'No, Microsoft Won't Rebase Windows to Linux' Argues Canonical's Manager for Ubuntu on WSL (boxofcables.dev) 98
Last month Eric Raymond suggested Microsoft might be moving to a Linux kernel that emulates Windows. ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argued such a move "makes perfect sense", and open source advocate Jack Wallen even suggested Microsoft abandon Windows altogether for a new distro named Microsoft Linux.
It eventually drew the attention of Canonical's engineering manager for Ubuntu on WSL, who published a blog post with his own personal thoughts. Its title? "No, Microsoft is not rebasing Windows to Linux." The NT kernel in Windows offers a degree of backward compatibility, long-term support, and driver availability that Linux is just now approaching. It would cost millions of dollars to replicate these in Linux. Microsoft has plenty of paying customers to continue supporting Windows as-is, some for decades. Windows is not a drain on Microsoft that would justify the expense of rebasing to Linux for savings, as Raymond has argued... It is unclear if the Windows user space could even be rebased from NT to the Linux kernel and maintain the compatibility that Windows is known for, specifically what enterprise clients with mission-critical applications are paying to get....
Microsoft has doubled down on Windows in recent years. Microsoft has invested in usability, new features, and performance improvements for Windows 10 that have paid off. These improvements, collaborations with OEMs, and the Surface helped revitalize a PC market that at one point looked in danger of falling to iPads and Chromebooks... Internal reorganizations in 2018 and 2020 show that the future of the Surface and Windows are now inextricably linked. Windows powers the Xbox and we are in a resurgence of mostly Windows-based PC gaming. Microsoft also has ideas for Windows 10X, the next operating system concept following Windows 10 (that I think we will get in gradual pieces), with future hardware like the Surface Neo in mind...
The much more interesting question is not whether Microsoft is planning to rebase Windows to Linux, but how far Windows will go on open source. We are already seeing components like Windows Terminal, PowerToys, and other Windows components either begin life as or go open source. The more logical and realistic goal here is a continued opening of Windows components and the Windows development process, even beyond the Insiders program, in a way that benefits other operating systems...
Raymond is correct in one key part of his blog. I do think the era of the desktop OS wars is ending. We are entering a new era where your high-end workstation will run multiple operating systems simultaneously, like runtimes, and not necessarily all locally. The choice will not really be Windows or Linux, it will be whether you boot Hyper-V or KVM first, and Windows and Ubuntu stacks will be tuned to run well on the other. Microsoft contributes patches to the Linux kernel to run Linux well on Hyper-V and tweaks Windows to play nicely on KVM. The best parts of Ubuntu will come to Windows and the best open source parts of Windows will come to Ubuntu, thanks to an increasing trend towards open source across Microsoft.
The key take-away though is that open source has won. And Raymond can be proud of helping to articulate the case for the open source development model when he did.
The post also explores "the reasons why I think this fantasy this keeps cropping up on Slashdot and Hacker News," calling the idea "a long-held fantasy for open source and Linux advocates."
But instead he concludes "Neither Windows nor Ubuntu are going anywhere. They are just going to keep getting better through open source."
It eventually drew the attention of Canonical's engineering manager for Ubuntu on WSL, who published a blog post with his own personal thoughts. Its title? "No, Microsoft is not rebasing Windows to Linux." The NT kernel in Windows offers a degree of backward compatibility, long-term support, and driver availability that Linux is just now approaching. It would cost millions of dollars to replicate these in Linux. Microsoft has plenty of paying customers to continue supporting Windows as-is, some for decades. Windows is not a drain on Microsoft that would justify the expense of rebasing to Linux for savings, as Raymond has argued... It is unclear if the Windows user space could even be rebased from NT to the Linux kernel and maintain the compatibility that Windows is known for, specifically what enterprise clients with mission-critical applications are paying to get....
