6 ms·

I'm looking forward to MS just dropping their OS entirely and using linux as their back-end. Basically, Microsoft might be better off creating their own linux

I'm looking forward to MS just dropping their OS entirely and using linux as their back-end. Basically, Microsoft might be better off creating their own linux distribution running a "microsoft windows" windows manager.

UK-AL 11y ago
Why? The windows core is a perfectly good alternative to Linux. It's always good to have competition.
- jadeddrag 11y ago
  How would we know unless we can read (and compile) the source code?
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    Considering how few people read and compile the Linux source code, how do you know on Linux? Most distributions are binary, not source.
    - lelandbatey 11y ago
      While that's true, I still know people who compile their own OS from scratch; I've gone through the experience of compiling my entire system from source via Linux From Scratch[0]. There are many thousands of people who have done the same thing, and this gives us a "web of trust". And if you don't want to trust anyone, you can always compile it yourself. That's the difference: I have the freedom to learn and study anything and everything. It might not be likely, and it might not be convenient, but it is possible. [0] - http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/ http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/
    - schoen 11y ago
      Fortunately that will change for Debian, and, we can hope, Debian-based distributions. https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds (I gave a talk about this at CCC. The status quo is a reason why free software doesn't have some of the transparency benefits over proprietary software we might expect, if you fear some developer is attacking you or someone is attacking some developers' infrastructure.)
      - throwawayaway 11y ago
        jeez, great post. sorry for my bad humour at you the other day. es tut mir leid.
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      I'm not sure about reading, but several distributions (notably, Gentoo and Slackware) encourage (and in the former case, require) users to configure and compile Linux from source instead of relying on a binary installation. Of course, this doesn't do anything against a malicious install environment or a backdoored compiler, but it's a start.
      - caskance 11y ago
        Yes, and that's why so few people use those distributions.
        yellowapple 11y ago
        Never claimed they were popular. Just that Linux From Scratch isn't the only option for those wishing to to run a kernel they built from source.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    People have, and do have access to it. Windows Research kernel. Kernel leaks, etc. Generally the code quality is considered good.
    - jadeddrag 11y ago
      I'm sure that the NSA agrees with you.
      - breischl 11y ago
        Yes they do! They also apparently like OSX, iOS, and RHEL.[1] Oh wait, you were just trying to score cheap snark points, weren't you? [1] - https://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml https://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configur...
        jadeddrag 11y ago
        Your link shows us how the NSA would like you to secure your systems, not their love for hiding their exploits behind closed sourced code. No snark points needed here!
        jevgeni 11y ago
        Why would NSA bother with OSs, if they could get direct access to firmware, theoretically?
        wosos 11y ago
        Costs?
        jevgeni 11y ago
        Good point, actually. :)
oblio 11y ago
You mean desktop environment? Funnily enough, Windows started as one (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Early_versions http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Early_versi...). It was considered a "graphical operating system shell", what we'd call a "desktop environment" these days. It is technically doable, but I'm not sure the Windows NT kernel is worth discarding entirely. It has some fancy tech in there and if need be it can emulate POSIX through "personalities" aka subsystems (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX). Subsystems actually make it more flexible than Linux.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Windows became more usable when it started supplanting the underlying OS, however.
Someone1234 11y ago
With how Microsoft has been acting in the last year and a half, I wouldn't put it past them. They actually already produce a lot of Linux code (yes, it is self-serving, but still) and on their cloud platform (Azure) Linux definitely isn't a second class citizen and even backs some of their cloud solutions. But in general the NT Kernel is pretty good and Windows Server is already moving to be more "Linux-like" (e.g. Core mode, all the GUIs now generate Powershell commands, etc). So it might be a while before Microsoft actually dropped NT and moved to Linux, least of all because it would require a lot of code changes in other products.
serge2k 11y ago
They might actually create a usable consumer OS given enough time to fix the garbage in Linux.
- jadeddrag 11y ago
  I think you're confusing linux (the kernel) with linux distributions (mostly lousy windows managers that run on linux). Let's not get into an OS war between us here, but looking at the changes over the last 15 years, it's clear that MS is warming up to Linux. This is something that was absolutely unthinkable during the Gates and Ballmer eras. The linux community must be doing something right when developer demand and excitement is so high for ssh.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Linux, the kernel, is also pretty bad, though.
talideon 11y ago
Come back to us when you've found a way to implement the good stuff that Windows has, such as IOCPs: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365198%28v=vs.85%29.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... And no, epoll isn't enough.
- floatboth 11y ago
  If I remember correctly, the node.js team needed a lot of help from experienced Windows developers (even from Microsoft itself??) to add IOCP support to libuv. I think kqueue is the best (well I guess I'm a BSD fan :D) but in general: app developers generally don't care about this, they just use libuv or libevent or something like that. Does Windows really have "good stuff" for developers? .NET is excellent, but the lower level APIs look horrible. (And the CP/M / DOS era files stuff – drive letters, file extensions that actually matter – makes me very unhappy.) Jails, ZFS, DTrace, FUSE, netmap, PAM, pf – that's good stuff!
  - apalmer 11y ago
    > .NET is excellent, but the lower level APIs look horrible. It is, more or less, what it is. lower level APIs cannot change without breaking backwards compatiblity. Microsoft as an organization is all about backwards compatibility. So this is just not going away, like you say there is stuff in there from DOS that will just not ever go away.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    > Does Windows really have "good stuff" for developers? If all a developer knows is Windows, it seems awesome.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    That doesn't make IOCP worse than epoll, it's just not the same as epoll. Look at PyParallel: https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-gil-and-exploited-all-cores https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-...
    - 11y ago
72deluxe 11y ago
But you'd have no backwards compatibility. No software would run. You'd have to use systemd and be subject to the infighting in the Linux world, with short-lived projects and the CADT development model that appears to exist there. At least with Windows you can still write in the classic Windows API and it'll still work. Your comments is naive, I feel?

