42 ms·

Microsoft is not rebasing Windows to Linux

251 points by sunbum 6y ago

pknopf 6y ago
It almost is, but not exactly a rebase. They are bringing in official SCP/SSH support, proper terminals with unix shells. X11 gui support (with WSL). I feel like Microsoft has read the writing on the wall. Developers love nix-based systems (Mac, Linux). They are trying their best to catch developers at the door with a "but wait! there's more!"
- pjmlp 6y ago
  If NT 3.51 had the necessary POSIX support for me to do my DG/UX homework, I would most likely never bothered with that Linux Unleashed book offering Slackware 2.0.
- fifticon 6y ago
  I believe it is a variation of their embrace-extend strategy. If you can tempt linux applications into cross-calling services on a present window side, suddenly you have a justification to keep a windows license running where a linux license would have sufficed. And so, another windows instance got an excuse to be kept running/installed.
  - spapas82 6y ago
    The next step after embrace and extend is extinguish. This is why I am always careful when Microsoft seems to suddenly love something...
  - m12k 6y ago
    If Linux is running in Azure, Microsoft still gets paid. They don't need to sell Windows licenses, they need to start getting a piece of the pie when web developers deploy to Linux servers. Getting Windows to be an attractive development platform for someone targeting Linux servers is an essential part of that.
- JosephRedfern 6y ago
  This may just be semantics, but is any of that stuff (SCP/SSH, terminals, shells, X11) actually Linux, as in, the Linux kernel? Aren't these are all "just" utilities?
  - pknopf 6y ago
    It's a mix. SCP/SSH is official Windows builds. The shells/tools are Linux kernel with some hypervisor magic (WSL). I'm sure there are other things I'm missing in this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
pjmlp 6y ago
Quite right, Microsoft just realised that they should have cared more about POSIX NT subsystem, and since 20 years later Linux ABI compatibility is more relevant than POSIX, they just got into it, following the BSDs, Solaris, AIX, IBM i, z/OS, ClearPath and a couple of other platforms that also offer support for virtualized Linux kernels.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Windows had POSIX because a number of government contracts mandated POSIX compatibility. As soon as that was dropped, so was POSIX support. I was always a half-hearted thing designed to prevent any dependency on POSIX from Windows apps, which was seen as a threat. Now the reverse is seen as advantageous: any app that moves from Linux to Windows is good for them, so things like WSL encourage that.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Sure, the point being that if they hadn't gotten rid of it, that is what most people would be using, just like the folks that buy Apple BSD UNIX based laptops to develop for GNU/Linux. This is the crowd that Microsoft is after, devs that don't care about Linux ideals, just a POSIX like stack.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      The POSIX subsystem was barely usable, much more something to check a box in a government form and prevent Windows from being disqualified than anything actually useful. I kind of disagree with the Windows/WSL and Mac being targeted at the same crowd. I have the feeling gaming has a higher priority with the Windows/WSL users and what would drive someone who'd otherwise get a Mac to get a Windows box. WSL seems to be geared at preventing a Windows user from switching over to either Mac or Linux for the superior Unix experience.
      - JdeBP 6y ago
        The first POSIX subsystem.
giancarlostoro 6y ago
What I am really waiting on is a Microsoft buys out Canonical headline cause it seems plausible. It would definitely give them an interesting edge as the primary maintainer of Ubuntu in Azure so there is definitely incentive for it. What I would love to see is Microsoft create something Wine like and charge about as much as a basic Windows license for it.
- tester34 6y ago
  >What I would love to see is Microsoft create something Wine Isn't Wine more like a hack? Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? isn't it doing to solve problems that Wine tries to challenge once it supports crossplatform GUI? (so basically once MAUI is released) * I'm not talking about Avalonia GUI framework which already exists and is crossplatform.
  - cheph 6y ago
    > Isn't Wine more like a hack? Not more so than Windows. > Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? isn't it doing to solve problems that Wine tries to challenge once it supports crossplatform GUI? No. .NET Core and Wine does not solve the same problem.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? .NET Core only allows you to run applications written for .NET, which isn't most applications.
    - cheph 6y ago
      And in comparison, Wine does not try to be a .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR).
  - hprotagonist 6y ago
    dotnet core does not now and probably will never support WinForms or WPF (edit: in a cross platform way that tools like WINE can offer) It’s a very nice tool, but the two dominant and old GUI frameworks for windows require win32 api for a bunch of stuff the last time i looked and there’s no getting away from it.
louwrentius 6y ago
I wonder if it’s the other way around. With WSL2 you can give Microsoft credit for actually getting Linux on the Desktop. Probably not what most expect from Linux on the Desktop. But hey, if you still can’t properly support 4K scaling in 2020, it’s never going to happen. It will probably always be a fringe group. Unless something really changes within the mentality of the open-source / Linux community.
- vetinari 6y ago
  And here I'm, running 4K linux desktop for years already. But hey, for some people linux will never do anything right.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    90% of Linux Desktops could experience a problem and as soon as someone reports it another guy would come out of the woodwork and shout that it works for him.
    - tolien 6y ago
      I mean, there's a whole lot of people in this thread saying that Windows scaling works perfectly for them when it definitely doesn't for me (use Windows-arrow to move browser window from a 4k to a 2k monitor and back again a few times, it'll eventually change shape and size). Just like reporting Ubuntu bugs feels like shouting into the void, what are your chances as an end user of MS quickly fixing a bug you find?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        The experience of finding solutions to Windows problems, which is in fact a significant portion of my day job, is vastly superior regardless of the fact that opening issues with Microsoft support is useless. For one, things generally aren't radically overhauled ever 2 years making all previous documentation on a subject obsolete. For two, when you talk with other Windows admins about a problem you're having, you don't get "well it works for me" presented as though it is somehow helpful.
