Microsoft has developed its own Linux: in-house software-defined networking OS • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by hga » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 1:14 PM UTC

scholia wrote: post #169

yuhong wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also talking about a few years later, up to the "Chicago"/Win95 period when the attacks really got nasty.

A period when IBM was spending more than $1 billion a year on OS/2 and WorkPlace OS to try to kill Microsoft? A period when IBM formed an alliance with Apple and Motorola to create a PC Reference Platform to try to kill both Microsoft and Intel? Up to the point in 1995 where IBM spent $3.5 billion on Lotus and used SmartSuite bundling to try to kill Microsoft Office? Microsoft's turnover had grown to $5.3 billion in…

Indeed, people like me were cheering Microsoft back in that period.

I started programming in 1978, on IBM systems, and they were indeed "a brutal monopolist", probably feared more than Microsoft has ever been.

Sure, during the early-mid '90s Microsoft had sharp elbows and was looking out for its own interests, but those also just happened to coincide with ours. IBM was big, stupid and much more dangerous, UNIX(TM) was horribly fragmented (one of the core competencies I developed in the early '80s was porting software between different versions of it, and see The Unix Haters Handbook publishing in 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unix-Haters_Handbook (disclaimer, Simson is a friend)).

GNU/the FSF was doing worthwhile stuff, but was and still is hanging fire on a kernel, the BSD porting efforts had been crippled by the '92-3 AT&T lawsuit, Linux was started from scratch in 1991 and immature, while NT was developed by well funded top notch experienced people (at least back then it was very rare if not unheard of for someone to develop more than one operating system, the process was so onerous) and was a great hope for a lot of us. In the mid '90s I developed or took part in developing several very solid systems using it, and I believe it's TCO and maintainability exceeded UNIX(TM) during that period.

Unfortunately, Microsoft started fumbling the ball about 3-4 years after NT's release (on or after the first Service Pack of NT 3.5 or more likely 3.51 as I recall), NT 4 was conceptually hopeless by moving graphics into the kernel, "and the rest is history".

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

#172

Post by teddyh » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #163

dunham wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downloaded and played with IE for Solaris, but I didn't use it for day to day browsing. One interesting thing that I recall from it was that it had .so files that corresponded to each of the windows DLLs. So it looked like they had some sort of framework for porting windows code to Unix.

IE originated as Spyglass Mosaic, formerly NCSA Mosaic, a unix browser. So it was more like they ported unix code to Windows.

Spyglass did not use any of the code from NCSA Mosaic¹.

① http://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html

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

#173

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 1:46 PM UTC

gillianseed wrote: post #150

pjmlp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still makes use of the original micro-kernel design,with kernel level RPC to separate modules. Thus still offering a micro-kernel cleanness in a monolithic space. Also since Windows Vista many drivers are now implemented in user space, with minimal kernel primitives.

>with kernel level RPC to separate modules. Is this what is described as LPC ? Could you elaborate on how it separates the modules (as opposed to unix subsystems) ? >Thus still offering a micro-kernel cleanness in a monolithic space. What does this 'cleanness' provide, and how ? It's all in kernel space so if one module crashes the whole kernel crashes ?

First of all, yes memory corruption will still bring the whole thing down. Only pure micro-kernels can survive it.

What Windows does, is that there aren't any direct calls between modules, only kernel level RPC calls.

All parameters are packed into the RPC message, it is dispatched, unpacked, validated as much as possible on the receiving end, then processed.

Messages and its validation introduce an indirection layer that improves safety.

It is based on the original micro-kernel design Windows NT had, before they moved graphics back into the kernel.

So the micro-kernel message passing is still there, but simplified since now everything runs on the same space. But as of Windows Vista, UDF was introduced for user space drivers.

The "Inside Windows" book series go into great detail how everything works.

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

#174

Post by teddyh » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #143

caskance wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL is cancer, but in a good way.

I have misgivings about GPL. It's given me a lot, and I appreciate that, but while developing I won't use GPL libraries because I simply don't like being told what to do, and per the golden rule, I don't like telling people what to do, so I cannot with good moral standing release GPL code.

If you “don’t like telling people what to do”, you must be licensing all your code as CC0 or public domain, right?

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

#175

Post by yuhong » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

scholia wrote: post #169

yuhong wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also talking about a few years later, up to the "Chicago"/Win95 period when the attacks really got nasty.

A period when IBM was spending more than $1 billion a year on OS/2 and WorkPlace OS to try to kill Microsoft? A period when IBM formed an alliance with Apple and Motorola to create a PC Reference Platform to try to kill both Microsoft and Intel? Up to the point in 1995 where IBM spent $3.5 billion on Lotus and used SmartSuite bundling to try to kill Microsoft Office? Microsoft's turnover had grown to $5.3 billion in…

If MS went with "NT OS/2" I doubt "OS/2 for PowerPC" would exist, which was a stripped down version of the "Workplace OS" you mentioned BTW. Interestingly, Windows NT themselves was ported to PowerPC too, and it was one of the main focus for NT 3.51 back in 1995.

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

#176

Post by donatj » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #174

donatj wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have misgivings about GPL. It's given me a lot, and I appreciate that, but while developing I won't use GPL libraries because I simply don't like being told what to do, and per the golden rule, I don't like telling people what to do, so I cannot with good moral standing release GPL code.

