191–200 of 267 posts
Also, NT, the Windows kernel, is actually pretty good. Is that the bit MS will swap out?
Also also, for better or worse, Windows is famously backwards compatible. Will they throw all that out?
But who knows, stranger things have happened.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having been a longtime Windows user, an on/off Linux desktop user, and now primarily a Mac user, I really think it's just what you're used to I've also used all three OS's in anger and largely agree. I like to call that sort of attitude YOSPOS, named after one of the technology-oriented subforums on Something Awful. It stands for "Your Operating System is a Piece Of Shit." Which OS? Your OS, whichever one (the roya…
Every OS sucks. Pick the one that you feel sucks the least for you at the time.
It's really really not a new sentiment.
From the description on this 14-year-old video:
An older song, from back in the days of XP and OS X.3.> In 2017 I predicted that most programmers would lose their employer employee bargaining power in the next 15-25 years. This was a pretty controversial take at the time, and I never wrote about it publicly, so it’s hard to claim too much credit for being right. but that didn't happen either the highest skilled programmers still make bank. the huge influx of more marginal "boot camp engineers" are in more precarious…
So at least for us, developers still have a lot of bargaining power.
What I’d like to see them do, is add more POSIX APIs to Win32 (not some separate environment like WSL is). It would make porting apps from Linux/macOS/etc to Win32 a lot easier, and remove the amount of code required in cross-platform apps/frameworks
I am an avid Linux user, but honestly I think Windows’ lack of POSIX is arguably a benefit. I feel like POSIX has effectively codified mediocrity. It’s not “bad” but I don’t think it’s the be all end all either. Even NT 1 was arguably ahead of the POSIX standard.
The official Windows POSIX model – from the NT POSIX system, to Interix/SFU/SUA, through to WSL1/WSL2 – has always been that a process is either POSIX or Win32, never both at once. By contrast, the z/OS model is any mainframe process [0] can turn on POSIX mode ("POSIX(ON)"), gaining access to Unix APIs, but still able to call all the classic mainframe APIs.
This is also basically the Cygwin model. But the Cygwin team have to do all kinds of expensive and complex hacks to make it work, while Microsoft could provide the same functionality far more easily.
To give a real example – NT lacks an exec() system call, the ability to replace a process with another executable while keeping the same PID. So Cygwin fakes it by starting a child process, but then maintaining "Cygwin PIDs" separate from the NT/Win32 PIDs, and a child process started by exec() inherits the parent's Cygwin PID, so looks to POSIX code like the same process. Microsoft could just implement an exec() system call. Or if for some reason that's too hard, move this "two PIDs" thing into the OS kernel, where everyone would get it for free.
[0] not quite true, there are some special types of processes which operate in modes which are incompatible with the use of POSIX APIs; but your average/normal/run-of-the-mill process can.
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None of the software and services you mentioned require Windows though - they could be made to run on Linux, and some already do. As more and more revenue shifts from desktop/servers to cloud and services, it doesn't seem too far-fetched for Microsoft to decide maintaining the entire OS stack themselves makes less and less sense. A Microsoft Windows linux distro would free up resources to focus on what makes Windows…
Exchange is very dependent on Win32 and .NET Framework. As is ODSP and Dynamics. Azure under the hood is Hyper-V with most services built upon that dependency. Yes, millions of man hours, monkies, and typewriters you could transform this to Linux. The economics aren't there when Azure/M365 keeps pulling in money running on it's current platform hand over fist.
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You "never understand" these posts and then list off a ton of crap I shouldn't have to do to an OS to make it usable. The default experience of using windows is downright user-hostile and it reveals the thinking of the corporation behind it. Yeah, you _can_ do all that to make it somewhat usable, but when alternatives exist that are much less of a pain, I'll be taking those.
My point was that the article is logically flawed. The user mode of the OS sucks, so let's run the same user mode with a different kernel? What? I don't care about configuration. I've had to do plenty of configuration on Linux as well; it's just different (text files instead of GPO/registry). I'm not sure I can list all the Arch Linux wiki articles I've read trying to get one driver or another feature working. I am n…
Not from the perspective of Microsoft. It sells OneDrive and Office 365. It makes money from ads.
>so let's run the same user mode with a different kernel?
The kernel is a piece of legacy cruft that isn't necessary for selling OneDrive and Office 365. It's only a cost. Throw that out and replace with an off the shelf Linux kernel. With some minor tweaks, it can sell OneDrive too. Then you can fire a lot of kernel developers. The line goes up.
Because the "UX" of Windows sucks, Microsoft will switch the "Kernel" to Linux? I don't get the argument. There are parts of Windows I don't like, so I have chosen a 3rd-party (often open-source) replacement. The exact same process as I do on Linux. I don't see why I have to switch to Linux to have that freedom. (and to be honest, I don't care where the taskbar is)
This article lists a few random grievances (which I sympathize with), says linux is good now for games, and then presents the bombastic conclusion that Microsoft will deprecate Windows, without making any connection between the two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I was about to say. The NT kernel isn’t bad at all; it’s arguably better than Linux. It’s just that an OS is more than a kernel, and pretty much all the other crap in Windows is terrible. Honestly, what I would like them to do is make/support a modern Copy on Write filesystem so that System Restore actually works , and so that it’s easy to roll back when Windows Update borks your PC. You don’t need Linux for ei…
Does it really matter if NT kernel is good or not? I don't think so. What matters if it's cheaper to use Linux kernel instead of Windows kernel in terms of expenses. Just an example. Microsoft developed several browser engines: first Trident, then EdgeHTML. Edge wasn't bad, it was on par with Chrome, may be slightly behind, but nothing that couldn't be fixed with time. But Microsoft decided to abandon it and use Blin…
That’s not to say you’re wrong.
As a Windows system and user-mode dev, I absolutely never understand these sorts of drive-by posts with nearly zero technical depth. If there is one thing about Windows that is really good, it is its kernel and driver architecture, and absolute plethora of user-mode libraries that come with the OS , that can be programmed against with a variety of languages from ancient to brand-new, all maintained by the vendor. Doi…
You "never understand" these posts and then list off a ton of crap I shouldn't have to do to an OS to make it usable. The default experience of using windows is downright user-hostile and it reveals the thinking of the corporation behind it. Yeah, you _can_ do all that to make it somewhat usable, but when alternatives exist that are much less of a pain, I'll be taking those.
In effort to imagine something even funnier: ReactOS developers use Copilot to extract and copyright launder Windows source code, and then rather than fight it, Microsoft starts shipping ReactOS.
But if legal system decides the output of LLMs belongs to the entity that trained it, and given that Copilot has the capability to generate any possible code, that means Microsoft, via Copilot, will own copyright to all possible code in the universe, which will naturally allow Microsoft to acquire ReactOS.
It is the output that could be copyrighted, not potential future output. Otherwise anyone could allready claim copyright on everything.