pjc50 6y ago
The two canaries to watch for are a systematic switch in the default line ending character from CRLF to LF, which will be driven by Microsoft developers fed up of git hassles, and a switch in the default path character from "\" to "/". In most places those are already supported, but not default.
- timvisee 6y ago
  I don't think they'll ever become the default, because of 'compatability' reasons.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    I could perhaps see them becoming configurable. I can't at all see why either of those would indicate that Microsoft is gearing up to rebase Windows.
- m463 6y ago
  SWITCHAR='-'
- CJefferson 6y ago
  Those are two of the smallest parts -- there is the entire Windows API, and kernel API. The line ending character used by notepad isn't what would stop a total re-write of Word. Tens of thousands of methods which power the majority of paid-for software. Microsoft has spent decades, and huge amount of man-power keeping all that software working, why would they flush all that away?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    The API is quite shim-able; WINE has done that in the reverse direction, and there is (or was) the "POSIX subsystem" and cygwin. People build cross-compilable C code that works on both. It's just a bit of a hassle because the semantics are different in key places. Leaving aside things which touch the GUI (which is a lot! You need a window to receive messages to use certain APIs!), the next big differences are the process API (no fork, starting processes is a lot more time consuming) and the advanced filesystem API (completion ports). There are frankly a few pieces of the API that I would like to see go in the other direction, like WaitForMultipleObjects().
DrBazza 6y ago
I would not want Microsoft to "rebase to Linux". Why? Ideas, and innovation. If Microsoft come up with something new in operating system design, they don't have to answer to the community when adding it into the kernel. And it gives Linux something to compare against.
- cies 6y ago
  > come up with something new in operating system design Like CRLF newlines and "\" instead of "/" as path separator? Jokes aside, MS is not the place I look for "something new" in OS design.
  - DrBazza 6y ago
    Where would you look though? Who else writes operating systems? MS Research writes papers that are submitted to various journals (as does IBM, Intel, Google, all of whom have their own operating systems). An obvious example is the Midori project produced lots of novel research much of which has been used, even if the project itself was abandoned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)
  - withinboredom 6y ago
    > MS is not the place I look for "something new" in OS design. With Windows Phone, they did pioneer quite a bit. It was a phone first, and app running device second. Android and iOS feel like the phone part was a second-thought add-on in comparison. The Windows Phone did its best to make it so you could make a phone call or send a text, at the expense of email, running apps, etc. when the battery was low which took Android and iOS many years to implement. There were probably some other interesting things, but I don't remember them any more.
    - mlvljr 6y ago
      Upvoting from my Nokia Lumia
  - thunderbong 6y ago
rPlayer6554 6y ago
Im not sure how many people thought this would _acctually_ happen. This is one of these things that seems cool from an Linux lover's point of view (because it somehow proves them right that Linux is the absolute best) but makes absolutely no practical or business sense. Two major groups buying windows are business clients (who would rather you not change things so that their 20 year old custom software still runs in Internet Explorer) and the average user (who couldn't care if the Kernel was NT, Linux, or a literal peice of Corn as long as things work). Everyone who thinks that using the Linux Kernel is better than NT is already using Linux. Everyone who needs some sort of intermediary support uses Dualboot/WSL/etc. Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. This is the company that won't change the bug that makes excel think 1900 is a leap year so that it doesn't break people's spreadsheets. [0] Not to mention porting windows would take a LOT of work. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/wrongly-assumes-1900-is-leap-year https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/w...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. I wish I could believe this, but the way Windows has been trending since 10 leaves me skeptical that the old Windows philosophies of catering to the user, keeping things consistent, and being backwards compatible are being smothered by whoever the fuck is working on it today.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    Windows has always been two creatures that behave in very different ways. The server line is where you see stability and compatibility reign supreme. On the desktop/workstation line though, let's take a trip down memory lane and remember all these upgrades together: Windows 3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> Me -> XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 -> 10. I am having a really hard time seeing how one can infer from that timeline that Microsoft's desktop OS line follows a philosophy of "catering to the user, keeping things consistent, and being backwards compatible." Windows 98 didn't cause much hassle, but, at least from my experience, that was really it. Windows 7 had its share of hassles, too. Particularly, as I recall, in the backwards compatibility department. We just remember it fondly because it was sandwiched in between Windows Vista and Windows 8.
simonh 6y ago
Microsoft already gave up on re-implementing Linux on windows, and went with running a genuine Linux kernel in WSL2. The only way to guarantee a fully backwards compatible Windows layer on Linux would be to run it on top of a genuine Windows kernel, at which point what are you actually gaining? Even if they did do it, I don't see how it would meaningfully change anything, or what advantages it might offer them. WSL is simply about better supporting Azure developers and customers. That's all there is to it.
- contextfree 6y ago
  Microsoft actually already ships a Windows layer on Linux, as part of SQL Server for Linux. The approach is somewhat similar to WSL1's: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2016/12/16/sql-server-on-linux-how-introduction/ https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2016/12/16/sql-se...
  - simonh 6y ago
    Oh sure, I'm aware of it but that's been around for decades. It's similar to the way Apple has a very limited single purpose compatibility layer for MacOS desktop apps on Windows that they use to run iTunes (and previously quicktime). It's a tactical solution to a specific problem, not an indicator of overall strategy.
Macha 6y ago
Reading the article the first time was confusing to me, as an unqualified "Raymond" in the context of Microsoft means Raymond Chen to me, it was only when mousing over one of the links that it finally clicked that it was esr.
