Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
transpute
likesftereppl99
Ok, sure.
Given Xen is battle tested at scale and k8s/etc for microservices, why bother to learn to manage this?
transpute
> why bother to learn to manage this?
Even if primarily adopted by existing Microsoft customers familiar with Hyper-V, this would benefit Xen, KVM and any Linux distro running on the same hardware targets.
If a theoretical HHQL motivates OEMs to prove that Linux drivers work in a Hyper-V root partition on new hardware, with driver fixes upstreamed to the Linux mainline kernel, then everyone wins.
There is also ongoing work for nested virtualization, to enable KVM, Xen or Hyper-V to be a bare-metal (L0) or a nested (L1) hypervisor, e.g. in a cloud environment where the bare-metal hypervisor cannot be changed by customers.
These interoperability improvements increase hardware support for hypervisors, which can then compete at multiple architectural layers. Users can choose based on optimization of the HL0-HL1-VM-App stack which works best for their specific workload.
aunty_helen
>Windows 10 is on a path to becoming a hybrid Windows/Linux system
This sounds promising, something closer to OSX would give apple competition for devs like myself that want a linux based system and a fluffy "it-just-works" gui
phkahler
>> This sounds promising, something closer to OSX would give apple competition for devs like myself that want a linux based system and a fluffy "it-just-works" gui
No, don't. That seems to be what they want. It's not about running linux apps on Windows. It's about blending the two so that even Linux apps are dependent on Microsft APIs and such. What is the point of bringing native DX12 to linux if not that? BTW they floated that a while back and the kernel folks said no.
It's the "extend" phase they are in now. Once they extend linux and you jump on with that gui, then the work to extinguish the other options, or just dont care because they get to take in money for every user of MS/linux hybrid.
This is painfully obvious and a bunch of people on here are saying "STFU" unless you have proof of their intentions, which is a stupid argument given the history and current efforts to "extend".
derefr
> What is the point of bringing native DX12 to linux if not that?
Oh, easy: it’s so games written for DX12 on Windows—that are currently run on Linux using Wine—can have a direct, low-overhead GPU driver path, rather than Wine needing to translate DX12 calls into OpenGL/Vulkan calls first.
Of course, if you’re a game-engine developer, you know you can achieve the same by just writing your engine to target Vulkan instead of DX12.
But if you’re e.g. Steam, you’d love to see more games “automatically made” multi-platform (with comparable performance), so that you can sell them to your Linux userbase.
Microsoft themselves are—maybe surprisingly—in the same boat as Steam here. The various game studios they own publish multi-platform games. Those platforms don’t necessarily include Linux, but they do often include Android. And merging code into the upstream Linux kernel is one way to get it to appear in Android.
—————
This change would also allow the graphics of Linux programs running in a VM on Windows to be accelerated through virtualization (i.e. having the X/Wayland server on Linux act as a Windows DX12 client.) It’s analogous to the reason that some VM software offers special-purpose “host-guest filesystem” drivers to the guest, that allows the guest to just pass through filesystem requests at a high level, rather than needing a virtual block device or a networked-filesystem protocol.
This is the reason Microsoft themselves offered. I feel like there’s a lot more money on being able to easily port Windows games to Android, though.
paulryanrogers
Right but the larger point is that it's less healthy long term since Microsoft controls DX, full stop. So it makes direct Vulcan support less appealing.
phkahler
>> > What is the point of bringing native DX12 to linux if not that?
>> Oh, easy: it’s so games written for DX12 on Windows—that are currently run on Linux using Wine
And why does Microsoft give two shits about that?
phkahler
You dont make games multi-platform by bringing an API from a closed platform to an open one. You do it either by writing to multiple APIs (extra work) or by using an API that is already multi-platform.
Microsoft proprietary APIs are not and can not be part of a free software platform, that is a contradiction. They can be part of a new MS-Linux platform masquerading as the real thing until support for the real thing dries up.
013a
> or just dont care because they get to take in money for every user of MS/linux hybrid.
