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Should The Next Windows Be Built On Linux? 787

Posted by timothy from the yoga-position-questions dept.
scrm writes "The next version of Windows should be built on top of Linux, according to this article by Robert Cringely of PBS." If Microsoft wanted to, they could be the world's largest vendor of Free software .. couldn't they?
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Should The Next Windows Be Built On Linux? More

Should The Next Windows Be Built On Linux?

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  • And compromise compatibility with drivers, etc (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Uksi ( 68751 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @09:58PM (#5110949) Homepage
    I'm sure that a lot of Windows driver developers will enjoy porting their drivers over to the Linux architecture.

  • Yeah right (Score:5, Funny)

    by KilljoyAZ ( 412438 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @09:58PM (#5110952) Homepage
    That's about as likely as Jack Valenti saying, "We actually don't need copyrights to last this long," or Duke Nukem Forever being released.

    • New motto (Score:3, Funny)

      by abe ferlman ( 205607 )
      Slashdot
      News for Nerds. Stuff that's never gonna happen.

  • No. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tshak ( 173364 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @09:59PM (#5110953) Homepage
    No, but it should be built on a BSDish *nix ala OS X. Heck, MS could even use Darwin - wouldn't that be an interesting turn of events!

  • They'll use FreeBSD or NetBSD if anything (Score:5, Interesting)

    by m0nkyman ( 7101 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @09:59PM (#5110956) Homepage Journal
    GPL licensing is anathema to them, but they seem to enjoy using BSD licensing....
    • GPL licensing is anathema to them, but they seem to enjoy using BSD licensing....

      But only in the one direction, no? Do they ever license their own work as BSD?

      • Re:They'll use FreeBSD or NetBSD if anything (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sl3xd ( 111641 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:25PM (#5111139) Journal
        Of course they don't. That's why they like the BSD licence (and hate GPL): With the BSD licence, they can take all they want, have some obscure reference to the original authors in the documentation, and re-sell the work as if it were their own. The BSD licence doesn't ask anything more than to give credit where credit is due-- it's worth noting, however, that Microsoft has even violated that licence in the past. (They ripped off some fairly large chunks of BSD code, and never gave credit to the original authors).

        However, the GPL licence: It requires that Microsoft give back; the thing to remember is that Microsoft is like a roach motel for source code -- it checks in, but it doesn't check out. The GPL would require Microsoft to make available any code they change under the GPL; it takes away their absolute control over the code, and takes away their ability to (over)charge for said code. Plus, a good roach motel doesn't let anything escape.

        • However, the GPL licence: It requires that Microsoft give back; the thing to remember is that Microsoft is like a roach motel for source code -- it checks in, but it doesn't check out.


          Sorry, I hate to be picky, but don't you mean that Microsoft checks code out but it doesn't check in?
        • Um. The BSD license *used* to require credit. Depending on what BSD license the original project used, a copyright notice may or may not have been required. I'm sure you wouldn't just say that because you couldn't find the copyright notice, so it's still entirely possible that MS did something wrong. I'll just need more to convince me. They've got a lot of well paid people that try to limit their liability, so...

          • Re:They'll use FreeBSD or NetBSD if anything (Score:3, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            No, all versions of the BSD license require that credit is given to the copyright holder. You might be thinking of the advertising clause in older versions of the BSD license that required that the phrase "this product includes software written by [name of copyright holder]". That clause was removed from the BSD code by Berkeley some time ago.

            If you want to see some examples of the BSD license "in action" so to speak, see Microsoft's release notes for Windows XP [microsoft.com]. There credit is given to a lot of people who have released BSD licensed software; not only to Berkeley, but also to people like Luigi Rizzo who have done a lot of work on the FreeBSD kernel.
            • Lol.

              (at the bottom of relnotes):
              "Portions of this software are based in part on the work of Luigi Rizzo. Because Microsoft has included the Luigi Rizzo software in this product, Microsoft is required to include the following text that accompanied such software:"

              After all that, is it really worth having your credit given at all? How about requiring that the user have a good chance to see it, instead? So they have to put it in bold on the desktop or something. :-)

    • Re:They'll use FreeBSD or NetBSD if anything (Score:4, Insightful)

      by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:25PM (#5111136) Homepage

      IMHO, considering what Microsoft has done in the past, the right word here is not "use", but "cannibalize".

    • That's because the misread it as the BSoD licence and thought it fitted their products perfectly.

  • wait..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by skinnedmink ( 637713 ) <(skinnedmink) (at) (gmail.com)> on Saturday January 18, 2003 @09:59PM (#5110958)
    If anyone could ruin the stability of Linux.....it would be Microsoft.

  • Well.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by captainclever ( 568610 )
    Well if i was calling the shots i'd set MS developers to write an alternative to X, perhaps in opengl or directx, that had all the same interfaces as QT and GTK and Motif so existing apps could be recompiled. A really fast graphical subsystem (instead of X) running on a Linux base, would make for an excellent and powerful platform, suitable for games aswell as general work.
  • Ever heard that company's slogan that says something about better ingrediants means better products? Lets attempt to break MS programmers' vision of what an OS should be and change it to Linus' vision. Now lets all remember that MS wants to put a cap on copying and copywrite violations whereas Linus wants everything to be open and within grasp. Conflict of interest and all.
  • but this really seems like tabloid style news. Shocking and not true.

