6 ms·

I'm just waiting for Microsoft to invert WSL into LSW. Specifically, I hope they release their own branded Linux distro, built on Ubuntu/Debian, with an option

I'm just waiting for Microsoft to invert WSL into LSW. Specifically, I hope they release their own branded Linux distro, built on Ubuntu/Debian, with an optional KVM-hosted NT kernel for Windows syscall support. Maybe call it Windows NC (for Next Century). I'll probably leave MacOS behind at that point on my work machine, especially if they create a display-PS compositing window manager that's anywhere as good as MacOS's.

danappelxx 6y ago
Embrace, extend...
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Someone else did it first, https://www.android.com/ https://www.android.com/ https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
- vms20591 6y ago
  Extinguish!
  - vms20591 6y ago
    Downvote all you can fanboys! this is just another disposable account, with no real value to me :D I'd say it again and again, every single Evil corp like Microsoft practices "Embrace, Extend & Extinguish".
- Iolaum 6y ago
  For all the hate it gets, the GPL protects from exactly that. Microsoft would need to publish all changes in the copyleft components of the shipped OS.
  - hawski 6y ago
    Most of the components would be outside of kernel, so it would not be GPL.
    - thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
      The majority of Linux distributions including Debian and Ubuntu have a GNU userland which is GPL licensed. The notable exceptions are Android and some distributions and toolkits that target embedded systems such as OpenWRT Linux without GNU is very far from a desktop Linux distribution experience that most users would recognize.
      - Someone 6y ago
        I don’t think counting distributions is the best metric. The majority of hamburger makers are individuals barbecuing at home, but McDonald’s dwarfs them. Counting users, I guess Android has over 50% of them. Counting installations (probably one of the fairer methods), I still would think Android has over 50% of Linux installations. Google gives me numbers in the million for the number of Google and Amazon servers, not always for recent years, but I guess they won’t have a hundred million servers combined. (And of course, there’s the philosophical discussion whether Android is a Linux distribution, or something that uses a Linux)
        mcpherrinm 6y ago
        There's also tons of embedded Linux devices, from your TV, your car, your fridge, home networking equipment... I don't know if theres enough of them to outweigh the massive number of phones in the world, but I think it's enough that Android wouldn't cross 50%, at least in north america.
  - da_chicken 6y ago
    Only if they distribute it to third parties. If they make it cloud-only and sell access to it but not installs for it, they're fine.
  - diffeomorphism 6y ago
    Which is why you add non-copyleft components and make them not really optional. Like for instance their directX-based graphics and cuda support. Sure, the "core" stuff is protected and you could do without the optional things for now. But how about when for example your favorite machine learning software says "we support linux, but cuda is only supported under WSL", similarly for graphics, rendering etc. .
    - mrighele 6y ago
      Sounds a lot what Google is doing with Android (open source) and Play Services (not). They made on purpose harder and harder the use the former without the latter.
- takeda 6y ago
  That's what WSL is though. LSW is unlikely.
- kristiandupont 6y ago
  What do you mean with this? GP is saying they wish for something that, as far as we know, MS isn't even considering.
fractal618 6y ago
More likely it would be built on Clear Linux
- tim-- 6y ago
  Didn't they help Attachmate buy Novell (SUSE)? Microsoft had a lot of support for SUSE-specific products around that time, like SLES Support in System Center (https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15895.manage-suse-linux-with-system-center-configuration-manager-2012-sp1.aspx https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/...)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
me551ah 6y ago
I wonder what it is that you can't do with WSL for which you need LSW?
- da_chicken 6y ago
  Presumably, work with the object paradigm instead of the character stream paradigm. That's the lure of PowerShell.
  - enedil 6y ago
    You can use PowerShell on Linux, what's the problem?
tim-- 6y ago
They (Microsoft) already have a Linux distribution. Azure Cloud Switch[0]. It does remind me of the old Microsoft Linux joke (http://www.mslinux.org/ http://www.mslinux.org/) of the early 2000's, which has aged more poorly then a younger me would have thought. [0] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/microsoft-showcases-the-azure-cloud-switch-acs/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/microsoft-showcases-t...
- app4soft 6y ago
  > It does remind me of the old Microsoft Linux joke (http://www.mslinux.org/ http://www.mslinux.org/) of the early 2000's, which has aged more poorly then a younger me would have thought. "I don't remember agreeing to that." -- Janet Reno
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    http://geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/ http://geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/ (I found this immensely amusing 20 years ago, and mirrored/restored this a decade ago, finding images from multiple wayback snapshots... ) http://l8r.net/geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/ http://l8r.net/geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/
- svntid 6y ago
  lmao MS Linux to have Start Button Microsoft is working hard to incorporate the well known "Start" button from the Windows Platform into X Windows' Gnome interface. "We just can't figure out how the hell to get that darn foot out of there! The damn thing is like stuck." The team will have this feature ready by product launch.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Two actually, Azure Sphere also runs a customized version of Linux.
- isignal 6y ago
  That looks like an OS for switches for the SDN world, not a regular Linux distro?
da_chicken 6y ago