Oh my god, the horror. Are you suggesting that I could, I dare to think it, pay Microsoft some money for a working operating system that meets all of my needs? Someone needs to call the EU and get this shut down, this is unacceptable behavior.
Look, this fear out of the linux community is why I'm hesitant to immerse myself in it. Lets say I decide to build a linux app that is dependent on Microsoft APIs, as you fear: what's stopping you from just not using it? If Microsoft allows this, and we're legal with the licensing, what gives you the right to (1) control how I build the software I want to build, and (2) control what kinds of software my users want to use?
Well, I think if we dig deep enough, the reason is some variant of "because then developers will take the easy route and use the generally pretty good and well supported Microsoft APIs, and the open linux APIs will flounder". Which is a weird combination of 'not invented here' and self-loathing from the linux community that is startlingly unhealthy. Microsoft is making an effort toward openness and interoperability here; we can argue their intentions all day, maybe they're good or bad, but its (some members of) the linux community who's saying "no, we don't want to be open, we want to live in Linux world and pretend like no one else exists." Sounds a lot like 90s-00s Microsoft.
And what's the worst case scenario? Microsoft suddenly removes their mask and admits they were the evildoer we all feared them to be, like a scooby-doo villain? Ok? They tried pulling that with the browser ecosystem, and Office, and Java, and the world is still spinning. Linux is healthier than ever.
phkahler
>> Oh my god, the horror. Are you suggesting that I could, I dare to think it, pay Microsoft some money for a working operating system that meets all of my needs?
You are free to do that now. Maybe Linux meets your needs, or maybe Windows, or something else.
>> Lets say I decide to build a linux app that is dependent on Microsoft APIs, as you fear: what's stopping you from just not using it? If Microsoft allows this, and we're legal with the licensing, what gives you the right to (1) control how I build the software I want to build, and (2) control what kinds of software my users want to use?
Nothing gives me that right. The problem isn't about you or your users. The problem is that longer term, developers like that end up using MS APIs on Linux and then all Linux users are forced to use MS APIs and we all end up paying for it. I don't pay MS anything these days, I use Apple and Linux systems and I don't want MS and other developers to ruin one of my options.
Fortunately the Linux Kernel folks are well aware of this type of thing and don't allow GPL licensed shims that serve no purpose other than supporting proprietary binary blobs.
disown
> This is painfully obvious and a bunch of people on here are saying "STFU" unless you have proof of their intentions, which is a stupid argument given the history and current efforts to "extend".
It's even more stupid when you consider that microsoft is going in the data collection business like facebook/google/etc. Not just their ever expanding "telemetry", taking more and more control away from the users but their acquisitions like linkedin, github, etc ( which are fundamentally data extraction companies ).
The amount of "love" microsoft/bill gates/etc gets here is rather disappointing. I'm sure it's part paid PR and partly people making a living on the windows/microsoft stack, but still sad.
Billionaires are evil, but don't you dare say anything bad about saint gates. He is here to save the world. Eerie. Facebook, google, etc are evil and people should stop using it, but I need microsoft in my life. Strange.
rusticpenn
>> It's the "extend" phase they are in now.
No, The OS is not their main money maker anymore. Even the team designing the windows OS has become much smaller ( inside sources). The focus is on the money maker - Cloud.
severino
So what's wrong with Linux if you want a Linux based system? I don't remember the last time I got a Linux desktop which didn't "just work"; of course I try to avoid exotic hardware components, but the truth is that you can run into driver problems and issues too when running operating systems you pay money for, like Windows.
nicoburns
Lack of support for GUI apps such as MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite, etc. It was actually workable with wine a few years back, but that was before everything went to an auto-updating subscription model.
severino
I can understand some people have specific needs and have to use software like that, but I wouldn't say an OS doesn't work just because you can't use some software on it.
