Microsoft to ship full Linux kernel within Windows 10

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Windows is a flaming garbage pile of an OS under the hood TBH. I would switch to Linux, but laziness.

I can't switch to Linux because of a number of things I use.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

I can't switch to Linux because of a number of things I use.

Everything I do would work fine on Linux, save Word which is a bit dicey. I've been thinking of dual booting (Win10 for gaming, Linux for work) for a while now and Proton is honestly making me think I should switch to Linux, probably Mint, full time.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Everything I do would work fine on Linux, save Word which is a bit dicey. I've been thinking of dual booting (Win10 for gaming, Linux for work) for a while now and Proton is honestly making me think I should switch to Linux, probably Mint, full time.

Vegas Pro, Vector Magic and the capture card I've got are the main reasons why I can't really switch to Linux.

btw when we getting relive on linux amd

[DavidKalinowski]

5 hours ago, Commodus said:

Nah, they just meant that it'd be the last monolithic Windows update, and that you'd see constant iterative updates from now on.  There's zero incentive to re-do Windows around Linux!  It'd break compatibility without much benefit.

Windows is breaking compatibility just fine on its own. (see the 1809 update issues with graphics card drivers.)

[BachChain]

14 minutes ago, Nowak said:

I can't imagine that the Linux kernel takes up more than a couple megabytes. Lemme go check.

 

Yeah, it's just 7 megabytes on my Ubuntu MATE installation. Barely any disk space used to store the kernel image.

Kernel + userspace + standard programs + various modules + whatever else Microsoft bundles + whatever system they're using to run the whole thing. My point is that it's non-zero, and the target audience isn't even a majority of users.

[flibberdipper]

11 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Vegas Pro, Vector Magic and the capture card I've got are the main reasons why I can't really switch to Linux.

btw when we getting relive on linux amd

but muh forza

[Nowak]

Just now, BachChain said:

Kernel + userspace + standard programs + various modules + whatever else Microsoft bundles + whatever system they're using to run the whole thing. My point is that it's non-zero, and the target audience isn't even a majority of users.

Userspace and utilities aren't installed by default. Just the kernel.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, laminutederire said:

Well not really. The main issue with wsl is gpu access for opencl/cuda. Other than that its basically just a terminal like linux terminals

Last time I tried it it was extremely limited, even just accessing local files was a pain in the butt.

[2FA]

45 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Last time I tried it it was extremely limited, even just accessing local files was a pain in the butt.

/mnt/c

[Tech Enthusiast]

Well, Microsoft is killing reasons to install Linux.

I doubt there is really more to say than that.

 

There is no huge market share for Linux, but there also is no huge market share for anything but Windows after all.

If they can gain 0.3% of market share, due to people not installing Linux for whatever Software that needs it,... well. It is another 0.3%!

This also allows 0.3% more people to use Visual Studio, which is like 3-5k per user, per year, along with MS Office, MS Teams,..... So there goes the money as well. 

[Sauron]

22 minutes ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

Well, Microsoft is killing reasons to install Linux.

I doubt there is really more to say than that.

The best reason to install Linux is that then you don't have to use Windows. This doesn't change that.

[Tech Enthusiast]

31 minutes ago, Sauron said:

The best reason to install Linux is that then you don't have to use Windows. This doesn't change that.

Which, judging by the market share, does not matter to most people.

I would not touch Linux with a 10-foot-long pole. But that choice is up to each and every user them self.

[laminutederire]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Last time I tried it it was extremely limited, even just accessing local files was a pain in the butt.

You just have to cd /mnt/your letter drive to access windows files, and cd to linux only files folders when needed. It's trickier to access them from windows directly but if it's really needed, you can move or copy them to windows territory!

I first started using it for git, and then to learn c++ a bit with it, and I always used visual studio in tandem, and both communicated rather well what issue are you referring to exactly? 

[Jito463]

11 hours ago, Sauron said:

even Microsoft needs a few hours to build it, test it and ship it

[Lagercat1]

6 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Baking WINE into an OS wouldn't be that hard if you had the Windows source code to hand. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to have engineers able to write an ahead-of-time translator either.

True didnt think about that.. huh maybe

[Derangel]

14 hours ago, Sauron said:

Arch gets new kernels within a couple of days from the upstream release, even Microsoft needs a few hours to build it, test it and ship it... also on a real Linux distro you can run RC kernels if you really want a new feature right now.

Test? A company needs to have an internal QA team in order to actually test things. MS just calls shit "good enough" then rolls it out to Insiders (aka unpaid beta testers) before maybe fixing things and rolling it out to the end user (aka unpaid beta tester branch 2). Then they fix broken shit before rolling it out to the people that they care about (enterprise users).

[Sauron]

10 hours ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

Which, judging by the market share, does not matter to most people.

Developer market share for Linux is a lot higher. The average user doesn't even know what Linux is.

10 hours ago, laminutederire said:

what issue are you referring to exactly? 

I don't remember much to be honest, I tried starting a couple of system services and I found out you either can't or need to do it in a different way from the actual distro (systemd); plus some packages were missing from the repositories (???) and the terminal emulator is trash. I gave up almost immediately because why bother when I can use the real thing?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

On 5/7/2019 at 12:08 PM, Misanthrope said:

why would most home users need Linux inside Windows 10

i think it's really cool, and i'm gonna use it a bunch to run some handy tools that are linux only, but yeah it makes way more sense to bring it to the enterprise first. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

16 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

I should switch to Linux, probably Mint, full time.

no Mint. it's based on Ubuntu LTS so running Windows games is a challenge because it's kinda out of date. i would recommend Manjaro Cinnamon if you want Linux Mint's interface but an up-to-date OS Underneath. 

