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Microsoft Brings ChakraCore to Linux and OS X (cio.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a columnist at CIO:
A few days ago I wrote about Microsoft's revival of Skype for Linux. I called it "a big deal" -- less because of Skype itself and more because it signified Microsoft's recognition that Linux is a platform worth supporting... Now the company has done it again. At Node Summit this week, Microsoft announced the availability of ChakraCore for Linux. ChakraCore is the core part of the Chakra JavaScript engine that powers Microsoft Edge and Universal Windows Platform. With this move, Microsoft is putting one of its core technologies on a competing platform. This, more than any other Linux-friendly move the company has made, is a clear departure from the Microsoft of Gates and Ballmer that used its technologies to lock users into Windows...
While Ubuntu is the primary Linux distribution that Microsoft is using to showcase its ChakraCore technologies, the company said that the support should easily translate to other modern Linux distributions.
Microsoft's blog post says the experimental implementation runs not only on x64 Linux but also on OS X.
While Ubuntu is the primary Linux distribution that Microsoft is using to showcase its ChakraCore technologies, the company said that the support should easily translate to other modern Linux distributions.
Microsoft's blog post says the experimental implementation runs not only on x64 Linux but also on OS X.
Yeah, this looks like Microsoft is trying to get on the content store gravy train.
But come on? How much marketable data can you slurp from a Windows VM only opened to run office? They need a spy on the real desktop! And on Linux, they only thing people run a lot form them is Skype. What do you bet that it is looking at the process list?
Microsoft sees themselves as less and less of an OS company, and more of a business services company, especially with the cloud. Windows is only a small portion of Microsoft revenue now, so they don't feel such a need to support it. It's possible that within the next decade, they may become to view it as a cost center, rather than a profit center.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Then I wonder, what about the Skype application?
Why is it so hard to bring that one up to speed on Linux? I mean, if you really wanted to support Linux?
An alternative could be the Line application?
http://line.me/en/
It is for now only supported on these mobile platforms, and then Windows and Mac: (unfortunately not on MeeGo or Ubuntu Touch, which I have)
iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Nokia
If we could could get them to support wider, then Microsoft could possibly also be enticed to support wider, and more honest on Linux?!
"The current cross-plat implementation doesn’t yet support JIT compilation and concurrent and partial GC features"
Which means it will be slow and useless.
For those who don't know, ChakraCore is open source; the code is on GitHub, under the MIT license.
https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore
by Cyphase ( 907627 )
Before Microsoft got their hands on Skype, the service was configured to use a central server to determine if your desired counter-party was on line, then the two end-points went through a handshake and all remaining communications were point-to-point.
After Microsoft got their hands on Skype, the initial call setup used a central server - and then the entire remainder of the conversation remains similarly routed through that central server, thereby allowing Microsoft to record the entire conversation.
Skype doesn't generate revenue, which means that the initial purchase was a loss-leader. Microsoft weren't trying to bring their own competition to market. There is nothing in the technology that they needed or wanted for their own business strategy. In other words, it's worth being very sceptical of Skype.
So why would they want to turn their attention back to the Linux client? Is it because the "bad guys" are using Linux and Microsoft want to remain in the middle of point-to-point conversations?
I'm sure that Skype is a very handy piece of software when you want to keep in touch with relatives who are miles away, but there are just too many inexplicable decisions being taken with it... What's that old saying: when something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
It was a Microsoft program called WISE and licensed to Bristol, Insignia, MainSoft and Locus( https://goo.gl/nrk4ML ). It allowed these vendors to build libraries for UNIX which let Win32 sources be built on UNIX systems. Lots of UNIX app developers porting UNIX apps to Windows since they could sell their apps for both Windows and UNIX. Only one problem, Microsoft pulled the rug out from under them all( save one ) and left all those UNIX software vendors with no path for their UNIX customers but moving to Microsoft Windows. They more than quadrupled the WISE program cost and only one of the vendors could afford to pay it. The one vendor who could still pay the licensing fee was also the one vendor Microsoft hired to port Internet Explorer to Sun Solaris.
So unless every single bit of this ChakraCore stuff is open source and under a BSD or MIT license(ie loose) then stay away, far far away. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Yeah....its sadly a lot worse than under Ballmer, because you didn't see the Ballmernator packing their flagship with spyware that uses tactics taken straight from malware vendors like hardcoding IPs to get around HOSTS blocking.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Microsoft must have an entire division devoted to coming up with names that make me glaze over sooner than I can get to a defining sentence in any article in which the word occurs.
List of Microsoft codenames
Hmm, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was originally codenamed "Snowball", which primarily involved the introduction of a 32-bit TCP/IP stack into a 16-bit OS.
Satan: I've got good news and I've got bad news.
Yourself: What's the good news?
Satan: I'm going to give you a choice.
Yourself: And what's the bad news?
Satan: You can either be known as "Snowball" or "Mr Pink".
Yourself: Wow, that's a relief. I was worried I'd get stuck with "Chakra" or something worse, if there even is anything worse.
Satan: Even in Hell, some dishonours are held in reserve. Now hurry up, or I'll assign you one of each, plus swelling and leprosy.
Maybe if MS contributed to something worthwhile like Wine instead of offering tokens like a sub-par JavaScript engine it would be viewed as a genuine gesture of goodwill.
Have you actually used Edge? It and it's JS component are utter crap. Why would anyone want to run their JS variant?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Start the timer. Apple becomes a hardware-only company, running mostly microsoft software. One decade or two?
real work. But for some reason, I should want to use their libraries on a system that actually is already useful for real work?
Really must be something in the water. Gnome3, Wayland, systemd, Trump, and Microsoft on Linux?