  • Let's be realistic now, Windows and Linux do different things. If you want actual control over your computer and a nice development environment, use Linux. If you want to access any kind of file type or hardware simply and easily, you're gonna use Windows. Sure one could be brought to perform like the other, but that would take a damn long time.

  • The question is (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:01PM (#5110974)
    Will Linus accept the BSOD patch for the kernel?

  • But no backwards compatiblity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:03PM (#5110991)
    The reason that "new" Windows releases still have a MS-DOS command line is backwards compatiblity. (And force of habit, by now.) Linux doesn't automatically offer that advantage (though the DOS emulators that run under Linux were useful to me in the mid-90's, and I'm sure they still exist now.)

  • Pardon? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:05PM (#5110997) Homepage Journal
    "Now back to Microsoft putting Windows on top of Linux. Linux is better, faster, stronger than whatever is living underneath XP now, right?"
    This article posed an interesting proposition but in order for the whole premise to fly, this snippet really has to be a "Well, duh" type of question. I really don't know that it is. Without any definitive proof of this, the author is merely picking at straws. How does anyone know where the clunkiness of Windows comes from? I mean, the NT kernel isn't exactly a slouch and I'm not sure that Linux is vastly superior. How are we to know that the windowing system isn't the problem? Perhaps the real Operating System-type services provided by the kernel are faster and more powerful than the ones provided by Linux. We just don't know because a separation of the windowing system from the real OS isn't possible with MS's closed source system. Thus, this argument isn't really credible to make. It's an interesting hypothesis but there's nothing solid to say, "Yes! You're right!" There's really no way to know which underlying OS services are better provided by XP or Linux.

    • Re:Pardon? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wideBlueSkies ( 618979 )
      >>We just don't know because a separation of the windowing system from the real OS isn't possible with MS's closed source system.

      I'll wager that the guys in Redmond have the Windows Kernel running on machines without the windowing system/fluff. They're not stupid people over there. There's no way that they could accurately benchmark kernel performance with all that crap running on top of it.

      I'll bet that they even develop the kernel seperately from the windowing system. They probably only test the 2 components together after a round of kernel changes, and standalone stability has been acheived.

      Even if the above isn't true, you know that somewhere in Redmond, some developer or group has got to have the Windows Kernel running standalone on a machine.

      Also, MS would be stupid to not benchmark their product's performance against the 'competition': LINUX and BSD. The only way to do so is with the raw kernel. At least it's the start of a good test.

      Would any MS developers like to comment?

    • Re:Pardon? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
      Not only that, but NT is a mostly microkernel-based OS. Right now it is targeted at the Windows NT HAL which does basically nothing but hardware access. Object management (Windows, devices, drivers, files, mutexes, processes, and threads, etc) is done entirely within the kernel. Perhaps some of that should be done by the microkernel. Mach, for example, manages hardware, memory, and threads; Windows currently manages threads.

      If it made sense for NT to use ANYTHING under it, it would make the most sense to stick with the NT kernel but target mach instead of the HAL, and move process/memory handling out of the kernel, allowing mach to manage these things. This is probably how linux should have been designed but as we know the microkernel/macrokernel debate has raged hotly since time immemorial and will not likely be finished any time soon. I do think it makes the most sense though, as it facilitates everything running in user space.

      Also I would not bother to port to any microkernel which does not support realtime scheduling (as does RTMach, but not normal Mach apparently) as you want to be able to use the same microkernel across all platforms, and microsoft has an embedded NT product. If you're going to move threading out of the kernel it has to do everything you've ever dreamed of. I guess they could add it to rtlinux if they hired a bunch of developers away from QNX or something :)

  • it SHOULD but with Billy-boy and his crew running things, it never will.

  • No... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 )
    Well, IBM is larger, and they ship free software. So in order for Microsoft to be the largest company that sells free software, they would need to be larger then IBM.

    Otoh, if you're mesuring units shipped, M$ could probably do it. I don't know why they would want to, though.

  • Erm no. More like bankruptcy. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:07PM (#5111012)
    "If Microsoft wanted to, they could be the world's largest vendor of Free software .. couldn't they? "

    They'd also be the largest vendor of Free Software filing for bankruptcy.

    I don't intend that comment as a troll. I know some investors. (My uncle is one...) I've talked with them about MS etc and what they like/dislike about them. If they were invested in MS, they'd be upset about MS giving their moneymaker stuff away. They'd likely sell their stock in a heartbeat unless MS put one hell of a spin on it. There's the whole matter of how you make free software profitable. They want return on investment. They want what's tried and true.

    Now, as for MS porting Windows to Linux: Wouldn't everybody (at least on /.) get their panties in a bunch accusing MS of over-extending their monopoly into the Linux world?

  • One hell of a paradigm shift! Unfortunately bureaucratic organizations suffer from a phenomenon known as groupthink [alleydog.com], plus people and especially organizations hate to admit they were wrong.

    If MS moves towards Linux then there is still hope that the republican party will move towards the legalization of drugs, the Catholic Church will embrace birth control, and the Bush Administration will read the constitution.

  • Erm. The "sitting atop" could be questionable. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:08PM (#5111024) Journal
    Cringly seems to misunderstand something...

