Linux receives 20th Birthday video from Microsoft

syklops

You can find it here.

Nice video. I have read comments that there will be a lot of tinfoil hat wearing fanboys who will be discussing "What does this mean??!?". I think MS is hoping that as the OS matures, there may be more mature attitudes to Linux. Alas I think the community will let us down in that respect. By community, I mean the small minority, who think they speak for the community because they can shout the loudest.

Thoughts?

Khannie

Interesting. Is that confirmed to actually come from MS? Maybe they're about to remove any patent claims they have.

henryporter

Hilarious - MS (if they are the source) look like they have conceded defeat in the battle of David and Goliath

Khannie

henryporter wrote: »

Hilarious - MS (if they are the source) look like they have conceded defeat in the battle of David and Goliath

Eh...not so much. Windows has now reached more or less rock solid status and is shiny and easy to use. The desktop war is over. Last stat I heard was that Linux has a depressing 1% share of desktop computers. Obviously in server rooms everywhere Linux is gaining ground, but that's mostly at the cost of other backend OS's like Solaris etc.

Pygmalion

Khannie wrote: »

Eh...not so much. Windows has now reached more or less rock solid status and is shiny and easy to use. The desktop war is over.

I dunno about that.
Linux isn't making a huge amount of ground on the Desktop atm, but OS X is.
Desktop developers are beginning to look at OS X in a serious way, which in many cases means writing more portable code and looking at true cross-platform solutions.
This might just end up leading to a Duopoly in which Linux is still unsupported by most, but IMO the move from supporting 2 platforms to 3 will be much easier than the move from 1 platform to 2.
The rise of smart-phones and tablets will facilitate this as well I'd say.
Obviously I'm not saying it will come quickly (maybe it won't come at all), or that it will remove Microsoft from the top spot, but this is probably the most optimistic I've been in the last 5 years of Linux use (although I hate that it's based on Apple's success :P).

As for being shiny and easy to use, I'd be willing to bet that given equal knowledge of, access to, and application support in each case, most users would choose OS X over Windows 7, with a significant amount of the rest using some kind of Linux distro.
Windows 7 isn't bad, but it's just missing too much things that users of other OSes would consider essential (workspaces and package managers come to mind straight away), and the default applications suck, on the other hand I can't think of anything great Windows 7 has that other OSes don't except for hardware/software support.
Of course there's no real way to prove/disprove this, and obviously it's a biased opinion.

Edit: As for the gesture, I'm not sure how I feel.
If it's a genuine gesture then great, I hope good things come from it.
I remain sceptical though, not because "OMG MICRO$UCKS", but because I don't see how it suits their bottom line, and they're known for being dodgy-as-**** (and not just by Freedom-loving neckbeard-wielders)

partyatmygaff

It's an odd gesture from MS. I wonder what they mean by "Microsoft and Linux?"

PrzemoF

syklops wrote: »

[..]
Thoughts?

My thoughts:
M$ is bullying companies that make money out of android with "patents" (read: linux in the background). The cake is bobby-trapped and I don't belive the "real" :eek: Tux would take it.

If the cake is the code that M$ "donated" to the linux kernel, I'd say that the cake is kept outdoor (staging branch) as it stinks (code quality) :cool:

Pygmalion

PrzemoF wrote: »

My thoughts:
M$ is bullying companies that make money out of android with "patents" (read: linux in the background). The cake is bobby-trapped and I don't belive the "real" :eek: Tux would take it.

If the cake is the code that M$ "donated" to the linux kernel, I'd say that the cake is kept outdoor (staging branch) as it stinks (code quality) :cool:

2 points.
1) Your argument would be better served if it didn't contain the string "M$".
2) Regarding code quality, I put my trust in the Linux kernel maintainers, the code was reviewed and accepted by them, so I doubt it "stinks".

For the most part I agree with your statement, but this is the kind of immaturity OP was talking about, you could have made the point without childish insults or wild claims about kernel code you've likely never seen or used.

syklops

Khannie wrote: »

Eh...not so much. Windows has now reached more or less rock solid status and is shiny and easy to use. The desktop war is over. Last stat I heard was that Linux has a depressing 1% share of desktop computers. Obviously in server rooms everywhere Linux is gaining ground, but that's mostly at the cost of other backend OS's like Solaris etc.

