81–90 of 225 posts
Mac is used by most tech companies because of terminal and tools it can run. But Linux can run all of them so windows built on Linux will have best of both worlds.
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…
That won't dry up Microsoft's revenue stream, and is a great middle ground between open and closed source.
> In addition, for several years now, Microsoft's WSL developers have been working on mapping Linux API calls to Windows and vice-versa. A lot of the work needed for Windows apps to run without modification on Linux has already been done. This argument makes little sense: that "vice versa" is wholly unsubstantiated and without it the rest collapses. Making Linux binaries work on NT (which already has a subsystem conc…
From Wikipedia:
A main design goal of NT was hardware and software portability. Various versions of NT family operating systems have been released for a variety of processor architectures, initially IA-32, MIPS, and DEC Alpha, with PowerPC, Itanium, x86-64 and ARM supported in later releases. The idea was to have a common code base with a custom Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for each platform. However, support for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC was later dropped in Windows 2000. Broad software compatibility was achieved with support for several API "personalities", including Windows API, POSIX,[11] and OS/2 APIs[12] – the latter two were phased out starting with Windows XP.[13] Partial MS-DOS compatibility was achieved via an integrated DOS Virtual Machine – although this feature is being phased out in the x86-64 architecture.[14] NT supported per-object (file, function, and role) access control lists allowing a rich set of security permissions to be applied to systems and services.
I see a lot of “why not” but no actual “why”. Microsoft loses strategic platform control and gains: ... crickets
One argument the article made is Microsoft is spending billions on Windows while the revenue from, and quality of, Windows are declining.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/Ear…
Also, I've never updated Android OS on a device - every phone and/or tablet I have, has the version of Android it shipped with; whatever that might be. The same goes for iOS, mostly. My old iPad, I knew better than to update the OS. The newer one, I've made the big mistake of upgrading to iOS 12. I'm sorely tempted at the moment to make a list of programs on the device and reset it to get it back to decency.
My feeling is, people are allowing the tech companies to release buggy software, they're still buying it, they're still paying for hardware using it and supporting bug-ridden versions. We need to shift the mainstream - and the business world - back to demanding software that works and keeps on working reliably for the life of the business.
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.
Back when Windows 8 was causing all sorts of problems I did my annual top ten list of what's coming in the following year. One of my predictions was that Microsoft would move Windows to using Linux as the back end. Overall Windows would become much more stable, they might be able to get some Mac users to switch and they could put more people on getting the UI right. Like a lot of my bolder predictions on each years l…
Why would you think they would do this? NT is the architecturally more modern kernel. People should read up on the history of the NT kernel [1]. And if they should do this for non-technical reasons, I think it is more likely that they go for some permissively-licensed kernel (e.g. FreeBSD) to avoid the GPL.
In the end, Microsoft did exactly the opposite: make it possible to run Linux binaries on Windows. Windows Subsystem for Linux is a testament to the strengths of the NT kernel. NT supports multiple 'personalities' and Win32 is just one personality, the Linux ABI is another personality. One could say that the Linux ABI is almost as native to the core NT kernel as the Win32 ABI is.
At any rate, I think that the Windows desktop is getting less and less important to them. So rather than going through the massive work of porting Window on top of the Linux kernel, I think it is more likely that they put Windows in maintenance mode and make/fork something along the lines of ChromeOS or Android for client systems.
(Disclaimer: I haven't seriously used Windows since Windows 3.1. It just bothers me when people misrepresent Windows or the NT kernel.)
[1] https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/windows-nt-and-vm...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The lack of a company controlling Linux is exactly why it's Linux. I am surprised that someone who is mid-career, has money, and little time doesn't know that.
They could even use WSL to put Linux on top of the NT kernel. It'd be called Microsoft GNU/Windows. Or they could ditch the GNU part and go for a non-GNU libc and userland like the article suggests. That wouldn't save nearly as much money as the article speculates because the Windows userland is humongous - NT is a small part of the whole, much like the Linux kernel is a vanishingly small part of the distributed effo…
Is WSL that complete? There could be tons of edge cases where stock Linux binaries could behave slightly differently and could be a support nightmare.
> In addition, for several years now, Microsoft's WSL developers have been working on mapping Linux API calls to Windows and vice-versa. A lot of the work needed for Windows apps to run without modification on Linux has already been done. This argument makes little sense: that "vice versa" is wholly unsubstantiated and without it the rest collapses. Making Linux binaries work on NT (which already has a subsystem conc…
The existence of MSSQL-Linux is proof that Microsoft can get this done. The story is pretty interesting: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2016/12/16/sql-se...