Will Linux Innovation Be Driven By Microsoft? (infoworld.com) 335
Adobe's VP of Mobile (and a former intellectual property lawyer) sees "a very possible future where Microsoft doesn't merely accept a peaceful coexistence with Linux, but instead enthusiastically embraces it as a key to its future," noting Microsoft's many Linux kernel developers and arguing it's already innovating around Linux -- especially in the cloud. An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld:
Even seemingly pedestrian work -- like making Docker containers work for Windows, not merely Linux -- is a big deal for enterprises that don't want open source politics infesting their IT. Or how about Hyper-V containers, which marry the high density of containers to the isolation of traditional VMs? That's a really big deal...
Microsoft has started hiring Linux kernel developers like Matthew Wilcox, Paul Shilovsky, and (in mid-2016) Stephen Hemminger... Microsoft now employs 12 Linux kernel contributors. As for what these engineers are doing, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman says, "Microsoft now has developers contributing to various core areas of the kernel (memory management, core data structures, networking infrastructure), the CIFS filesystem, and of course many contributions to make Linux work better on its Hyper-V systems." In sum, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin declares, "It is accurate to say they are a core contributor," with the likelihood that Hemminger's and others' contributions will move Microsoft out of the kernel contribution basement into the upper echelons.
The article concludes that "Pigs, in other words, do fly. Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows, has made the necessary steps to not merely run on Linux but to help shape the future of Linux."
Microsoft has started hiring Linux kernel developers like Matthew Wilcox, Paul Shilovsky, and (in mid-2016) Stephen Hemminger... Microsoft now employs 12 Linux kernel contributors. As for what these engineers are doing, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman says, "Microsoft now has developers contributing to various core areas of the kernel (memory management, core data structures, networking infrastructure), the CIFS filesystem, and of course many contributions to make Linux work better on its Hyper-V systems." In sum, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin declares, "It is accurate to say they are a core contributor," with the likelihood that Hemminger's and others' contributions will move Microsoft out of the kernel contribution basement into the upper echelons.
The article concludes that "Pigs, in other words, do fly. Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows, has made the necessary steps to not merely run on Linux but to help shape the future of Linux."
Embrace, extend, extinguish (Score:2, Informative)
You know the drill.
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No I don't. What is the drill? Assume that a company that has wholly changed from actively attempting to squash competition on the desktop to being a cloud based services provider who already has close to 100% market share on the desktop still follows a strategy from 20 years ago?
EEE takes a lot of time, money and effort. So why would they do it? What is their incentive?
The desktop? Nope. They've shown to be able to fuck users quite badly without losing marketshare to Linux, so that's not a threat to them.
T
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Their incentive is that small devices might suck the oxygen out of MS. They know it, the rest of us hope for it. Stop trusting them, they don't trust you.
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On what basis do you claim that Microsoft has changed? While this particular story says that some people within MS want to take advantage of Linux, other stories paint a very different picture of other actions. I see no reason whatsoever to trust them.
Please note that it is quite possible for certain individuals within the company to be enthusiastic supporters of Linux, while management continues to plot to tear it down. There is no contradiction there, and management determines corporate policy. (It's
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I'm glad you have started to use Red Hat, although Fedora and Debian (at least) are free-er alternatives. You can learn to use a wide range of programming languages in a fully professional environment in Linux, and can do things like read source for everything from simple stuff to the operating system itself as you learn C (the "real programmer" language, as in the one people use to write operating systems and maybe 80 to 90% of all the code contributed to Linux and the other free operating systems).
Howeve
Re: Embrace, extend, extinguish (Score:2)
Are any of those drop-in replacements for the Microsoft products?
Re: Embrace, extend, extinguish (Score:2)
Yup, and pushing garbage ideas like "enterprises that don't want open source politics infesting their IT" is part of that.
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Adobe and MS want to do things on Linux?
Run away ! FAAAAST !
Yes, Pigs can fly, but only once and downwards.
It usually ends with sausage-ready meat.
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Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows,...