    Apple released Darwin under the APSL out of the goodness of their hearts (and their PR department, I'm sure). They don't have any restriction against using Darwin source inside their closed source components, like Aqua. I think this means that there are certain kinds of linking that you're allowed to do with BSD code that you aren't allowed to do with GPL code, if you're going to keep your IP proprietary. So Apple may not have been able to do what they did had they used the Linux kernel. For example, wasn't there a recent flap over Linus changing the name of some kind of trap to GPL_ONLY?

    I guess Microsoft could make this ok by GPLing anything that linked in that manner to the kernel, but it's definitely something that would have to be a consideration were this ever to occur.

    Ooooh. This would be an excellent way for them to embrace and extend, wouldn't it? Couldn't they release a Linux variant that was practically useless without their proprietary components? They wouldn't have to do that at first, but they might be able to work up to it...

    Iduno. Just talking.

  • One More Time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CajunArson ( 465943 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:10PM (#5111035) Journal
    Since this article was already highlighted on OSnews and Newsforge, I am once again forced to repeat myself:
    Cringely has no idea wtf he is talking about.
    Windows XP is NOT a simple windows manager sitting atop MS-DOS.
    But it has a DOS prompt!! Yeah, so does Linux if you install an emulator, does that mean Linux runs on MS-DOS?? The DOS prompt in XP is just another program that happens to look like what you used in the 80's before there was Linux :)
    I could go on and on about how XP is based off the NT core which came from VMS and how different the X server is from how MS does its graphical shell, but I'm sure many other posters will put up the same info.
    OK: Even ignoring why Cringely was completely wrong from a technical standpoint, here's why he's still wrong even if he were right (does that make sense?)
    MS: Has spent a boatload of money copying and building there own versions of what everyone else already had. They are finally starting to get it right, and are making money hand over fist doing it (at least in the OS sphere which is what we are talking about). Moving to a Linux base would be a HUGE investment, and MS software would go back to the stability of Win98 for 3 generations as they worked out all the bugs. As much as the Linux gurus on Slashdot would love to see MS sabotage themselves like that, they aren't that stupid.
    Linux: Linux would NOT be helped by having MS grab the Linux kernel and use it as a base for their OS. I also don't give a fsck what you'll say about "but the GPL!!" If MS were to do this they would withouth question weasal around the GPL or hire an army of lawyers to get it thrown out or watered down to the point it wouldn't matter. Meanwhile, they would either not give any code back to the kernel, or more likely would inject code specifically designed to slowly build up an IP claim over the entire kernel.
    MS doesn't like Linux but believe me, they are doing it a major favor by not trying to subvert it, and despite how much everyone here loves to bash MS, a whole bunch of the software running on
    Linux owes some credit to MS for providing a model to follow, like it or not.
    Once again, Cringely is proved to be a whole bag of hot air.

    • Re:One More Time (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sl3xd ( 111641 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:43PM (#5111214) Journal
      MS: Has spent a boatload of money copying and building there own versions of what everyone else already had. They are finally starting to get it right, and are making money hand over fist doing it (at least in the OS sphere which is what we are talking about). Moving to a Linux base would be a HUGE investment, and MS software would go back to the stability of Win98 for 3 generations as they worked out all the bugs. As much as the Linux gurus on Slashdot would love to see MS sabotage themselves like that, they aren't that stupid.

      Of course, the actual logic of spending this money to build their own version of what everyone else already had is the troublesome part; There are major parts of the OS that have been quite literally 'carbon copied' from the Free/Open/Net BSD code, with a zero licence cost of any kind at all. Why they go about re-inventing the wheel when somebody is giving away a far better wheel (Such as the process scheduler, VM, file system, and network stack, to name a few) 'no strings attatched*', is beyond me... however it does reek of the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. Of course that may not be the case, but Microsoft's apparent refusal to adopt larger portions of the BSD code seems like a bad business decision to me. There is just a lot less money that would have to have been spent, and the end result would have been a more flexible, stable, and secure system than what Microsoft developed in-house, and yet they get to keep all of the BSD-licenced code as tightly-controlled as the Windows source currently is. It seems like Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by not taking advantage of what amounts to thousands of man-hours of free (non-cost, no-strings attatched) work and research; passing up a free lunch is a very un-Microsoft like behavior.

      And I agree that it's crap to say that they would build the OS on top of Linux. Some people may idolize the GPL, and that's fine. Many feel the BSD licence is a more 'free' licence, again that's fine. Given the choice between the two, however, and Microsoft would almost certainly choose the 'no strings attached*' BSD code.

      *No strings attached meaning that there is zero cost to licence the code, and there are no terms on redistribution other than to give credit to the original authors; The GPL stipulates that any changes of the code must be redistributed, the BSD licence does not. This modified code redistribution is the disinguishing feature of the GPL to which Microsoft objects-- they do not wish to allow anyone access to their code (not without working out some scheme whereby Microsoft will recieve monetary 'compensation' for access to their modifications, at a minimum.)

  • Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kruetz ( 642175 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:11PM (#5111046) Journal
    Okay, this would be nice if Microsoft was purely interested in developing a great consumer OS. Unfortunately, they're not. They are only interested in their bottom line (hey, this is capitalism!). To this end, they want to remain a monopoly and have their software on everyone's computer. Which is fair enough.

