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Microsoft's Linux Kernel

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Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#331

Post by davesmith1983 »

meruru wrote: post #145
mycall wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux desktop means little when people log into Google, Facebook et al.

Exactly. Linux won on technical merits, but we failed to educate people about the really important part about freedom.

When is Linux technically better? It is a good enough all rounder. There is this principle of "Worse is better" when it comes to many, many products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better

Also the first versions of the kernel was released at the right time.

It is decent enough, free, open source and was around at the right time. The internet was just becoming a thing, the PC ecosystem had "won" and it was pretty open in that anyone could manufacture a PC. There was an AT&T lawsuit wasn't happening in the 90s IIRC against the BSD Code. If Linus had created his kernel a little later or a litter earlier than it may have never received the interest it did.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#332

Post by filmor »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #199
ndarwincorn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> classic example are laptops that dynamically switch between discrete and integrated graphics YMMV, but as far as I know that's more or less a solved problem by default (for X anyway) with DRI3. This particular complaint echoes folks (I was one) who booted Ubuntu desktop a decade ago and couldn't get wifi to work, and proceeded to complain about shoddy driver support (to present day, clearly), using only that single…

> What this ignores is that Linux driver support is generally fantastic, works out of the box in a way that desktop architects at MS dream about and is infinitely more current in practice since you go to one place to update all your software, including driver software, something MS hasn't been able to get right in a decade of trying. Generally, yes, it's pretty decent on first go and there's a nice default happy path…

Version compatibility is not an issue for in-kernel drivers, only for the few remaining external ones. On Windows you have this issue much more often if you are trying to use an older device, in particular if it's one that came out before Vista, on Linux, once a driver is in the kernel it's continuously adjusted to driver API changes and will keep working. You can still run a current kernel on a 386 if you want to.

I'm running a quite current Dell on an essentially unpatched kernel (just includes Gentoo's default patches) with no additional modules involved and everything I tested up until now works, even fancy things like Dell's mini-dock.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#333

Post by posix_me_less »

Hawxy wrote: post #245
alexanderdmitri wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years ago I would have thought it unthinkable a Windows machine would be sending data behind the scenes about me to a remote server. This privacy policy[1] is insane: > Together, diagnostics and feedback are how you and your Windows 10 device tell Microsoft what's really going on. As you use Windows, we collect diagnostic information, and to make sure we're listening to you, our customer, we've also built ways for…

It's not really that insane. Microsoft just provides a very detailed privacy policy that covers every single possible scenario and clearly explains it to the user. In any generic platform privacy policy, the same lines you quoted from their privacy statement would be summed up as "We collect [insert here] as required for operational and security reasons", "We use your data to perform business functions" and "Your dat…

Read this part:

> one or more unique identifiers that can help us recognize an individual user on an individual device and understand the device's service issues and use patterns.

They have a file on each user, it is straight out of 1984.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#335

Post by goodcanadian »

gorio wrote: post #319
goodcanadian wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this angst over whether Linux will ever be ready on the desktop. Well, I've been using it exclusively for something like 15 years.

So your opinion is that it's ready?

For most purposes, it has been ready for years. There are a handful of proprietary programs that individual people may need for work that aren't available, and you aren't going to be able to play the latest games on Linux. Most people, however, could switch to one of many Linux distributions and be just as productive if not moreso.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#336

Post by emilsedgh »

linguae wrote: post #54
cobalt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so microsoft's open source linux kernel is going to cause everyone to stop using linux...?

No, not everyone is going to abandon Linux; I'm going to define Linux in this context as the traditional Linux desktop where people run some sort of X11 or Wayland window manager or desktop environment on top of a Linux kernel running on bare hardware. However, it would be interesting to see what impact the popularity of WSL will have on Linux desktop environments such as KDE, GNOME and its derivatives MATE and Cinna…

WSL didn't change much for Linux Desktop landscape and the newer version wont be much different:

Linux Desktop users are there because it offers them a better experience for whatever they are doing. And WSL doesn't change it that much.

If you really need MS Office, you wouldn't be a Linux Desktop user anyways.

I honestly don't see WSL being a game changer for Linux Desktop. But I do see it improving the life of current windows users.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#337

Post by StreamBright »

mtzet wrote: post #265

This is really Microsoft catching up to the Mac in terms of integration with the open-source ecosystem which importantly drives the web. In the mid 2000's the Mac really took off due to being a good-enough Linux replacement on the command line, while taking care of all the hardware integration and providing a sleek desktop experience. This really helped the Mac take off among hackers. This system wasn't as open-sourc…

> a good-enough Linux replacement on the command line

nit picking but it was more of a good enough bsd/unix than linux.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#339

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

ozim wrote: post #221
phkahler wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "embrace" phase. It also kind of encompasses "extend" by adding hardware support via Windows drivers. This alone is not enough to get to "extinguish" though, so allow me to make a prediction. The next step is fully locked down hardware that requires a signed OS. Linux will not run on it, but MS will pretend to support you by allowing linux apps to run on their kernel. Then, once no hardware will allow you…

Problem with this line of thinking is that operating system kernel matters. It does not anymore. What matters now is: if people are buying their cloud solution. No one cares about desktop users, no one cares about selling server OS. Real money is in big/medium companies buying their cloud stuff with nice monthly subscription. Good luck making people pay you every month for an OS, they don't want to upgrade and pay fo…

> No one cares about desktop users, no one cares about selling server OS.

I don't see this in reality though. Any kind of corporate office IT is still firmly in the hands of Microsoft and Windows and I don't see any change for that on the horizon. Quite the contrary as IT departments have to double down on applying the Microsoft way with Windows 10 Enterprise and its changed licensing scheme. Where you've been able to dodge having a machine dedicated to license management (Windows Server, of course), you now are forced into a different licensing setup with Windows 10 Enterprise. Why Windows 10? Because Microsoft forbids you to use anything older on new hardware. Why Enterprise? Because you can't reliably make Windows 10 Pro stop phoning home about the documents you are opening. The only offer here is Windows 10 Enterprise.

All this futzing around with open source and Linux subsystems is just for the developer facing part of Windows. All the other areas, those that developers rarely encounter unless they talk to IT, are still shaped by the same Microsoft of 10 or 15 years ago.

Microsoft has seen that there was a huge brain drain towards apps running on Linux servers, developed on Macs (webdev, containers, deep learning, ...).

The new strategy is to get developers back on Windows via Linux. Once it's the new norm to run your apps in Linux containers that run inside Windows Server 2022, developed on Windows 10 machines, they are going to edge Linux out of the equation again. You won't be able to switch your containers away from Windows after that.

Believing that it doesn't matter how your end user devices fit into corporate IT or ignoring what steps Microsoft has taken to make Windows Server the default in the cloud is really dangerous.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#340

Post by gorio »

goodcanadian wrote: post #335
gorio wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your opinion is that it's ready?

For most purposes, it has been ready for years. There are a handful of proprietary programs that individual people may need for work that aren't available, and you aren't going to be able to play the latest games on Linux. Most people, however, could switch to one of many Linux distributions and be just as productive if not moreso.

Then we disagree. Linux works until is doesn't, which is the problem. It isn't a handful of programs so much as a wide range of capabilities. We can all speculate the taste of the average user, but do you think companies wouldn't love running desktop Linux instead of paying millions to Microsoft? That is what everyone did when Linux actually became good enough as a server OS.
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