What commitment to Windows? These days, Windows has become exceedingly slow on my laptop while logging in, and also while opening and closing programs. Windows 10 Mobile has been badly crippled - WiFi is now undetectable.
While this laptop is currently working w/ Windows 10, when it dies, I'll get a mac. I have the TrueOS laptop as well, but updating it has so far proved elusive
Re: Embrace, extend, extinguish (Score:3, Funny)
Poor, defenceless, multi-billion-dollar Microsoft.
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Not for long. The desktop market is shrinking and MSFT is spending money buying companies. Examine their SEC filings to see the decline in current assets and increase in "Goodwill". I hope these new hires are being paid salary/wages. MSFT stock options are not worth what they used to be.
Re: Embrace, extend, extinguish (Score:5, Interesting)
It is the hard truth. Microsoft has not changed its underlying culture. As soon as it feels it has enough power to do so, it will pervert the open source community around Linux. Even the summary already spells it out: "open source politics" as if that is bad. The corporations not wanting to participate in those politics, shouldn't be using open source software. I've (professionally) seen many examples in the past few years of Microsoft putting on an open source friendly face for their own benefit, and stabbing open source based companies in the back at the same time. All the development described here is for the benefit and enhancement of their own products, mainly because in the server space their lunch is being eaten by Linux. Once they feel they have what they need, they'll start fighting it again.
Copyleft: hard to extend/extinguish (Score:2)
As soon as it feels it has enough power to do so, it will pervert the open source community around Linux.
But the peculiarity around "Linux", is that it is Copyleft. Not just any random thing where the source happen to be visible (as often the corporate friendly "open-source" buzzword is slapped around), but it on purpose follows the copyleft notions of the GPL.
Basically, this license gives you the right to do whatever you want with it BUT if you decide to give to someone else YOU MUST ABSOLUTELY provide with it the same freedom "to do whatever" that you receive it in the first.
And this not only concerns the Li
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While GPL protects the kernel form a code perspective, the practical reality and ecosystem is another matter.
If they *just* did the kernels and people by and large still sourced from distributions, then in practice a move that is bad for the community *might* result in fork and Microsoft's fork dying on the vine due to distribution disinterest.
Of course they have cozied up to RedHat, and recent history has shown that RedHat gets to call the shots in practice for every distro. So in a theoretical fork of ke
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All the development described here is for the benefit and enhancement of their own products, mainly because in the server space their lunch is being eaten by Linux.
Oh is it? The way I see their server business has been on a dedicated upwards trend and has never been more profitable than it is now. They have several wonderful vendor locking products without any competition at all in open source. Oh and you're ignoring the shitload of money they make with Linux by offering Linux themselves for the Azure platform.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS
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How are any of those examples of embrace, extend, and extinguish? The Stac Electronics case found that while Microsoft did infringe on two of Stac's patents, the infringement was not willful. That's just a simple patent case, not EEE.
In the case of QEMM, Microsoft simply made a competing product. As for DR-DOS, a pre-release version of Windows 3.1 would not work on their DOS. No released version failed to run. What was embraced or extended or extinguished in either of those cases? I think the grandparent's
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In the Stacker case once the court ordered them to stop infringing they released a new version of DOS with the new compression software. They also changed the way such programs loaded and changed the EULA forbidding the reverse engineering of the method. The existing forms of Stacker of course could no longer load. A new version was released by Stacker reverse engineering the loading method and Microsoft promptly sued them and lost the case. The EULA mod was not legal. Stacker won but no longer exists,
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But it is not a case of embrace, extend and extinguish. It was a simple patent dispute, which happens all the time. Microsoft didn't license Stacker, but instead licensed DoubleDisk from by Vertisoft (which then became DoubleSpace). They didn't attempt to make it compatible with Stacker, and then extend it as would be required by the EEE mantra. If Microsoft had selected Stacker for their disk compression, perhaps it would be Vertisoft that we would be talking about here. In which case, there was no way for
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automatically bashing anything Microsoft does
Didn't Microsoft itself bash Windows when they added bash to it in the WSL?