Microsoft still only has a few primary applications: SQL Server (already converted) MS Office suite (including Project and Visio) and Sharepoint Exchange (for Outlook's best features) ActiveDirectory (scalable auth + DNS + client management is still hard to beat, but MDMs are catching up) Beyond that, all they really have is an open source platform (.Net), and a few open source projects (VS Code, PowerShell), and Visual Studio. Oh, and GitHub, I suppose. Microsoft will not release their version of Linux for sale. They're going to try to make it a high-availability Azure-only service. They're still chasing Apple's and Google's services-only architecture and Amazon's cloud-dominance strategy. Windows will become their legacy server and user client product.
perakojotgenije 6y ago
That's called linux with windows in virtualbox :-)
- the8472 6y ago
  Virtualbox doesn't have looking glass.
pjmlp 6y ago
Actually Microsoft had one of the best UNIXes for PC, Xenix, they sold it to SCO, when they thought it wasn't really much going to happen with it. Had it not been for FOSS UNIX clones, they were probably right.
- robaato 6y ago
  Worked at Logica in the '80s when they had were engaged by Microsoft to port Xenix to other platforms. So played with it a little at the time.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    For me it was my introduction to UNIX, the teacher would take a PC tower with Xenix into the room, each student group would prepare their UNIX exercises in MS-DOS as good as we could, and then we had a time slot to make them work on the tower.
xvilka 6y ago
You can always use free and open-source ReactOS [1] inside the QubesOS [2] Linux as a virtual domain [3][4]. [1] https://www.reactos.org https://www.reactos.org [2] https://www.qubes-os.org https://www.qubes-os.org [3] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2809 https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2809 [4] https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16480 https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16480
sandworm101 6y ago
>> their own branded Linux distro As a multi-decade linux user, the thought of a Microsoft distro still makes my stomach churn. The grand-daddy of software copyright enforcement branding the paragon of f/oss... it is just wrong. But I bet it wouldn't last. MS's institutional inertia would soon see the thing fork away from linux, becoming something else. Something like android. Something more horrible.
Ciantic 6y ago
I've been hoping for Microsoft branded Linux distro too. I just don't like Windows anymore. So much of the modern development tools are Linux only, and depends on shell scripts. Running the WSL is not ideal either, even though it helps a lot. Only thing keeping me from switching directly to Linux is the bad memories with the various Linux Desktops I tried in the early 2000s. Clipboard didn't work, font smoothing was very inconsistent, the fight with the (GPU especially) drivers, simple windowing animations was jerky, browser was always slower (e.g. scrolling on web sites, and videos).
- ahofmann 6y ago
  You complain about problems you experienced 20 years ago. Maybe you should try again in 2020?
- coreblocks 6y ago
  Still the same problems after 20 years tbh...
  - franga2000 6y ago
    All of those, except font smoothing and clipboard issues, I've recently only experienced under Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Intel's i915 and AMD's amdgpu drivers seem to work without issues. Font smoothing is occasionally inconsistent between modern and ancient apps, but the same happens on Win. As for the clipboard, I've only seen clipboard issues on my ancient Arch install, which I'm surprised even boots up at this point.
l0b0 6y ago
First we'd need a FOSS window/desktop manager replicating the Windows experience. It would gobble down the market share of existing FOSS WMs/DMs in an instant. Basically any decent Windows experience — 2000, XP, 7 or 10 — would be far ahead of the current big players for the 99% use case. For example, it's 2020 and I could list at least half a dozen graphics glitches I've had on Ubuntu 20.04 so far. On recent Windows installations, no graphics glitches I can think of, certainly none that persisted. Second, MS would need to port some sort of compatibility layer, which would probably be 10000 person-years to achieve anything like the backward compatibility they currently support. Third … well, that would be it. The vast majority of non-techies would be ecstatic to find they can upgrade for free for ever, their software would just keep running, and hardware would work basically from day one (because the companies developing cutting edge hardware Windows would pivot their driver development) until the end of time (because FOSS drivers, while slower to appear for most hardware, are supported essentially forever).
- nickjj 6y ago
  > it's 2020 and I could list at least half a dozen graphics glitches I've had on Ubuntu 20.04 so far It depends on what desktop environment / window manager you use. I don't notice too many weird issues when I run i3 and bsp on my Linux laptop. I think the nice thing about a tiled window manager is if you go down this route, you often hand select a bunch of small components that do 1 thing very well. Even going as far as evaluating and picking a specific compositor (or maybe not even using one at all). You are right tho about Windows. Its UI is very stable and buttery smooth for actions like moving and resizing windows. It has a level of polish that out of the box DEs on Linux usually don't have.
- raghava 6y ago
  Maybe they'll "borrow ideas" or "get inspired" by things like LinuxFx etc. https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxfxdevil/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxfxdevil/ https://b00merang.weebly.com/windows-10.html https://b00merang.weebly.com/windows-10.html Leveraging the FOSS work and cutting down on maintenance costs, and focus that only for LSW, to guarantee the functioning of that abstraction layer, and leave the harder parts (hardware support, security etc) onto public to pick up - at the cost of a few coupons, t-shirts, coffee-mugs etc thrown at them via "hackathons". (And even perpetuate the "passion for software" hence "public github contributions". May be give a slightly higher tier github subscription for free, they've bought that org anyway. And people are anyway suckers for Internet points)
cjohansson 6y ago
Ubuntu is better in almost every way than Windows and macOS, in my opinion. Windows is slow, buggy, require constant updates that often include regression-bugs
krisgenre 6y ago
Who knows they might even acquire Canonical.