talkingtab 6y ago
No. Microsoft is attempting to rebase Linux on to Windows. And if you are aware of Microsoft's purchase of GitHub, Microsoft's purchase of NPM and the MS efforts to provide a "free" compelling tool with VsCode, then you may have a reason to ask whether this pattern of activity suggests that Microsoft is attempting to rebase Open Source onto Microsoft Source or simply to monetize open source. I know many people who are unfamiliar with Microsoft's long history of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish will be appalled at this suggestion, but if you are looking at canaries or concerns there it is. EEE is the MS DNA. Don't say you weren't told.
- joana035 6y ago
  > No. Microsoft is attempting to rebase Linux on to Windows. Exactly https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/09/15/microsoft_submits_linux_kernel_patches/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/09/15/microsoft_submits... It is not the first time it happens and people keep buying into it. But hey we have calculator source code, Microsoft loves open source, right? Right?
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  I don't think I follow your logic. Open source software has a long history of being monetized via support. Many popular open source projects have a major financial backer responsible for most development. At any rate, I fail to see how MS getting open source tech working smoothly on Windows will somehow > EE is the MS DNA. I don't mean to be rude, but this comment is repeated ad nauseum here on hacker news. It's not an insightful, nuanced nor fresh take. > Don't say you weren't told. Believe me. We were told. Thousands of times. You all won't let up. Just to be clear, I am also concerned about these issues but this argument just isn't convincing. It takes an ethically misguided company strategy from decades ago and extrapolates that to some vague sense of "evil" lurking inside the company. How about some _recent_ evidence? Sources? Because as far as I can tell, MS is being _forced_ to embrace and extend Linux on their OS. They've been historically reluctant to do so until the cloud made Linux impossible to ignore. I struggle to see how they could even pull off an "extinguish". The very nature of open source makes that difficult. I guess they could buy Canonical and then just fire everyone, but the damage is still just limited to Ubuntu which would be promptly forked if needed.
trothamel 6y ago
Between Apple Silicon and Chromebooks, it's looking like ARM-based computing is becoming a thing, or at least enough of a thing that if I was Microsoft, I'd worry about how much Windows is tied to x86. And while Windows does have an ARM port, all the drivers and board support packages seem to be tied to Linux, and Linux based operating systems like ChromeOS and Android. What I suspect to see is a product that combines the Linux kernel, ELF versions of Edgium and Office, a port of the Windows shell that runs on top of this, and maybe support for running Win32 binaries in emulation, with as-it-is backwards compatibility guarantees. If something like this comes to exist, I'm guessing it will be sold as Windows A, or something other name like that. Will it be Windows? That's probably a philosophical question, more than anyththing.
- golf1052 6y ago
  >Windows does have an ARM port, all the drivers and board support packages seem to be tied to Linux Not entirely sure what you mean by this. Windows has supported ARM for a long time, Windows CE supported ARM starting in 1997 [1]. Windows Mobile which ran on ARM phones had been around since 2000. The Surface RT, based on Windows RT, was a more traditional tablet was also ARM based. Now Windows 10 on ARM has been around for about 3 years and third party manufacturers are selling ARM based Windows laptops. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact#Releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact#Relea...
fortran77 6y ago
Why would they take a beautiful, modern microkernel OS like Windows 10 and graft it on a clone of an Apollo-era monolithic-kernel OS? You’d have to be nuts to even think of that!
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Unix turned out to be more elegant and flexible in the long run than VMS despite being a few years older. OS are commodities now anyway. Cost savings equals improved profits for shareholders, which is the goal of every big company.
known 6y ago
Doesn't MS lose Azure business without Linux ?
baybal2 6y ago
> It is unclear if the Windows user space could even be rebased from NT to the Linux kernel and maintain the compatibility that Windows is known for, specifically what enterprise clients with mission-critical applications are paying to get. Given how buggy, and unreliable Windows is, wouldn't be this a straight improvement for their "mission-critical" stuff?
k__ 6y ago
Why not? It wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft ditched it's technology. (DOS - OS/2, Sliverlight - JavaScript, EdgeHTML - Blink, etc.) I'd guess that the OS market is done, they want to get rid of most of their Windows legacy stuff, and focus on making real money with the cloud.
Theodores 6y ago
Windows is a legacy operating system with an elderly demographic. They just need to keep Windows as Windows for its business and consumer customers without trying to make it something that it isn't.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
shmerl 6y ago
> Raymond is correct in one key part of his blog. I do think the era of the desktop OS wars is ending. Mhm. Let's repeat this when percentage of Windows usage will be much lower and there will be more games released for Linux on day one and MS will stop swallowing Linux friendly studios like inXile and Obsidian. Right now I don't see it being the case by far. MS is still very hostile to Linux gaming with DirectX lock-in and platform politics. The above claim just ignores reality.
- cptnapalm 6y ago
  During the initial discussion on the kernel mailing list regarding MS bringing in some DX related stuff, there was mentioned (although seemingly no one really picked up on it) an internal discussion at MicroSoft of porting DX12 to Linux with no Windows required. https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1527 https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1527
  - shmerl 6y ago
    They never said they'll open source it though. So I'd say no, thanks. I don't really trust them doing the right thing. If they wanted, they could join the Vulkan effort which is already cross platform. They never cared which clearly demonstrates where their interests lie. The proper progress is for such lock-in to be replaced with Vulkan which is by design an open and cross platform API, not to proliferate blobs on Linux.
afrcnc 6y ago
Oh look... more garbage ZDNet and TechRepublic reporting on the fate of Linux being disproven by people involved in the Linux world.
gitgud 6y ago
