Runit is 5474 SLOCs. Most source files are shorter than 100 lines. Works like a charm. Implements an init system; does not replace DNS, syslog, inetd, or anything else.
Systemd, by construction, is a set of Unix-replacing daemons. An ideal embedded system setup is kernel, systemd, and the containers it runs (even without podman). This makes sense, especially given the Red Hat's line of business, but it has little relation to the Unix design, or to learning how to do things from scratch.
I love how people worship UNIX design in Linux circles, especially when complaining about decisions where Linux is catching up with commercial UNIXes, as in the init systems replacements.
UNIX design was so great that its authors did two other operating systems trying to make UNIX done right.
One of the few times I agree with Rob Pike,
> We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.
This is not about mindless worship, but about the fact that the UNIX design has stood the test of time for this long, and is still a solid base compared to most other operating systems. Sure, there are more modern designs that improve on security and capability (seL4/Genode/Sculpt, Fuchsia), but none are as usable or accessible as UNIX.
So when it comes to projects that teach the fundamentals of GNU/Linux, such as LFS, overwhelming the user with a large amount of user space complexity is counterproductive to that goal. I would argue that having GNOME and KDE in BLFS is largely unnecessary and distracting as well, but systemd is core to this issue. There are many other simpler alternatives to all of this software that would be more conducive to learning. Users can continue their journey with any mainstream distro if they want to get familiar with other tooling. LFS is not the right framework for building a distribution, nor should it cover all software in the ecosystem.
The first version of UNIX was released in 1971 and the first version of Windows NT in 1993. So UNIX is only about 60% older than NT. Both OSes have "stood the test of time", though one passed it with a dominant market share, whereas the other didn't. And systemd is heavily inspired by NT.
Time flies fast, faster than recycled arguments. :)
I'm confused as to which OS is the one that passed the other with dominant market share. Last I checked, Linux is everywhere, and Windows just keeps getting worse with every iteration.
I'm not sure I'd be smugly pronouncing anything about the superiority of Windows if I were a Microsoft guy today.
It's not surprising that systemd was heavily inspired by NT. That's exactly what Poettering was paid to create, by his employer Microsoft. (Oh, sorry--RedHat, and then "later" Microsoft.)
Linux is "everywhere" only if you count Android, which is not very Unix-like.
Except that it didn't, Linux has nothing to do with UNIX design, it isn't a UNIX System V in 2026.
> Linux has nothing to do with UNIX design
Respectfully, that's nonsense. Linux is directly inspired by Unix (note: lowercase) and Minix, shares many of their traits (process and user model, system calls, shells, filesystem, small tools that do "one thing well", etc.), and closely follows the POSIX standard. The fact that it's not a direct descendant of commercial Unices is irrelevant.
In fact, what you're saying here contradicts that Rob Pike quote you agree with, since Linux is from the 1990s.
But all of this is irrelevant to the main topic, which is whether systemd should be part of a project that teaches the fundamentals of GNU/Linux. I'll reiterate that it's only a distraction to this goal.
Yet, UNIX or Unix proper descendents, have replaced, or complemented their init systems, with systemd like approaches, before systemd came to be.
So is UNIX design only great when it serves the message?
I'm not familiar with what UNIX or its modern descendants have or have not implemented. But why should Linux mimic them? Linux is a Unix-like, and a standalone implementation of the POSIX standard. The init system is implementation-specific, just like other features. There has been some cross-system influence, in all directions (similar implementations of FUSE, eBPF, containers, etc.), but there's no requirement that Linux must follow what other Unices do.
If you're going to argue that Linux implementing systemd is a good idea because it's following the trend in "proper" UNIX descendants, then the same argument can be made for it following the trend of BSD-style init systems. It ultimately boils down to which direction you think is better. I'm of the opinion that simple init systems, of which there are plenty to choose from, are a better fit for the Linux ecosystem than a suite of tightly coupled components that take over the entire system. If we disagree on that, then we'll never be on the same page.
A project which is intended to be a learning experience in building a Unix variant (in this case, Linux) is a kinda right place for sticking to the Unix philosophy and design, for illustrative purposes.
Mr Pike has indeed constructed a better OS than Unix; too bad AT&T neither knew how to achieve viral popularity, nor why Free Software (as in GPL) is going to dominate the world. By about 1995, it was already too late. (Something similar happened to Inferno vs Java.)
Still, the Unix principles of modularity, composability, doing one thing well, and unified interfaces are widely considered very sane, and adopted.
Not as much as people in Linux community think, especially those that never used commercial UNIX offerings.
GPL is on its way out, a good example is that all Linux competitors in the embedded space, including Linux Foundation's Zephyr, none of them has adopted GPL.
GPL based software is now a minority, almost everything uses licenses that businesses rather reach for.
