If Microsoft has an OS based on Linux and with good UI and MS support this rocks! Today it's not about OS, but about cloud services and Software used by users.... Email, Calendar, something more valuable... Anyway, Linux is about free configuration, make API for anything you wish, that is important for a user or (heavy-user). iOS and Apple already done this I think. (in some way, You can't change Apple Binary code, but You have API-s to change the behavior of MAC-OS in real world). It's complicated story anyway.
Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
121–130 of 225 posts
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I am quite proudly a lag-behind when it comes to tech within the last decade. The rest of you can go on ahead and suffer all the horrible bugs that would have been found in QA testing, if the testers had been given adequate time and resources. I'll happily arrive after you're done and use the finished product. Also, I've never updated Android OS on a device - every phone and/or tablet I have, has the version of Andro…
Are you not getting Android or iOS security updates, then?
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm essentially trapped on OSX, and have been for a decade Me too until this May, when it was past time for my aging MB Pro to retire. I really couldn't justify a new one given I don't even like them any more (the Touchbar was the coup de grace). Hence a Dell XPS 15, running Windows 10. I won't pretend the latter is anywhere near as good as OSX (less stable, less consistent UI, generally lower quality apps), but it…
Are you saying Linux won't work out-of-the-box on an XPS 15? Because Dell literally sells those pre-loaded with Ubuntu, even saves you $100.
I don't think there's a developer edition of the 9570 model (there's no linux driver for the fingerprint scanner for example), and in any case we rarely get the Dell developer editions here in Australia.
I am certainly saying that a fresh install of Ubuntu (and a reasonable attempt to get over the initial issues eg. using a respin available on github) has too many problems for me to either live with or spend time investigating. Others may have more tolerance for fiddling around with OSs, but I've done my dash with that kind of stuff.
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#124This [0] is a link to a portion of 2018 Bryan Lunduke's presentation where he gives a refresher on Microsoft + Linux, and goes on to discuss Microsoft's "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactics and how they're relevant here.
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
One's "fragmentation" is another's "choice".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18677200
> I still wish we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across all the distributions.
A standardized desktop can be used just fine by all of Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch.
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#126> 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…
Yeah the article is just plain wrong about WSL being relevant here. WSL is running Linux binaries on an NT kernel. This article wants to run Win32 binaries on a Linux kernel. Totally different problems. I like WSL, but it's not part of the solution here. (Also WSL's IO performance problems suggest this kind of emulation approach has significant costs.)
I totally agree with your conclusion but I wanted to comment about the IO performance remark. If you take an IO-heavy application and compile it natively on both platforms you will find that IO performance on Linux is dramaticly faster than windows(1) (and OSX for that matter). For certain workloads, I could see a Windows application running faster under emulation on Linux than natively.
1) This is maybe not true for big databases since those are optimized to basically bypass all of the Windows filesystem.
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#127Illegal Hacking and social engineering is my business I was 16 years old, never had a real job so i had the time to get really good at hacking and I made a good amount of money last +20 years. I'm not doing this to make few bucks here and there. I'm a professional computer expert who could earn 50-100 dollars an hour with a legal job. Stop reading if you don't have a serious hacking problem worth spending some cash on. Hit me up if you are risk taker. Send in your requests at lucidionysus/at/ hotmail/com and let my work do the talking.
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah the article is just plain wrong about WSL being relevant here. WSL is running Linux binaries on an NT kernel. This article wants to run Win32 binaries on a Linux kernel. Totally different problems. I like WSL, but it's not part of the solution here. (Also WSL's IO performance problems suggest this kind of emulation approach has significant costs.)
I totally agree with your conclusion but I wanted to comment about the IO performance remark. If you take an IO-heavy application and compile it natively on both platforms you will find that IO performance on Linux is dramaticly faster than windows(1) (and OSX for that matter). For certain workloads, I could see a Windows application running faster under emulation on Linux than natively. 1) This is maybe not true for…
I wonder if an intermediate step would be an ext2 filesystem driver for NT. As an officially supported feature that would be very handy.
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying Linux won't work out-of-the-box on an XPS 15? Because Dell literally sells those pre-loaded with Ubuntu, even saves you $100.
I don't think there's a developer edition of the 9570 model (there's no linux driver for the fingerprint scanner for example), and in any case we rarely get the Dell developer editions here in Australia. I am certainly saying that a fresh install of Ubuntu (and a reasonable attempt to get over the initial issues eg. using a respin available on github) has too many problems for me to either live with or spend time inv…
I think it's a bit contradictory to choose an insecure OS because a more secure one doesn't support a nice-to-have piece of security hardware. That aside, I'd be interested in the specifics of the "too many problems" that you anticipate on supported hardware (which includes most configurations of the XPS and Precision).
Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?
#130Here'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…
Amazon and Google are likely to make cloud-ready NT distros, cutting off Microsoft's last cash lifeline on rival clouds. So it would have significant costs. On the other hand, Flash once had API dominance and lost it as they (fortunately!) abdicated to HTML5. MS is now extremely aware that Win32 isn't the future - they even cut the OS into pieces and reorg'd NT under us (Azure.) .NET Core is the way forward for the c…
Amazon has supported Windows VMs since at least 2010, the first time I did a Windows cloud based deployment.
So far it hasn't been that interesting for Windows projects.
Regarding the ever-shrinking desktop market, laptops and 2-1 are "desktops" as well.
Plugging phones into docking stations will never caught on.