Re:Go on then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Defend them with actual arguments, I dare you.
There is no need to provide actual arguments when the original claim didn't make any arguments either. Surely the onus is on the original accuser to prove their EEE meme. The only link that your provided in your post is to an irrelevant gif about racism.
You say that Microsoft has a track record of this, but what has it actually successfully embraced, extended and extinguished? When they are contributing to an open source project (that can be forked at any time by anyone), how can they possibly extinguish the Linux kernel? We all have the access to the code.
If they extend the kernel as part of the main project those extensions are available to all, so it's not like they can only work for Microsoft customers. What evidence is there that any of the existing Linux contributions by Microsoft have any backdoors or patent traps in them, and how would it ever stand up in court if they did try to sue for patents citing the code that they submitted?
"Go on then," you say..... Okay, sir, I will. (Score:2)
As I heard it... The sad story of Wordperfect for Windows [wikipedia.org] is a pretty clear example of MS EEE. The referenced Wikipedia article says: " Its (WordPerfect's) dominant position ended after a flubbed release for Microsoft Windows, followed by a long delay before introducing an improved version.
So here's the thing. The flubbed release was no accident... or so the story goes. The WordPerfect developers were apparently sabotaged by their Microsoft partners. In the process of bug fixing Microsoft supposedly ch
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Gave it away free
Which essentially killed Netscape, who was charging at the time
hence, Extinguish
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They embraced the idea ... web browsers were new then
Gave it away free
You must hate Linux then. And OpenOffice. And Pages, Numbers and Keynote for the Mac. And... well, you get the idea.
It is not evil to make your own program and include it in your operating system. This sort of thing happens all the time. I remember shareware authors complaining when AmigaDOS added functionality that their little programs offered in an operating system update. Windows didn't originally have TCP networking stack, so a company called Trumpet sold a version. Later, this was added into Windows.
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What killed Netscape wasn't so much the price, but the fact that IE was included -- in fact, they claimed it was an inseparable part of Windows back then (it wasn't, someone removed the browser from Windows and it kept working). It's like every desktop/notebook being sold with Windows so that nobody really needs to think about installing a new OS (e.g., Linux).
No. What killed Netscape was that it was a bloated mess. As I said before, browsers like Chrome are having great success even though Windows comes with two browsers these days. As you said later in your post, Microsoft don't ask which browser you want to use initially, and yet it hasn't stopped the decline of their browsers' usage. What more proof do you need? If the alternatives are superior then users will find a way to download and use the software.
As for Internet Explorer being a part of Windows, it was
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PDFs in stupid Edge are horrible
Web pages are also horrible in Edge. There really is nothing that it can do right.
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Lol, wow, you've got a selective memory. There was an actual court case with very high-powered lawyers specifically about this issue and it resulted in findings of fact which you can read here:
I said then as I maintain now that the judgement was wrong. I don't think the judge was technologically savvy enough to understand the quality difference between the two browsers. If Netscape had been superior to Internet Explorer, then people would have still downloaded it. The judge was also not savvy enough to realise that web browsing is something that should be a basic part of an operating system; just like printing and networking.
Not sure why you are talking about "these days" because Netscape and Firefox are not the same in any meaningful sense
I am not just talking about Firefox, but all third party browsers (espec
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If history wasn't inundated with examples of Microsoft doing exactly what the GP says, then maybe you would have a point. Stop astroturfing.
All I see is a bunch of Anonymous Cowards repeating this claim without providing any real examples of it. When asked, the only response seems to be to twist and pervert the meaning of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. People try to claim that releasing a competing product is "embracing". And if another product stops being developed then it is "extinguishing" even if there was no "extend" involved.
It is not astroturfing to counter vague and baseless claims, no matter how much you believe it in your heart.
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Microsoft probably killed 100 or more companies.
Perhaps you like to google the latest attempt I remember, the MS vs. Sun debacle about the attempt to kill Java?
