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Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

zdnet.com

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Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#71

Post by didibus »

crispinb wrote: post #59
halbritt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you guys tried Linux on the desktop recently? There's a host of folks in my org running Ubuntu on Dell XPS laptops. Issues do arise, but they're pretty rare. I made the switch from Mac almost two years ago and it's been great.

Yep, on the XPS this year (the last time a new Ubuntu install a couple of weeks ago). Many problems. Some fixable, but a poorer use of my time than running or sailing or any number of three-dimensional activities I choose over screen flatland when not working.

Give openSuse Tumbleweed a try, with KDE Plasma. I've been running it on a 10 year old XPS 13, smooth as butter.

Or KDE Neon if you'd rather have an Ubuntu core. I heard good things about it but didn't try.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#72

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

gingerbread-man wrote: post #47
riffraff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you need an open source kernel for POSIX compatibility, afair NT allows different OS "personalities" to coexist and you could write a POSIX compatible one as a kernel module. But I don't think that has more interest than a Linux compatible subsystem, which they already have.

I was thinking more that an open-source kernel could result in unix-y distros e.g. Arch Windows.

Yeah, because you know what'd be really great? If Windows had the same fragmentation mess that Linux Desktop does.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#73

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #41
overgard wrote: post #19

I see a lot of “why not” but no actual “why”. Microsoft loses strategic platform control and gains: ... crickets

> but no actual “why” Because in every other aspect but the very kernel (and the UI perhaps) Windows is a disaster. Windows Update especially.

So how does replacing the kernel help with that?

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#74

Post by crispinb »

halbritt wrote: post #69
crispinb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, on the XPS this year (the last time a new Ubuntu install a couple of weeks ago). Many problems. Some fixable, but a poorer use of my time than running or sailing or any number of three-dimensional activities I choose over screen flatland when not working.

I'm not going to pretend there aren't issues, but subjectively it feels to me like there are few. The UI is decent and usable. For me the dealing with the few issues that arise is a better use of my time than wrestling with things like Docker on Mac, homebrew, ancient python, and weird VPN issues that seem to pop up with every upgrade.

No doubt every case is different, so there's no contradiction here. If it's efficient for you, great. Ubuntu wasn't worth it for me. The UI is fine, but there's too much that just doesn't work, or works poorly, and I'm not going to do the research involved to overcome these things.

I don't really believe Microsoft is going to do a linux as a consumer-grade replacement for Windows, but if it did, I suspect the issues I have would go away. Hardware vendors would write drivers, missing software pieces would be filled in, etc.

[Edit: I committed the cardinal sin - or is it a common convention? - of commenting on an article before reading it. A mistake in this case - I realise now the article is just silly speculative hand-waving]

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#75

Post by dbcurtis »

gingerbread-man wrote: post #34

Here's a dopey idea: What if Microsoft open-sourced the Windows NT kernel? (While retaining some proprietary drivers, etc..) If handled well, a community would blossom around "NT," with multiple "unofficial" distros (maybe one with full POSIX compatibility), and lots and lots of happy developers. If things went really well, they might even achieve the resources necessary to create Windows Phone 2.0. Microsoft could s…

I suspect not legally possible. There is a lot of code in the NT kernel from various other companies that at least at one point was under NDA, and a lot probably still is.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#76

Post by sho »

didibus wrote: post #71
crispinb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, on the XPS this year (the last time a new Ubuntu install a couple of weeks ago). Many problems. Some fixable, but a poorer use of my time than running or sailing or any number of three-dimensional activities I choose over screen flatland when not working.

Give openSuse Tumbleweed a try, with KDE Plasma. I've been running it on a 10 year old XPS 13, smooth as butter. Or KDE Neon if you'd rather have an Ubuntu core. I heard good things about it but didn't try.

Sigh. No offense but it's comments like this that remind me why no, I haven't tried desktop linux recently. No, I am not going to mess around trying KDE Plasma or SomethingElse Tumbleweed or OpenWuffe SnufflePuss XL or any other of the billion permutations of half-baked shit which might or might not work. I am mid-career, I have money, I have little time and even less interest in fucking around with any of that just to get a working computer that meets my needs.

I want a big company, who I trust will follow through, to take my money and solve my problems with The Desktop Linux™. I need office apps, I need music apps, I need image processing, I need some sort of integrated cloud offering, and I'd like a unix-like back end. I'll pay money for this. I will not pay in time. Apple does this for me currently; MS is possibly the only possible other company which could take on such a challenge, hence the interest in the idea.

It's sort of ironic to me that one of the main reasons I like linux on the server - which I use exclusively - is because I perceive it as "just working" in a way that MS servers never do. The situation is entirely inverted on the desktop - OSX, and to a lesser extent Windows, "just work" and the solutions to all of my problems are, at most, an install and possibly a few dollars away. Linux is very far from that currently, and until it gets a whole lot closer - and it will probably take a big company to actually do it - that door is closed to me, and people like me, for the foreseeable future.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#77

Post by vlovich123 »

Endy wrote: post #32
simonblack wrote: post #3

I suggested on Mini-Microsoft about 10 years ago that Microsoft do an 'Apple'. Apple took a free OS from BSD and put their own GUI over the top of it. I suggested that MSFT do the same sort of thing, that being to put their Windows GUI on top of the Linux OS instead of using the Linux X11 GUIs. This had the advantage that the underlying OS base would no longer need maintaining by Microsoft, and all their coding effor…

That would have been the end of me using computers, right then and there. An operating system that updates or upgrades more than about once per decade is moving entirely too fast. 5 years about the fastest possible rate that even approaches being reasonable. The fact that Windows has always bent over backwards to provide backward compatibility would be totally invalidated by shifting toward Linux. I run a bunch of DO…

And then you have iOS, OSX, ChromeOS, & Android that both upgrade annually. I'm sure you'll be happy with Windows 10 though considering it's the last official Window release. Really it's not though; it's just rolling releases in the background.

I'm afraid you have to realize you're in the tail end of the tech adoption cycle[1], either in the late majority or bordering on laggard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_adopter

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#78

Post by monocasa »

dbcurtis wrote: post #75
gingerbread-man wrote: post #34

Here's a dopey idea: What if Microsoft open-sourced the Windows NT kernel? (While retaining some proprietary drivers, etc..) If handled well, a community would blossom around "NT," with multiple "unofficial" distros (maybe one with full POSIX compatibility), and lots and lots of happy developers. If things went really well, they might even achieve the resources necessary to create Windows Phone 2.0. Microsoft could s…

I suspect not legally possible. There is a lot of code in the NT kernel from various other companies that at least at one point was under NDA, and a lot probably still is.

That was true of Solaris too, and they managed to work through that.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#79

Post by viraptor »

cwyers wrote: post #25

The Windows NT kernel has better hardware support and Microsoft is showing that they can run a full Linux userland on top of it. What do they gain from shipping Linux for the desktop?

> showing that they can run a full Linux userland on top of it

There are still missing features. There's a lot of userland working, not nearly 100%.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#80

Post by askvictor »

crispinb wrote: post #10

I'd like to use linux, and install it from time to time, but am always eventually worn down by problems, some trivial & some less so, that could mostly be solved, but at the cost of research & fiddling time I'm not interested in spending. The issues largely fall into two categories - missing software, and missing or undercooked hardware support. If Microsoft did signal to the market an increased long-term support for…

Having had a decent go at all three major OSes (windows, osx and Linux) in the past few years, I've found all of them to have a whole bunch of annoyances that stop me being able to do what I want, how I want it.
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