    There are several problems stopping MS from using Linux:

    1) They have .NET server (which will Win2004 or something, now), all of their .NET software, LongHorn and the next SQL Server under heavy development. I'm sure they'd rather continue working on software they know will rake in billions of dollars than start from scratch writing a UI for Linux.

    2) Remember all the FUD about the GPL and Linux? Well, Microsoft probably doesn't feel like doing a three-point-turn and adopting Linux and proclaiming it as the underlying foundation to Windows. And I doubt they'll use Linux and just remain silent about the presence of Linux.

    3) If they use Linux, they will probably want to extend some of the kernel, or alter parts of it. But it's GPL!! Now, they can dynamically link to GPLed software and that's okay, but if they want to make any alterations, they hve to distribute them. Now, that might actually make a valid busines plan, but it isn't an option as far as Microsoft is concerned. They don't want anyone seeing any source, if they can help it. The past is evidenc.

    4) This would mean a re-write of either ALL of their software - Office, IE, VisualStudio, BackOffice ... hardly a good idea, giving competitors a few years to catch up in the software stakes. Or they could drastically improve WINE and run their unported Windows software. But what would be the point of moving to Linux and using it to run Windows programs through an emulator? I doubt Microsoft would even consider this option, especially as WINE is GPL, so they'd have to start from scratch.

    Basically, what it boils down to is: compatability with existing and under-development software, and a desire to keep the Windows platform closed to everyone outside of Microsoft.

    Also, MS wants to integrate DRM into the OS. And they definitely don't want anyone getting their hands on the code. So they'd be rather worried about how to distribute the DRM without any legal issues concerning the GPL. They'd have to keep the DRM right away from the core of the OS, which is where they appear to want it to be. (Okay, this is a rather flaky reason, but it may be a small factor).

    • Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by erpbridge ( 64037 ) <steve.erpbridge@com> on Saturday January 18, 2003 @11:47PM (#5111475) Journal
      #4... see the OSI chart, Applicaton Layer

      It SHOULDN'T mean a rewrite of all of their software, as the software should just be written to reference to the OS layer below it, not to the Kernel layer below that. The only things that might have problems are things like Visual C++ which, as part of their programming language, has the ability to make direct device calls... which even then should be done via device drivers running in the OS layer.

      Theoretically, the OS should run as an abstraction layer, so that whatever it is running on top of, whether that be a DOS "kernel", NT kernel, Macintosh (before OSX), or Linux or BSD kernel, isn't even something that needs to be addressed by the individual apps.

      Of course, that's in a perfect world, where any windowing system, whether it be MS Windows based, Mac windowing based, or X-Window based, can run on top of any kernel. We don't have a perfect world, and application developers (especially Microsoft ones) are known to code quick and dirty for their specific setup only, not for global compatibility.

      So, yes, for the time being, you are correct.

  • Cringely a bit confused.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by radon28 ( 593565 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:12PM (#5111048)
    If you read the article, Cringely seems to have a misconception about how Windows NT works.. he still thinks that Windows is just a binary layer running over a DOS shell, something that hasn't been true since Win9x. The command line in Windows 2K/XP is just an emulation of DOS. Anyway, let's be serious. We all know Microsoft isn't worried about the quality of their products, and certainly wouldn't backpedal the last few years of Unix/Linux bashing (no pun) and do something revolutionary like this.

  • Utterly ridiculous and wistful (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:14PM (#5111062) Homepage
    It doesn't save much even when he concludes that it wouldn't likely happen. This is mainly because the idea of Microsoft moving their windowing system over to Linux has been thought of long ago. And If not also by other people, certainly by myself.

    Frankly, I think it would sell all over the place though clearly people would insist on running X with "Microsoft Lindows" anyway... look at people running X with MacOSX.

    It's clear that Linux users need a MUCH better windowing environment, but we've been geared to X for so long that another windowing environment is unimaginable... okay maybe not unimaginable, but so far, not projected to be in wide acceptance.

    I also fear for what would happen if Microsoft got control of the Linux desktop. Instability is a "feature" I firmly believe is part of their marketting strategy. (Provide patches for a while and then stop offering them while pushing the 'next version.') We would always have problems and would never get fixed.

    However, I also see people hackign Windows for Linux by writing compatible libraries and making it free. It is happening with a great deal of stuff in the WINE project... it would just be more complete and more compatible wouldn't it?

    Anyway... it's not going to happen. MS would sooner take FreeBSD and put Windows atop of that.

  • But then... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Loonacy ( 459630 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:14PM (#5111063)
    MicroSoft could say "Hey, look at how often Linux crashes now!"

  • Err, world's largest vendor of free software? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZanshinWedge ( 193324 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:18PM (#5111088)
    Kinda reminds me of the "change bank" skit on SNL. "How do we make money? Volume!"

  • Windows on linux? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chris Canfield ( 548473 ) <slashdot@chrisca n f i e l d.net> on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:18PM (#5111092) Homepage
    What and break the current [slashdot.org] windows [freebsd.org] based on [infowarrior.org] BSD? [theregister.co.uk]

  • Be careful what you wish for... (Score:3)

    by UpLateDrinkingCoffee ( 605179 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:19PM (#5111098)
    If Microsoft adhered to their normal business practices, once they "adopted" the Linux kernel it would never run anything non-Microsoft again. Think about it, the GPL has never really been tested in court and Microsoft has enough money to tie up any legal action until everyone forgets all about Linus Torvolds.