Microsoft has doubled down on Windows in recent years. Microsoft has invested in usability, new features, and performance improvements for Windows 10 that have paid off. These improvements, collaborations with OEMs, and the Surface helped revitalize a PC market that at one point looked in danger of falling to iPads and Chromebooks... Internal reorganizations in 2018 and 2020 show that the future of the Surface and Windows are now inextricably linked. Windows powers the Xbox and we are in a resurgence of mostly Windows-based PC gaming. Microsoft also has ideas for Windows 10X, the next operating system concept following Windows 10 (that I think we will get in gradual pieces), with future hardware like the Surface Neo in mind...
The much more interesting question is not whether Microsoft is planning to rebase Windows to Linux, but how far Windows will go on open source. We are already seeing components like Windows Terminal, PowerToys, and other Windows components either begin life as or go open source. The more logical and realistic goal here is a continued opening of Windows components and the Windows development process, even beyond the Insiders program, in a way that benefits other operating systems...
Raymond is correct in one key part of his blog. I do think the era of the desktop OS wars is ending. We are entering a new era where your high-end workstation will run multiple operating systems simultaneously, like runtimes, and not necessarily all locally. The choice will not really be Windows or Linux, it will be whether you boot Hyper-V or KVM first, and Windows and Ubuntu stacks will be tuned to run well on the other. Microsoft contributes patches to the Linux kernel to run Linux well on Hyper-V and tweaks Windows to play nicely on KVM. The best parts of Ubuntu will come to Windows and the best open source parts of Windows will come to Ubuntu, thanks to an increasing trend towards open source across Microsoft.
The key take-away though is that open source has won. And Raymond can be proud of helping to articulate the case for the open source development model when he did.
The post also explores "the reasons why I think this fantasy this keeps cropping up on Slashdot and Hacker News," calling the idea "a long-held fantasy for open source and Linux advocates."
But instead he concludes "Neither Windows nor Ubuntu are going anywhere. They are just going to keep getting better through open source."
"The key take-away though is that open source has (Score:1)
Re: "The key take-away though is that open source (Score:3)
Re: "The key take-away though is that open source (Score:4, Interesting)
If they were going to rebase it on anything, it would be FreeBSD. Freer license for the developers, since you aren't obligated to distribute the source under any condition.
So no dealing with whiners from the FSF, or RMS, or ESR.
'and no having to deal with fragmentation between distros - 1,000 shitty distros, all sorts of conflicting package managers, systemd or not systemd, and who knows what other crap is coming.
Also, you can't even give it away because most users don't want it.' Even more so than at the turn of the century.
Open source lost.
Re:Denials mean it's already in development... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Canonical secretly working on rebasing Ubuntu to Windows, using Microsoft engineering to help them get there?
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That's basically what WSL1 was. Didn't work perfectly, so WSL2 uses HyperV instead.
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Well they do have background services that send data to Amazon. Also an "unattended upgrade" service that gets enabled by default and you only notice when you reboot or try and install something...
Usability (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has invested in usability
Like the horrible start screen that was designed for touch screens which most of us don't have, and those that do - don't want smudgy fingerprints on?
Like the horrible start menu replacement that forces us to install Classic Shell?
Like the crappy default taskbar setting that groups/combines so you can't see the Window title of the open applications in the taskbar? At least this is easily fixed - on every environment I have to remote desktop to.
Please - paying 8 year olds lollypops for usability / design guidance is not working out.
Re:Usability (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed. MS doesn't know what the fuck they are doing with UI.
My favorite is where you can't use Windows+Arrow keys to move an off-screen window back on screen. Ended up writing an AutoHotKey script just to fix this broken shit. Replace hotkey with your favorite one:
Wake me up when I can set gradient title bars (again.)
Re: Usability (Score:1)
Win+Arrow works, dunno what your problem is.
And gradient title bars? When that sort of thing is on your list of biggest issues, then yes, I can say that MS have nailed UI.
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Re: Usability (Score:1)
Not sure blaming other people for how easy it is to break windows really washes anymore. But good effort.