You can't also have Omnigraffle for Windows, yet nobody would say Windows doesn't work for that reason.
de_watcher
So make these apps work on Linux. They go instead inventing VMs and hypervisors to extend their walled gardens.
jacquesm
That is not really Linux' fault though. If you all keep buying this auto-updating subscription crap you are sending the signal to the companies involved that you bought in to their view. The only way to make them reconsider is to stop using it.
rbanffy
When I really need to run a Windows application, I fire up a VM and use it. KVM's desktop experience is lacking, but VirtualBox is excellent.
And the VMs are nicely contained, disk volumes can have copy-on-write snapshots, and the volumes can even be made immutable - you shut the VM down and, when you restart, it's back to its immutable state. This is becoming less than practical thanks to various self-updating things - you need to make them mutable, let the self-updates happen and then you can make them immutable again. Otherwise they'll self update a lot on every boot.
ekianjo
> Lack of support for GUI apps such as MS Office,
not the same but you have Office 365 that does a reasonable job for most documents out there.
On the other hand, not having Office is kind of a feature, it makes you learn better tools :)
sandworm101
>> I try to avoid exotic hardware components
My exotic hardware can only run on linux (wifi hacking dongles, SDR bits, very old data devices). One of the big reasons I switched to linux as a kid was so that I could play around with tools that windows hates, like enabling monitor mode on a wifi card.
milankragujevic
I would say that these days the exotic components are the ones that DO work on Linux, and various common components just don't, or work "on paper" but with debilitating bugs.
willis936
I really feel this. I manage about a hundred computers for scientists/students. Total free reign. Some want to use linux. I’m sorry, you will never have working audio. Oh. It looks like the available linux drivers don’t play nice with this sandy bridge mobo and the dm will fail to initialize. The list goes on.
Never have I seen lack of hardware support on windows. I think that’s the essence of “just works” here.
baq
Windows drivers for GPUs have at least an order of magnitude more people working on them than Linux drivers.
severino
I don't know for other vendors, but at least for nvidia, there's parity with the Windows drivers, according to the benchmarks and the general stability. In fact, I remember when sometimes a feature had to be removed from the Linux version of the nvidia drivers just to keep "parity with the Windows one".
Kaze404
And yet I use mine to play video games all the time with zero performance loss that I can tell.
jasonlotito
> I don't remember the last time I got a Linux desktop which didn't "just work";
I can. I have a laptop with a high-DPI screen. It can output to a second monitor. Setting that second monitor up is relatively easy (though not as simple as it is on Windows or Mac), though getting the desktop to play nicely with a high-DPI screen and a non-highDPI screen doesn't just work. It basically becomes unusable at that point. The laptop was sold with Linux installed by default.
> but the truth is that you can run into driver problems and issues too when running operating systems you pay money for, like Windows.
Yes. Though, I haven't had that problem in years. And when I last had that problem, my solution was literally just upgrading the driver.
Listen, I've hand coded XFree86 config files back in the day to get three monitors up and running on a Slackware system. It's gotten better. But it doesn't "just work."
Sangeppato
I agree, if you just want to use Linux a classic Thinkpad/XPS will play well with it
somedude11
Unless you want your built in cellular modem to work properly.
x87678r
Last two jobs I've had you can only connect to work from MacOS or Windows. They've had some custom virus scanner.
jacquesm
Fair point, corporate IT can be a nightmare in that sense. Even if the OS is intrinsically safer the fact that a particular band-aid can not be installed could easily be a dealbreaker.
pjmlp
My laptop AMD card begs to differ.
microtonal
This sounds promising, something closer to OSX would give apple competition for devs like myself that want a linux based system and a fluffy "it-just-works" gui
I switched from macOS to Linux. GNOME and others are pretty good these days. I did try Windows + WSL2 out of curiosity, but my brain is just fundamentally incompatible with non-unix systems. Moreover, I was really annoyed that when Windows installed drivers automatically, it also installed a lot of Realtek and Intel crapware with it. Why?
It would be really nice though if Microsoft could make a Linux version of Office (even if it was just Wine-based), because the web version is too limited. Oh, and the Affinity suite would be nice as well ;).
harha
Coming from Mac and Linux, I sometimes need to use Windows and I'm always surprised how they managed to make it so incredibly difficult to use and bloated.
