19 ms·

Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

163 points by pengwinhayden 4y ago

yellowapple 4y ago
The Devil's rummaging through his closet for some mittens.
- taftster 4y ago
  This comment made me LOL. Thank you, that's pretty funny. I was curious if this was a saying I'd never heard of or if you just came up with it. Seems you just came up with this? What's amazing is that Google already has this HN post indexed and you're already the first hit for the phrase. And even weirder, Google says that they (currently) indexed it 56 minutes ago, when HN reports you posted it 23 minutes ago. Google is now apparently predicting the future 33 minutes in advance. https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Devil%27s+rummaging+through+his+closet+for+some+mittens https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Devil%27s+rummaging+thro...
  - cipherboy 4y ago
    Wouldn't that just be because OP's comment appeared on the article, which was posted ~1h ago, and the Google result link is to the article, not the comment directly, hence has the earlier timestamp?
    - taftster 4y ago
      Ah yes, OK. My bad. That definitely sets the world back to normal then.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      It's still a bit off; Google's index clearly contains content that wasn't present on the page at the "time of indexing". Whatever content appeared on the page after Google indexed it is something Google shouldn't know about.
      - danielheath 4y ago
        Googles indexing defers javascript execution. If comments are loaded via JS, they'll appear on the index with the timestamp the page was fetched, not the time its script was executed.
        metadat 4y ago
        HN uses notoriously scant amounts of JS, and not at all for comments, so this doesn't explain the puzzle of odd indexing behavior.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > even weirder, Google says that they (currently) indexed it 56 minutes ago, when HN reports you posted it 23 minutes ago. Google is now apparently predicting the future 33 minutes in advance. One interpretation is that Google is lying about the indexing time. But it seems more likely in this case that they're reporting the indexing time of the page they link to ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33458756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33458756 ), rather than the indexing time of the comment you're responding to ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459157 , which can only have been indexed half an hour ago). In other words, they updated their cache of the page content without refreshing the indexing timestamp.
    - sally_glance 4y ago
      Yeah, they don't seem to make any guarantees at all about the date being displayed next to the search result... I'm too lazy to check the page source here right now on which meta fields are updated with comments, but this is what Google says about how they determine the date: > Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup. > Google doesn't depend on one single factor because all of them can be prone to issues. Publishers may not always provide a clear visible date. Sometimes, structured data may be lacking or may not be adjusted to the correct time zone. That's why our systems look at several factors to come up with what we consider to be our best estimate of when a page was published or significantly updated. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-googl...
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    Get a grip old chap and think through the old saw: "... when Hell freezes over", meaning [it] will never happen. There are plenty of riffs on that meme, including devilish hand protection strategies. Google is a boring old replayer of trite old stuff and quite right too - that's what it does! I suspect it also reads HN on a tight loop - many of the locals there are also from this parish. I suspect even the eye of Sauron doom scrolls HN ...
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > I was curious if this was a saying I'd never heard of or if you just came up with it. Seems you just came up with this? It's just a variation on similar sayings like "the devil's putting on ice skates".
- deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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denkmoon 4y ago
The article says Delridge is Debian based but appears to be using RPMs? Never seen that. I would have thought the primary advantage of being Debian based is the large repository of packages?
- compsciphd 4y ago
  it says delridge (old) was debian based. Mariner (new) is rpm based (but not a rhel derivative)
- zxspectrum1982 4y ago
  You can install RPMs on Debian but most probably you will run into filesystem-level conflicts with DEB packages. But if you are rebuilding your own Debian-based distro, nothing prevents you from packaging everything into RPMs instead of DEBs and that's see. Not that I see the point of that, though.
  - saghm 4y ago
    From what I understand, most of the package-level tools (dpkg, rpm, etc.) will technically work on any Linux system; you just wouldn't be able to share dependency management with whatever the native package management system is, so as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, dealing with file conflicts would be one annoying issue. I think using the repository-level tooling (apt, yum/dnf, etc.) on distros they're not the default on might be harder to do, although I wouldn't be surprised if it also fell into the "technically possible but probably not worth the effort" bucket.
    - account42 4y ago
      If you are neither using the distro's packages nor the distro's native tooling then in what way is it based on that distro?
      - saghm 4y ago
        My point is that using non-native tooling might conflict with the native tooling which presumably still exists and is managing some non-trivial portion of the system (at the very least, the base installation, but probably a bunch of other packages as well), so whether or not that conflicts with an external package manager is likely to vary by distro.
aeturnum 4y ago
> Microsoft Linux Man, what a time to be alive! Who would have thought it. Edit: who's extending, embracing and extinguishing now?!
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  > Edit: who's extending, embracing and extinguishing now?! Still an open question, I'd say.
  - 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
