Just wondering: Would you like Microsoft adapt a Unix kernel?

Would it be okay with you if MIcrosoft adapted Unix as their kernel?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 45.0%

  • No

    Votes: 11 55.0%
  • Total voters
    20
concorde

concorde

New Member
Would you like for Microsoft to use their existing kernel, or would you like for them to adapt Unix as their new kernel?

Note: Windows would be like a window manager (like KDE or GNOME or XFCE) and would be painted on top of Unix like Mac OS. Windows would still be Windows but with Unix superiority - Would you use it? If not, what would you do? Would you panic and pull out your hair:) or move on?
 
Rumor has it that Apple is going to adapt Linux into their kernel - I don't know if this is true or not. I think, likely, they will continue to keep their BSD Unix kernel (Darwin).
I'm having a little bit of doubt of if people will continue to accept Windows if it had a Unix or Linux kernel: they might be scared off if they hear about anything ending in -ix or -ux. But, it'd still come with 99.9999% of computers as always. And if this ever happened there'd be a farewell sendoff for the Blue Screen Of Death, 'cause it ain't gonna happen in Unix or Linux (exception: kernel panic, and those are rare).

In a million years, according to what Microsoft says, will it ever consider becoming a Unix or Linux adopter. But, wait...I've read some articles that Microsoft uses Linux for some of their servers, particularly for their updates and patches servers that people get these things off of. Hmmmm...are they secretly liking Linux? Also, Microsoft and Novell are partnering in promoting open source openSUSE, (which I have on a partition and use frequently, alongside Ubuntu and Fedora 9) - Microsoft wants to help Novell make SuSE interoperate with Windows, which is OK. But why would Microsoft be so secretive about adopting and liking open source Linux? According to Steve Ballmer, he hates it and said something like "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." I bet when he goes home he takes a laptop into a hidden, secret closet and boots up Linux :)

I am not really fond of Dell's products, but I do have to give credit where credit is due: they openly accept orders specifying Ubuntu Linux. Does Gateway? No. Does
HP? Only HP-UX, which has fallen by the wayside. IBM ([Lenovo] which is not owned by IBM but picked up their PC market) doesn't. Linux does not have a large market yet, and with this Windows Vista mudslinging event going on and now that XP is off the shelves, it is a good opportunity to help the Linux community flourish now. But these PC manufacturers are bowing down to Microsoft like faithful worshippers and churchgoers and fear the New God. God forbid if those humble companies (when compared to Microsoft) decided to offer Linux - I don't know how Dell survived their bold act:)
 
Microsoft says that it wants to put MS-DOS behind them, but it still shows its face.
Unix was built solely on command line, so they would be phasing out MS-DOS or anything like it (MS-DOS is still there regardless of what people say) bu there would still be a command line. BUT, you can do cool things with a *nix command line, like yum install {application} or use the shutdown command with fancy bells and whistles such as telling everyone when to get off and maybe even throwing in a message. And this is beginners' stuff. Can you do that with MS-DOS? Can you add or remove a user just by typing in useradd in MS-DOS? No, you have to minimize your 'Command Prompt' window, move your mouse to the Start menu, choose Control Panel, and click a zillion times to get the job done. It's true that more work can be done in less time with a command prompt. Cool, you can even do a calculation in a *nix shell by doing this: expr {number} {operator} {number} without leaving your shell world.

I'm kind of getting off the subject :) but any discussion about Linux or Unix dictates mention about the command line (shell) - just for what its worth though.
 
Nah. It would require so much energy to make everything cross compatible that if they where to take the same energy and put it into the existing kernal then it would actually make it decent. But i dont think its the kernal so much as the front-end that needs the work.
 
Yes, Windows (front end) could use some work, but after all the kernel is very essential! You couldn't have an OS without some kind of kernel.

Windows could become some kind of window manager - like KDE or GNOME - except you pay for it and you can't copy it.


____

Tuffie - tsk! tsk! Your little message below your post...:eek: I think I might need some Pepto tablets:)
Let's keep it PG:)
 
Apple made the switch from their HFS and their proprietary kernel (Mac OS 9 and below) rather seamlessly. Everything could use some change. Microsoft can do it if they were confident - and they should be, because they have more resources (people, money, power) than Apple.