If you “don’t like telling people what to do”, you must be licensing all your code as CC0 or public domain, right?

Some public domain, mostly MIT. All MIT really asks is to give me credit if they use my code.

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

#177

Post by scholia » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 11:29 PM UTC

yuhong wrote: post #175

scholia wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A period when IBM was spending more than $1 billion a year on OS/2 and WorkPlace OS to try to kill Microsoft? A period when IBM formed an alliance with Apple and Motorola to create a PC Reference Platform to try to kill both Microsoft and Intel? Up to the point in 1995 where IBM spent $3.5 billion on Lotus and used SmartSuite bundling to try to kill Microsoft Office? Microsoft's turnover had grown to $5.3 billion in…

If MS went with "NT OS/2" I doubt "OS/2 for PowerPC" would exist, which was a stripped down version of the "Workplace OS" you mentioned BTW. Interestingly, Windows NT themselves was ported to PowerPC too, and it was one of the main focus for NT 3.51 back in 1995.

Well, Microsoft did go with "NT OS/2" -- it just quickly replaced intended OS/2 compatablility with Windows compatibility.

Otherwise, IBM claimed Workplace OS was new code.

NT, of course, wasn't written for x86 in the first place. It was intended to be cross-platform. It was also sold on PCs with DEC Alpha chips.

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

#178

Post by scholia » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #171

scholia wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A period when IBM was spending more than $1 billion a year on OS/2 and WorkPlace OS to try to kill Microsoft? A period when IBM formed an alliance with Apple and Motorola to create a PC Reference Platform to try to kill both Microsoft and Intel? Up to the point in 1995 where IBM spent $3.5 billion on Lotus and used SmartSuite bundling to try to kill Microsoft Office? Microsoft's turnover had grown to $5.3 billion in…

Indeed, people like me were cheering Microsoft back in that period. I started programming in 1978, on IBM systems, and they were indeed "a brutal monopolist", probably feared more than Microsoft has ever been. Sure, during the early-mid '90s Microsoft had sharp elbows and was looking out for its own interests, but those also just happened to coincide with ours. IBM was big, stupid and much more dangerous, UNIX(TM) wa…

Good points.

Microsoft, of course, had a major problem, which was how to get the market to move from DOS-based Windows to NT. Not even offering OEMs 75% off the price of NT managed to shift them. Ultimately, Microsoft had to do whatever it took, and not all of it was nice. It didn't manage to do it until XP in 2001.

Re Unix, you have missed out the COSE/Hamilton group development of OSF/1, first released in 1991. This was supposed to unify most of the major players -- DEC, HP, IBM etc -- except Sun* behind a single Unix to prevent Microsoft from getting into corporate computing with NT.

Presumably you would have come across it....

* OSF = "Oppose Sun Forever" according to Scott McNealy

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

#179

Post by yuhong » Sat, Sep 19, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

scholia wrote: post #177

yuhong wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If MS went with "NT OS/2" I doubt "OS/2 for PowerPC" would exist, which was a stripped down version of the "Workplace OS" you mentioned BTW. Interestingly, Windows NT themselves was ported to PowerPC too, and it was one of the main focus for NT 3.51 back in 1995.

Well, Microsoft did go with "NT OS/2" -- it just quickly replaced intended OS/2 compatablility with Windows compatibility. Otherwise, IBM claimed Workplace OS was new code. NT, of course, wasn't written for x86 in the first place. It was intended to be cross-platform. It was also sold on PCs with DEC Alpha chips.

Of course, the problems with this plan wasn't the WinNT part, it was the Win95/Chicago part. My favorite technical problem is how it's dependence on DOS led Caldera to continue their DR-DOS lawsuit. But it wasn't just the technical problems, there was also the tactics MS used to attack OS/2 2.x and later.

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

#180

Post by hga » Sun, Sep 20, 2015, 1:43 AM UTC

scholia wrote: post #178

hga wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, people like me were cheering Microsoft back in that period. I started programming in 1978, on IBM systems, and they were indeed "a brutal monopolist", probably feared more than Microsoft has ever been. Sure, during the early-mid '90s Microsoft had sharp elbows and was looking out for its own interests, but those also just happened to coincide with ours. IBM was big, stupid and much more dangerous, UNIX(TM) wa…

Good points. Microsoft, of course, had a major problem, which was how to get the market to move from DOS-based Windows to NT. Not even offering OEMs 75% off the price of NT managed to shift them. Ultimately, Microsoft had to do whatever it took, and not all of it was nice. It didn't manage to do it until XP in 2001. Re Unix, you have missed out the COSE/Hamilton group development of OSF/1, first released in 1991. Thi…

"Oppose Sun Forever", heh.

Yes, indeed, I used it in 1996-7 on the Alpha, just after it was renamed Digital Unix from DEC OSF/1 AXP. It was very nice, ran everything we wanted well, plus had a great High Availability capability. But I didn't view it as a major contender, back then at least, Sun provided the systems of choice. Assuming you could manage to buy them.

As for Win 16 -> Win 98 -> XP ... I don't know, I went from Windows 3.1 to NT, and as far as I could tell NT was better and more stable than the legacy non-memory protected stuff; hmmm, but I'll bet not for games (and NT4 putting graphics in the kernel was ugly). XP was great, and due to things mentioned elsewhere, I and then my parents used it for more than a decade.