    Yeah, we're just now reaching the embracing. First Windows+WSL becomes the ideal dev environment, then Linux apps run natively without WSL, and then... why run a Linux kernel? After that they'll have their sights on the real prize: being the dominant browser again.
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      I find these kind of comments fascinating, with the juxtaposition of the late 90s OS wars from the Linux side and the complete pivot to aaS and meet people where they are from Microsoft. Be as watchful as you want, be aware that the enemy isn’t coming though.
    - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
      > First Windows+WSL becomes the ideal dev environment, then Linux apps run natively without WSL, and then... why run a Linux kernel? I think it's more like, "Why run a NT Kernel?" or from an MS internal perspective, "Why fund development and testing of an NT Kernel? We already made it so all legacy Windows apps run natively on Linux anyways"
- shadowfox 4y ago
  It is not like the first time they tried a Unix. Xenix was a thing in the past.
- squarefoot 4y ago
bnjms 4y ago
Why doesn’t MS use Server Core? If they don’t why would anyone use Server at all? Is AD even worthwhile anymore for a new company?
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  > Is AD even worthwhile anymore for a new company? Probably but Samba already does AD so you don't need Microsoft to do it. I guess PolKit at some point may offer similar functionality as group policy.
  - EvanAnderson 4y ago
    I’ve been meaning to get around to trying Samba’s AD emulation for several years now. AD has been very solid in my experience. Samba has big shoes to fill in my mind. Is it really workable as an AD replacement for a real production AD environment today?
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      Yes it is workable but you still need MS tools to configure things like group policy.
  - thedougd 4y ago
    I don't think so. Start with Azure AD if you want the Microsoft system.
    - ncphil 4y ago
      Actually, you can use Azure AD even without any Windows systems.https://canonical.com/blog/new-active-directory-integration-features-in-ubuntu-22-04-faq https://canonical.com/blog/new-active-directory-integration-.... But licensing is still going to cost you. Having said that, as a former directory engineer (iPlanet/Sun/Oracle/ForgeRock) I don't think any of the Azure AD workarounds, including samba's (who really needs CIFS in a world where files can be served up over https with secure OAuth?), are worth all the extra effort. If you need an enterprise directory, you should deploy one. The good news is that both Ubuntu and Red Hat now support Azure AD, so you're not stuck with half measures. Of course not every shop _needs_ a system/network directory, and both those Linux ecosystems support a range of user and system management options that can do the job. Even if you finally find yourself in need of something more, AWS and GCP offer competitive identity services that can work just as well with non-legacy systems as Azure AD (so long as you don't have any Microsoft PaaS or SaaS dependencies).
mastax 4y ago
Imagine writing Linux From Scratch and someone from Microsoft reads it and uses it to make a Linux distribution that goes on to power dozens of that trillion-dollar company's products. To be clear, I'm not saying that "you should be outraged," necessarily. It's just an interesting thing.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  LFS wouldn't be the ideal disto to create a Linux distribution. It might be good to help train people how to make one but Yocto and other projects are better suited for creating a distro. The use of RPM though is IMO a bad choice and one that lets me know that it is very unlikely that this would ever become a major distro for Microsoft.
  - 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
    Of all the Linux package managers (sans 'frontends/wrappers'), RPM is probably the least horrible.
    - jeremyjh 4y ago
      I like Arch’s pacman the best.
      - encryptluks2 4y ago
        Same here.. I think that is what mingw or some of the initial "Windows" Linux distros is based on. A PKGCONF file would really make creating and maintaining packages a breeze.
      - dTal 4y ago
        You should take a look at xbps, used by Void Linux. It's extremely similar in speed and interface, but tracks shared library dependencies and so supports partial updates. xbps-src, roughly equivalent to Arch's makepkg, statelessly builds packages in a chroot which, when writing "templates" (PKGBUILDs), helps make sure you haven't missed any build dependencies simply because they happen to be installed on your system.
noinsight 4y ago
No. Microsoft will buy Canonical for Ubuntu and that sweet, sweet developer mindshare. Ubuntu is the developer distro after all. Ubuntu will become Microsoft Linux.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Is this really realistic ? Why would Microsoft get into the Linux Enterprise market?
  - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
    >> Why would Microsoft get into the Linux Enterprise market? Azure integration
    - jacooper 4y ago
      They can do that without buying canonical surely?
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    Developers Developers Developers Same reason they brought MSSQL to Linux.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Because the same reason they have already tried with WSL... They are losing too many developers.
    - mickael-kerjean 4y ago
      WSL on my office laptop takes 10s to boot and if you CTRL+C before it gives the prompt it shows a python stacktrace. I can only hope that by the time the people who have only ever used windows retire, windows will become as relevant as what cobol is today which is probably an insult to cobol as it's not known to make blue death screen on ATM and airport screen
bitwize 4y ago
Makes me think of Eric S. Raymond's erotic fanfic: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8764 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8764 If this is going to be a desktop offering from Microsoft, I think it will be for remote cloud and potentially WSL2 use only. The future of desktop Linux is a VM under Windows.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  I fully disagree with this. WSL has only from my perspective gave Linux Desktop a bad name due to many poor choices and performance. It has gotten better, but you still need someway to deploy Windows and Windows deployment automation sucks and is bloated. Why would a user want to run a lightweight desktop inside a legacy spyware one?
