6 ms·

I get the feeling MS is heading towards Windows running on a MS Linux kernel at some point. An MS linux build, that supports .NET (CoreCLR) and a true cross pl

by WDCDev 12y ago

I get the feeling MS is heading towards Windows running on a MS Linux kernel at some point. An MS linux build, that supports .NET (CoreCLR) and a true cross platform windowing library (WPF) would be serious force to contend with in both the enterprise and consumer markets.

danieldk 12y ago
I get the feeling MS is heading towards Windows running on a MS Linux kernel at some point. What would be the point? The NT kernel has a newer architecture than the Linux kernel and build upon Dave Cutler's experience with VMS (which could already benefit from learning from Unix). Open sourcing the NT kernel does make a lot of sense though, since it would be easier to integrate Windows in Xen, KVM, and other virtualization infrastructure. They will probably end up taking an Apple-like approach. Open bits where it is strategic and keep some bits closed to sell Windows licenses. It 'only' took a new CEO to do the rational thing.
- nly 12y ago
  "newer architecture" doesn't really mean much. Microsoft have to maintain a more rigid overall structure because they are committed to third-party binary compatibility wrt drivers and such. As a result, major architectural shifts in things like networking or graphics (XP -> Vista) cause a lot of pain. It's a trade-off. Linux looks floppy architecturally because it can afford to be.
- userulluipeste 12y ago
  "Open sourcing the NT kernel does make a lot of sense though, since it would be easier to integrate Windows in Xen, KVM, and other virtualization infrastructure." If you're interested in an open-source NT kernel, you might be interested in ReactOS. Although their target comprises development of the entire OS, their main task was the NT kernel and "the glue" with existing parts of Win32 sub-system developed by Wine.
brudgers 12y ago
The odds that Windows will become based on Linux seems pretty low to me. There are advantages of Windows architecture, e.g. PowerShell and similar reflection technologies that are unlikely to be implemented in *nix OS's. Engineering tradeoffs happen on both sides.
- akoeplinger 12y ago
  There's already a PowerShell implementation for *nix: https://github.com/Pash-Project/Pash https://github.com/Pash-Project/Pash
  - brudgers 12y ago
    It depends on what one's definition of "is" is. From the top of the link: An Open Source reimplementation of Windows PowerShell, for Mono. Mono is not *nix and PowerShell provides direct access to [nearly?] the entire Windows OS. More from the project page: Status Alpha. This project is useful in certain constrained applications, e.g. the NuGet Console in Xamarin Studio.
    - akoeplinger 12y ago
      I just wanted to point out that there's nothing that inherently ties PowerShell to Windows (as expected, it's just a shell after all). > PowerShell provides direct access to [nearly?] the entire Windows OS PS has access to the .NET Framework which abstracts the OS APIs, not really to Windows directly. There's also chatter that MS is already working on porting PowerShell to CoreCLR/.NET Core (the cross-plat, open-source version of .NET).
      - brudgers 12y ago
        The abstraction layer is 'thinner' with Windows. With *nix we're dealing with serializing text with regexes or parsers or both coming in and deserializing to text on the way out. It's a bit of a Turing tarpit when it comes to non-inherency.
cwyers 12y ago
Microsoft already has an OS that is "competitive" in those markets, if by competitive you mean 90% or more market share on the desktop,which is where WPF makes sense. The NT kernel has its advantages, not least of which is driver support and the ability to run large amounts of existing software. Who benefits from changing kernels?
- WDCDev 12y ago
  Microsoft does. An MS Linux kernel opens Windows to all the native server side applications that can't run on Windows now.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    What applications cannot run with a small POSIX compatibility layer? Or perhaps even simpler - emulating Linux system calls, as recently shown. (Yes, it would help if they implemented fork().) They will never give up a kernel architecture that is more modern and that is not tainted (from their perspective) by the GPL.
    - WDCDev 12y ago
      You would still have to purchase the Windows license. Also, why would you run say something like Redis, on Windows through a compatibility layer ... when you can just run it on Ubuntu or Cent instead? Sure, if you are already committed to Windows then that makes sense. But if you are starting fresh then you don't choose Windows, and that is the dilemma MS is facing.
jeswin 12y ago
I did think sometime back that this was a possibility, but not anymore. - Windows sells because it works with every hardware device ever made. Linux does not even come close to that level of hardware support. There is no way those drivers will run on MS Linux kernel. - None of Microsoft's top money making apps are built with .Net; Office, Visual Studio or Sql Server are mostly C++. So it isn't as easy as porting .Net over to Linux. - Windows Driver development tooling is way ahead of Linux. So while we all love Linux, throwing away the entire Windows kernel is a bad idea. - The Windows NT kernel is not an awkward piece of engineering. While different from the *nix, it is actually quite respectable. - Add: MS mobile device strategy too is based on the NT kernel. They are not going to be an Android theme. What they really wanna do is make windows more text-shell friendly, and perhaps Open Source the NT kernel. But more than anything else, I just want Microsoft to switch sides when it comes to Patents and IP extortion.
- WDCDev 12y ago
  I don't think MS would abandon the NT kernel. Both version of Windows could exist side-by-side and organizations would have to choose which one they would want to adopt.
- CD1212 12y ago
  I thought the latest Visual Studio was built with WPF and therefore C#. Is that not correct?
  - stuartd 12y ago
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4776355/does-wpf-work-with-c http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4776355/does-wpf-work-wit...
  - alexvoda 12y ago
    Yes, Visual Studio since 2010 is built with WPF so at least a large part of Visual Studio is based on .Net . Also at least some parts of SQL Server depend on .Net. About Office I'm not sure.
- jebblue 12y ago
higherpurpose 12y ago
If they are going to use a completely different kernel anyway, why bother with Linux? Why not create something more innovative, and this time with solid security in mind. There was an article here a few months ago about 5 (?) new innovative operating systems that have security in mind. One was MirageOS and there was another one I liked - something about resource starvation - but I can't remember the name now. There's also the Ethos OS, that comes with the "encrypted by default" MinimaLT networking stack, and so on. I'd be much more excited about a "new" Windows that's open source and is truly built for the 21st century with (cyber-) security in mind, than just dumping the old Windows onto the Linux kernel (and I bet they won't even bother to implement grsec in that, if they do it, because it's yet another patched-up solution for an unsecure kernel, that breaks a lot of stuff). It would also be lovely if this new kernel was built with Rust or some other type-safe language.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Microsoft Research is still building Midori: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_%28operating_system%29 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_%28operating_system%29
- Jweb_Guru 12y ago
  Microsoft Research has numerous languages that provide many, many more guarantees than Rust. If Microsoft were to design a completely new kernel, I'd be fairly disappointed if they didn't do it in something Z3 Boogie based like Dafny.

