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Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

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Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#81
post #10
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The same as using Red Hat's Linux. You get a well supported environment. If you are a Linux shop but want to run on Azure then it makes sense, to me anyway, to go with the best supported OS on that platform. I love Linux and while I also have some nagging negative thoughts about Microsoft getting so cosy with the Linux world, I also can't pretend I wouldn't be super excited to run a Microsoft Linux on my dev machine…

>can't pretend I wouldn't be super excited to run a Microsoft Linux on my dev machine

Seeing as MS is basically a branch of the NSA I'm not excited about that at all. I might be slightly excited if MS went open source and allowed people to include their tools in other distros, but the NSA would never allow that.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#82
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My first UNIX, a couple of years before GNU/Linux was even a thing.

Cool.

My first Unix was some PC-based clone, the name of which I cannot remember now, but was also a while before Linux. Not sure whether it was before Xenix or not, though I used Xenix (SCO Xenix at the time, IIRC, or was it SCO Unix) a year or so later.

First Unix's name may have started with E-something. Everex? Not sure.

I think I also got to use Interactive Systems' PC Unix (PC-IX?) around the same time as the first one.

Soon after, moved to Unix on higher Motorola 680x0 processor based minicomputers, and even a multi-CPU SMP RISC Unix (from MIPS) for a while.

Later SVR3 and SVR4. Didn't like 4 though. By then (as I learned later) the UNIX wars had started, and it seemed to be a clunky hybrid of features from the SVR3 and BSD camps. Later worked a good amount on HP-UX too, on their PA-RISC business servers. Liked HP-UX. Pretty stable and powerful OS with a good patch management system and many other features and tools (HP PRM, Glance Plus, Ignite, MC/ServiceGuard, etc.).

The hp-ux mailing list was good too - very friendly and helpful people, I helped out others too.

Never got to work on Solaris, though, which I regret.

I remember I first wrote my selpg utility [1] on a HP-UX box (for a large corp customer, at their request), and then released it on the HP-UX mailing list. Some people appreciated it.

[1] http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-arti...

http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text-pages-...

Good fun doing a lot of systems stuff on those machines for some years.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#83
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…

Was Motif paid?

Edit: Checked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)

According to that article, it was, initially. Didn't know.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#84
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

Yes, MS has been involved with Unix from much before the recent moves. Possibly a less known fact to some.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#85
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They intentionally tried to destroy the web What are you referring to?

The web as envisioned early on by Netscape was supposed to have apps much sooner than it did. Once Microsoft swept aside Netscape by killing their business it basically froze development on IE. They made one mistake: XMLHttpRequest (probably the last big feature added to IE before the freeze) and we got lucky with Firefox.

Netscape's vision was java applets though, right? The only thing I can remember that was worse in a browser than Flash. Perhaps we owe Microsoft some thanks.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#86
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.

There's been a rather effective cleanup effort a few years ago: http://windows-now.com/blogs/robert/mark-russinovich-explain...

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#87
post #54

I highly doubt these Linux games will amount to much for Microsoft, but it's fun to watch. Their fundamental problem is (which they realize pretty well i seems) that they have lost developer's mind share. .NET may be a fine ecosystem and C# may be a great language but in all practical senses it is Windows-only. All these Mono/open source CLR games are not even the slightest blip on the radar for a practical day-to-da…

> Their fundamental problem is (which they realize pretty well i seems) that they have lost developer's mind share. .NET may be a fine ecosystem and C# may be a great language but in all practical senses it is Windows-only. All these Mono/open source CLR games are not even the slightest blip on the radar for a practical day-to-day backend operations running cross platform (which is mostly Linux, but Windows as well).

The JVM has certainly had a lot of time to mature, and certainly has a fairly entrenched position, but when you look at all the developers who were willing to hop on board the Go train with no supporting infrastructure, it's pretty clear that support from powerful entities can go a long way.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#88
post #13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could use it as stepping stone for businesses heavily invested on Linux or already having a mix of Linux and Windows: "we guarantee this is the best Linux distribution for compatibility with MS tech (Msad, powershell, Azure, mono etc etc)".

I don't know how appealing that is. Even from a GUI perspective, moving from Linux to Windows is such a huge step backwards. I have to keep an eye on a whole bunch of things at work so I only run a Windows box for one or two pieces of software. This box takes up less than 25% of my screen real estate. Every window on the Linux box is automatically placed and I usually have to put in literally no effort. On the Window…

You can have a tiling window manager under windows as well, like HashTWM https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM or AquaSnap http://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap . Window management under windows can be just about the same as it is under linux.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#89
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With MS supporting CLR on Linux, I don't see what the problem is. They now have a limited IDE and runtime support for cross-platform. FWIW I've used Mono in production on Linux in telecom, and it's handled many billions of messages over the years. With F# nonetheless. Apart from a few rare issues here and there it's been a great experience.

>limited IDE and runtime support Key word: limited I don't believe MS will ever fully support Linux 100%. They will always make their software tooling more compatible with their OS even though they have the ability to create software for Linux that is on par with the Windows counterparts. Microsoft purposely leaves their "cross-platform" software gimped out so that anyone who does decide to take up .NET on Linux will…

JetBrains will be releasing C# IDE - https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/

Right now it's not much with C# in cross platform development (ASP.NET is in total flux, it's not even renamed to Core 1.0, Rider IDE still not released), but soon™.

Re: Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft

#90
post #54

I highly doubt these Linux games will amount to much for Microsoft, but it's fun to watch. Their fundamental problem is (which they realize pretty well i seems) that they have lost developer's mind share. .NET may be a fine ecosystem and C# may be a great language but in all practical senses it is Windows-only. All these Mono/open source CLR games are not even the slightest blip on the radar for a practical day-to-da…

With MS supporting CLR on Linux, I don't see what the problem is. They now have a limited IDE and runtime support for cross-platform. FWIW I've used Mono in production on Linux in telecom, and it's handled many billions of messages over the years. With F# nonetheless. Apart from a few rare issues here and there it's been a great experience.

FWIW we spent years on mono as well, constantly chasing performance issues, incompatibilities, stupid bugs, race conditions and uncountable segfaults. All with code that worked perfectly fine on Windows (but we had to run on Linux due to cost and integration necessities).

We are about 70% of the way through a complete Go rewrite and I couldn't be happier with the outcome. For once, things just work as expected, on Windows, Linux and OSX.

I'm glad Microsoft is finally doing something to make .NET something other than a shit show on Linux, but we needed that 3 years ago, not 3 years from now.

Alas, too little too late for us anyway. I hope it works out better for others, but the ship has already sailed.

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