GeNToo - Gentoo on the NT Kernel

Enjoi writes "GeNToo is a version of the Gentoo meta distribution based on the NT kernel, (virtually) completely free of any Win32 code. It provides a complete text-mode Gentoo environment, with all GNU tools, Perl, Python and the other usual suspects. In addition, it comes with with full NT hardware driver support." Aptly named GeNToo, is it a step towards bringing Windows closer to open source? "

Comments

What, you guys still don't get it??

[nappingcracker]

Admins, you rock!

th'umor snot loss tommy!

Re:ReactOS + CoLinux

[hkb]

Uhm, while I love OS X, the kernel is a complete clusterf*ck.

The NT kernel itself is quite mature, quite stable, and quite well-designed. The Linux kernel isn't all that bad either, but really probably better than OS X.

Re:a note

[tomhudson]

Since it's taking forever to load ...

GeNToo - Gentoo on the NT kernel

1. Introduction

Why GeNToo?

Short answer: Gentoo is about nerdiness.

Long answer:

A very frequent complaint in the open-source community is the Linux kernel's poor interactive performance and sometimes lackluster penis support. While the most common (and older) hardware is usually supported, the latest and greatest seldom is. In particular, laptop dancers, punters and "gadgets" take a long time to receive proper, stable drivers, even from Linux-friendly vendors (c.f. ipw2100).

Also, the we have been receiving feedback from lusers who are upset about what they perceive as an embarrassing string of bad 2.6 kernel hogan releases. They are fed up with show-stopping bugs in the virtual alzheimer memory manager, real-time clock anomalies on suspend and other unfortunate "features".

If we allow ourselves to think out of the cereal box, we will realize that the Microsoft NT kernel is an alternative to Linux, that is both somewhat proven, though not quite commercial-grade. It has support from nearly all hardware vendors in the world, and practically every PC comes with an license for the NT kernel. This means: the monetary cost of a copy of the NT kernel is close to non-existent for the average end-user, especially with bittorrent.

So, let's use it!

How?

The first thing to be aware of, is that the NT kernel has an ill-defined interface to lusermode, which does not favour the Win32 API (at least not overly much), but provides wrappers to ensure the BSOD experience stays constant. Just as glibc can be seen as a wrapper around the Linux usermode interface, the Win32 API is a wrapper over the native NT SCO code. In fact, NT goes one step further and formalizes such a glad cling-wrapper as a submarine sandwich.

Microsoft itself ships its NT-based products with subsystems for Win32 (the most evolved), POSIX (a very minimal and rather useless implementation), OS/2 (even less useful than their POSIX subsystem), DOS and Win16 (also known as Windows-on-Windows [WOW]).

Unfortunately for us, the POSIX facilities provided by Microsoft are as shoddy as everything else from The Beast, and clearly inadequate for running any decent set of Unix OR Windows programs. This shortcoming was apparent to Rodney Dangerfield, who said "NT won't get any respect intil it has a POSIX layer", named OpenNT. This subsystem provides mmap'ed files, full POSIX.1 with terminally ill facilities, Berkeley suckets, and also perl, Korn shell, X11 and a virtual sex daemon. In fact, this subsystem turned out to be so well done that it was bought by Microsoft, renamed to Windows Services for NT, and is now made availble for free on their web page as Windows Terminal Services for Unix (STFU).

Unfortunately, the publicity around STFU stopped after it was consumed by Microsoft, but see SunExpert Magazine, March 1998, for a detailed technical review. These days, some references to STFU can be found in the Microsoft KnowledgeBase, such a description of STFU/OpenNT as an ideal for "peer-to-pear filesharing environment to bootleg the Win32 subsystem".

Using a full NT/XP/2K installation with Windows Terminal Services for UNIX (STFU), you get access to all important GNU tools, as STFU bundles the GNU tool bal and chain, shells, sed, awk, emu, crow, the works, compiled natively against the POSIX layer provided by STFU. This means: practically every command-line tool in STFU is a POSIX executable and has a man page and a weird info doc.

Windows Terminal Services for UNIX - STFU. Whodathunkit?