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Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

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Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#191

Post by bayindirh »

rcarmo wrote: post #190
bayindirh wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is telling the same thing, but with the all Secure Boot debacle, Halloween Documents, GPL violations with Copilot, and other things, it's very difficult to believe and feel this. When these definitions merge, Microsoft looks like a cozy home with a fireplace inside, but built like a spiky poisonous ball outside, designed to crush anything and everything. I don't want to act like a bone headed old men yellin…

Well, maybe you should listen to “everybody” a bit more, the way you’re piling on more dislikes and grim figures of speech into what wasn’t an argument is exactly why I never replied to any of those e-mails.

Well, seeing the actions of "Greater Microsoft" drowns out the actions and words of people who work inside the machine (aka "everybody").

Seems like we're not so different in the amount of history we have accumulated about these things called computers, so we have possibly seen many (if not all) of the big events shaped the industry.

I'm not grim or angry, but have generous reservations for the company and its motives, that's all. I'm seeing Microsoft as an elephant in the china shop, contemplating the most efficient maneuver to break everything at once.

That's all.

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#192

Post by yazaddaruvala »

skissane wrote: post #156
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. Microsoft tried to bridge the Linux APIs to NT APIs in WSL1 just like WINE does for Windows APIs to Linux APIs. Uhh, I think you miss read my post. I agree with you WSL1 was a dead end. It tried to put Linux on top of NT. I believe MS will try to put Win32, etc on top of Native Linux APIs (removing NT entirely). WINE and Proton have effectively done 90% and MSFT will have a way simpler time of getting it to 100…

I think it is unlikely even Microsoft would succeed in replacing the NT kernel with the Linux kernel. NT has features which Linux kernel devs have actively opposed including – such as alternate data stream support in its VFS/IFS layer, and a stable device driver ABI. So even supposing – and I'd be rather surprised if it were to ever actually happen – Microsoft were to release the NT kernel under a GPL-compatible lice…

Love your response. Im sure you’re right about all of those details if a strict translation was needed. I just don’t believe it needs to be so strict, and as such that it is not that difficult these days.

Apple’s Rosetta 2 and Valve’s Proton have shown that these kind of emulations can be extremely effective. When you control the OS code, and are willing to be extremely hacky for the medium term, anything is possible.

If I were to lead this effort I’d do:

1. Try my best porting the Win32 APIs, Direct3d, to Linux. I’d convert many of them. Use Office, the Windows window manager, Visual Studio, etc as test suites. This can be deployed to users where there is no performance regression.

2. Update any non-legacy applications to use more of WSL2 especially were incompatible with the new Win32 APIs. eg Office, Electron, Chrome, Visual Studio.

3. Build a binary parser like Rosetta that detects use of any incompatible Windows APIs. Mark these binaries as “legacy” (this parsing only needs to be run once per binary). Run legacy binary processes through a hyper visor and slimmed down snapshot of Windows.

4. Investigate more traspiling of binary code like Rosetta, but for Windows APIs to WSL APIs.

5. Announce it and state the intention to migrate.

Many modern apps are Electron anyways. Actively supported apps will slowly migrate to more performant APIs. Legacy apps were not designed for today's hardware anyways and it would work just fine with a little performance degradation but overall still a performance win compared to when the app was released.

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#193

Post by MonkeyClub »

aitchnyu wrote: post #178
walterbell wrote: post #106

Microsoft employs primary maintainers of the Linux kernel (gregkh) and systemd (Lennart Poettering), among other Linux contributors. (correction: gregkh works for Linux Foundation, Sasha Levin works for MS). Azure Sphere OS for embedded is based on the Linux kernel, https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/ossna19/91/Crossover_E... There's also their NOS for merchant silicon whitebox networking, https://www.linuxfoundat…

10+ years ago, a MS dev inserted a hex constant B16B00B5 into the linux kernel and caused a fight.

True story: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/b16b00b5/amp

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#194

Post by MonkeyClub »

happymellon wrote: post #175
josephg wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more specific? What, exactly, are you mad about microsoft doing with vscode? Copilot is a whole other beast. I don't think there's any simple answers there.

Probably presenting a code editor with IDE like extensions that are all Open Source, and then gradually killing the Open Source extensions and switching them out for proprietary ones.

Which is exactly the EEE technique, “patented” by Microsoft: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...

If GitHub, VS code, an MS Linux, and perhaps somehow LinkedIn, prove to be a joint front to EEE the F/OSS community, what can I say...

