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Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

zdnet.com

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Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#41

Post by mlvljr »

Karunamon wrote: post #29
therein wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they wouldn't just toss away millions of lines of kernel code.

I recall reading somewhere (can't find it for beans now) that the Windows kernel was a huge mess codewise since many of the original developers have moved on and poor to nonexistent documentation was left, meaning that the modern employees had to basically reverse engineer a lot of the code. Take this with a grain of salt, of course.

Here are some comments from the times of the source code leak:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

I'd say, the user experience has improved since then overall (meaning the code quality, too, in one of the most practical senses).

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#42

Post by mlvljr »

bithush wrote: post #37
osweiller wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a huge deal, but you'd be "super excited" about it? I develop on Windows, mostly. I deploy to Ubuntu, Redhat, Amazon's AMI, among others. I literally will repeat that you sound like you know nothing about Linux, cloud providers, or Microsoft's play in this market.

I apologise for being excited about something that interests me.

And stop offending nice persons!

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#44

Post by rpgmaker »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #9
diskcat wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the point of using microsoft's linux?

Taking back market share from Mac users. Especially among developers.

> Taking back market share from Mac users. Especially among developers.

You're assuming that if they do release a MS Linux it would be geared towards the desktop which is ludicrous. I would love if they actually replaced the Windows code base for a Unix-derived one (it doesn't have to be Linux) but that is just not going to happen. It would only make it easier for Big Software to be ported to Linux and the Mac, with Windows and Microsoft losing its competitive advantage. Not going to happen.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#45

Post by akiselev »

rgbrenner wrote: post #40
Intermernet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prediction is that they'll continue to work on the recently announced "Windows Subsystem for Linux"[1] and attempt to cover a larger and larger portion of the Linux ABI. If people can develop, and run the majority of Linux programs on Windows, and those programs are competitive in performance, and those programs have MS support backing, then they have a huge win in the enterprise space. Personally, I'm happy to ke…

It sounds like a rehash of Windows Services for Unix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX What's different this time? My prediction is that it'll languish in obscurity, rarely used, and eventually be discontinued.

This time around we have a decade plus of virtualization experience and specialized silicon in many (most?) modern processors like Intel VT-i/x/d and AMD-V. We no longer have to try to emulate kernel code or implement interfaces like POSIX or WINE on top of other kernels that inevitably lead to impedance mismatches between very different archirectures.

For example, modern virtual machine software like Parallels and VMWare Workstation allow for "unity" modes where the guest OS window manager is hijacked so that each window can be rendered onto the host without the rest of the guest desktop interface. If you're running the guest kernel "side by side" with the host as a virtual machine, you can focus on drivers that bridge the two operating systems (filesystem, network, window manager, etc.) and make it seamless instead of trying to shoehorn a low level emulated interface into a system that may not be ergonomic for that task.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#46

Post by e12e »

rgbrenner wrote: post #40
Intermernet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prediction is that they'll continue to work on the recently announced "Windows Subsystem for Linux"[1] and attempt to cover a larger and larger portion of the Linux ABI. If people can develop, and run the majority of Linux programs on Windows, and those programs are competitive in performance, and those programs have MS support backing, then they have a huge win in the enterprise space. Personally, I'm happy to ke…

It sounds like a rehash of Windows Services for Unix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX What's different this time? My prediction is that it'll languish in obscurity, rarely used, and eventually be discontinued.

> What's different this time?

Running 64bit Linux elf binaries on the NT kernel, side-by-side with windows binaries is quite different from WSUS -- at least what experience I had with WSUS. It's more like Wine (a port of the win32 api to Linux (and BSD/OS X?) that allows running unmodified windows executables on Linux.

Being able to "apt install redis" on windows, and get the redis-build that Ubuntu ships, and be able to use it locally is a pretty big deal, IMNHO.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#47

Post by e12e »

What I'm curious about: Isn't Oracle Linux mostly a joke of a copy-cat distribution? Apart from them acquiring Ksplice and possibly delaying ksplice-like functionality in SuSe and RedHat a couple of years, isn't Oracle Linux mostly just an excuse to drain Oracle users for OS license money for those that don't want to be constrained by limited hardware support in Solaris?

I guess what I'm asking, why would Microsoft want this person? (No offence intended to anyone involved)

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#48

Post by SiVal »

therein wrote: post #28
wslh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows [kernel] is a very advanced operating system with an incredible wide support for third party drivers. I think the prediction would be more oriented to running them side by side.

Yeah they wouldn't just toss away millions of lines of kernel code.

They've done it before, when they replaced the foundation under DOS/Win3/Win95/Win98/WinMe line with WinNT, and Apple did it when they replaced the foundation under MacOS 1-9 with NextStep and called in OS X.

Apple's non-unix line endings (CR) changed to LF, their non-unix path delimiter (:) changed to /, and they were suddenly a major force among non-Apple-targeting developers who had always derided the Mac as a "toy" prior to OS X.

If MS has similar ambitions, they could do again what both they and Apple have done before: toss away millions of lines of kernel code.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#49

Post by Ologn »

adamnemecek wrote: post #33
bithush wrote: post #2

It would be amazing to see a Microsoft GNU/Linux distro in the future. To be honest it wouldn't exactly be hard for Microsoft to do. Take a Debian base, add whatever bits they need to make sure it works nicely in Azure, have an official Microsoft apt repo and they are done. I actually think it will happen. It makes sense for Microsoft to have an official Linux distro that they can offer true support for.

Not linux but close https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix

Radio Shack used to sell TRS-80 Model 16 microcomputers running Xenix in their stores to business customers. At least up until the mid-1990s, many local Radio Shack stores were using these machines as their point-of-sale, inventory and financial systems. Xenix in general was the most widely used Unix in terms of installs into the late 1980s.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#50

Post by WhoBeI »

brudgers wrote: post #38
bithush wrote: post #2

It would be amazing to see a Microsoft GNU/Linux distro in the future. To be honest it wouldn't exactly be hard for Microsoft to do. Take a Debian base, add whatever bits they need to make sure it works nicely in Azure, have an official Microsoft apt repo and they are done. I actually think it will happen. It makes sense for Microsoft to have an official Linux distro that they can offer true support for.

The current iteration of Windows 10 tries to abstract away hardware under a higher level "Windows" layer and mostly get rid of variation between windows for embedded, mobile, and Intel platforms. With the new Bash/Ubuntu feature, I think Windows is moving on to abstract away the operating system. My wild-ass prediction for a Microsoft Linux distribution is one in which Microsoft Windows replaces X-windows. Wayland is…

That'd be nice. No more dual booting presuming they bring DirectX along. It seems far of though. Microsoft would have to give up a lot of lower level control.
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