The Desktop war may be over, but linux is branching into areas that windows never thought of.

In my house, aside from the Desktop and laptops, my tv runs linux, my phone runs Android which is linux-based, my ebook reader runs linux. In your home, there is a decent chance your set top box runs Linux.

Interesting article here of other things that run Linux, such as Nuclear Submarines, Air Traffic control systems, the Super-collider, and other things that run linux.

partyatmygaff

Windows isn't suited to any of those platforms though. It doesn't scale very well. Although with Windows 8 they seem to be attempting to change that.

PrzemoF

Pygmalion wrote: »

2 points.
1) Your argument would be better served if it didn't contain the string "M$".
2) Regarding code quality, I put my trust in the Linux kernel maintainers, the code was reviewed and accepted by them, so I doubt it "stinks".

For the most part I agree with your statement, but this is the kind of immaturity OP was talking about, you could have made the point without childish insults or wild claims about kernel code you've likely never seen or used.

ad.1 I take the point - It shows my attitude towards the discussed company
ad.2 The code is not in the mainline: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/071811-microsoft-hyperv-linux.html?hpg1=bn and you're right I'm not using it. I think that the code is used when running a virtual linux machine under windows, so it's highly unlikely I'll ever use it..

P.S. My previous post was meant to be funny, I'm sorry if I went too far.

syklops

partyatmygaff wrote: »

It's an odd gesture from MS. I wonder what they mean by "Microsoft and Linux?"

Probably that they are not necessarily competitors anymore. Though that is arguable.

partyatmygaff

syklops wrote: »

Probably that they are not necessarily competitors anymore. Though that is arguable.

Android v Windows Phone 7 and Windows Server vs the various Linux distributions. They're still competing in those two markets.

croo

syklops wrote: »

In my house, aside from the Desktop and laptops, my tv runs linux, my phone runs Android which is linux-based, my ebook reader runs linux. In your home, there is a decent chance your set top box runs Linux.

And is the desktop as important as it was?
The "home user" is now, as you mention, relying on their tablet & phone and the apps they are interested in are the likes of facebook & twitter that are hardware & OS neutral. Hard core gamers might require a windows PC but most gamers, I would imagine, are using a console of some description.

And more and more business applications are moving online... to "the cloud" to use the current marketing buzz term. This shift has been happening for a decade, driven by the likes of google, amazon (with their Ec2) and also to an extent by solutions like SalesForce.com. And while Salesforce.com was a market leader I know of quite a few companies who now provide complete web based ERP type solutions that merge their various sales channels (ebay, amazon, web stores as well as traditional bricks & mortar retail etc) into one, web based, back end solution that enables them to manage the logistics for these many & varied sales channels but also being web based it can be rolled out across the world with JIT spending on IT infrastructure that the cloud provides.

So more and more the home and business users rely less and less on the desktop as we knew it. I suspect though that because, here in Ireland, our broadband roll out has lagged the world so much, the idea of running your key business infrastructure online might well seem very risky to many. Our experience of broadband is 10 years behind the world leaders and, so, so is our trust of it. I know unless I was located in very specific locations in key cities in Ireland I would be very ... anxious... that I might not get access when I need it!

So in the end I doubt it will be noticeable when the desktop war is won ... because by that point we simply won't care anymore about the desktop!

d'Oracle

Pygmalion wrote: »

I dunno about that.
Linux isn't making a huge amount of ground on the Desktop atm, but OS X is.
Desktop developers are beginning to look at OS X in a serious way, which in many cases means writing more portable code and looking at true cross-platform solutions.

I really think this has nothing at all to do with OS X.
Its about 70% "dur look purty mac" and 20% Apples proprietary as much as possible philosophy makes a lot of stuff easy and 10% people are never stuck because of apple support.

Or to be less condescending about it.
Apple are doing well because of slick marketing and design.
Not because of their OS.

Also: Hilarious amount of vehemence in the youtube comments.

Khannie

d'Oracle wrote: »

Also: Hilarious amount of vehemence in the youtube comments.

Wow! There really is.

PrzemoF

That's what one can expect when trying to show that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents as a Halloween trick-or-treat... :rolleyes:

Pygmalion

d'Oracle wrote: »

I really think this has nothing at all to do with OS X.
Its about 70% "dur look purty mac" and 20% Apples proprietary as much as possible philosophy makes a lot of stuff easy and 10% people are never stuck because of apple support.

