I don't get the argument. There are parts of Windows I don't like, so I have chosen a 3rd-party (often open-source) replacement. The exact same process as I do on Linux. I don't see why I have to switch to Linux to have that freedom.
(and to be honest, I don't care where the taskbar is)
Honestly, what I would like them to do is make/support a modern Copy on Write filesystem so that System Restore actually works, and so that it’s easy to roll back when Windows Update borks your PC.
You don’t need Linux for either of these things. You need software engineers to build a modern filesystem or make Windows natively support ZFS or something.
Just an example. Microsoft developed several browser engines: first Trident, then EdgeHTML. Edge wasn't bad, it was on par with Chrome, may be slightly behind, but nothing that couldn't be fixed with time. But Microsoft decided to abandon it and use Blink, because that was cheaper.
I absolutely could see the same scenario in the future, when they would need to cut expenses. Just get Linux, wine, fix enough bugs to make explorer.exe and OneDrive.exe to run smoothly enough and ship it.
True, but you don't generally need backward compatibility with HTML rendering engines. You definitely do with OS kernels.
One would like to believe that as far gone as they are on Windows, they’re not that far gone. But hey, anything could happen.
That’s not to say you’re wrong.
But that said, I didn't say either were "good", I said that NT is "arguably better".
ETA: I reread my comment; you're right, I actually said that NT "isn't bad at all". I stand by what I said mostly though; that doesn't imply it's "good" necessarily, just that it's arguably better than Linux.
I also don't get why people claim NT is "better." Linux is a modern kernel under very active development.
There are a few interviews of Dave Cutler (NT's architect) around where he explains this far better than I am here.
Overall, you have classic needs and if you don't care about OSS (either for auditability, for customizability or for philosophical choice about open source), it's a workable option with its strength and weaknesses, just like the Linux kernel.
Also Linux being OSS can't be dismissed because it means it'll have features that Microsoft isn't interested in for Windows.
Because it does do some things "better". All I/O is async. No stupid OOM. Personality support. Stable ABI.
> Linux is a modern kernel under very active development.
As is NT, on both accounts.
Much of the discussion surrounding NT's supposed superiority is outdated or superficial at best. Linux, on the other hand, offers several advantages that actually matters. It supports a wider variety of filesystems natively, with FUSE providing exceptional utility. Linux also accommodates more architectures and allows for more creative applications through features like User Mode Linux and the Linux Kernel Library. It also has a more robust debugging ecosystem thanks to its large community and open source nature. All of these things are possible because Linux isn't bound by a single company's commercial interests.
Also, is Microsoft putting as much effort into NT these days? I find it hard to believe they care about NT when they stopped caring about what runs on top of it, leading to articles like this one.
Not nearly to the depth and breth of NT. NT is async I/O throughout. Linux has a bunch of libs that ride on top of pretend async I/O with io_uring as a more recent bonus.
> It's debatable whether NT's lack of memory overcommitting is a superior choice.
NT won't randomly kill a process. That's the winning play.
> OS personalities have never been relevant outside of marketing
Until you've used them for non-marketing purposes, then they're invaluable. Personalities existed when virtualization didn't exist on x86.
> Moreover, the Linux kernel maintains a stable ABI.
The only stable ABI on Linux is Win32.
> It supports a wider variety of filesystems natively,
Most distros suggest ext4 out of the box. Sysadmins are going to deploy ZFS where it counts. Some might use XFS. Having access to a ton of file systems is great, but the usage outside of ext4 is going to be comparatively low. ext4 is the only FS I'd want to see as first-party on Windows as a data drive. But that would have been more important before persuasive networking.
> with FUSE providing exceptional utility
FUSE is also on Win32 via https://winfsp.dev/rel/.
> It also has a more robust debugging ecosystem thanks to its large community and open source nature.
This ignores the debugging tools on Win32 by a country mile.