Well, they did a similar move with Edge! (which is now a Chromium derivative [1])... There's many business reasons against rebasing the Windows Kernel to Linux, but there's also many positives too never say never [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527550/microsoft-chromium-edge-google-history-collaboration https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527550/microsoft-chromiu...
thelazydogsback 6y ago
I don't get all the hate for win10 -- I love *nix from a the pov of a clear, orthogonal internal design (at least from 10k feet) and it doesn't make since to deploy at scale on Win (unless you really need to) -- but why would I ever want to spend time dealing with all the configuration idiosyncrasies and driver issues on a day-to-day basis, if what I'm using a OS for is to host browsers, editors, IDEs, terminal windows, etc., and productivity apps? Okay, win8 was DoA, but win10 seems pretty unoffensive FWICT. I just want to pick up my machine (and just as importantly, someone else's random machine) and have it just work as I expect.
- subsection1h 6y ago
  "Driver issues on day-to-day basis"? WTF. Maybe you need this: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Dummies-Richard-Blum/dp/1119704251 https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Dummies-Richard-Blum/dp/1119704...
  - thelazydogsback 6y ago
    Perhaps -- and if I do, I think you've just underscored my point. If someone who started programming the same decade Unix was invented doesn't want to be his own sysadmin, why would most people?
    - julianmarq 6y ago
      You're right, you don't need "linux for dummies" (don't even understand the point of linking to that), you're probably better off sticking with windows. For what it's worth, though, I haven't been "my own sysadmin" nor have I had to "spend time dealing with all the configuration idiosyncrasies and driver issues on a day-to-day basis" in linux for the past six years. In fact, I don't even install extensions anymore. My secret ain't manuals, though, it's the much simpler "only buy machines that the vendors declare as compatible with linux" or the even simpler "buy machines with linux installed already". Though I only use my computer for browsers, editors, IDEs, terminal windows, and productivity apps; and pretty much nothing else, so experience may vary of course.
  - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
super_mario 6y ago
I don't know much about the direction Windows is heading (I have not used Windows since early 2000s), but if there ever was a good time to do it, it would be now that Apple is slowly killing macOS and turning macs into giant phones. If Windows had UNIX kernel and POSIX with custom UI, it would be a viable platform to switch to.
thayne 6y ago
I love linux, but I would actually rather see MS open source the Windows kernel than replace it with the Linux kernel. I'd also love to see a "Linux Subsystem for Windows", to make it better to run windows applications on Linux. Wine sort of fills this role, but I'd really love to see a MS-backed fully compatible system. And maybe it could work similar to WSL2, where it is an actual windows kernel running inside KVM.
- t0astbread 6y ago
  Can't you already run Windows on QEMU/KVM? (Or did WSL do something special that I missed?)
  - anaganisk 6y ago
    Wsl runs on a very barebones custom linux kernel, unless flipside is also true Qemu would be loading a full blown OS. May be that's what he meant.
    - thayne 6y ago
      That's part of what I meant. But also, being able to launch a windows application from linux and have it seamlessly start, rather than having to boot up a full Windows VM and then launch the application from inside of there.
ksec 6y ago
Why would anyone want Windows to rebase to Linux? Personally I want Microsoft to open source the Window Kernel.
mtzaldo 6y ago
Did they fixed the sleeping issues with WSL2 and Docker?
pier25 6y ago
There's another angle to this. What if Microsoft created a new linux-based OS precisely to start from scratch and let go of all the Windows cruft? Windows 10 is mature enough to not need any significant work and still maintain backwards-compatibility, but maybe Microsoft is preparing the terrain with a new OS for the next 20 years. Apple is moving fast towards universal apps for mobile and desktop. Maybe Google is doing that with Fuchsia too. Microsoft failed with Windows Phone but it probably learned from its mistakes. I'd be surprised if Windows 10 + Android is their long term goal.
lordleft 6y ago
It would be an unbelievable technical headache to rebase to Linux. Think of the bugs that exist in Windows 10 now with their current testing regime.
breatheoften 6y ago
> Microsoft has plenty of paying customers to continue supporting Windows as-is, some for decades I have to respond to this thought because -- I don't think its true. Aside from government and military, which of those paying customers truly have revenue streams so guaranteed that those entities cannot be replaced or outcompeted over the course of decades by somebody approaching the problem with fresh eyes -- or even just some internal division at the same company approaching the problem with fresh eyes and building something _better_ because it was allowed to change as opposed to something very stable because it is _not_ allowed to change? For government -- do we really want/need our government throwing money away because they are more or less not allowed to development new solutions to old problems? For military -- ... yeah well ... I don't know what to think about military ... Military is not a sector that has any measurable goals aside from self-perpetuating its budget so its hard to argue against boondoggle maintenance projects as having some capacity for objective success with regard to that goal ... But -- perhaps there is a future where the system could reasonably decide that the wisest course is to _not_ spend billions of dollars keeping 1980s era visicalc programs running unmodified so that they can properly manage the floppy disk supply chain for nuclear missile silos ...
dzonga 6y ago
what people keep forgetting is maybe the next desktop will be run as a service. games which are compute intensive are already run on the clould. aws has a desktops product. so yeah microsoft wouldn't switch to linux kernel but would have other microsoft apps stream off a linux server in the cloud.
- anaganisk 6y ago
  Are already? No competitive gamer or a regular gamer would prefer the level of latency cloud gaming has. Its mostly for games that are not FPS.
trboyden 6y ago
That never was a goal of Microsoft. Their goal is to get Microsoft apps, technology, and development toolsets embedded everywhere, and to a large extent, they have already succeeded in that. Projects like .NET Core, SQL Server on Linux, Visual Studio Code, Windows IoT, all have cross-pollinated to the Linux world and have gotten Linux, macOS, and ARM hardware users to adopt Microsoft technologies. All those investments drive usage of other Microsoft services which results in more revenue for Microsoft, which is all they ever wanted.
phendrenad2 6y ago
Finally someone shot down this ridiculous shared delusion.

