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Should The Next Windows Be Built On Linux?
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?
Are you sure? I heard a rumor that FreeBSD was dying.
I'm sure that a lot of Windows driver developers will enjoy porting their drivers over to the Linux architecture.
You mean, like OS X?
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.
This
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!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
GPL licensing is anathema to them, but they seem to enjoy using BSD licensing....
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
When you have 95% of the world on your platform, what's the point?
If anyone could ruin the stability of Linux.....it would be Microsoft.
peace be with you.
this is about as plausible as Fred Phelps marching for gay rights.
possibly the first smarting Robert XXX Cringley has EVER said!
now watch.. in 3 months he'll go against his word and bash Apple as well for no apparent reason..
that would be interesting to see. Maybe a linux based windows wouln't be so bad? I don't see why not. What do you guys think? Why or why not?
Hard work usually pays off over time, but procrastination pays off now.
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.
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
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.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
but this really seems like tabloid style news. Shocking and not true.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
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.
Will Linus accept the BSOD patch for the kernel?
new version of 1diskxwin available at:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/natld
embedded linux
no it shouldn't.
The next Windows should not be built on top of Linux. why not? I wwould require to many workarounds to get some backwards compatability.
Microsoft should be forced to rewrite the entire code allover. part of their code has probably change since windows 3.11.
Wait, Windows isn't already free? Hmmm... odd, I don't remember paying for my copy...
Ben Garrison, a mindless idiot who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
The article implies that WinXP is still biult on DOS.
While that was true through WinMe, WinXP is built on NT, which is a completely independant kernel, whose history others can tell better than I can. So technically, they have already done something similar to what is being suggested -- switching to a modern kernel.
Only the one they used was (mostly) developed in house.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.)
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Yes they could become an open source endeavor if they really wanted to, but doesn't that contradict Microsoft's capitalist demeanor? The whole point of M$ is to make as much money as possible.
it SHOULD but with Billy-boy and his crew running things, it never will.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
I've never paid for a copy of Windoze yet.
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No, Billyboy should buy AmigaOS or BeOS...
"If Microsoft wanted to, they could be the world's largest vendor of Free software .. couldn't they? "
/.) get their panties in a bunch accusing MS of over-extending their monopoly into the Linux world?
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
that is MS wanted to make a BSD based OS that could still run dos/win32 based apps they could. Just my $.02
Keep Austin Weird!
Windows XP is built on the 2000 kernel, which is based on, not built on, the NT kernel.
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What possible advantages would windows gain from a Linux kernel? I can't think of one! Mac OS X did the switch to a unix kernel but that was only because of stability issues and the fact that they could port tons of software to a relatively small software base (compaired to windows software base)
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Whenever I see an article like this I tend to think that some fanboy's trying to make a joke of us all.
./ers say it is pretty solid, runs cleanly and does everything the desktop OS could want. It seems to me that running the Linux kernel would just complicate things and try to fix something that isn't wrong. I'm really curious on what the horrors of the NT kernel are, as I've never seen them (I'm talking about desktop OS here).
Sure, Windows COULD be built on top of the Linux kernel, but why in the hell would you want it to be? Other than being closed-source, what is wrong with the current NT Kernel? Despite what a lot of
Plus, the last thing I want to see is "You've installed a new device! Please wait while Microsoft (R) Windows recompiles the kernel in order to have support for [device name]"
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.
kernel segmentation fault, ignore, retry, fail?
I wonder what the mascot would look like? Sorta like a blue mouse, with big ears...
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.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I don't remember paying for my copy
I can see only four possibilities for running a computer: paying for Windows, pirating Windows, stealing a computer that contains Windows, or not running Windows at all. Which is it in your case?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm Brian Fellows!!
I dont like Microsoft. Its big and scary.
I'm Brian Fellows!!
Lay off the pipe you tard. YUO MAEK KNOW SENSE!!!!!
/.? this is just crap. many incorrect statments and an ugly color too. PBS needs to fire him and air more of 'Star Hustler' and 'Sesame Street'.
Who allowed this to be posted on
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.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I don't know much about the topic, but doesn't the liscencing disallow you from selling it for money? Or is it just a common misconception?
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
If Microsoft built their next operating system on Linux, they be required to disclose all of the source code essentially making it free (ie. another Mandrake).
That's funny, I thought XP & 2000 were versions of NT, without any DOS subOS. Windows versions 1-3.1, 95 & 98 were DOS based, to the extent that DOSEMU will run Windows 3.0.
As for being able to get a C:\ prompt, there are probably people running user-friendly Linux distros like Mandrake, which starts X & KDE on boot by default, who have never seen a login screen (I know I didn't for 3+ months), but Konsole, Xterm & RXvt will be there if needed.
I can run cygwin bash, too.
sh
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
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.
.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.
... 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.
There are several problems stopping MS from using Linux:
1) They have
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
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).
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
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.
Wouldn't that break a fair number of Windows applications that use the services of the Windows kernel? Cringely doesn't mention that Microsoft would have to undergo the same pain that Apple did in supporting Mac OS 9 applications.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
Microsoft never said that a disk operating system wasn't in NT, there's a disk operating system in linux as well, as long as by disk operating system you mean a system for interacting with disks and as long as you have disks in your system, that's what you are going to need.
If memory serves correctly NT5 already has the TCP/IP stack from BSD(*nix).
Why Microsoft Should Build Its Next Version of Windows on Top of Linux
By Robert X. Cringely
I was exchanging e-mail recently with my friend Mike Class, SJ, who is associate dean of the Graduate School at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mike, who is a Jesuit priest and therefore naturally drawn to the whole idea of conversion, wants Microsoft to build its next version of Windows on top of Linux. And you know, it actually makes some sense!
The idea of Windows as an operating system is purely a product of the Microsoft marketing department, and not some law of nature. When Windows 1.0 appeared, it was a separate program you loaded on top of MS-DOS. Same for Windows 2.0 and 3.0 up through MS-DOS 6.22, the last standalone version of DOS sold by Microsoft. That way, they thought at the time, if Windows ever proved to be a commercial failure (this was far from certain and it is easy to claim Windows WAS a failure before 3.0), it would have been easy for Microsoft to punt back to MS-DOS.
It was only with Windows 95 that Microsoft decided that Windows was a success, dropped the second box and integrated the products. But are they really integrated? No. DOS 7.0 was under Windows 95 and DOS 7.1 brought the FAT32 file system to Win95, not the other way around. 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.
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. The idea of running a windowing system atop an OS or even having competing operating systems under the same OS has been around for a long time. Back when Unix meant typing on a command line, in the PC world there were versions of DOS from vendors other than Microsoft, and in fact, some of those products are still available. IBM will still sell you a copy of PC-DOS 2000, and you can download a copy of DR-DOS 7.03 for free from DeviceLogics Inc., in Utah. Up through Windows 3.11 both these products worked as well or better under Windows than MS-DOS, and some people have claimed to have made them work under later Windows versions, too.
The history of DR-DOS is especially interesting because it went through so many hands. This MS-DOS-compatible operating system was written at Gary Kildall's Digital Research as a better version of DOS that would be Gary's revenge against Bill Gates, only it didn't work out that way, did it? Still, DR-DOS was a better product than MS-DOS at the time.
DR-DOS was eventually sold, along with the rest of Digital Research, to Novell, which already had its own DOS clone inside the early versions of Netware. Novell's version of DOS was noteworthy because of its Indexed TurboFAT file system, which was a response to the painfully slow performance of the Hierarchical File System built into MS-DOS 2.0. Indexed TurboFAT was a flat file system that was kept all the time in a RAM cache so that it was incredibly fast. Like all the really industrial-strength applications of the time, NetWare (like Autodesk and others) did whatever it could to get beneath MS-DOS. It was the only way to get high performance.
Novell eventually sold DR-DOS to Caldera, which at one point renamed it OpenDOS and started giving it away. Smart move, throwing away a brand name known by millions. What DR-DOS did for Caldera was give it an inherited anti-trust claim against Microsoft because Redmond kept changing Windows to make it incompatible with DR-DOS, which -- if you do it just to be mean -- is against anti-trust law. Caldera won more than $100 million from Microsoft in an out-of-court settlement, making their day, and then DR-DOS moved on to Lineo, a Novell/Caldera partnership for embedded software, and finally to DeviceLogics, which plans an 8.0 version for later this year, again aimed primarily at embedded apps.
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. As Mike Class points out, by not having to develop its own OS, Microsoft could also save money. They wouldn't need however many people are presently devoted to maintaining the underlying OS that isn't supposed to be there.
And it wouldn't devalue Windows, precisely because Microsoft has done such a good job of making people think there isn't a DOS under there. Windows is the brand, and would remain so. And the nature of the General Public License is such that Microsoft would not be required to divulge much, if anything, about either Windows code or its applications, specifically because they would be sitting atop -- not built into - Linux.
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? The last I looked, Rick Rashid was still a Sr. Vice-President and head of Microsoft Research -- the same Rick Rashid who, as a professor at Carnegie-Mellon Univerisity, was responsible for Mach in the first place. No biggie.
Then look at what this does to Microsoft's anti-trust situation. Suddenly, they aren't this overbearing monolith, but just another company pushing a windowing system and apps. True, they have a broader offering of window systems and more apps (not to mention more money) than any possible competitors -- make that all possible competitors COMBINED. But that's not illegal. The Feds would simply go away, and even the current consent decree might no longer be required.
What this would do is level the playing field just a bit. The best windowing system and the best apps would win where they best meet the needs of users, which would vary from constituency to constituency. This wouldn't be the end of Gnome or KDE by any means, but what it would do is give 95 percent of the computers in the world a relatively standard and robust OS that could run a wide variety of windowing systems equally well. And for Microsoft, it offers that delectable prospect of selling Microsoft Office for Linux by inserting a bit of middleware to interface its apps with other windowing systems, again without having to adhere to the GPL.
It won't happen, of course, because Microsoft will want to maintain every advantage and would see this as giving-in. It would also have a negative impact on their language business, though that's not an absolute certainty. The part I love, though, is the idea of Bill Gates showing up at LinuxWorld to kiss Linus's ring.
And if it ever happens (the ring-kissing, I mean), don't forget Mike Class in Milwaukee, who came up with the idea in the first place. I don't know if Jesuit friars are allowed to accept big checks from corporations, but I'm sure Marquette University could always use the money.
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.
MicroSoft could say "Hey, look at how often Linux crashes now!"
Linux is built on top of Windows!!!
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.
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
Windows 95 was not an OS because it sat atop a 16-bit protected mode bootloader (I can nitpick that to heck but still). Ditto Win 98 and ME. But Windows NT/2000/XP are as much an OS as BeOS, Linux, QNX and BSD are. The fact that they have a CLI doesn't make them any less an operating system.
And a shell doesn't an OS make. If anything, I'd argue for Microsoft to make it easier to write a shell replacement. I've never found one that is as as stable and complete as the default, and writing shells for Windows is still a bit of a black art, unlike Linux which completely separates the kernel from the windowing system and doesn't have a shell by itself.
Cringely writes good stuff, but this time he's planted his foot firmly in his mouth.
wtf are you people smoking?
p.s. can i buy some?
-- "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Apparently it's necessary for absolutely everything written by this guy to have an article on Slashdot. Wonderful. Even though half of us are trolls, I think the average slashdot reader is at least as smart as he is. Oh well. Can't have useful things on Slashdot *all* the time.
