Live data from Hacker News

Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

gamesbymason.com

231–240 of 267 posts

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#231
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible during setup though I'm not sure how supported it is. Not sure why you'd really want to, writes are much slower than NTFS in general due to journaling.

NTFS getting corrupted by the tiniest errors would be one reason to use ReFS Using it for the OS partition is not very well supported right now though (for a consumer), installing etc. works fine, but DISM doesn't support ReFS so adding features generally doesn't work

Can't recall the last time I saw a corrupt NTFS volume... even when using Storage Spaces. I'm sure it's happened to someone given Windows is in use by billions of machines, but NTFS becoming corrupt can't be all that common.

Besides, ReFS doesn't do data journaling by default.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#232

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…

Unfortunately the other crap is probably what’s going to get ported. They’ll maintain for a long while a backwards compatible version of Windows that they’ll sell for an arm and a leg, but they’ll try to move their uncaring customers to a Windows userland running on Linux. That’s my belief, and I’m always looking for clues that it’s what develops into their long-term plan. Right now the only thing we could glean is r…

> Right now the only thing we could glean is reduced investments in Windows.

What "reduced investments"? They just put out 25H2 with numerous changes and many monthly updates bring new features online.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Windows is the only OS that does scaling properly. macOS just pretends non-'retina' displays don't exist Not true. I use a high-DPI (~250) MacBook with a non-high-DPI (~100) external monitor [0] and the transition between the two is seamless. Windows are identically sized when dragging from one screen to another. The same holds true when I use the laptop with a mid-DPI (~150) monitor. I could not say the same was tr…

I have a long blog post stewing here. I'll give you the gist. Moving windows between monitors of different pixel densities is a rather difficult problem. Windows handles pixel density per-application, not globally, and it uses something called device-independent pixels (DIPs) for scaling. macOS and every desktop environment I've tried on Linux does scaling globally, or at least globally per-display. On Windows, when…

You get that that’s worse though, right?

Windows renders the window once at a single DIP resolution. The other side of the window appears either too big or too small.

MacOS renders the window once at a single DIP resolution. Then, the other half of the window is upscaled or downscaled for the other screen. It’s going out of its way to make it consistent; Windows doesn’t bother.

Your worries about blurry text go away when you use nearest neighbor upscaling (this is configurable in the MacOS zoom settings). Nice crisp text, at the right size.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#235
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a long blog post stewing here. I'll give you the gist. Moving windows between monitors of different pixel densities is a rather difficult problem. Windows handles pixel density per-application, not globally, and it uses something called device-independent pixels (DIPs) for scaling. macOS and every desktop environment I've tried on Linux does scaling globally, or at least globally per-display. On Windows, when…

You get that that’s worse though, right? Windows renders the window once at a single DIP resolution. The other side of the window appears either too big or too small. MacOS renders the window once at a single DIP resolution. Then, the other half of the window is upscaled or downscaled for the other screen. It’s going out of its way to make it consistent; Windows doesn’t bother. Your worries about blurry text go away…

> Your worries about blurry text go away when you use nearest neighbor upscaling (this is configurable in the MacOS zoom settings). Nice crisp text, at the right size.

macOS does not do nearest-neighbour when doing pixel density scaling. It especially does not do nearest-neighbour when the 'looks like' resolution of any display is not a nice divisor of the physical resolution. As the grandparent commenter said, macOS renders to a fixed framebuffer. The size of this framebuffer depends on the pixel density of the physical display; at Apple-blessed densities of ≥ 79 px/cm, this framebuffer is four times the 'looks like' resolution (twice in each dimension); below this, it is the same resolution.

After this rendering macOS applies filtered scaling to fit the framebuffer to the physical resolution. If upscaled, this leads to blurry text and UI; when downscaled, this causes ringing artifacts[1].

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/12j14ud/macos_vs_windo...

I concede that Windows' implementation is simpler, but I will argue that practically it doesn't matter because basically no one I know uses an application window across multiple displays.

My very strong opinion: text/vector UI should never be raster-scaled to fit varying pixel densities.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#236
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a world where Microsoft could make yet another soulless decision to kill something good they already have on the theory it would save some money, on the mistaken belief that the kernel is the problem with Windows. One would like to believe that as far gone as they are on Windows, they’re not that far gone. But hey, anything could happen.

They don't care if Windows is good or not because they don't make any money on it. Today, the only purpose of Windows OS is to advertise (or force) other more profitable Microsoft products as cheaply as possible.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#238
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NT is a monolithic kernel and "hybrid kernel" is a pure marketing term. You can move functionality out of the kernel into userspace or not. There is no in-between. I also don't get why people claim NT is "better." Linux is a modern kernel under very active development.