A minimal version of Windows along with a good package manager and a UX closer to Windows 2000 (or at least without the whole Control Panel / Settings App confusion) would be amazing.
Joeri
Supposedly windows 10X will be that thing.
I have to say I find the settings / control panel dichotomy issue overblown. I rarely need to go into control panel anymore, and pretty much never without it being a clickthrough from the new settings app.
withinboredom
> Why?
You’d have to ask the driver developers. In my experience though, that crapware is the only way to configure the hardware since config files aren’t a thing in Windows.
AnIdiotOnTheNet
On the other hand, because config files aren't a thing you don't have to learn 15 different poorly documented often-changing config file formats.
merb
oh yeah intel drivers. which nowadays open a webserver at some useful ports
Alopis
Looking at the AMD and nVidia software, I see it surfacing a lot of hardware-/vendor-specific options and I don't see how it could be done any differently. Then there's Realtek, where I've never seen their software add anything useful that doesn't already exist in system settings. But then again, there are drivers like those for the Xonar DX or other soundcards where a bunch of useful features and configuration options are surfaced.
I think there are pros and cons. PulseAudio could possibly be half the incomprehensible monstrosity that it is if it didn't have to take over the responsibilities of every audio driver out there. On the other hand, Realtek will arbitrarily disable/hide features with no way (that I've found) to do anything about as a user.
AstralStorm
Realtek stuff installs Nahimic 3D virtual positioning and a different denoiser and beamformer, which are controllable from their driver.
Technically, they could make these features separate and configurable from Windows sound effects options for the recording or playback device...
kubanczyk
The ecosystem is already there for devs, except for those interested with directly interacting with their laptop's hardware.
I've migrated from MBP to Win10 WSL three months ago and it's like a breath of fresh air for general $DayJob backend CRUD-like work. I'd still prefer a Linux laptop, but WSL is so much closer to a real Linux box.
I don't think I touched PowerShell or any .BAT stuff even once.
pydry
WSL had horrendous I/O performance last time I tried it and it couldn't run some pretty basic stuff (e.g. headless chrome).
Virtual box is a better experience if you wanna run Linux on windows IMO.
selsta
WSL2 is a simple virtual machine. Nothing you couldn’t do on macOS with e.g. multipass.
mtzet
Not really. Under HyperV both the Windows and Linux kernel run subsidiary to the HyperV hypervisor, so in that sense Windows itself is "just a virtual machine".
The work in TFA describes patches to make the Linux kernel communicate with the hypervisor (sharing information like used memory pages). In my book that's pretty sophisticated.
EDIT: The work appears to be available on Github https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel/commits/linux...
Diggsey
It's really not. With WSL2 the kernel runs in a VM, but user-space programs do not. As a result, CPU-bound programs suffer close to zero overhead compared to running natively on linux.
AFAIK, there's no way to achieve anything like this on macOS.
tilolebo
WSL2 is a simple VM like Docker is a simple Linux container.
withinboredom
But it’s not simple. It’s nothing like a “simple” VM.
jacquesm
So use Linux if you want an 'it just works' gui. It just works. I've been using Linux as my daily driver since just about forever and it works just fine. Very, very rarely do I hit the limitations of the system, usually this is when trying to do something weird such as running 8 sound cards in the same machine or some other strange hardware feat. But other than that it is very hard to find flaws in the day-to-day use and for more mundane use cases it just works accurately describes the state of affairs.
If you have to develop for Windows then that's of course another matter.
wayneftw
I've been using Manjaro Linux as my daily driver for 2 years and I can't complain at all about it. It absolutely just works. Installing software is easier than any other OS and Manjaro's default desktop environment, XFCE, does a Windows-style UI better than Windows 10 does IMO and with more features, like being able to middle-click taskbar items to close them just like Chrome tabs - a feature I used to have to hack Windows to enable. Even when I've had to write small scripts for XFCE to add features, I don't feel like I'm hacking because everything I'm doing is supported.