by WDCDev 12y ago

danieldk 12y ago

I get the feeling MS is heading towards Windows running on a MS Linux kernel at some point. What would be the point? The NT kernel has a newer architecture than the Linux kernel and build upon Dave Cutler's experience with VMS (which could already benefit from learning from Unix). Open sourcing the NT kernel does make a lot of sense though, since it would be easier to integrate Windows in Xen, KVM, and other virtualization infrastructure. They will probably end up taking an Apple-like approach. Open bits where it is strategic and keep some bits closed to sell Windows licenses. It 'only' took a new CEO to do the rational thing.

nly 12y ago
"newer architecture" doesn't really mean much. Microsoft have to maintain a more rigid overall structure because they are committed to third-party binary compatibility wrt drivers and such. As a result, major architectural shifts in things like networking or graphics (XP -> Vista) cause a lot of pain. It's a trade-off. Linux looks floppy architecturally because it can afford to be.
userulluipeste 12y ago
"Open sourcing the NT kernel does make a lot of sense though, since it would be easier to integrate Windows in Xen, KVM, and other virtualization infrastructure." If you're interested in an open-source NT kernel, you might be interested in ReactOS. Although their target comprises development of the entire OS, their main task was the NT kernel and "the glue" with existing parts of Win32 sub-system developed by Wine.

brudgers 12y ago

The odds that Windows will become based on Linux seems pretty low to me. There are advantages of Windows architecture, e.g. PowerShell and similar reflection technologies that are unlikely to be implemented in *nix OS's. Engineering tradeoffs happen on both sides.

