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It seems like they're doing all they can to get developers on their platform. Not to establish Windows developers like they have in the past, but to have others
by pathartl 6y ago
It seems like they're doing all they can to get developers on their platform. Not to establish Windows developers like they have in the past, but to have others see Windows as just another platform.
We're reaching a revolution from moving from x86 to ARM and I think the more Microsoft positions themselves like this, the less likely they are to be left in some weird compatibility limbo.
As weird as this sounds, I feel more confident with Microsoft being able to do a successful transition to ARM than Apple at this point.
- pianoben 6y agoIn fact, the _have_ transitioned to ARM, way back around the time of the first Surface tablet. Windows and Office have been running on ARM since at least, what, 2012?
- loeg 6y agoWindows NT in 2000? I guess ARM was not a going concern at the time, but Windows was remarkably portable in 2000 before the dark decade of more or less exclusively Wintel.
- zrm 6y agohttps://archive.org/details/Microsoft_Windows_NT_Server_Version_4.0_94373_Microsoft_1996 https://archive.org/details/Microsoft_Windows_NT_Server_Vers... "Disc contains code to run on Windows NT-compatible x86, Pentium, MIPS, R4x00, Alpha, PowerPC and Pentium Pro systems"
- pnako 6y agoWay before that they had ARM-based Pocket PCs running Windows CE (or Windows Mobile).
- jupp0r 6y agoWindows itself has never been the problem, but the Software that’s running on it.
- VWWHFSfQ 6y agoIt will be very difficult until Windows is POSIX-compatible. Whatever that means, I don't know. But it can't just be the Windows Subsystem for Linux. The whole OS needs to have POSIX compatibilities.
- wongarsu 6y agoWindows NT used to have a POSIX subsystem [1] that applications could use instead of the Win32 subsystem. So the Windows NT kernel is designed with the option of POSIX compatibility. Arguably the Subsystem for Linux is the current successor of the POSIX subsystem, providing POSIX compatible access to the kernel along with a POSIX compatible shell and UNIX commands. Obviously the Win32 subsystem isn't POSIX compatible, but I'm not sure why we would want that. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
- jacobush 6y agoThat subsystem was just so they could tick off the “POSIX” box for Department of Defence.
- pjmlp 6y agoThat was one of many, then came SFU, followed by SUA. GNU/Linux users should be happy that old Microsoft didn't bother to do that much with POSIX subsystem. Had they actually invested into keeping it up to date, and many of us on PC land would never bothered with FOSS UNIX clones.
- jacobush 6y agoYeah, that may be true, but on the other hand, had they made it useable, portabilith with other Unix would have been a simpler option. Simpler than Win32 + Unix portability in any case. Or in some cases, software would have been ported to Win32 at all.
- 6y ago
- GordonS 6y agoWindows is my daily driver, and I spend most of my time at work these days building dotnet core applications for Linux on both x64 and ARM. It's a great dev experience Seeing what was coming with cloud and making .NET cross-platform was very well timed.
- DeathArrow 6y agoMicrosoft tried countless times to move to Arm. The most recent efforts are with their Surface Pro X, their SQ1 CPU and pushing Qualcomm to release Snapdragon 8cx CPU for ARM laptops. But most software development companies didn't care enough to recompile their software for Arm and running X86 software in emulation is not exactly a good experience.