> I also don't get why people claim NT is "better." Because it does do some things "better". All I/O is async. No stupid OOM. Personality support. Stable ABI. > Linux is a modern kernel under very active development. As is NT, on both accounts.

Modern Linux supports asynchronous I/O. It's debatable whether NT's lack of memory overcommitting is a superior choice. OS personalities have never been relevant outside of marketing and might even be technical debt at this point, as virtualization offers a more effective solution with significantly less complexity. Moreover, the Linux kernel maintains a stable ABI.

Much of the discussion surrounding NT's supposed superiority is outdated or superficial at best. Linux, on the other hand, offers several advantages that actually matters. It supports a wider variety of filesystems natively, with FUSE providing exceptional utility. Linux also accommodates more architectures and allows for more creative applications through features like User Mode Linux and the Linux Kernel Library. It also has a more robust debugging ecosystem thanks to its large community and open source nature. All of these things are possible because Linux isn't bound by a single company's commercial interests.

Also, is Microsoft putting as much effort into NT these days? I find it hard to believe they care about NT when they stopped caring about what runs on top of it, leading to articles like this one.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#239
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't get why people claim NT is "better." Because it does do some things "better". All I/O is async. No stupid OOM. Personality support. Stable ABI. > Linux is a modern kernel under very active development. As is NT, on both accounts.

Modern Linux supports asynchronous I/O. It's debatable whether NT's lack of memory overcommitting is a superior choice. OS personalities have never been relevant outside of marketing and might even be technical debt at this point, as virtualization offers a more effective solution with significantly less complexity. Moreover, the Linux kernel maintains a stable ABI. Much of the discussion surrounding NT's supposed su…

> Modern Linux supports asynchronous I/O.

Not nearly to the depth and breth of NT. NT is async I/O throughout. Linux has a bunch of libs that ride on top of pretend async I/O with io_uring as a more recent bonus.

> It's debatable whether NT's lack of memory overcommitting is a superior choice.

NT won't randomly kill a process. That's the winning play.

> OS personalities have never been relevant outside of marketing

Until you've used them for non-marketing purposes, then they're invaluable. Personalities existed when virtualization didn't exist on x86.

> Moreover, the Linux kernel maintains a stable ABI.

The only stable ABI on Linux is Win32.

> It supports a wider variety of filesystems natively,

Most distros suggest ext4 out of the box. Sysadmins are going to deploy ZFS where it counts. Some might use XFS. Having access to a ton of file systems is great, but the usage outside of ext4 is going to be comparatively low. ext4 is the only FS I'd want to see as first-party on Windows as a data drive. But that would have been more important before persuasive networking.

> with FUSE providing exceptional utility

FUSE is also on Win32 via https://winfsp.dev/rel/.

> It also has a more robust debugging ecosystem thanks to its large community and open source nature.

This ignores the debugging tools on Win32 by a country mile.

> is Microsoft putting as much effort into NT these days

Yes. Even if you do the bare minimum investigative effort and follow the "what's new" for each version of Windows, you can see the kernel-level investment. Much of this is around security and isolation of kernel components. There is also Microsoft in talks (finally, again) with EDR vendors to isolate their solutions; hopefully game devs are next.

> leading to articles like this one.

This isn't an article. It's an uninformed blog post.

Re: Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro

#240
post #15

I can't really envision what Microsoft stands to gain by doing this. If Windows were to become a Linux distribution, what reason would anyone have anymore to buy Windows, or Windows Server? I can run Linux for free. Any kernel modifications Microsoft makes would have to be open-sourced, due to the GPL, so I'm not missing out on those either. What's the unique value proposition at that point?

The amount that Windows contributes to Microsoft's revenue has been falling for years. In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, Windows accounted for 11.35% of their revenue (including enterprise and OEM sales). They make most of their money in cloud services these days. I think Microsoft has been aiming for the effective retirement of Windows for a long time, and this will continue. That's why they don't care that Windows is g…

> In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, Windows accounted for 11.35% of their revenue

That's over 25 billion dollars.

> They make most of their money in cloud services these days.

And why, if you had to take guess, do large companies tend to buy those cloud services?

Microsoft killing Windows would be like Amazon killing Prime. Like, no, it itself is not keeping the company afloat in terms of revenue - but, take a wild guess where most Prime members buy most of their online products?

Post reply on HN