Or to be less condescending about it.
Apple are doing well because of slick marketing and design.
Not because of their OS.

Also: Hilarious amount of vehemence in the youtube comments.

Why they use it, and the merits (or lack thereof) of OS X, is mostly irrelevant though.
My point is that use of anything that isn't Windows at this point is a good thing for the future of portable, cross-platform software.

partyatmygaff

Pygmalion wrote: »

Why they use it, and the merits (or lack thereof) of OS X, is mostly irrelevant though.
My point is that use of anything that isn't Windows at this point is a good thing for the future of portable, cross-platform software.

And why would that be?

Stuxnet

ive read the kernel for Windoze 8 comes from an upstream fork of the Linux kernel !

Pygmalion

partyatmygaff wrote: »

And why would that be?

Because OS X is a different platform.
Software which works on Windows and OS X would by definition be cross-platform.

I never said that this would translate directly to Linux support, but I did speculate that once developers port their software to a second platform and begin to use cross-platform libraries and toolkits then it would be much less of a leap.

Naikon

This video is not from Microsoft. Why is this even a worthy of a thread?

Pygmalion

OSI wrote: »

Also, I always find it funny when Linux fans take the piss out of OS X. Considering they both share a large number of GNU tools, and OS X is based on a BSD code base, to say one is better than the other is almost laughable.

GNU Hurd shares a large number (read: pretty much all) of GNU tools, and is based on the Mach kernel (as is OS X).
Is it funny that I say GNU Hurd is not a good desktop OS even though it shares some of the underlying code of better OSes?

EvilMonkey

syklops wrote: »

In my house, aside from the Desktop and laptops, my tv runs linux, my phone runs Android which is linux-based, my ebook reader runs linux. In your home, there is a decent chance your set top box runs Linux.

Funny how most of these are some of the most locked down devices consumers can get usually requiring hardware mods to get them open!

syklops

EvilMonkey wrote: »

Funny how most of these are some of the most locked down devices consumers can get usually requiring hardware mods to get them open!

Whats your point?

EvilMonkey

Its great that they are using Linux but most of the Hardware manufactures that are using Linux for their OS are just as bad or worse than Microsoft

croo

But if they are using Linux they must provide the source when requested that's the difference.

PS. Not many of those hardware manufacturers have a "rap sheet"... MS does!

Pygmalion

croo wrote: »

But if they are using Linux they must provide the source when requested that's the difference.

tbh their willingness to provide the source (and some of them seem not to even do that until threatened) means absolutely nothing without the right and the means to load custom code onto the device.

That said, in many cases it has little to do with the manufacturer (with the possible exception of Apple, who need to save users from themselves), I very much doubt phone manufacturers care whether users load custom firmware, but service providers will insist that it be possible to lock a phone to their network or disallow certain applications.

syklops

croo wrote: »

But if they are using Linux they must provide the source when requested that's the difference.

PS. Not many of those hardware manufacturers have a "rap sheet"... MS does!

So few of them do then. BT were taken to court and ordered to release the source code for their Home Hub device. And they got around it by just linking to the kernel.org site.

croo

So far I reading that they have bad customer service but that when push comes to shove they do provide the code... that's all that is required. Using GPL does not mean their customer services suddenly improve any. Sadly this seems to be an issue with most companies of any size these days be they using open source or not.

As for linking the kernel.org; That would seem sufficient if they were using a stock kernel. There are many open licenses but assuming it is GPL v2 they use, they are required to provide the "complete corresponding machine-readable source code, ... on a medium customarily used for software interchange" - which used to mean CD but I guess you could argue online is a typical format today for code distribution. GPLv3 is better in this regard explicitly stating "a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange".

The GPL also states "complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable" - so again unless they used bog standard stock kernels I would question if BT has fulfilled its requirements.

The FSF usually chase these things for free if you feel a company is not holding up their end of the GPL license agreement! I would suggest that companies are lax in their compliance because most people are not aware, and don't care, if they are the beneficiaries of open source or not... which for consumers I don't think we should be surprised.

spoonbadger

That video is one of the most retarded things I've seen in quite a while. Even aside from any actual meaning or sentiment, in terms of quality it watches like a mentally retarded social-media-engineer's final year project.

Must be a troll.