacy back-compatibility needs. Newer is rarely better. Besides, in computing, so many "new" things are just rehashes of old (and not so old) ideas. I really wish we could get away from the "that software is old" meme in this industry.
- jay-anderson 9y ago
  Old software often had requirements or made design decisions based on assumptions that aren't true anymore. These can make it more difficult to deal with or extend. I agree that in general we should just use the old software that works. However big projects like fuscia can reap some long term benefits. In the end it's a cost/benefit analysis to decide.
  - gnufx 9y ago
    Well, the context that shaped old software has a habit of re-appearing, so the design decisions/trades-off may have become relevant again at least once since. The first vectorized code I saw was a relic from a long-gone Cray 1.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  What? New software is usually better, or do you think people never improve anything? That just makes no sense.
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    Of course software improves. The context was BSD, Posix, etc are based on 40 year old tech. Those systems got a lot right and it takes a hell of a lot of hubris to think just because it’s 40 years old it is somehow not good anymore.
- sverige 9y ago
  One great advantage of old software that has been continuously developed by the same core of people is that when new features are added, they have the benefit of being informed by all the past failures and near-misses. And they are almost always features that are actually new. New software, otoh, hasn't been through a 40-year shakedown cruise.
imtringued 9y ago
If it's so terrible why did microsoft develop the windows subsystem for linux? Shouldn't they instead try to avoid the "pile of legacy" as much as possible?
- 0x0 9y ago
  Well they didn't replace their NT kernel with WSL? So it's a bit of apples-to-oranges comparison. WSL is there to provide access to the existing, vast library of linux software that might not have been treated with win32 ports?
- sverige 9y ago
  1. MS is all about "piles of legacy." That is not counter to their philosophy at all. 2. MS apparently sees some long-term advantage to having a Linux compatibility layer. (By "advantage," I mean of course some way to make more money.) Neither of these things has any bearing on the quality of Linux, or lack thereof.
- majewsky 9y ago
  How did you manage to read "it's terrible" into "it's a great wheel"?
- twblalock 9y ago
  Because developers who write software that is deployed to non-Microsoft cloud providers are writing code that runs on Linux, and WSL makes that a lot easier to do on Windows.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Because they saw a market opening with UNIX devs no longer happy with the hardware selection for using macOS as a pretty UNIX. Also their goal is not to run 100% of POSIX or Linux specific software, rather achieve a good enough compatibility to run majority of well known projects and utilities.
- akurtzhs 9y ago
  WSL is an attempt at getting developers to use Windows rather than OS X or Linux. That's a very different situation than coming up with the fundamentals for a new operating system.
justadudeama 9y ago
Do you think it will ever replace Linux on something that isn't a phone?
- discreditable 9y ago
  Ars Technica got it to work on a Pixel book: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-on-the-pixelbook-it-works-it-actually-works/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-o...
  - JepZ 9y ago
    Thanks for the link. From what we can see now it got a lot of Google integration. Too much for my taste.
- LamaOfRuin 9y ago
  Considering that they could plausibly have it shipping on tens of millions of devices as soon as they get a browser working and hardware support for a well controlled subset of modern systems, I think that's a real possibility.
gnufx 9y ago
There are two wheels involved, the micro-kernel and capabilities, though they are roughly 40 years old.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

> The "wheel" is 40 years old. It's a great wheel, it's doing a hell of a job. But with 40 years of perspective, maybe it actually can be re-invented better without carrying around a pile of legacy back-compatibility needs. Newer is rarely better. Besides, in computing, so many "new" things are just rehashes of old (and not so old) ideas. I really wish we could get away from the "that software is old" meme in this industry.

jay-anderson 9y ago
Old software often had requirements or made design decisions based on assumptions that aren't true anymore. These can make it more difficult to deal with or extend. I agree that in general we should just use the old software that works. However big projects like fuscia can reap some long term benefits. In the end it's a cost/benefit analysis to decide.
- gnufx 9y ago
  Well, the context that shaped old software has a habit of re-appearing, so the design decisions/trades-off may have become relevant again at least once since. The first vectorized code I saw was a relic from a long-gone Cray 1.
IshKebab 9y ago
What? New software is usually better, or do you think people never improve anything? That just makes no sense.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Of course software improves. The context was BSD, Posix, etc are based on 40 year old tech. Those systems got a lot right and it takes a hell of a lot of hubris to think just because it’s 40 years old it is somehow not good anymore.
sverige 9y ago
One great advantage of old software that has been continuously developed by the same core of people is that when new features are added, they have the benefit of being informed by all the past failures and near-misses. And they are almost always features that are actually new. New software, otoh, hasn't been through a 40-year shakedown cruise.

imtringued 9y ago

If it's so terrible why did microsoft develop the windows subsystem for linux? Shouldn't they instead try to avoid the "pile of legacy" as much as possible?

0x0 9y ago
Well they didn't replace their NT kernel with WSL? So it's a bit of apples-to-oranges comparison. WSL is there to provide access to the existing, vast library of linux software that might not have been treated with win32 ports?
sverige 9y ago
1. MS is all about "piles of legacy." That is not counter to their philosophy at all. 2. MS apparently sees some long-term advantage to having a Linux compatibility layer. (By "advantage," I mean of course some way to make more money.) Neither of these things has any bearing on the quality of Linux, or lack thereof.
majewsky 9y ago
How did you manage to read "it's terrible" into "it's a great wheel"?
twblalock 9y ago
Because developers who write software that is deployed to non-Microsoft cloud providers are writing code that runs on Linux, and WSL makes that a lot easier to do on Windows.
pjmlp 9y ago
Because they saw a market opening with UNIX devs no longer happy with the hardware selection for using macOS as a pretty UNIX. Also their goal is not to run 100% of POSIX or Linux specific software, rather achieve a good enough compatibility to run majority of well known projects and utilities.
akurtzhs 9y ago
WSL is an attempt at getting developers to use Windows rather than OS X or Linux. That's a very different situation than coming up with the fundamentals for a new operating system.

justadudeama 9y ago

Do you think it will ever replace Linux on something that isn't a phone?

discreditable 9y ago
Ars Technica got it to work on a Pixel book: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-on-the-pixelbook-it-works-it-actually-works/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-o...
- JepZ 9y ago
  Thanks for the link. From what we can see now it got a lot of Google integration. Too much for my taste.
LamaOfRuin 9y ago
Considering that they could plausibly have it shipping on tens of millions of devices as soon as they get a browser working and hardware support for a well controlled subset of modern systems, I think that's a real possibility.

gnufx 9y ago

There are two wheels involved, the micro-kernel and capabilities, though they are roughly 40 years old.