6 ms·

I wonder how relevant the NT kernel is nowadays. My impression is the kernel as a foundation is that it is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, the windows struc

I wonder how relevant the NT kernel is nowadays. My impression is the kernel as a foundation is that it is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, the windows structures atop it are eternally collapsing and rotted in parts. With the introduction of the windows subsystem for linux, the whole edifice is coming down, threatening to bury the NT kernel and render it obsolete. It seems Microsoft has capitulated and competition has been reduced to "'Doing Linux' better than linux". Which is to say, "We surrender! There is no plan. Start migrating away from our legacy tech; here is a path." What's the point in continuing development on and for Windows if it no longer offers (and demands) technological distinctiveness? There is no point.

bcoates 8y ago
At the API and system service levels the reason for all that goofy cruft is that businesses still use it, a lot, and are willing to pay fairly big bucks if and only if they get to keep it. Adding Linux features is just more cruft added to the kludge. Sells more units, particularly in Azure, not particularly part of some sort of strategic direction then, say, the Distributed Transaction Coordinator. The UI and OS-level shovelware stuff on the other hand is a nightmare that might kill the not-quite-golden-anymore goose.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Still, it is more organized as desktop stack than any UNIX based alternative, with exception of macOS, which doesn't care much about their UNIX underpinnings, even during NeXT days.
WorldMaker 8y ago
It seems just the opposite to me. The Windows Subsystem for Linux seems a testament to the NT Kernel and its deliberate approach from nearly three decades ago. Designed originally to support Win32, POSIX, and OS/2 frontends, for a long time it only ever really needed to exercise one of those things. Now it has the best POSIX layer it has ever had, focusing on byte-for-byte compatibility with binaries targeting the Linux kernel. That's incredible power, and the idea that the NT Kernel is doing it almost like running any other application is fascinating. If the NT Kernel is "Doing Linux better than Linux", that's a fascinating statement, because the NT Kernel is also running Win32, UWP, and all of its own chores at the same time. What's the Linux kernel doing? ;P Sure, Win32 is a beast now past retirement, and Microsoft has been trying to help that retirement happen sooner rather than later with UWP, but again, that seems a testament to the underlying NT kernel, because the NT kernel doesn't care, it's still chugging along doing its thing and doing it well. It's also running on more hardware combinations and more processor architectures than most other kernels could dream of touching.
- dblohm7 8y ago
  I don't think we'll ever see Win32 retired. .NET and UWP aren't distinct subsystems; they run atop Win32.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Sure, there will always be legacy Win32 apps. I work with too many VB6 applications to be more optimistic about that. UWP is closer to being a distinct subsystem than "running atop Win32". Though it isn't an official subsystem, it has some of the hallmarks of one (and that was one of the complaints about Windows 8). They've been successfully blurring the lines between UWP and Win32 since Windows 8, but it's also not entirely accurate to state that UWP "runs atop Win32". (The old .NET Framework does, yes, but I didn't mention the .NET Framework, I mentioned UWP.) If anything, with increasingly more of the Windows Shell moving to UWP, it may even start to be increasingly the case that it is Win32 running atop UWP.
    - dblohm7 8y ago
      COM is dependent on Win32, and UWP is based on COM.
      - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        COM itself is quite small, sure there are a lot of components that implement COM and use Win32 but I don't think it would take much to port COM itself to another platform.
        WorldMaker 8y ago
        COM itself as a format/standard is Win32 agnostic other than being built on some similar data structures to Win32. Also, WinRT isn't COM. It's very like COM, "son of COM and .NET metadata" and all that, but WinRT and all the WinRT components don't use Win32 and never have, and even have a quite clean break with all of the Win32 data structures COM has embedded in the past. (Though, I suppose some of that starts to get into the semantic weeds of whether or not you consider DirectX a part of "Win32" or not, as for instance XAML is built on DirectX and much of DirectX is provided as WinRT components, sort of. There are certainly a lot of Win32-adjacent things that live in all worlds like DirectX, but whether or not they can be considered Win32 is an interesting philosophical debate.)
pjmlp 8y ago
No, they are doing GNU/Windows actually. It just happens that Linux kind of killed the commercial UNIX offerings, with Aix and HP-UX the last ones standing. Everyone else just happens to want to use POSIX like tools, so GNU/Windows is no different than running a Linux VM on top of an IBM z/OS or IBM i mainframe. Microsoft is cleverly going after the users that Apple doesn't care any more, the ones that weren't interested in Apple platform to begin with, they just want a pretty UNIX to run their POSIX command line tools.