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    Because Windows is super easy for the vast majority of people to use and desktop Linux isn’t. Windows deployment isn’t bloated, it just has a ton of actual functionality that real users want and that doesn’t come for free. The UX for the admin is also super nice, with tons of online articles and communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do, as opposed to tell you why what you want is bad.
    - pxc 4y ago
      > Windows deployment isn’t bloated, it just has a ton of actual functionality that real users want and that doesn't come for free A base Windows installation takes up a lot of space mainly because of Microsoft's compatibility commitments and the implementation strategy it uses to maintain them, and to some extent the way libraries are typically distributed. Neither OS features, nor hardware compatibility, nor the selection of included applications has much to do with that. Microsoft delivers some real value through their compatibility commitment, but it's a different thing than functionality. > The UX for the admin is also super nice, with tons of online articles and communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do This is frankly a stunning claim. From local configuration being the hodgepodge of many generations of GUIs to the incompleteness to the painful slowness of completing a task through visual imitation to the fundamental hostility automation to the slowness and incompleteness of PowerShell to the absolutely anarchic nature of software management on the platform, administering Windows machines is a cumbersome, manual mess. > communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do, as opposed to tell you why what you want is bad. This is an illusion afforded to those who come to both operating systems with Windows-centric expectations. In this very forum, you can find Windows users who respond to posters who complain about defects that come up with Microsoft's official Windows port of OpenSSH by telling them they never should have tried to use rsync to transfer files between Windows machines. With any operating system, there will always be people who respond to questions involving solutions that are at odds with the paradigm, strengths, or cuatoms of the operating system with advice to re-think the problem. (And sometimes, they'll be right!)
tim-- 4y ago
I thought Microsoft Linux was already shipping in November 2003! https://web.archive.org/web/20190529203637/http://www.mslinux.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190529203637/http://www.mslinu... It even shipped with GUILT - Microsoft's Graphical User Interface command-Line Technology /s
- anyfoo 4y ago
  I do miss the time when whimsical stuff like that was commonplace. Even if it wasn't always original or super funny, some of it was, and it was nice that the Internet was a place for those things.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    The internet was a lot more fun 20 years ago. Not quite as useful for daily life, but definitely much more fun, and less depressing.
- deleted 4y ago
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_carbyau_ 4y ago
Is this is a direct attack on Red Hat? MS Linux including MS Support! But install your favourite RPMs...
- deleted 4y ago
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gotschi_ 4y ago
This reads really bad. Maybe I‘m spoiled with proper linux posts but MS totally shines though with that. Yuck!
dullcrisp 4y ago
How does CBL-Mariner running atop the user’s distribution in WSL work? Is the userland managed by the user’s distro or by this one?
- easton 4y ago
  It’s used as the “system distro” for running support services and stuff before/between when distros are loaded. The distro userland sits on top of the VM running CBL-mariner (and I’m almost certain that when you run multiple wsl distros they are all in one VM, though that may be wrong). Of interest, the CBL-Mariner ”system distro” is where the X server is for WSLg. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/wslg/main/docs/WSLg_ArchitectureOverview.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/wslg/main/docs/W...
  - NGRhodes 4y ago
    >and I’m almost certain that when you run multiple wsl distros they are all in one VM, though that may be wrong Yes, they run as containers. From https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/1573#issuecomment-1185880426 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/1573#issuecommen...: WSL distributions (instances) are not VMs. They are best described as "containers" running inside the WSL2 VM. Each WSL2 distribution/instance has its own isolated: PID namespace Mount namespace User namespace (I believe) Cgroup namespace (And probably) IPC and UTS namespaces WSLg System Distribution (Windows 11 only) init process However, they all share the parent VM's: Network namespace Device tree (other than /dev/pts) CPU/Kernel/Memory/Swap (obviously) /init binary (and some other binaries that are injected in)
tmountain 4y ago
I think this was a Slashdot April Fool’s about 20 years ago.
- sslayer 4y ago
  Extend,Embrace,Extinguish
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    I think you meant Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- IncRnd 4y ago
  Read it and weep, err laugh actually! [1] With Microsoft Linux Enterprise Edition, you can create scalable multi-tier applications using our new Graphical User Interface command-Line Technology (GUILT)?. Extend your productivity with optimized support for Internet Active-XWindows? Technology and built-in Internet Xplorer web browser. ... Hot Topics Microsoft Invades Cuba Microsoft Monkey Colony on Mars MS Linux to have Start Button MS Linux Faces Competition [1] http://www.mslinux.org/ http://www.mslinux.org/
- deleted 4y ago
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IncRnd 4y ago
CBL-Mariner from Microsoft: the only linux distro to build on Ubuntu but work with RPM packages.
- deleted 4y ago
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- naikrovek 4y ago
  it's not built on Ubuntu.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    I did not say based or built on ubuntu. I said that it builds on Ubuntu, which it does and has for many people.
walterbell 4y ago
