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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 s

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.
  - ezconnect 6y ago
    Hardware support was always an issue on every version of windows but on the software side the only time I had software compatibility issue was whenI moved to Windows 2000. Windows vista for me was just a bad PR management by Microsoft.
    - vezycash 6y ago
      I place the blame mainly on penny pinching OEMs who sold windows XP hardware and slapped vista capable logo on it.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    3.11 to 95 was a big shift in terms of how the interface worked, but after that it was pretty damned consistent until 8 tried to turn everything into a tablet. The introduction of WDDM along with the new sound and networking driver architectures caused some headache in Vista, but were ultimately significant improvements over the way things had been. 10, on the other hand, made automatic updates mandatory, and pushed itself on everybody through dark patterns. It puts ads in the start menu and on the lock screen. It started, but didn't finish, implementing new interfaces nobody asked for while deprecating the old ones they still hand't entirely replicated. Today, they're doing their damnedest to hide the fact that you don't need a Microsoft account to set up your computer.
    - ROARosen 6y ago
      We should - though - definitely appreciate the fact that they still "let" you setup a workstation without signing in to a Microsoft account (unlike iOS, the new Oculus device etc.)
      - djxfade 6y ago
        You can setup iOS devices without an Apple ID if that is what you are trying to imply.
        6y ago
- daniel-thompson 6y ago
  Because a large portion of Windows' target market is people who are technically unsophisticated, and who will blame Microsoft if an application misbehaves after a Windows upgrade (regardless of whether the application vendor is actually at fault), Microsoft goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure backwards compatibility, even to the point of adding dummy code that allows [poorly-written programs that abuse features in Windows X] to still work in Windows X + 1, even when those features aren't there anymore. - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030828-00/?p=42753 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030828-00/?p=42... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050118-00/?p=36673 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050118-00/?p=36... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20051026-44/?p=33613 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20051026-44/?p=33... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060109-27/?p=32723 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060109-27/?p=32... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060110-17/?p=32703 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060110-17/?p=32... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070723-00/?p=25903 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070723-00/?p=25... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200526-00/?p=103794 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200526-00/?p=10...
  - thunderbong 6y ago
    Sometimes I wonder where the world of computers would have been if it had not been for Microsoft doing all this stuff! This is seriously next level of customer support, which we hardly get to appreciate, let alone know about.
  - taneq 6y ago
    Notice that only one of those articles is set later than 2007, and that the one later article is about telling the customer to buck up and deal with the broken backwards compatibility. They had an incredible focus on backwards compatibility. That no longer seems to be the case.
    - smileybarry 6y ago
      They still do. I have Win95 games that were broken in WinXP but started working in Win7 x64, or ones that broke in Win7 x64 and started working again in Win10.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  The whole point of Project Reunion is to drop some of those ideas and get back on track with a Windows 7 like development stack, just with an improved runtime tooling (UWP). And in about 10 years pretend that the road started by Sinosfky on Windows 8 never happened.
- dheera 6y ago
  > Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. They wouldn't necessarily need to sacrifice backwards compatibility. They would just have to ensure that the new OS fully supports all of their APIs from the past. Imagine Wine but 10 times better, built into the OS natively, and built by 500 engineers with full-time pay. I'm sure it could be pulled off, if they wanted to. But they probably don't want to.
  - nikanj 6y ago
    What you're describing are the Windows compatibility mitigations patches. Windows 10 emulates a tremendous number of quirks and glitches from earlier versions of Windows. Fifteen years ago they were already knee-deep in patches ( http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780321440303/samplechapter/Chen_bonus_ch01.pdf http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780321440303/samplech... ), and the importance of backwards compatibility has not diminished since.
    - dheera 6y ago
