Windows 11 could run on Linux
computerworld.com
computerworld.com
So far it's only “MS did a Linux-to-Win layer with questionable performance, it means they could totally do the opposite with negligible loss while keeping drivers for millions of device models working! And compatibility with software that hooks at every point in the Windows APIs! See, Wine does a small portion of that just fiiiine after the twenty six years of development.”
devenv.exe isn't even 64-bit yet...
I mean they could make a Linux version of Visual Studio, just like the make a Mac version of Visual Studio, it just wouldn't be the same program as the Windows version of Visual Studio.
If I had to do serious dotnet work on Linux, I'd probably just use JetBrains Rider instead though.
Registry backups shouldn't be expected to be any easier with a different kernel. In fact, if anything it will introduce a lot more bugs, even just from programs that rely on kernel bugs.
There's no reason to believe NT is any less 'fresh' than Linux. It undoubtedly does some things better. Even as a Linux user, throwing that away would seem a massive shame.
While basing Windows on Linux may make some development easier, it also throws away the unique proposition that Windows provides.
It would take a lot of internal motivation to overcome the people who founded their careers on building an operating system for Microsoft.
> While basing Windows on Linux may make some development easier, it also throws away the unique proposition that Windows provides.
Like what exactly? Do you have examples or just feel this way?
> Like what exactly? Do you have examples or just feel this way?
Idk, like maybe letting you actually wait for a process to exit (until Linux finally added it in recent months), IOCP, not doing stupid things like overcommitting memory... I could go on...
And then there's the documentation which is like infinitely better than Linux's...
It makes me wonder, what information drives your skepticism? It seems pretty unfounded to me.
I am 100% unexpert in systems programming. I am not challenging this sentence.
When I look through Linux's source code, I read documentation files like Documentation/x86/exception-tables.txt and filesystems/ntfs.txt. I can also read the source code and its notes - for instance kernel/cpu.c or kernel/panic.c.
Where do I find analogous documentation or source code for NT 10? Lack of systems documentation pushed me away from Windows, and I would love to learn I was wrong.
I've heard of other things but don't know enough to verify them.
Google made this play easy by splitting off Play Services. Now all Microsoft has to do is essentially replace Play Services with Windows Services, Microsoft Services, Azure Services, or if Microsoft names it, Microsoft Windows Azure Team Site Foundations Forefront Services.
I know they have the Launcher, but to actually put a dent in Google Android, Microsoft needs to play more like Amazon and Fire os, including their own curated store.
Microsoft has embraced Android, if it Extends it, it would be logical to think that Microsoft Services would end up being a single package of cloud services that transcend Android and Windows, with the same servers, and Client implementations that best fit the OS capabilities.
But unlike many I actually like Windows though and used to be heavily invested as a .NET developer. I switched all that away though just because I didn't like the ads, forced updates, the cloud integrations and the tracking that were included in Windows 10 and felt forced.
This is what makes Windows 10 and Windows in general bad. Not the kernel or the other things in Windows. If Microsoft would start valuing these things again Windows would be less bad in my opinion.
I just use Linux because it's better, but it's only better right now and that could change in the future. I don't believe Windows 11 would be better if it ran Linux if it still had all those privacy-issues. It would be still as shitty in my view.
I am now heavily invested in Linux and has completely dropped my investment in the Microsoft-ecosystem. I start all new projects on Gitlab because I am actually mostly tired of big american companies that track and store everything and doesn't care about you.
And more...
Uh... huh?
"The scheduler solves this problem by randomly boosting the priority of the ready threads (in this case, the low priority lock-holders). The low priority threads run long enough to exit the critical section, and the high-priority thread can enter the critical section. If the low-priority thread does not get enough CPU time to exit the critical section the first time, it will get another chance during the next round of scheduling."
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/procthread/pr...
> Expensive locking primitives
Elaborate/citation?
> It is designed for a simpler age and has not caught up.
A little ironic to read something like this when, say, unlike in Linux, their I/O system was designed to be asynchronous from the ground-up. Or when so much of Windows is so insanely extensible at so many points that I can't even begin to list them all (just consider how they literally implemented a Linux subsystem on top). Or when Linux literally just discovered the concept of waiting for a process to exit a few months ago.
The reality is that there are not a lot of ppl with knowlage of the kernel and linux enthusiasts often tends to have a very baised opinion towards windows.
I cannot imagine a BSD-based MS Windows but it would be cool!
This would probably solve slow filesystem I/O (which is one of the major pain points for me when working under Windows, especially if you have a large number of small files).
However, it's important for Windows to keep backward compatibility for applications using old APIs. I think that's a major selling point vs. other platforms.
Having said that, slow file i/o probably wouldn't rank that high in the average user's list of Windows issues.
It's only taken 10 years and more since I suggested on Mini-Microsoft that Microsoft do 'an Apple' and put a Windows GUI on a Linux foundation just like Apple had put the Apple GUI on a BSD foundation. I remember that suggestion being howled down derisively by the Softies.
You can always trust Microsoft to do the smart thing .... after they've repeatedly wasted years and years and billions of dollars doing the dumb things.
Can I read about this anywhere? I didn't realise there will be a Windows 11
Windows has all the API, wine doesn't have the API they reverse-engineered the compatibility layer.
Since Windows has the code it wouldn't take a lot. Plus a lot of drivers and what not is already implemented in linux
Biggest probably would be graphics but then again they have the API/code as they made it so they can easily connect the dots to make it work
But the whole conceit of the article is the Microsoft sucks at userspace.