"Back when Unix meant typing on a command line..." I'm sorry, when did this change? Nobody informed me I don't have to use the command line. Can someone help me figure out how to recompile apache with out it?
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.
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.
.NET framework. This strategy makes far more sense, both considering the existing strengths of Windows, and Microsoft's emnity toward open-source software.
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
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
I'm sorry, but has lost it.
Actually he stopped making any sort of sense along time ago, like Dvorak, Katz, and most of the Salon crew he stopped making sense or being original sometime between the 2000 election and the planes smashing into buildings.
With the exception of his stuff about long range 802.11b, Cringely just doesn't matter. Its about the same as looking to Wired for insight these days.
"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? The last I looked, Rick Rashid was still a Sr. Vice-President and head of Microsoft Research -- the same Rick Rashid who, as a professor at Carnegie-Mellon Univerisity, was responsible for Mach in the first place. No biggie."
No biggie? It took Apple from June of 1997 to August of 2001 to move about 75% of it's OS functionality from Classic to X, yea MS is bigger with more coders and more money, but it's also a much bigger project with many times more compatability issues to have to sort out. It'd be a biggie.
I read the piece. It's about a pipe-dream and J.X.C's knowledge of DOS history. It's pointless.
I love how he claims that fact that you can get a command prompt in XP means dos must be underneath still. Call me crazy but I thought the NT series emulated dos for backwards compatibilty. I didn't think NT was just hacked on to DOS like Win9x, 3.11 , etc. were. He seems to think if someone tried REALLY hard they could still get XP to run on top of DR-DOS instead of...well instead of the imaginary DOS that isn't there now. Then there's the whole micro vs monolithic kernel thing. I hope no one reads this article and think, "Yeah! Why don't they?" There's a reason Apple had to provide the classic environment after they released OS X, and it ain't because some people prefer the old widget style.
Why not fork?
I usually like Cringly's pieces, they tend to be at least entertaining. But this one is just stupid... He was doing fine until he makes the ridiculous claim that XP is not an operating system. Im sorry, but that is just demonstratably false. Sure, 3.1, 95, etc. where basically just DOS shells, but NT, 2000, and XP certainly are NOT and have just as much a right to be called an OS as any Unix does. While you can make the case that the GUI can be seperated from the underlying OS, that does not mean the underlying OS is MS-DOS. The kernel of NT/2K/XP is VASTLY superior to DOS. I would even venture to say it somewhat superior to Linux (at least as far as raw performance/scalability goes). I like Linux, but facts are facts. Efficient threading, an excellent VM, overlapped I/O, memory-mapped files, excellent serialization primitives, etc... The "core" of XP is fairly advanced. Linux has most of the same features, but the spit and polish isnt there yet. Putting the Windows GUI on top of Linux might make a nice Linux Desktop, but it would definitely be a step backwards for Windows. Go ahead, flame away :)
- sigs are stupid
specifically, what a premise.
Let me start thinking that way.
You can get to a root prompt in Linux. You can do so in BSD as well. Solaris, also.
Apparently, these are all actually the same thing - they're all running Linux, underneath it all. And because it's that simple, it's just marketing - since the product is free - Solaris is just hyping it up so that people will use CDE.
Lets go further. Also, you can find a brain inside every animal. Cats have brains.
So, deep down, we're all cats, right*?
*Really old, bad movie quote
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Venkman: This industrty is about to face a disaster of biblical proportions.
Linus: What do you mean, "biblical?"
Ray: We mean real wrath-of-God type stuff. Plagues, darkness--
Winston: Lotus rising from the grave!
Egon: Forty years of uptime! Competition, open source--
Venkman: Riots in Redmond, Ballmer and Ellison living together, mass hysteria!
--
warn "Just Another Perl User" if $anyone_cares;
I don't know much about the topic, but doesn't the liscencing disallow you from selling it for money? Or is it just a common misconception?
An extremely common misconception. See the GNU GPL FAQ:
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
Who said Freedom was Fair?
If they did that people would abandon Windows all together. Not to mention that Microsoft would go down the tubes. What of Pallidium well that would be gone, because no one would use their Distrobution and its not like they can get the U.S. to force it upon us because not every distrobution operates in the United States and they don't have to listen. Also hackers will just remove the code. Its an optimistic point but an unrealistic one.
MS has a vested interest in the "OS" portions of Windows, now that they've finally moved their latest versions (Win2K, WinXP) over to something that can actually be considered a "real kernel" (The somewhat stable NT-based underpinnings).
They also have strong coupling between this OS portion, and the desktop apps that everyone is forced to use (Excel, Word, Outlook, etc.) in ordeer to be compatible with everyone else. (By "everyone," I simply mean the large majority of users who use Windows on a PC, for what ever reason they do so.)
This coupling / tight integration is a main technical component of MS's business strategy, which has allowed them to achieve their monopoly position.
Why would they give this up?
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.
My Sig: SEGV
This would be an interesting idea, but there are a number of factual errors in his article.
1) Windows XP is not based on DOS. XP is the latest incarnation of NT, which is not based on DOS. Basing a Win9x varient on Linux is an interesting concept, but Windows was so horribly tied to DOS that it would make heavy use of undocumented DOS data structures.
2) The HFS is a Macintosh file system and has nothing to do with DOS 2.0.
3) Windows is far more than a windowing system he suggested. It also added protected mode preemptive multitasking and virtual memory, device independence, and all kinds of other things that DOS never had. Suggesting that KDE is remotely similar to Windows is completely wrong.
4) Claiming that Linux is better, faster, stronger than anything under XP. This is total FUD. People's bias against Windows and its instability may have been rightfully justified under Win9x, but the NT line has been stable for me for years.
There are a number of other errors that have me question the article. Its an interesting wish, but I'd rather see Windows go Open Source, or see Microsoft apps ported to Linux before I'd like Windows to be "ported" to Linux.
There is no money in free software. Microsoft has shareholders that they need to answer to. If they aren't producing a profit, then the shareholders will get angry.
It WOULD be smart for them to move into the Linux market though, as they will sell their office products. The Linux versions wouldn't be as complete as the Windows/Mac versions though, because there isn't the framework to tie into. I'm sure they'd still sell a lot of copies though.
even if MS decides to put the Windows GUI on top of Linux, they will still find a way to make it crash.
It's all about the quality and skill of programmers/coders.
About a week ago in my daily Interent column I predicted that Microsoft would launch its own flavor of Linux sometime in the next 18 months.
I still think it's a very real possibility for the reasons I listed.
This is driving me nuts. WINDOWS XP IS BASED ON THE NT KERNAL!! Windows 2000 is NT 5.0, XP is Windows NT 5.1! Got it?! The author is so STUPID! It uses NTFS, it has the 'nt boot loader', it has a file called 'ntloader' in the system directory (or the root). And if that's not enough evidence just look at it. IT'S WINDOWS 2000 WITH A COUPLE CHANGES HERE THERE. Damn ignorant people. It's not like it's a big secret. XP is *NOT* based in any way shape or form on MS-DOS or any other DOS. It is totally and completely a derivative of NT. Why doesn't anyone know this? Not trying to be inflammatory, this just drives me crazy.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
I was hoping that a respected institution such as PBS would be able to come up with a more competent technology columnist than Robert X. Cringley, but unfortunately, this has not been the case. There's no need to even read the article - the main proposal is so ludicrous and demonstrative of a fundamental ignorance of software as to be completely lacking credibility.
I'm surprised that even Slashdot deigned to post this; it is such utter drivel as to rival and perhaps even surpass the ineptitude of the editors here who, for all their spelling errors and unabashed sensationalism, at least tend to get their technical facts right the first time.
--sdem
This guy should get a computer degree, learn a little bit about computer science and rethink his article. It's more than obvious that he doesnt have a clue about what he is talking.
But they'll always be a reptile underneath. Expect them to experiment with all sorts of outward appearances, as all companies do. Apple built upon BSD. Did that make them a more ethical company at the core? Last I heard they'd turned on the "communities" that had previously been considered part of the big happy apple family.
/they are not ethical creatures/.
Don't expect any better from Microsoft. Anything they do, is calculated to turn a profit. Nothing wrong with that, unless you happen to be one of those who recieve a cease and desist because your community is no longer considered an asset!
Reptiles people. A corporation is not a human being. It has no understanding of warmth, trust, or any sense of morals you or I are familiar with. There are grave psychological descriptions for real human beings who act like corporations. Anti social, psychopath, borderline personality disorder. Let the corps make widgets or whatever they do. But when they come at you talking like they want to be your buddy, the alarm bells should be going off in your head because
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.
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.
I can't belive he's so ignorant. You can get a C prompt in XP because people want a C prompt. It isn't needed (and in fact you can't get one in Windows ME, which is more DOS-like then XP)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Aborted IBM/MS OS >> Windows NT >> Windows 2000 >> Windows XP.
DOS >> Windows 1.0 >> Windows 2.0 >> Windows 3.1 >> Windows 95 >> Windows 98 >> Windows Millenium
Does Cringely even know what he's talking about if can't even get this timeline straight?
apt-get install windows
bugger it
apt-get install kde
Who did Microsoft buy NT from? IIRC they co-developed it with IBM as OS/2 and then went seperate ways with the result being NT and OS/2.. html
See http://www.jwntug.or.jp/misc/japanization/history
Imagine how stupid this guy must feel. He writes this tabloid story hoping to suck up to some zealots . It gets posted to slashdot (home of the zealots) and even they're not dumb enough to bite on it.
It must hurt.
I cringed while reading this.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Other people have already spoken on this, but I feel the need to as well. Cringely is a complete buffoon who tosses names and history around without really know what he's talking about; which is why he can only get a job on the dole. To whine about a command line in Windows while speaking about windowing systems and Linux itself is ludicrous. I guess we can't use Linux, either because it has a command line. Wait, it doesn't, because it has a pretty GUI. Oh, wait, it is, because the pretty GUI has a command line, repeat. "Linux is better, faster, stronger than whatever is living underneath XP now, right?" Apples and oranges, sometimes, stronger how? "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?" The NT kernel is based on the Mach kernel, you idiot. "As Mike Class points out, by not having to develop its own OS, Microsoft could also save money." Um, no, because Windows is worth more than the sum of its parts. And if the Windows GUI was ported over to Linux, that means we wouldn't have DirectX and all the other goodies Windows has. Since when was breaking all the software to move over to another kernel that's just different (in construction and generation) a good idea? I would contact Cringely directly, but there's no e-mail, and the forum is down. Hmm...
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
And, they do it once more.
I think if we do have a Windows based on Linux, it will be something like the OS X setup, which would be the underlying core is open source, but the GUI (and others not in the "core" of things) would be closed source. Mark my words, it will be this way if M$ does it. However, I sincerely doubt that M$ will do it.
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
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.
The cake is a pie
but explorer.exe is not the windowing layer/api, just like Gnome is not X-Window
If Microsoft changes Windows over a Unix based OS, it will be built on a BSD, such as FreeBSD or OpenBSD or even Darwin.
Most of the code in the NT kernel is already built from BSD code. It seems it would be a lot easier to change things over to BSD since NT seems to do a lot of things the "BSD way". Plus, since Mac OS X is BSD based, a lot of hardware developers have ported their drivers to a BSD-based system. It would be trivial to then port those drivers to MS BSD. Besides, BSD is better than Linux anyways. It just makes sense to do it with BSD.