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I'm running triple monitors on 2 of my rigs. Windows 10 has this annoying habit of moving windows OFF SCREEN.
Win+Arrow does NOT work when the window is offscreen -- which is why I wrote that utility.
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Alt+R (to restore window if it's somehow still maximized, as on a second screen; then alt+space again)
Alt+M (Move)
Tap an arrow key
Window now snapped to your mouse.
Or shift+right click the individual instance on the taskbar, and do the same. Not a perfect/universal solution (e.g. borderless windows/software that discards window messages), but sometimes useful.
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Agreed. MS doesn't know what the fuck they are doing with UI.
The same statement applies equally to the various flavours of Ubuntu, via their reliance on the disastrous GTK3 and the upcoming mega-disaster of GTK4. And their forcing a for-the-most-part-uninstallable Chromium snap is vintage Microsoft behaviour.
To me the most telling line in the Ubuntu shill's little missive is this: "The best parts of Ubuntu will come to Windows and the best open source parts of Windows will come to Ubuntu". Gee, there's nothing there at all indicating that in his small mind Linux IS U
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Don't worry when it comes to the future direction of Linux it will not be decided in the USA or the EU but in China and India and Russia. It will be interesting.
Re: Usability (Score:2)
Re: Usability (Score:2)
The best joke was done by MS themselves: They literally advertised for Windows 10 with "The old Start menu is back!".
You mean like ... the Windows 7 I already got? You want me to pay money for *that*?
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The Windows 10 start menu is the best one they have made so far. There, I said it.
Seriously. Think about how people used the previous versions. Well much of the time they didn't, they just had a load of icons on the desktop. That models seems to be the least bad one, similar to how people organize the home screens of their phones.
The tile part of the new start menu offers the user something similar to their phone, where they can put their frequently used apps.
The actual menu part was always rubbish. It rapi
Re:Usability (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously. Think about how people used the previous versions. Well much of the time they didn't, they just had a load of icons on the desktop.
The Windows 7 start menu is GREAT. Most-used items automatically congregate below the line, and anything you've pinned remains faithfully above it. The search field has focus when you hit the windows key. When you combine that with the Windows 7 taskbar with pinnable icons you don't have any need for icons on the desktop.
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I can go to the app I want, hover, and very rapidly flip through the windows it has opened AND (this is the part that I really like), see exactly where it's gonna pop up because it hides the other windows when showing it to me.
I'm not sure what you dislike about the start menu either, adding the search function was a MAJOR improvement.
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Like the horrible start screen that was designed for touch screens which most of us don't have, and those that do - don't want smudgy fingerprints on?
Like the horrible start menu replacement that forces us to install Classic Shell?
Like the crappy default taskbar setting that groups/combines so you can't see the Window title of the open applications in the taskbar? At least this is easily fixed - on every environment I have to remote desktop to.
Please - paying 8 year olds lollypops for usability / design guidance is not working out.
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When the target audience has very low expectations, and is easily persuaded by meaningless descriptors, we all get products designed for them.
"Usability" has become a catchphrase for creating wants specifically for the average, clueless, established user base. Manufacturers have learned constantly introducing "features" or "improvements" or "innovations" that make little or no sense sells, because the average consumer is attracted to new bright shiny objects. Introducing actual improved functionality is h
Re:Usability (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, Microsoft has no incentive to make things actually more useful. In what way does that benefit their bottom line? They have a desktop monopoly.
Actually their best play is to be seen making changes that *look* like they're addressing usability. This forces the mass of people who don't have any choice but to use Windows to accommodate to a new normal, which they hate but it doesn't matter. They have no choice. On the plus side this makes life difficult for people creating products that might work enough like Windows to be a threat. Take any Windows user from the 1990s and put him on XFCE, and he won't have any problem finding his way around. That's bad for Microsoft, but they are powerful enough to change the world so that a perfectly functional UI without pointless bells and whistles just feel *weird*.