*Obviously, there's Wine and OSX, but still.
If you don't like LibreOffice, try SoftMaker FreeOffice.
I think that's debatable at best. Of course the experience is better because you don't get in-system ads, forceful cloud integration, and all the bad stuff that comes with Microsoft.
But my personal experience of Ubuntu is a constant struggle against randomly occurring bugs, inexplicable performance drops, crashes, and bad design. It's still worth it because it's Ubuntu, but I wouldn't celebrate the UX too much.
Out of the box, Windows is orders of magnitude easier to use for non-technical users.
It's actually orders of magnitude easier for technical users who don't also happen to be Linux experts. I'm using Linux f/t right now, because the ways in which I like it are of high priority enough to me to put up with the negatives. But, damn, the negatives are legion. A couple of weeks in to this particlar OS iteration, and my installation has far more missing than a typical half-day old Windows 10 one. I have written up several github issues and half a dozen forum posts. There are so many little things that don't work, or that I haven't had time to tackle, or which blew up so badly I'm going to have to screw up courage to try them again, or which I'm reconciled to living with.
Which isn't to say that Windows is better overall (I've chosen Linux over it, after all), and there are definitely more desktop-ready distros out there than the one I happen to be using, but I'd be truly loathe to recommend Linux to any non-technical user who wants to do more than browse the web.
Both have their quirks and I had a bunch of randomly occurring bugs under Windows as well. I vividly remember the update process claiming 100% CPU which required extensive research to fix. The worst thing I had with Linux so far was a Kernel update which prevented the Ethernet card from coming up after sleep. Switching back the Kernel fixed that immediately. A bug report later (that's definitely out of layman territory) I got a kernel parameter to add and after a while a proposed fix. That was more support than I ever got for Windows which I paid for.
Windows really shines in games and in corporate (AD/group policies). Not worth the spying for Windows Home.
Even literally double-clicking is pretty much always more painful for me (most pronounced on laptops) on Linux OSes than on Windows, and that's the most basic command on a GUI. Too often the mouse always ends up being too sensitive and moving when you're just trying to click, or the default delay ends up being too short, or the mouse ballistics end up being too awful and unnatural so you can't even aim the damn thing. Or like the window-close button doesn't extend to the screen border, so you have to aim the mouse like a sniper rifle at the close button just to close a window. And forget about many of the multi-finger gestures or other features of your touchpad/mouse; you're lucky if even both two-finger scrolling and edge scrolling work for your laptop.
Now I don't know about your family, but I wouldn't expect my grandma to tell me the mouse acceleration curve sucks or that there's a 3-pixel border that makes it hard to close a window, or that double-clicking turns into dragging when she's trying to click, or that the focus stealing prevention isn't working well, or the myriads of other things that Windows has clearly paid attention to and Linux is oblivious to. She'd just try clicking and get confused why it's not working until it works.
a) Make the mouse slower
b) Use a smaller resolution
c) Increase Window scaling factor or equivalent
d) Use accessibility features
e) Use another mouse acceleration profile
...
I concede that Linux desktops can suck if you are unlucky. But that's the case for Windows as well (I use that daily at work). Every update something changes which forces me to go to Duckduckgo... Another example: I use two monitors at work, a more recent one with high dpi and a really old one with lower dpi. I have to to use a lower than the natural resolution on the new one to get approximately the same font size on both. Although Windows shows up the correct dpi(!) numbers for both it is not possible to scale the font to the same size. Result: the new monitor is blurry whereas the old one is crisp. At home however, I have a 4 monitor set up where one of the monitors has a different resolution as well. No problem for Linux at all.
I stand by my opinion: Both suck evenly well, but one does not spy on me...
You are talking about one of the most observable operating systems ever made. Those claims are very hard to take seriously.
I haven't experienced any of the problems you describe. But if I ran into a problem, I have have debugging symbols, source code, a debugger, profiling tools... whatever is happening would have an explanation.
Which is exactly the problem with talking to linux ideologues. If you differ from them they always claim bad faith. Always.
It sounds like you are far more familiar with OS X and Linux than Windows.
> Installation of Ubuntu is about as easy as it gets
I still have tearing issues on my screen from the graphics drivers that I'm not sure how to fix. Windows has no such issues for me. I know there are issues with Windows too - they just never seem to occur to me.
While I agree this comparison isn't fair to the hard working developers of Linux, it illustrates the point that both operating systems are complex. The more familiar you are, the less problems it seems to have.
Can you provide some examples here? I'm running Kubuntu and it's OK but not Windows level of slick.
Problems I'm having are display scaling and multi monitor support for different display resolutions, shitty wifi drivers and networking needing a restart whenever coming out of sleep.
The only OS that's doing what you're claiming at the moment is ChromeOS just because everything is so wonderfully integrated and _just works_. Even if that comes with handing your life over to Google...
Endemic, I'm afraid (though before long someone's bound to chime in to inform us that these problems don't exist, you just need to read a half dozen Arch wiki pages and spend 4 days compiling things and .. voila!).
Anyway on the different monitor resolutions issue, does Kubuntu support Wayland? It does a better job than X11 for this in my experience.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/875832/how-to-set-per-monito...
I wonder what is their business model. There doesn't seem to be a paid option.
There doesn't seem to be a paid option.
There is: https://www.softmaker.com/en/
But for some reason they make it almost impossible to find from the FreeOffice page.