Of course I keep a few separate Windows PCs around to do things that Windows can only do (when I need to do them, which hasn't happened for quite some time now) like SQL Server Management Studio, Visual Studio and some games/video streaming services.
Also, I keep a Mac around to do Mac things like debugging an iOS app or helping some junior developers who only know how to use a Mac.
mhoad
I would second this. I finally got rid of my MacBook Pro after all kinds of hardware problems and moved to Linux as my daily driver. I made a point of buying a new laptop that was built by a System76 type company in Europe to avoid any weird hardware compatibility issues and it really does work perfectly for me. I’m using Pop_OS 20.04 for what it’s worth.
saberience
Linux "just works" if you're a developer who posts on Hackernews. It doesn't work if you're my parents or older sister.
slipheen
My parents (who are both pensioners) switched over from Macs to Thinkpads with Linux.
The only help I gave them was recommending compatible hardware. They've been using them full-time for the last year, and have been really happy with them.
Even Steam games seem to work reasonably well, which I was impressed by.
Avamander
My parents and older sister say otherwise, if we're posting anecdotal evidence.
baryphonic
I recently had an issue with my Linux Mint desktop where a power outage somehow introduced a hard disk error that was not easy to resolve (unless one knows exactly what to look for in the logs and knows the correct `fsck` incantation from memory). Linux is definitely still worth it, but the "just works" factor is just significantly less than MacOS.
jacquesm
If that had happened to you on Windows instead of doing an fsck you might have had to re-install from scratch. And I've had OS/X helpfully suggest to 'initialize a harddrive' with some perfectly good data and a borked boot block on it.
Fixing that took a lot more magic than just an fsck, no matter what the incantations. Once you have trouble at that level any OS will be tricky to get going again because a lot of the underlying assumptions have failed.
smartmic
For me it feels quite the opposite. OS X is built upon on a Unix core and shares such common heritage. There is consistency in the design throughout all OS levels. On the contrary with Windows and GNU/Linux, IMHO two very incompatible architectures. The business rationale for Microsoft behind this is clear but hybrids represent mostly a temporary transition state. So the question is, what comes next, where is the journey to go?
EE84M3i
>There is consistency in the design throughout all OS levels.
There is...? What sort of examples come to mind?
dippersauce
I cannot speak for the other poster, but there are several levels where consistency is significantly better. The GUI is of course the most noticeable, especially as the “iOS-ification” of macOS continues. But for a developer, the methods you interact with are more consistent across platforms and apps. Porting an app between iOS and macOS can be as simple as changing a few method names and setting a new target in XCode. For the most part one can assume things like app bundle layouts and where files will be dropped on the system. Most of this consistency lies parallel to where Apple enforces it, which comes with its own downsides.
That consistency isn’t absolute though, rough spots like the boundary between Mach and the BSD components still exist.
jmnicolas
There's already WSL for your Unix needs.
However MS seems to fall back on its old bad habits and the "it-just-works" gui is less true since a while now (I would say a year): we had some major pains after every Windows update at work to the point where the admin blocked them in the firewall.
I think their release schedule (twice a year) is way too fast, and they should focus more on stability.
simonh
WSL 2 uses Hyper-V itself, so yes that's exactly what we're talking about.
rubidium
LTSB for the win. I don’t know why more orgs don’t default to that.
jmnicolas
We're 2 to manage IT tasks in the company (my real qualification is software dev though). We don't have access to Microsoft anything (too expensive) so we use the licenses that comes with the computers we (rarely) buy.
I still haven't managed to convert all our workstations from Win 7 to Win 10 (and yes we still have a couple XPs), there are special apps on them that needs the intervention of one of our provider, it's complicated.
Last year one of our provider sent us some machines with LTSB 2016 installed. They're already at their EOL.
Edge is not available and there's not even an image viewer on this OS, MS Photos is impossible to install (and is crap anyway, it regularly fails to show an image that any other viewer including Paint can open etc).
Color me unimpressed.
tmottabr
It is not used on most orgs because LTSB is not meant to be used on desktops, Microsoft docs even say it is not meant for desktops and so they will likely not support you if you use it in a desktop.