UK-AL 11y ago

Why? The windows core is a perfectly good alternative to Linux. It's always good to have competition.

jadeddrag 11y ago
How would we know unless we can read (and compile) the source code?
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Considering how few people read and compile the Linux source code, how do you know on Linux? Most distributions are binary, not source.
  - lelandbatey 11y ago
    While that's true, I still know people who compile their own OS from scratch; I've gone through the experience of compiling my entire system from source via Linux From Scratch[0]. There are many thousands of people who have done the same thing, and this gives us a "web of trust". And if you don't want to trust anyone, you can always compile it yourself. That's the difference: I have the freedom to learn and study anything and everything. It might not be likely, and it might not be convenient, but it is possible. [0] - http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/ http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/
  - schoen 11y ago
    Fortunately that will change for Debian, and, we can hope, Debian-based distributions. https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds (I gave a talk about this at CCC. The status quo is a reason why free software doesn't have some of the transparency benefits over proprietary software we might expect, if you fear some developer is attacking you or someone is attacking some developers' infrastructure.)
    - throwawayaway 11y ago
      jeez, great post. sorry for my bad humour at you the other day. es tut mir leid.
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    I'm not sure about reading, but several distributions (notably, Gentoo and Slackware) encourage (and in the former case, require) users to configure and compile Linux from source instead of relying on a binary installation. Of course, this doesn't do anything against a malicious install environment or a backdoored compiler, but it's a start.
    - caskance 11y ago
      Yes, and that's why so few people use those distributions.
      - yellowapple 11y ago
        Never claimed they were popular. Just that Linux From Scratch isn't the only option for those wishing to to run a kernel they built from source.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  People have, and do have access to it. Windows Research kernel. Kernel leaks, etc. Generally the code quality is considered good.
  - jadeddrag 11y ago
    I'm sure that the NSA agrees with you.
    - breischl 11y ago
      Yes they do! They also apparently like OSX, iOS, and RHEL.[1] Oh wait, you were just trying to score cheap snark points, weren't you? [1] - https://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml https://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configur...
      - jadeddrag 11y ago
        Your link shows us how the NSA would like you to secure your systems, not their love for hiding their exploits behind closed sourced code. No snark points needed here!
        jevgeni 11y ago
        Why would NSA bother with OSs, if they could get direct access to firmware, theoretically?
        wosos 11y ago
        Costs?
        jevgeni 11y ago
        Good point, actually. :)

oblio 11y ago

You mean desktop environment? Funnily enough, Windows started as one (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Early_versions http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Early_versi...). It was considered a "graphical operating system shell", what we'd call a "desktop environment" these days. It is technically doable, but I'm not sure the Windows NT kernel is worth discarding entirely. It has some fancy tech in there and if need be it can emulate POSIX through "personalities" aka subsystems (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX). Subsystems actually make it more flexible than Linux.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Windows became more usable when it started supplanting the underlying OS, however.

Someone1234 11y ago

With how Microsoft has been acting in the last year and a half, I wouldn't put it past them. They actually already produce a lot of Linux code (yes, it is self-serving, but still) and on their cloud platform (Azure) Linux definitely isn't a second class citizen and even backs some of their cloud solutions. But in general the NT Kernel is pretty good and Windows Server is already moving to be more "Linux-like" (e.g. Core mode, all the GUIs now generate Powershell commands, etc). So it might be a while before Microsoft actually dropped NT and moved to Linux, least of all because it would require a lot of code changes in other products.

serge2k 11y ago

They might actually create a usable consumer OS given enough time to fix the garbage in Linux.

jadeddrag 11y ago
I think you're confusing linux (the kernel) with linux distributions (mostly lousy windows managers that run on linux). Let's not get into an OS war between us here, but looking at the changes over the last 15 years, it's clear that MS is warming up to Linux. This is something that was absolutely unthinkable during the Gates and Ballmer eras. The linux community must be doing something right when developer demand and excitement is so high for ssh.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Linux, the kernel, is also pretty bad, though.

talideon 11y ago

Come back to us when you've found a way to implement the good stuff that Windows has, such as IOCPs: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365198%28v=vs.85%29.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... And no, epoll isn't enough.

floatboth 11y ago
If I remember correctly, the node.js team needed a lot of help from experienced Windows developers (even from Microsoft itself??) to add IOCP support to libuv. I think kqueue is the best (well I guess I'm a BSD fan :D) but in general: app developers generally don't care about this, they just use libuv or libevent or something like that. Does Windows really have "good stuff" for developers? .NET is excellent, but the lower level APIs look horrible. (And the CP/M / DOS era files stuff – drive letters, file extensions that actually matter – makes me very unhappy.) Jails, ZFS, DTrace, FUSE, netmap, PAM, pf – that's good stuff!
- apalmer 11y ago
  > .NET is excellent, but the lower level APIs look horrible. It is, more or less, what it is. lower level APIs cannot change without breaking backwards compatiblity. Microsoft as an organization is all about backwards compatibility. So this is just not going away, like you say there is stuff in there from DOS that will just not ever go away.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  > Does Windows really have "good stuff" for developers? If all a developer knows is Windows, it seems awesome.
- cwyers 11y ago
  That doesn't make IOCP worse than epoll, it's just not the same as epoll. Look at PyParallel: https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-gil-and-exploited-all-cores https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-...
  - 11y ago

72deluxe 11y ago

But you'd have no backwards compatibility. No software would run. You'd have to use systemd and be subject to the infighting in the Linux world, with short-lived projects and the CADT development model that appears to exist there. At least with Windows you can still write in the classic Windows API and it'll still work. Your comments is naive, I feel?