      I wonder why they can't just take the Android approach and let each .exe define an API level that it wants to have, and then never change how that version of the API behaves, just release new versions and let apps update their code on their own schedule. I feel like they shouldn't be knee-deep in patches if they do that ... but I'm not familiar with Windows development at all.
      - nikanj 6y ago
        https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/compatibility---application-manifest https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/c... They did add that. With the initial Windows 7 release. In 2009.
  - donio 6y ago
    > Imagine Wine but 10 times better I have a hard time doing that, Wine is already so good. I can certainly imagine better but even 2x better is kinda hard to picture.
- pitterpatter 6y ago
  Oh the backwards compat attitude goes quite far. Even to the extent that shims are added in updates just to make sure old apps keep working in cases where the vendor can't realistically update all client machines.
andi999 6y ago
I do not understand why Microsoft does not continue to support windows 7 (for a medium fee). I mean as a business client the transition 7->10 was and is a complete waste of resources.
- Bjartr 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure they do support 7 (and earlier), for an exorbitant fee, for their largest clients.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Mainstream support ended almost six years ago. But extended support (meaning those who pay the big bucks) (officially) ended in January this year after 10 years of support. Whether they still unofficially support those who pay even bigger amounts? I don’t know.
  - EvanAnderson 6y ago
    The program is called "Extended Security Updates for Windows 7", and the fee isn't exorbitant, but it's not necessarily cheap either. For 2020 it's $25 / PC, rising to $50 / PC for 2021, and $100 / PC for 2022. There's background here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-security-updates https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-secu... Background: I have a Customer who needed to maintain Windows 7 support for a legacy application on a single computer. For $175 to get 3 more years out of a paid-for critical application it was a "no-brainer" (and 3 more years to figure out a replacement strategy). Obviously, not all situations will be as simple.
    - addicted 6y ago
      That’s cheaper per year than Office 365.
    - 2ion 6y ago
      Which I would love to pay as a consumer Win 7 Pro user but unfortunately MSFT is not interested in that. Win10 -- which I also own -- has horrible UI and takes the simplicity + familiarity out of Windows, and I just don't want to move any active work to it.
wenc 6y ago
Just to add some context, Windows remains a significant part of MS's revenue stream, but in recent years has been overtaken by cloud services (Azure). From their most recent SEC-10K (July 2020, pg 92, Part II Item 8) [1]: (revenue, in billion $) * Server products and cloud services: 41 (in 2020), 26 (in 2018) * Office products and cloud services: 35 (in 2020), 28 (in 2018) * Windows: 22 (in 2020), 19 (in 2018) * Gaming: 12 (in 2020), 10 (in 2018) Windows continues to be important (probably a defensive revenue stream), but strategically I wonder what the advantage is of switching to a Linux kernel. So many things would break (the 3rd party driver ecosystem for one would have to turn over several times to catch up), plus MS would lose full control over the direction of kernel development. It also doesn't really help or hinder their Azure strategy -- a large percentage of VMs on Azure are Linux VMs. But I'll stop pontificating without real knowledge and just leave it at that. [1] https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/static-files/4e7064ed-bbf7-4140-a8cb-79aba77421b9 https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/static-files/4e7064ed-bbf7-414...
- foota 6y ago
  Cost savings? They probably still have lots of kernel developers.
oregontechninja 6y ago
My current linux distros runs old windows apps better than windows 10 anywho. It easily surpasses Microsoft's threshold for "backwards compatibility"
- usr1987 6y ago
  right... I tried ubuntu, debian and last RedHat. They are great for their specifically design use but as a desktop for me a novice that just want to get things working and occasional videos and gaming still sucks!
GlitchMr 6y ago
> Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. The times have changed, it's not 2008 anymore. Microsoft doesn't really sell Windows upgrades anymore. They don't need to convince the user to purchase a new version of Windows by saying it won't break their programs. Now it's all Windows 10. Microsoft will update the operating system users use and if it breaks something, oh well. There is no real competition to Windows anymore. Previously, the competition was staying on the previous version of Windows. macOS? This breaks programs even more often. Linux? Good luck getting an user to use that.
- pitterpatter 6y ago
  > Microsoft doesn't really sell Windows upgrades anymore. Haha, no. There are _tons_ of business running old versions (xp, 7, 8, vista not to mention different builds of 10). There are also tons of people still using Windows CE who they're trying to woo over to Windows 10 IoT.
rektide 6y ago