bcoates 8y ago

At the API and system service levels the reason for all that goofy cruft is that businesses still use it, a lot, and are willing to pay fairly big bucks if and only if they get to keep it. Adding Linux features is just more cruft added to the kludge. Sells more units, particularly in Azure, not particularly part of some sort of strategic direction then, say, the Distributed Transaction Coordinator. The UI and OS-level shovelware stuff on the other hand is a nightmare that might kill the not-quite-golden-anymore goose.

pjmlp 8y ago
Still, it is more organized as desktop stack than any UNIX based alternative, with exception of macOS, which doesn't care much about their UNIX underpinnings, even during NeXT days.

WorldMaker 8y ago

It seems just the opposite to me. The Windows Subsystem for Linux seems a testament to the NT Kernel and its deliberate approach from nearly three decades ago. Designed originally to support Win32, POSIX, and OS/2 frontends, for a long time it only ever really needed to exercise one of those things. Now it has the best POSIX layer it has ever had, focusing on byte-for-byte compatibility with binaries targeting the Linux kernel. That's incredible power, and the idea that the NT Kernel is doing it almost like running any other application is fascinating. If the NT Kernel is "Doing Linux better than Linux", that's a fascinating statement, because the NT Kernel is also running Win32, UWP, and all of its own chores at the same time. What's the Linux kernel doing? ;P Sure, Win32 is a beast now past retirement, and Microsoft has been trying to help that retirement happen sooner rather than later with UWP, but again, that seems a testament to the underlying NT kernel, because the NT kernel doesn't care, it's still chugging along doing its thing and doing it well. It's also running on more hardware combinations and more processor architectures than most other kernels could dream of touching.

dblohm7 8y ago
I don't think we'll ever see Win32 retired. .NET and UWP aren't distinct subsystems; they run atop Win32.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Sure, there will always be legacy Win32 apps. I work with too many VB6 applications to be more optimistic about that. UWP is closer to being a distinct subsystem than "running atop Win32". Though it isn't an official subsystem, it has some of the hallmarks of one (and that was one of the complaints about Windows 8). They've been successfully blurring the lines between UWP and Win32 since Windows 8, but it's also not entirely accurate to state that UWP "runs atop Win32". (The old .NET Framework does, yes, but I didn't mention the .NET Framework, I mentioned UWP.) If anything, with increasingly more of the Windows Shell moving to UWP, it may even start to be increasingly the case that it is Win32 running atop UWP.
  - dblohm7 8y ago
    COM is dependent on Win32, and UWP is based on COM.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      COM itself is quite small, sure there are a lot of components that implement COM and use Win32 but I don't think it would take much to port COM itself to another platform.
      - WorldMaker 8y ago
        COM itself as a format/standard is Win32 agnostic other than being built on some similar data structures to Win32. Also, WinRT isn't COM. It's very like COM, "son of COM and .NET metadata" and all that, but WinRT and all the WinRT components don't use Win32 and never have, and even have a quite clean break with all of the Win32 data structures COM has embedded in the past. (Though, I suppose some of that starts to get into the semantic weeds of whether or not you consider DirectX a part of "Win32" or not, as for instance XAML is built on DirectX and much of DirectX is provided as WinRT components, sort of. There are certainly a lot of Win32-adjacent things that live in all worlds like DirectX, but whether or not they can be considered Win32 is an interesting philosophical debate.)

pjmlp 8y ago

No, they are doing GNU/Windows actually. It just happens that Linux kind of killed the commercial UNIX offerings, with Aix and HP-UX the last ones standing. Everyone else just happens to want to use POSIX like tools, so GNU/Windows is no different than running a Linux VM on top of an IBM z/OS or IBM i mainframe. Microsoft is cleverly going after the users that Apple doesn't care any more, the ones that weren't interested in Apple platform to begin with, they just want a pretty UNIX to run their POSIX command line tools.