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Comment by nguoi | Hacker News Reader

I'm open to the concept but not where this article takes it.

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.

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Less so on desktop, but Ive been arguing for a while that Microsoft could ship the Windows shell+Bing/OfficeGraph on top of Android and instantly reenter the Mobile Phone arena. It's something they could ship that installs on existing phones. People could "convert" their Android experience and "fall in love with Windows all over again" or whatever BS marketing wants to put out. The important part though would be a unique visual identity, and pushing people towards Microsoft apps and services, away from Google.

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.

> 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.

Like what exactly? Do you have examples or just feel this way?

Two Words: Group Policies.

group policies are user mode

How would you implement a group policy like "Audit the access of global system objects" in user-mode on Linux?

Hmm interesting. I thought that guy meant the whole group policy system, which can change settings in user mode programs (such as explorer) and is akin to /etc files or in the kernel (like the one you mentioned) and is akin to sysctl

The entire value of group policy is in the whole thing, not the individual pieces. The group policy system would be almost useless without the actual group policies it comes with; the actual policies and their vertical integration through the kernel and all the way to the UI are what bring in pretty much all the value. Viewing it as a glorified regedit or dconf-editor that's basically decoupled from the rest of the OS kind of misses the larger picture.

SELinux + ansible.

>> It undoubtedly does some things better

> 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.

> And then there's the documentation which is like infinitely better than Linux's...

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.

IOCP and HANDLE objects in general. You can await on anything in NT, you can't even sanely wait on a mutex or socket at the same time in linux.

Vertical integration of the OS and kernel means that users can use the UI to respond to running out of memory where Linux just kills using heuristics.

I've heard of other things but don't know enough to verify them.

Honestly, running out of memory isn't the best example for vertical integration of the OS. While it can behave reasonably on Windows, OOM is still the one thing that that can still sometimes bring down every OS to an unusable state, including Windows. But barring that, best of luck trying to bring down the GUI on Windows. Whereas with Linux, you always gotta be ready to drop out of your GUI and into a terminal to rescue stuff.

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