 

full disclosure, i'm biased against Mint lol. i think it's an awful distro. so take my opinion with a grain of salt. 

[Chunchunmaru_]

On 5/7/2019 at 7:52 AM, Dan Castellaneta said:

Windows has needed to be rebuilt for ages. Wouldn't be that bad of an idea to center it around Linux.

Still an hybrid kernel like the Windows NT one is a newer approach than the old monolithic Linux (a unix-like 70's one clone) with modules... The fact it's stable and relatively faster in some occasions has other reasons

On 5/7/2019 at 2:53 PM, Arika S said:

Do you honestly think that "EEE" is capable of taking down Linux?

Imo no, a simple web engine is a totally different thing from a kernel project I don't see a way they could possibly do that, it's too much used currently for different things unlike a plain web engine...

On 5/7/2019 at 1:48 PM, HarryNyquist said:

It's going to be open source, so I don't see the issue. If you want pure Linux then use a VM or install it directly.

I assume the customization they're talking about will be for things like hardware acceleration & audio, which can't be done most efficiently through virtualization. In customizing the kernel they can provide direct access to hardware instead of routing it through HyperV.

18 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Baking WINE into an OS wouldn't be that hard if you had the Windows source code to hand. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to have engineers able to write an ahead-of-time translator either.

This is just what WSL 2 is, before they were using a sort of reverse Wine (which only took less years compared to the Wine, a community project, since 20 years I think? And it's still not complete) and now they are using another approach based on the same userspace but with the actual binaries running on a Linux kernel inside a small VM, which could possibly be a great approach... But I don't know how they can gain access to physical devices without being passed to Windows, we should see how they are going to manage it.

On 5/7/2019 at 9:22 AM, Nowak said:

Yeah. It actually is possible to run graphical Linux software on Windows via an X server and a few bash commands, but there's no audio support and I don't believe there's hardware acceleration. I wonder if this'll add those missing features.

Anyway, the hardware acceleration is not really an issue, the fact is there are not any X.org servers with hardware acceleration (Xming is not perfect) currently existing in Windows, as for wayland that's another story...
As for audio, one can easily run a pulseaudio server on Windows...No matter if they run inside a vm or not

17 hours ago, Nowak said:

I can't imagine that the Linux kernel takes up more than a couple megabytes. Lemme go check.

 

Yeah, it's just 7 megabytes on my Ubuntu MATE installation. Barely any disk space used to store the kernel image.

It really depends on how it's built, considering it only needs to support a vm theoretically, it can be even less than 1M... Not considering userspace, obviously

But remember Linux kernels on distributions have all sort of drivers on it, and the kernel + initramfs + modules can weight up to 1gigabytes, I don't think the WSL 2 approach needs all those drivers or an initramfs. The Linux Kernel on android for example I remember being much smaller than the one present on GNU/Linux distributions

If one builds the linux kernel with all the modules inside the kernel image (builtin options in menuconfig), this is going to weight like the modules folder you got in /lib/

15 hours ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

Well, Microsoft is killing reasons to install Linux.

I doubt there is really more to say than that.

I don't honestly think they care about linux market share at all rather than simplifying life for developers... Or changing the uses for Linux in servers or ioT

On 5/7/2019 at 7:48 AM, Dan Castellaneta said:

Honestly, time will tell whether if this'll be Microsoft's admission of defeat or them experimenting hardcore with Linux.

On 5/7/2019 at 7:47 AM, Nowak said:

Again, this is the same company that used to call Linux a "cancer" and actively resisted its proliferation in the workplace. Now they're embracing it to the point where they're including the kernel within Windows 10. Thoughts? Concerns? Screams of agony? Should Microsoft replace the NT kernel with the Linux kernel and finally usher in the Year of the Linux Desktop?

On 5/7/2019 at 1:47 PM, Drak3 said:

“Hit pieces.” What a load of shit.

Doubtful.

Don't start another flame war please ç_ç

 

[Drak3]

7 minutes ago, Chunchunmaru_ said:

Don't start another flame war please

OP shouldn't make false claims then.

[LAwLz]

40 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

OP shouldn't make false claims then.

It's not a false claim though.

For example Microsoft used to run a campaign called "get the facts" where they tried to discourage companies from adopting GNU/Linux by stating that GNU/Linux would cost more in the long run (despite other internal studies from Microsoft showing the opposite).

 

But nahh, you're right. Sending out papers like this to companies is totally not a hit piece. (sarcasm)

[Drak3]

5 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It's not a false claim though.

For example Microsoft used to run a campaign called "get the facts" where they tried to discourage companies from adopting GNU/Linux by stating that GNU/Linux would cost more in the long run (despite other internal studies from Microsoft showing the opposite).

 

But nahh, you're right. Sending out papers like this to companies is totally not a hit piece. (sarcasm)

Your first article is a hit piece, prime example of it.

 

And actually reading through the second article (which I recommend you do), it holds up to scrutiny. It is also disingenuous to take it of the context that it was written, in case you try to take it out of context.

[RoseLuck462]

Hopefully it’ll make Windows 10 more pleasant to use.

[vorticalbox]

On 5/7/2019 at 7:02 AM, Screen said:

The vision and focus is shifting. They are just Improving their stand over Linux with integrations such as this. Nothing will be able to touch them with their aggressive adaption to opensource and Linux technologies to cater needs of developers. They have already won the battle if there was one.

Yup classic EEE (embrace, extend,  extinguish)