> is Microsoft putting as much effort into NT these days
Yes. Even if you do the bare minimum investigative effort and follow the "what's new" for each version of Windows, you can see the kernel-level investment. Much of this is around security and isolation of kernel components. There is also Microsoft in talks (finally, again) with EDR vendors to isolate their solutions; hopefully game devs are next.
> leading to articles like this one.
This isn't an article. It's an uninformed blog post.
Is this a purity thing or does it have practical implications?
> NT won't randomly kill a process. That's the winning play.
Every OS will have to when it runs out of resources. No overcommitting means it's less resource-efficient too, so things aren't that simple.
> Until you've used them for non-marketing purposes, then they're invaluable. Personalities existed when virtualization didn't exist on x86.
When have OS personalities ever been a commercial success? Every product that built on it went nowhere.
> The only stable ABI on Linux is Win32.
Containers and Flatpaks prove otherwise. Static binaries exist, too.
Also, if you're extending this Linux / Windows comparison to include the userland, then Windows is no match for Linux. Not when Microsoft is actively sabotaging Windows.
> Having access to a ton of file systems is great, but the usage outside of ext4 is going to be comparatively low.
What on earth? There's more use to filesystems than mounting it at root. Are you really claiming that OS personalities are useful, but being able to mount any filesystem is not? That's absurd.
> FUSE is also on Win32 via https://winfsp.dev/rel/
Which doesn't mean much without an ecosystem of programs using WinFsp that's comparable to Linux. Moreover, the long-term development of WinFsp isn't guaranteed, and there remains the risk that Microsoft could introduce changes that might impede the functionality of third-party filesystems.
> It's an uninformed blog post.
Uninformed? While an official Windows-themed Linux distro doesn't make sense, the observation that Windows is declining and Microsoft no longer cares at all what users think is very much correct and obvious to anyone. The fact that Microsoft hasn't ceased development doesn't negate this fact.
> Every OS will have to when it runs out of resources. No overcommitting means it's less resource-efficient too, so things aren't that simple.
NT does memory overcommit...
> When have OS personalities ever been a commercial success? Every product that built on it went nowhere.
Xceed made money off of it. Yes, every product has a shelf life. Just like every commercial Unix. They were successful at what they did until a replacement came along.
> Also, if you're extending this Linux / Windows comparison to include the userland, then Windows is no match for Linux. Not when Microsoft is actively sabotaging Windows.
You're not saying anything, here. "No match" how, exactly?
> There's more use to filesystems than mounting it at root. Are you really claiming that OS personalities are useful, but being able to mount any filesystem is not? That's absurd.
Absurd, how? Is mounting HFS /really/ that critical to your day-to-day?
> Which doesn't mean much without an ecosystem of programs using WinFsp that's comparable to Linux.
Movin' those goal posts!
> Uninformed? While an official Windows-themed Linux distro doesn't make sense,
You uh... did read the post, right? That's what the entire thing was about!
Or are you claiming that io_uring integrates async IO throughout the OS whereas epoll didn't?
Using it for the OS partition is not very well supported right now though (for a consumer), installing etc. works fine, but DISM doesn't support ReFS so adding features generally doesn't work
Besides, ReFS doesn't do data journaling by default.
A large part of my complaints about Windows Update have come because it can brick your machine, System Restore doesn’t work, and so you’re stuck spending a weekend trying to back up and fix stuff.
When I ran Ubuntu with ZFS on root, I had it so that I every time apt was run, it took a snapshot. This came in handy when my WiFi driver got borked during an update; I was able to restore from a previous point, it took like ten minutes.
And on a client machine, it's of much less importance overall (to you, it may be super important and I don't want to discount that). And on the server side, that's why we have n+2 failovers. No single machine of importance should ever be a point of failure... I realize that's not always reality but it's more or less Microsoft's position; after all, why sell one Windows Server license when you can sell 3!
There are few pieces of software that are more universally disliked than Windows Update, and while I cannot speak for everyone the main reason I hate it so much is because it's often automatic and I've had it make my computer unbootable multiple times (and it's actually a big reason I ditched Windows completely like sixteen years ago).