XP actually ships with both cmd.exe and command.com. (command.com works via emulation of the DOS calls, of course, so yes, he's an idiot.)
The cake is a pie
What this would do is level the playing field just a bit.
And that, among other things, is precisely why they will not (and from their perspective, should not) do it.
Admittedly, it was slower than a lawnmower, but it was a "d.o.s." nonetheless...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
It'll be like a combination of Lindows and Windows. We can call it Windows.
Lots of people are switching away from all the false promises of stability and speed that have been promised all these years, rewrite after rewrite. It's just not true. Linux is unstable and it's a piece of junk. People who hate windows and people who love Unix, both should all run FreeBSD.
Unlike Linux if you were to allow people to fiddle with the underbelly of Windows it would destroy the fine grained control that has taken over a decade to master.
Actually that is called the registry. You tell Microsoft you were touching the registry and your done. Go home, reinstall and forget that you even called them.
...Bush/bin Laden alliance has been hot for many years.
Cringely doesn't seem to know his as... well, anyway. XP is NOT based on DOS, as others have already said, it's the current version of what was called NT a couple years ago. He shows great ignorance for claiming otherwise.
.NET? Why do you think they didn't start on a Unix kernel from the get go? If Cringely thinks there's a snowball's chance in hell of MS ever doing this, he really needs to have his head examined. He talks about what would be neat, and what would be good for the industry, and what would make /. have a happy frolic through the tulips. All in the face of reality.
:-)
MS has one big huge overwhelming reason not to put Windows on Linux, or any other kernel for that matter. Control. Simple as that. They will not give someone else *any* control over any of they're products. That's just the way they work, and they've made billions because of it. Why do you think there is a thing called
And it wouldn't even be that good an idea. Linux isn't such a wonderful kernel as good kernels go. Sure, it's stable and performs well, but it's not the only good kernel out there. More importantly, Linux the kernel is not the reason that Linux the distro rocks. The distros rock because they, like they're Unix precursors, provide huge piles of control over the system on which they run, and a nice clean interface to the hardware. It would be perfectly conceivable to build a full-featured Unix-like distro running on top of the NT kernel. MS would have to be the ones to do it of course, but that isn't the point. The point is that the NT kernel isn't the problem. The problem is MS. Slapping Linux under Windows would provide us with the same problem we have now: a monopoly exerting too much control on the industry, with a product no better than they offer now.
I could spend the next hour picking the article to pieces, and I'm not even that good at it. I think I'll just stop now
Should the next version of Windows be built on Linux they ask. Does this mean no one remembers Windows 95 and all of it's problems?
Only if you have been living in a cave in Afghanistan.
Should the next Chevy truck be built on a Honda frame? Yeah Right! Some one close the cage, the Microsoft Evil Monkeys are loose again!
MS could only survive in such a mythical model if they concentrated on being a service oriented organization and/or relying on applications such as Office. Why would they want to do this when their business model works perfectly well now? Sure their stuff crashes, is a crackers dream and is always about 5 years behind the *nix world with functionality (but they always have more "features"). However their marketing and legal methods have produced what their lack of engineering and innovation have not, so why change?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Judging by the name Cringley has picked out for himself, he seems to think he is of some higher breed than the rest of us. This way, he can write technical columns for PBS and get away with glaring errors and awful research. Not to mention it sounds like the article was written by a high school newspaper editor-in-chief or something.
This isn't the first time he's been wrong. If you go back and read his columns (arrange to be checked into a mental asylum if you do decide to), you will find every article full of bs like this.
Why would you want to buy a Microsoft product based on Linux when you can get it for free anyhow? I guess he didn't bother thinking out the reality of the situation. That's like saying maybe Xbox Next should be based on PS3 methinks.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
I, Cringely has never been a source for news developments. "I, Cringely" by its name itself implies it's an opinion column...
Cringely's most famous work has been as a historical storyteller rather than covering developments as they happen. Don't look for him expecting news, that's never been what he's had to sell you.
So yeah, this is a rather far out idea that even he admits in the column is never gonna happen. But, hey, what a conversation starter... he's done is job.
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
You may be an emasculated loser, but at least you are willing to take it up the ass in metamod.
Using Unix doesn't necessarily mean recompiling Apache. And, if you really felt the urge, there's probably some GUI program out there that will automatically run ./configure && make && make install for you. If there isn't, it'd be trivial to write one. The command line is an important and useful part of Unix, but it's certainly not a necessary one.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only thing that stops Microsoft from using Linux as the baseline is the GPL. MS would love the public relations coup of jumping into a unix-like platform, but they are scared to death of GPL. The BSD family, on the other hand, is more aligned with the way Microsoft wants to run their business.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
"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.
You're wrong. VMS and UNIX appeared at about the same time, but are very different beasts. Arguably, VMS was better than UNIX, but UNIX became dominant as a result of BSD.
Dx9 and up support.
Use of proprietary extensions.
Media Player.... v6.4
etc.etc.etc.
Your 4 year linense for 49.99
Ends one argument, begins four more.
If they kept who in mind who they're making this for they'd have less problems.
The command line is an important and useful part of Unix, but it's certainly not a necessary one
What would X sit on top of if there was on command line? Itself? That makes for some weird Mc Escher picture.
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.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Heh, well, I guess that's what you get for penning something a ridiculous/obiously-overly-attention-grabbing/horr ibly researched as this.
yes the article is inacurate. what does that matter? this is like telling apple 5 years ago that they should move to a kernel that is unix based and open source (bsd anyone?). of course, they would have laughed in your face.
microsoft is like any capitalist entity...they are there to make $$$. apple has gone the way of an open and stable kernel. they decided to forgo the waste of money that is kernel development and use a system that is currently open, supported, and doesn't have to be bought. apple figured that they shouldn't have to spend money on something they clould have for free. why not M$? apple doesn't make their money based upon the kernel. they make their money because their proprietary interface (and hardware...yada, yada, yada...). same is true with windows. if the the NT kernel changes to an open source kernel, the interface is what will matter. instead of useing X11 they use their own GUI server...
on another note...if M$ becomes more compatible with open source software (on a kernel level), then one of 2 things are going to happen. either 1.) M$ will expand because they will have the ability to run and develop software that will work on open systems (even if the binaries are closed), or 2.) they will open the door for open source os's to penitrate the market.
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
This pressumes that the Linux kernel is in anyway superior to the WinNT kernel, which it isn't.
There are many reasons to be enthusiastic about Linux and the accomplishment of a group of volunteers assembling a Unix clone is remarkable.
However in our enthusiasm for OSS we should not lose sight that linux is a reimplementation of a 30 year old operating system (although admittedly a very good one, that has seem some updates along the way).
In other words, Linux is the open source implementation of a VW bug. The state of the art is way ahead of this (both in car and OS design).
Mach, the NT kernel, BeOS, AtheOS are examples of where an OS can be. The Apple UI shows what a decent toolkit and window manager ought to look like.
There is still much work to be done before linux is a state-of-the-art OS worth replacing the NT kernel.
Slashdot: news for nerds. Stuff that you saw on osnews.com two days ago.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
NT understands both the concepts of DOS programs and console mode Windows programs. cmd.exe, the command shell, is a console mode Windows program. NT is able to run real DOS programs in an emulated environment, however.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but this reall pisses me off. This is either the /. editors trolling for hits by mentioning something bizarre, or their posting about articles without even reading them.
Deciding which one of those is a bigger problem is left as an exercise for the reader...
MS could just buy Mandrake and not miss a beat...say hello to the new clippy.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
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.
Windows 9x depended on dos as well. :D
A simple way to see this is at a dos prompt run
debug
Then at the
-
prompt run
-f 0:0 ffff 0
And hit enter.
IF it's based on dos, then it will crash as you just overwrote the interupt vector table.
Windows all the way up til windows 98 depended on this...
-Ober
Why would microsoft LIMIT themselves by using a kernal that has licensing LIMITATIONS, which BSD doesnt. Much less the fact that BSD has a far superiour kernal than linux.
Actually I would be upset about it. I would worry to no end, that they would be up to any number of shenanigans.
Assuming you're refering to Linus, he's a Finn (there's a not-inconsequential Swedish-speaking minority in Finnland).
Besides, Linus isn't pimply-faced; he's HOT! I think he's married, but if he wasn't I'd fuck his hot geeky Finnish brains out.
No, I wouldn't call you a troll. I think you've made a very good point.
I actually hope that 95% is an inaccurate number, as I support freeware and GPL. (I run RedHat 8.0, Gnome, and Enlightenment on my homebox).
We have already seen with Apple that a company can sell an operating system on top of a open source base, but is it really worth it. Apple's has imposed many restriction on it's Darwin projects which have kept many in the free software community out of joining the project. The beauty of OS X is that it brings Unix to the masses and does have a solid foundation. But at what cost would this be implemented through Microsoft, their sole reason for such a move would be to convince people to stop using other implementations of Linux. What would be the advantage in having Linux running as a base for Windows, just the same as BSD/Darwin is the base for Aqua. Unless companies fully agree to the open source mind set there is little to no point. Running X11 on top of Darwin can be done yet people still opt for the Linux alternative despite the fact that a lot of open source app's will run on X11/Darwin machines it's still not the same. Also Microsoft is more than likely aware that selling a windowing system in it's self would not work and what possible reason would they have to give up such a revenue generator as Windows which allows them to fight in other market spaces. They have already used windows to support the destruction of Netscape and now it is more than likely funding the push into game console markets and everything else that is being slapped with a Microsoft sticker. If they were to build Windows on top of Linux they would then have to stop campaigning against it, and if they tell people to now embrace Linux, people will opt for the cheaper alternative and slowly the Windows and Office empire would fall and they would have to rely on the quality of their product and the ability to generate revenue in other key markets which they are currently driving into, which could be hard given that [I believe] many are currently running at a loss (xbox).
The same way that MacOS works. You can distribute the binaries that sit on top of the OS. Just make sure you don't link any of the OS code into your binaries, and you'll be ok.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
my stock price how?
Splits and dividends, whoo hooo!
You're just wasting power.
Or crack some keys or something!
-b
That IBM/OS project wasn't aborted! It released OS/2 1.0, which was a fully multitasking OS with no GUI. I believe Microsoft was still involved when OS/2 1.1 was released. This release included Presentation Manager, the first GUI for OS/2.
Also, your progression for DOS isn't really correct. DOS and Windows were concurrent things for years. All 16-bit versions of Windows required you to actually go out and buy DOS. They weren't just two different things from a technical standpoint. They were two different things from a marketting standpoint. It was really more like:
DOS 3.0 >> DOS 4.0 >> DOS 5.0 >> DOS 6.0 >> Windows 95
Windows 1.0 >> Windows 2.0 >> Windows 3.1 >> Windows 95
The cake is a pie
If I ever want MS to get root on my machine, I'll just install IIS.
Otherwise, no thanks.
A bunch of folks have already started working on xpde. It aims to be a "transitional" window manager to give people an easier time moving to Linux from from Windows. It's basically a Windows look-alike, but instead of being the end-all like the Microsoft idea, it's meant to give people something that simply looks like windows, so they can get past desktop-shock.
Slashdot
News for Nerds. Stuff that's never gonna happen.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
1. Port Windows XP over to MSFT/Linux 2. Talk about evils of GPL 3. ??? 4. Profit!!
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
He's referring to the X-window like portion.