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The problem with that example is that Java is the top ranked programming language on the TIOBE Index [tiobe.com]. In other words, there was no extinguish. Also, that example was from 1995. If that is the latest attempt then it doesn't seem like a pattern of behaviour.
So if there are 100 or more examples of them successfully embracing, extending and extinguishing, name one of those. You can probably easily name more than 100 examples where people have accused Microsoft of having that plan for something, but not one time
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The point is they tried to extinguish Java.
From where the term EEE comes, I leave up to your GOOGLE skills, I guess YOU find much more than 100 examples where they succeeded.
Or do you really thing the world does MS an injustice by inventing the term EEE ... how old are you?
Re: Embrace, extend, extinguish (Score:5, Informative)
All I see is a relative noob who's either shilling for Microsoft or is arguing without having done any basic research.
Some examples, courtesy of Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extinguish ):
Browser incompatibilities:
The plaintiffs in the antitrust case claimed that Microsoft had added support for ActiveX controls in the Internet Explorer web browser to break compatibility with Netscape Navigator, which used components based on Java and Netscape's own plugin system.
On CSS, data:, etc.: A decade after the original Netscape-related antitrust suit, the web browser company Opera Software has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Union saying it "calls on Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support these standards, instead of stifling them with its notorious 'Embrace, Extend and Extinguish' strategy".[13]
On Office documents: In a memo to the Office product group in 1998, Bill Gates stated: "One thing we have got to change in our strategyâ"allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples [sic] browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends [sic] on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destory [sic] Windows." [emphasis in original][14]
Breaking Java's portability: The antitrust case's plaintiffs also accused Microsoft of using an "embrace and extend" strategy with regard to the Java platform, which was designed explicitly with the goal of developing programs that could run on any operating system, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux. They claimed that, by omitting the Java Native Interface (JNI) from its implementation and providing J/Direct for a similar purpose, Microsoft deliberately tied Windows Java programs to its platform, making them unusable on Linux and Mac systems. According to an internal communication, Microsoft sought to downplay Java's cross-platform capability and make it "just the latest, best way to write Windows applications".[15] Microsoft paid Sun US$20 million in January 2001 (equivalent to $27.05 million in 2016) to settle the resulting legal implications of their breach of contract.[16]
More Java issues: Sun sued Microsoft over Java again in 2002 and Microsoft agreed to settle out of court for US$2 billion[17][18] (equivalent to US$2.66 billion in 2016).
Networking: In 2000, an extension to the Kerberos networking protocol (an Internet standard) was included in Windows 2000, effectively denying all products except those made by Microsoft access to a Windows 2000 Server using Kerberos.[19] The extension was published through an executable, whose running required agreeing to an NDA, disallowing third party implementation (especially open source). To allow developers to implement the new features, without having to agree to the license, users on Slashdot posted the document (disregarding the NDA), effectively allowing third party developers to access the documentation without having agreed to the NDA. Microsoft responded by asking Slashdot to remove the content.[20] The Microsoft extensions to Kerberos, as introduced in binary form in Windows 2000, have since been described in RFC 3244 and RFC 4757, and these extensions have since been listed in Microsoft Open Specification Promise. This document relates to "Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement" the technologies listed. Microsoft's legal statement concerning unrestricted use of Microsoft intellectual property also includes the Kerberos Network Authentication Service v5 (RFC 1510 and RFC
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Guess better than suing or being assholes (Score:2, Interesting)
MS has backed up it's words with c#, .net core, Microsoft code editor, SQL server, and Git VFS all ported to Linux. Also Ubuntu for Windows 10 is coming along nicely as well.
Competition is good and since it's now the 2010s I hope most slashdoters realize as Microsoft's new CEO realized. That the 1990s are over.
I feel MS is really worried about losing web developers which explains Ubuntu for Windows as well as Android emulators and Python into VS 2017 (no folks you did not misread that.)
Time will tell
Re: Guess better than suing or being assholes (Score:2, Insightful)
You hot the nail on the head: Microsoft is worried. That is their motivation. Not a true, well meant change of heart. And as soon as they think they can get away with it, they'll revert to being the big, mean Microsoft on the outside, too, again keeping everything to themselves once more and extinguishing as much of others as they can.