    I guess someone needs to write Palladium support.

  • Displaying his ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:20PM (#5111111)
    Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe.

    The command processor has nothing to do with the operating system. This statement displays Mr Cringely's deep ignorance of operating sytems.

    Having worked on development of MSDOS,Window 95 and Windows NT, I can state authoratatively that DOS is not the foundation of windows XP (which is really NT with lipstick). Anybody who knows anything about OS's knows this anyway.

    • Re:Displaying his ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @11:04PM (#5111308)
      It's amazing how many users will think that just because all of the elements visible on the screen are exactly the same, that nothing has changed when they installed a new OS.

      There were worlds of diffence under the hood of Windows ME and Windows 2000... yet they looked almost identical to the common user's eyes.

  • They could, but won't (and probably shouldn't) (Score:5, Informative)

    by foonf ( 447461 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:21PM (#5111113) Homepage
    Although some of Cringely's comments about the DOS basis of Windows are off-base with regards to modern NT-kernel based versions of windows (the C:\ prompt is there because it has a compatibility layer) the idea that most of what we think of as "Windows" could be ported to a Linux or Unix base is basically correct. Just imagine an officially-sanctioned WINE with its own GUI system and configuration tools...it is not that far from reality.

    But the kernel is neither Windows' biggest problem, nor Linux's greatest asset. By all accounts, the Windows NT kernel is (or at least started out as) a very clean, modular microkernel system. It was built with a POSIX compatibility layer, and actually can host a traditional Unix userspace (and does, if you install the MS "Unix Services" package). On the other hand, Linux is a very straightforward, unexceptional reimplementation of a standard, monolithic Unix kernel, which has become very popular more or less because it works, it is free, and it was there when people needed it. Its novelty is that it allowed for the first complete Free Unix-like system (while *BSD was still in legal limbo). Microsoft could take that kernel, and modify it to run Windows, and neither they, nor we (Linux users), would gain anything...Microsoft would get an operating system more or less like what they have now, except with a pesky kernel under a free-software license, and we would get another version of Windows, which might, with the installation of an X11 server and a raft of libraries, be able to run Linux software, not that anyone would want to.

    If Microsoft tries to "embrace and extend" Unix, they probably won't use Linux, or BSD for that matter. Unlike Apple several years ago, they already have a modern kernel. According to another recent Slashdot story, they are already trying to build a new shell environment based on the existing "Unix services" package, and probably running under the .NET framework. This strategy makes far more sense, both considering the existing strengths of Windows, and Microsoft's emnity toward open-source software.

  • What an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EvilNTUser ( 573674 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:26PM (#5111149)

    Are we really supposed to take someone who says something like this seriously:

    "Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe."

    Clearly the NT kernel is just a big lie, just like NASA never went to the moon. Thank you, Cringely, you have shown me the light!

    And what the hell does he mean by "a disk operating system is hiding there"?? Please, someone, give him a non-disk operating system and see how far he gets after all his drives disappear.

    Besides, it's not the NT kernel that's the problem, it's all the crap MS has put around it.

  • Cringly is poorly informed (Score:5, Informative)

    by ShooterNeo ( 555040 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:31PM (#5111171)
    Cringly is not very well informed in his article. He assumes Windows XP/2k ect are still built on top of DOS. Actually, if he'd read Showstoppers he'd know that the NT kernal was written from scratch, by a group of developers from Digital Equipment Co who set up essentially an independent shop within microsoft to make it. This is why NT is far more stable than earlier versions. The NT kernal is very similar to Unix in how it operates, and essentially is just as good. Also, if he'd read the book he'd know that the DOS command prompt is done via emulation, as well as legacy program support. The core of the system remains NT even when the emulator is running. Anyone who's actually used XP or 2k would find that the vast majority of problems are related to the underlying hardware drivers (this is the ONLY reason why Unix is more stable on some systems, because people building Unix servers use very solid hardware) or to the overlying windowing interface.
    • Yes, I forgot that it was VMS the DEC guys were working on. I do know that the client/server architecture it uses (explorer and most NT services are "clients" of an underlying kernal, so if they crash the underlying system keeps running) is similar to Unix. I suspect that the NT kernel might even be better written than Linux (face it, it was written by experienced developers from top schools and there were dozens of em, with clear design goals set by their boss vs. a hacker who just wanted to write his own Unix clone). I don't have access to the code to do a comparion, obviously, but it wouldn't surprise me. From what I read in Showstoppers, 16 bit APP support, while done semi-natively, is done with a translation system that translates the API calls. It is basically emulation, and the developers despaired for a while when it seemed like they were training the OS to run certain progrms (not a general case emulator like they wanted). That is also how XP runs DOS stuff. Believe it or not, Microsoft has known their OSes sucked for a long time, and spent over a hundred million paying NT develepors to correct this (just for the initial development of 1.0. I suspect the tab is over a billion now).

      Their main problem now is that they feel they have to add too many features to keep selling new versions, which greatly increases complexity. This is why their software gets more and more bloated, and why new versions still have many bugs. Their other problem is they basically own their target markets, and to grow any further have to try other sectors, which may not even be profitable ideas. For instance, making web browsers may never be profitable for Microsoft.

