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If Windows 10 was built on top of Linux I'd get a lot more excited. I have to use Windows for the myriad of engineering tools that are not available under any

If Windows 10 was built on top of Linux I'd get a lot more excited. I have to use Windows for the myriad of engineering tools that are not available under any other OS, for example, SolidWorks, Altium Designer, various embedded toolsets, etc. And, while I've been using PC's (and Macs and Linux) since they came on the scene I hate, hate, hate the DOS or technically DOS-like underbelly of the beast. I know it is a ridiculous idea. It would break everything, including their profitable corporate platforms. Yes, there are ways to mitigate this but it'd be nice if all computing platforms got behind a common standard. Utopia. I know.

yzzxy 12y ago
What about just real POSIX and some kind of X interop or compatibility baked in? My (poorly informed) guess is this would allow a lot of low-hanging fruit from Linux, BSD, etc to be ported properly.
- alttab 12y ago
  Inevitably that effort would still fall short, and therefore not really at all. The leverage of linux is the linux community, and the access. Not ls vs dir. IMO. In any case, if they provided the Windows 8 experience built right on top of linux (and all the binaries and everything still worked) it would be a marvel.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Windows used to have those things. Windows 8 was where they removed it. I believe the official answer nowadays is "run a Unix using Hyper-V."
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Well, no, they didn't remove it; its been a separate component for a long time, and with Windows 8 they restricted it to Windows 8 Enterprise and Server 2012. (Though I think the Windows 7 version can actually be used in Windows 8.)
    - cwyers 12y ago
      It's deprecated in Windows Server 2012: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831568.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831568.aspx I believe it was removed with 2012 R2.
      - 72deluxe 12y ago
        I wonder if it was because nobody used it? It must have been a large thing to maintain and test every release.
        lmm 12y ago
        It was gaining popularity at the point where they killed it; there was this real buzz, a feeling that this really cool thing was finally spreading to more people.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        > It was gaining popularity at the point where they killed it Was it? As far as I can tell, it had been losing popularity for a long time before Windows 8, and it was rare and getting rarer that any nx-based project would recommend using it on Windows, though occasionally you'd find people outside the main projects with recipes for making it work (or horror stories of their attempts to do so.)
        lmm 12y ago
        I felt like it was. Things like the gentoo-on-windows project were new and lively, and that company that was backing it was getting a bigger and bigger set of packages in their repo.
cperciva 12y ago
If Windows 10 was built on top of Linux I'd get a lot more excited. GPL would make that impossible. There are reasons OS X is based on BSD, and not all of them are about technical superiority.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Android is built on Linux, and it seems to do just fine despite the kernel being GPL'd.
  - 0x0 12y ago
    "just fine" isn't perfectly true. The bionic interface they somehow "wash" from GPL headers to BSD headers is questionable.
    - dezgeg 12y ago
      Nope, there is nothing questionable about it. Linus himself has stated it: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110322014831856 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110322014831...
      - 0x0 12y ago
        That's interesting. Still, there are a huge number of copyright holders of the linux kernel and some may have a different opinion on the legalese applies.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
- wfjackson 12y ago
  WebOS and Jolla had/have a ton of closed source components(pretty much the whole GUI) but run on top of Linux so there's a loophole somehere.
  - dezgeg 12y ago
ANTSANTS 12y ago
The APIs may be annoying (HWND, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, DWORD_PTR dwcsprcadrswtfbbq, NULL, ...) but that backwards compatibility you're suggesting they do away with is pretty much the best thing about Windows. I got so fucking sick of the desktop Linux people constantly breaking everything on foppery and whim that I went back to Windows 7+mingw, and while Stallman would be ashamed of me, I have to say that it's incredibly comforting to use a platform that mostly figured itself out over a decade ago, that won't change under my feet every other month, and even when it does (Windows 8) I can keep using the version I liked best for years and years because they actually took binary compatibility seriously throughout the entire system. There are still people on XP for christ's sake. I'll take that over overzealous redhatters who think they know what's best for me any day.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Being built on Linux as GP suggested doesn't mean its just Linux -- presumably you'd implementing Windows APIs on top of Linux. Think WINE, but without the disadvantage of having to be done by third parties. Though a more likely way, were Microsoft to want to bridge that gap, would be to have a solid first-party POSIX environment on top of Windows, rather than the other way around.
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    Why? What's the point? NT isn't bad at all, it's just different from POSIX (hell, I can't believe the irony of this statement, but I'm glad that Microsoft is still around to resist the POSIX monoculture). Neither Microsoft nor the Free Software™ world would gain much from killing the NT kernel, but the latter camp would gain so much more from learning the lessons that made Windows so successful 20 goddamned years after the fact. It's so sad hearing Linus passionately say "you do not break binary compatibility in the kernel" then watching people on the outside flagrantly disregard this concept time and time again.
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      > Why? What's the point? The point is portability. People now write all of their server software for Linux. More people would bother porting it to Windows if doing so was easier. Example: There is no Windows equivalent to epoll/kqueue. Neither of them is even POSIX. But if you bring this up to most Windows people they tell you to use IO completion ports, which are totally different and require the core of the program to be redesigned.
72deluxe 12y ago
Which bit of Windows do you feel is DOS-like? Did you ever use DOS? The DOS underbelly of Windows disappeared with the release of Windows XP over a decade ago. Windows 95 and 98 were DOS-based, or at least had DOS underpinnings to some extent I think. From an API point of view, the Win32 API is incredibly stable and reliable and allows the ability to run programs from decades ago. This contrasts sharply with Linux, where the APIs are in a constant state of irritating flux. From a serious development perspective, this might be why the commercial application market has flourished under Windows and why you see commercial Linux applications few and far between, and (usually?) treated as a side attempt before falling by the wayside (as it appears that few Linux users will pass over cash for an application). I would believe it is a naive approach to ask that Windows be "built on top of Linux". They are architecturally different: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT I do not install mingw or cygwin or any other "Linux-land" compilers/systems on Windows because it feels like I'm using the wrong system - just install Linux if I want all that! It would be better to just use native Visual Studio in Windows-land and keep everything separate, no? Ordinary users that I am writing software for will typically have the Visual-C++ runtimes already installed so bundling of different GNU DLLs is redundant.
- robomartin 12y ago
  We are now starting a large Python/Django project. All of our software development to date save iOS has been done on Windows machines. It is quickly becoming a PITA to develop these kinds of projects on a non-unix platform. Serioulsly considering switching everyone to Mac Pro's despite cost (10 to 12 seats). Yes, there are work-arounds. Not sure they solve the problem. More than willing to listen to suggestions.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    I would switch to the Mac Pro, even an older tower one. They still have bonkers performance (it's my main development machine for native C++ and Windows development in a VM). But you don't feel like you're fighting with the system to do "unix" things like you do on Windows, and it doesn't feel like you're trying to fit a peg into a square hole, which shoving all GNU tools etc. onto Windows certainly feels like to me. Or I suppose you could go with Linux and fight the shifting desktop sands? (That's why I got fed up with it and switched mainly to Mac OSX; despite the OSX changes, they're gradual and not insisting that we drop the dock or window behaviour etc.)