I think it's nice in concept, but I'd rather have MS Office for Linux than the XP shell for Linux.
I realize that using unix doesn't necessarily mean recompiling Apache, it's just an example. Unix usually implies a certain amount of efficency.. if there was a gui that could be used to compile apache I know of noone (personally)that would use it aside from new users. Why waste space and memory on a gui when you can use config.nice to recompile? Otherwise it would be called Windows. Command line not necessary on *nix? I will have to politely disagee here.
Windows needs to run on *nix just as much as we need shit on our ice cream.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
And it was like that that the big mean giant became good and open sourced all it's stuff...
and mr cringely finally got a life...
c'mon...
Win9x didn't really run 'on-top' of dos, but rather 'next' to it. Their relationship was complicated.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is not a .sig--it's just something I typed at the end of my message.
I had once proposed Greece and Turkey should unite to solve their problems with each other, in a discussion list. I still don't know how I thought it was possible, but Window uniting with Linux sure surpasses the craziness of my idea.
ato
You're not trolling and I hope I'm not, either, but what matters here is the weighted average. That is, there may be a lot more people in, say, India than the US -- but are there more people using computers?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
but explorer.exe is not the windowing layer/api, just like Gnome is not X-Window
Quick and dirty architectural comparisons:
Linux Kernal -> Windows Kernel
sh -> cmd.exe
X server -> GDI.exe
Window Manager -> Explorer.exe
CORBA -> (D)COM
Note these are just quick approximations. My point is that both OS's are reasonably mature and stable (baring spyware, etc.) and there are a lot of areas where both could improve, but porting Windows onto Linux doesn;t make sense for Microsoft today and is a lot more work than Cringly seems to think.
But then this guy has never seemed to know what he is talking about
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If you don't need the features, don't use 'em. A good multi-user OS is helpfull for families so that diffrent members can have their own book-marks, files, desktop backgrounds, etc. Sure, you don't need a multi-user OS to do that, but it makes it a lot cleaner.
It's also nice to be able to throw an OS you're used to up on a server, or whatnot.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
according to the finns i've met, the only consequence that the swedish-speaking finns have is that they force everyone to learn swedish b/c of them; otherwise they are of no consequence.
Windows has far too many kernel dependancies (if that's the right term) for this to happen. Think about this: how do you implement DirectX (as an example) in Linux without serious kernel hacking? I doubt something this low-level -- something that requires cooperation of all sound/video/input drivers and many internel kernel hooks -- could be done with a module.
Someone else pointed out that all hardware drivers would have to be rewritten. Filename/path conventions (backslash != forward slash), not to mention the underlying filesystem, has to change. Filesystem attributes (ACLs, etc) have to be implemented.
Then you have the multi-thread capabilities. I don't know where Linux is at on that currently, but I don't honestly think it's up there with Windows, or at minimum we're talking serious differences in implementation.
And what of applications? The strong-hold Microsoft has on the PC market lies primarily in a) hardware/driver availability, and b) software availability.
Even if you s/Linux/BSD/, the above all still applies.
And seriously -- is the Windows 2000/XP core bad enough to warrant replacement? I don't think it is, personally. The vast majority of the problems I have with Windows is the applications on top of it (IIS, MSIE, Outlook, etc). The OS itself is pretty solid, honestly, as long as you have decent hardware (and drivers). Yes, there is TONS of room for improvement, but that doesn't warrant dumping the entire core and starting with something new...
So no, won't ever happen, and not because of pride or anything else -- it won't happen because it's not necessary, and would be a very bad decision, both technically and from a business point of view.
Apple was a completely different situation. For one, they control the hardware, so compatibility and drivers weren't an issue. I don't know much about the previous Mac-OS versions, so I really don't know if it was technically necessary or not, but in the end it seemed to have been a good decision (it sure made me suddenly crave a Mac, something I thought would never happen).
In my opinion the article (and author) is a bit uninformed. He had some of the tech terms right, and sounds reasonably intelligent, sure, but I don't feel he understands the underlying issues. Sounds more like an attempt to jump on the "MS sucks, Linux Rocks" bandwagon, by pointing out some far-fetched "wouldn't it be ironic?" scenerio...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Okay....
Bill Gates is going to throw out twenty years of R&D on his own server (now home) operating system and is going to adopt some GPL style OS underneath it. Then again, if Mono ever makes critical mass, you could probably pull such a feat, ironically, in Linux.
I also predict Saddam Hussain will be a born again Christian by year's end. And pigs do fly.
J.
This space for rent.
Sure, maybe the average joe's might sell their stock. so that leaves what, 98.5% still in the hands of the MS board of directors? bankrupty with $40 billion of non-stock cash in the bank? ya, maybe if they made no profit for 150 years, hired on 8000 more people every year... you get the picture.
Well, actually he's not an idiot in general but this time he's talking about something he does not understand.
(btw, Apple didn't port anything, they wrote their own version of UNIX and then wrote a compatibility layer for their old stuff. )
Anyway, The entire basis of the article relies on a false premise, that Windows XP is still based on DOS. He offers cmd.exe as evidence. But the thing is, M$ already did what apple did, years BEFORE apple when they wrote NT. NT does most of what Unix can do, and it doesn't need to be replaced by Linux for any reason.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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?
1) Linux is GPL'd and Microsoft would have to release a lot of their secret sauce, which they loath to do.
2) It would be retarded.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
WTF kind of crack are you on, dude?
Windows 95 was not an OS because it sat atop a 16-bit protected mode bootloader
Utter nonsense. You obviously don't know what the heck you're talking about. Here're the steps taken during Win9x/ME initialization:
- Real-mode DOS is loaded, as usual.
- win.com is executed.
- win.com loads the vmm32.vxd image into RAM, and executes it. vmm32.vxd is essentially an EXE.
- vmm32.vxd creates the GDT, IDT and the necessary paging structures, and switches the system to protected mode -- DOS ends right here, its subroutines are no longer called. They simply CANNOT be called from protected mode, unless called via a V86 task rerouting the calls to DOS itself. Want proof? Create an empty Win32 project in, say, VC++, and try executing any "harmless" DOS (or BIOS -- doesn't matter) interrupts. See what happens. The system will fuck up.
(the rest is besides my point, but anyway, here)
- vmm32.vxd loads the vxd's necessary to revive the devices present in the system.
- explorer.exe is loaded, and you see the system shell.
(I didn't bother to list the numerous DLL's which are loaded in the process, since it's got nothing to do with what I have to say)
That's it. From here and on, the vmm32.vxd's subroutines are as deep as a system call can go, and you cannot access DOS at all -- it is not touched until you kill Windows and return to DOS from the shutdown menu. One exception to that is if you've loaded any real mode device drivers during bootup (not likely, but possible) -- this touches real mode code, but not DOS itself. So any claims that Windows somehow "sits atop" of DOS don't make sense at all. DOS is needed to *load* it, yes, but it's something that's done only once.
That "16-bit PROTECTED MODE _BOOTLOADER_" part makes no sense to me, either. In the case of DOS, the *final* bootloader is the SYSINIT subroutine of io.sys, which is executed in REAL mode. In NT, the bootloader specifically responsible for NT's boot process is ntldr.com, and it also starts out in real mode. The only difference from Win9x/ME here is, that NT does not offer a 16-bit operating environment in-between the bootloader and NT itself.
Your comments do partially apply to Windows 3.x, but you haven't even mentioned that system.
Get your facts straight, or your next remark will be just as lame.
The NT core didn't come from VMS. One of the key developers was an import VMS person, and so there's some shared concepts, but it's a whole new beast.
Well, slashdot wasn't an apple zealot orgy when first started using the site (like 99 or 98). The apple crap only started up about a year so ago.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Err make that 'X -bpp 32 :1'
need the 32 bpp for the dual slot sbus
framebuffer. getting sleepy
But seriously I'm always amazed at the
cool shit that you can do with X that if
you were raised on mac, os/2 or microsoft
you wouldn't even think possible.
this guy's post or that he scored "2 interesting"...
good point.. .. in many countries that can't afford to pay windows licenses have pirated copies of it to run. ;)
also
making the 95% a very realistic figure.
If for some mysterious, magical reason Windows would be built on Linux, I think it'd be a Bad Thing, not for any technological reason though, but for economical reason.
A healthy capitalist system requires a diverse eco-system, in this case, various technologies to compete, something like this would just tip the balance too much on one side. The ideal situation is that you have multiple operating systems with roughly equal market share, so they compete against each other to gain more market shares, but ideally, they only temporarily gain a lead.
I'm pretty certain the open-source movement generally agrees that different approaches to one problem, is a good thing, like KDE, Gnome, Window Maker, BlackBox, etc. No window manager should ever completely dominate the others, because then it stifles improvement.
*puts on an absestos suit* I wonder how much I'll be flamed this time for posting...
Microsoft should have followed Apple's lead and ditched the Windows codebase in favour of an abstraction layer. Maintaining backward compatibility over ~20 years worth of products, and building on a codebase that, while admittedly supperior to 9x, is still more than 10 years old is never going to result in real power and stability. There's just too much bad work in there that everything else depends on; if they fixed all the errors, half the applications written to run on it would probably break!
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
Five years ago, would anyone have thought that Apple would use someone else's OS to run their UI?
Yes. NeXT. Based on Mach. The difference between the Open-Source kernel (Mach) and the Open-Source OS (BSD) is fairly unimportant, especially since the important stuff (NeXTStep/Carbon/Cocoa) is still proprietary. And it was well known that Apple had completely fucked up their own Next-Gen OS and needed to get something to rescue their hopelessly obsolete system.
Anyway...
His "benefits" of moving to Linux or even BSD are wrong. BSD was orders of magnitude better than OS9; the NT kernel, on the other hand, is one of the most advanced systems out there - it's the stuff that's build on top of it that Microsoft fucks up. Moving to a new underlying OS would just make things worse in pretty much every conceivable way.
He's doesn't know what he's talking about, and he drones on like he's an expert - that's makes him an idiot in my books. Sure, he's right, the user wouldn't care what the underlying OS is, if it worked perfectly - which it would never, ever do. Just ask anyone who runs OS9 apps on OSX.
If, five years from now, Microsoft's OS is hopelessly behind every other operating system out there (a rather unlikely scenario), it might be possible. Right now, it doesn't make sense in any possible way except maybe on Bizarro World.
AFAIK windows has a POSIX compatible micro-kernel underneath it
Cringely states that Microsoft should, for no apparent reason but PR, scrap the NT kernel and move everything onto linux - which, in technical terms is not as modern as the NT kernel. Why would any company want to invent a huge amount in change for change's sake? Microsoft may be a bunch of lamers, but they aren't stupid.
By the time anybody cared at all about UNIX on the PC, UNIX was already quite dominant on "enterprise-level" hardware (at least compared to VMS).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
really this guy is talking rot. imho i always feel people who say things like `i am smart, i have contacts` [see about cringely portion] blah blah...suck. overrated sensationalist crap. the true folks keep quiet and allow their work to talk instead.
can i say i have noticed that slashdot is becoming like a news rag hyping up people and technology [ooh...its MS bashing time]. similar to cringely, personally, i think lessig is overrated, i am right now in stanford and have seen his works and heard him speak. but then again i guess this site is full of such dual confused philosophies ? [we hate blizzard, i cant wait for next release, we hate m$ but this problem has nothing to do with it, free software rulez, lets beg for the money, linux rulez but how can redhat change a theme *gasp*, we develop software for passion not money , how can someone make money out of it *so bad*]
it was nice initially . now its quite painful to read most of the stuff. news.google + bottomquark + ars technica + cnn makes a good alternative seriously
sorry for the long mail. my $.02 . no offence
vv
D:\WINNT>DEL TREE /Y C:/
Invalid switch - "Y".
