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Microsoft's Linux Kernel

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Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#401

Post by wolrah »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #389
brighter2morrow wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most office workers could get away with a Chromebook, I'm surprised this hasn't caught on in offices yet.

Might be different in the US given popularity of Apple software, but in the rest of the world, Microsoft Office suite is a fundamental tool in almost every office. I don't think it'll run on a Chromebook. (And I mean the desktop version. O365 is dumbed down half-way to Google's Office Suite level - which is cool for an occasional document or spreadsheet, but is lacking both features and efficiency for professional us…

Depends on the use case. I work for a MSP and I do almost all my office work in GSuite on the web. The only thing I fire up LibreOffice for is dealing with CSV files which are a pain in GSuite.

99% of my job requires nothing more than a web browser and a terminal with a SSH client. The remainder is mostly Wireshark.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#402

Post by floatboth »

phkahler wrote: post #174
mrbungie wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, except in this case is just one goalpost and everyone wins. Now we can enjoy using software as MS Office and userland from Linux distros in the same machine seamlessly.

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…

MS is actually walking back from lockdown. New Qualcomm ARM laptops allow you to disable secure boot exactly like on old x86 ones.

They don't need to do this anymore, pushing Windows is not their priority, they want to get people on Azure, Office 365 and Xbox live. Everything is about services these days.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#403

Post by ex3xu »

rbanffy wrote: post #347
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…

> I find it fairly easy to work on both Mac OS X, Linux and WSL2 -- but not pre-WSL Windows The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable. > I don't know how/if they're going to handle freeing memory again -- here the NT kernel really needs t…

> The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable.

This is definitely a problem especially considering that the shotgun approach to some Windows updates actually hurt the performance of some machines, even breaking Windows on occasion [0]. However, in fairness I would say that I've spent just as much or more time fixing rolling release issues on Arch/Manjaro, or troubleshooting the package stopping me from sudo apt upgrade. The worst experience for me was having to reformat after the update from Ubuntu 14.04 crashed.

What annoys me most about Microsoft's overarching paternalistic philosophy is is how creepy their telemetry initiatives are. Granted plenty of companies do this now, for the same profit-driven motivations, but Microsoft goes above and beyond in terms of disabling or even ignoring opt out options [1]. I've found the Winaero blog [2] to be a good source of tools to stop some of the Windows telemetry shenanigans.

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/05/19/microsof...

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/a4lpg0/windows_1...

[2]: https://winaero.com/

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#404

Post by floatboth »

bonoboTP wrote: post #306
VvR-Ox wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to laugh when I read about this "Ubuntu install process" - Is there really still people on earth who can screw that up? :-D

Yes, many people I know would get stuck on the very first step: formatting and creating the bootable USB drive.

Canonical needs to put USB drives with Ubuntu into retail stores then :D

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#406

Post by doubleunplussed »

tjoff wrote: post #268
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…

I'm not sure how the bubble you live in came to be but for ordinary desktop/laptop hardware that is as false as can be. And there is a very simple reason for that. All desktop PCs and laptops are sold with windows, if no support exist the hardware as a whole will not exist. Meanwhile in linux land I still can't use my three monitors because displayport MST doesn't work with the open source AMD driver. Support has exi…

For what it's worth it is my experience that displayport MST has never worked reliably on any OS or hardware whatsoever. I gave up on it and am thankful I can now just buy a thunderbolt dock with multiple video outputs.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#407

Post by nobleach »

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.

As much as I love Linux (I'm typing this from my IBM Thinkpad running Arch with a KDE desktop) There are far too many warts to call it "ready". Every morning, I plug into my widescreen monitor, and watch as application windows randomly decide which monitor they'll appear on. Then begins the fight with my bluetooth mouse. I enable bluetooth, then turn on the mouse. It's recognized and "connected". But it does not work. I have to disconnect and reconnect. I can't in good conscience advise my mother or wife that this is a "normal" experience, therefore, it's not "ready".

Now, does using Ubuntu cover some of these glaring warts? Perhaps. But that often opens its own set of problems. Each comes with its own set of workarounds. Where macOS and Windows excel, is their sense of "polish". Most happy path things just work, and work 99% of the time.

All that said, I'm die-hard Linux ALL THE WAY! I just couldn't say that it's ready for most purposes. For the things that I'd use a tablet for? Sure.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#408

Post by ndarwincorn »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #406
tjoff wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how the bubble you live in came to be but for ordinary desktop/laptop hardware that is as false as can be. And there is a very simple reason for that. All desktop PCs and laptops are sold with windows, if no support exist the hardware as a whole will not exist. Meanwhile in linux land I still can't use my three monitors because displayport MST doesn't work with the open source AMD driver. Support has exi…

For what it's worth it is my experience that displayport MST has never worked reliably on any OS or hardware whatsoever. I gave up on it and am thankful I can now just buy a thunderbolt dock with multiple video outputs.

MST on a NUC was pretty seamless for me when I used it.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#409

Post by slantyyz »

bnt wrote: post #369
tjpnz wrote: post #362

As a dev and Linux/OSX user I'm still struggling to see who exactly this is for. All of the tools I want to use are very well supported on OSX and I don't have much use for Microsoft software like Office these days with Google Sheets et cetera. Is this being geared more towards corporate customers who have chosen to standardise all of their IT on Microsoft products, but who need easier access to dev tools/environment…

I recently switched to Windows after 10 years of Macs, because I didn’t fee like forking out €3k for a decent 15” laptop. I switched to a Razer (€1700) which can actually game + with WSL I can actually do Rails development. After a month of using this machine, my carpal tunnel pains dropped off significantly (in part because I ditched the Magic Mouse for a Logitech MX) and my fingers don’t swell or hurt from bashing…

FWIW, when I switched from Mac to Windows, I was able to still do Rails development in Windows itself (I guess it ultimately depends on your Rails app complexity and the gems you rely on) and deploy my solutions to Linux servers. This was before WSL came out.
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