If there were full filesystem snapshots and a utility to fully restore from those snapshots, I think a lot of people would be more willing to do the updates. It wouldn't be hard for users that have any tech skills at all; do what NixOS does [1] and on boot allow the user to choose an earlier snapshot to boot from if anything gets toasted.
Windows does have System Restore, but as far as I can tell that never has fixed anyone's problems at any point in time, along with the "Automatic Repair Tools" which has become a running joke in my family.
It just bothers me, because the FOSS community has solved this, a long time ago no less. Back in 2012, I used btrfs + Snapper whenever I would install a "risky" driver like a GPU or Wi-Fi chip, or whenever I did an update. When I did break my video display, restoring from the snapshot took like ten minutes, I'm able to get back into my system and fix the issue, without having to do any major surgery to the internals of Linux. I've never tried it with FreeBSD and ZFS but I suspect it's a similar process.
Microsoft is a trillion dollar corporation, they have a higher market cap than the entire GDP of NYC and Singapore combined. Why exactly can't they just augment ReFS and copy Snapper or Time Machine (with APFS)? They have infinite funds, they have access to Dave Cutler and until about a year ago Leslie Lamport, they already have a CoW filesystem and they could easily afford a license to any version of ZFS if ReFS wasn't up to the task.
[1] I know NixOS isn't doing filesystem interface, but the overall principle is the same in this instance.
EDIT: Just to be clear, if you don't understand when you'd use this command, do not use it. I suddenly realised people might not be familiar with formatting, and don't want to be responsible for the destruction.
Containers are hardly modern, they trace back to offerings on 1990's, like HP-UX Vaults.
Obviously not built into Windows but readily available since 2004.
The kernel version has to do with process isolation not being fully there when Windows containers were initially supported, so they had the limitation the container kernel dependency had to match the host version.
Since Windows 11 this has been relaxed.
The namespacing approach is based on Jobs API.
Modern Windows security relies on several sandboxed components, Hyper-V is always running anyway, also one of the reasons of the updated harware requirements, while this configuration is optional on Windows 10, it is always enabled on Windows 11.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/b...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-...
That’s my belief, and I’m always looking for clues that it’s what develops into their long-term plan. Right now the only thing we could glean is reduced investments in Windows.
What "reduced investments"? They just put out 25H2 with numerous changes and many monthly updates bring new features online.
I've been on macOS for eons, but I still hope that some day, someone at microsoft will have the balls to make a Windows Redux. Which is just Windows 7 with a coat of paint; and less stuff, installable separately; geared towards speed and not stuffings.
Win32, stable driver APIs (I can still run Win11 on my old Nvidia GPU laptop which Linux doesn't support), COM, good remote desktop infrastructure, DirectX 12, WPF, ClearType or certain Win32 aspects like IO completiton ports (allows true async like uring does but in Windows since NT times) are all has some good engineering and widespread adoption. Many other OSes still copy what Windows offered in early 00s.
They are fucking their last mile a big time. They fuck explorer, they fuck desktop experience. All in the name of stupid fads. Silicon Valley hustler Microsoft is worse than shirts with Ballmer's fluids Microsoft.
At least on what concerns Windows development, everything was much better with him, even if the command.com wasn't great, there were alternatives already.
GUI frameworks have become a mess, .NET, C++ and Visual Studio are now AI tainted as well.
That being said, Azure is already running a lot of Linux. So for backend, it’s somewhere between Linux and Windows depending on what you need to do
But Azure also heavily runs Hyper V.
This article lists a few random grievances (which I sympathize with), says linux is good now for games, and then presents the bombastic conclusion that Microsoft will deprecate Windows, without making any connection between the two.
It follows that, at some threshold number of users, it becomes much cheaper to ship a Linux distro than to continue to support Windows proper.
:shrug:
Guess we'll see in 15 years.
Game studios don't care about Linux on the client side.