I tried Edge and have stuck with Firefox.
So, no, I don't have a compelling reason to install ChakraCore on my Linux box. However, half a dozen or so already reside there - anything that depends on node requires a JS engine, Gtk+ and Qt embed versions with their toolkits and openjdk has rhino and nashorn for Java EE.
Does the world need yet another JS engine? Well probably not but there may be a use case.
smells like a trojan_horse, after years of being belligerent towards Linux i can not trust microsoft to be honest, look at the mess windows 10 is when it comes to privacy and lack of being open to users,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I can't imagine why I would use a windows javascript engine when the real deal is available already.
Ubuntu is the slowest of the Linux distributions for servers, but lends itself well to the windows95 crowd of users with it's gadgetry and half-whistles to entertain the first waves of AOL style user migrations from windows.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Soon all those Windows vulnerabilities will be available on Linux too.
Not quite sure what you mean by that.
Do they allow you to compile from source at least or is it a closed binary that needs root rights?
The release is source, it's right here https://github.com/microsoft/ChakraCore licensed under MIT.
Vulkan has some merits, or at least novelty; OpenGL and DirectX are actually in competition, and DirectX long had features allowing DirectX programmers to more-readily take advantage of not-always-present extensions while OpenGL historically would just fail and not tell you. OpenGL has long since improved on that front; minor technical arguments still bounce back and forth between the two technologies.
Stuff like that is why I find graphics programmers weird.
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Why should Microsoft contribute to a project that doesnt further its goals? Mono furthered its goals, ChakraCore furthers its goals, Wine does not further its goals.
Over here in the .Net world, Microsofts open source contributions are a lot more than "token", btw.
Vulkan is more a competitor to DirectX 12, and its better because it is probably more consistent due to throwing out all the legacy crap (read OpenGL).
It's also more-complex than OpenGL, although DirectX 12 is more-complex than DirectX 10. Direct-manipulation of atoms is more-complex than current processor fab tech, too, and can give certain results modern fab tech can't. Assembly is more-complex than C#, and can allow tight, highly-optimized code that C# can't approach; C# can make large, complex programs.
Maybe Vulkan will get some higher-level APIs, or run alongside OpenGL, or something. Who knows? An integrated solution allowing leverage of low-complexity and high-complexity operations in tandem would provide an optimal solution.
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I'm seriously asking -- why should non-Windows OS developers care about whether or not ChakraCore is supported on non-Windows operating systems?
every indication is that the company today is a heck of a lot different than the one you're referencing.
I have seen very little such indication at all -- they look pretty much the same to me.
Well yes Vulkan is more complex than OpenGL, but its not in the same relation to OpenGL as Assembly is to c#.
True, there is SPIR, but there are already compilers for SPIR out there, and it has been a critique point of OpenGL for a long time that shaders couldn't be compiled, while they could be compiled by DirectX.
Either way, the indie gaming industry seems to be moving towards engines like unity that then expose simple high level APIs. They will enjoy vulkan because it will allow unity and similar engine developers to make their engines faster and have more api functions. And AAA games will enjoy Vulkan even more because they can customize every tiniest part which they couldn't do with OpenGL.
That's the specialist argument: someone further down the line gets to deal with this complicated stuff. It's a valid argument; and the specialists still need to improve their skillset when the complicated stuff becomes more-complicated, with the trade-off that they can engage in their specialty more-effectively.
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Thank you for repeating your "demand", but you again fail to explain *why* Microsoft should contribute to Wine - "because they should" is not an arguable reason. And Wine being "meaningful" is a matter of opinion - its not meaningful to Microsoft, so why should they contribute to it?
ChakraCore furthers a lot of Microsofts goal - fully expect a UWP runtime for Linux in the near future, with stuff like Skype etc running the same code across all platforms. How is that not a goal that is being furthered?
And your opinion of .Net pretty much shows that you cam be discounted entirely from any adult discussion on this topic. You are basically saying "no one uses or gives a shit about Linux. Apart from the millions of people that use and give a shit about Linux, but Im going to ignore that because it doesnt fit with my view."
Whilst I applaud the effort (and welcome alternatives), Chakra isn't quite ready for prime-time on other platforms yet -- more specifically, node-chakra. What it does, it does blazingly fast -- outpacing the v8 core on 6.3.1 -- but there are some specific use-cases which just end in fail, and a commonly-occurring message about buffers not being used in an expected manner.
Next release maybe? V8 needs the competition and I'll gladly take whatever is tops out stability, then features, then speed. I'm not a brand-whore.
ChakraCore for Linux and OS X does not further any MS goal.
Of course it does, what is the point of open source if not to engage the community and work together to develop a better project?
It's just a token gesture to say "look at us, we love other OSes so we can't possibly have a monopoly".
They dont have a monopoly anymore, back then Windows was pretty much the only option for the (Intel) PC but nowadays there are plenty of viable options out there for personal computing. Big box vendors ship Ubuntu systems, Macs use Intel processors now, Chromebooks are on shelves everywhere, Android and iOS tablets are readily available and much of peoples' personal computing is done on their smartphones.
If they want to put their money where their mouth is, they'd contribute to something meaningful like Wine.
Why would they do that? There is no benefit to that at all.
Over there in .NET world, Microsoft's contributions only benefit a small subsection of Windows programs. Nobody else uses it or gives a shit about it.
You could say exactly the same thing about everybody's contributions to desktop Linux systems too.
I think you need to get away from your assumption that Microsoft doing this to somehow please you or show you that they value the same "meaningful" goals as you, which given their actions versus your suggestions it's pretty clear that they don't and aren't trying to.
*sigh*
I don't know why I thought I could have this conversation on Slashdot, of all places...
hi