Also on the plus side, people don't realize how much work it takes to keep an OS working with evolving hardware and security threats. Also every piece of software has bugs, and those bugs need to fixed, and the people fixing them need to paid. Users think things like that should be free, but it's not a sustainable business model; by the time bugs are discovered license revenue is long gone. Superficial changes make it seem like users are getting *something* for their money, even if that thing is useless.
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I hate to tell you this but Canonical probably think all those were great ideas. That's why their UI is shit too.
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Please - paying 8 year olds lollypops for usability / design guidance is not working out.
That is complete rubbish. Microsoft relies heavily on some of the best UI experts in the industry - Apple's. They copy what Apple does one or two releases behind, and then they jump up and down and scream how they are the best. Mind you, because they are just copying Apple they do make colossal blunders, such as copying the iOS interface for Windows 8...
By this guy's logic... (Score:1)
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Re: By this guy's logic... (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s the same operating system, same kernel, different cpu.
Windows NT has run on many cpus over the years, but itâ(TM)s still windows under the hood.
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Re: By this guy's logic... (Score:4, Informative)
Windows NT has run on many cpus over the years, but itÃ(TM)s still windows under the hood.
The full OS has run on five instruction sets: i386, amd64, PPC, Alpha, and HP-PA. The kernel and some other bits also run on ARM. And three of those architectures were only supported for a single OS version. That's a solid handful, but of all of the complete operating systems out there only netbsd and Linux have really run on "many" CPUs.
Re: By this guy's logic... (Score:2)
Youâ(TM)re missing the point. This is not some pissing contest. GP was making the argument that a kernel switch is easy since arm has moved CPUs from x86 to ARM. I was pointing out that switching CPUs is easy NT has run on several already) and this does _not_ indicate the ease of switching the underlying kernel of an OS.
Btw NT also ran on mips & sparc.
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Hmm, forgot about those.
You're right that one thing has nothing to do with the other. Though really, it would probably be pretty easy for Microsoft to switch to Linux if they wanted to. They might have to contribute some improvements to Mono and/or Winelib, and NTFS support. The real "argument" "should" be about whether it makes any sense for Microsoft to do it in the first place, and I'm going to say no even though I'd like to see it happen. I see what they would get out of it, but I don't think it's suffi
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Yeah, MIPS was the primary development platform for WinNT. But you forgot Intergraph CLIPPER. Both the SPARC and CLIPPER ports were done by Intergraph.
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OS-X and iOS are pretty much the same OS under the hood, and the latter already runs on Apple's A-series that's used in iPads and iPhones. So bringing OS-X to the same CPU, which will enable Apple to leverage the same CPU base is comparatively trivial compared to the migration of System 7 from Motorola 68k to PowerPC, or OS-X from PowerPC to x64.
Windows NT did run on MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC as well, but no mainstream software, including Microsoft's, was ever ported to those platforms, which is why they f
Re: By this guy's logic... (Score:2)
The other question is whether Apple will continue to Open Source their OS kernel. If the premise of the article is that Open Source âoewonâ, then why hasnâ(TM)t the commercial OS that has allowed you to recompile your kernel for 15 years (MacOS) not killed the completely closed Windows? And why are all the new high-growth consumer platforms built on closed ecosystems? Open Source didnâ(TM)t âoewinâ, itâ(TM)s just the same companies battling for desktop scraps in a world of
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With enough levels of abstraction (Score:3, Interesting)
Between the OS and the Display/Gui it should be pretty easy to make some transitional steps to where it doesn't matter what the user "sees".
There already seem to be plenty of desktop environments in the Linux world, that don't actually share in much of anything in common other than providing a unique environment.
Canonical may be running scared, since their questionable decisions regarding desktops (Unity/Gnome 3) in the past have probably led to more dissatisfaction in their user bases than anything else. Then toss in years of new features that are quickly killed because nobody really wants them.