> 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). The hypothesis is that users would not even know. API compatibility would be retained through emulation layers, or perhaps hosting legacy Windows inside a VM. Not proposing that Windows Subsystem On Linux (WSoL) is going to be real, but this attack seems out of touch to me with the technics of the matter. I don't think it is so unimaginable for Microsoft to create a non-disruptive rebase of their OS platform APIs onto another environment. Many have already, in their free time, done just that, quite successfully, albeit Microsoft would have to go further.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  The question isn't whether it's technically plausible to do this, the question is whether there's a compelling reason to do it. Is there really any indication that Microsoft feels like Windows is approaching the same kind of dead end that the original Mac OS was at in the late 90s which led them to "rebase" it onto NeXTStep?
  - rektide 6y ago
    Agreed. I think there are some really good & interesting futures for MS & everyone if they did WSoL rather than WS(f)L, but it seems unlikely & chasing this path would require enormous work & deciation. I did feel though that the top rated comment was off-base & incorrect in it's analysis.
    - rektide 6y ago
      Ran into the old Marc Andreessen quote from 1995, Netscape will "reduce Windows to a set of poorly debugged device drivers". Remarkably apt. Mobile and the competition and especially the web have stripped the primacy of the desktop OS way back. There's mostly just inertia, a lot of legacy, keeping Windows moving forwards. And that legacy, as we keep seeing, is not that radically difficult to emulate or translate. The gui itself has expected behaviors, but I would not say they are loved? There are like 4 different sound control panels in modern windows. The legacy has kept piling up, but in a way that has never become more distinct, or more meaningful: it's chaotic & senseless. Whereas folks like Gnome can ship a radical 3.0, some radical shifts in their long 3.x series, and then go build a 4.0. Beyond comparison to other gui computing systems, the greater trend wiping Windows relevance off the map is the cloud, is that we no longer want to care about individual computers & computing in isolation. Where we want to go today is across a panoply of systems, into a highly networked well connected cloud, albeit clouds that in practice have been alas radically infantile in ways ("Internet of Shit"), lacking much of the "PC-compatible" spirit of portability & consistency that supported & enabled the rise to the desktop. None the less, Marc has ended up being pretty spot on. Computing is multi-system, multi-device, computing is connected, & we expect most of our experiences to have online impact & usability: this is something that Windows has never really adapted to, never rebased around, despite attempts like Microsoft Live, Microsoft InfoCards, Microsoft OneDrive. This Andreessen quote also highlights what Microsoft would gain by switching to Linux: far better debugged drivers. Instead of needing to write a Driver Development Kit (DDK)/Windows Driver Kit (WDK) with a bunch of ideas & hope people pick good ways to use the DDK & build robust support, sometimes stepping in themselves if they are desperate for better support. Often it's up to OEMs to fight with their hardware vendors to make the stuff work right. Where-as on Linux, best practices for devices drivers can evolve organically: as one device drivers learns & adapts & figures out good ways of, for example, playing sound, other device drivers can adapt & follow the lead. Common patterns can be surfaced & enshrined. The kernel is it's own documentation for how to move forwards, a nearly complete corpus of what it takes to compute. Windows on the other hand inherently lacks this ability to debug, to find sense for the developers on the platform, for those developers cannot relate with one another: they can only relate & share with Microsoft, whose time & support is limited. What is Windows's purpose for existence? It reached such vast heights, but now what role does it have, what mission does it have? It's meaning is degraded by a world where devices are now, as Marc pointed out in 1995, terminals to a greater world, & it's distinction among operating systems is fuzzy, uncertain. As this Chris Wilson's key "History of the Web" slide title declares, "The Web as universal platform"[1] has largely become true (among other erstwhile desktop competitors like native mobile apps). If Microsoft can gain better technical underpinnings, that is easier to support & make fast, by porting their environment & their platform APIs on top Linux, then they can perhaps better focus on finding real distinction & advantage for themselves, finding ways to reach out & regain relevance & connectivity from a more share-able, embraceable, knowable, & connective base (Linux). I think it would be a great advantage to Microsoft to build themselves atop the known & adoptable, with better drivers, better subsystems, & it would be better for us the consumers by far measure. This is why I think, although unlikely, Microsoft should rebase onto Linux. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRE9S7B-DV8#21m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRE9S7B-DV8#21m10s
taylodl 6y ago
