Dan says Windows ontop of the Linux Kernel is impossible!

Hi Chris and Mike,

I have just been listening to episode 481 and heard the suggestion that Windows should switch to the Linux Kernel. IMHO that is never going to happen due to the extremely tight connection between the windows userspace and kernelspace in the Windows API. 

For instance windows kernel drivers are launched as services (=daemons on Linux), where you pass the same parameters to the service which the driver's main entry point expects.

All of this follows the extremely strict Windows API&ABI stability guarantees: MS does not deprecate anything(!!) in the humongous API (iirc there's tens of thousands of functions). 

The upside: if you wrote something in the 90ies using the documented API, then it will still run! Try that on Linux :-/. 

The downside is obvious though: any iteration of windows must stay compatible with the old APIs. 

Building a compatibility layer for all the user space calls is challenging by itself (but wine is slowly getting there). But the real problem is the linux kernel: there is no stable kernel internal API or ABI, but there is one on Windows... And Windows driver vendors expect it, because they just want to throw in their proprietary drivers and don't mess with API changes or code reviews from these pesky and nagging kernel developers.

Bottom line: IMHO windows switching to the Linux kernel is an idealistic dream that is impossible due to windows guaranteing API&ABI stability for *decades*.


Great show, please keep it up!

Dan

P.S.: Mike, what would you recommend for getting into MTG? I've been wanting to play it but never found a good hook to get, well, hooked.