      As for using NT in mission critical systems...well, depends on HOW mission critical. While it might be fine for archiving, say, medical data its not good enough to control the electronics of a radiation machine. Nor is it good enough for regulating the cooling system of a nuclear power plant, though it might be fine for running the visitor log at the guard shack. And while it might be fine for the interactive TV system on an airliner, its not for the fly by wire firmware. For this stuff NO OS is acceptable, it has to be written very carefully from scratch, with the software kept as simple as possible. Instead of using multiple threads, the developers will often break the different tasks into different cpus (so that way if one crashes, the other physical chips will keep running). For extreme cases (a rocket?) there will be 3 or more computer systems, each completely independent and running firmware written by completely isolated developers (often in different countries) from a central spec. If one of the computers disagrees, the others will override it.

  • Now you know why they call him Cringely... (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Gline ( 173269 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:37PM (#5111190) Homepage
    I cringed while reading this.

  • No! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @10:40PM (#5111202) Homepage Journal
    It's time we stopped trying to shoehorn seventies era multiuser designs (or eighties era single user designs) onto modern PCs. What we really need is an OS redesigned entirely from the ground up for the sort of tasks a modern home or business user needs on the desktop. Linux is no more that then Windows.

    All of the complaints about Linux on the desktop boil down to the fact that it is a clone of an OS designed for minicomputers with multiple users. All of the complains about Windows boild down to the fact that it is an extension of a single-user, single tasking machine.

    In both cases, the OSes have been stretched into something else. In both cases, the stretching has caused problems. Better to start from scratch.

  • Everyone is missing the point. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jason Pollock ( 45537 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @11:05PM (#5111311) Homepage

    Cringley isn't an idiot. You may not agree with what he's saying, you may think that he doesn't understand what an OS is, you may even think that Microsoft would never follow that course, but he isn't an idiot.

    He is talking about Microsoft doing _exactly_ the same thing that Apple has done with OSX (use someone else's OS), except with Linux instead of BSD. Five years ago, would anyone have thought that Apple would use someone else's OS to run their UI? Heresy!

    Is it going to be as easy as simply porting a windowing system? No Way! Does he understand that? Most certainly.

    What he is saying is that Microsoft has demonstrated that it doesn't _need_ to control the underlying OS in order to get everyone to think that they're running the show on the desktop.

    He points out the benefits of moving to Linux or even BSD. Would replacing XP/NT/9X as the OS remove MFC .NET, C#, DirectX or any other API? Nope, it would just use the underlying OS differently. In fact, Wine has done a lot of this already...

    Would Microsoft ever do it? Doubtful, but then I would have sworn that Apple would never use BSD...

    Jason Pollock

    • Re:Everyone is missing the point. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jpmorgan ( 517966 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @11:36PM (#5111440) Homepage
      No, Cringley is missing the point, and he's talking about something he doesn't understand: namely the Windows/NT mix.

      In some respects he's right, but accidentally (a stopped clock is right twice a day), in that Windows is built on top of another operating system, in this case, NT. But to transition to another base there are three questions that would have to be answered:

      • Is it possible?
      • Would it be better?
      • Would it be economic?

      Is it possible? Not without a lot of modification to Linux. NT is not UNIX and has a number of fundamentally different idioms; while Win32 abstracts a lot of this, it still pokes through in a few places. Even if Microsoft implemented features in the Linux kernel necessary, they'd still be forced to deprecate half the API and force developers to rewrite their applications to take full advantage of the new architecture. And if they rewrote Linux enough to make this unnecessary, it wouldn't be Linux anymore - it'd be an NT rewrite.

      Would it be better? Cringley simply assumes that Linux is faster, more stable, etc... than NT. Windows is notorious for being unstable, although most of that reputation is due to the Win9x line. Win2K/XP have been known to crash on occasion, but unless you're using some seriously broken hardware, or have fucked its internals up a lot, it doesn't crash that often, and even then the vast majority of crashes are due to the Win32 layer, not NT itself. NT has a stronger security model, is realtime and fully reentrant. In short, the problems with Windows 2000/XP are not the fault of NT, but Win32 itself. Exactly how would porting Win32 to Linux solve these problem?

      Would it be economic? The marginal benefit of porting to Linux would be minimal, and at great expense. I can't see how Microsoft would justify it.

      Cringley suggested something that is fundamentally highly technical without understanding the real issues involved, which was stupid. This is particularly ironic when you consider the section of his site saying that people should listen to him since he knows what he's talking about. Once again this simply proves that he's nothing more than a digital snake-oil salesman - under the guise of holding an expert opinion, he tells people what they want to hear in exchange for ratings.

      • I was agreeing with everything you mention, until I got to "...is realtime and fully reentrant."


        The reason I migrated completely from NT to Linux is that a few years ago I was writing a software that did realtime data acquisition from the sound card. It never worked correctly in NT, because, as I found out after much debugging, NT disables interrupts for as long as 100 milliseconds at a time. If you want to do any extensive data processing on an audio stream without gaps in NT, you have three alternatives: (1) write a realtime thread handler that duplicates a lot of the scheduling task, (2) write a new device driver, or (3) do it offline. Strange thing is, Linux is *not* realtime, but my program works fine in it, just goes to show how important a good task scheduler is.

    • The difference between Apple and Microsoft, however, is this:

      Apple: Proprietary hardware and OS, though with a little effort, other operating systems can be installed.

