Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

theregister.com

151–160 of 236 posts

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#151
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lack of support for GUI apps such as MS Office, not the same but you have Office 365 that does a reasonable job for most documents out there. On the other hand, not having Office is kind of a feature, it makes you learn better tools :)

If you mean the web apps, they work until they don't. Often it is a function you would never expect: - in Excel, you can clear conditional formatting rules but you can't manage them. And text in text boxes turn into images that can't be edited, only moved. - in Word, formulas turn to images. Complex tables break. - Visio... well, there is no web app version of Visio.

I haven't used Visio in almost a decade. I have used draw.io a lot in that time, and it is more than sufficient. Plus, it easily embeds into Confluence which is something I use daily.

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#152

>Windows 10 is on a path to becoming a hybrid Windows/Linux system This sounds promising, something closer to OSX would give apple competition for devs like myself that want a linux based system and a fluffy "it-just-works" gui

So what's wrong with Linux if you want a Linux based system? I don't remember the last time I got a Linux desktop which didn't "just work"; of course I try to avoid exotic hardware components, but the truth is that you can run into driver problems and issues too when running operating systems you pay money for, like Windows.

As a Kubuntu use (and I appreciate this isn't strictly a Linux problem), I've found most of the window managers quite buggy on Linux - system clock freezes, menus crash, settings occasionally reset themselves randomly. You allude to driver issues which certainly can happen on Windows, but I've had quite a few in Linux - particularly with network adapters. Let's not even get into gaming on Linux... I do it, but it certainly doesn't 'just work' for many things.

I think there's something to be said for the consistent experience that Apple and Microsoft achieve by being the arbiter of their entire stack.

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#153

>Windows 10 is on a path to becoming a hybrid Windows/Linux system This sounds promising, something closer to OSX would give apple competition for devs like myself that want a linux based system and a fluffy "it-just-works" gui

There's already WSL for your Unix needs. However MS seems to fall back on its old bad habits and the "it-just-works" gui is less true since a while now (I would say a year): we had some major pains after every Windows update at work to the point where the admin blocked them in the firewall. I think their release schedule (twice a year) is way too fast, and they should focus more on stability.

WSL 2 uses Hyper-V itself, so yes that's exactly what we're talking about.

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's wrong with Linux if you want a Linux based system? I don't remember the last time I got a Linux desktop which didn't "just work"; of course I try to avoid exotic hardware components, but the truth is that you can run into driver problems and issues too when running operating systems you pay money for, like Windows.

Lack of support for GUI apps such as MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite, etc. It was actually workable with wine a few years back, but that was before everything went to an auto-updating subscription model.

When I really need to run a Windows application, I fire up a VM and use it. KVM's desktop experience is lacking, but VirtualBox is excellent.

And the VMs are nicely contained, disk volumes can have copy-on-write snapshots, and the volumes can even be made immutable - you shut the VM down and, when you restart, it's back to its immutable state. This is becoming less than practical thanks to various self-updating things - you need to make them mutable, let the self-updates happen and then you can make them immutable again. Otherwise they'll self update a lot on every boot.

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone should be afraid Please don't FUD like this. Proprietary systems on top of Linux are nothing new and Microsoft certainly isn't the first company to have done it. If you have some real proof of their business plans then let's hear that rather than encouraging speculation and fearmongering.

It's not FUD. It's the Microsoft's never-changing strategy. I don't know how many times people need to experience it to remember this.

That strategy has also failed them numerous times and resulted in complete flops. Sorry I am just really sick of the senseless Microsoft bashing that tends to pervade Linux communities. If you have some real reason to criticize them based on current behavior then let's hear that. Anything else is speculation.

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#156

Sorry for the ignorance, but what does this mean? I understand from the article that the patch allows the full Hyper-V stack to run on a linux-based machine (as opposed to previously needing windows to run the root partition). But what does _that_ mean to have the ability to run Hyper-V entirely on linux? Is it just a "good to have options" thing?

It probably means they want to leverage out the existing open source VM software so they can make one with proprietary Windows support (at some point down the line). There is a long history of this in the past with Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Everyone should be afraid of this, even the Microsoft employees commenting here. Look at the 737 MAX post on the front page for ano…

Or maybe the Hyper-V team sees that Windows as the only host that Hyper-V support as a liability. Look at [0], you need 16 hours to compile Windows in 64 bit superfast workstation w/ hundreds of GB memory, which would be frustrating and annoying, if they just want to improve Hyper-V and testing, working w/ Linux would be much faster since it compiles within minutes on standard dev machine with adequate RAM.

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-open-sourcing-...

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably means they want to leverage out the existing open source VM software so they can make one with proprietary Windows support (at some point down the line). There is a long history of this in the past with Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Everyone should be afraid of this, even the Microsoft employees commenting here. Look at the 737 MAX post on the front page for ano…

>Everyone should be afraid Please don't FUD like this. Proprietary systems on top of Linux are nothing new and Microsoft certainly isn't the first company to have done it. If you have some real proof of their business plans then let's hear that rather than encouraging speculation and fearmongering.

I had to look up what FUD was (it stands for Fear Uncertainty Doubt for anyone else who didn't know)

I feel like taking an extremely cautious stance in regards to Microsoft is very fair, given that they were actually hauled in front of Congress for bad practices multiple times in the past...

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So make these apps work on Linux. They go instead inventing VMs and hypervisors to extend their walled gardens.

but they did afaik? there's Excel online.

The whole 'online' thing is the soft entry into the OS war by Google by the means of diminishing of the role of the OS: the OS is like a bootloader for the browser. Browser takes the responsibility of the OS shell and main applications (mail, drive, docs, chat...). So that's a slightly different topic.

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's wrong with Linux if you want a Linux based system? I don't remember the last time I got a Linux desktop which didn't "just work"; of course I try to avoid exotic hardware components, but the truth is that you can run into driver problems and issues too when running operating systems you pay money for, like Windows.

GPU decoding support for video streaming in Chrome/Firefox was enough for me to switch back. I know this JUST got added to Firefox but afaik, this Nvidia proprietary drivers don't support this.

On Linux you should be avoiding Nvidia in the first place.

Re: Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches to enable complete Hyper-V on Linux

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So make these apps work on Linux. They go instead inventing VMs and hypervisors to extend their walled gardens.

but they did afaik? there's Excel online.

Which is hardly comparable to excel.
Post reply on HN