A Windows desktop on a linux OS means Canonical could be pretty much rendered useless.
Now I personally don't really like the Windows desktop, or the app environment, but some people get attached to whatever current incarnation of evil is popular.
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Can't blame them for how awful Gnome 3 is.
Re: With enough levels of abstraction (Score:2)
If Canonical were smart, they'd switch from Linux to FreeBSD. And kill off their multiple package formats.
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Yes, running scared (Score:1)
Canonical may be running scared, ...
I think this gets to the heart of the matter. A few points that stood out for me: 1) "It would cost millions of dollars to replicate these in Linux.": Relative to Canonical, that may represent a lot of money. Relative to Microsoft, not so much. 2) "Microsoft has doubled down on Windows in recent years." Microsoft has also doubled down on hypervisor technology and Linux. 3) Microsoft has done similar gut-wrenching changes before, and pulled them off: Windows NT's kernel replacing Windows 95/DOS's, and 16-3
Re:Yes, running scared (Score:4, Informative)
Except that theres no benefit to Microsoft in such a move. They've shown they don't *need* to run windows on Linux to get linux compatibility into windows, and theres far too many differences between the core windows kernel functionality to make it particularly attractive.
Windows makes utterly silly amounts of money for Microsoft. Removing their brand uniqueness makes little sense.
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The benefit for MS is that the promise of Windows is financially unsustainable. Windows promises businesses that their internal software they are still using for 2003 will still work today and forever. MS has to invest significant resources making sure that all of their new Windows releases don't break old software, because if it did then THAT would make companies consider migrating away from MS services. BUT, the vast majority of security holes in Windows is not found in software MS has any control over. I
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It is also worth pointing out that the OS kernel is pretty much irrelevant to most users. What most users interact with is the userland built on top of the kernel; in particular, the graphical interface. Where the OS kernel might matter to users is hardware driver support, and in my opinion, Linux has got good enough at that to be at least as good as Windows. People at work who build systems for our specialised software and hardware find Linux much easier than Windows. The customers don't notice any differe
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You forgot several points:
* Gruesome Patch Tuesdays that brick machines across the world.
* Bricked because of sloppy coding, because of sloppy coding
* Ancient untenable parodoxical API sets that made software companies millions but today are a noose around those same company's necks
* People are a herd, and what's under the hood is irrelevant to 90% of them so long as the stuff *works reliably*, which after missteps starting at Windows 8X, have continually made many of their customers scream in agony.
Microso
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Because I have run Linux at work and at home since the days of Windows 98, I have only indirect experience of the issues you listed. I do have some personal experience of the weird defects of Windows, though.
A number of years ago, I used to build Windows systems at work, with our custom software and some other applications added after installing Windows. My usual practice with a fresh Linux install is to run updates right after the install, to make sure I had all the latest security patches. I ran the updat
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There are a few patch sets that stitch code, but much of the problems amount to three things: An API set where many bits of code are dependent on the API and might now behave differently; dependencies that may require much other code to achieve version-coherent interaction; and the hardware/HAL drivers and code that have huge diversity across the playing field, and Microsoft tries to keep a huge playing field of hardware diversity that their OEMs and third parties produce-- a mind-boggling amount of potenti
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Perhaps the binary patch thing was a red herring. What I was trying to understand is why a Windows update after a fresh install is so much slower than a Linux distribution update after a fresh install. It is quite common for Linux distributions to have a snapshot release for download and initial installation via CD or USB stick, and then you do an update via the package system. This looks very similar to the Windows installations I used to do.
The multiple historical versions of Windows that have to be handl
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Different code, kernel, orchestration, setting up of APIs (some never needed, ever, but always loaded... just in case) are the differences. Honestly, it's not tough for Linus and the kernel crews to make Linux faster than Windows. Both have lots of legacy to be compatible with, but the cruft in Windows is huge, where Linux cruft is more loaded dynamically in the form of ancient ported GNU apps of AT&T Unix and/or BSD that are used once a millennium but are included with most distros.
