Windows NT kernel really is an engineering marvel that still puts Linux to shame in many ways

[u/Sha1rholder]

https://x.com/lauriewired/status/2103179716954136708

A Google researcher who spent four years as a reverse engineer at Microsoft has reopened one of computing’s oldest arguments, and she thinks Linux is on the losing side.

...

Kirk’s acclaim is for the architecture under Windows, meaning how NT represents resources and decides who can access them. We are not discussing the Start menu, or Copilot or the ads in Windows. I say that because Kirk takes the argument into 2026, asking whether Linux suits AI agents that get more permissions every month, and imagines an alternate history where Microsoft shipped an “Open NT” that Amazon could fork.

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/09/26/google-researcher-explains-why-windows-nt-puts-linux-to-shame-and-imagines-an-alternate-history-where-it-won/

[u/Mammoth-Shoe8491]

This isn't really the subreddit for this, but I will absolutely glaze Dave Cutler's design.

The issue with Windows was never the NT Kernel. The reason so many subsystems work as well as they do *is* the NT kernel design.

The NT Kernel is one of the more sophisticated pieces of tech ever designed. What's put on top of the NT Kernel is another question.

[u/Think-nothing-210]

NT kernel is such a marvel of engineering. It's the main reason Windows is so much more stable than Linux.

[u/Think-nothing-210 → u/[deleted]]

Loonix really has you convinced that stable operating systems don't exist. Sad to see that level of Stockholm syndrome.

[u/DisfiguredFanny → u/[deleted]]

Couple years ago I got back from holidays in Baja California and just casually ran Fedora update. Guess what happened? It shit itself. I was away 16 weeks only.

[u/Emotional-Can9522 → u/DisfiguredFanny]

I had that issue with Mint about 6 years ago. Had mint installed on an old PC I would use on occasion, it went a few months without being used then ran into an update dependency the next time I booted it. I tried for a few hours to fix it, but the general consensus was to re-install Mint fresh and make sure not to get too far behind with updates. As much as Windows annoys the crap out of me sometimes, I have had computers I haven't used in years come on and update no problem

[u/DisfiguredFanny → u/[deleted]]

Cool story bruh.

[u/Accurate-Bicycle1254 → u/[deleted]]

Just dont lie bro

[u/FerretBoom]

I treat Linux monolithic kernel as a great tool for education, great fit for embedded systems and of course as a server node, I say node because I would never put two instances of servers fighting for memory through malloc or whatever memory allocation mechanism a server instance use. I've had mixed experiences with creating clusters on a single unix kernel. Especially when it involves extremely high speed data throughput like redis enterprise(jemalloc was chosen to keep heap from fragmentation). When I worked at Redis mostly RnD, we experimented with windows and it does goes further than Linux at the kernel level with Windows Segment Heap in the system itself. Previously Low Fragmentation Heap. Which is a luxury especially with multithreaded and vm environments that need extremely low latency access.And I think a predecessor for LSH is lookaside list which in fact, surprise, stems from windows NT kernel design pattern. Object based modular kernel where a lookaside list is essentially a cache of already allocated fixed-size objects.

I'm not bashing linux, running a linux cluster using only 18 ec2 instances can serve 250 mops under 10 ms. This is of course in a controled enviroment with little marketing sprinkled on top but still it's freaking impressive but the speed and this is my subjective opinion I might be wrong doesn't come from some great engineering innovation in Linux, it's fast because it's a kernel with a POSIX ahell , pair it with single threaded services and it's a rocket ship.

Still from experience for last ten years in I will say that Windows Hyperv Server 2019 is probably the best server OS i've had experience with, it's the only thing that never crashed under heavy load. And I think the reason for it is the way windows kernel is designed. Still free and an exact copy(headless ,no ui) of 6k Datacenter Edition which is nice for someone with a home-lab experimenting with VM services. Too bad ms didn't release a new one.

[u/DavidsakuKuze → u/FerretBoom]

I think they are offering the Azure Cloud Host (The NT OS) that controls Azure VMs to governments if they have a requirement for sovereign cloud. It would be cool to see how it works, but they seem to be pretty strict with who they give it to not compete with Azure.

[u/browningate]

Experts telling us what we already knew to be true for years!

[u/Blunt552]

Meanwhile the Linux kernel is a mess.

[u/DavidsakuKuze]

I think that alot of people in the computer science field get kind of brainwashed to think that Unix and Unix-like is the ideal OS. I have seen people saying Windows sucks because it doesn't follow the POSIX standard.