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Microsoft's Linux Kernel

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Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#521

Post by WorldMaker »

wahern wrote: post #155
TimTheTinker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... except that (a) WSLv2's kernel will be running in a VM, and (b) macOS's kernel is much more like Linux's -- fork/exec, networking, filesystem, memory, TTY. I see WSLv2 as more of a concession that a *nix-style interface is what developers want, and that the NT kernel can't deliver that.

NT supports interfaces for supporting a fork model efficiently, it's just not well documented. In fact, you can write an efficient, Windows-native POSIX environment entirely from user space using existing APIs: https://midipix.org/ The only thing that NT really lacks is a Unix-style TTY subsystem. The interplay in Unix between TTYs, process control, and signals is complex and deep, and none of it lends itself toward…

> The only thing that NT really lacks is a Unix-style TTY subsystem.

The long, laborious ConHost / NT Console subsystem rewrite/refactor over the last few years has moved Windows a lot closer to the Unix PTY system for internal plumbing (while not breaking the NT Object side of things). The fancy new Microsoft Terminal in alpha testing now takes advantage of that.

> WSL1 fell short on both accounts, though standing alone I think it was much cooler technology.

I feel like this is an interesting case where version numbers hurt more than help, because it sounds like WSL1 and WSL2 rather than a pure 2 > 1 are going to be side-by-side for some time now (moving distros between WSL1 and WSL2 is supposedly a simple powershell operation and can be done in either direction) and hints from Microsoft that there may even still be additional investments in WSL1 depending on user use cases and interest.

I think it's good for the NT Kernel to maintain subsystem diversity, and so I do hope that WSL1 continues to see interesting uses, even if a lot of developers will prefer WSL2 more for day-to-day performance.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#522

Post by jstimpfle »

pjmlp wrote: post #517
cookiecaper wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the post-SGI, pre-Second-Jobsian-Revolution world of the the mid-late 90s, there was a real malaise in workstation computing. The systems were dumbed down, the hardware was homogenized and commoditized into joyless beige, an ocean of "Try AOL Free for 100 days" CDs jostled and slushed amidst the flickering fluorescence of the cube farm, where CRTs and overhead lights would never quite hum along at the same frequen…

This is about UNIX clones being offered for $0. No one can fight against free beer, regardless how bad it might taste, people still go for it.

I think I've read this free-beer explanation of yours in about 100 distinct comments. In most of them you explain why some particular programming language that you hate with a passion came to develop mindshare while it was so unlikely considering what a bad design it is.

For some balance, you could consider how Windows got preinstalled on most computers since the 90s and what huge dominance it had in the consumer and also development domains (also thanks to some evil capitalist practices, some might say!). That there are free versions of Visual Studio and other IDEs and dev tooling for various programming languages for Windows just as well. Also, consider that I can buy Windows 10 Professional for $8.90 with 5 seconds of googling.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#523

Post by ajford »

gambiting wrote: post #417
ex3xu wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]. Howe…

So after a very long hiatus I have decided to try installing linux on a raspberry pi - and wow, the results were amazing. Using my decade-old knowledge of using fstab I added some drives to /etc/fstab and rebooted. Oooops. Raspbian would fail boot with a message "root account locked, couldn't open console". Fantastic - so if any of the fstab entries are missing, the entire system effectively bricks itself. The only w…

I've had a windows update brick my laptop. It failed to complete an update, would roll back, reboot, then try again. Nothing I did fixed it. I spent almost a week with it in a boot loop, trying various fixes and such before giving up and reformatting. Put linux on it and added it to my pile of linux laptops.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#524

Post by pjmlp »

jstimpfle wrote: post #522
pjmlp wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about UNIX clones being offered for $0. No one can fight against free beer, regardless how bad it might taste, people still go for it.

I think I've read this free-beer explanation of yours in about 100 distinct comments. In most of them you explain why some particular programming language that you hate with a passion came to develop mindshare while it was so unlikely considering what a bad design it is. For some balance, you could consider how Windows got preinstalled on most computers since the 90s and what huge dominance it had in the consumer and…

So I have found the first person willing to pay for Linux or BSD the same off the shelf price as a Solaris, HP-UX, Aix.... license.

Maybe Coherent would have survived with such willingness.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#525

Post by jstimpfle »

pjmlp wrote: post #524
jstimpfle wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I've read this free-beer explanation of yours in about 100 distinct comments. In most of them you explain why some particular programming language that you hate with a passion came to develop mindshare while it was so unlikely considering what a bad design it is. For some balance, you could consider how Windows got preinstalled on most computers since the 90s and what huge dominance it had in the consumer and…

So I have found the first person willing to pay for Linux or BSD the same off the shelf price as a Solaris, HP-UX, Aix.... license. Maybe Coherent would have survived with such willingness.