      Microsoft: Proprietary OS, open hardware. Any variety of OS can be installed as an alternative.

      The key word here is proprietary. Apple makes whatever business they have from the proprietary hardware, not the OS. Microsoft makes whatever business they have from the proprietary OS, not the hardware.

      As Microsoft is primarily a software company, they have everything to lose by using an open source kernel which they will have no control over.

    • Re:Everyone is missing the point. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:09AM (#5111587) Journal
      He is talking about Microsoft doing _exactly_ the same thing that Apple has done with OSX (use someone else's OS), except with Linux instead of BSD. Five years ago, would anyone have thought that Apple would use someone else's OS to run their UI? Heresy!

      The difference is that Apple has always been a friendly company - not friendly to everyone, of course, they have to protect their investments, but I look at it this way: Apple may be a 'corporation', which is evil to some, and they may not GPL every line of code ever written, which is evil to others, but they're not anti-competetive (as if they have a chance), and they're not anti-user. MS, on the other hand, is very anti-competetive, and very anti-user. All their software assumes that you're a lying, cheating, thieving bastard, and spies on everything you do. Nice.

      MS makes their money by doing what's best for the company. Apple makes their money by doing what's best for the users. What MS doesn't realize is that in the short term, being a jerk is great, but in the long term, Apple's the one who's going to come out on top.

      The point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that Apple went with BSD because it was the smart thing to do, it was the clever thing to do, and it's paid off big time already. MS will never go with Linux, because then they don't control everything. They can't control Linux kernel development, they can't control apps, they can't control APIs, they can't control hardware, they can't control much of anything, because they'd always have to give the source back. Companies wouldn't want to write Linux drivers, because binary drivers generally suck, and source drivers don't leave a lot of room for trade secrets. MS requires power-control.

      Apple, on the other hand, opened the source, but still keeps a leash on it, in a small sense, and they control the hardware as well, plus the overlying APIs, but Apple's control is quality control, and no one's going to take their quality away from them just by having the source.

      --Dan

  • The Truth... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @11:16PM (#5111354)
    "Should The Next Windows Be Built On Linux?"

    No because I hate Microsoft and I refuse to see any good that could come from it.
    • "No because I hate Microsoft and I refuse to see any good that could come from it."

      Heh. If you posted that sooner a bunch of other posts would have been modded as redundant.

      Too bad I don't think anybody'll see the humor in it.

  • MS used to sell UNIX (Score:5, Insightful)

    by karlm ( 158591 ) on Saturday January 18, 2003 @11:19PM (#5111374) Homepage
    Did they sell exclusive rights to Xenix to SCO, or could they still migrate everything over to the Xenix kernel without having to pay SCO?

    This will NOT happen.

    It's a shame to see MS take things it definately knows about and reinvent them poorly. They knew about UNIX crypt passwords, but went ahead and made the LM hash for passwords but neglected the salt value used in UNIX crypt to prevent parallel cracking of the entire password file. They later saw some of thier problems and came up with the NT hash based on UNIX md5 passwords (but using the md4 hash), again neglecting the UNIX salt. I'm a security systems guy, so maybe it just happens that MS only reinvented poorly the stuff I'm knowledgable about. Using off-the-shelf MIT-liscenced (similar to X11 liscence) Kerberos instead of making up their own networking authentication protocols and having to revise them when they realize they designed them poorly.

    It was a good idea for them to try and make NT a microkernel OS, but it didn't end up working out. It's a shame they didn't reinvent the filesystem as a unified virtual filesystem with C:, D:, etc. being symbolic links for legacy purposes. Oh well.

  • Maybe this is simplifying it too much but... (Score:3, Informative)

    by techstar25 ( 556988 ) <techstar25.gmail@com> on Saturday January 18, 2003 @11:31PM (#5111417) Journal
    Maybe this is simplifying it too much but . . . if Apple put a nice GUI on top of UNIX and called it OS X then why can't Microsoft develop a nice GUI to go on top of Linux and just call it Windows? If the GUI is nice looking enough, most people won't know the difference, so they'd still be able to sell "Windows 2003" for $100 per copy. Now that Apple has done it, MS could probably get away with the same thing.

    • Re:Maybe this is simplifying it too much but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:18AM (#5111638) Journal
      why can't Microsoft develop a nice GUI to go on top of Linux and just call it Windows?

      Because Apple was willing to almost completely drop backwards compatibility. Microsoft's entire monopoly is based on backwards compatibility. If they were to say that the next version of Windows wouldn't be able to run most current programs, you would see their share of the desktop market instantly drop like a rock.

  • Not bloody likely (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sj0 ( 472011 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @02:03AM (#5111984) Journal
    The thing is, and we've seen this time and time again, Microsoft is only interested in power -- not nessessarily money. For them, power means money. Giving up even one slice of control would be both suicide for them, and not even within the realm of possibility for the execs *who would like to keep their damn jobs*. Control over every aspect of the OS is their mandate, and they've fought countless battles over just that thing. Anyone who thinks they'll give up control for engineering reasons or even financial reasons never used the first floppy version of Windows 95.

  • Separation of operating system and windowing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @02:13AM (#5112004) Homepage
    There are arguments for a strong separation between the operating system and the windowing system. NT 3.51 really did have a strong separation between the two. In NT 4/2000/XP, the graphics subsystem moved into the kernel, over the objections of Dave Cutler, the primary architect of NT. This wasn't done to improve performance; it was done so that Windows 95 code could be reused in NT 4, giving NT and Win95 closer graphics semantics.