Makes no practical or business sense? How many engineers does Microsoft have working on the Windows kernel? A kernel that, from a business standpoint, is adding little value to Microsoft? Obviously Windows isn't going away - but how many of Microsoft's customers would know that their kernel has been swapped out when the UI and all the applets look identical? As far as they're concerned the switch could have already happened! All they care is the look-and-feel is the same and their applications still run. They don't care about the kernel. It's not a matter of better, it's a matter of good enough and saving on expenses. Presumably those engineers could be better utilized somewhere that's generating more revenue. That's the bottom line.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  > A kernel that, from a business standpoint, is adding little value to Microsoft? > Obviously Windows isn't going away - but how many of Microsoft's customers would know that their kernel has been swapped out when the UI and all the applets look identical Right. Because it's just a simple switch to flip when changing kernels, and all of the Windows software will just go on working as it before.
  - treis 6y ago
    They're not going to get there tomorrow, but 20 years from now? I can see it happening. Computers are trending towards being things that just run web browsers. Applications are headed to the cloud. And Windows lost the mobile war and is increasingly losing the laptop war. On the flip side as Azure becomes more significant for MS the role of Linux becomes more significant. At some point the cost of working on two kernels is going to outweigh the benefit of transitioning Windows over to Linux. Or maybe not. It's hard to predict things. Especially about the future.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      The main thing that will happen to software that's twenty years old in twenty years is for the software to be forty years old. Large legacy systems do not get replaced.
ROARosen 6y ago
> Everyone who thinks that using the Linux Kernel is better than NT is already using Linux Well, except - of course - if they need to use one of the multitudes more "programs" created just for Windows, which won't run on Linux.
stiray 6y ago
This will happen. The windows nt kernel is better by design (dont crucify me for this, but it really is), but this decision will come from another perspective - "we need to pay large sums of money to kernel dev. depart and we are having huge problems with HR to deliver what is essentially free and we can pick higher management bonuses for eliminiting that cost. It is not a technical question - it is $ question and linux wins here. I dont like it, I prefer freebsd but this is the sad fact: Management bonuses > any technical knowlidge or reason The whole IT progress was destroyed by this fact, from OSes to the cloud, from irc to fb, from cats videos to having live cat. From optimal protocols for the task to http. From native gui to html/js abomination,... from laundry machines that live 20 years to the ones that get broken in few years... It gets destroyed when complete analphabets drive the decision about progress trough their vision of getting more money. At the end you will be running windows. With its look and feel, but with linux as kernel. (I know that I am not great for anyone here, feel free to downvote me, but do take time to think about it. Consumerism destroyed the computer science and it is not getting any better)
- xnyan 6y ago
  I upvoted you, thank you for your thoughts! I use and develop on both windows and linux a lot, have positive and negative thought and feelings about both. I'm not a systems programmer, but I'm very interested in kernels and OS dev. I'm decently waves hands vaguely familiar with NT and the linux kernel at a high level. Could you please speak a bit more on NT>linux kernel? I'm very interested.
- nikanj 6y ago
  The the investment required to port the MS userland to Linux kernel would dwarf the investment required to keep the NT kernel chugging along
- andromeduck 6y ago
  I'll believe it when we change to metric.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Only once Windows adoption is like IE/Edge now. Until then switch does not make sense. As Linux a user I know my hardware choices are limited. AMD GPU drivers in kernels, I would not risk yet. There is ongoing switch from X to Wayland, Steam Proton yet gaining compatibility. Many more years later. What if Wine/Proton achieves 100% compatibility? How would it affect Linux user space? There would be much less friction to migrate, critical hardware just works.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
I used to think such things, then Ballmer left and they dropped IE like a rock, and started renting Linux on Azure. Apple had made it cool to reinvent a company every ten years, and shown it to be potentially more profitable. Don't forget, it was a long time ago but MS used to be quite cross-platform. My Commodore featured their BASIC "OS". They could be again. Will it happen today? Of course not. But it's not hard to imagine ten years in the future where NT is creaking from under-investment and finally abandoned in favor of much cheaper WINE/VM or ReactOS support. Operating systems and tools are now a commodity.
- tracker1 6y ago
  Windows will carry via entropy for years to come. Enough software developers don't really care if their applications run outside of windows, even for apps that would be trivial to port/migrate to do so.
z3t4 6y ago
Windows backwards compatibility is shite. It's so shite that Wine on Linux has better Windows compatibility then Windows itself.