In a way, it is a good thing that Microsoft isn't even remotely planning a switch to the Unix kernel because my days of living virus free would be over:) -Right now, I have an antivirus as a courtesy to my Windows colleagues. I have no worries about viruses, I just worry if I stick my flash drive into one of the computers at work and the sysadmin hunts me down, ax in hand:P after a dangerous virus takes reign of all the computers on the network. (We have a pretty good antivirus and a titanium-clad one, too, so actually, I don't worry at all)

Wouldn't it be great if we did away with operating systems as we knew them and placed Windows, Ubuntu, MacOS - whatever - on a tiny ROM (heed - ROM) chip that is mounted on a card called an OS card? And on that card, if you want a program suite, you just take the cover off the computer and put the program chip in? If you wanted to change the OS in some way, say, by changing the desktop background, this information gets stored in an adjacent flash chip. And then, bring back the removable disk in the form of a solid state drive that can go from one PC to another, like a flash or floppy disk. I think this form of computing would be a great idea - but - the big three (Win/Lin/Mac) need to stop fighting like brothers and sisters in the backseat on a long road trip and work together so this universified computing idea could work. I'm off the subject again and I just revealed something that I could probably patent later on. There goes my aspirations of becoming a large icon in the computing industry:P
 
I personally like the NT kernel its nice

Its explorer thats crappy. IMHO, they need to get the entire GUI core out of kernel, and have kernel -> gui manager (in the same way that X server works) -> explorer windowmanager

they are doing this for the next windows methinks (minwin?)

Rumor has it that Apple is going to adapt Linux into their kernel - I don't know if this is true or not. I think, likely, they will continue to keep their BSD Unix kernel (Darwin).
Click to expand...

FreeBSD supports linux compatibility but apple wont be able to include it by default as you cant distribute GNU and proprioetary together at a kernel level (thats why lots of dists have got into hot water over nvidia/ati drivers) however it could be made a downloadable option

In a million years, according to what Microsoft says, will it ever consider becoming a Unix or Linux adopter. But, wait...I've read some articles that Microsoft uses Linux for some of their servers
Click to expand...

MS used to until very recently run Hotmail off of FreeBSD. MS used to be a UNIX vendor, they made XENIX in the 70s/80s durning the UNIX wars.

I am not really fond of Dell's products, but I do have to give credit where credit is due: they openly accept orders specifying Ubuntu Linux. Does Gateway? No. Does
HP? Only HP-UX, which has fallen by the wayside. IBM ([Lenovo] which is not owned by IBM but picked up their PC market) doesn't
Click to expand...

Lenovo dont make the mainframe products, just the home stuff. IBM still base all thier X series and other large systems on AIX , thier version of UNIX.
 
I was around in the Xenix era. Too far forgotten, but it was the first PC version of Unix offered. It was an important stepping stone which led to PC versions of Unix as we know them today, including but not limited to: MacOS X, Solaris, BSD, Linux...

jdbennett: why do you like the NT kernel? You cannot modify it - it's against the EULA and the law. It isn't as secure as a good Linux kernel. And, one company has control of it. With Linux, anyone involved can take a copy of the original kernel and modify the copy kernel and present it to the Community for others to use. Also, a Linux kernel is more efficient than a NT kernel, and then you have the filesystems such as ext3 that are way better than NTFS/FAT32 - less hard disk thrashing (thrashing = wear and tear) and less than 1 - 3% of fragmentation.
 
I know what a lot of people are thinking: what about Microsoft Office? Microsoft Windows Media Player? Outlook? Money? Encarta? ... well, that is a dilemma. They could be rewritten, or they could just be kept and ran under an emulator. Running an emulator would make it slow, and the one purpose of switching to Unix is to speed things up with its efficient kernel. Apple rewrote their programs to use the BSD kernel (yes, MacOS uses a kernel derived from BSD called Darwin), so Microsoft could do it, too. Or, as there are substitutes for Microsoft counterparts, people could use the alternatives. We all know about OpenOffice.org and its close resemblance to Office (not 2007, though; I've used 2007 and had gotten nothing out of it but a headache!) but there are alternatives for other programs. Some examples are Evolution Mail to substitute Outlook, AmaroK (the capital K is right) to substitute Windows Media (Totem would be needed for movies), Microsoft Money? Hmmm....good old fashioned pocket calculator, a wise banker, paper and a pencil. :P Encarta? I'd say a collection of good encyclopedias. You have to use these programs to know how easy they are to deal with and how comfortable you can get with them - you can't take my word for it. There's a lot of programs for Linux - you just have to find what you want.