??

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#526

Post by pcollins123 »

gambiting wrote: post #417
ex3xu wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]. Howe…

So after a very long hiatus I have decided to try installing linux on a raspberry pi - and wow, the results were amazing. Using my decade-old knowledge of using fstab I added some drives to /etc/fstab and rebooted. Oooops. Raspbian would fail boot with a message "root account locked, couldn't open console". Fantastic - so if any of the fstab entries are missing, the entire system effectively bricks itself. The only w…

Check your video card chipset and call support :P

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#527

Post by hermitdev »

vbezhenar wrote: post #440
hermitdev wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm nervous about WSL 2. I use WSL at home quite a bit and I'm on the Fast Insider ring. My PC hasnt been able to boot Win10 for over a year with virtualization support enabled in my BIOS. No errors or anything, just hangs at boot. Ive left feedback in the hub, but crickets. Don't know what the problem is. It used to work, but at some point an update broke it. Not bleeding edge hardware, either. About a 4 to 5 year o…

I had similar problem. With Hyper-V my PC BSODed like every other day. I did some investigation on dumps and I think that problem was in nvidia driver (not entirely sure, though, but stacktraces were from that driver). I don't really know whether it resolved or not, because I decided not to use Hyper-V ever again, VirtualBox is much better.

I never got BSODs, just hangs at start, so I don't have any dumps to look at. I'm also using nVidia (1080 GTX) and it has probably been a few months since I updated drivers, but I've been having the issue I think since at last the 1803 update.

I havent been on the PC for several weeks, so I don't have a link to my feedback. I'll post next time I'm on.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#528

Post by filmgirlcw »

idividebyzero wrote: post #294
filmgirlcw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on Windows (and my work machine is a MacBook Pro FWIW) WSL 2 is a lot like that -- it's a VM in the sense that it uses Hyper-V, but it's super lightweight. And in fact, when WSL 2 is enabled, both Windows AND Linux are running in the same type of VM (separate, obviously), so it's near-native performance in a lot of ways. There are still some I/O issues that the team is actively…

Just out of curiosity: did they let you use the MacBook Pro without problems? Can you guys @ Microsoft decide to use whatever OS is more suitable for what you do?

Just saw this. The answer is it depends on the team, but unless there is a hardware/software reason tied to your job for a specific platform, people can choose what they want.

Many of my colleagues use macOS, some use Windows, some Linux. I have a work-issued Mac and a work-issued Surface Book, because it’s important to test compatibility, especially when it comes to CLI stuff, across different platforms. I have Linux VMs and docker containers and WSL configured too.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#529

Post by nickpsecurity »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #51

Well that is pretty nice. WSL gets that much more exactly like Linux. What I really appreciate about WSL is that you get the accessibility of a bunch of OSS projects and a machine which has legit drivers for all of its component bits. What this means to me is that searching for a "linux laptop" won't be a chore, if it runs the latest Windows it will run Linux. And I can do development on the Linux side while communic…

So, you buy Windows to get better hardware compatibility for your Linux system on top of whatever Windows ecosystem brings you. I did something like that with non-Windows VM's. Although I couldn't find the link, there was an academic prototype you might have liked that used virtualization to reuse Windows drivers in other OS's or VM's.

Seems like there could be a market for that where it's combined with recent enhancements in efficiency targeted toward people like you that want more compatibility. What do you think?

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#530

Post by ChuckMcM »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #529
ChuckMcM wrote: post #51

Well that is pretty nice. WSL gets that much more exactly like Linux. What I really appreciate about WSL is that you get the accessibility of a bunch of OSS projects and a machine which has legit drivers for all of its component bits. What this means to me is that searching for a "linux laptop" won't be a chore, if it runs the latest Windows it will run Linux. And I can do development on the Linux side while communic…

So, you buy Windows to get better hardware compatibility for your Linux system on top of whatever Windows ecosystem brings you. I did something like that with non-Windows VM's. Although I couldn't find the link, there was an academic prototype you might have liked that used virtualization to reuse Windows drivers in other OS's or VM's. Seems like there could be a market for that where it's combined with recent enhanc…

In general I think it is an interesting idea. There has always been an economic issue with hardware manufacturers who were unwilling to expose too much information in an open source driver, and security issues of running a binary blob at ring level 0 in the kernel.

Microsoft puts itself in the middle of that by certifying a driver through a vendor sign up / certification process, and since it doesn't require the vendor to release source, the vendor can keep that information secret. As a result you have more drivers for more hardware created under the "Made for Windows" driver development plan than you do from enthusiastic reverse engineering efforts in the Linux camp.

To the extent that you can capture the value of Microsoft's oversight without having to pay the 'tax' of a Microsoft OS, you add value for the end users.

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