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Do you find that convincing? I don't. Those things don't help Linux, they only help MS. What license are they under?
P.S.: I found .net.core is basically useless without the rest of it. I looked at using it when they announced it was released. Most of the others I haven't even looked at, and don't intend to. C# could be interesting, but the last time I looked it wasn't, I don't remember the details of why, but it had to do with the interesting parts being tied to MSWindows.
So basically that list of th
Re: Guess better than suing or being assholes (Score:2)
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Shut up Trump supporter. No one cares what you think!
That's similar to what I told the Ubuntu for Windows subsystem. Shut up Linux emulator! No one cares what you thunk!
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Xamarin Studio was based on MonoDevelop, which already ran on Linux, so how hard could that be?
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Only if the Linux system is embedded in a computer that's running MSWindows.
Same old story (Score:2, Insightful)
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Came here for this, did not leave disappointed. Yeah sure, EEE makes sense if you're completely blind to what MS has done in the past 10 years, but it fails the sniff test and also doesn't make sense if you apply any thought at all.
They have zero incentive to extinguish Linux. It isn't costing them even a spec of market share. For all the fucking over of users, for the privacy invasions, for the forced updates, for the unusable hardware... their desktop market share has given up but a rounding error to Linu
Re:Same old story (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you don't get a bad reputation. Microsoft knew what they were doing and didn't care. A lot of people in tech, including me, suffered under their reign. If the stench of their foul deeds follows them for decades, well, that's their own fault. Following that strategy made them into the megabillion dollar success that they are today. And here they are following the same strategy again. Have they apologized? Showed remorse? Paid reparations? If not why should anyone believe that the tiger changed its stripes?
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it."
-- Jean-Louis Gassee, CEO Be, Inc.
Re:Same old story (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah sure, EEE makes sense if you're completely blind to what MS has done in the past 10 years,
You mean like force spyware on users? Microsoft is still the same gang of shitlords they have always been.
They have zero incentive to extinguish Linux. It isn't costing them even a spec of market share.
Who told you that? Why did you believe them?
For all the fucking over of users, for the privacy invasions, for the forced updates, for the unusable hardware... their desktop market share has given up but a rounding error to Linux.
So what? Linux has cut into the server market, and it's cutting deeper still every day. And the non-desktop is cutting into the desktop market, and Linux leads the non-desktop market in the form of Android.
On the flipside the single most profitable part of their business (cloud services) are incredibly dependent on Linux with over 1/3rd of Azure instances running the OS.
And that's why Microsoft is scared. As that ratio grows, Windows looks less and less compelling. At the point at which you're not using Windows any more, why would you need Microsoft? You can run your Linux VMs anywhere.
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Yeah, the threat to Microsoft is not that Linux is taking over the desktop, it's that the desktop is in considerable decline from 365 million to 270 million [businessinsider.com] units/year. And it's in absolute decline in a booming market where at the same time you've gone from selling 472 million to 1.5 billion [statista.com] smartphones a year. The same trend is confirmed by browsing statistics [statcounter.com]. It's not dying, but it's not the future. And I don't understand how you can say their server platform is not threatened and at the same time say 1
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Microsoft doesn't get the benefit of the doubt
Didn't give them any. Just pointed out that EEE doesn't make sense in their business context.
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1)Active Director + 2) Sharepoint + 3) Exchange.
1) LDAP, dozens of implementations
2) git, SVN etc.
3) mail standards like iCalc/MIME, SMTP, POP, IMAP.
Sorry, but you are _indeed_ an idiot.
And everything above can be backed up with standard tools. Sharepoint not so much.
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Sorry, but you are _indeed_ an idiot.
hahahahahahah. Oh myself, Microsoft and all the Fortune 500 companies which use none of your solutions are laughing at this. Thanks for the Sunday night comedy. hAHahaha mail standards = exchange. Oh that's a good one. I'll have to remember that for my next stand-up routine.