Microsoft employs primary maintainers of the Linux kernel (gregkh) and systemd (Lennart Poettering), among other Linux contributors. (correction: gregkh works for Linux Foundation, Sasha Levin works for MS). Azure Sphere OS for embedded is based on the Linux kernel, https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/ossna19/91/Crossover_ELC2019.pdf https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/ossna19/91/Crossover_E... There's also their NOS for merchant silicon whitebox networking, https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/software-for-open-networking-in-the-cloud-sonic-moves-to-the-linux-foundation https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/software... > SONiC is an open source network operating system (NOS) based on Linux that runs on over 100 different switches from multiple vendors and ASICs.. members including Alibaba, Broadcom, Dell, Google, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA.. Microsoft founded SONiC.. as open source so the entire networking ecosystem would grow stronger. SONiC already runs on millions of ports in the networks of cloud scalers, enterprises, and fintechs.
- 4khilles 4y ago
  Do you have a source on Microsoft employing GKH? First time I've heard of it.
  - walterbell 4y ago
    Apologies, I mixed up gregkh (Linux Foundation) with Sasha Levin (Microsoft), https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/06/26/2 https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/06/26/2 DirectX on Linux, https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742 https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742
    - ripvanwinkle 4y ago
      Sasha Levin works at Google https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-levin-9861662 https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-levin-9861662
      - walterbell 4y ago
        Since 2021. During the 2020 thread posted above, he worked at Microsoft. Other MS contributors to LKML: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/?q=microsoft.com https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/?q=microsoft.com
sylware 4y ago
I recall when novell bought suse, since everybody was considering novell as basically a proxy of msft (maybe a member of the blackrock/vanguard galaxy), it was presumed than suse gnu/linux was basically msft gnu linux.
desktopninja 4y ago
Lindows!!! Anyone remember that catchy song "Lindows Rocks" from the 2000s?
- pjmlp 4y ago
  No, but I remember the ill fated distribution.
  - desktopninja 4y ago
    https://youtu.be/QSdRTOh2jeA https://youtu.be/QSdRTOh2jeA
tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
"MS Linux: Shipping in November 2003!" https://web.archive.org/web/20050204084517/http://www.mslinux.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050204084517/http://www.mslinu... ;)
- account42 4y ago
  Does that come with Linux Genuine Advantage™? http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/ http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/
dis-sys 4y ago
do they use bash and vim as the default shell & editor?
DeathArrow 4y ago
>While there is no official GUI desktop, there are some interesting GNOME packages landing in the repository Since it's likely that some developers at Microsoft have some prior experience with Windows development, I wonder if they find Gnome and GTK philosophy more close to Windows programming experience than KDE, QT etc. I also wonder if we will see a GTK backed for .NET MAUI.
rcarmo 4y ago
I have zero to do with Mariner, but I would just like to point out that nobody seems to have actually read the distro docs. I see it as a way to have end-to-end supply chain management for critical components that are used across multiple MS workloads, and not as something directly targeted at customers, so all the conspiracy theories in this HN thread are incredibly amusing. Everyone’s free to use it, though. The entire thing is up on GitHub someplace (on mobile, so can’t dig out the repo easily), but some assembly might be required for your use case. As an anecdote, when I was playing around with it (built a VM, some containers, etc.) I also moved my personal laptop to Fedora because I realized I was out of touch with modern RPM-based distros.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  > so all the conspiracy theories in this HN thread are incredibly amusing. Microsoft may be just doing something for their needs, and putting in the open like a good citizen of the FOSS world, but the older people who remembers whatever happened back in the day have all their rights to be paranoid about MS. "Eh, this is the old Microsoft, today's one is different" is just a sentence. They still don't (and probably never will) inspire confidence when it comes to Linux and FOSS. We see what they have done with GitHub, for a start.
  - rcarmo 4y ago
    Well, I have been in the industry for over a quarter of a century (at least) and joined Microsoft around the time Satya presented his “MS Loves Linux” slide, and those people would be amazed at the internal culture around OSS contributions. But having worked at several tech companies and with direct insight into a few others, I’m used to cognitive dissonance between outside views and reality. (It was a little annoying to get vaguely threatening, but overtly insulting e-mails at my taoofmac.com address the first couple of months, though. Oh, and I’m a Mac user, too. Try to factor that in …)
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      Everybody is telling the same thing, but with the all Secure Boot debacle, Halloween Documents, GPL violations with Copilot, and other things, it's very difficult to believe and feel this. When these definitions merge, Microsoft looks like a cozy home with a fireplace inside, but built like a spiky poisonous ball outside, designed to crush anything and everything. I don't want to act like a bone headed old men yelling to the cloud, but from outside, none of this is visible. Oh, even Microsoft screwed its own supporters with hot-reload support incident in .NET Core. Whenever I say myself, "OK, past is past. No need to be this rigid", Microsoft does another thing to make me return to my old stance. Maybe Microsoft needs to be able to see itself from outside?
phendrenad2 4y ago
I must be the only one in the world not intrigued and excited by an incredibly boring server distro, barely different from Debian, that happens to be made by the Microsoft cloud Linux server department. Am I really missing something?