251 points by sunbum 6y ago

It almost is, but not exactly a rebase. They are bringing in official SCP/SSH support, proper terminals with unix shells. X11 gui support (with WSL). I feel like Microsoft has read the writing on the wall. Developers love nix-based systems (Mac, Linux). They are trying their best to catch developers at the door with a "but wait! there's more!"

pjmlp 6y ago
If NT 3.51 had the necessary POSIX support for me to do my DG/UX homework, I would most likely never bothered with that Linux Unleashed book offering Slackware 2.0.
fifticon 6y ago
I believe it is a variation of their embrace-extend strategy. If you can tempt linux applications into cross-calling services on a present window side, suddenly you have a justification to keep a windows license running where a linux license would have sufficed. And so, another windows instance got an excuse to be kept running/installed.
- spapas82 6y ago
  The next step after embrace and extend is extinguish. This is why I am always careful when Microsoft seems to suddenly love something...
- m12k 6y ago
  If Linux is running in Azure, Microsoft still gets paid. They don't need to sell Windows licenses, they need to start getting a piece of the pie when web developers deploy to Linux servers. Getting Windows to be an attractive development platform for someone targeting Linux servers is an essential part of that.
JosephRedfern 6y ago
This may just be semantics, but is any of that stuff (SCP/SSH, terminals, shells, X11) actually Linux, as in, the Linux kernel? Aren't these are all "just" utilities?
- pknopf 6y ago
  It's a mix. SCP/SSH is official Windows builds. The shells/tools are Linux kernel with some hypervisor magic (WSL). I'm sure there are other things I'm missing in this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

pjmlp 6y ago

Quite right, Microsoft just realised that they should have cared more about POSIX NT subsystem, and since 20 years later Linux ABI compatibility is more relevant than POSIX, they just got into it, following the BSDs, Solaris, AIX, IBM i, z/OS, ClearPath and a couple of other platforms that also offer support for virtualized Linux kernels.

rbanffy 6y ago
Windows had POSIX because a number of government contracts mandated POSIX compatibility. As soon as that was dropped, so was POSIX support. I was always a half-hearted thing designed to prevent any dependency on POSIX from Windows apps, which was seen as a threat. Now the reverse is seen as advantageous: any app that moves from Linux to Windows is good for them, so things like WSL encourage that.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Sure, the point being that if they hadn't gotten rid of it, that is what most people would be using, just like the folks that buy Apple BSD UNIX based laptops to develop for GNU/Linux. This is the crowd that Microsoft is after, devs that don't care about Linux ideals, just a POSIX like stack.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    The POSIX subsystem was barely usable, much more something to check a box in a government form and prevent Windows from being disqualified than anything actually useful. I kind of disagree with the Windows/WSL and Mac being targeted at the same crowd. I have the feeling gaming has a higher priority with the Windows/WSL users and what would drive someone who'd otherwise get a Mac to get a Windows box. WSL seems to be geared at preventing a Windows user from switching over to either Mac or Linux for the superior Unix experience.
    - JdeBP 6y ago
      The first POSIX subsystem.

giancarlostoro 6y ago

What I am really waiting on is a Microsoft buys out Canonical headline cause it seems plausible. It would definitely give them an interesting edge as the primary maintainer of Ubuntu in Azure so there is definitely incentive for it. What I would love to see is Microsoft create something Wine like and charge about as much as a basic Windows license for it.

tester34 6y ago
>What I would love to see is Microsoft create something Wine Isn't Wine more like a hack? Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? isn't it doing to solve problems that Wine tries to challenge once it supports crossplatform GUI? (so basically once MAUI is released) * I'm not talking about Avalonia GUI framework which already exists and is crossplatform.
- cheph 6y ago
  > Isn't Wine more like a hack? Not more so than Windows. > Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? isn't it doing to solve problems that Wine tries to challenge once it supports crossplatform GUI? No. .NET Core and Wine does not solve the same problem.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Why would you want to have something like that when there's .NET Core? .NET Core only allows you to run applications written for .NET, which isn't most applications.
  - cheph 6y ago
    And in comparison, Wine does not try to be a .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR).
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  dotnet core does not now and probably will never support WinForms or WPF (edit: in a cross platform way that tools like WINE can offer) It’s a very nice tool, but the two dominant and old GUI frameworks for windows require win32 api for a bunch of stuff the last time i looked and there’s no getting away from it.

louwrentius 6y ago

I wonder if it’s the other way around. With WSL2 you can give Microsoft credit for actually getting Linux on the Desktop. Probably not what most expect from Linux on the Desktop. But hey, if you still can’t properly support 4K scaling in 2020, it’s never going to happen. It will probably always be a fringe group. Unless something really changes within the mentality of the open-source / Linux community.

vetinari 6y ago
And here I'm, running 4K linux desktop for years already. But hey, for some people linux will never do anything right.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  90% of Linux Desktops could experience a problem and as soon as someone reports it another guy would come out of the woodwork and shout that it works for him.
  - tolien 6y ago
    I mean, there's a whole lot of people in this thread saying that Windows scaling works perfectly for them when it definitely doesn't for me (use Windows-arrow to move browser window from a 4k to a 2k monitor and back again a few times, it'll eventually change shape and size). Just like reporting Ubuntu bugs feels like shouting into the void, what are your chances as an end user of MS quickly fixing a bug you find?
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      The experience of finding solutions to Windows problems, which is in fact a significant portion of my day job, is vastly superior regardless of the fact that opening issues with Microsoft support is useless. For one, things generally aren't radically overhauled ever 2 years making all previous documentation on a subject obsolete. For two, when you talk with other Windows admins about a problem you're having, you don't get "well it works for me" presented as though it is somehow helpful.