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ultimately this is what all you linux geeks really want - but if it happened, would you really be happy with Microsoft? I have a feeling everyone would still find reasons to bag on microsoft...
No.
How is this different than what WINE could become? WINE could eventually run everything. What is the point of Windows anyway cnsidering there are alternitives. And running Windows on Linux is Linux running an API layer. I guess this would be like Mac OS X.
but for the wrong reasons. As has been pointed out here quite a few times a c:\ does not indicate dos is the underlying operating system. I've got a c:\ prompt on my linux dos and I doubt anyone (well no one intelligent) would try to claim my Linux box is running on top of dos. There is an operating system down there somewhere though and it doesn't require clicking to make it go.
All those flashy clicking things in Windows are not part of the operating system. They're not built into the kernel, nor do they talk to the hardware directly. They are part of a windows manager running on top of an operating system. In this, I agree with Cringly's conclusion. Windows is not only a winodws manager, it's also a giant visual basic interpreter that is designed to let even the most clueless vb weenies crank out shitware. This is why windows has done so well financially and so poorly in the areas of security and stability.
Microsoft's biggest problem is backward compatibility. They cannot afford to break the cycle of backward compatibility like Apple did. Sure some things break here and there but it's pretty amazing to me that I can fire up some old program from the early 90's and it usually runs. This is their downfall. All this old cruft has to be dragged on and on to each new version of windows.
It would not be a simple task to make the clicky flashy thing called windows run on top of Linux and keep all those old 16 bit apps working. In order to pull this off they'd have to translate windows system calls to linux systems calls. In other words, they'd have to write Wine. Now they could certainly have an easier time of it than our current wine team since they have that source code and could legally use it.
Should they do it? Hell yeah they should... they're losing the battle and it will get worse and worse for them unless they can take over even more of the government and make the GPL illegal. If they fail to get the mindless sheep of the world to sign up for the Digital rights crap they'll need a plan B. They could roll out their own version of wine, support only the most modern 32bit or even 64 bit apps with a smaller, cleaner API and start doing it right. They could continue to milk their dos/windows until it runs out. This could get them out of the lukewarm water they're in with the DOJ and give them a real product that might even be worth buying.
Of course they won't do this since the GPL "should" put a stop on their embrace and extend tactics. Plus I doubt they'd let themselves be at the mercy of the Linux kernel guys.... imagine Microsoft having to play catch-up with changes in the underlying APIs.... not likely. Now how about BSD though? The BSD license would give them the control that they would require but BSD (The os) doesn't have the name that Linux does. By name, I mean name recognition. I don't wish to start a BSD/Linux flame war. A BSD/GPL flame war on the other hand might be worth another look.
G
Recently I've been playing with .NET to see what all the hype is about and I have to say, I am not impressed. For example, lets take threading as it is done in .NET. .NET scalability. If your application doesn't have a lot of concurrent use, it's not a problem. But if on the other hand you are building a heavy weight application that needs to do lots of things in parallel or distributed, 25 threads probably won't be enough. For applications like websites that are stateless, no big deal. For a company that aggregates products from dozens of other companies, it's a huge problem. Say you're a travel agent that specializes in package deals that include hotel, airlines, dining and rentals. If any one of the items are no longer available, the package can't be sold. This means your application has to maintain state about a lot of data. Not only that, it has to have a way of resolving conflicts and/or recommending other pacakges or offering additional options. .NET simply won't scale because the underlying COM/COM+, Win32 DLL's are flawed.
The default limit for System.Threading.ThreadPool is 25. Now the limit in and of itself is a clue as to
It's obvious in an application like this, you will easily use a dozen or more threads if the data has to be retrieved at transaction time, since that kind of information changes frequently. Now if your server has to serve every state in the pacific time zone, that could be thousands of requests per second. With a thread limit of 25 per threadpool would mean multiple threadpools. But at what point can you have threadpool of threadpool of threadpools without killing the server every minute. In a scenario where your system has to support high concurrency,
Should windows use linux? In many cases I would say yes, but over all no. The problems in windows API and DLL's are not well suited to server environments, so it's not a light task. I'm no expert with windows API, so I could be wrong and over generalizing. Hopefully if I am wrong, someone will correct me and provide the correct information.
hey... it's spelled:
K E R N E L
though its constant misuse has no doubt rendered this point moot. still, i'm full of a deep, burning hatred for you.
Out to lunch I suppose.
This troll, captainclever, is just here to slander. Speculate on Microsoft venturing into its bloodbath of openGL, GTK, Motif, Linux; it's speculation. This troll begins by saying the X Window Sysems is slow: It is obvious captainclever has no merit, because no evidence is provided on any such claims and no resolutions are provided that define the purpose of such software.
The moderators are supposed to moderate these posts accordingly into Troll heaven; c'mon, the post was supposed to be -1, but +3 is rediculous for mis-leading everyone and blithering information no different that what can be found in a recipe book for chocolate-chip cookies. Moderators, you have failed slashdot and knowing your disgust in everyone's eyes; will probably moderate this verry post down instead of the troll I am responding to.
Such a sad event to see slashdot slowly drift into a sad state of depression in its journalism...
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.
Microsoft Corporation announced today the impending release of Microsoft WindowsTUX. Major features include:
OpenDRM: Digital Rights Management software under GPL
MDE: The new M Desktop Environment includes spinning flashing buttons you can skin!
NoIm: NotepadImproved will automatically add ^M characters after every carriage return!
Outlook Evolution: Use it to load test your system.
Expel: Hyperfast CD ejection
BSOKP: Blue Screen of Kernel Panic
JFS: Journalist File System - automatically publishes all your files to the entire Internet so there's no need for security.
Send Microsoft your firstborn child to reserve your copy today!
Microsoft has $43 BILLION (US) in the bank.
Even if they're incompetent at investing, they could probably still get 2% interest. That's $860,000,000 (close to $1 billon) a year. In interest alone.
Considering that a smart investor (ie: not me) can achieve 12% returns in a good year - they're probably making a lot more than 2%. The rich get richer.
They could give away every single product they ever make so long as they're allowed to invest - and they'd _still_ be profitable.
Its crazy to think a proprietary systems maker would consider GNU/Linux - hahaha!!!
;)
That said it would be nice for Microsoft to release a POSIX/UNIX system because these systems have proven to work excellently and GNU/Linux needs some real competition. NT is OK but its not as easy to fix when things go horribly wrong, isnt as easy to develop and the GNU/Linux system will soon be as simple to administer *if it isnt already* as NT.
Perhaps MS would buy Mandrake as they both give the exact same experience to the user? Theyd probably have a lot of work to do making it proprietary though *or maybe they could just slip MS Office into MS Office Linux*.
Pixels keep you awake!
"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."
This is pretty much total crap. Yes, you can bring up a C prompt. Does that mean that XP sits on top of DOS? No. What you are doing is running a type of "DOS emulator." It's not really DOS at all.
"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."
Nope... Total crap here.
Windows, Windows 95, 98 and I believe ME are one branch. Windows NT is a completely different code base. NT, 2000 and I believe XP are all from the same code base.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I always had a suspision that underneath it all, Windows (NT especially) was running atop of some bastardized form of Unix. Think about it.
H ivelist
A M
What was there 30+ years ago but Unix? Isn't it the grandfather of all anyways? Try this:
-Open the management console in Windows 2000 (the one called "Manage" when you right-click My Computer).
-Select "System Information", expand the "Software Environment" folder and select "Loaded Modules".
In pre-SP1 builds of Win2K the dates on some of the DLLs in this folder were in the 1970's. How can that be? Windows wasn't even around in the 70's! Isn't it possible the kernel is already based on Unix and 'Windows' is just another abstraction layer? It sure would account for the mediocre performance (added overhead).
And some of the hardware names in the registry are Unix-like. Check:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\
You can see the OS locates volumes the same way Unix does. For example, the location of Registry file \REGISTRY\MACHINE\SAM is:
\Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINNT\System32\Config\S
So what if the '/' is a '\'? It's the same thing right?
After all...
"...The greatest trick the devil ever made was convincing the world he didn't exist..."
I know, corny one...;)
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
"When I grew up, I realized how stupid I'd been and acknowledged that I didn't really hate Macs, but their users. Today I might even consider buying one because of OSX, but my earlier feelings show just how much a platform can be hurt by bigoted users."
You must understand that those "users" were reciting propaganda that came directly from Apple Computer, Inc. It's hard to know exactly how many were actually Apple employees, but it is clear that propaganda like the "Windows is DOS" confusion originated from the office of one Guy Kawasaki. With a job title of "Evangelist", Kawasaki was officially responsible for telling the Apple shills what lies to spread.
Apple's EvangeList network, as it was known, employed such "high-tech" technology as fax machines at a time when most businesses were using _computers_ to communicate (e-mail, www, etc.). Ironic, no?
Today the names and job titles may have changed, but Apple is still up to the same old tricks. Now they're trying to ride the coattails of UNIX fame. Now the propaganda is trying to equate BSD to UNIX, although the U of C's BSD never was UNIX, and the "baby BSDs" (OSX is a mishmash of these various incompatible distributions) are not UNIX either. And then there's the "MHz myth" myth...
Just to raise the bar some and because there isn't a doubt in my mind that some geek somewhere would give it a try (in the fantasy world where this man apparently wrote this article) lets make the very next version of Linux based on Windows.
Come on, you know you want to do it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I think you meant to say, "so don't run Mozilla or KDE or GNOME or BlackBox or Enlightenment (especially Enlightenment!) or Nautilus or Konqueror or the GIMP then.. sheesh!"
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
Microsoft has $40 billion dollars in cash tucked away.
If they wanted to, the could be the world's biggest just-about-anything.
Windows is comprable to gnome or KDE? ouch. But KDE and gnome don't exactly sit atop Linux... or even the linux kernel. they are part of a GNU/Linux backage in some cases -- or KDE can even be run on Mac, Win32, or BSD. God this guy is ignorant...
no...
:)
i love easy questions
mod accordingly.
Because GUI is easier to learn. I Know I wont be migrating untill there's a distro that locks bash out to prove that it can be used without it.
why bother with linux - go for the heart of gold of communal knowledge contained within atari 8-bit o.s.; de re atari++.
Purchase the technical reference manuals and you've got the keys to the crystal castle along w/ Bentley the Bear, h0lmz.
Watch out for the king bees though, whirlwinds of sting is all they are about.
If what you are saying is true then explain why Apple was able to pull it off with OSX?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Ken Thompson came up with C (from B) and unix together, and used the new C language to make the first unix?
Actually, MS could just do what Apple did: build their OS on top of *nix and only give the source to the underlying *nix core. I think one of the appealing aspects of OS X is its pleasing looks while have a robust *nix core.
all the windows drivers for hardware would have to be ported to Linux.. would be nice for me cos my soundcard isnt really supported :)
If Microsoft were to base Windows on GNU/Linux, why would they need to give Windows away, or indeed release the entire source code to a Windows release? If they built their own closed X Windowing system and a GUI similar to what they have right now, this wouldn't necessarily need to be GPL'd - similar to how OS X is based on Darwin, although Quartzextreme and Aqua are still proprietary.