yzzxy 12y ago

What about just real POSIX and some kind of X interop or compatibility baked in? My (poorly informed) guess is this would allow a lot of low-hanging fruit from Linux, BSD, etc to be ported properly.

alttab 12y ago
Inevitably that effort would still fall short, and therefore not really at all. The leverage of linux is the linux community, and the access. Not ls vs dir. IMO. In any case, if they provided the Windows 8 experience built right on top of linux (and all the binaries and everything still worked) it would be a marvel.
cwyers 12y ago
Windows used to have those things. Windows 8 was where they removed it. I believe the official answer nowadays is "run a Unix using Hyper-V."
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Well, no, they didn't remove it; its been a separate component for a long time, and with Windows 8 they restricted it to Windows 8 Enterprise and Server 2012. (Though I think the Windows 7 version can actually be used in Windows 8.)
  - cwyers 12y ago
    It's deprecated in Windows Server 2012: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831568.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831568.aspx I believe it was removed with 2012 R2.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      I wonder if it was because nobody used it? It must have been a large thing to maintain and test every release.
      - lmm 12y ago
        It was gaining popularity at the point where they killed it; there was this real buzz, a feeling that this really cool thing was finally spreading to more people.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        > It was gaining popularity at the point where they killed it Was it? As far as I can tell, it had been losing popularity for a long time before Windows 8, and it was rare and getting rarer that any nx-based project would recommend using it on Windows, though occasionally you'd find people outside the main projects with recipes for making it work (or horror stories of their attempts to do so.)
        lmm 12y ago
        I felt like it was. Things like the gentoo-on-windows project were new and lively, and that company that was backing it was getting a bigger and bigger set of packages in their repo.

cperciva 12y ago

If Windows 10 was built on top of Linux I'd get a lot more excited. GPL would make that impossible. There are reasons OS X is based on BSD, and not all of them are about technical superiority.