pjc50 6y ago

The two canaries to watch for are a systematic switch in the default line ending character from CRLF to LF, which will be driven by Microsoft developers fed up of git hassles, and a switch in the default path character from "\" to "/". In most places those are already supported, but not default.

timvisee 6y ago
I don't think they'll ever become the default, because of 'compatability' reasons.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I could perhaps see them becoming configurable. I can't at all see why either of those would indicate that Microsoft is gearing up to rebase Windows.
m463 6y ago
SWITCHAR='-'
CJefferson 6y ago
Those are two of the smallest parts -- there is the entire Windows API, and kernel API. The line ending character used by notepad isn't what would stop a total re-write of Word. Tens of thousands of methods which power the majority of paid-for software. Microsoft has spent decades, and huge amount of man-power keeping all that software working, why would they flush all that away?
- pjc50 6y ago
  The API is quite shim-able; WINE has done that in the reverse direction, and there is (or was) the "POSIX subsystem" and cygwin. People build cross-compilable C code that works on both. It's just a bit of a hassle because the semantics are different in key places. Leaving aside things which touch the GUI (which is a lot! You need a window to receive messages to use certain APIs!), the next big differences are the process API (no fork, starting processes is a lot more time consuming) and the advanced filesystem API (completion ports). There are frankly a few pieces of the API that I would like to see go in the other direction, like WaitForMultipleObjects().

DrBazza 6y ago

I would not want Microsoft to "rebase to Linux". Why? Ideas, and innovation. If Microsoft come up with something new in operating system design, they don't have to answer to the community when adding it into the kernel. And it gives Linux something to compare against.

cies 6y ago
> come up with something new in operating system design Like CRLF newlines and "\" instead of "/" as path separator? Jokes aside, MS is not the place I look for "something new" in OS design.
- DrBazza 6y ago
  Where would you look though? Who else writes operating systems? MS Research writes papers that are submitted to various journals (as does IBM, Intel, Google, all of whom have their own operating systems). An obvious example is the Midori project produced lots of novel research much of which has been used, even if the project itself was abandoned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)
- withinboredom 6y ago
  > MS is not the place I look for "something new" in OS design. With Windows Phone, they did pioneer quite a bit. It was a phone first, and app running device second. Android and iOS feel like the phone part was a second-thought add-on in comparison. The Windows Phone did its best to make it so you could make a phone call or send a text, at the expense of email, running apps, etc. when the battery was low which took Android and iOS many years to implement. There were probably some other interesting things, but I don't remember them any more.
  - mlvljr 6y ago
    Upvoting from my Nokia Lumia
- thunderbong 6y ago

rPlayer6554 6y ago

Im not sure how many people thought this would _acctually_ happen. This is one of these things that seems cool from an Linux lover's point of view (because it somehow proves them right that Linux is the absolute best) but makes absolutely no practical or business sense. Two major groups buying windows are business clients (who would rather you not change things so that their 20 year old custom software still runs in Internet Explorer) and the average user (who couldn't care if the Kernel was NT, Linux, or a literal peice of Corn as long as things work). Everyone who thinks that using the Linux Kernel is better than NT is already using Linux. Everyone who needs some sort of intermediary support uses Dualboot/WSL/etc. Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. This is the company that won't change the bug that makes excel think 1900 is a leap year so that it doesn't break people's spreadsheets. [0] Not to mention porting windows would take a LOT of work. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/wrongly-assumes-1900-is-leap-year https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/w...

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. I wish I could believe this, but the way Windows has been trending since 10 leaves me skeptical that the old Windows philosophies of catering to the user, keeping things consistent, and being backwards compatible are being smothered by whoever the fuck is working on it today.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  Windows has always been two creatures that behave in very different ways. The server line is where you see stability and compatibility reign supreme. On the desktop/workstation line though, let's take a trip down memory lane and remember all these upgrades together: Windows 3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> Me -> XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 -> 10. I am having a really hard time seeing how one can infer from that timeline that Microsoft's desktop OS line follows a philosophy of "catering to the user, keeping things consistent, and being backwards compatible." Windows 98 didn't cause much hassle, but, at least from my experience, that was really it. Windows 7 had its share of hassles, too. Particularly, as I recall, in the backwards compatibility department. We just remember it fondly because it was sandwiched in between Windows Vista and Windows 8.

simonh 6y ago

Microsoft already gave up on re-implementing Linux on windows, and went with running a genuine Linux kernel in WSL2. The only way to guarantee a fully backwards compatible Windows layer on Linux would be to run it on top of a genuine Windows kernel, at which point what are you actually gaining? Even if they did do it, I don't see how it would meaningfully change anything, or what advantages it might offer them. WSL is simply about better supporting Azure developers and customers. That's all there is to it.

contextfree 6y ago
Microsoft actually already ships a Windows layer on Linux, as part of SQL Server for Linux. The approach is somewhat similar to WSL1's: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2016/12/16/sql-server-on-linux-how-introduction/ https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2016/12/16/sql-se...
- simonh 6y ago
  Oh sure, I'm aware of it but that's been around for decades. It's similar to the way Apple has a very limited single purpose compatibility layer for MacOS desktop apps on Windows that they use to run iTunes (and previously quicktime). It's a tactical solution to a specific problem, not an indicator of overall strategy.