OS Versioning is a w
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Even if I could run all Linux applications on windows, I still would not do that as long as windows does stuff that I did not ask it to do - disk defragmentation, updates, telemetry, ads, enabling services I've disabled, forcing microsoft accounts, ....
Future history will show... (Score:1, Insightful)
This guy is wrong, or at least will be.
Will never happen... (Score:2, Interesting)
Unlike Linux where all the UI is totally separate from the kernel, Windows has large chunks of the UI and graphics system in kernel components (the most important of which is win32k.sys).
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Yup. That's why it took a decade for MS to release Vista. They had to basically reconstruct the entire Windows NT kernel from scratch. And why it really really sucked when they did (it was about 75% ready for release). Vista was about as successful as trying to open up a brand new 15 story mega-mall to the public with floors 12-15 still under construction.
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On low end machines Vista was quite bad and lots of machines where sold with Intel integrated gpus which could not hardware accelerate the vista ui which led to horrible performance. On high end machines the issue was completely different. With a dedicated gpu, 4 cores or more and 16GB+ of ram Vista drastically outperformed previous versions of windows.
I ran Vista at the time and while it was bad on low end systems it worked fine on higher end systems.
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That hasn't been true since the Windows XP days. I think 2000 had some of it in the kernel but even with XP you could entirely replace the UI with your own. Vista completed the process with full separation.
Wikipedia has a list of alternative UIs for Windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Full separation? Doesn't the graphics driver itself still run in kernel space? It can certainly cause bluescreens like it does.
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Not since Vista, no.
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There's clearly not enough separation there to solve the actual problem, which is that the graphics driver can crater the system. I wonder why they bothered to move it if it wasn't going to solve anything.
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It wasn't 100% with Vista but was by Windows 8.1. When I had a bad GPU I used to get the graphics driver crashing now and then and it recovered without issue.
If you have getting blue screens in Windows 8 or 10 it's probably not the graphics driver, it's more likely a symptom of something else.
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I don't run Windows 8 or 10. I'm not paying for 8 and I'm not interested in 10 — I bought a laptop with it and the AMD graphics driver crashed and required a reboot, though I admit it didn't bluescreen on that occasion. Therefore I'm still on 7, which still ought to have the same level of separation since it's basically Vista unfucked.
I haven't had a blue screen in a while personally, though I have had the graphics driver blue screen Windows 7 before. And the problem was solved with a driver update, s
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Ah okay. So the moved the main driver out of the kernel in vista but the complete separation didn't come until 8.
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Since Vista almost all the graphics driver was moved out of the kernel and a GPU crash just ends up getting the driver reloaded and your desktop remains. Most programs (except games) keep running without any issues and no work is lost. With Windows 8 and further refined with Windows 10 it is extremely rare to have the GPU crash the system. If the driver fails it is just reloaded. That is also why you can update video drives without a reboot anymore. It just installs the new driver, shuts down the old one an
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...even with XP you could entirely replace the UI with your own.
I did not know that. Has anybody actually done it?
As a matter of proper software design, it is good to keep presentation code separate from "engine room" code. That way, most UI changes will not have an impact on core functions. I suspect that earlier versions of Windows, that had UI related stuff in the kernel, did this for efficiency reasons, because context switching is quite a significant overhead.
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Did you look at the link I posted?
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I just had a look at the link. I agree people have created alternative Windows shells. I am not sure they have had any impact on how Widows is used by most people. Most of them look like experiments, that are now discontinued. This is no doubt why I had not come across this before. It does not look like the situation with desktops running on X/Linux, where there are many desktops to choose from, all under active development.
It would cost millions of dollars to replicate (Score:5, Insightful)
"It would cost millions of dollars to replicate these"
Dude, millions of dollars is like, nothing to these companies. It's their monthly coffee budget.