163 points by pengwinhayden 4y ago

yellowapple 4y ago

The Devil's rummaging through his closet for some mittens.

taftster 4y ago
This comment made me LOL. Thank you, that's pretty funny. I was curious if this was a saying I'd never heard of or if you just came up with it. Seems you just came up with this? What's amazing is that Google already has this HN post indexed and you're already the first hit for the phrase. And even weirder, Google says that they (currently) indexed it 56 minutes ago, when HN reports you posted it 23 minutes ago. Google is now apparently predicting the future 33 minutes in advance. https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Devil%27s+rummaging+through+his+closet+for+some+mittens https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Devil%27s+rummaging+thro...
- cipherboy 4y ago
  Wouldn't that just be because OP's comment appeared on the article, which was posted ~1h ago, and the Google result link is to the article, not the comment directly, hence has the earlier timestamp?
  - taftster 4y ago
    Ah yes, OK. My bad. That definitely sets the world back to normal then.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    It's still a bit off; Google's index clearly contains content that wasn't present on the page at the "time of indexing". Whatever content appeared on the page after Google indexed it is something Google shouldn't know about.
    - danielheath 4y ago
      Googles indexing defers javascript execution. If comments are loaded via JS, they'll appear on the index with the timestamp the page was fetched, not the time its script was executed.
      - metadat 4y ago
        HN uses notoriously scant amounts of JS, and not at all for comments, so this doesn't explain the puzzle of odd indexing behavior.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > even weirder, Google says that they (currently) indexed it 56 minutes ago, when HN reports you posted it 23 minutes ago. Google is now apparently predicting the future 33 minutes in advance. One interpretation is that Google is lying about the indexing time. But it seems more likely in this case that they're reporting the indexing time of the page they link to ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33458756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33458756 ), rather than the indexing time of the comment you're responding to ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459157 , which can only have been indexed half an hour ago). In other words, they updated their cache of the page content without refreshing the indexing timestamp.
  - sally_glance 4y ago
    Yeah, they don't seem to make any guarantees at all about the date being displayed next to the search result... I'm too lazy to check the page source here right now on which meta fields are updated with comments, but this is what Google says about how they determine the date: > Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup. > Google doesn't depend on one single factor because all of them can be prone to issues. Publishers may not always provide a clear visible date. Sometimes, structured data may be lacking or may not be adjusted to the correct time zone. That's why our systems look at several factors to come up with what we consider to be our best estimate of when a page was published or significantly updated. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-googl...
- gerdesj 4y ago
  Get a grip old chap and think through the old saw: "... when Hell freezes over", meaning [it] will never happen. There are plenty of riffs on that meme, including devilish hand protection strategies. Google is a boring old replayer of trite old stuff and quite right too - that's what it does! I suspect it also reads HN on a tight loop - many of the locals there are also from this parish. I suspect even the eye of Sauron doom scrolls HN ...
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > I was curious if this was a saying I'd never heard of or if you just came up with it. Seems you just came up with this? It's just a variation on similar sayings like "the devil's putting on ice skates".
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago

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denkmoon 4y ago

The article says Delridge is Debian based but appears to be using RPMs? Never seen that. I would have thought the primary advantage of being Debian based is the large repository of packages?

compsciphd 4y ago
it says delridge (old) was debian based. Mariner (new) is rpm based (but not a rhel derivative)
zxspectrum1982 4y ago
You can install RPMs on Debian but most probably you will run into filesystem-level conflicts with DEB packages. But if you are rebuilding your own Debian-based distro, nothing prevents you from packaging everything into RPMs instead of DEBs and that's see. Not that I see the point of that, though.
- saghm 4y ago
  From what I understand, most of the package-level tools (dpkg, rpm, etc.) will technically work on any Linux system; you just wouldn't be able to share dependency management with whatever the native package management system is, so as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, dealing with file conflicts would be one annoying issue. I think using the repository-level tooling (apt, yum/dnf, etc.) on distros they're not the default on might be harder to do, although I wouldn't be surprised if it also fell into the "technically possible but probably not worth the effort" bucket.
  - account42 4y ago
    If you are neither using the distro's packages nor the distro's native tooling then in what way is it based on that distro?
    - saghm 4y ago
      My point is that using non-native tooling might conflict with the native tooling which presumably still exists and is managing some non-trivial portion of the system (at the very least, the base installation, but probably a bunch of other packages as well), so whether or not that conflicts with an external package manager is likely to vary by distro.

aeturnum 4y ago

> Microsoft Linux Man, what a time to be alive! Who would have thought it. Edit: who's extending, embracing and extinguishing now?!