Macha 6y ago

Reading the article the first time was confusing to me, as an unqualified "Raymond" in the context of Microsoft means Raymond Chen to me, it was only when mousing over one of the links that it finally clicked that it was esr.

talkingtab 6y ago

No. Microsoft is attempting to rebase Linux on to Windows. And if you are aware of Microsoft's purchase of GitHub, Microsoft's purchase of NPM and the MS efforts to provide a "free" compelling tool with VsCode, then you may have a reason to ask whether this pattern of activity suggests that Microsoft is attempting to rebase Open Source onto Microsoft Source or simply to monetize open source. I know many people who are unfamiliar with Microsoft's long history of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish will be appalled at this suggestion, but if you are looking at canaries or concerns there it is. EEE is the MS DNA. Don't say you weren't told.

joana035 6y ago
> No. Microsoft is attempting to rebase Linux on to Windows. Exactly https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/09/15/microsoft_submits_linux_kernel_patches/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/09/15/microsoft_submits... It is not the first time it happens and people keep buying into it. But hey we have calculator source code, Microsoft loves open source, right? Right?
ShamelessC 6y ago
I don't think I follow your logic. Open source software has a long history of being monetized via support. Many popular open source projects have a major financial backer responsible for most development. At any rate, I fail to see how MS getting open source tech working smoothly on Windows will somehow > EE is the MS DNA. I don't mean to be rude, but this comment is repeated ad nauseum here on hacker news. It's not an insightful, nuanced nor fresh take. > Don't say you weren't told. Believe me. We were told. Thousands of times. You all won't let up. Just to be clear, I am also concerned about these issues but this argument just isn't convincing. It takes an ethically misguided company strategy from decades ago and extrapolates that to some vague sense of "evil" lurking inside the company. How about some _recent_ evidence? Sources? Because as far as I can tell, MS is being _forced_ to embrace and extend Linux on their OS. They've been historically reluctant to do so until the cloud made Linux impossible to ignore. I struggle to see how they could even pull off an "extinguish". The very nature of open source makes that difficult. I guess they could buy Canonical and then just fire everyone, but the damage is still just limited to Ubuntu which would be promptly forked if needed.

trothamel 6y ago

Between Apple Silicon and Chromebooks, it's looking like ARM-based computing is becoming a thing, or at least enough of a thing that if I was Microsoft, I'd worry about how much Windows is tied to x86. And while Windows does have an ARM port, all the drivers and board support packages seem to be tied to Linux, and Linux based operating systems like ChromeOS and Android. What I suspect to see is a product that combines the Linux kernel, ELF versions of Edgium and Office, a port of the Windows shell that runs on top of this, and maybe support for running Win32 binaries in emulation, with as-it-is backwards compatibility guarantees. If something like this comes to exist, I'm guessing it will be sold as Windows A, or something other name like that. Will it be Windows? That's probably a philosophical question, more than anyththing.

golf1052 6y ago
>Windows does have an ARM port, all the drivers and board support packages seem to be tied to Linux Not entirely sure what you mean by this. Windows has supported ARM for a long time, Windows CE supported ARM starting in 1997 [1]. Windows Mobile which ran on ARM phones had been around since 2000. The Surface RT, based on Windows RT, was a more traditional tablet was also ARM based. Now Windows 10 on ARM has been around for about 3 years and third party manufacturers are selling ARM based Windows laptops. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact#Releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Compact#Relea...

fortran77 6y ago

Why would they take a beautiful, modern microkernel OS like Windows 10 and graft it on a clone of an Apollo-era monolithic-kernel OS? You’d have to be nuts to even think of that!

mixmastamyk 6y ago
Unix turned out to be more elegant and flexible in the long run than VMS despite being a few years older. OS are commodities now anyway. Cost savings equals improved profits for shareholders, which is the goal of every big company.

known 6y ago

Doesn't MS lose Azure business without Linux ?

baybal2 6y ago

> It is unclear if the Windows user space could even be rebased from NT to the Linux kernel and maintain the compatibility that Windows is known for, specifically what enterprise clients with mission-critical applications are paying to get. Given how buggy, and unreliable Windows is, wouldn't be this a straight improvement for their "mission-critical" stuff?

k__ 6y ago

Why not? It wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft ditched it's technology. (DOS - OS/2, Sliverlight - JavaScript, EdgeHTML - Blink, etc.) I'd guess that the OS market is done, they want to get rid of most of their Windows legacy stuff, and focus on making real money with the cloud.

Theodores 6y ago

Windows is a legacy operating system with an elderly demographic. They just need to keep Windows as Windows for its business and consumer customers without trying to make it something that it isn't.

deleted 6y ago
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shmerl 6y ago

> Raymond is correct in one key part of his blog. I do think the era of the desktop OS wars is ending. Mhm. Let's repeat this when percentage of Windows usage will be much lower and there will be more games released for Linux on day one and MS will stop swallowing Linux friendly studios like inXile and Obsidian. Right now I don't see it being the case by far. MS is still very hostile to Linux gaming with DirectX lock-in and platform politics. The above claim just ignores reality.

cptnapalm 6y ago
During the initial discussion on the kernel mailing list regarding MS bringing in some DX related stuff, there was mentioned (although seemingly no one really picked up on it) an internal discussion at MicroSoft of porting DX12 to Linux with no Windows required. https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1527 https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1527
- shmerl 6y ago
  They never said they'll open source it though. So I'd say no, thanks. I don't really trust them doing the right thing. If they wanted, they could join the Vulkan effort which is already cross platform. They never cared which clearly demonstrates where their interests lie. The proper progress is for such lock-in to be replaced with Vulkan which is by design an open and cross platform API, not to proliferate blobs on Linux.

afrcnc 6y ago

Oh look... more garbage ZDNet and TechRepublic reporting on the fate of Linux being disproven by people involved in the Linux world.

gitgud 6y ago

Well, they did a similar move with Edge! (which is now a Chromium derivative [1])... There's many business reasons against rebasing the Windows Kernel to Linux, but there's also many positives too never say never [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527550/microsoft-chromium-edge-google-history-collaboration https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527550/microsoft-chromiu...