Re: It would cost millions of dollars to replicate (Score:2)
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"It would cost millions of dollars to replicate these"
Dude, millions of dollars is like, nothing to these companies. It's their monthly coffee budget.
"Millions" is an understatement, by two or three orders of magnitude. Moreover, it would never work quite right. The whole idea is stupid, and only someone who's never actually worked on a complex operating system would propose it.
Says the guy who manages a MacOS clone .... (Score:3)
on a Linux kernel, that shits on the core principles and ideas of Unix and Linux every day, and proudly so. In a Dunning-Kruger way.
So "PCs are dying" became a fact for him? (Score:2)
Casually stating the assumption as if it was a real thing ... Jesus, how clueless is he?
You either work, and use a real PC with a professional OS, like Linux ... or you dabble and play with colorful tappables and use MacOS, Windows 10 or Ubuntu.
PCs just became fast enough. *That is literally it!*
It's not like anyone who drills concrete and steel for a living is suddenly switching out his Makita for an IKEA electric screwdriver, with 3N, in pink.
So stop acting like it somehow became an established fact that
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Casually stating the assumption as if it was a real thing ...
You either work, and use a real PC with a professional OS, like Linux ... or you dabble and play with colorful tappables and use MacOS, Windows 10 or Ubuntu.
There appears to be some disconnect between these two statements.
Microsoft lacks enough (Score:1)
What? (Score:2, Troll)
Microsoft has invested in usability, new features, and performance improvements for Windows 10 that have paid off.
In what bizarro world does this guy live? Every time I want to do something, Windows 10 gets in the way with some weird ass, annoying pop-up about how this is a great "feature" or don't forget X or would I like to . . . And don't get me started on how Microsoft repeatedly, and deliberately, hides what you need to get to. "Just search for it". I don't want to fucking search for it. I want to g
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In the bizarro world where he's trying to convince Microsoft to not migrate to the Linux space where they would immediately dominate just due to their massive presence.
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In what bizarro world does this guy live? Every time I want to do something, Windows 10 gets in the way with some weird ass, annoying pop-up about how this is a great "feature" or don't forget X or would I like to . . . And don't get me started on how Microsoft repeatedly, and deliberately, hides what you need to get to.
You must remember that the newer versions of the most popular DE's and applications - like those in the most-commonly used flavours of Ubuntu - are already pretty far along the very same path. Once you've drunk the Kool-Aid purveyed by the current GTK devs, (as this guy clearly has), Microsoft's crazy-making shitshow of productivity-destroying baubles must look like the Promised Land.
Sounds like he's scared to me. (Score:2)
"Microsoft wants to just keep Windows separate, right? I mean *nervous laugh* no one likes Linux anyway. *Nervous laugh* Linux is just for nerds, guys."
NT Kernel.. Microsoft... theft... and shame. (Score:1)
Microsoft spent a lot of money stealing the VMS V4.0 designers (including Dave Cutler) to build W/NT as the next step after VMS. Note that every letter in WNT is one above VMS. (Kind of like in 2001 A Space Odyssey HAL was just one step ahead of IBM).
After a huge lawsuit MS agreed to build DEC Alpha-based (64 bit) chips to compensate for this trade theft.
No, they have too much "capital" invested to just throw it out.
One of many many links: https://www.itprotoday.com/com... [itprotoday.com]
E
Windows drivers (Score:2)
Hasn't Windows broken driver compatibility a few times now? I would think Linux supports a lot more hardware than Windows does.
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> I would think Linux supports a lot more hardware than Windows does.
You shouldn't. You'd be wrong.
" It would cost millions of dollars..." (Score:2)
So? MS has billion of dollars to spend if they see a pay-off in the future. This must be the most bogus argument ever.
Not for me (Score:2)
Microsoft has doubled down on Windows in recent years. Microsoft has invested in usability, new features, and performance improvements for Windows 10 that have paid off
Huh? How?
This is still usability issues, features I want that are missing, and it hasn't gotten any faster.