CoastalCoder 4y ago
> Edit: who's extending, embracing and extinguishing now?! Still an open question, I'd say.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  Yeah, we're just now reaching the embracing. First Windows+WSL becomes the ideal dev environment, then Linux apps run natively without WSL, and then... why run a Linux kernel? After that they'll have their sights on the real prize: being the dominant browser again.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    I find these kind of comments fascinating, with the juxtaposition of the late 90s OS wars from the Linux side and the complete pivot to aaS and meet people where they are from Microsoft. Be as watchful as you want, be aware that the enemy isn’t coming though.
  - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
    > First Windows+WSL becomes the ideal dev environment, then Linux apps run natively without WSL, and then... why run a Linux kernel? I think it's more like, "Why run a NT Kernel?" or from an MS internal perspective, "Why fund development and testing of an NT Kernel? We already made it so all legacy Windows apps run natively on Linux anyways"
shadowfox 4y ago
It is not like the first time they tried a Unix. Xenix was a thing in the past.
squarefoot 4y ago

bnjms 4y ago

Why doesn’t MS use Server Core? If they don’t why would anyone use Server at all? Is AD even worthwhile anymore for a new company?

encryptluks2 4y ago
> Is AD even worthwhile anymore for a new company? Probably but Samba already does AD so you don't need Microsoft to do it. I guess PolKit at some point may offer similar functionality as group policy.
- EvanAnderson 4y ago
  I’ve been meaning to get around to trying Samba’s AD emulation for several years now. AD has been very solid in my experience. Samba has big shoes to fill in my mind. Is it really workable as an AD replacement for a real production AD environment today?
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Yes it is workable but you still need MS tools to configure things like group policy.
- thedougd 4y ago
  I don't think so. Start with Azure AD if you want the Microsoft system.
  - ncphil 4y ago
    Actually, you can use Azure AD even without any Windows systems.https://canonical.com/blog/new-active-directory-integration-features-in-ubuntu-22-04-faq https://canonical.com/blog/new-active-directory-integration-.... But licensing is still going to cost you. Having said that, as a former directory engineer (iPlanet/Sun/Oracle/ForgeRock) I don't think any of the Azure AD workarounds, including samba's (who really needs CIFS in a world where files can be served up over https with secure OAuth?), are worth all the extra effort. If you need an enterprise directory, you should deploy one. The good news is that both Ubuntu and Red Hat now support Azure AD, so you're not stuck with half measures. Of course not every shop _needs_ a system/network directory, and both those Linux ecosystems support a range of user and system management options that can do the job. Even if you finally find yourself in need of something more, AWS and GCP offer competitive identity services that can work just as well with non-legacy systems as Azure AD (so long as you don't have any Microsoft PaaS or SaaS dependencies).

mastax 4y ago

Imagine writing Linux From Scratch and someone from Microsoft reads it and uses it to make a Linux distribution that goes on to power dozens of that trillion-dollar company's products. To be clear, I'm not saying that "you should be outraged," necessarily. It's just an interesting thing.

encryptluks2 4y ago
LFS wouldn't be the ideal disto to create a Linux distribution. It might be good to help train people how to make one but Yocto and other projects are better suited for creating a distro. The use of RPM though is IMO a bad choice and one that lets me know that it is very unlikely that this would ever become a major distro for Microsoft.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  Of all the Linux package managers (sans 'frontends/wrappers'), RPM is probably the least horrible.
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    I like Arch’s pacman the best.
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      Same here.. I think that is what mingw or some of the initial "Windows" Linux distros is based on. A PKGCONF file would really make creating and maintaining packages a breeze.
    - dTal 4y ago
      You should take a look at xbps, used by Void Linux. It's extremely similar in speed and interface, but tracks shared library dependencies and so supports partial updates. xbps-src, roughly equivalent to Arch's makepkg, statelessly builds packages in a chroot which, when writing "templates" (PKGBUILDs), helps make sure you haven't missed any build dependencies simply because they happen to be installed on your system.

noinsight 4y ago

No. Microsoft will buy Canonical for Ubuntu and that sweet, sweet developer mindshare. Ubuntu is the developer distro after all. Ubuntu will become Microsoft Linux.

jacooper 4y ago
Is this really realistic ? Why would Microsoft get into the Linux Enterprise market?
- thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
  >> Why would Microsoft get into the Linux Enterprise market? Azure integration
  - jacooper 4y ago
    They can do that without buying canonical surely?
- denkmoon 4y ago
  Developers Developers Developers Same reason they brought MSSQL to Linux.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Because the same reason they have already tried with WSL... They are losing too many developers.
  - mickael-kerjean 4y ago
    WSL on my office laptop takes 10s to boot and if you CTRL+C before it gives the prompt it shows a python stacktrace. I can only hope that by the time the people who have only ever used windows retire, windows will become as relevant as what cobol is today which is probably an insult to cobol as it's not known to make blue death screen on ATM and airport screen

bitwize 4y ago

Makes me think of Eric S. Raymond's erotic fanfic: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8764 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8764 If this is going to be a desktop offering from Microsoft, I think it will be for remote cloud and potentially WSL2 use only. The future of desktop Linux is a VM under Windows.

