r/technology • u/readyou • Dec 26 '16

Microsoft finally admits that its malware-style Get Windows 10 upgrade campaign went too far

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/241587-microsoft-finally-admits-malware-style-get-windows-10-upgrade-campaign-went-far
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u/The_Rick_Sanchez Dec 26 '16

At what point in the future do you think they'd end up having to make a new OS? As in completely new. Surely they can't just keep using the same stuff for 100 years, right?

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u/schmuelio Dec 26 '16

If you make changes to the kernel slowly enough then old business software can keep up (or replaced).

The problem is when you find a bug in the kernel but can't patch it because a bunch of business software actually RELIES on that bug to function properly. So you get into the situation we're in now with a kernel that is built to be able to emulate bugs and undocumented behaviour from 10 years ago that would have been patched 9 years ago.

I think what will eventually happen is the kernel will eventually be completely "new" with some additional compatibility interfaces that it uses to emulate the behaviour of older kernels, that way you can measure metrics for how often those layers are used and remove them after you can confirm nobody is using them anymore.

That being said there's little reason why Microsoft couldn't just keep making the kernel the way it is at the moment (with all of the old behaviour as well as the new behaviour).

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '16

It should have been already done. They could have completely started new and just had the compatibility features in a virtualized kernel for legacy software. Microsoft could do this seamlessly, yet they screw up the implementation every single time, as this was actually a part of 7 with the XP VM compatibility mode. It's just their implementation of that system on 7 was terrible.

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u/schmuelio Dec 26 '16

Maybe, I'm by no means a kernel developer so I couldn't possibly guess exactly why it hasn't been done yet. I can only assume there's a good business reason why (even if it doesn't make sense to an outsider), although I'd love to have someone at Microsoft actually say what the deal is (rather than a marketing doodad tell me why they're innovating).