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Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

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Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#211

Post by JetSpiegel »

jimmy1 wrote: post #86
halbritt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I still cannot to this day get pip working correctly on my mac -- it is eternally damned to never run python correctly, and if it wasn't for rvm and shell magic, the same would be true for ruby.

That doesn't have anything to do with Linux Desktops, though.

Have you tried to use Ruby or Python on Windows? It's even worse.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#212

Post by qwerty456127 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #198
qwerty456127 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just like it is in Linux. Quite the opposite: the only thing that is (hell arguable, of course) wrong with Linux is its kernel architecture.

I could not possibly disagree more strongly. Linux's kernel has some problems but it is mostly ok. Userspace is where everything has gone horribly horribly wrong in Linux.

E.g. what? As for the kernel I personally dislike the the Linux kernel-driver separation model (I believe these should better be made more separate, like in Windows) but other people (kernel hackers probably) have mentioned the VMS genes in the NT kernel make it in interesting in more ways. But what's wrong with the GNU/Linux userspace? I can't name a single problem with it.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#213

Post by halbritt »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #211
jimmy1 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still cannot to this day get pip working correctly on my mac -- it is eternally damned to never run python correctly, and if it wasn't for rvm and shell magic, the same would be true for ruby.

That doesn't have anything to do with Linux Desktops, though. Have you tried to use Ruby or Python on Windows? It's even worse.

Python generally sucks less on Linux desktops, mainly because they don't ship with an old broken python.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#214

Post by thekyle »

Santosh83 wrote: post #95
Endy wrote: post #32

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…

There are no current OSes which upgrade once per decade or 5 years, sadly. Sure Win 7 and 8.1 are there, but on their way out. Everything else is updated much more frequently. I suppose MacOS is the only remotely reasonable alternative once Win 7 and 8.1 are past EOL.

There are plenty of Linux distros that are supported for upwards of 10 years. Debian and CentOS come to mind but Ubuntu 18.04 was also recently announced to have support until 2028.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#215

Post by karmasimida »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #209
karmasimida wrote: post #58

Can't see it happen. Desktop Linux has no meaningful user base, with or without MSFT.

Well, Steam [1] is probably a good measure of "desktop" as it's usually home users that install on their personal computers? So, by that measure Linux has ¼ of the users of MacOS. The significance of that for you is not my call though. Steam's top seller in 2017 was PUBG at $600 Million, so assuming equal spread of revenue that 0.8% represents $4.8M you're leaving on the table. With less competition on Linux then the…

> assuming equal spread of revenue.

But I would assume the cost it is not. With your PUBG example, it was known for bad optimization and vulnerability for hacking from the beginning. The developer could optimize for Windows and benefit 96% or more of their customers, while it is hard to justify do the same for the 0.8% user base while the spending is probably the same. So no, I don't think $4.8M is easy money.

And for smaller, even moderate successful titles, Linux version makes even less sense.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#216

Post by oaiey »

halbritt wrote: post #201
oaiey wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just that a database server is a very specific thing. Own memory handling, own file system handling, own scheduling, ... . The core of these systems give a shit about the operating system.

No argument that a desktop environment and a database server are different things. It'd be hard to judge which is a more complex task. Even still, read the story about how they built an OS abstraction layer on top of Windows and Linux and then ported their product to it. That was an impressive feat and an perfect example of Microsoft doing something (maybe only this one thing) right. Unlike Office on Mac which was a…

Oh I did. I followed WSL and MSSQL development strategies a lot. Cool stuff.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#217

Post by justinclift »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #159
Zardoz84 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shit... There are some Unix software from 80's that runs unmodified on modern Linux. You only need to recompile it.

Linux (the kernel) is an extreme outlier in this case because Linus actually cares deeply about compatibility. You don't even need to recompile statically linked old Linux software to have it work in most cases. But otherwise UNIX's compatibility story is pretty damned atrocious because part of its culture is relying on everybody to recompile everything.

That sounds weird to me. I used to do Solaris SysAdmin stuff from (roughly) the early 2000s. That also had a strong backwards compatibility attitude, sot you should (and generally could) run old Solaris binaries on much newer releases of the OS.

Which Unix's had this "pretty damned atrocious" backwards compatibility approach?

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#218

Post by justinclift »

Endy wrote: post #196
Zardoz84 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shit... There are some Unix software from 80's that runs unmodified on modern Linux. You only need to recompile it.

Having to "recompile" it means that it's not unmodified, though. Unmodified would mean that it runs like Windows programs where the same binary files work now as did then.

Yeah, that's how I took it too. eg being able to run old binaries on newer versions of an OS.

My experience across Solaris and Linux has led me to believe it's also been a strong nix thing too, not just a Windows approach. I used to use FreeBSD a lot too, but that was years ago and I don't have clear memories of it's compatibility approach. :/

Which nix's are you thinking of, which don't offer strong backwards compatibility for compiled binaries?

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#219

Post by unixhero »

geofft wrote: post #167
unixhero wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NT has the capabilities to run different API "Personalities". This was pretty major. WIN32 was only one of the APIs NT supported. IBM also did the same with Workplace OS, but it failed. NT could have been a lot of things, if the competitive landscape was different. 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 v…

Yup, that's what I meant by "subsystems" (which is NT's own term; not sure why Wikipedia calls them "personalities," and Linux's personality(2) syscall is much more limited). In any case, that support is in the wrong direction. The article proposes dropping NT and moving to Linux, which doesn't have subsystem support at all. Even if it did, the existing WSL code isn't helpful.

Thea reason why the term Personalities was used is because this is what the industry called this capability, back in the day. It was a huuuge turf war, and the capabilities enabled incredible things. It didn't really pan out however.

Re: Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux?

#220

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

justinclift wrote: post #217
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux (the kernel) is an extreme outlier in this case because Linus actually cares deeply about compatibility. You don't even need to recompile statically linked old Linux software to have it work in most cases. But otherwise UNIX's compatibility story is pretty damned atrocious because part of its culture is relying on everybody to recompile everything.

That sounds weird to me. I used to do Solaris SysAdmin stuff from (roughly) the early 2000s. That also had a strong backwards compatibility attitude, sot you should (and generally could) run old Solaris binaries on much newer releases of the OS. Which Unix's had this "pretty damned atrocious" backwards compatibility approach?

Perhaps you're right, I sometimes forget that commercial UNIX's exist. The BSDs are mostly what I was thinking of.
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