encryptluks2 4y ago
I fully disagree with this. WSL has only from my perspective gave Linux Desktop a bad name due to many poor choices and performance. It has gotten better, but you still need someway to deploy Windows and Windows deployment automation sucks and is bloated. Why would a user want to run a lightweight desktop inside a legacy spyware one?
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  Because Windows is super easy for the vast majority of people to use and desktop Linux isn’t. Windows deployment isn’t bloated, it just has a ton of actual functionality that real users want and that doesn’t come for free. The UX for the admin is also super nice, with tons of online articles and communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do, as opposed to tell you why what you want is bad.
  - pxc 4y ago
    > Windows deployment isn’t bloated, it just has a ton of actual functionality that real users want and that doesn't come for free A base Windows installation takes up a lot of space mainly because of Microsoft's compatibility commitments and the implementation strategy it uses to maintain them, and to some extent the way libraries are typically distributed. Neither OS features, nor hardware compatibility, nor the selection of included applications has much to do with that. Microsoft delivers some real value through their compatibility commitment, but it's a different thing than functionality. > The UX for the admin is also super nice, with tons of online articles and communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do This is frankly a stunning claim. From local configuration being the hodgepodge of many generations of GUIs to the incompleteness to the painful slowness of completing a task through visual imitation to the fundamental hostility automation to the slowness and incompleteness of PowerShell to the absolutely anarchic nature of software management on the platform, administering Windows machines is a cumbersome, manual mess. > communities with people who are willing to help you do what you’re trying to do, as opposed to tell you why what you want is bad. This is an illusion afforded to those who come to both operating systems with Windows-centric expectations. In this very forum, you can find Windows users who respond to posters who complain about defects that come up with Microsoft's official Windows port of OpenSSH by telling them they never should have tried to use rsync to transfer files between Windows machines. With any operating system, there will always be people who respond to questions involving solutions that are at odds with the paradigm, strengths, or cuatoms of the operating system with advice to re-think the problem. (And sometimes, they'll be right!)

tim-- 4y ago

I thought Microsoft Linux was already shipping in November 2003! https://web.archive.org/web/20190529203637/http://www.mslinux.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190529203637/http://www.mslinu... It even shipped with GUILT - Microsoft's Graphical User Interface command-Line Technology /s

anyfoo 4y ago
I do miss the time when whimsical stuff like that was commonplace. Even if it wasn't always original or super funny, some of it was, and it was nice that the Internet was a place for those things.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The internet was a lot more fun 20 years ago. Not quite as useful for daily life, but definitely much more fun, and less depressing.
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_carbyau_ 4y ago

Is this is a direct attack on Red Hat? MS Linux including MS Support! But install your favourite RPMs...

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gotschi_ 4y ago

This reads really bad. Maybe I‘m spoiled with proper linux posts but MS totally shines though with that. Yuck!

dullcrisp 4y ago

How does CBL-Mariner running atop the user’s distribution in WSL work? Is the userland managed by the user’s distro or by this one?

easton 4y ago
It’s used as the “system distro” for running support services and stuff before/between when distros are loaded. The distro userland sits on top of the VM running CBL-mariner (and I’m almost certain that when you run multiple wsl distros they are all in one VM, though that may be wrong). Of interest, the CBL-Mariner ”system distro” is where the X server is for WSLg. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/wslg/main/docs/WSLg_ArchitectureOverview.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/wslg/main/docs/W...
- NGRhodes 4y ago
  >and I’m almost certain that when you run multiple wsl distros they are all in one VM, though that may be wrong Yes, they run as containers. From https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/1573#issuecomment-1185880426 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/1573#issuecommen...: WSL distributions (instances) are not VMs. They are best described as "containers" running inside the WSL2 VM. Each WSL2 distribution/instance has its own isolated: PID namespace Mount namespace User namespace (I believe) Cgroup namespace (And probably) IPC and UTS namespaces WSLg System Distribution (Windows 11 only) init process However, they all share the parent VM's: Network namespace Device tree (other than /dev/pts) CPU/Kernel/Memory/Swap (obviously) /init binary (and some other binaries that are injected in)

tmountain 4y ago

I think this was a Slashdot April Fool’s about 20 years ago.

sslayer 4y ago
Extend,Embrace,Extinguish
- IncRnd 4y ago
  I think you meant Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
IncRnd 4y ago
Read it and weep, err laugh actually! [1] With Microsoft Linux Enterprise Edition, you can create scalable multi-tier applications using our new Graphical User Interface command-Line Technology (GUILT)?. Extend your productivity with optimized support for Internet Active-XWindows? Technology and built-in Internet Xplorer web browser. ... Hot Topics Microsoft Invades Cuba Microsoft Monkey Colony on Mars MS Linux to have Start Button MS Linux Faces Competition [1] http://www.mslinux.org/ http://www.mslinux.org/
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IncRnd 4y ago

CBL-Mariner from Microsoft: the only linux distro to build on Ubuntu but work with RPM packages.

deleted 4y ago
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naikrovek 4y ago
it's not built on Ubuntu.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  I did not say based or built on ubuntu. I said that it builds on Ubuntu, which it does and has for many people.

