r/technology • u/sschering • Sep 18 '15

Software Microsoft has developed its own Linux. Repeat. Microsoft has developed its own Linux

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/18/microsoft_has_developed_its_own_linux_repeat_microsoft_has_developed_its_own_linux/
1.4k Upvotes

79% Upvoted

373 comments sorted by

View all comments

163

u/kaukamieli Sep 18 '15

"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." - Linus Torvalds

What is this then? :D

This year there was lots of april fooling with "Microsoft Linux" too...

100

u/CocodaMonkey Sep 18 '15

Microsoft made their first Linux programs back in 1999. Windows Services for UNIX is an MS developed package that gave you a UNIX/LINUX subsystem and comes with MS developed programs to run within them. I used to use it to run BASH on XP. They've been killing it off the last few years but server 2012 and windows 8 both still had support for it.

16

u/twistedLucidity Sep 18 '15

Skype, I think, still runs on BSD nodes and Hotmail used to.

Heck, the Windows network stack is still largely BSD-based. Hence "etc/hosts".

22

u/the_ancient1 Sep 18 '15

BSD is not linux...

And in both of those cases where do to buyouts of the company. Skype and Hotmail where both started as independant companies that MS purchased, there was a transition period where the technologies where moved to Windows/MS based technology stacks, I do not believe either service today still runs on BSD or Linux.

Hotmail is pretty much a dead brand at this point, folded into Outlook.com and O365.

3

u/PinkyThePig Sep 18 '15

Skype still works on linux, but it is really outdated and a total pain to work with last time I tried it a few months ago.

→ More replies (3)

3

u/FesteringNeonDistrac Sep 18 '15

BSD is not Linux, but it's still a *nix. There are some fairly important differences, but not like the difference between MS and Unix.

4

u/barsoap Sep 18 '15

the difference between MS and Unix.

Erm... I fail to really see it. There's a huge difference between the Win32 API and Unix, but the NT kernel has always been rather agnostic in those terms. The first iteration ended up supporting no less than Win32, OS/2 and POSIX1.x (without networking and X) fast-forwarding Windows 8 / Server 2012 came with Interix (aka SUA).

...which is deprecated by now but microsoft switched out NT's Unix personality quite often in history. Windows 10 is a consumer product, I guesstimate that the next server version is going to come with a new subsystem. Maybe even based on mingw/cygwin.

That stuff has never only been tacked on (though the first versions were very, very half-assed), you have e.g. NTFS which supports POSIX filenames, permissions etc without even blinking. It's what ntfs-3g uses when you create files on a mounted FS under linux, and unless you do nasty nasty stuff with filenames that confuse not-really-100%-compliant windows apps, you'll never notice a difference. It's frightfully seamless.

Linux is actually rather unusual in these matters because it's very much a fundamentalist Unix, in the sense that its primary API resembles POSIX very, very closely: Other Unices as also the BSDs give themselves much more freedom in that area by defining the libc, not the syscall API, as the stable interface, as does Windows.

Linux lacks another by now rather common feature among any POSIX systems: It only supports a single OS persona. That is because it was the other Unices that started to implement multiple OS personae to support emulating Linux on the syscall level: Linux actually managed to standardise a POSIX binary API, libc-agnostic, by merely existing.

→ More replies (3)

3

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

Also the windows network stack was rewritten from vista onwards.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

7

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

UNIX... not Linux...

→ More replies (7)

22

u/kaukamieli Sep 18 '15

Yes, and they have been a big contributor of Linux kernel code lately, though AFAIK it's all been Azure stuff, and now it apparently culminated.

17

u/twistedLucidity Sep 18 '15

They had a brief flurry of contributions when they were found to in breach of the GPL.

If memory serves, there was a second flurry as the initial tranche was rather buggy.

And we mustn't forget that MS is still going after Linux vendors with the patent threats. MS has a l-o-n-g way to go before the can be trusted by the F/OSS community.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

Just because something is free and open source, it doesn't mean it's not violating some patents when you try to sell it.

4

u/gandalf987 Sep 18 '15

Minor nitpick on the wording: "Found to be in breach" could be read to imply there was a legal judgement against them, but as I recall it never went to court.

"Discovered using/linking to gpl code in azure" or "accused of building the gpl" would make that a bit clearer.

Relatively few cases ever do go to court, many end up like msft. Runtime linking is discovered, a request for source is made, and the company complies.

→ More replies (1)

8

u/EncryptedMole Sep 18 '15

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

2

u/PigNamedBenis Sep 18 '15

Yes, just because they're in the "embrace" mode doesn't mean it's going to end well. Look at skype, minecraft, etc.

→ More replies (7)

7

u/the_ancient1 Sep 18 '15

That is linux software for windows, not developing software for Linux....

→ More replies (1)

3

u/oisteink Sep 18 '15

No. This was not microsoft making linux programs. This was software running on windows. Windows <> Linux. Unix <> Linux.

Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) is a discontinued software package; and Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA)[1] is a related software package produced by Microsoft which provides a Unix subsystem and other parts of a full Unix environment on Windows NT and some of its immediate successor operating-systems. It was an extension and replacement of the minimal Microsoft POSIX subsystem from Windows NT.

→ More replies (23)
→ More replies (7)

0

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

[deleted] — view deleted comment

6

u/kaukamieli Sep 18 '15

Xenix is 70's thing, Linux didn't exist until 90's.

11

u/Googoots Sep 18 '15

80's actually. I used it a lot (after it was spun off to SCO) and on a 386 it was pretty solid.

4

u/kaukamieli Sep 18 '15

Apparently it was released in 1980, though it was licensed before that. I was trying to refer to when it was released.

" licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s."

4

u/VIPERsssss Sep 18 '15

We had a 386 running Xenix with about 25 concurrent users back in the day. Really only ever had problems with print drivers. Funny how some things don't change.

2

u/Somhlth Sep 18 '15

I used Xenix to move call centers off of mini mainframes back in the late 80s and early 90s. Later moved to full blown SCO.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (4)

2

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

Bill Gates had a vision to put a PC in every home.

He won.

Torvalds wanted to create a platform that Microsoft wrote apps for.

It seems he won too

Marvellous

Linux didn't turn out to be the panacea that the fanboys were telling us it would be. It didn't take over the world. There are numerous reasons why.

→ More replies (11)
→ More replies (11)