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.
- ezconnect 6y ago
  Hardware support was always an issue on every version of windows but on the software side the only time I had software compatibility issue was whenI moved to Windows 2000. Windows vista for me was just a bad PR management by Microsoft.
  - vezycash 6y ago
    I place the blame mainly on penny pinching OEMs who sold windows XP hardware and slapped vista capable logo on it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  3.11 to 95 was a big shift in terms of how the interface worked, but after that it was pretty damned consistent until 8 tried to turn everything into a tablet. The introduction of WDDM along with the new sound and networking driver architectures caused some headache in Vista, but were ultimately significant improvements over the way things had been. 10, on the other hand, made automatic updates mandatory, and pushed itself on everybody through dark patterns. It puts ads in the start menu and on the lock screen. It started, but didn't finish, implementing new interfaces nobody asked for while deprecating the old ones they still hand't entirely replicated. Today, they're doing their damnedest to hide the fact that you don't need a Microsoft account to set up your computer.
  - ROARosen 6y ago
    We should - though - definitely appreciate the fact that they still "let" you setup a workstation without signing in to a Microsoft account (unlike iOS, the new Oculus device etc.)
    - djxfade 6y ago
      You can setup iOS devices without an Apple ID if that is what you are trying to imply.
      - 6y ago
daniel-thompson 6y ago
Because a large portion of Windows' target market is people who are technically unsophisticated, and who will blame Microsoft if an application misbehaves after a Windows upgrade (regardless of whether the application vendor is actually at fault), Microsoft goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure backwards compatibility, even to the point of adding dummy code that allows [poorly-written programs that abuse features in Windows X] to still work in Windows X + 1, even when those features aren't there anymore. - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030828-00/?p=42753 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030828-00/?p=42... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050118-00/?p=36673 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050118-00/?p=36... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20051026-44/?p=33613 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20051026-44/?p=33... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060109-27/?p=32723 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060109-27/?p=32... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060110-17/?p=32703 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060110-17/?p=32... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070723-00/?p=25903 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070723-00/?p=25... - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200526-00/?p=103794 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200526-00/?p=10...
- thunderbong 6y ago
  Sometimes I wonder where the world of computers would have been if it had not been for Microsoft doing all this stuff! This is seriously next level of customer support, which we hardly get to appreciate, let alone know about.
- taneq 6y ago
  Notice that only one of those articles is set later than 2007, and that the one later article is about telling the customer to buck up and deal with the broken backwards compatibility. They had an incredible focus on backwards compatibility. That no longer seems to be the case.
  - smileybarry 6y ago
    They still do. I have Win95 games that were broken in WinXP but started working in Win7 x64, or ones that broke in Win7 x64 and started working again in Win10.
pjmlp 6y ago
The whole point of Project Reunion is to drop some of those ideas and get back on track with a Windows 7 like development stack, just with an improved runtime tooling (UWP). And in about 10 years pretend that the road started by Sinosfky on Windows 8 never happened.
dheera 6y ago
> Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. They wouldn't necessarily need to sacrifice backwards compatibility. They would just have to ensure that the new OS fully supports all of their APIs from the past. Imagine Wine but 10 times better, built into the OS natively, and built by 500 engineers with full-time pay. I'm sure it could be pulled off, if they wanted to. But they probably don't want to.
- nikanj 6y ago
  What you're describing are the Windows compatibility mitigations patches. Windows 10 emulates a tremendous number of quirks and glitches from earlier versions of Windows. Fifteen years ago they were already knee-deep in patches ( http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780321440303/samplechapter/Chen_bonus_ch01.pdf http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780321440303/samplech... ), and the importance of backwards compatibility has not diminished since.
  - dheera 6y ago
    I wonder why they can't just take the Android approach and let each .exe define an API level that it wants to have, and then never change how that version of the API behaves, just release new versions and let apps update their code on their own schedule. I feel like they shouldn't be knee-deep in patches if they do that ... but I'm not familiar with Windows development at all.
    - nikanj 6y ago
      https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/compatibility---application-manifest https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win7appqual/c... They did add that. With the initial Windows 7 release. In 2009.
- donio 6y ago
  > Imagine Wine but 10 times better I have a hard time doing that, Wine is already so good. I can certainly imagine better but even 2x better is kinda hard to picture.
pitterpatter 6y ago
Oh the backwards compat attitude goes quite far. Even to the extent that shims are added in updates just to make sure old apps keep working in cases where the vendor can't realistically update all client machines.