About the shell - yes, most people using Microsoft would not want to get involved with the shell but it can be simple when you learn it unless you want to get really advanced. But, like I said in previous posts, there are benefits of using the shell. Unix/Linux gives you options with the shell and its infinite abilities - however, most of Windows administration tasks can all be done with the mouse, some of it can be good, some of it is a pain. What can you do with MS-DOS? I call it MS-DOS thirty years after its release (I was 13 when it came out) because that's what it is. Yes, if you open "Command Prompt" in Vista and XP, it is essentially the same program that you'd find in Windows 98 and 95 when the application was boldly named MS-DOS Prompt.

Unix and Linux does not have to be taken in its crude form. Look at Ubuntu: it is very easy to use. So is Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva and many other distros (distributions). Microsoft could take what it wants, weed out what it doesn't want and improve on things that need improvement in the kernel. It can even add what it wants to the kernel. The Linux kernel is modular - like building blocks - you don't have to have every module if you don't want to, and you can have more than what is offered if you build it yourself.
 
It would be really cool: less viruses (because windows has thousands of them and linux or other unix-based OS less than 10 viruses).
But the Unix console is pretty difficult, it should have like a an altered console with the MS-Dos' commands, but Unix kernel, because it's too difficult.

The NT kernel is pretty good, but too vulnerable to malware, BSoD and so on.
 
yeah but they dont have to make it open source

they can either use FreeBSD kernel (BSD licence allows using in whatever you want, commercial or not) or they can just buy UNIX(tm) from SCO/Novell/whoever the hell the courts decided owns it now
 
jdbennett: why do you like the NT kernel? You cannot modify it - it's against the EULA and the law.
Click to expand...

Too many cooks spoil the pot. Plus if MS used a UNIX kernel, they wouldnt necesiarally have to make it open source

It isn't as secure as a good Linux kernel.
Click to expand...

false. thats only because windows users are idiots and run as admins. If all linux users ran as root, it would be equally insecure

With Linux, anyone involved can take a copy of the original kernel and modify the copy kernel and present it to the Community for others to use.
Click to expand...

yet again, we are talking aboue UNIX(tm) not Linux

and yes, MS do have a bash-like shell its called windows PowerShell and it standard on server 2008
 
For the record the NT Kernel is Unix-like anyway and follows POSIX. However, MS just makes it so every user runs as root, which is a huge security flaw by design for Windows. So, really Windows is already based off of Unix in a way.
 
with vista and server 2008 it is changing though

the next version of windows should be sweet

Vista SE - LOL
 
The NT kernel is nothing like the Unix kernel - what counts is that it uses similar commands that Unix systems would use. It is barely compliant - MacOS would be considered a full version of Unix as you can just pull up a terminal and use commands and syntax that you can use in any other Unix or Linux system. NT is in its own worlds with POSIX compliancy - there are no support under the NT kernel for binary dependencies for other, real POSIX systems. Whether you are using a NT kernel or just a plain kernel, you'd still have to use Samba to work with the NT computer. An Apple, Solaris or Linux system, however, will work seamlessly with another Unix system.

NT is not Unix nor does it resemble Unix in any way!!!
 
Well, yes and no. You are talking about network protocols now. Samba is an open source version of SMB, which is what Windows uses over TCP/IP for file sharing. Apple has their own called AFP, and you can also run that service on Windows and Novell servers.

OS X also supports NFS, but even then AFP is way more widely used.

I never meant to make the NT kernel completely comparable to Unix, but you can draw some parallels. The NT kernel is what the newest Windows kernel is based on, they no longer use the 9x kernel.

Also, you are wrong about identical syntax. I have used many forms of Linux and Unix that do not follow any sort of set standard syntax in their commands, and I have seen minute (very small) differences on how they handle bash profiles.

The use of case sensitive characters would be the best example I can give. Some distros binary commands may use -R while others would use -r.

OS X, is definitely different in this very aspect as well.
 
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