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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

>This driver is designed to emulate Windows NT synchronization primitives

To me, anything that emulates windows primitives is a bad thing. Again these changes being pushed by Microsoft make me glad the BSDs exist.

Lets hope the BSDs can continue staying independent of Large Corporations.

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Well, one of the biggest drivers of consumer Linux adoption in recent years has been the Steam Deck, and compatibility with Steam games. The article explicitly calls out how this improves performance for this use case. I think your opinion is an unpopular one.

Yeah, I know multiple people running Linux at home and Windows compatibility us a critical feature for them. For the people I know not in tech about half would switch if Linux got up to par in:

1. Ability to play any video game

2. Compatibility with hardware (e.g. one of my friends is booting windows temporarily as his graphics card has an issue on Linux)

3. Usability/looks. This is subjective but for people used to Windows for the last couple decades people often find Linux more difficult to use and honestly uglier (Linux is customizable but most people I know are not confident enough to go far from the defaults).

This is just my friends, some of whom are engineers and some are normal people when it comes to technical ability, but currently a lot of them want to like Linux but have specific requirements holding them back.

> Anecdotes everyone in this discussion knows

I’m genuinely curious why you think this post is appropriate or beneficial for this topic or even this subthread? Linux isn’t a windows clone; everyone knows that.

Linux isn't a Windows clone but compatibility and parity with Windows are the biggest blockers to adoption for a lot of the potential userbase. This thread is specifically about compatibility with Windows so talking about how it's the most important feature for people I know (and also mentioning a few other ways people view Linux as generally a worse experience) is not off topic entirely. This thread is part of a broader context of driving Linux adoption by poaching a specific subset of Windows users, which this change is directly in service of.

"On June 8, 2016, a standard FreeBSD 10.3 image was published into the Azure Marketplace. Microsoft published the image working as part of the FreeBSD community and in collaboration with the FreeBSD Foundation. This was a milestone representing the culmination of several years of Microsoft collaboration with the FreeBSD community. FreeBSD is leveraged as the base OS for a number of virtual appliances running in Azure, and so Microsoft has a natural interest in making sure it runs well."

https://freebsdfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Run...

Your points are factually incorrect in several ways. But if I steelman your argument, Linux driving Windows compatibility for gaming could be bad for several reasons:

- adoption of NTSYNC may distort the technical roadmap of Linux. That's arguable, it comes down to technical details.

- we should ask game vendors to support Linux, not enable them to not support Linux. Unfortunately that ship has sailed and we already know that Linux gaming is not a market they care about.

- Windows and Microsoft are bad and Linux is good. That's an emotional argument. When MS was truly anti-Linux, this association would rightly trigger suspicion. But MS is not behind this effort.

Not sure what is left.

I think the best hope for native Linux gaming at this point is that the Steam deck and Proton in general becomes so popular it makes it worth it to consider native Linux too.

You know, Gates and Nadella wear pants, so maybe we should all go pantiless because of that, just so we don't emulate them?

I don't see how improving compatibility is a bad thing in itself, unless it breaks native functionality, which it doesn't.

You think Microsoft wants Windows games to perform better on Linux?

Do you think MS still wants to be in the consumer OS market?

It's low revenue, fairly high expense, and the relevance of "which operating system do you use" is going down rapidly (see linux gaming getting good with MS's help). Businesses.. sure they'll keep using windows and paying for it, since they already have a huge amount of legacy systems/software and IT procedures/institutional knowledge - like IBM still doing mainframes - but consumers don't seem to care about that.

Most people basically seem to use their computer to run a browser, maybe some games, and maybe some office suite stuff, OS doesn't matter too much anymore.

Honestly I don't see any evidence that Microsoft wants anything. Every little fiefdom within Microsoft wants their own thing and no one cares about what is good for the company as a whole. There is at least one team that just wants to sell as many games as possible, and are no doubt looking at SteamOS as potential platform to target.

It's not as if they're the main stakeholder of Windows games on Windows anyway.

For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Gaming

"The division owns intellectual property for some of the most popular, best-selling, and highest-grossing media franchises of all time, including Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Warcraft, Halo, Minecraft, and The Elder Scrolls."

Microsoft doesn't give a hoot what platform you use Gamepass on.

They give a couple hoots, otherwise Gamepass would be on Linux

Gamepass is on Linux. They literally have a tutorial on how to get it to run on your Steam Deck.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-...

That's cloud gaming, not games run locally

Your point was that Microsoft "gives a couple of hoots" about which platform Gamepass is on, implying that they specifically care about making Gamepass not accessible on Linux. Them having a guide for Gamepass access on Linux proves the opposite.

But you're just nitpicking looking for an argument. So, goodbye.

You are going to be amazed when you find out how many Large Corporations contribute to FreeBSD.

What's even more amazing is how many Large Corporations use FreeBSD, but don't contribute to it.

What's even more amazing is you expect Large Corporations to contribute when they the license just allows the to use it for nothing.

Exactly right.

> To me, anything that emulates windows primitives is a bad thing.

To me, dogma is a bad thing.

> these changes being pushed by Microsoft

I don't think Microsoft has anything to do with NTSYNC. Its goal is to make running Windows games on Linux easier.

I hate to break it to you, but Linux has always had a very significant amount of development done by and for various corporate interests. There are whole companies that exist solely to commercialize Linux.

>> Lets hope the BSDs can continue staying independent of Large Corporations.

If that's a concern they really shouldn't use the BSD license. Imagine what will happen if the BSDs become popular.

Microsoft did not push these changes. Valve (and places like Collabora) did, because it meaningfully improves performance for emulated Windows games. You should probably at least get the basics of your story straight if you're going to scare yourself silly over something you don't understand.

Windows did the same thing, in Windows Vista they added some Linux style synchronization primitives, for example condition variables.

> Lets hope the BSDs can continue staying independent of Large Corporations.

I have some bad news for you on what MacOS and iOS are originally based on.

Not really, Sony and Apple are good examples of how BSDs would have looked like if the AT&T lawsuit never happened, and UNIX vendors would keep using BSD on their UNIX flavours, also most likely no one would have cared for Linux if it wasn't for that lawsuit.

NT is more advanced than Unix. It's a good thing for Linux to be adopting these decade old ideas.

Without providing examples, like no giant lock (mostly gone on Linux, now), IOCP, less monolithic kernel, inherit async I/O in the kernel, et. al., your assertion going to be lost on those who see "Windows == bad", which it certainly is closer to the surface.

Is initcall_blacklist not enough of an option for you?

I am still on 5.15, I will need to remember to blacklist it. But that does not address the fact Microsoft is slowly taking control of Linux.

In what way do you view this as Microsoft taking control of Linux? This is an effort to support more users leaving Microsoft for Linux and taking their software with them.

yes, let keep BSD corporation free, business free, and user free.

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