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

The Register ^ | Sep 18, 2015 | Simon Sharwood

[dayglored]

"This is 'UGE!"

Errr,... HUGH. And SERIES...

[dayglored]

Microsoft now has a Linux distro? Clearly it's the End Times ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[dayglored]

I imagine you might want to ping your list on this one...

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Funny. After hearing about all the spyware loaded up on Windows 10 I was thinking of switching my home PC over to Linux.

[Company Man]

We need that GIF of the little guys running back and forth wailing.

[Darth Reardon]

So, will they call it Minix, or we will have a third iOS?

[M1911A1]

Linosoft.
Lindows.
Winux.
Micrux.
Microlin.

Ah, they all sound creepy.

[dayglored]

> So, will they call it Minix...

That already exists, by Andy Tannenbaum from the 80's. It was the system Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel on.

[catnipman]

Yawn. Sounds like they have a bunch of networking iron they’re developing that runs embedded Linux. Half the world has already been doing this for nearly a decade.

[jdege]

Dave Cutler was the main reason that VMS learned almost nothing from Unix. He hated that so many of DEC’s customers preferred to install BSD on their PDPs and their VAXen.

He was working on the successor to VMS, when DEC pulled the plug. So he and most of his team went to Microsoft to build NT. Where his arguments with Richard Rashid (who’d built Mach, at Carnegie Mellon, before coming to Microsoft) we’re legendary.

Cutler was a lead developer on Azure.

If he were dead, he’d be rolling in his grave. (Though he seems to have been shuffled off to work on the Xbox, which is pretty much the same thing.)

[dayglored]

> Linosoft. Lindows. Winux. Micrux. Microlin. Ah, they all sound creepy.

Yep. "Lindows" was originally a Linux OS, and the trademarked name is owned by Microsoft, so that might be the one....

[dayglored]

Dave Cutler's legacy is that Windows NT learned nothing from Unix either. Despite the fact that Microsoft had been a Unix house prior to the IBM-PC MSDOS takeover, and that there was considerable Unix experience within MS engineering (witness how much of the MSDOS filesystem mimicked Unix filesystem structure and usage), all that was forsaken with NT.

Cutler is/was brilliant and capable, no one admits otherwise. But had Microsoft used Unix lessons more during NT development, they would likely now have a much better Windows product. And it would be one that their engineers understand.

Oh well.

[hoagy62]

“Micrux” sounds too much like ‘horcrux’.

Voldemort is alive and well and living in Redmond......

[PastorBooks]

Linux OSX

[ThunderSleeps]

Yet another Linux distro? Yawn. Check out https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg for a graphical snapshot. Given that there are tools both online and off that let anyone custom spin their own distro ... someone using a flavor of embedded Linux as a platform to run their software on isn’t particularly exciting. Though I guess putting Microsoft and Linux in the same sentence gets some base level of attention...

[ThunderSleeps]

One other thought though. I guess what is most telling / interesting isn't that there is yet another embedded Linux distro being used... It is that Microsoft did not host their networking software on one of their flavors of Windows...

[namvolunteer]

John has a long mustache. The chair is along the wall.
John has a long mustache. The chair is along the wall.

[Darth Reardon]

Is he related to the Andrew Tannenbaum who very publicly stated in 1992 that Linux was obsolete?

[tophat9000]

Its SDN people Software Defined Networking...that software version of a network switch.. on a generic white box.. Linux for open standard compatibility. likely to integrated with Openstack or similar for a in-house cloud platform

it not a personal computer OS

[Mariner]

For years folks have tried to take on the ASIC with general purpose processors and sleek software.

It's generally too slow to be useful outside the single platform that is doing the computing.

VMWare has the v-switch and it works OK to define multiple vlans in the cluster.

But when that data exits it always goes through ASIC based switches and routers.