Seems somewhat unlikely though, given the number of allowances that must be made for that to hold true.

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#195

Post by janc_ »

anonymoushn wrote: post #186
janc_ wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only supported (=tested) upgrade from non-LTS to LTS is from the last version before the LTS, and you should not change the sources yourself when you do that. When you skip releases, no distro will officially support such upgrades (except for Ubuntu LTS-to-LTS, without skipping an LTS), and things might break. Also, when you really want to skip releases, it is often better (IME) to change the sources manually and…

If you have a machine running ubuntu 19.something today, you cannot upgrade to any other release without messing with your sources first.

Any Ubuntu 19.something hasn’t been supported for years…

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#196

Post by jamincan »

walterbell wrote: post #106

Microsoft employs primary maintainers of the Linux kernel (gregkh) and systemd (Lennart Poettering), among other Linux contributors. (correction: gregkh works for Linux Foundation, Sasha Levin works for MS). Azure Sphere OS for embedded is based on the Linux kernel, https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/ossna19/91/Crossover_E... There's also their NOS for merchant silicon whitebox networking, https://www.linuxfoundat…

It looks like Sasha Levin works for Google as of 2021. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-levin-9861662

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#197

Post by tssva »

bayindirh wrote: post #184
rcarmo wrote: post #183

I have zero to do with Mariner, but I would just like to point out that nobody seems to have actually read the distro docs. I see it as a way to have end-to-end supply chain management for critical components that are used across multiple MS workloads, and not as something directly targeted at customers, so all the conspiracy theories in this HN thread are incredibly amusing. Everyone’s free to use it, though. The en…

> so all the conspiracy theories in this HN thread are incredibly amusing. Microsoft may be just doing something for their needs, and putting in the open like a good citizen of the FOSS world, but the older people who remembers whatever happened back in the day have all their rights to be paranoid about MS. "Eh, this is the old Microsoft, today's one is different" is just a sentence. They still don't (and probably ne…

> We see what they have done with GitHub, for a start.

Provide free hosting for countless FOSS projects?

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#198

Post by bayindirh »

tssva wrote: post #197
bayindirh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so all the conspiracy theories in this HN thread are incredibly amusing. Microsoft may be just doing something for their needs, and putting in the open like a good citizen of the FOSS world, but the older people who remembers whatever happened back in the day have all their rights to be paranoid about MS. "Eh, this is the old Microsoft, today's one is different" is just a sentence. They still don't (and probably ne…

> We see what they have done with GitHub, for a start. Provide free hosting for countless FOSS projects?

> Provide free hosting for countless FOSS projects?

and provide the resulting source code to anybody regardless of the source and target license w/o consent via Copilot.

Also, it was free for FOSS even way before Microsoft, so that part doesn't even count.

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#199

Post by bayindirh »

LeFantome wrote: post #164
thrown_22 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine if the people who work at those companies aren't your enemy. But instead are potential customers and potential collaborators, who see value in your work and want it to succeed. Yes, but we'd have to imagine it isn't microsoft doing it. You'd think people would learn the dozenth time it happens, but no, here we are again with copilot and VS Studio Code.

Visual Studio Code is a massive gift to the community. If we take it in a different direction than Microsoft wants, that would be us doing what you are accusing them of. We can do what we want though. So can they. That’s Open Source! The CoPilot thing is new and troubling.

> So can they. That’s Open Source!

Well, it's a very tiny detail, but VSCode proper is not open source, and you can't built VSCode proper from the available source out there.

Re: Is CBL-Mariner going to become Microsoft Linux?

#200

Post by CoolCold »

easton wrote: post #125
chao- wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>snap will just install broken package updates for you and is incapable of undoing this operation by design I no longer recommend Ubuntu for this reason to people looking to get into Linux for the first time for developer-adjacent reasons. My recommendation is now Mint or Pop_OS, as they are effectively Ubuntu without Snap. Edit: I am not blindly against snap, or against its idea outright. I understand what it is for…

Cracked me up the other day when Ubuntu in WSL2 told me that I needed to install Firefox via Snap if I wanted to use it, but Snap doesn’t work in WSL2 because systemd isn’t being used.

Systemd works nowdays. Running LXD under systemd and snap on my WSL2 right now. May require insider builds though.

Never tried Firefox, cannot day works or not, have Firefox on Windows' side of the things.

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