Tim
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
No, Xenix was not UNIX. It was a feeble attempt to copy UNIX, marketed at a time when AT&T was the only UNIX vendor.
I don't know if any "VMS guys from Dec HATED Unix, because BSD had completely wiped out their beloved VMS". But since VMS is still around, and BSD is not UNIX, that would be a very illogical sentiment. I really doubt that an OS has the capacity to be "hostile", as you describe. Perhaps there is a more realistic explanation.
"If MicroSoft had any business sense they would have made NT very Unix-like so that porting software to it was a no-brainer."
I'm not sure why this is stated rhetorically, since MS (with $40B in cash, but never paid a dividend) obviously does have business sense, and the NT POSIX DLL is there to aid exactly such porting. But what you thought was probable didn't happen, so...
This is ridiculous. MS persists to achieve its goals, achieve them amidst years of laughter and jokes from Mr Big Iron. Its a bit late Linux. I'm sure you'll mature, but you need the apps. Then again perhaps this article just proves what I've said before. Linux just turns more into windows with every so called improvement. Why build what already exists.
Because when the graphical subsystem should be placed outside the kernel, you would have a lot of CPU statechanges (which costed a lot of cycles) in gui applications, including a lot of messaging going on between kernel and userland. Now this is optimized and does not take place. It's however a myth that the total graphical subsystem is in the kernel, still a lot of drawing is going on outside the kernel, however the logic that controls the gui is inside the kernel and I think that was a wise decision.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
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. As Mike Class points out, by not having to develop its own OS, Microsoft could also save money. They wouldn't need however many people are presently devoted to maintaining the underlying OS that isn't supposed to be there. And what actual data do you have to prove this? Our win200 advanced server smokes our Caldera server both running on the same hardware config, but then again Im comparing SQL server on win 2000 VS MySQL on Linux. Oh..thats right...I'm sorry Linux pundits..I guess this isnt a fair comparison because SQL server is optimized on windows.....Please.
Hey, what are you talking about?
Microsoft has already started developing its own version of Linux (MS. Linux)
For details, please visit MS Linux
Building Windows on UNIX, presumably Linux, doesn't mean anything. Define "build". Microsoft can take Linux, and taint it in any way they see fit. They would no doubt use "non-standard" calls, APIs, etc. (i'm no programming expert, heh), even if they did build Windows on UNIX. The prospect of a universal standards system is one of the things that gets UNIX guys so hot. Everything pretty much runs the same way on UNIX, no matter what distribution you have, what "form" you have (Linux/BSD/commercial UNIX/whatever), mostly not even what processor you have. UNIX is UNIX. Microsoft would certainly change that if UNIX was a factor in Windows. Microsoft wants you to buy Microsoft UNIX, and buy products made for Microsoft UNIX; they don't want to be compliant with other operating systems. As such, you've lost a high proportion of UNIX guys already.
Assuming, however, that Microsoft did manage to make a good OS built on UNIX, and even a lot of the UNIX guys liked it, you still have the "monopoly" argument. Microsoft likes their income. They like the fact that their products are used all around the world. They're still going to employ the "monopoly" tactics. High prices, less-than-satisfying licences, FUD, Palladium-type stuff, etc.. Microsoft will never just one day turn around and start playing ball with everyone that hates them.
Also, what the fuck is Cringely talking about? XP is a windowing system? What the Hell. Firstly, KDE and GNOME don't just "sit atop Linux"; they sit atop X, which sits atop Linux. Secondly, the ability to get a C:\ prompt in XP does not mean that MS-DOS is hiding underneath. I mean, don't they call "the C:\ prompt" in Linux a terminal emulator? Windows emulates MS-DOS.
Anyway, really the point of that article shouldn't have been the whole thing about DOS, the point should've been building the OS itself on the Linux kernel. Either way, not going to happen. :p
Now before the Linux purists get started up and start modding me as flamebait - I use both Linux and FreeBSD (Linux since 96, BSD since 2000) and although I'm partial to FreeBSD myself, I have nothing serious against either one...
Parts of Windows have used BSD derived code in the past, such as the TCP/IP stack (which may have since been rewritten), and MS is a lot friendlier to FreeBSD than linux (C# anyone?).
Barring legalities, the whole FreeBSD vs Linux argument is a matter of personal preference at the moment for most people. So Linux does better SMP at the moment? How many desktop users have SMP desktop machines out there? Amongst the *geeks* maybe 10%. I've run both extensively and as far as performance goes, there's not enough in it to bicker about.
Again, the BSD license is a lot more compatible with MS - they can base Windows 2008 on xBSD and not have to open the source up at all if they like!
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Hell, no!
Long answer: Let M$ have what they've earned. Personally, I wouldn't tolerate a Windows UI on Linux, BSD, or anything else for that matter.
Simple reason for this: I prefer a combination of Gnome/Enlightenment. That's all it is, just personal preferences. When M$ offers this combination without their spyware (ya, right!) please get back to me.
Heck, at least with Open Source/Free Software I at least *have* choices like that.
C|N>K
It's called XPde and it's been discussed before right here on /. ;-)
mslinux.org
*grin*
From the article:
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....
This article has almost no validity. When you use windows, you get a feeling of reliability and an *speed*. I'm writing an audio application that has very tight time-performance constraints, and I'm finding MFC's threads and gui widgets to be by far the quickest over qt. Why? its native. Don't flame me about qt not being linux. if you do you've missed the point.
The point IS that MFC is native. N-A-T-I-V-E. In the windows sense that means its going to deal with the K-E-R-N-E-L better, and anything else that has to do with the windows platform.
Windows XP is not just a windowing system. It is more complete than linux. I don't like XP for various reasons, but that doesn't change how a business makes decisions. point is, if this all this was true windows WOULD be, how was that? "kissing the ring of linux?"
-P
That would be useless - FVWM95 already exists :)
blah
On top of it Chairman Bill has put up a distress flare to the Bush regime asking for a corporate hand out. The Apollo program took over $25 billion dollars and more than ten years to acheive it's goal of catching up to and passing the competition. Is Bill telling us that this is what it would take? Just upgrade to a non-Microsoft product.
If one accepts that most of Windows could be implemented on Linux through an official WINE, one must also accept that huge code investments would have to be thrown away. One of the great advantages of Windows is that anyone who creates a hardware device of any kind writes Windows drivers for it, but they would have to ditch their device driver model. Go look at Microsoft's device driver development facilities, they're extensive and represent a huge investment.
I hope nobody gets the impression that I take Cringely's stupid idea seriously just because I posted to this thread. They guy is an interesting writer, but his writing often betrays a serious ignorance of how computers work. Plus he stole the Cringely name from Infoworld.
Stupid things said by stupid (made up) people. The fact is, the NT kernel is way better than linux, and has always been so demonstrated.
What Lies Beneath: Why Cringley Should Write His Next Article on Toilet Paper
I was discussing this article with a friend, and he suggested that Cringley should write his next article on toilet paper. And you know, it actually makes some sense!
Here's another technical nonsensity he got from who-the-hell-knows where:
>>DOS 7.0 was under Windows 95 and DOS 7.1 brought the FAT32 file system to Win95, not the other way around.
All versions of WIndows 95 had FAT32. I'm not sure what DOS 7.1 was, but 7.0 had it. And the DOS implementation in those versions was not the implementation of FAT32; Windows never used DOS for file calls. In fact, even Windows for Workgroups 3.11, where a lot of Win95 core parts were first implemented, also had a fully 32-bit file system driver (vfat), although no FAT32.
The DOS in Win95 was sort-of compatible with FAT32, in that it could read the directories and files, but it was not the file system implementation used by Windows.
This is kinda off-topic but I have to ask....
I have been hearing rumor that MS is looking in buying or becoming a controlling intrest in Pepsi. Presumably for the marketing/brand recognition and market demographics of Pepsi in conjunction with the Xbox and related MS projects in the works.
Has anyone heard anything like this? Any truth to this or is it just BS
Disregarding all the other comments: If what the article say IS true (I'm not saying it is), wouldn't there also be some backwards compatibility issues with Windows on top of Linux? Regarding all the comments: No matter what, I will never consider Windows an operating system. It may be a system, but it cannot operate.
I am amazed that no-one has mentioned Wine yet which is essentially what Cringely is proposing.
If Wine was being developed by a company with the resources and inside knowledge of Microsoft, I wouldn't be surprised if it could be an almost complete replacement for XP within about 2 years.
Windows is just one API sitting on another from a program's perspective. If programs depend only on the upper levels then it becomes a lot easier to port them to other operating systems.
So yes, underneath the pretty GUI is just another operating system - a sort of VMS revisited.
Regards,
Tim
This is all just my personal opinion.
First, it's highly probable that these moderations were made by editors
Second, moderations were right, the first comment was flamebait, and the second offtopic. (Like this one, alas)
The discussion is not specifically about which free distribution should windows be based on, but it's about whether it is a good idea or not and what would be the implications...
Pure capitalism would result in the lowest price to the consumer every time as all companies would price to the 'margin'
The GPL seems to offer a pure capitalist opportunity for anybody who wants to take it, I can download Debian images and compete with the largest of Linux vendors like Redhat, just like Lindows is doing. My sales and standing in the market would be based soley on my reputation and speed to market of new innovations.
The main argument against this market is that companies would hold 'trade secrets' which would possibly thwart the progress of science and learning in society so we have a patent system.
However patents and copyrights allow companies to force competitors to enter the market on their terms or not enter at all. Rather like the old Navigation and Corn Laws of England these are Mercantilist protections of existing interests. I think it could fairly be called Neo Mercantilism or Corporate Mercantilism. This does not truly benefit the consumer except arguably in some circumstances.
I think patents on drugs, whilst devisive do have a purpose, the research nessasary to produce a working 'safe' drug can easily reach billions of dollars, and there would be no incentive to invest that money if there was no chance of a return on it.
There are examples of other industries where patent protection is arguably justifiable to encourage investment. In most industries patents are used as bargaining tools to get access to the latest technologies and remain competitive.
Serious problems arise when non-innovative companies buy up existing patents and use them to extract money from industries, which harms innovation in every way as money will almost always be cut from R & D operations first as any potential gain they will make is always a) uncertain and b) years away.
This problem strikes in every patent protected industy following a recession and always results in higher costs being passed onto consumers.
It does in fact represent a private tax extracted from companies by groups who's interests represent no common good.
These private tax collection agencies are almost universally made up of Lawyers and see a removal of useful capital from industy to benefit an already wealthy few.
> Pure capitalism would be NO government aid. No major tax cuts, no negative net taxes paid back to corporations.
I would also argue that pure capitalism can exist with Govenment aid and tax cuts/rises as long as such are applied equally throughout the industries concerned.
>No corporations being handed publically funded projects (aka the phone lines, the railways etc).
>Today's capitalist system thrives because of the socialist controls imposed on it...
I would certainly say that a section of todays capitalism thrives based on government contracts, I would even say that the companies involved are worse than the the Patent Hoover companies as they are stealing money directly from taxpayers pockets.
In the UK we had a recent example where a government directive to purchase Generic medicines in place of Brand names, a contract was given to a major Labour party contributor and friend of the Prime Minister. At this point generic medicines averaged at 10-15% the cost of Brand name products. It should have been a huge saving for the NHS and tax payer. Instead the cost of Generic drugs sourced exclusively through this one agent rose month on month until they represented a cost 90% of the brand name products.