andi999 6y ago

I do not understand why Microsoft does not continue to support windows 7 (for a medium fee). I mean as a business client the transition 7->10 was and is a complete waste of resources.

Bjartr 6y ago
I'm pretty sure they do support 7 (and earlier), for an exorbitant fee, for their largest clients.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Mainstream support ended almost six years ago. But extended support (meaning those who pay the big bucks) (officially) ended in January this year after 10 years of support. Whether they still unofficially support those who pay even bigger amounts? I don’t know.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  The program is called "Extended Security Updates for Windows 7", and the fee isn't exorbitant, but it's not necessarily cheap either. For 2020 it's $25 / PC, rising to $50 / PC for 2021, and $100 / PC for 2022. There's background here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-security-updates https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-secu... Background: I have a Customer who needed to maintain Windows 7 support for a legacy application on a single computer. For $175 to get 3 more years out of a paid-for critical application it was a "no-brainer" (and 3 more years to figure out a replacement strategy). Obviously, not all situations will be as simple.
  - addicted 6y ago
    That’s cheaper per year than Office 365.
  - 2ion 6y ago
    Which I would love to pay as a consumer Win 7 Pro user but unfortunately MSFT is not interested in that. Win10 -- which I also own -- has horrible UI and takes the simplicity + familiarity out of Windows, and I just don't want to move any active work to it.

wenc 6y ago

Just to add some context, Windows remains a significant part of MS's revenue stream, but in recent years has been overtaken by cloud services (Azure). From their most recent SEC-10K (July 2020, pg 92, Part II Item 8) [1]: (revenue, in billion $) * Server products and cloud services: 41 (in 2020), 26 (in 2018) * Office products and cloud services: 35 (in 2020), 28 (in 2018) * Windows: 22 (in 2020), 19 (in 2018) * Gaming: 12 (in 2020), 10 (in 2018) Windows continues to be important (probably a defensive revenue stream), but strategically I wonder what the advantage is of switching to a Linux kernel. So many things would break (the 3rd party driver ecosystem for one would have to turn over several times to catch up), plus MS would lose full control over the direction of kernel development. It also doesn't really help or hinder their Azure strategy -- a large percentage of VMs on Azure are Linux VMs. But I'll stop pontificating without real knowledge and just leave it at that. [1] https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/static-files/4e7064ed-bbf7-4140-a8cb-79aba77421b9 https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/static-files/4e7064ed-bbf7-414...

foota 6y ago
Cost savings? They probably still have lots of kernel developers.

oregontechninja 6y ago

My current linux distros runs old windows apps better than windows 10 anywho. It easily surpasses Microsoft's threshold for "backwards compatibility"

usr1987 6y ago
right... I tried ubuntu, debian and last RedHat. They are great for their specifically design use but as a desktop for me a novice that just want to get things working and occasional videos and gaming still sucks!

GlitchMr 6y ago

> Windows would never sacrifice it's backwards compatibility. The times have changed, it's not 2008 anymore. Microsoft doesn't really sell Windows upgrades anymore. They don't need to convince the user to purchase a new version of Windows by saying it won't break their programs. Now it's all Windows 10. Microsoft will update the operating system users use and if it breaks something, oh well. There is no real competition to Windows anymore. Previously, the competition was staying on the previous version of Windows. macOS? This breaks programs even more often. Linux? Good luck getting an user to use that.

pitterpatter 6y ago
> Microsoft doesn't really sell Windows upgrades anymore. Haha, no. There are _tons_ of business running old versions (xp, 7, 8, vista not to mention different builds of 10). There are also tons of people still using Windows CE who they're trying to woo over to Windows 10 IoT.