thelazydogsback 6y ago

I don't get all the hate for win10 -- I love *nix from a the pov of a clear, orthogonal internal design (at least from 10k feet) and it doesn't make since to deploy at scale on Win (unless you really need to) -- but why would I ever want to spend time dealing with all the configuration idiosyncrasies and driver issues on a day-to-day basis, if what I'm using a OS for is to host browsers, editors, IDEs, terminal windows, etc., and productivity apps? Okay, win8 was DoA, but win10 seems pretty unoffensive FWICT. I just want to pick up my machine (and just as importantly, someone else's random machine) and have it just work as I expect.

subsection1h 6y ago
"Driver issues on day-to-day basis"? WTF. Maybe you need this: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Dummies-Richard-Blum/dp/1119704251 https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Dummies-Richard-Blum/dp/1119704...
- thelazydogsback 6y ago
  Perhaps -- and if I do, I think you've just underscored my point. If someone who started programming the same decade Unix was invented doesn't want to be his own sysadmin, why would most people?
  - julianmarq 6y ago
    You're right, you don't need "linux for dummies" (don't even understand the point of linking to that), you're probably better off sticking with windows. For what it's worth, though, I haven't been "my own sysadmin" nor have I had to "spend time dealing with all the configuration idiosyncrasies and driver issues on a day-to-day basis" in linux for the past six years. In fact, I don't even install extensions anymore. My secret ain't manuals, though, it's the much simpler "only buy machines that the vendors declare as compatible with linux" or the even simpler "buy machines with linux installed already". Though I only use my computer for browsers, editors, IDEs, terminal windows, and productivity apps; and pretty much nothing else, so experience may vary of course.
- 6y ago

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super_mario 6y ago

I don't know much about the direction Windows is heading (I have not used Windows since early 2000s), but if there ever was a good time to do it, it would be now that Apple is slowly killing macOS and turning macs into giant phones. If Windows had UNIX kernel and POSIX with custom UI, it would be a viable platform to switch to.

thayne 6y ago

I love linux, but I would actually rather see MS open source the Windows kernel than replace it with the Linux kernel. I'd also love to see a "Linux Subsystem for Windows", to make it better to run windows applications on Linux. Wine sort of fills this role, but I'd really love to see a MS-backed fully compatible system. And maybe it could work similar to WSL2, where it is an actual windows kernel running inside KVM.

t0astbread 6y ago
Can't you already run Windows on QEMU/KVM? (Or did WSL do something special that I missed?)
- anaganisk 6y ago
  Wsl runs on a very barebones custom linux kernel, unless flipside is also true Qemu would be loading a full blown OS. May be that's what he meant.
  - thayne 6y ago
    That's part of what I meant. But also, being able to launch a windows application from linux and have it seamlessly start, rather than having to boot up a full Windows VM and then launch the application from inside of there.

ksec 6y ago

Why would anyone want Windows to rebase to Linux? Personally I want Microsoft to open source the Window Kernel.

mtzaldo 6y ago

Did they fixed the sleeping issues with WSL2 and Docker?

pier25 6y ago

There's another angle to this. What if Microsoft created a new linux-based OS precisely to start from scratch and let go of all the Windows cruft? Windows 10 is mature enough to not need any significant work and still maintain backwards-compatibility, but maybe Microsoft is preparing the terrain with a new OS for the next 20 years. Apple is moving fast towards universal apps for mobile and desktop. Maybe Google is doing that with Fuchsia too. Microsoft failed with Windows Phone but it probably learned from its mistakes. I'd be surprised if Windows 10 + Android is their long term goal.

lordleft 6y ago

It would be an unbelievable technical headache to rebase to Linux. Think of the bugs that exist in Windows 10 now with their current testing regime.

breatheoften 6y ago

> Microsoft has plenty of paying customers to continue supporting Windows as-is, some for decades I have to respond to this thought because -- I don't think its true. Aside from government and military, which of those paying customers truly have revenue streams so guaranteed that those entities cannot be replaced or outcompeted over the course of decades by somebody approaching the problem with fresh eyes -- or even just some internal division at the same company approaching the problem with fresh eyes and building something _better_ because it was allowed to change as opposed to something very stable because it is _not_ allowed to change? For government -- do we really want/need our government throwing money away because they are more or less not allowed to development new solutions to old problems? For military -- ... yeah well ... I don't know what to think about military ... Military is not a sector that has any measurable goals aside from self-perpetuating its budget so its hard to argue against boondoggle maintenance projects as having some capacity for objective success with regard to that goal ... But -- perhaps there is a future where the system could reasonably decide that the wisest course is to _not_ spend billions of dollars keeping 1980s era visicalc programs running unmodified so that they can properly manage the floppy disk supply chain for nuclear missile silos ...

dzonga 6y ago

what people keep forgetting is maybe the next desktop will be run as a service. games which are compute intensive are already run on the clould. aws has a desktops product. so yeah microsoft wouldn't switch to linux kernel but would have other microsoft apps stream off a linux server in the cloud.

anaganisk 6y ago
Are already? No competitive gamer or a regular gamer would prefer the level of latency cloud gaming has. Its mostly for games that are not FPS.

trboyden 6y ago

That never was a goal of Microsoft. Their goal is to get Microsoft apps, technology, and development toolsets embedded everywhere, and to a large extent, they have already succeeded in that. Projects like .NET Core, SQL Server on Linux, Visual Studio Code, Windows IoT, all have cross-pollinated to the Linux world and have gotten Linux, macOS, and ARM hardware users to adopt Microsoft technologies. All those investments drive usage of other Microsoft services which results in more revenue for Microsoft, which is all they ever wanted.

phendrenad2 6y ago

Finally someone shot down this ridiculous shared delusion.