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Makes you wonder if the endgame is to eventually just gut windows completely and have a Microsoft GUI running on Linux.
by stevehiehn 7y ago
Makes you wonder if the endgame is to eventually just gut windows completely and have a Microsoft GUI running on Linux.
- naikrovek 7y agoIt does not make anyone wonder that. No one who knows Windows, anyway.
- fxfan 7y agoReminds me of the time there was a comment wondering what the OS on Microsoft watch was- someone responded with a speculation - an erlang vm with js for gui
- ulkesh 7y agoInterestingly, I have it on good authority from someone who works at MS that they are experimenting exactly with that: Windows as a desktop environment running on top of Linux.
- acct1771 7y agoThis is a bold claim - is your friend sure they're not "just" sharing some system calls, but still running both kernels?
- ulkesh 7y agoI said they’re experimenting with Windows simply being a desktop environment on top of Linux. Only the Linux kernel would be involved. NTOSKRNL wouldn’t be present. I suspect if they’re trying to get native Windows apps to run, some call translation layer would have to exist (similar to what WINE provides). Perhaps it is a bold claim, I haven’t seen it first hand. And it certainly has me hoping it goes much further than experimentation. I’d love to have a Windows environment on top of ext4 or zfs and the Linux kernel.
- Daprofessor 7y agoIt would be an interesting proposition - yet the burden of legacy code is too much. Essentially we are talking about a WINE-ey situation here, where your true honest humble int WINAPI WinMain program's messages have to be translated to Linux kernal calls and vice versa. It would be a huge hassle for everyone involved plus the corporate crowd would absolutely detest it (unless every corporate bell and whistle was there and I very much doubt it).
- tracker1 7y agoConsidering MS has the actual source to the Win API, they could very well complete what WINE does on a linux kernel.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoNo one would have guessed a few years back that Apple would be running on risc chips, then Unix, then x86, then... Or Amazon becoming the leading internet infrastructure provider. Or MS dumping their browser for Chrome, or ten other very surprising things they’ve done lately. Don’t underestimate what new leadership who have no nostalgia towards Windows, but want to save money to pay themselves bonuses might do.
- orodley 7y agoThe fact that surprising things have happened in the past isn't evidence for a particular surprising thing happening in the future.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoWho’s looking for evidence? It’s a call to open your mind.
- NikkiA 7y ago> No one would have guessed a few years back that Apple would be running on risc chips Just how far back are you talking? Because around 1988 most people were suspecting that apple would migrate to the 88000 at some point in the near future. And by the time it was obvious to apple users and (3rd party) developers that the 88000 was going nowhere fast, AIM had happened.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoWhen I started out in the 90s there were cisc wintel PCs, cisc macs, and risc/unix workstations like Sun. The idea that Apple would be selling a risc/unix workstation would been laughed at. And of course that didn't last long, they blew everyones minds again by switching to Intel a few years later.
- walrus01 7y agoI don't think anyone cares anymore - microsoft's future revenue is subscription based/monthly recurring services like office365, azure VMs, etc. Whether people access those from a desktop, laptop or android, ios device running windows 10 or a linux kernel or ios kernel or macos is moot.
- woliveirajr 7y agoOnce upon a time I would run windows over a Linux served VM. It was fast, stable and happy, not having to deal with that much hardware.
- robmiller 7y agoWindows Is an Emulator ...doesn't quite have the same ring.
- anticensor 7y agoEmulator Not Inside Windows
- jjdredd 7y agoI mean it's all ring0
- andrewstuart 7y agoYou've misunderstood what this is. It is a full kernel for the Linux subsystem, which provides the ability to run Linux code in Windows. As I understand it, the existing solution maps Linux kernel calls to the Windows kernel. I can imagine it would be much easier to just provide a true Linux kernel rather than try to support a brittle mapping layer. They are not putting in a Linux kernel for Windows. Huge difference.
- monochromatic 7y ago>endgame He’s not saying it’s happening right now.
- davidkuhta 7y agoIt could be in one of the other 14,000,604 outcomes.
- stevehiehn 7y agoI have a decent understanding of what this is. I don't think WSL was added because they thought it would be cool to have two OS's. The bigger picture is every day windows becomes less relevant. Microsoft is now a powerful cloud company. I'm not sure even they even care about windows clients beyond legacy contracts. I think before thier users have no choice but to leave they want to say hey look, you are already using Linux, no need to go anywhere.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoWSL came originally from their plan to make Android apps trivially portable to Windows Phone.
- toflon 7y agoWorth noting that Project Astoria was shelved before release, and WSL came out after Windows Phones final release. So technically WSL was not intended to be used for porting android apps. But they did use Project Astoria as at starting ground to create WSL.
- codedokode 7y agoI think they only want to be able to run Node, Python or Docker on Windows natively so that developers don't have motivation to switch to Linux.
- tracker1 7y agoNode and Python already run on windows natively... Docker for Windows is, meh, but it works. Still switching from a hackintosh at home to Linux... wish I could switch at work.
- fetbaffe 7y agoWhy? With the NT now you can run Windows binaries AND Linux binaries. With the Linux kernel you can only run Linux binaries (no WINE does not count). How is that an improvement?
- __HYde 7y agoNT can not run Linux binaries. That is why Microsoft are now shipping a full Linux kernel for WSL 2. WSL 1 translated Linux syscalls to NT in the same way that WINE does in the reverse.
- fetbaffe 7y agoLinux kernel runs on a VM above the NT kernel. Edit: NT kernel & hypervisor.
- irth 7y agoTo be honest, WSL translated Linux syscall to NT the same way that it translates Win32 calls to NT. NT has its own API and has a thing called "personalities" which they used to implement both OS/2 and Win32 binaries support, and recently Linux. So where WINE is an additional layer on top of Linux syscalls, WSL1 is on the same "level" as Win32.
- tracker1 7y agoWINE is to Linux as WSL is to Windows... they're the same thing. In any case, the WSL experience on windows is still pretty sub-par. Until you can at least support the functionality offered by PodMan directly, including SystemD etc, it's not there yet. Even then, it's been kind of nasty to work with in general the handful of times I've tried. Currently using Docker for Windows, and the msys bash that comes with Git, which though annoying for some things is still better experience wise than WSL is. Next desktop (Zen 2) will be on Linux.
- fetbaffe 7y agoWSL1 yes, but not WSL2, this is the what this article is about. Constantly people are bringing up that MS should switch to the Linux kernel. It makes zero sense. You lose the ABI to run all the old Windows binaries out there when you can keep that AND run Linux binaries. Also people seem to forget that the NT kernel runs on multiple platforms, on my XBox One with x86-64 CPU I can run old XBox 360 RISC CPU games. Windows 10 can run x86 binaries on ARM CPU:s. How is switching to a Linux kernel ever going to help with that? Consequence of that argument is that Microsoft needs to support TWO flavors of Windows, one with the NT kernel & one with the Linux kernel. On top of that you get all the editions as a multiplier.
- mmcnl 7y agoI would be very interested in a Linux distro by Microsoft. Could be very compelling.