No seriously though, it's clear you don't work in IT and have never touched exchange, sharepoint, or Active Directory. It's not your fault that you're completely ignorant as to their deep integration with Windows and Office on a level th
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Your examples might be _extend_ examples, and for 2) I could have given a document management system standard, but my standpoint holds.
The three examples your parent gave are simply bollocks and prime examples for Microsofts EEE strategy.
I worked with the early implementations of Sharepoint, It was an unbackable version control system for office documents with some Wikis surrounding them.
For that we have Atlassian Confluence since ... 15 years?
Comparing Exchange/Outlook with open standards is an insult. Tha
Actually the bigger influence is in the userspace (Score:5, Insightful)
We now have a huge rush of people conditioned in a Windows world transferring the ideas they learned there to the userspace. Ideas like complex service management, binary log files or the ability for a normal userspace program to disable system shutdown.
The result are monstrosities like ConsoleKit, Pulseaudio and SystemD.
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The result are monstrosities like ConsoleKit, Pulseaudio and SystemD.
Which developers behind those projects have come from the Windows world?
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I mean people who grew up with Windows, before they started to program. People who have experienced all the glossy surface of Windows, but never the problems of those design decisions.
How does being the user of an operating system change how someone codes? A user can't tell by looking at the glossy surface how the system is programmed underneath.
Sure, Lennart Poettering of PulseAudio and systemd did say that the audio stacks of Windows and MacOS were superior to what they had on Linux at the time, but was that a blind assumption that Windows does it better (as you suggest), or was it a carefully considered examination of both programming structures? Considering that he has many tens of p
Re:Actually the bigger influence is in the userspa (Score:5, Insightful)
Well "better" is not an objective thing. For Lennart, for example, "better" usually means "more complex" or "able to solve non-existent problems".
This is a certain mindset that is shaped by what you have experienced in your life. If you have used Windows before, you have never experienced the advantages of a unixoid system. For example you became accustomed to a program doing lots of things, instead of doing one thing properly and using simple interfaces to interface with other programs. Interprocess communication does exist on Windows, but it's highly complex so few programs actually implement it, making it fairly useless. You cannot just combine 2 programs without the creators having foreseen that option on Windows... while in an unixoid world you can do that easily.
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Well "better" is not an objective thing. For Lennart, for example, "better" usually means "more complex" or "able to solve non-existent problems".
If that is the case, and there is no problem that needs to be solved, then his projects will be ignored by distro creators. But wait! That isn't the case. It seems that those who make the distributions must disagree with you.
If you have used Windows before, you have never experienced the advantages of a unixoid system.
I can't understand how you can seriously say that someone who has been developing in the Linux world for at least 14 years and works for Red Hat has no understanding of the advantages of a unixoid system. Perhaps the problem is that you don't have enough experience with other systems to
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Essentially you are saying that someone who has 14 years of experience somehow knows better than people who have 20 and more years of experience?
If you look at it, all the "greybeards" are against SystemD.
Besides, and I know this is a very weak argument, Redhat is more an "Open Source" company not really interrested in Free (as in speech) software.
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Essentially you are saying that someone who has 14 years of experience somehow knows better than people who have 20 and more years of experience?
No. That is simply stupid and utterly irrelevant. Essentially I am saying that 14 years experience knows better than someone who has "never experienced the advantages of a unixoid system".
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Umm, is this not just the sort of point Casandro was making?
No. Windows doesn't have distros, so how can that possibly be the same thing?
Re: Actually the bigger influence is in the usersp (Score:2)
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Well actually it does have binary log files. Nobody uses them, but if you dig down deep enough you'll find them. I don't know where current versions hide them, but they exist. Searching for "Windows log" will bring you to screenshots of that interface.
Same goes for opaque service management with dependencies. I think this used to be under "Control-Panel" -> "Services", and there are even crude command line tools available.
Of course it doesn't do DNS or NTP, but then again, those were exotic protocol when
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Yes the Windows System Logger uses a binary on-disk format which journald also does but there ends the single similarity between the two. If you have ever used both and programmed for both you would know this (I have extensively).