This problem wasn't noticed for over 2 years and refered to as an 'oversight' by the chancellors office.
This isn't the only example by any stretch of the imagination.
John H.
Redistribution and use of this comment in text and opinion form, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1.Redistributions of comment must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2.Redistributions in opinion form must reproduce the above copyright notice :P this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the opinion.
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Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
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?
But it would be a very limited discussion about "whether it is a good idea or not" and "the implications" if you can't consider the alternatives. If MS decided to build Windows on top of UNIX similar to the way Apple did, it would make sense to look at the different options. One can't discuss the validity of doing this with Linux without considering the BSDs.
On the other hand, the whole discussion has limited use because most comments won't be technical in nature (e.g. this one isn't) and unless MS has people considering this, this discussion will be largely (if not completely) ignored by them. However, that's no reason not to have the discussion...
Linux Kernal -> Windows Kernel
sh -> cmd.exe
X server -> GDI.exe
Window Manager -> Explorer.exe
CORBA -> (D)COM
As someone above mentioned
Linux Kernal -> Windows Kernel
sh -> cmd.exe
X server -> GDI.exe
Window Manager -> Explorer.exe
CORBA -> (D)COM
Elitist as Apple may be, MS must be biting its lips in anger... because Apple let it eating dust... again!
Someone has its ears hot up there in MS: "Why didn't you think of it first?"
Heh. Ingenuity will always be ahead of money.
What about WinNT Mach Kernel?
I think in MSDN CDs you still can install a Unix comapbillity layer which allows Windows 2000, XP to suport unix calls. Somewhat related to mach kernel structure. Does anyone knows more about it?
---
There's always more than meets the eye.
Linux and Bob.
Now we have Linux for Dummy
..tell the guy it's already been done.
Install a reasonable linux distro, get wine running, and then drop XPde on top of it, Set his wallpaper to a picture of green grass and blue skys.
There, problem solved,
Klowner
He was just dumbing things down for the masses.
Fact is, if he thought XP was ontop of DOS he would simply had said so.
All he was stating was that there are parrallels.
Look at his background as a journo & a TV doco maker. Fact is American television networks tradition dumb down everything as they're designed for adults with a mental age of 10. Great production values yes, but script wise American television is really dumbed down - just compare Columbo to Morse. It's piss easy to work out who the killer is in Columbo (It's always the really helpful person who Columbo keeps annoying till the point that he/she get the shits), in Morse you actually have to follow the nuinces of the script right to the end.
Cringly just dumbed his blurb down to the same 'adult with a mental age of 10' standard.
Because, fact is the parrallels are there:
Linux Kernal -> Windows Kernel
sh -> cmd.exe
X server -> GDI.exe
Window Manager -> Explorer.exe
CORBA -> (D)COM
Just as people are building a BeOS API & GUI layer onto the Linux kernal, the same can be done with Windows.
But for what, there's really nothing that great about the Linux kernal. Sure a non X linux GUI OS could potentialy (but not necassarily) be a vast improvement over the graphical enviroment/window manager/X/Linux-GNU mess we have now, but what does MS gain? XP & its NT kernal's fine.
He was just dumbing things down for the masses.
Fact is, if he thought XP was ontop of DOS he would simply had said so.
All he was basically stating was that there are parrallels.
Look at his background as a journo & a TV doco maker. Fact is American television networks tradition dumb down everything to the adult with a mental age of 10 level. Great production values yes, but script wise American television is really dumbed down - just compare Columbo to Morse. It's piss easy to work out who the killer is in Columbo (It's always the really helpful person who Columbo keeps annoying till the point that he/she get the shits), in Morse you actually have to follow the nuances of the script right to the end.
Cringly just dumbed his blurb down to the same 'adult with a mental age of 10' standard.
Because, fact is the parrallels are there:
Linux Kernal -> Windows Kernel
sh -> cmd.exe
X server -> GDI.exe
Window Manager -> Explorer.exe
CORBA -> (D)COM
Just as people are building a BeOS API & GUI layer onto the Linux kernal, the same can be done with Windows.
But for what, there's really nothing that great about the Linux kernal. Sure a non X linux GUI OS could potentialy (but not necassarily) be a vast improvement over the graphical enviroment/window manager/X/Linux-GNU mess we have now, but what does MS gain? XP & its NT kernal's fine
Because people can't run Windows! Only computers! I would be very suprised to find a single person running Windows...he or she would probably be pretty slow...
W95 used FAT16
stability is a plus that windows has over linux. well, at least where xfree86 is concerned.
Your implication: "The version of XFree86 included with popular distributions of the Linux operating environment is not very stable."
What makes you think XFree86 isn't stable in general?
If you're having specific problems with your system that you can't solve by reading HOWTOs (or if you don't understand the terse language in which HOWTOs are written), then buy a copy of a distro such as Red Hat Linux that includes a few months of tech support and have the distro publisher's tech support department help you fix your problem.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Statements of fact are not flamebait. Anyone who believes they are is in denial.
apparently you're not using twm-gl like the rest of us.
then release Windows XP under the GPL...:) and license Linux.....
The lunatic is in my head
First, the idea of porting the Windows into Linux has been around for a long long long long time. It's always had it's supporters and dissenters, so far nothing in this string of posts have contributed anything new to the argument.
:) It should make at least some of giggle. :)
It comes down to getting decent apps on the Linux platform, and I know I'm probably gonna get flamed for this, but 95% of the software honestly sucks. At least Windows apps generally conform to a standard and typically very polished. Yes, I know that Linux apps are getting better, but they aren't there yet and why we all argue about every little thing, Microsoft moves on to the their next version, happy to throw something at the Linux community to get it all rialled up.
So far, the only version of Linux that I see as promising is Xandros and that's because they are in control rather than 5 million whiney geeks, hackers, cracker, dweebs, or whatever we call ourselves today.
Second, every OS out there sucks. They all do. Windows X.X, MacOS X.X, Linux and every other OS that is out there sucks.
I would love nothing better than to see a free, open source OS dominate the market because it is fast, stable, and actually easy to use. Linux is 2 out of 3. Windows XP is generally fast, stable, and a lot easier to use than Linux. MacOS X is fast, stable, and easy to use to a certain group of people while the rest think it is either moronic or insulting to use. In my book that puts Linux at 2 out of 3 while XP and MacOS are at 2.5. Perhaps Linux, in it current form, isn't the answer for the desktop. Maybe the GNU community needs to develope an OS from the ground up that is geared towards the Desktop, and let Linux handle the server and workstation market (where it is competeing extremely well). That way we aren't wasting are time trying to make the Swiss Army Knife of the OS world.
Oh, BTW, DOS under NT, 2000, and XP is an emulator, just like DOSEMU in Linux. It provides enough of DOS so that many, but not all, old DOS programs will run. The great part is that since those DOS apps run inside a Windows app, if the DOS program pukes, it doesn't take the OS with it like what used to happen under Win 3.x and Win 9.x.
Finally, here is a link to a funny song that helps make my point on OSes sucking.
Cya L8r
Lee
What do you mean? This isn't a new concept. Noone but corporations is actually dumb enough to pay for their stuff do they?
I agree - you're probably right, but you haven't given reasons. CMD.EXE != Windows is not a cogent argument by itself.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
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?
What is music when you despise all sound?
You could just (re)compile a module and insert (modprobe) that into the kernel, IMHO.
When the VAX was introduced, BSD had already existed for a couple of years, basically as a collection of utilities that required an AT&T source code license to install, (which later versions up to Net/2 required as well) but BSD really took off when they made a BSD (3BSD) for the VAX that included virtual memory, a feature AT&T was not yet offering and a key feature of the VAX hardware. (V=virtual in both "VAX" and "VMS") 4BSD, thanks to ARPA asking Berkeley to add a networking stack for ARPAnet protocols (TCP/IP) to Unix, was the first version to include TCP/IP. This version of BSD did indeed take off, but later on AT&T's System V became more popular.
wasnt that the Point of LINDOWS?
linux with a similat GUI to windows?
There is no such company as Linux - there are dozen of vendors, handreds of support centers and thousands of independent developers. You cannot buy ALL of them. You cannot force ALL of them out of business. This is the new life, new objective reality. You cannot compete with the life itself.
Microsoft is not a church or any religion organization. Instead, Microsoft is the most successful software-related business. When Microsoft is using some propaganda - it's to make new money, nothing else. If (or when) strategic planners in the giant discover that Windows on a top of Linux is a good idea - they will command to do it without any hesitation.
Linux community won't be really hurt - more drivers etc etc. The life won't be the same as we know it, but that won't be the death for the Linux community. I am positive.
There won't be the war between OSes. Instead, there will be wars between architecture and design ideas. Users won't choose between Windows and Linux. They will be choosing between diffirent implementations and distros.
I guess, Microsoft will shift their main profit source from OS licensing to application licensing and even more - to support.
If (actually - when) Microsoft will build new Windows on a top of Linux, the users will win. That's for sure.
Now, why linux and why not BSD? If Microsoft will adopt BSD then it will play well for its strong potential competitor - Apple. If Apple will deliver MacOSX for x86 - Microsoft market share will collapse and it would happen rapidly - MSFT stock may collapse.
How Linux may help? It's very simple. Just count how many Linux users are out there. Add how many corps have already considered Linux (just not migrated yet). If Microsoft will declare that new Windows will be on the top of Linux then Apple can forget about x86 forever.
Speaking about GPL, it's a matter of time that Microsoft will agree with logic of IBM: GPL is compatible with profitable business models. There is nothing wrong of including GPL kernel and uilities into your OS. And that there are much more good GPL software out there than BSDL.
Besides, if you agree to include GPL into your product, its more likely you agree with BSDL as well. If don't - then you are limited only to BSDL subset of OSS. So, your agreement to include GPL gives you all OSS instead of just small portion of it. Just make sure your lawers are OK with GPL and your business model is OK with GPL. And that what's gonna happen to Microsoft soon, I believe.
Less is more !
OS X!
WNT = VMS + 1
"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.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
quote:
... :\
vendor of Free software (...)
end quote.
That's a joke certenely
When XP was brought out, didn't Bill Gates say the underlying DOS was not there anymore? I doubt he would say that if it was not true. I have seen stories about certain Governments getting the Windows source code. If that happens, it'll leak out, and we'll then know if DOS is required or not to run windows. Nice thought, that Windows is just another wm. Makes me want to run icewm, and save some processing power. I do that now with RHL 7.1. I have some more RAM ordered, but for now, I run icewm to lighten the load as compared to KDE. Very clever, really, of Cringley to present us with the "Windows XP = a wm" idea.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
OS/2 couldn't run DOS programs until Version 2.0. That's a pretty good sign that it wasn't "just DOS".
The cake is a pie
According to insiders, It indeed will be based on BSD. Check it out!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
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.
There's a funny thing editorial and opinion based articles on the Net about anything hi-tech - no references. He clearly does not know what he's talking about. He has not done any research on how this would be accomplised. This is a daunting task. To me, this is like a cardiac surgeron simply stating "Heart transplants always work because I did my first transplant today." This idiot's reasoning is the same thing. Linux works and X has a Windows like interface. Gimp works in Windows so its easy to port Linux apps to Windows. Liunx is stable, Windows isn't. Let's port Linux to Windows. No research, credentials, references are used to back up his claim. Yet he's being /.'ed and getting media attention. Hope Darwin's theory works soon rather than later.
