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

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

#251

Post by rootusrootus »

pjmlp wrote: post #250
rootusrootus wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> K-12 american student... And Sweden, and Austria, and there are probably others.

Might be, I am only used to countries where families are still expected to buy their own computers, or get to share one among the family, and school life is still quite analog. Actually I would love to see a report per worldwide schools, to settle this argument about high adoption of Chromebooks outside USA.

> to settle this argument

It's really a one-sided argument, I don't need to participate. You assert that this is an America-only phenomenon. Austria and Sweden are just easy examples that falsify your assertion. There is no debate about adoption rates or anything else.

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

#252

Post by taegee »

Alupis wrote: post #20
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a sysadmin and Group Policy is the entire moat Microsoft has. Linux has nothing like it, and it probably can't because it requires a level of top down authority over a platform's design and implementation that would be hard in the Linux space. Maybe something like systemd could do something similar which defined policy over all the components they've taken over, but a distro doing it would be pointless, we're no…

Nothing in the linux world would forbid something like Group Policy. A commercial distro that targets large-scale enterprise customers could implement something exactly like Active Directory + friends. Ansible, FreeIPA, and more can be used individually or together to achieve what AD provides. There are large enterprises that are non-windows...

selinux?

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

#253

Post by shiroiuma »

beAbU wrote: post #191

I'm not so sure. The article starts by stating MS does not have the resources to properly support Windows any more. And the solution is to roll their own linux distro? 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.

>Also also, for better or worse, Windows is famously backwards compatible. Will they throw all that out?

Sure, why not? Because after all, Windows is not actually backwards compatible; it's why they have something call "WoW" (Windows on Windows). Basically, when you run older Windows software, you're not running it natively, you're running it through a compatibility layer, exactly how "WINE" works in Linux.

Doing the same thing in Linux would be mostly trivial, since WINE already exists, and they could even improve it since they own all the important DLLs.

>Also, NT, the Windows kernel, is actually pretty good. Is that the bit MS will swap out?

It is? How so? It's tied to a crappy and obsolete filesystem, and its device driver support isn't that great since it relies on vendors a lot still, rather than being under MS's control. Perhaps the scheduler is nice, I dunno, but there's a lot more to a kernel than that, and I'd say filesystems and drivers are the most important parts, and parts where MS is behind Linux.

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

#254

Post by p_ing »

tombert wrote: post #245
p_ing wrote: 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.

For the same reason I want btrfs or ZFS on Linux; cheap snapshots so if something breaks I can easily restore to a safe point. A large part of my complaints about Windows Update have come because it can brick your machine, System Restore doesn’t work, and so you’re stuck spending a weekend trying to back up and fix stuff. When I ran Ubuntu with ZFS on root, I had it so that I every time apt was run, it took a snapsho…

ReFS doesn't give you any more rollback capability than NTFS in that sense. ReFS supports file level snapshots, not volume.

And on a client machine, it's of much less importance overall (to you, it may be super important and I don't want to discount that). And on the server side, that's why we have n+2 failovers. No single machine of importance should ever be a point of failure... I realize that's not always reality but it's more or less Microsoft's position; after all, why sell one Windows Server license when you can sell 3!

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

#255

Post by p_ing »

soraminazuki wrote: post #244
p_ing wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 U…

> 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. Is this a purity thing or does it have practical implications? > NT won't randomly kill a process. That's the winning play. Every OS will have to when it runs out of resources. No overcommitting means it's less resource-efficient too, so things ar…

Yes, deep async I/O has practical applications -- here's an example (which is now outdated, but sans io_uring, demonstrates the issues with "async I/O" on most Unicies sans Solaris) - https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-...

> Every OS will have to when it runs out of resources. No overcommitting means it's less resource-efficient too, so things aren't that simple.

NT does memory overcommit...

> When have OS personalities ever been a commercial success? Every product that built on it went nowhere.

Xceed made money off of it. Yes, every product has a shelf life. Just like every commercial Unix. They were successful at what they did until a replacement came along.

> Also, if you're extending this Linux / Windows comparison to include the userland, then Windows is no match for Linux. Not when Microsoft is actively sabotaging Windows.

You're not saying anything, here. "No match" how, exactly?

> There's more use to filesystems than mounting it at root. Are you really claiming that OS personalities are useful, but being able to mount any filesystem is not? That's absurd.

Absurd, how? Is mounting HFS /really/ that critical to your day-to-day?

> Which doesn't mean much without an ecosystem of programs using WinFsp that's comparable to Linux.

Movin' those goal posts!

> Uninformed? While an official Windows-themed Linux distro doesn't make sense,

You uh... did read the post, right? That's what the entire thing was about!

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

#256

Post by p_ing »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #21
Alupis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in the linux world would forbid something like Group Policy. A commercial distro that targets large-scale enterprise customers could implement something exactly like Active Directory + friends. Ansible, FreeIPA, and more can be used individually or together to achieve what AD provides. There are large enterprises that are non-windows...

My comment above already addresses this. I'm aware there are large enterprises that are non-Windows. All of them are technology companies. They are well equipped to pay their own developers to compensate for not having Group Policy, and may even be Microsoft competitors who don't want to spend money on them. Ansible being a replacement for Group Policy is very funny. That is like saying Postgres is a replacement for…

Home Depot used to have a large fleet of RHEL machines within the stores. Looks like they've more recently rolled to SuSe.

https://linuxdevices.org/linux-based-pos-rolls-into-home-dep... (2001!)

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/data-center-site-selecti...

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

#257

Post by p_ing »

shiroiuma wrote: post #253
beAbU wrote: post #191

I'm not so sure. The article starts by stating MS does not have the resources to properly support Windows any more. And the solution is to roll their own linux distro? 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.

>Also also, for better or worse, Windows is famously backwards compatible. Will they throw all that out? Sure, why not? Because after all, Windows is not actually backwards compatible; it's why they have something call "WoW" (Windows on Windows). Basically, when you run older Windows software, you're not running it natively, you're running it through a compatibility layer, exactly how "WINE" works in Linux. Doing the…

> Windows is not actually backwards compatible; it's why they have something call "WoW" (Windows on Windows)

Boring semantics. Windows can run it. That's backwards compatibility.

NTFS is neither crappy or obsolete. Nor is ReFS. exFAT is crappy, but not obsolete. FAT32 is crappy and obsolete. UDF is well, UDF.

I think that's all of the on-disk formats Windows supports OOTB. But you can FUSE if you want more.

> device driver support isn't that great since it relies on vendors a lot still

As does Linux. Who do you think contributes those drivers to the kernel? Linus himself?

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

#258

Post by pshirshov »

p_ing wrote: post #239
soraminazuki wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 U…

Yes, kernel-level investment. I hope in 50 years they'll add 4th hardcoded layout swichinc key combo.

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

#259

Post by tombert »

p_ing wrote: post #255
soraminazuki wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Is this a purity thing or does it have practical implications? > NT won't randomly kill a process. That's the winning play. Every OS will have to when it runs out of resources. No overcommitting means it's less resource-efficient too, so things ar…

Yes, deep async I/O has practical applications -- here's an example (which is now outdated, but sans io_uring, demonstrates the issues with "async I/O" on most Unicies sans Solaris) - https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-... > Every OS will have to when it runs out of resources. No overcommitting means it's less resource-efficient too, so things aren't that simple. NT does memory overcommit...…

You probably know more about this than me, but hasn't Linux had epoll for like 25 years? And BSD/macOS with kqueue? Doesn't that give you async IO?

Or are you claiming that io_uring integrates async IO throughout the OS whereas epoll didn't?

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