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And that's because userspace isn't simple.
How would you handle the following use case, using ALSA and scripts? You may not close the application in use, either.
Current setup: 1 sound card (
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Uhm...
a) That's a very constructed setup
b) That's only an argument for _an_ audio daemon, not for one that's pseudo modular and virtually undebugable. The concept of an audio daemon can be done competently.
Besides all of that could be avoided by sticking with the unix philosophy. Would we just have extended terminal emulators to support GUIs, we wouldn't have the problems of X11 and audio. You'd have a sort of "Window manager" which can arrange your terminal windows on your screen, and also manage the audio
MS Office (Score:2)
It is hard to imagine a time where MS is offering Office for Linux. For me, and no doubt plenty of others, this is the reason I do not use Linux as a primary OS. For my work Office is required. Not something which "sort of" works with office documents either. Part of my work includes making vba macros for several of our sites, all of which are on office 16. This of course works only with excel and nothing else.
A few years ago, gaming was also the reason I still used Windows. I do still game from time to tim
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Well, Office for Mac works.....sort of. I'm sure they'll get the bugs and interoperability worked out Real Soon Now.
Re:MS Office (Score:5, Interesting)
It is hard to imagine a time where MS is offering Office for Linux.
I have no problem opening up Office 365 on Linux. Before you say it's not "Office" remember that if you search Microsoft Office on any search engine or go to Office.com or go to the Microsoft store the first thing you will be greeted with is Office 365.
To say they aren't pushing a desktop version would be disingenuous, they are actively hiding it. So their "premier" Office product most definitely runs on Linux.
Re: MS Office (Score:2)
No, Microsoft's "premier" office product runs on their servers. Whether those servers run Linux is irrelevant: the important factor is that the core logic does not run on the end user's computer. If you're not sending whatever data Microsoft wants to Microsoft, you can't use their "premier" office product.
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No, Microsoft's "premier" office product runs on their servers.
A distinction that no end user cares about save for a few people.
IBM, meanwhile (Score:2)
has been pushing development of linux partitions on its mid-range and mainframe devices for years.
A bit unlikely, but smart - run your favourite OS as one or more partitions on this high-spec hardware. They still rule the market for high-uptime hardware.... with an appropriate price tag, of course.
Think Peloton (Score:3, Funny)
Think of a peloton in the Tour de France. Think of the bizarre cathedral on magic wheels we now have rolling along. If Microsoft want to take a turn pulling the magic penguin train along, we should embrace them, welcome them in, be friends and comrades in the game of MakeTheBloodyMachineWork. We have nothing to fear from them, the can embrace us, and extend us all they like. They will never extinguish the flame of our inner penguin.
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If you think a /. comment, made in jest, where I was so high on coffee that I missed the bloody y key with my right pointy finger... that coffee'd up...
If you think that demonstrates _anything_ about the Open Source community, of which I am not even a part, being a former Free Software nutter, and a kind of PoohBear programmer who lives the philosophy that if your program takes more than 1000 lines, you're using the wrong language... (And generally I start to get worried when I've used more than 10 lines fo
Re: (Score:2)
When it comes to Open Source, I'm of the mind that it would be less effort to write a better solution to the problem I face, than to try and solve the makes-NP-hard-look-like-a-teddy-bears-tea-party-Hard problem of figuring out how to explain OpenSource and FreeSoftware to somebody who doesn't already get it. Gates didn't get it. Ballmer didn't get it. Nadella seems to get it.
Re: (Score:2)
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Sometimes I do wonder if I am the only regular 3-digit Slashdotter left. My Wacom stylus scribbled this thought the other minute: http://allsup.co/HowManyRegula... [allsup.co]
Re: Think Peloton (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm here, but I don't post (or even read articles) on a regular basis.
I believe most of us low-digit account holders got busy with with life (work, family, etc.) and don't have the time or energy for Slashdot.
The decline of the site has probably played a part as well.