LTBS is meant for stuff like ATM or POS as replacement for the older Windows embedded versions.
dragonelite
From what i can gather, China is hedging away from windows and onto the Linux based distro UOS(deepin). I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is also making some preparation for that movement so they can still offer software for the Chinese market.
JamesSwift
Sorry for the ignorance, but what does this mean? I understand from the article that the patch allows the full Hyper-V stack to run on a linux-based machine (as opposed to previously needing windows to run the root partition). But what does _that_ mean to have the ability to run Hyper-V entirely on linux? Is it just a "good to have options" thing?
flightllessbird
It allows them to run a bare metal (type 1) hypervisor instead of a VM on top of Windows.
quietbritishjim
Hyper-V already is a bare metal (type 1) hypervisor. Admittedly it does use one (or more) of the guests, called the "parent partition", to handle some of the work for it. This change allows that parent partition to be Linux instead of Windows, but it does not make it any more of a bare metal hypervisor than it was before, unless you know something in addition to what the article says.
SQueeeeeL
It probably means they want to leverage out the existing open source VM software so they can make one with proprietary Windows support (at some point down the line). There is a long history of this in the past with Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
Everyone should be afraid of this, even the Microsoft employees commenting here. Look at the 737 MAX post on the front page for another example of management corrupting engineering
cycloptic
>Everyone should be afraid
Please don't FUD like this. Proprietary systems on top of Linux are nothing new and Microsoft certainly isn't the first company to have done it. If you have some real proof of their business plans then let's hear that rather than encouraging speculation and fearmongering.
SQueeeeeL
I had to look up what FUD was (it stands for Fear Uncertainty Doubt for anyone else who didn't know)
I feel like taking an extremely cautious stance in regards to Microsoft is very fair, given that they were actually hauled in front of Congress for bad practices multiple times in the past...
de_watcher
It's not FUD. It's the Microsoft's never-changing strategy. I don't know how many times people need to experience it to remember this.
ghostpepper
Generally proprietary systems aren't merged into the kernel though. That's not the same as shipping a closed-source, proprietary user space application.
SeriousM
Just because it's happening already doesn't justify it. Stealing and murder is also happening and shouldn't.
whereistimbo
Or maybe the Hyper-V team sees that Windows as the only host that Hyper-V support as a liability. Look at [0], you need 16 hours to compile Windows in 64 bit superfast workstation w/ hundreds of GB memory, which would be frustrating and annoying, if they just want to improve Hyper-V and testing, working w/ Linux would be much faster since it compiles within minutes on standard dev machine with adequate RAM.
[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-open-sourcing-...
fomine3
Windows contains not only kernel but also many components like stdlibs, daemons, graphics, basic apps, and so on. So you should compare compiling time for Linux, glibc, systemd, X/Wayland, GNOME, wpa_supplicant, PulseAudio and so on.
mlindner
Linking policies from decades ago isn't helpful.
robbyt
Perhaps Microsoft is finally tired of trying to get Azure working on the Windows kernel.
Or possibly they need this for ARM VM instances?
whereistimbo
Perhaps Hyper-V team is already tired dealing with Windows. I mean look at this quote: "...it takes approximately 16 hours to compile Windows on a 64 cores super fast server-class machine optimized for the job, and with hundreds of GB of memory, and that time does not include running tests." [0]
[0] https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-open-sourcing-...
fomine3
Azure team should use Windows Server Core or similar equivalent for Hypervisor OS that don't need Desktop features. Minimum Windows is not so much huge.
morrbo
This is awesome. Although hyperv itself has been great for me, there have been certain things which have been a royal pain (copying/unzipping a compressed image, integrating into our monitoring system come to mind) which don't work with the stripped down windows version they have. I do wonder though, will the Linux version be backwards compatible with the Microsoft hyper-v console? Or will there be something similar? It's very nice to be able to fire up a GUI over a vpn and right click add/configure a new machine.
