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

Microsoft Edit

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 337 posts

Re: Microsoft Edit

#191

Post by dfedbeef »

masfoobar wrote: post #146

About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home. From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing special. I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create a micrsoft specific Linux distro that replaces bash with powershell, or Edit with vim, nano and other choices as well as .NET and Visual Studio Code by developer installs. M…

You think Microsoft maintains an entire secret distro just for Windows people to feel 'at home'.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#193

Post by lpcvoid »

LionEgo wrote: post #181
masfoobar wrote: post #146

About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home. From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing special. I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create a micrsoft specific Linux distro that replaces bash with powershell, or Edit with vim, nano and other choices as well as .NET and Visual Studio Code by developer installs. M…

The reason why WSL is a thing is because developers in corps needed a way to run Linux. IT support and techs doesn't know anything about Linux typically and don't want to deal with supporting it. WSL fixes this problem. Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.

Sorry for the snarky comment, but then those devs are simply bad. Windows is legacy, the future is in open source.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#194

Post by csense »

Fun project #1: Get the binary size comparable to EDIT.COM

Fun project #2: Port to MS-DOS (with DPMI)

Fun project #3: Port to 16-bit MS-DOS (runs on original 8086)

Re: Microsoft Edit

#195

Post by masfoobar »

delfinom wrote: post #173
masfoobar wrote: post #146

About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home. From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing special. I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create a micrsoft specific Linux distro that replaces bash with powershell, or Edit with vim, nano and other choices as well as .NET and Visual Studio Code by developer installs. M…

>Microsoft cannot dominate the Linux kernel but it can gain control in userland. Imagine if they gained traction with their applications being installed by default in popular distributions. Yes, but how do they make money by doing this. Unlike the socialist hiveminds that end up being behind the distros. Microsoft has salaries and bills to pay. As far as I've always seen, everyone loves to leech on Microsoft's free s…

I do not claim to be a business expert but I dont think their success comes from just their Windows Operating System. Well, I would say the success for Windows is not about the profit but the control of users. If the majority are on Windows, they are unlikly to change habit to what they are familar with.

Besdies, for new PC/Laptops come bundled with Windows, Microsoft has made an agreement made with various retailers to come with Windows (Home edition) preinstalled. So in some ways, Windows is free for the User unless they pay for Professional edition, or whatever is offered today.

Of course, the average user will create a microsoft account to complete the install. :-)

Besides the Windows OS -- it is really the Services they provide.. Azure, Office365, SQL Server, PowerBI, etc. I would say THIS is where a lot of the money comes from... business willing to pay for them!

I work for Companies that are willing to PAY for these things - all for "Support"

If something goes wrong.. raise it with Microsoft. Even if I know what the problem is, it is all about the ticketing system. Throw it to Microsoft and carry on.

Despite the above, Microsoft also have "Free" software. They have started to Open Source many of their software.. allowing Linux support as well as Windows. Visual Studio Code, SQL Server, Powershell, etc.

It comes back to my point. When they presented WSL - they could have provided a "MS Linux" Distro, all promoted as "ease for Windows users" and if it became a popular distro, would have pushed micrsoft to have more control in userland... which would have alienated most Windows users away from Ubuntu, etc.

Like Windows, it is a method to keeping your userbase to rely on what they know overall.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#196

Post by Aldipower »

I appreciate the sense of humor coming from this project. F.ex. from the release note: "As Steve Ballmer famously said: Fixes! Fixes! Fixes!".

Refreshing to see employees can have fun in a multi billion dollar company.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#197

Post by shortrounddev2 »

Timwi wrote: post #190
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are currently no ideal native app development frameworks on Windows. WinForms is the closest thing

I'm so glad to hear that from someone unprompted. I tried WPF and it was a million times harder to use than WinForms, and I couldn't even be bothered to try out MAUI (although I accept it as an apology for WPF lol). I'm still using a WinForms application every day (Git Extensions) and have been able to contribute to it not least because it's the good old familiar WinForms. This is not to say that WinForms isn't witho…

I think that the native GUI development APIs provided by OS vendors need a kind of "headless" implementation first, where you can build UI in pure code like winforms, and then they should offer a framework on top of that. I, personally, hate XAML. It's stricter than HTML/CSS and very opinionated about how to organize your application. I feel that XAML frameworks should have a common Winforms-like API behind them that you can switch to any time you want. But I've found that using the C# code-behind APIs manually for WPF, UWP, MAUI, etc, is far more verbose than Winforms was.

My only major problem with winforms is that it's still using GDI under the hood which, despite what many people believe, is actually still primarily software-rendered. If they could just swap out Winforms for Direct2D under the hood (or at least allow a client hint at startup to say "prefer Direct2D") it would really bring new life to Winforms, I think.

I would also like a C++ native GUI API that's more modern than MFC

Re: Microsoft Edit

#198

Post by masfoobar »

LionEgo wrote: post #181
masfoobar wrote: post #146

About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home. From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing special. I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create a micrsoft specific Linux distro that replaces bash with powershell, or Edit with vim, nano and other choices as well as .NET and Visual Studio Code by developer installs. M…

The reason why WSL is a thing is because developers in corps needed a way to run Linux. IT support and techs doesn't know anything about Linux typically and don't want to deal with supporting it. WSL fixes this problem. Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.

> Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.

First of all, I disagree with this comment.

However, lets assume you are right.. that the average "Windows Developer" has little to zero skills in GNU/Linux.

If that is the case, it proves my point EVEN MORE that Micrsofot missed out creating a Microsoft Linux Distro... designed to have Powershell, Visual Studio Code, Edit, and potentially Edge, SQL Server, etc.

It would still be Linux but keeping to what they know in Windows -- and would have given Microsoft more power in the linux world.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#199

Post by masfoobar »

dfedbeef wrote: post #191
masfoobar wrote: post #146

About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home. From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing special. I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create a micrsoft specific Linux distro that replaces bash with powershell, or Edit with vim, nano and other choices as well as .NET and Visual Studio Code by developer installs. M…

You think Microsoft maintains an entire secret distro just for Windows people to feel 'at home'.

> You think Microsoft maintains an entire secret distro just for Windows people to feel 'at home'.

Sorry I dont understand the point you are making.

I did not suggest they had a "secret distro" I am suggesting they could have claimed a share of dominance in the Linux Distro as the default WSL distro.

Post reply on HN