I suspect that GPL2 was instrumental in guaranteeing that the work sacrificed into the common pot of Linux kernel is not going to be taken by a competitor when it's still unpolished, closed, and used to achieve market domination.
FreeBSD came before Linux (as 386BSD), and is also active used by the industry. How much code did Sony or Raytheon shared back to FreeBSD? (LLVM is not FreeBSD proper.)
See Android for how much that is working in practice, outside the kernel.
Or the Linux distros used by NVidia.
I find Zephyr to be a somewhat poor example. It's typically used on MMUless microcontrollers where the application is linked into the same binary as the OS. I'm sure you'll point out that it's not strictly necessary to use it in that manner, but that's how most people use it and that's how they expect it to work. Licensing it as GPL would mean that basically nobody would use it because it would require releasing your entire firmware source code, especially when there's other permissively licensed alternatives in that space like RTEMS, ThreadX, and FreeRTOS.
Exactly, there are no other FOSS kernels using GPL nowadays, the Linux kernel was the first and last one with commercial success.
I will be honest mentioning Zephyr in a situation when talking about how outdated the Unix design philosophy is, is a bit funny to me since Zephyr (like ecos kinda did once) tries to be Posix-like in its APIs (but ends up not really improving things over the other embedded OSes TBH).
I am talking about Zephyr in the context of GPL, nothing else.
I think the main problem of Unix today is that it's not Unix-style enough. Too many namespaces with too many non-composable separate APIs on them instead of "everything is a file". Plan9 is more Unix than Unix and that's indeed better. Redox OS, too.
The Unix security model is mostly useless today, but it seems like something better is possible as an incremental change, and there are projects that do that, like RSBAC.
Yes, "everything is a file" but the mouse on Rio is written in stone.
Aside of that, plan9 wins on the theoretical side, it was a research OS, but in the practical one... it's opinionated.
And we've all heard of the linux people, as opposed to whoever is pushing these post-Cassidy OS. Linux isn't where it is because of some imperial decree, it has been winning out in a slow, protracted war for what OS programmers choose when they want to get work done.
Pike is more than entitled to an opinion, but I think there is some cause-effect reversal at work here. The linux circles aren't people driving the UNIX-love. The UNIX-love is effective in practice - especially the blend of principle and pragmatism that the linux community settled on - so the linux circles happen to be bigger than the most similar alternatives. Better alternatives are going to have to fight through the same slog as linux if they want recognition.
Compared to plan9, past its sell-by date. Compared to redhat poetteringware, I will continue to attend services.
> We really are using a 1970s era
1970 Anno Domini no less
Making it even more so of a religion.
UNIX is only an OS with some good ideas, and also plenty of bad ones.
No reason to stick with it ad eternum as some kind of holy scriptures.
The article is not about UNIX, what's good and bad, but what's better for understanding Linux. And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux. And this is the core of LFS.
Discussing whether UNIX is good or bad seems narrow-minded, as there is no solution to that. It's like discussing whether iOS is better than Android. We can always isolate some specific parts and discuss that, but just slashing the whole concept doesn't help anyone and rarely yields any meaningful results.
> And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux.
I know there are strong opinions on this, but isn’t systemd part of the core of most Linux desktops nowadays?
All of my Debian out of the box has systemd. On Gentoo it's OpenRC, which I find easier. But! There are some work-around packages that implement some stubs of systemd things because other packages are designed for systemd only world (one such stub is elogind)
Unfortunately yes
It's "problem" unfortunately is that it happens to be the only major foss os. If there were other foss oses with good support and "better" models I'd gladly try them out. I know I personally would never switch to any non foss os after the user friendliness I have experienced. I would say that's the main reason many stick to it, including game theoretic arguments for commercial players also. Not because people like to stick to ancient models. It's not a ideal system obviously but going back to locked down crap is a no go for me and perhaps many others. BSDs are ok too but the suicidal licensing makes me less inclined.
What’s suicidal about the BSD license? BSD code is everywhere
Yes and much of it is sealed off and proprietary. The bsd oses got MacOS for all their hard work, a closed off system that they can't read or port back anything from. Someone would say linux or gpl projects also have been fucked over this way. I suppose if your house has been burgled, such a person would argue we must remove all protections rather than add more.
MIT et al are winning over GPL for a reason.
I'm not a big corporation. I prefer MIT, or better yet, public domain.
Are they winning as in more people are picking the license or are they winning as in we are getting a overall more enriched foss community?
I don't understand why people have such difficulties with the Golden Rule, sounds a simple and fair enough concept.
We are winning as in "we have more freedom to do as we like without a bunch of lawyers breathing down our necks."
Freedom and liberty are what I value. There is no harm occurring to software as a result of more freedom or more liberty. Quite to the contrary.
Is your Golden Rule "you will use 'my' software exactly how I dictate, or else I'll call my dogs to attack you"? That's not the one I was taught.