    More and more junk has been going into the kernel ever since. The multimedia codecs have moved into the Win2000/XP kernel, for example. Start coding your viruses now.

  • XP better than Linux (flamebait?) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by forged ( 206127 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @06:19AM (#5112538) Homepage Journal

    From the article:

    • Linux is better, faster, stronger than whatever is living underneath XP now, right? Performance would improve.

    I actually have a positive experience after having -finally- moved from 98SE and ME to XP, and despite my very low expectations about XP, I have to admit that it's not working too badly after all, to say the least.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm also a happy Linux user since 1994. But with XP I can actually see Microsoft catching up with Linux regarding stability, performance and features....

  • Article makes me cringe (Score:5, Informative)

    by thasmudyan ( 460603 ) <thasmudyan@opREDHATenfu.com minus distro> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @08:23AM (#5112776)
    It's been a long time that I read such completely bogus. I don't want to flame but I have to. Here it goes:

    Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe.

    What a bunch of crap! So there is still a "disk operating system" under Linux because I can open a shell window, too? Man, what are you talking about?

    DOS 7.1 brought the FAT32 file system to Win95, not the other way around

    So what, FAT32 is a file system, and now - ? What does that say about the operating system? Nothing? Right.

    Windows XP is not an operating system. It is a windowing system that sits atop an operating system much as KDE or Gnome sit atop Linux.

    What's this guy's definition of an operating system? First, Windows has its OWN KERNEL (microkernel, btw). Second, it has its OWN DEVICE DRIVER and SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE. While I can agree that KDE/Gnome do a fairly large and important part of the work that non-Linux OSes provide as a whole package, Windows is doing ALL THE STUFF an OS does with *no* underlying foreign kernel or architecture.

    The history of DR-DOS is especially interesting because it went through so many hands. [....]

    Blah, blah, blah... where's all that DOS talk supposed to get us? Does it really make sense to talk about legacy crap like that? And if so, should we really begin to talk about text-mode-only Linux, from back in the days, also? What about legacy mainframe interfaces? Why? To prove the point that DOS is underlying of Windows just as Linux is the underlying architecture to KDE? WTF???

    Now back to Microsoft putting Windows on top of Linux. Linux is better, faster, stronger than whatever is living underneath XP now, right? Performance would improve.

    Give me a break here! Driver support for Windows often leads to much better performance (because PC manufacturers really cater to the Windows monopoly).

    Apple has made a virtue of doing exactly this with MacOS-X, heralding its Mach kernel and BSD roots. Couldn't Microsoft do the same?

    MacOS-X is a completely new system, it has a legacy-app compatibility layer (like Wine is for Linux) but otherwise it's a complete new system. And, they HAD to do it, because OS 9 and below where such utter crap (from a purely technical point of view, mind you). If MS where to switch (for whatever stupid reasons) to a *nix kernel like BSD or Linux they would have to provide a complete legacy Windows version inside the new system just to provide backwards-compatibility. And boy would *that* be slow! And, again, why??? It would mean to develop *LOADS* of new device drivers and APIs - for what?

    I could go on like this forever. Articles like that make me want to puke. It would be suicide for MS if they did something like that, especially now, the first time they have a workable OS with Win2000/XP. Why oh why?

    OK, I asked for it. Bomb me, I don't really care. Cringely articles I actually liked them in the past, but what the fuck is this load of crap supposed to be?

  • Instead of building it on Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:11AM (#5113056) Homepage Journal
    How about on the GNU/Hurd? They could make some Win32, OS/2 modules and work it in over an architecture that's going to try and be compatible with a horde of *nixes.

    But then the question is: if a company makes a proprietary component on the Hurd, would they have to release the source as per the GPL?

  • No (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:10AM (#5113268)
    "Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe."

    WRONG. From NT onward, Windows has been an entirely new OS, not a windowing system "running on" DOS. Yes, NT/2000/XP etc have a command processor that LOOKS like DOS, and in fact they have DOS emulation SUPPORT (including the familiar "command.com" binary), but that does not mean they run on it, any more than it means Lindows runs on DOS because of Wine, or that any machine is running on Amiga just because it has an Amiga emulator.

    _Showstopper_ is a good read.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:02PM (#5113467)
    What's the point, exactly? Why would MS bother? The NT kernel is stable, fast, and secure if you want it secure. Why would the re-invent the wheel? They've *finally* come out with a good product for the consumers (businesses have been using NT for a long time). After all of these years, and all of this work, why in the *hell* would they suddenly decide to start back at the drawing board again? That was one of the stupidest, for lack of a better word, article that I've read in a *long* time.

  • for D in seq 0 1000000; do echo "c: != DOS" done (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @12:28PM (#5113605) Homepage
    WTF? Slashdot was never this lame... I've been forced to browse at +5 and I've seen a bazillion posts explaining how smart the poster is that he knows that cmd.exe is not DOS, and how Cringely is by comparison.

    If an explanation of why cmd.exe is not DOS +5 interesting gets modded +5, then there's too many mod points floating around. That's what you get when you mod karma whores +5.

    This is NOT meant to be a troll. Slashdot used to be better than this.

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