> If Microsoft wanted to, they could be the world's largest vendor of Free software .. couldn't they?
Gee what where they THINKING?!
"Wow! We could become the world's largest vendor of Free software!"
-Or-
"we continue to be the world's largest vendor of software that people PAY for.."
Is it still mindboggling? Why is this even a thread?
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.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Hey, genius, if people who own MS's stock all sell it, MS doesn't go bankrupt. Bankrupcy means that the company isn't making enough income to pay their expenses. What the value of the stock price is has nothing to do with this.[*]
I tried to type slowly so that you might understand this.
[*] A low stock price can be problematic for the company in that it makes it harder for them to raise additional capital by selling more stock. However, with $40+Bn in the bank, MS doesn't need to issue any new stock any time soon.
you are one of the stupidest people i know. not a single one of those moderations was a good moderation. flamebait=trying to attract flames. this person was stating the truth in his/her opinion. the 2nd one was not offtopic - he/she was replying to an on-topic post. discussions go on tangents sometimes - but as long as there is a link to the original topic, it is still ONtopic. but no, you won't get modded offtopic because you are going against people who are going against linux. the only possible way you'll get modded offtopic is if a person with any common sense gets moderatorship, which doesn't happen very often.
Knowing Microsoft, they will probably settle for the Windows OS, and Linux GUI.
A better world already exists, called MAc OS-X. Got the best of all worlds with a great Unix OS, and a really cool GUI.
He's just a hippie, waking up from a high... please be kind.
But that doesn't mean M$ would give up on basing their OS on other existing OSes. There's always BSD. If you had any memory at all, you'd remember the /. story Why Unix is better than Windows... By Microsoft. M$ goes on and on about all the things BSD does better than Windows. And who could forget that Hotmail used to be run on BSD.
Don't expect Windows 2004 to be based on Linux. It'd be BSD if anything (and if they give a rat's behind about security, they should go with OpenBSD ... but that's just me).
And you KNOW this.
I'm sorry but a 'FreeBSD r0x0rs so mUch tHan L1nux' post without any other 'proof' than 'If you are in the l33t BSD users circle, you already know this' IS flamebait!!! It's not even an argument, it's just there to begin a 'BSD vs linux' flamewar, which is, I'm sorry to say, offtopic.
You could argue than the first post was an opinion and that everybody's free to express his opinions, yada, yada, but this kind of opinion fall into the same category as the 'BSD is dead' opinions, that is 'troll/flamebait'...
Now you're right that sometimes stories bring interessant 'tangent' discussions, but I do not feel that would have been the case...
What I would pay big money for is the XP GUI on top of linux/unix. As I sit here, I have a machine which is running the Lycoris distro and it comes close to the ease of use.
I have said it many times before, but I'll post it again: the world will be a much better place if everyone DUMPS X. X has no future on the average desktop which is where the OS battle is fought. Linux/Unix in the server world is fine, but there are few (Xandros, Lycoris, Ximian, etc) that are good enugh to be called desktop distros.
Now when Fresco, Chandler, Phoenix (which rocks), etc. all fully mature, I'll be a happy boy.
Or maybe Apple will get off their ass (aka Steve Jobs), and port MacOS X to x86. ah...to be a dreamer...
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I wonder which mascot they will use...Personally, I'd prefer tux rather than some dancing orangutang. ;)
python >>>
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))
... that NT meaned "Neanderthal Technology"
I also don't give a fsck what you'll say about "but the GPL!!
OK, at least we know where you stand but let me try and present the facts anyway.
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.
That's an amazing amount of crap squeezed into one sentence. You can't just "weasel around the GPL": it's a license that happens to be applied to someone else's copyrighted code. Should your theoretical army of Microsoft-sponsored lawyers get the GPL chucked out of court, then an even worse fate awaits the company: illegal use of copyrighted code - an offence they know and understand very well (since they have been found guilty and fined for doing so more than once). Your other suggestion is equally laughable. Microsoft's lawyers can't water down the GPL any more than I can sign a piece of paper giving you carte blanche to sell unauthorised copies of Windows XP. There are a good five million lines of GPLed code in the Linux kernel and tens of thousands of contributors. Microsoft knows only too well they can't even look at GPL projects let alone use their code.
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.
Um, yeah right. Microsoft forks the kernel and builds in its own proprietary extensions, starts distributing them illegally and attempts to sabotage the remaining official branches. Apart from wrapping the whole of Seattle in huge plastic letters that spell out the words "WE LOST" I can't think of a better way to admit defeat.
Linus once said, and it's a telling quote: "if Microsoft ever port Office to Linux, I've won." You can be really sure that quote is well known (and understood) by management in Redmond - who are people that like to win more than they like to make money.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
this would never happen, at least anytime in the forseeable future.
Damn glass gets hot, don't it!
--
Have a look at the www.microsoftlinux.com
Solaris refers to the complete "Operating Environment" which includes SunOS (5.9 at it's latest version). What he is suggesting would be more akin to Sun replacing SunOS with Linux, not Solaris. In fact, there is no reason that I know this could not be done.
I think it is quite clear to anyone who knows both Windows and Linux history that when he says Windows he means the GUI front end, non-kernel space programs, and DOS refers to the kernel. Similarly, Linux means just Linux, the kernel.
So would that be plausible then? Replace the Windows NT/XP kernel with the Linux kernel? THey would have to do some things, like take the GUI display driver out of the kernel and make it a user process. Then users could load up either a XDM process to launch X 11, or a Microsoft process to launch "Windows."
I believe there would also be some process and thread control issues, but then there's no reason they can't run everything in user-space or contribute (gasp!) to the Linux kernel. Could you imagine Linus having to approve any Microsoft patches to the kernel? That would be hillarious.
OK, I don't except this to every happen, but MS could adopt NetBSD as thier underlying kernel and run Windows on it.
Windows running on everything from big iron servers to toasters?! One step closer to world domination!
ok, read all the comments on this board right here. if you believe 100% of the ones that do not present evidence are "flamebait", then i think you're an idiot. just because he doesn't like linux doesn't mean it's freeking flamebait. we get modded down for stating our opinions, but you freeks get away with "M$ sucks" (as the body of the entire commment) comments - and get modded up insightfull for those.
microsoft will never do it -- they'll never let go of control of the lowest common denominator (the OS is the last layer between software and the hardware) - they don't want to lose that control, and never will.
because they kept that hood so tightly welded shut -- open source had to arise, because people like to be able to tinker. so -- thank you microsoft!
cheers,
john
when apple put 'classic' compatibility in a box -- the os9 'classic' compatibility ran better than most windows 'upgrades' that were supposed to be compatible.
i can still run software from macOS 6.0.4 in the OS-X 'classic' mode -- macwrite II v1.5, photoshop 3.0 (from 1994 - mac OS 7.6 era), and macpaint 2.0 (from 1988) still runs fine -- mac compatibility is really quite good.
john
Why? Because if Microsoft doesn't control the OS, they can't very well force the hardware vendors to include certain things (e.g. network cards) as part fo their "standard" platform, could they?
M$ is way to anal about the money, and nowhere near enough anal about the innovation.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
Yeah, and I can run DOS programs on my Alpha (using Bochs)... It may work, but it will really have to work incredibly well. Besides, I would believe that Windows' API is an order of magnitude more complicated.
In any case, I'm sure I can find any number of OS X compatibility horror stories on the net. I've already seen a few, although I don't even look for them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This Cringely article is so technically ridiculous that it's embarrasing for the Linux community. I wonder if the article was sponsored by M$ in order to discredit Linux.
It's a commercial issue. Microsoft would see their revenues fall if they built their core OS on Linux.
Licensing issues would also be an obstacle, I'm sure many court cases would follow too. There are already some patent issues with Linux and Microsoft would be the target of some legal action if they released a commercial OS based on such code.
Ok, I think the /. crowd has certainly expounded justifiably on Mr. Cringely's ignorance. To add fuel to the fire:
Up through Windows 3.11 both these products worked as well or better under Windows than MS-DOS, and some people have claimed to have made them work under later Windows versions, too.
That's actually not true. Windows 3.1 (3.11? it's been a while) was made to generate an error if you attempted to start it up on DRDOS. It's my understanding that there was no technical reason for this except that Gates didn't like competition.
In hindsight, I think a trend could have been detected even then...
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Microsoft has been really good about one thing from the outset of Windows, and that is third party support. Applications and drivers can be released independently by third parties and stay compatible for a reasonable period of time.
Linux, on the other hand, seems designed to prevent third party developers. It's not possible for third parties to ship applications which will run on all the different distributions available for a given version of Linux, let alone different versions. Newer kernels constantly break the kernel driver interface layers. The philosophy is that it just dosn't matter, because as long as the source is there in the kernel, someone will update the interface.
The trouble is that the world is not open source. Linux has terrible third party application support in part because it's impossible to be a third party for Linux. If Microsoft based their next operating system on "Linux" it would be in name only. They would tear the innards appart to mature the driver interface, stabilize the binary format, and stop letting people make incompatible changes to the MS fork of the OS. They wouldn't do these things to "own" Linux, they would do them because this is the only way you can have a hugely popular operating system installed on 96% of desktops, performing millions of different types of operations for different people.
However, the biggest reason they won't do this is that they just don't need to. The balkanazation of UNIX has merely been replaced with the balkanazation of Linux.
Directory structure. Windows users use the backslash \. *nix users use the (fore)slash /. (Call me petty, but I prefer the backslash over the slash. It makes more sense -- in fraction form, the bigger directory goes under the smaller one) Microsoft will demand the use of the backslash. Microsoft may adapt easy to software that tries to use the wrong slash, but the biggest headaches this will cause is trying to use all of the Linux software that is specifically programmed to use the foreslash. A whole bunch of code will have to be changed and recompiled, which isn't a problem, but I think it would cause a huge flamefest from the Linux side.
:p
It will be called the holy war of slash.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
It's quite possible that they have...
Keep Austin Weird!
This may have flown if XP was not based on NT, which I believe was based on the old VAX systems and never had anything to do with DOS. I think there may be some OS/2 code in there, but Cringely obviously doesn't know the difference between Win95/98/ME ilk and the NT derivatives.
XP IS an OS and IS integrated with the code that talks to the hardware. It is not a windowing system that sits on DOS.
How can a technology writer have missed this rather obvious and very important development?
Evil is the money of all root....
I still say they were stupid. There would be no Linux today if they had just based NT on Unix. It could have been even as bad a copy as Xenix. They realized their mistake and that is why the now say "embrace and extend" is the way to go.
The VMS guys saw all the Vaxen sold to education instutions wiped and replaced with BSD Unix and felt quite defeated by this. It did not matter what banks left on the Vaxes, for the average new student is CS a VAX ran BSD Unix. The students were also exposed to a great deal of FUD that VMS sucked and Unix was a win. I think they had a lot of hatred of Unix.
... why are they not whining for their dividends?
As things stand now they will be slightly less better of in a casino.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Barrett Anderson, I hereby wish to express my desire for you to end your life. Please. Now. Go kill yourself.
I do not seek the ignorant; the ignorant seek me -- I will instruct them.
I ask nothing but sincerity. If they come out of habit, they become tiresome.
-- I Ching
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