walterbell 4y ago

Microsoft employs primary maintainers of the Linux kernel (gregkh) and systemd (Lennart Poettering), among other Linux contributors. (correction: gregkh works for Linux Foundation, Sasha Levin works for MS). Azure Sphere OS for embedded is based on the Linux kernel, https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/ossna19/91/Crossover_ELC2019.pdf https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/ossna19/91/Crossover_E... There's also their NOS for merchant silicon whitebox networking, https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/software-for-open-networking-in-the-cloud-sonic-moves-to-the-linux-foundation https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/software... > SONiC is an open source network operating system (NOS) based on Linux that runs on over 100 different switches from multiple vendors and ASICs.. members including Alibaba, Broadcom, Dell, Google, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA.. Microsoft founded SONiC.. as open source so the entire networking ecosystem would grow stronger. SONiC already runs on millions of ports in the networks of cloud scalers, enterprises, and fintechs.

4khilles 4y ago
Do you have a source on Microsoft employing GKH? First time I've heard of it.
- walterbell 4y ago
  Apologies, I mixed up gregkh (Linux Foundation) with Sasha Levin (Microsoft), https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/06/26/2 https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/06/26/2 DirectX on Linux, https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742 https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742
  - ripvanwinkle 4y ago
    Sasha Levin works at Google https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-levin-9861662 https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-levin-9861662
    - walterbell 4y ago
      Since 2021. During the 2020 thread posted above, he worked at Microsoft. Other MS contributors to LKML: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/?q=microsoft.com https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/?q=microsoft.com

sylware 4y ago

I recall when novell bought suse, since everybody was considering novell as basically a proxy of msft (maybe a member of the blackrock/vanguard galaxy), it was presumed than suse gnu/linux was basically msft gnu linux.

desktopninja 4y ago

Lindows!!! Anyone remember that catchy song "Lindows Rocks" from the 2000s?

pjmlp 4y ago
No, but I remember the ill fated distribution.
- desktopninja 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/QSdRTOh2jeA https://youtu.be/QSdRTOh2jeA

tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago

"MS Linux: Shipping in November 2003!" https://web.archive.org/web/20050204084517/http://www.mslinux.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050204084517/http://www.mslinu... ;)

account42 4y ago
Does that come with Linux Genuine Advantage™? http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/ http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/

dis-sys 4y ago

do they use bash and vim as the default shell & editor?

DeathArrow 4y ago

>While there is no official GUI desktop, there are some interesting GNOME packages landing in the repository Since it's likely that some developers at Microsoft have some prior experience with Windows development, I wonder if they find Gnome and GTK philosophy more close to Windows programming experience than KDE, QT etc. I also wonder if we will see a GTK backed for .NET MAUI.

rcarmo 4y ago

I have zero to do with Mariner, but I would just like to point out that nobody seems to have actually read the distro docs. I see it as a way to have end-to-end supply chain management for critical components that are used across multiple MS workloads, and not as something directly targeted at customers, so all the conspiracy theories in this HN thread are incredibly amusing. Everyone’s free to use it, though. The entire thing is up on GitHub someplace (on mobile, so can’t dig out the repo easily), but some assembly might be required for your use case. As an anecdote, when I was playing around with it (built a VM, some containers, etc.) I also moved my personal laptop to Fedora because I realized I was out of touch with modern RPM-based distros.

bayindirh 4y ago
> so all the conspiracy theories in this HN thread are incredibly amusing. Microsoft may be just doing something for their needs, and putting in the open like a good citizen of the FOSS world, but the older people who remembers whatever happened back in the day have all their rights to be paranoid about MS. "Eh, this is the old Microsoft, today's one is different" is just a sentence. They still don't (and probably never will) inspire confidence when it comes to Linux and FOSS. We see what they have done with GitHub, for a start.
- rcarmo 4y ago
  Well, I have been in the industry for over a quarter of a century (at least) and joined Microsoft around the time Satya presented his “MS Loves Linux” slide, and those people would be amazed at the internal culture around OSS contributions. But having worked at several tech companies and with direct insight into a few others, I’m used to cognitive dissonance between outside views and reality. (It was a little annoying to get vaguely threatening, but overtly insulting e-mails at my taoofmac.com address the first couple of months, though. Oh, and I’m a Mac user, too. Try to factor that in …)
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Everybody is telling the same thing, but with the all Secure Boot debacle, Halloween Documents, GPL violations with Copilot, and other things, it's very difficult to believe and feel this. When these definitions merge, Microsoft looks like a cozy home with a fireplace inside, but built like a spiky poisonous ball outside, designed to crush anything and everything. I don't want to act like a bone headed old men yelling to the cloud, but from outside, none of this is visible. Oh, even Microsoft screwed its own supporters with hot-reload support incident in .NET Core. Whenever I say myself, "OK, past is past. No need to be this rigid", Microsoft does another thing to make me return to my old stance. Maybe Microsoft needs to be able to see itself from outside?

phendrenad2 4y ago

I must be the only one in the world not intrigued and excited by an incredibly boring server distro, barely different from Debian, that happens to be made by the Microsoft cloud Linux server department. Am I really missing something?