danappelxx 6y ago

Embrace, extend...

pjmlp 6y ago
Someone else did it first, https://www.android.com/ https://www.android.com/ https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
vms20591 6y ago
Extinguish!
- vms20591 6y ago
  Downvote all you can fanboys! this is just another disposable account, with no real value to me :D I'd say it again and again, every single Evil corp like Microsoft practices "Embrace, Extend & Extinguish".
Iolaum 6y ago
For all the hate it gets, the GPL protects from exactly that. Microsoft would need to publish all changes in the copyleft components of the shipped OS.
- hawski 6y ago
  Most of the components would be outside of kernel, so it would not be GPL.
  - thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
    The majority of Linux distributions including Debian and Ubuntu have a GNU userland which is GPL licensed. The notable exceptions are Android and some distributions and toolkits that target embedded systems such as OpenWRT Linux without GNU is very far from a desktop Linux distribution experience that most users would recognize.
    - Someone 6y ago
      I don’t think counting distributions is the best metric. The majority of hamburger makers are individuals barbecuing at home, but McDonald’s dwarfs them. Counting users, I guess Android has over 50% of them. Counting installations (probably one of the fairer methods), I still would think Android has over 50% of Linux installations. Google gives me numbers in the million for the number of Google and Amazon servers, not always for recent years, but I guess they won’t have a hundred million servers combined. (And of course, there’s the philosophical discussion whether Android is a Linux distribution, or something that uses a Linux)
      - mcpherrinm 6y ago
        There's also tons of embedded Linux devices, from your TV, your car, your fridge, home networking equipment... I don't know if theres enough of them to outweigh the massive number of phones in the world, but I think it's enough that Android wouldn't cross 50%, at least in north america.
- da_chicken 6y ago
  Only if they distribute it to third parties. If they make it cloud-only and sell access to it but not installs for it, they're fine.
- diffeomorphism 6y ago
  Which is why you add non-copyleft components and make them not really optional. Like for instance their directX-based graphics and cuda support. Sure, the "core" stuff is protected and you could do without the optional things for now. But how about when for example your favorite machine learning software says "we support linux, but cuda is only supported under WSL", similarly for graphics, rendering etc. .
  - mrighele 6y ago
    Sounds a lot what Google is doing with Android (open source) and Play Services (not). They made on purpose harder and harder the use the former without the latter.
takeda 6y ago
That's what WSL is though. LSW is unlikely.
kristiandupont 6y ago
What do you mean with this? GP is saying they wish for something that, as far as we know, MS isn't even considering.

