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Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#111

Post by WorldWideWayne »

ChrisArgyle wrote: post #70
drnewman wrote: post #24

Don't know anyone's ages here, but is anyone fascinated by the historical implications of this? I started using Linux in the 90's and the talk in the community at the time was "world domination". It seems to me that's happened--more or less behind the scenes, but it's happened.

I couldn't disargee more about Microsoft's current place in tech markets. They've lost quite a lot of weight since their 800lb gorilla days in the 90s. They used to exploit their dominant market position to replace de-facto standards with their own: kerberos "extensions", creating ActiveX instead of just implementing NPAPI, removing JNI from the MS JVM. But they can't do that any more. They lost too much ground under…

Yeah, it's so surprising that Microsoft didn't implement the "Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface" (which was just for web browses) or other interfaces that weren't build for Windows.

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#112

Post by frik »

ilitirit wrote: post #55

Microsoft's foray - I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way - into OS technologies doesn't surprise me any more. I remember an MS Rep telling us one day: > Our CEO believes that consumption is the new currency. The context in which he used it seemed to imply that Nadella believes that the way forward for Microsoft is to not so much compete with existing products, but to give people new and better ways to cons…

It looks like that. The spyware from CEO Nadella actively scares away consumers of their Windows and XboxOne products.

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#113

Post by frik »

osullivj wrote: post #30
drnewman wrote: post #24

Don't know anyone's ages here, but is anyone fascinated by the historical implications of this? I started using Linux in the 90's and the talk in the community at the time was "world domination". It seems to me that's happened--more or less behind the scenes, but it's happened.

Yes, Linux has dominated the commodity server space. Look what happened to Sun & Solaris. But what about the desktop? Back in the late 90s there was much talk of how the Linux desktop would take over, KDE vs Gnome etc. IBM and Sun backed Open Office, Andy Herzfeld launched Nautilus. And then it didn't happen. MS still owns the business desktop with Windows & Office. And MS still has a big chunk of the consumer deskto…

With a proper open source Web based Office alternative, MS Office would loose a lot of customers.

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#115

Post by hga »

amyjess wrote: post #101
osullivj wrote: post #3

People forget that MS used to have it's own Unix in the 80s: Xenix. I ported a large DEC PDP Fortran codebase to run on Xenix back then - it was far too big to fit in the 640K DOS limit. Writing the Xenix device driver for the 68000 powered graphics card in the PC was fun.

It's also very likely that if things went just a little differently, Microsoft's main OS today would probably be Xenix-based. Microsoft created Xenix because they knew DOS would have a limited future, and in particular they knew there was a lot of value in running enterprise software on microcomputers. They also knew costs would go down and performance would go up over time and that running minicomputer-grade stuff o…

A bit of nuance to part of the story:

IBM previously had told it's legion of "buying IBM won't get you fired" IT managers that the 286 powered PC-AT was the last PC model they'd have to buy for a long while (one reason Compaq was the first to come out a 386), and demanded OS/2 run on it.

Unfortunately, the 286 was seriously crippled for doing this sort of thing, as I recall, switching segment registers was very expensive. And for those of you who didn't live through the ugliness of 8086->286 (and 386 and beyond compatibility modes) programming, these were thoroughly 16 bit computers, where you had at most 64 KiB segments each of stack, code and data, unless you switched one of those segment registers to point elsewhere. That was cheap enough for the vast gain in memory on the 8086/8, and the 286 in its compatibility mode, but native? That mode did a lot more for you (like, hey, memory protection!), and Intel when that decision was made and implemented slowly simply didn't understand how people used their CPUs.

Anyway, Windows 3.0 and on was taking off, no one but stupidly managed Lotus wanted to program OS/2 Presentation Manager, and prior to in 1988 that DEC killed off a RISC CPU + new operating system effort in favor of continuing with VAX/VMS for a while longer. The software people, at least, were in Bellevue, WA, and many were hired to develop OS/2 3.0, which due to the above morphed into NT 3.1 (which really was around a 3.x Microsoft quality release :-).

