Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.jreypo.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 123 posts

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

#41

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #22
l0b0 wrote: 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.

Hopefully not using the Linux kernel though. It changes too much, stuff gets dropped too often, it's buggy, it's insecure as hell, there no test framework. It releases features quickly, sure. But I kind of hate using it, both on my desktop and in production. Would rather BSD, but then you don't get features.

> It changes too much, stuff gets dropped too often,

Stable features that are visible from user space? That would be extremely surprising.

> it's buggy, it's insecure as hell

It's really not. It has bugs, even security bugs, but no more than any other modern kernel.

> there no test framework.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/dev-tools/testing-ove... plus assorted fuzzing and integration testing

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

#43

Post by azinman2 »

discordance wrote: post #42
vermilingua wrote: post #35

A MS dev writing a blog on building MS’ own distro of Linux on his _Macbook_ must have Ballmer sweating bullets.

Many people at Microsoft use Macs. It’s not a big deal.

Meanwhile no one at Apple is using windows unless they have to for very specific software.

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

#44

Post by emteycz »

michrassena wrote: post #31
l0b0 wrote: 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 think it more likely that Microsoft continues the ABI-hosting of Linux like it is currently with WSL. It doesn't make sense for them to use third-party kernel when the one they have works well enough and supports a long legacy of hardware and software, and it's something they can maintain control over. If Microsoft feels competition from Linux, it makes more sense for them to allow hosting of Linux as a user-space…

Didn't they switch to hypervisor virtualization of Linux?

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

#45

Post by fomine3 »

Osiris wrote: post #6
l0b0 wrote: 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'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.

Can NDISwrapper approach be applied to other drivers?

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

#46

Post by beebmam »

azinman2 wrote: post #43
discordance wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people at Microsoft use Macs. It’s not a big deal.

Meanwhile no one at Apple is using windows unless they have to for very specific software.

That's unfortunately their loss in my opinion. Windows has a pretty awesome development story, far better than Apple's authoritarian hold on what software can be run and distributed for that platform.

Moreover, gaming is great on Windows, and always has been, and WSL2 is extremely slick.

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

#47

Post by nyanpasu64 »

jeswin wrote: post #12
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #5

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.

Editing the registry never results in corrupt unreadable intermediate states, unlike writing to config files. A workaround is "atomic save" (where one app writes to a different filename and renames it over the original). This ensures you'll never get torn reads (I think the Windows registry doesn't support transactional/atomic updates of multiple values at once), but you lose permissions and symlinks or something like that.

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

#48

Post by fanf2 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #25
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #5

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.

Personally I like the Mac plist system the best. It just works, and it works so well that you never hear about it because no one ever complains about it!

There are at least three different formats for plist files, and the tools are differently broken depending on the format. There are some really odd cases like terminal colour settings which are stored in the plist as a pickled object, so you have to use the gui to adjust a colour rather than (say) using css syntax.

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

#49

Post by nuller »

azinman2 wrote: post #43
discordance wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people at Microsoft use Macs. It’s not a big deal.

Meanwhile no one at Apple is using windows unless they have to for very specific software.

I was forced to use a Mac, wehen I worked at Apple. Absolutely horrible piece of hardware. Keys sucked, touch bar useless. Had to carry around an external keyboard. Luckily I could bring my own external keyboard, which meade it somewhat bearable.
Post reply on HN