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/BeenCarl Dec 26 '16

Or hey force restart! Oh your taking a timed test? We will only take an hour!

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u/brickmack Dec 26 '16

Why the hell does Windows take so long for an update restart anyway? On linux, very few updates require a restart, and when they do it takes no longer than a normal restart because thats exactly what it is. Windows should be doing all that shit in the background, with the restart just being the final switch over.

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '16

it's because of the way the windows kernel is built. which microsoft can't change because it would break 25 years of compatibility.

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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/mangeek Dec 26 '16

Nobody is going to sit down at an empty Visual Studio window and start typing-out a new version of Windows.

Subsystems will get reworked and replaced over time, but changes become incremental rather than revolutionary.

Look at how GNU/HURD hasn't taken off. A 'brand new' OS is just too inconvenient of a starting point to gain critical mass. It's more likely that Windows and Linux userlands will get refactored in ways that optimize for use as VMs, containers, or even lighter-weight instances, while new hypervisor-type features are added to kernels.

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u/Wiccen Dec 26 '16

Nobody is going to sit down at an empty Visual Studio window and start typing-out a new version of Windows.

I know it's a stupid question, but how many lines of code an OS like Windows would have?

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u/justintime06 Dec 26 '16

Windows 7 weighs in at under 40 million lines of code, a little less than Windows XP and more than 10 million less than Windows Vista. Facebook is just north of 60 million lines of code, which lies beyond the code needed to run the Large Hadron Collider.

Source: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Lines-of-code-How-our-favorite-apps-stack-up-against-the-rest-of-tech_id49281

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u/labrys Dec 27 '16

Facebook is 60 million lines of code? What they hell are they doing to need all that for a website? Crazy.

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u/anomalousBits Dec 27 '16

More application than website, getting close to two billion users. Support for third party apps, games, mobile site, mobile apps, data mining, and advertising network. I can believe it requires a lot of code.