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Open source's Eric Raymond: Windows 10 will soon be just an emulation layer on Linux kernel
Will Windows lose the last phase of the desktop wars to Linux? Noted open-source advocate Eric Raymond thinks so.
Celebrated open-source software advocate and author Eric Raymond, who's long argued Linux will rule the desktop, reckons it won't be long before Windows 10 becomes an emulation layer over a Linux kernel.
[...] Looking further into the future, Raymond sees Microsoft killing off Windows emulation altogether after it reaches the point where everything under the Windows user interface has already moved to Linux.
"Third-party software providers stop shipping Windows binaries in favor of ELF binaries with a pure Linux API... and Linux finally wins the desktop wars, not by displacing Windows but by co-opting it. Perhaps this is always how it had to be," Raymond projects.
Is It Time for Windows and Linux to Converge?
Last phase of the desktop wars?
The two most intriguing developments in the recent evolution of the Microsoft Windows operating system are Windows System for Linux (WSL) and the porting of their Microsoft Edge browser to Ubuntu.
For those of you not keeping up, WSL allows unmodified Linux binaries to run under Windows 10. No emulation, no shim layer, they just load and go.
[...] Proton is the emulation layer that allows Windows games distributed on Steam to run over Linux. It's not perfect yet, but it's getting close. I myself use it to play World of Warships on the Great Beast.
The thing about games is that they are the most demanding possible stress test for a Windows emulation layer, much more so than business software. We may already be at the point where Proton-like technology is entirely good enough to run Windows business software over Linux. If not, we will be soon.
So, you're a Microsoft corporate strategist. What's the profit-maximizing path forward given all these factors?
It's this: Microsoft Windows becomes a Proton-like emulation layer over a Linux kernel, with the layer getting thinner over time as more of the support lands in the mainline kernel sources. The economic motive is that Microsoft sheds an ever-larger fraction of its development costs as less and less has to be done in-house.
If you think this is fantasy, think again. The best evidence that it's already the plan is that Microsoft has already ported Edge to run under Linux. There is only one way that makes any sense, and that is as a trial run for freeing the rest of the Windows utility suite from depending on any emulation layer.
So, the end state this all points at is: New Windows is mostly a Linux kernel, there's an old-Windows emulation over it, but Edge and the rest of the Windows user-land utilities don't use the emulation. The emulation layer is there for games and other legacy third-party software.
Also at The Register.
Previously: Windows 10 Will Soon Ship with a Full, Open Source, GPLed Linux Kernel
Call Me Crazy, but Windows 11 Could Run On Linux
Microsoft Windows Linux for Everybody
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Wednesday September 30 2020, @03:21PM (4 children)
Well, it's iffy.
WSL1 worked by translating Linux kernel calls to Windows kernel calls. It mostly worked, but many features were unimplemented. It's basically reverse WINE.
WSL2 works by running a custom-built Linux kernel on top of Hyper-V. Because Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor (when you use it, Hyper-V becomes the bare metal host and Windows itself is converted to a client OS), that means you're basically running Linux side by side. Technically, that's "no emulation, no shim layer". Then again, you could do the same thing with KVM instead of Hyper-V.
Even with WSL2, though, it's misleading to say that Linux binaries "just load and go". That's true if you're in a terminal, because WSL gives you a direct terminal to the Linux guest. But if you want to run Linux desktop apps, you still have to tunnel them through something like RDP or Spice, or try running them with X tunneling to an X server running natively on Windows.
Unfortunately, RDP or Spice are full-screen solutions, and X tunneling is slow as ass even with completely local sockets. To run Linux GUI apps on Windows, Microsoft would have to develop a custom windowing system for Linux that could tunnel back to Windows at full speed.
Such a custom windowing system might work for most software, but it will never work for everything. Same goes for the reverse, making the Windows desktop capable of tunneling back to Linux at full speed. There's just too much backwards bullshit you can do to the screen, which any performance-conscious application will do.
Which brings us to Proton, the Wine fork developed by Valve. It's not a drop-in compatibility layer, though, and it never will be. It's a tool to make porting games to Linux a vastly simpler process that involves tweaking config files instead of re-architecting the entire graphics interface. But the tweaking of config files will always be necessary.
Long story short, Windows and Linux GUI apps will never live side-by-side without sacrificing backwards compatibility. And let's be honest, backwards compatibility is the only thing keeping the Windows desktop on top.
Could Microsoft make a Windows-like experience on top of a Linux desktop? Sure. Will it run the entire back catalog of Windows programs? Hell no.
Have they tried something like that before! Actually, yes: Windows on ARM processors. It breaks backwards compatibility already, but the boost to battery life may be worth it.
So maybe that's the end-game for Windows apps for native Linux: Surface devices running Linux with a Windows-like desktop environment. They could even develop something like the XP mode for Windows 7, or Apple's Rosetta, which translated PPC-compiled apps to x86 apps.
But it just doesn't make sense for any of this stuff to converge the way Raymond thinks it will. Microsoft definitely wants Windows to be the best way to run Linux apps. But there's no way in hell they're going to abandon the Windows kernel, the Windows desktop, and the back catalog of 3rd-party Windows applications.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @07:23PM (1 child)
linux needs a LSW where any windows app is install-able and runable transparently, with sandboxing, etc. just imagine all the smb that would switch to linux if they didn't have to use windows for their old proprietary industry desktop apps.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday September 30 2020, @09:28PM
You can always run Windows in KVM and connect to it via RDP or, with the right virtual graphics adapter, Spice. That's basically the reverse of WSL2, except that terminal access, filesystem access, and user integration is roll-your-own. Which describes most stuff in the Linux desktop anyway.
The major downside of this is that you still need a valid Windows license key. The upside is that unlike WSL, you could use PCI passthrough for the graphics adapter and get native (local) graphics performance.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2020, @10:04PM (1 child)
If I recall correctly, that's a major portion of what Windows 10 S is supposed to do - restrict the user's ability to use Win32 programs, in favor of their own walled garden, UWP.
For "security."
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday October 01 2020, @03:33PM
For what it's worth, UWP apps are easier to make cross-platform than others. The framework is basically ported to everything except legacy Windows, which huh, that's a curious and idiotic move, but whatever.
Also, Win32 is the incurable source of the majority of Windows-related security issues, so I'd say that restricting access to it absolutely makes Windows more secure.
Walled gardens aren't always bad. Sometimes they keep you trapped inside, and that's bad, but they also keep the rabble out. And on the interwebs, "rabble" doesn't mean poor people, it means botnets and shareware that installs privacy-destroying browser plugins.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?