cwyers 12y ago
Android is built on Linux, and it seems to do just fine despite the kernel being GPL'd.
- 0x0 12y ago
  "just fine" isn't perfectly true. The bionic interface they somehow "wash" from GPL headers to BSD headers is questionable.
  - dezgeg 12y ago
    Nope, there is nothing questionable about it. Linus himself has stated it: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110322014831856 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110322014831...
    - 0x0 12y ago
      That's interesting. Still, there are a huge number of copyright holders of the linux kernel and some may have a different opinion on the legalese applies.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
wfjackson 12y ago
WebOS and Jolla had/have a ton of closed source components(pretty much the whole GUI) but run on top of Linux so there's a loophole somehere.
- dezgeg 12y ago

ANTSANTS 12y ago

The APIs may be annoying (HWND, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, DWORD_PTR dwcsprcadrswtfbbq, NULL, ...) but that backwards compatibility you're suggesting they do away with is pretty much the best thing about Windows. I got so fucking sick of the desktop Linux people constantly breaking everything on foppery and whim that I went back to Windows 7+mingw, and while Stallman would be ashamed of me, I have to say that it's incredibly comforting to use a platform that mostly figured itself out over a decade ago, that won't change under my feet every other month, and even when it does (Windows 8) I can keep using the version I liked best for years and years because they actually took binary compatibility seriously throughout the entire system. There are still people on XP for christ's sake. I'll take that over overzealous redhatters who think they know what's best for me any day.

dragonwriter 12y ago
Being built on Linux as GP suggested doesn't mean its just Linux -- presumably you'd implementing Windows APIs on top of Linux. Think WINE, but without the disadvantage of having to be done by third parties. Though a more likely way, were Microsoft to want to bridge that gap, would be to have a solid first-party POSIX environment on top of Windows, rather than the other way around.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  Why? What's the point? NT isn't bad at all, it's just different from POSIX (hell, I can't believe the irony of this statement, but I'm glad that Microsoft is still around to resist the POSIX monoculture). Neither Microsoft nor the Free Software™ world would gain much from killing the NT kernel, but the latter camp would gain so much more from learning the lessons that made Windows so successful 20 goddamned years after the fact. It's so sad hearing Linus passionately say "you do not break binary compatibility in the kernel" then watching people on the outside flagrantly disregard this concept time and time again.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    > Why? What's the point? The point is portability. People now write all of their server software for Linux. More people would bother porting it to Windows if doing so was easier. Example: There is no Windows equivalent to epoll/kqueue. Neither of them is even POSIX. But if you bring this up to most Windows people they tell you to use IO completion ports, which are totally different and require the core of the program to be redesigned.

72deluxe 12y ago

Which bit of Windows do you feel is DOS-like? Did you ever use DOS? The DOS underbelly of Windows disappeared with the release of Windows XP over a decade ago. Windows 95 and 98 were DOS-based, or at least had DOS underpinnings to some extent I think. From an API point of view, the Win32 API is incredibly stable and reliable and allows the ability to run programs from decades ago. This contrasts sharply with Linux, where the APIs are in a constant state of irritating flux. From a serious development perspective, this might be why the commercial application market has flourished under Windows and why you see commercial Linux applications few and far between, and (usually?) treated as a side attempt before falling by the wayside (as it appears that few Linux users will pass over cash for an application). I would believe it is a naive approach to ask that Windows be "built on top of Linux". They are architecturally different: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT I do not install mingw or cygwin or any other "Linux-land" compilers/systems on Windows because it feels like I'm using the wrong system - just install Linux if I want all that! It would be better to just use native Visual Studio in Windows-land and keep everything separate, no? Ordinary users that I am writing software for will typically have the Visual-C++ runtimes already installed so bundling of different GNU DLLs is redundant.

robomartin 12y ago
We are now starting a large Python/Django project. All of our software development to date save iOS has been done on Windows machines. It is quickly becoming a PITA to develop these kinds of projects on a non-unix platform. Serioulsly considering switching everyone to Mac Pro's despite cost (10 to 12 seats). Yes, there are work-arounds. Not sure they solve the problem. More than willing to listen to suggestions.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I would switch to the Mac Pro, even an older tower one. They still have bonkers performance (it's my main development machine for native C++ and Windows development in a VM). But you don't feel like you're fighting with the system to do "unix" things like you do on Windows, and it doesn't feel like you're trying to fit a peg into a square hole, which shoving all GNU tools etc. onto Windows certainly feels like to me. Or I suppose you could go with Linux and fight the shifting desktop sands? (That's why I got fed up with it and switched mainly to Mac OSX; despite the OSX changes, they're gradual and not insisting that we drop the dock or window behaviour etc.)