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Windows Terminal Source Code

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111–120 of 214 posts

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple should follow MS's example and open source its Terminal.app This is bellyaching about nothing. Instead, Microsoft should follow Apple's example and open source the operating system . The only part of macOS that is not open source is the GUI, i.e. Quartz Compositor, and the gui applications. Microsoft, meanwhile, is an incredible slouch when it comes to open source, only very recently changing their hostile "e…

There’s orders of magnitude more closed source than open on macOS. But yeah, all software should be open source.

I probably shouldn't dignify this with a response, but yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. The kernel XNU is OSS. The BSD userland is OSS. This means that technically, the operating system is open source. If you go by file count, there is far more OSS in macOS than not. But if you want to go by file sizes, then the only closed source parts of macOS, again, are the GUI, the Quartz Compositor, and a lot of Apple's installed applications, which are bound to have large file sizes. So it is deceptive and frankly false to claim speciously there are, plural, "orders of magnitude more closed source than open in macOS."

But every release Apple releases more open source software.[1] No other proprietary operating system vendor releases more open source than Apple.

So, yeah, you're just wrong.

[1] https://opensource.apple.com/releases/

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terminals should not be sending telemetry. Imagine if every .exe and every .dll did that! That's not OK!

Why not? I want the features I use to be maintained. I am dead tired of advanced features being removed from applications I use. With web applications every single round trip to the server is logged, inherently, and there are far more than one round trip to the server than there are page loads, I assure you. So it's ok there? "oh that's just logging, not telemetry." That's what telemetry is! Google and Facebook track…

  - it's more work when you're trying to stop
    data exfiltration / espionnage

  - privacy -- I've no idea what the telemetry
    says about me today, and I certainly don't
    know what they'll make it look for tomorrow

  - privacy -- even if the telemetry is fine,
    maybe information about my usage patterns
    might be more valuable to me than it might
    seem at first glance

  - performance -- every app, every library, all
    sending out telemetry?  Please, no.

  - because I get to not want this

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#113
Though I've been enjoying WT, there are some limitations that have bit me:

1) As a 'Store' app, it can be a pain to install in locked-down corpo networks that block Windows Store. Winget can be a workaround, or you can extract the exe from packages, but an installer would be nice.

2) Since it's a UWP app, there's no way to launch it as another user-identity (i.e. runas)

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#114

Though I've been enjoying WT, there are some limitations that have bit me: 1) As a 'Store' app, it can be a pain to install in locked-down corpo networks that block Windows Store. Winget can be a workaround, or you can extract the exe from packages, but an installer would be nice. 2) Since it's a UWP app, there's no way to launch it as another user-identity (i.e. runas)

[deleted]

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope someone can take his demo and implement the idea for Windows Terminal. This would prove that such performance boost is indeed doable for a real world production level terminal.

The Terminal team is very aware of this code, and are not able to use it due to how Casey licensed it. They aren't even allowed to look at it. Casey deliberately licensed it as GPL so that Microsoft could not use it, actually. That's his choice, of course. The Terminal team have a path forward to implement strong performance improvements based on techniques like those Casey described, and are working on those improve…

Microsoft the business creates those caustic relationships.

I’ve managed 9-figure relationships with different software companies. Microsoft plays dirty, both with their own people, who have unachievable goals that encourage douche behavior, and with the customer.

I feel for the folks on the ground. The engineers crank out amazing work. But part of working for a company that essentially taxes every global business and government is having a thick skin.

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terminals should not be sending telemetry. Imagine if every .exe and every .dll did that! That's not OK!

Why not? I want the features I use to be maintained. I am dead tired of advanced features being removed from applications I use. With web applications every single round trip to the server is logged, inherently, and there are far more than one round trip to the server than there are page loads, I assure you. So it's ok there? "oh that's just logging, not telemetry." That's what telemetry is! Google and Facebook track…

How do you know what you’re sending up?

With a website, you can control what you do where. If your terminal client is sending stuff to the sky, you never know what it’s actually doing.

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#117
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did some reading through the code to understand what was going on here. After a brief read, it appears that most of this telemetry code is only enabled when ETW (Event Tracing for Windows) is enabled. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/2b202ce6d99340401... ETW is explicitly opt-in on windows and is almost exclusively used for debugging, not to mention it requires a kernel mode driver to be loaded. https://n…

Maybe, maybe not: 1. It looks like ETW is enabled by default since Vista. 2. The code deletes the username due to "PII issues," suggesting that something is being sent back (line 295) 3. An oblique reference to a 5% sampling rate (line 284) suggests you may not be able to tell what it's sending based on network monitoring. Apparently they are considering stopping collecting the list of processes due to "community con…

I fully admit I could be wrong, and I didn't explain myself adequately re: ETM. ETM has been enabled since Vista, but you can get a full list of all ETS logs very easily (via `logman query -ets`). The question is what's consuming it, and as far as I can tell the basic telemetry settings won't send anything remotely beyond some incredibly basic information.

This issue seems to fully explain the issue with the telemetry: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/5331

The biggest takeaway to me here (besides the explanation of the telemetry levels) is that the processes in question are cmd, powershell, bash, etc, and not what you are running in them. Even if you have enhanced telemetry enabled it wouldn't bubble up what you're running underneath the console process as a process name.

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope someone can take his demo and implement the idea for Windows Terminal. This would prove that such performance boost is indeed doable for a real world production level terminal.

The Terminal team is very aware of this code, and are not able to use it due to how Casey licensed it. They aren't even allowed to look at it. Casey deliberately licensed it as GPL so that Microsoft could not use it, actually. That's his choice, of course. The Terminal team have a path forward to implement strong performance improvements based on techniques like those Casey described, and are working on those improve…

Just to clarify, I do not hate MSFT. I just don't have the ability to implement such things and just curious whether it is feasible (in reasonable time) or not. If the actual code is not available maybe someone can fork the Terminal code? Or if that does not get around the legal stuffs, maybe take the idea and go from there?

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? I want the features I use to be maintained. I am dead tired of advanced features being removed from applications I use. With web applications every single round trip to the server is logged, inherently, and there are far more than one round trip to the server than there are page loads, I assure you. So it's ok there? "oh that's just logging, not telemetry." That's what telemetry is! Google and Facebook track…

How do you know what you’re sending up? With a website, you can control what you do where. If your terminal client is sending stuff to the sky, you never know what it’s actually doing.

you can see the exact data collected, what are you talking about?

Re: Windows Terminal Source Code

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Terminal team is very aware of this code, and are not able to use it due to how Casey licensed it. They aren't even allowed to look at it. Casey deliberately licensed it as GPL so that Microsoft could not use it, actually. That's his choice, of course. The Terminal team have a path forward to implement strong performance improvements based on techniques like those Casey described, and are working on those improve…

Microsoft the business creates those caustic relationships. I’ve managed 9-figure relationships with different software companies. Microsoft plays dirty, both with their own people, who have unachievable goals that encourage douche behavior, and with the customer. I feel for the folks on the ground. The engineers crank out amazing work. But part of working for a company that essentially taxes every global business an…

> part of working for a company that essentially taxes every global business and government is having a thick skin.

no. people are people, and if the human race is going to survive its own actions, the actions must change. no part of any job should require that harassment be tolerated, and it's not feasible to ask for that.

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