The new licensing each core in the cluster will (Score:2)
The new licensing each core in the cluster will drive people away from windows and not only that each server must have at least an 16 core license for it even if it has less then that.
Nope. (Score:3)
Microsoft doesn't innovate, they copy.
Scylla and Charybdis (Score:2)
Microsoft and Poettering, Scylla and Charybdis.
Isn't it nice to have choices?
Coming Soon (Score:2)
I honestly don't believe that (Score:2)
Microsoft is as committed to Windows as they were in the past. The company is not as reliant on that lockin any longer since the future for the company is Azure and online services like Office 365.
Outside Windows Server for specific tasks and in-house applications/data centers, I don't think they are as fiercely protective of the OS.
I've often said they should just consolidate the Windows desktop to one version and give it away free (they practically did for Windows 10 free upgrades already).
Think about it... after systemd ... (Score:2)
Hell no. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Microsoft we're talking about. The company that engages in behind-the-scenes extortion of Android device brands and manufacturers using their (seriously aging) VFAT patents. I'm sure they're able to say "b-but, we're the good guys now!", but in dealing with people like these one must always understand there's nothing stopping "the bad guy" from saying that as well.
On a practical level, collaboration with Microsoft causes companies to die. Look at Nokia: it never had a chance. I only hope that Red Hat lets Microsoft in balls-deep.
No. (Score:2)
This comment brought to you by Betteridge's law of headlines [wikipedia.org]. Saving you from having to read TFAs since 1991!
Adobe VP (Score:2)
If he's so interested in developments in Linux, could he maybe have a word or two with other VPs in his own company?
Adobe software is the only thing keeping me on Windows, all other software I use professionally has Linux versions.
Hiring Linux developers is good? (Score:2)
Isn't this one of Microsoft's proven methods of killing things? (buying them)
Please, ask Linus (Score:2)
I am looking forward to read his kind answer!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Although the .NET licensing was seriously shady in the past, it's actually licensed under the MIT licence now (which is much like the BSD licence).
I don't think MS did this out of the goodness of their hearts. IMO, their initial BS faux free licensing wasn't fooling anyone, they weren't taking as much ma
Re: C: A Dead Language? (Score:3)
What part of .NET do you have to pay for?
Re: (Score:2)
Thanx, best laugh on slashdot in ages.
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Re: C: A Dead Language? (Score:2)
COBOL is unfortunately very much alive.
Re: (Score:2)
you know, apart from the hundred of thousands of lines of code Microsoft has already put in the Linux kernel.
Re: (Score:2)
this attitude of driving off supporters will eventually cause Linux to extinguish itself.
Ironically, Linus' choice of GPL attracts supporters and is the reason why Linux is the only "OS" (kernel anyway) gaining market share. It continues to take servers away from Microsoft.
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I have had Sun kit run 3 years non-stop. Generally, this would not happen because it does not need to - you build a new machine and migrate tasks before upgrading the old one. If you have a "whole data centre" to play with, its not difficult. Even if your "whole data centre" is a 21U rack, if
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Actually that is what I was thinking, too.
Considering that MS once had its on Unix, Xenix, it is absurd what they did the last 25 years.
Having a Linux core like Apple has its BSD core makes perfectly sense.
Run Windows apps side by side with X11 and they would be a competition again. Now thy are only market leader in installations, not in growth or money.
Re: (Score:2)
Run Windows apps side by side with X11
Or run Windows apps in X11. In a past life, I used to do exactly that. I had a Linux desktop (on a 200 MHz Dell). The company had an NT server farm hosting multiple Windows desktop sessions through a third party networked dirplay handler. This supported all the engineering folks with AIX, HP-UX, Sun and Linux desktops. Because office productivity*.
But this will take a bite out of Microsoft's per seat licensing model. When people realize how infrequently they need a Windows app the s/w purchase or monthly r
Re: (Score:2)
You may want to keep an eye on that coworker; his/her judgment may not be the most reliable.
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Who cares if there's a closed source version of it? That doesn't affect the functionality of what's been contributed to the open source version already.