rektide 6y ago

> 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). The hypothesis is that users would not even know. API compatibility would be retained through emulation layers, or perhaps hosting legacy Windows inside a VM. Not proposing that Windows Subsystem On Linux (WSoL) is going to be real, but this attack seems out of touch to me with the technics of the matter. I don't think it is so unimaginable for Microsoft to create a non-disruptive rebase of their OS platform APIs onto another environment. Many have already, in their free time, done just that, quite successfully, albeit Microsoft would have to go further.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago
The question isn't whether it's technically plausible to do this, the question is whether there's a compelling reason to do it. Is there really any indication that Microsoft feels like Windows is approaching the same kind of dead end that the original Mac OS was at in the late 90s which led them to "rebase" it onto NeXTStep?
- rektide 6y ago
  Agreed. I think there are some really good & interesting futures for MS & everyone if they did WSoL rather than WS(f)L, but it seems unlikely & chasing this path would require enormous work & deciation. I did feel though that the top rated comment was off-base & incorrect in it's analysis.
  - rektide 6y ago
    Ran into the old Marc Andreessen quote from 1995, Netscape will "reduce Windows to a set of poorly debugged device drivers". Remarkably apt. Mobile and the competition and especially the web have stripped the primacy of the desktop OS way back. There's mostly just inertia, a lot of legacy, keeping Windows moving forwards. And that legacy, as we keep seeing, is not that radically difficult to emulate or translate. The gui itself has expected behaviors, but I would not say they are loved? There are like 4 different sound control panels in modern windows. The legacy has kept piling up, but in a way that has never become more distinct, or more meaningful: it's chaotic & senseless. Whereas folks like Gnome can ship a radical 3.0, some radical shifts in their long 3.x series, and then go build a 4.0. Beyond comparison to other gui computing systems, the greater trend wiping Windows relevance off the map is the cloud, is that we no longer want to care about individual computers & computing in isolation. Where we want to go today is across a panoply of systems, into a highly networked well connected cloud, albeit clouds that in practice have been alas radically infantile in ways ("Internet of Shit"), lacking much of the "PC-compatible" spirit of portability & consistency that supported & enabled the rise to the desktop. None the less, Marc has ended up being pretty spot on. Computing is multi-system, multi-device, computing is connected, & we expect most of our experiences to have online impact & usability: this is something that Windows has never really adapted to, never rebased around, despite attempts like Microsoft Live, Microsoft InfoCards, Microsoft OneDrive. This Andreessen quote also highlights what Microsoft would gain by switching to Linux: far better debugged drivers. Instead of needing to write a Driver Development Kit (DDK)/Windows Driver Kit (WDK) with a bunch of ideas & hope people pick good ways to use the DDK & build robust support, sometimes stepping in themselves if they are desperate for better support. Often it's up to OEMs to fight with their hardware vendors to make the stuff work right. Where-as on Linux, best practices for devices drivers can evolve organically: as one device drivers learns & adapts & figures out good ways of, for example, playing sound, other device drivers can adapt & follow the lead. Common patterns can be surfaced & enshrined. The kernel is it's own documentation for how to move forwards, a nearly complete corpus of what it takes to compute. Windows on the other hand inherently lacks this ability to debug, to find sense for the developers on the platform, for those developers cannot relate with one another: they can only relate & share with Microsoft, whose time & support is limited. What is Windows's purpose for existence? It reached such vast heights, but now what role does it have, what mission does it have? It's meaning is degraded by a world where devices are now, as Marc pointed out in 1995, terminals to a greater world, & it's distinction among operating systems is fuzzy, uncertain. As this Chris Wilson's key "History of the Web" slide title declares, "The Web as universal platform"[1] has largely become true (among other erstwhile desktop competitors like native mobile apps). If Microsoft can gain better technical underpinnings, that is easier to support & make fast, by porting their environment & their platform APIs on top Linux, then they can perhaps better focus on finding real distinction & advantage for themselves, finding ways to reach out & regain relevance & connectivity from a more share-able, embraceable, knowable, & connective base (Linux). I think it would be a great advantage to Microsoft to build themselves atop the known & adoptable, with better drivers, better subsystems, & it would be better for us the consumers by far measure. This is why I think, although unlikely, Microsoft should rebase onto Linux. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRE9S7B-DV8#21m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRE9S7B-DV8#21m10s

taylodl 6y ago

Makes no practical or business sense? How many engineers does Microsoft have working on the Windows kernel? A kernel that, from a business standpoint, is adding little value to Microsoft? Obviously Windows isn't going away - but how many of Microsoft's customers would know that their kernel has been swapped out when the UI and all the applets look identical? As far as they're concerned the switch could have already happened! All they care is the look-and-feel is the same and their applications still run. They don't care about the kernel. It's not a matter of better, it's a matter of good enough and saving on expenses. Presumably those engineers could be better utilized somewhere that's generating more revenue. That's the bottom line.

