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A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

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Re: A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

#12
post #4

It seems almost inevitable that Windows will eventually become a Linux distro. Microsoft could replace incredibly resilient cruft like NTFS with EXT4 or ZFS and the registry with human readable configuration files. On the other hand, they could replace Bash with PowerShell and hopefully pressure various orgs to adopt some sensible subset of configuration formats.

I love the idea of windows registry though, I hope it stays. With linux, i have to to poke around the file system or google "package X config location" and many programs have their own idiosyncratic rules around which config paths take precedence over others. Windows registry as implemented is not the best, but the idea of something like a central sqlite db for config is great.

Certainly not for me. Registry was one of the worst parts of the Windows experience for me; but I understand it can be subjective.

With separate files, the ability to download and replace them individually is a big win. Also, I can use terminal tools on them which is great for automation.

Re: A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

#13
post #8

How is this licensed under MIT and not GPL if it's a distro built on existing Linux code that's GPL-ed?

As indicated here (https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner/blob/1.0/LICENSES-A...), the MIT license is for source code actually contained in the repo.

The bulk of this repo are spec files which define dependencies and how to build/incoporate, and call out dependency licenses.

The actual output of this build would still have all the proper GPL goodness intact.

Re: A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

#14
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Windows driver model is vastly different than Linux. Linux drivers have to be compiled for every kernel release. Windows drivers that are more than a decade old can still be installed and work correctly.

DKMS and driver segmentation enables 10 year old drivers to mostly still work on Linux too.

Yes. Sometimes those old drivers can't be compiled with newer headers.

Re: A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

#16
post #10
post #4

It seems almost inevitable that Windows will eventually become a Linux distro. Microsoft could replace incredibly resilient cruft like NTFS with EXT4 or ZFS and the registry with human readable configuration files. On the other hand, they could replace Bash with PowerShell and hopefully pressure various orgs to adopt some sensible subset of configuration formats.

I understand a lot of the benefits of ZFS and Powershell. But whats wrong with NTFS? Can you talk a little about the relative strengths of NTFS vs EXT4?

NTFS is a more sophisticated files filesystem but it has a worse performance under certain workloads, specifically the workload underneath `yarn install`

Re: A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

#17
post #4

It seems almost inevitable that Windows will eventually become a Linux distro. Microsoft could replace incredibly resilient cruft like NTFS with EXT4 or ZFS and the registry with human readable configuration files. On the other hand, they could replace Bash with PowerShell and hopefully pressure various orgs to adopt some sensible subset of configuration formats.

I love the idea of windows registry though, I hope it stays. With linux, i have to to poke around the file system or google "package X config location" and many programs have their own idiosyncratic rules around which config paths take precedence over others. Windows registry as implemented is not the best, but the idea of something like a central sqlite db for config is great.

> many programs have their own idiosyncratic rules around which config paths take precedence over others.

The place where programs put their config in Windows Registry is as if not more idiosyncratic.

Re: A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

#18
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of windows registry though, I hope it stays. With linux, i have to to poke around the file system or google "package X config location" and many programs have their own idiosyncratic rules around which config paths take precedence over others. Windows registry as implemented is not the best, but the idea of something like a central sqlite db for config is great.

Certainly not for me. Registry was one of the worst parts of the Windows experience for me; but I understand it can be subjective. With separate files, the ability to download and replace them individually is a big win. Also, I can use terminal tools on them which is great for automation.

[deleted]

Re: A Look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s Internal Linux Distribution

#19
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of windows registry though, I hope it stays. With linux, i have to to poke around the file system or google "package X config location" and many programs have their own idiosyncratic rules around which config paths take precedence over others. Windows registry as implemented is not the best, but the idea of something like a central sqlite db for config is great.

Certainly not for me. Registry was one of the worst parts of the Windows experience for me; but I understand it can be subjective. With separate files, the ability to download and replace them individually is a big win. Also, I can use terminal tools on them which is great for automation.

Registry never made much sense on the local system: just use the filesystem. I assume there was once a plan to use it in a networked fashion. But Active Directory replaced it for that purpose.
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