Similarly with installing new images. If anyone has any insight into any of this id be really interested to know!
whereistimbo
Probably they will port necessary library and console apps to Linux version of PowerShell.
a_imho
I know next to nothing about virtualization, are these patches Microsoft specific, or do they benefit others as well?
undefined
flatiron
HyperV host only runs on Windows.
whereistimbo
This patch makes it possible to make Linux as HyperV host, or in Xen terminology, "Dom0"
AstralStorm
For me, the show stopper is lack of device forwarding with WSL and WSL2 (HyperV in general) on non-Server versions. Even the Workstation edition does not support it.
It will be less of a problem once DXGI support lands since it's mostly required for AI, DSP and video processing work for me, as they require rather direct access to the GPU.
wilt
I don't see what this will do that kvm can't already do? Seems like a wasted effort.
arbitrage
it enables hyper-v on linux. the whole point is that it does something different.
EdSchouten
So what does it do then?
rbanffy
I believe the biggest difference is that, unlike KVM, Hyper V causes money to change hands.
fanatic2pope
Interesting. Windows is slowly becoming WorkplaceOS.
bugBunny
The only reason I am still using windows is MS office. I might give it a try myself... My home machine is running Arch linux and works flawlessly for more then two years already. Just my work is still stucked with a lot of documentations sharing between some other people and I need MS office programs which have no alternative in open-source word. well, the office.com looks promising these days and I hope to switch completely ASAP.
kasabali
Wine runs older Office versions fine. I heard Crossover works even better if you're willing to pay for it.
rovr138
Yeah, I was going to mention the online versions.
If you’re doing simple office stuff, it works great. If you need excel plugins and stuff, then you’ll need a local version.
robbyt
This reads like a Slashdot post from 1998.
kyuudou
Just needs a "even my grandmother is using KDE seamlessly with her online banking site"
duckmysick
It even predates Arch Linux by a few years.
whereistimbo
For typical business use office.com is really quirky and doesn't work well like the desktop counterpart.
charwalker
My reading is this allows HyperV Server (standalone, free) to be Linux based.
But I could me misunderstanding this as the ability to run HyperV on Linux baremetal much like Windows 10 with HyperV installed or Windows Server with HyperV role.
As a Windows guy, I can appreciate this. HyperV Server is already free, though requires some care and feeding if set up off a domain.
yewenjie
What was the status of it so far in Linux?
jlgaddis
Well, according to TFA, the patches were submitted as an RFC.
Short version: it's not in Linux, this is basically the very first step in getting it into Linux, it's still gonna be probably several months at least before it makes it into the mainline kernel, and then however long after that for it to make it into your distro's kernel.
FWIW, I think it was a little over 3 years from the first "RFC" for Wireguard until it was merged into mainline (part of that, though, is because some existing things in the kernel had to be "re-worked" first).
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
If this reaches production status (e.g. with a new Hyper-V Hardware Qualification List and HHQL logo program like WHQL), it could be the biggest news for Linux since Dell started shipping a laptop with pre-installed Linux.
Such a logo program could provide OEMs with a test suite for Hyper-V with Linux hardware drivers, which means Microsoft could start contributing test cases to upstream Linux projects like CKI.
Most importantly, a Hyper-V for Linux logo qualification program could require that OEM/ODMs pass HHQL before shipping supported hardware, when they still have engineering resources allocated for system and device firmware fixes.
In short, Hyper-V for Linux has the potential for positive ripple effects throughout the supply chain for Linux "secured core" hardware. When combined with WSL2, Direct X paravirtualized graphics for Linux, and Azure Sphere (based on OpenEmbedded/Yocto), it's a major endorsement for Linux and the flexibility of Type-1, CPU-assisted virtualization pioneered by open-source Xen.
The Microsoft Linux license for IoT/embedded devices includes support for 10+ years of security updates, which will hopefully extend OEM firmware support timelines for edge hardware, https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/seay/
> This talk will cover ... device security from the chip to the Linux kernel, user application isolation, network communication, cloud interaction, and what it takes to keep a system secure for 13 years.