dmitriid 6y ago
> A kernel that, from a business standpoint, is adding little value to Microsoft? > Obviously Windows isn't going away - but how many of Microsoft's customers would know that their kernel has been swapped out when the UI and all the applets look identical Right. Because it's just a simple switch to flip when changing kernels, and all of the Windows software will just go on working as it before.
- treis 6y ago
  They're not going to get there tomorrow, but 20 years from now? I can see it happening. Computers are trending towards being things that just run web browsers. Applications are headed to the cloud. And Windows lost the mobile war and is increasingly losing the laptop war. On the flip side as Azure becomes more significant for MS the role of Linux becomes more significant. At some point the cost of working on two kernels is going to outweigh the benefit of transitioning Windows over to Linux. Or maybe not. It's hard to predict things. Especially about the future.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    The main thing that will happen to software that's twenty years old in twenty years is for the software to be forty years old. Large legacy systems do not get replaced.

ROARosen 6y ago

> Everyone who thinks that using the Linux Kernel is better than NT is already using Linux Well, except - of course - if they need to use one of the multitudes more "programs" created just for Windows, which won't run on Linux.

stiray 6y ago

This will happen. The windows nt kernel is better by design (dont crucify me for this, but it really is), but this decision will come from another perspective - "we need to pay large sums of money to kernel dev. depart and we are having huge problems with HR to deliver what is essentially free and we can pick higher management bonuses for eliminiting that cost. It is not a technical question - it is $ question and linux wins here. I dont like it, I prefer freebsd but this is the sad fact: Management bonuses > any technical knowlidge or reason The whole IT progress was destroyed by this fact, from OSes to the cloud, from irc to fb, from cats videos to having live cat. From optimal protocols for the task to http. From native gui to html/js abomination,... from laundry machines that live 20 years to the ones that get broken in few years... It gets destroyed when complete analphabets drive the decision about progress trough their vision of getting more money. At the end you will be running windows. With its look and feel, but with linux as kernel. (I know that I am not great for anyone here, feel free to downvote me, but do take time to think about it. Consumerism destroyed the computer science and it is not getting any better)

xnyan 6y ago
I upvoted you, thank you for your thoughts! I use and develop on both windows and linux a lot, have positive and negative thought and feelings about both. I'm not a systems programmer, but I'm very interested in kernels and OS dev. I'm decently waves hands vaguely familiar with NT and the linux kernel at a high level. Could you please speak a bit more on NT>linux kernel? I'm very interested.
nikanj 6y ago
The the investment required to port the MS userland to Linux kernel would dwarf the investment required to keep the NT kernel chugging along
andromeduck 6y ago
I'll believe it when we change to metric.
sergeykish 6y ago
Only once Windows adoption is like IE/Edge now. Until then switch does not make sense. As Linux a user I know my hardware choices are limited. AMD GPU drivers in kernels, I would not risk yet. There is ongoing switch from X to Wayland, Steam Proton yet gaining compatibility. Many more years later. What if Wine/Proton achieves 100% compatibility? How would it affect Linux user space? There would be much less friction to migrate, critical hardware just works.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

I used to think such things, then Ballmer left and they dropped IE like a rock, and started renting Linux on Azure. Apple had made it cool to reinvent a company every ten years, and shown it to be potentially more profitable. Don't forget, it was a long time ago but MS used to be quite cross-platform. My Commodore featured their BASIC "OS". They could be again. Will it happen today? Of course not. But it's not hard to imagine ten years in the future where NT is creaking from under-investment and finally abandoned in favor of much cheaper WINE/VM or ReactOS support. Operating systems and tools are now a commodity.

tracker1 6y ago
Windows will carry via entropy for years to come. Enough software developers don't really care if their applications run outside of windows, even for apps that would be trivial to port/migrate to do so.

z3t4 6y ago

Windows backwards compatibility is shite. It's so shite that Wine on Linux has better Windows compatibility then Windows itself.