fractal618 6y ago

More likely it would be built on Clear Linux

tim-- 6y ago
Didn't they help Attachmate buy Novell (SUSE)? Microsoft had a lot of support for SUSE-specific products around that time, like SLES Support in System Center (https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15895.manage-suse-linux-with-system-center-configuration-manager-2012-sp1.aspx https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/...)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

me551ah 6y ago

I wonder what it is that you can't do with WSL for which you need LSW?

da_chicken 6y ago
Presumably, work with the object paradigm instead of the character stream paradigm. That's the lure of PowerShell.
- enedil 6y ago
  You can use PowerShell on Linux, what's the problem?

tim-- 6y ago

They (Microsoft) already have a Linux distribution. Azure Cloud Switch[0]. It does remind me of the old Microsoft Linux joke (http://www.mslinux.org/ http://www.mslinux.org/) of the early 2000's, which has aged more poorly then a younger me would have thought. [0] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/microsoft-showcases-the-azure-cloud-switch-acs/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/microsoft-showcases-t...

app4soft 6y ago
> It does remind me of the old Microsoft Linux joke (http://www.mslinux.org/ http://www.mslinux.org/) of the early 2000's, which has aged more poorly then a younger me would have thought. "I don't remember agreeing to that." -- Janet Reno
- bbarnett 6y ago
  http://geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/ http://geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/ (I found this immensely amusing 20 years ago, and mirrored/restored this a decade ago, finding images from multiple wayback snapshots... ) http://l8r.net/geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/ http://l8r.net/geraldholmes.freeyellow.com/
svntid 6y ago
lmao MS Linux to have Start Button Microsoft is working hard to incorporate the well known "Start" button from the Windows Platform into X Windows' Gnome interface. "We just can't figure out how the hell to get that darn foot out of there! The damn thing is like stuck." The team will have this feature ready by product launch.
pjmlp 6y ago
Two actually, Azure Sphere also runs a customized version of Linux.
isignal 6y ago
That looks like an OS for switches for the SDN world, not a regular Linux distro?

da_chicken 6y ago

Microsoft still only has a few primary applications: SQL Server (already converted) MS Office suite (including Project and Visio) and Sharepoint Exchange (for Outlook's best features) ActiveDirectory (scalable auth + DNS + client management is still hard to beat, but MDMs are catching up) Beyond that, all they really have is an open source platform (.Net), and a few open source projects (VS Code, PowerShell), and Visual Studio. Oh, and GitHub, I suppose. Microsoft will not release their version of Linux for sale. They're going to try to make it a high-availability Azure-only service. They're still chasing Apple's and Google's services-only architecture and Amazon's cloud-dominance strategy. Windows will become their legacy server and user client product.

perakojotgenije 6y ago

That's called linux with windows in virtualbox :-)

the8472 6y ago
Virtualbox doesn't have looking glass.

pjmlp 6y ago

Actually Microsoft had one of the best UNIXes for PC, Xenix, they sold it to SCO, when they thought it wasn't really much going to happen with it. Had it not been for FOSS UNIX clones, they were probably right.

robaato 6y ago
Worked at Logica in the '80s when they had were engaged by Microsoft to port Xenix to other platforms. So played with it a little at the time.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  For me it was my introduction to UNIX, the teacher would take a PC tower with Xenix into the room, each student group would prepare their UNIX exercises in MS-DOS as good as we could, and then we had a time slot to make them work on the tower.

