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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?
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.
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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.
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).
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Who's got the whiteout?
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
"Yeah, Cringely is either incompetent or trolling for readers."
Yes he is, but he's just one person. What really saddens me is how pervasive this kind of thinking is. People who genuinely believe XP is based on DOS are a real threat to getting intelligent users to migrate.
When I was younger, I was originally turned off by the Mac platform because of all the ignorant users. It wasn't uncommon to hear them condescendingly say that Windows is based on DOS and Macs do true multitasking etc. And there I was, sitting in front of a box running a *preemptively* multitasking kernel (NT 4.0 at the time), thinking "there's no way I want to associate myself with these retards".
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.
My Sig: SEGV
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.
In some respects he's right, but accidentally (a stopped clock is right twice a day), in that Windows is built on top of another operating system, in this case, NT. But to transition to another base there are three questions that would have to be answered:
Is it possible? Not without a lot of modification to Linux. NT is not UNIX and has a number of fundamentally different idioms; while Win32 abstracts a lot of this, it still pokes through in a few places. Even if Microsoft implemented features in the Linux kernel necessary, they'd still be forced to deprecate half the API and force developers to rewrite their applications to take full advantage of the new architecture. And if they rewrote Linux enough to make this unnecessary, it wouldn't be Linux anymore - it'd be an NT rewrite.
Would it be better? Cringley simply assumes that Linux is faster, more stable, etc... than NT. Windows is notorious for being unstable, although most of that reputation is due to the Win9x line. Win2K/XP have been known to crash on occasion, but unless you're using some seriously broken hardware, or have fucked its internals up a lot, it doesn't crash that often, and even then the vast majority of crashes are due to the Win32 layer, not NT itself. NT has a stronger security model, is realtime and fully reentrant. In short, the problems with Windows 2000/XP are not the fault of NT, but Win32 itself. Exactly how would porting Win32 to Linux solve these problem?
Would it be economic? The marginal benefit of porting to Linux would be minimal, and at great expense. I can't see how Microsoft would justify it.
Cringley suggested something that is fundamentally highly technical without understanding the real issues involved, which was stupid. This is particularly ironic when you consider the section of his site saying that people should listen to him since he knows what he's talking about. Once again this simply proves that he's nothing more than a digital snake-oil salesman - under the guise of holding an expert opinion, he tells people what they want to hear in exchange for ratings.
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.
NT, as a project, started out as "OS/2 version 3". Microsoft and IBM worked together on OS/2 version 1, and planned to split their resources so that IBM would create a version two, that was fully thirty two bit (wouldn't run on the much maligned 80286 and so wouldn't need the kinds of grafts and fixes running on that chip required), and Microsoft would concentrate on producing version three, a complete rewrite that would make use of the latest ideas in operating system design, be secure, genuinely multiuser, run on non-Intel architectures, etc.
When IBM and Microsoft had their spat, the projects continued, but without Microsoft seeing any need to make the "next generation" OS have anything to do with OS/2 at all. Compatability requirements were dropped to just the command line environment, the operating system was renamed (choose your own favourate urban legend, and about the only real sign that the operating systems were related was that the very first version, 3.1 (yeah, 3.1 - I could be cynical and suggest it's because Microsoft figured they never got anything decent out the door until "version 3" so they might as well jump the line... but I believe the real reason was that they wanted the version numbers to match those of the DOS/Windows line, NT had a Windows 3.1 compatable subsystem after all) could optionally be installed on an HPFS partition - HPFS being the OS/2 file system. This feature was dropped from later versions (I'm trying to remember that far back, but I think one issue was that NTFS wasn't implemented until 3.5 or 3.51 or something. Can anyone help me here?)
Unfortunately, this story has been misunderstood by a lot of people to mean "NT is just a version of OS/2". It isn't. It owes its history to OS/2, and maybe if OS/2 hadn't happened, Microsoft would be migrating its customers to "Xenix Windows". But that doesn't make it the same code and it isn't.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.