181–190 of 225 posts
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…
Even shared source would be great. You can see the code, you can audit it for security or privacy issues, disable parts you don't like and distribute modified versions to people who already have a licensed copy of Windows. That won't dry up Microsoft's revenue stream, and is a great middle ground between open and closed source.
It was 2002 when I first read some of the Windows code via official Microsoft channels (Shared Source license) to unterstand some of the quirky behaviors.
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Citation needed that opening Solaris had anything to do with Sun getting sold off.
It certainly did not improve sales. I bet no one that downloaded it has spent a dime to Sun.
It was a free download for decades before being open sourced. From what I heard, it increased support contract sales quite a bit, letting companies feel that that weren't necessarily tied to Sun for Solaris, but knowing that Sun was the best outfit to support it.
> I bet no one that downloaded it has spent a dime to Sun.
You would lose that bet hard. They made their money on hardware sales and support contracts.
A family member of mine was the head of Federal Sales for Sun at the time.
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…
Example - I installed latest ubuntu on my laptop. Few days later, I needed to share my internet connection from wifi to ethernet. Ok, no problem, I'll just google it. Answer says it's easy as anything, you just open the connection manager, tick two boxes and done. Except....on latest version of ubuntu, the connection manager looks nothing like the one shown in screenshots, and doesn't have that option. Ok, so I start digging(and it's not easy, because almost every result on google shows me something that doesn't exist anymore). Finally, I find a command to open the old network manager, because of course it still exists - and voila, it works straight away. Except that I wanted to set up some filtering where only certain ports would be allowed through...no issue, I'll just use iptables. Fine. But since the last time I used Linux, someone had a moronic idea to change the interface names from easily understandable (eth0 for ethernet, wl0 for lan) they are now all something like eb239xsd83d, because of course that's easier to remember and type. And there is no way to instinctively tell what is ethernet and what is wifi anymore. Lovely.
Like, this is all extremely minor and easy to fix with some googling, but it feels like every damn time I want to do anything on Linux, I have to use the terminal. Ughhhh.
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So how does replacing the kernel help with that?
It doesn't. Replacing the kernel doesn't but deprecating the entire OS and switching to GNU/Linux + Wine (which means MS would start contributing to Wine) does. If this happens we can get heavily improved Wine + vendors like Adobe releasing Linux-native versions of their apps.
This article is nonsense.
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.
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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.
The question is are they just "changing OS" issues or are they specific to Ubuntu/Linux distros? Changing from Win7/8 to Win10 was a massive headache (I don't use it daily, just admin for friends and family).
Works fine on X11, which is why I think Ubuntu shifted to Wayland and then back to X11, but at this point, X11 is no closer to dying.
Nvidia hardware doesn't like to behave well in Linux. One has to get just the right driver, and the correct kernel options to prevent hangs and poor standby behavior. However, I'm not sure this is terribly different than my experience with Nvidia drivers on Windows.
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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…
https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/07/27/dell-xps13-developer-edit...
Alternately, there's System76