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#116

Post by tracker1 »

x5n1 wrote: post #34
noir_lord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 35, started using Linux in '97 so I've been around for most of the history. It's quite amazing how Microsoft has changed in that time tbh from "Embrace, Extinguish, Extend" and all the shenanigans they pulled with comparing Win2k vs Linux/Samba and the halloween memo through to submitting code to the kernel, using Linux as a guest in their VM stuff and now using it internally not to mention making .Net a first cl…

They don't have a choice. Linux has already won. Heard of Android? Yeah that's the Linux kernel right there, over a billion mobile devices. Heard of Mac OS? That's a Unix kernel right there. Microsoft makes a proprietary operating system with cumbersome licensing restrictions. Microsoft is 10 years from death if it does not embrace Linux.

Microsoft is not going to die if it doesn't embrace Linux... that said, they are much more open today than a decade and a half ago. .Net Core is making a lot of progress and has respawned interest in C# cross platform. I think a lot of this is in the light of what happened with Oracle v Google.

There's also, XBox itself and Azure, which are key points to the future of MS along with Office, which will now grow to other platforms, as it should have some time ago.

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#117

Post by frik »

buffoon wrote: post #11
junto wrote: post #2

Microsoft are now moving quickly to allow users to run .NET on all platforms. How long until they decide that Windows Server is no longer worth investing in? Or are there too many Microsoft server products earning good profits (i.e. Exchange and BizTalk), to make that switch a realistic future expectation? I'm genuinely interested to hear people's opinions on their thoughts of the future of Microsoft and Windows Serv…

Heavy Windows server user here. We have 100+ windows server 2008 R2 and 2012 R2 machines in production and a massive .Net/C# codebase. Currently it's a complete bastard of an operating system. It's expensive, hard to manage even with powershell and DSC etc, difficult to update, difficult to provision, complicated and to be honest absolutely terrible licensing hell that costs us days a year. Hyper-V just adds complexi…

The plan for the original Active Directory was to be the directory service of a Microsoft dominated "information highway" called "The Microsoft Network" (v1). see the infamous Microsoft memo from Bill Gates

It seems they have big plans for their cloud product "Azure"

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#118

Post by hga »

frik wrote: post #113
osullivj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Linux has dominated the commodity server space. Look what happened to Sun & Solaris. But what about the desktop? Back in the late 90s there was much talk of how the Linux desktop would take over, KDE vs Gnome etc. IBM and Sun backed Open Office, Andy Herzfeld launched Nautilus. And then it didn't happen. MS still owns the business desktop with Windows & Office. And MS still has a big chunk of the consumer deskto…

With a proper open source Web based Office alternative, MS Office would loose a lot of customers.

Unless Microsoft ruins Office, I can't see it happening. I believe it would take a seriously funded company to implement all the needed features (sure, no one uses all the features of Word, but each uses a different vital set of them), prove that, oh, Excel was safe to run your company/trading on, and provide support.

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#119

Post by r3bl »

frik wrote: post #113
osullivj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Linux has dominated the commodity server space. Look what happened to Sun & Solaris. But what about the desktop? Back in the late 90s there was much talk of how the Linux desktop would take over, KDE vs Gnome etc. IBM and Sun backed Open Office, Andy Herzfeld launched Nautilus. And then it didn't happen. MS still owns the business desktop with Windows & Office. And MS still has a big chunk of the consumer deskto…

With a proper open source Web based Office alternative, MS Office would loose a lot of customers.

From my own perspective, both LibreOffice and Google Docs are both more then capable enough. I know that LibreOffice is primarily a desktop application, but it has a not-so-perfect remote web interface since version 3.5.

But, for filling out forms and keeping the design as it is, I'm currently using a web interface of Office 365. It's a bit annoying to use it at the moment (you can't get rid of the constant "Install Word on Your Device" messages and you first have to upload your document on OneDrive before you can edit it), but it gets the job done.

Re: Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS

#120

Post by srisaila »

I used Windows for a little over a decade, then I discarded it one day when I suddenly realized that the proprietary OS actually never taught me anything about computers. Those precious 10 years went to waste. I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't discover Linux until about 5 years ago.
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