akoeplinger 12y ago
There's already a PowerShell implementation for *nix: https://github.com/Pash-Project/Pash https://github.com/Pash-Project/Pash
- brudgers 12y ago
  It depends on what one's definition of "is" is. From the top of the link: An Open Source reimplementation of Windows PowerShell, for Mono. Mono is not *nix and PowerShell provides direct access to [nearly?] the entire Windows OS. More from the project page: Status Alpha. This project is useful in certain constrained applications, e.g. the NuGet Console in Xamarin Studio.
  - akoeplinger 12y ago
    I just wanted to point out that there's nothing that inherently ties PowerShell to Windows (as expected, it's just a shell after all). > PowerShell provides direct access to [nearly?] the entire Windows OS PS has access to the .NET Framework which abstracts the OS APIs, not really to Windows directly. There's also chatter that MS is already working on porting PowerShell to CoreCLR/.NET Core (the cross-plat, open-source version of .NET).
    - brudgers 12y ago
      The abstraction layer is 'thinner' with Windows. With *nix we're dealing with serializing text with regexes or parsers or both coming in and deserializing to text on the way out. It's a bit of a Turing tarpit when it comes to non-inherency.

cwyers 12y ago

Microsoft already has an OS that is "competitive" in those markets, if by competitive you mean 90% or more market share on the desktop,which is where WPF makes sense. The NT kernel has its advantages, not least of which is driver support and the ability to run large amounts of existing software. Who benefits from changing kernels?

WDCDev 12y ago
Microsoft does. An MS Linux kernel opens Windows to all the native server side applications that can't run on Windows now.
- danieldk 12y ago
  What applications cannot run with a small POSIX compatibility layer? Or perhaps even simpler - emulating Linux system calls, as recently shown. (Yes, it would help if they implemented fork().) They will never give up a kernel architecture that is more modern and that is not tainted (from their perspective) by the GPL.
  - WDCDev 12y ago
    You would still have to purchase the Windows license. Also, why would you run say something like Redis, on Windows through a compatibility layer ... when you can just run it on Ubuntu or Cent instead? Sure, if you are already committed to Windows then that makes sense. But if you are starting fresh then you don't choose Windows, and that is the dilemma MS is facing.

jeswin 12y ago

I did think sometime back that this was a possibility, but not anymore. - Windows sells because it works with every hardware device ever made. Linux does not even come close to that level of hardware support. There is no way those drivers will run on MS Linux kernel. - None of Microsoft's top money making apps are built with .Net; Office, Visual Studio or Sql Server are mostly C++. So it isn't as easy as porting .Net over to Linux. - Windows Driver development tooling is way ahead of Linux. So while we all love Linux, throwing away the entire Windows kernel is a bad idea. - The Windows NT kernel is not an awkward piece of engineering. While different from the *nix, it is actually quite respectable. - Add: MS mobile device strategy too is based on the NT kernel. They are not going to be an Android theme. What they really wanna do is make windows more text-shell friendly, and perhaps Open Source the NT kernel. But more than anything else, I just want Microsoft to switch sides when it comes to Patents and IP extortion.

WDCDev 12y ago
I don't think MS would abandon the NT kernel. Both version of Windows could exist side-by-side and organizations would have to choose which one they would want to adopt.
CD1212 12y ago
I thought the latest Visual Studio was built with WPF and therefore C#. Is that not correct?
- stuartd 12y ago
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4776355/does-wpf-work-with-c http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4776355/does-wpf-work-wit...
- alexvoda 12y ago
  Yes, Visual Studio since 2010 is built with WPF so at least a large part of Visual Studio is based on .Net . Also at least some parts of SQL Server depend on .Net. About Office I'm not sure.
jebblue 12y ago

higherpurpose 12y ago

If they are going to use a completely different kernel anyway, why bother with Linux? Why not create something more innovative, and this time with solid security in mind. There was an article here a few months ago about 5 (?) new innovative operating systems that have security in mind. One was MirageOS and there was another one I liked - something about resource starvation - but I can't remember the name now. There's also the Ethos OS, that comes with the "encrypted by default" MinimaLT networking stack, and so on. I'd be much more excited about a "new" Windows that's open source and is truly built for the 21st century with (cyber-) security in mind, than just dumping the old Windows onto the Linux kernel (and I bet they won't even bother to implement grsec in that, if they do it, because it's yet another patched-up solution for an unsecure kernel, that breaks a lot of stuff). It would also be lovely if this new kernel was built with Rust or some other type-safe language.

cwyers 12y ago
Microsoft Research is still building Midori: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_%28operating_system%29 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_%28operating_system%29
Jweb_Guru 12y ago
Microsoft Research has numerous languages that provide many, many more guarantees than Rust. If Microsoft were to design a completely new kernel, I'd be fairly disappointed if they didn't do it in something Z3 Boogie based like Dafny.