xvilka 6y ago

You can always use free and open-source ReactOS [1] inside the QubesOS [2] Linux as a virtual domain [3][4]. [1] https://www.reactos.org https://www.reactos.org [2] https://www.qubes-os.org https://www.qubes-os.org [3] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2809 https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2809 [4] https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16480 https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16480

sandworm101 6y ago

>> their own branded Linux distro As a multi-decade linux user, the thought of a Microsoft distro still makes my stomach churn. The grand-daddy of software copyright enforcement branding the paragon of f/oss... it is just wrong. But I bet it wouldn't last. MS's institutional inertia would soon see the thing fork away from linux, becoming something else. Something like android. Something more horrible.

Ciantic 6y ago

I've been hoping for Microsoft branded Linux distro too. I just don't like Windows anymore. So much of the modern development tools are Linux only, and depends on shell scripts. Running the WSL is not ideal either, even though it helps a lot. Only thing keeping me from switching directly to Linux is the bad memories with the various Linux Desktops I tried in the early 2000s. Clipboard didn't work, font smoothing was very inconsistent, the fight with the (GPU especially) drivers, simple windowing animations was jerky, browser was always slower (e.g. scrolling on web sites, and videos).

ahofmann 6y ago
You complain about problems you experienced 20 years ago. Maybe you should try again in 2020?
coreblocks 6y ago
Still the same problems after 20 years tbh...
- franga2000 6y ago
  All of those, except font smoothing and clipboard issues, I've recently only experienced under Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Intel's i915 and AMD's amdgpu drivers seem to work without issues. Font smoothing is occasionally inconsistent between modern and ancient apps, but the same happens on Win. As for the clipboard, I've only seen clipboard issues on my ancient Arch install, which I'm surprised even boots up at this point.

l0b0 6y ago

First we'd need a FOSS window/desktop manager replicating the Windows experience. It would gobble down the market share of existing FOSS WMs/DMs in an instant. Basically any decent Windows experience — 2000, XP, 7 or 10 — would be far ahead of the current big players for the 99% use case. For example, it's 2020 and I could list at least half a dozen graphics glitches I've had on Ubuntu 20.04 so far. On recent Windows installations, no graphics glitches I can think of, certainly none that persisted. Second, MS would need to port some sort of compatibility layer, which would probably be 10000 person-years to achieve anything like the backward compatibility they currently support. Third … well, that would be it. The vast majority of non-techies would be ecstatic to find they can upgrade for free for ever, their software would just keep running, and hardware would work basically from day one (because the companies developing cutting edge hardware Windows would pivot their driver development) until the end of time (because FOSS drivers, while slower to appear for most hardware, are supported essentially forever).

nickjj 6y ago
> it's 2020 and I could list at least half a dozen graphics glitches I've had on Ubuntu 20.04 so far It depends on what desktop environment / window manager you use. I don't notice too many weird issues when I run i3 and bsp on my Linux laptop. I think the nice thing about a tiled window manager is if you go down this route, you often hand select a bunch of small components that do 1 thing very well. Even going as far as evaluating and picking a specific compositor (or maybe not even using one at all). You are right tho about Windows. Its UI is very stable and buttery smooth for actions like moving and resizing windows. It has a level of polish that out of the box DEs on Linux usually don't have.
raghava 6y ago
Maybe they'll "borrow ideas" or "get inspired" by things like LinuxFx etc. https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxfxdevil/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxfxdevil/ https://b00merang.weebly.com/windows-10.html https://b00merang.weebly.com/windows-10.html Leveraging the FOSS work and cutting down on maintenance costs, and focus that only for LSW, to guarantee the functioning of that abstraction layer, and leave the harder parts (hardware support, security etc) onto public to pick up - at the cost of a few coupons, t-shirts, coffee-mugs etc thrown at them via "hackathons". (And even perpetuate the "passion for software" hence "public github contributions". May be give a slightly higher tier github subscription for free, they've bought that org anyway. And people are anyway suckers for Internet points)

cjohansson 6y ago

Ubuntu is better in almost every way than Windows and macOS, in my opinion. Windows is slow, buggy, require constant updates that often include regression-bugs

krisgenre 6y ago

Who knows they might even acquire Canonical.