I release all my code in the public domain.
Why are you acting so strange and making up misinterpretations of what I wrote? You depend on lawyers either way, whichever license you use, I fail to see how copyright law can be implemented and defended without lawyers. The golden rule is simple, anyone can look it up, I really don't understand what difficulty you have that made you make up such a strange "not even wrong" theory about it. "do to others what you would have them do to you" , here it means you have benefited from countless man hours of work by other people, so you too should pass on any improvements you made to it just like they did to you.
Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario. Your small company depend on a complex bsd library thats hard to replicate. It gets the attention of a much larger company, they fork it make various changes to make it much better and keep it closed, their product kills yours. While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today), the company either has to redevelop it inhouse if they wish to serve it as product to the public without releasing its sources, or they do the same thing as in the bsd case, they make a much improved version...and you have equal access to the same sources, you can take that and pivot upon it instead of your company dying. Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory. Nobody can force anyone to choose a license, its your choice. Again, Mac OS is not a very encouraging example of the overall outcome of BSD licensing. No freebsd/openbsd/whatever person is permitted to read or use Apple's "fork" now. Apple took the hard work of others and instead of paying it back in like, it doesn't take a single cent of money, "paying" back here simply means doing the same the others did, they generously provided you their work as foss, you pass back your delta to it as foss. Thus raising the high water mark of the entire ecosystem. Think academic research. Its usually released in open, so any improvements made by one team are available for others to use and further improve upon. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. How does GPL "force" anyone to do anything? They can either choose to follow the license, or choose another library or home grown an alternative if they dislike the terms.
> You depend on lawyers either way, whichever license you use
No, in fact I don't. Indeed, I go far out of my way to avoid these parasites entirely, and anyone who depends on them. I don't give a damn what anyone does with my software. I don't need the attorneys to do anything.
For accusing me of "misinterpreting" what you wrote, you seem to be quite confused yourself. What part of "public domain" don't you understand? The means I don't give a shit what you do with the code. You can decide for yourself. You know, the mature, unselfish approach. Busybodies and control freaks hate this one simple trick.
> Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario.
Here we go, lol. We're headed down the rabbit hole straight to the juicy caramel center of your flawed thinking.
> Your small company depend on a complex bsd library thats hard to replicate. It gets the attention of a much larger company, they fork it make various changes to make it much better and keep it closed, their product kills yours.
Sounds like you had a very poor business model. Probably because you have no idea what you're doing. Your monetization strategy failed. Pick yourself back up and try again.
The solution is not Big Brother and his machine guns to force others to comply with your dictates. (i.e. the lawyers and legal system, if I have to spell it out for you.)
> While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today)
AGPL is strongly avoided by almost everyone, for good reason. It's even more of a cancer than the GPL.
> the company either has to redevelop it inhouse if they wish to serve it as product to the public without releasing its sources, or they do the same thing as in the bsd case, they make a much improved version...and you have equal access to the same sources, you can take that and pivot upon it instead of your company dying.
...or they just decide to develop their own version from scratch instead, keep it closed source from day one, and you get nothing at all. Happens all the time.
If you were truly a shit-hot developer you would not be concerned about anyone ripping you off. You'd know you're so creative and putting out so much quality effort on a consistent basis that you'd never worry about being surpassed by anyone.
Big company thought of a good idea to add to your big pile of good ideas? No problem. Copy that and come out with another good idea or two for him to steal. If they're always imitating you, then that means you're the industry leader, doesn't it?
If you're not the industry leader however, because you really only had one good idea and Big Company has more, then what right do you have to try and Stop Progress just for your own selfish ends? That's what this all boils down to: selfishness, due to insecurity.
Your mentality is completely foreign to a true winner, but oh-so-common among the insecure midwits. They're always deathly afraid that their One Thing will get ripped off and they will be left with nothing.
It's a scarcity mentality. That's the problem. It's all in your head.
You're a squirrel with one little nut that you cling to desperately, in hopes that nobody else will grab it. You make all your life about protecting that nut at all costs. You're so glad that Big Brother offers you his machine guns to help you protect it. You don't care about the harm that comes from bringing thugs with guns into the picture to push people around. You're just desperate to protect Your Thing, so you will accept anything that you believe will help this end. It's the same broken mentality that manifests itself everywhere else besides software also. Nothing new under the sun.
Do not pretend that I don't understand you far better than you know yourself, or that I am misinterpreting you in some way. I've seen ten thousand of your type if I've seen one. You're everywhere, especially on HN. I'm well aware of what your mentality is. The root of the problem is your insecurity.
> Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory.
You don't have a clue about how economics actually works--which is typical for those of your loudly expressed opinions. But you think of yourself as some enlightened game theorist. Not quite.
The bottom line is, you can't FORCE people to behave how you want through your favorite legal fiction or any other, and you damn sure should never try, as it's a fool's errand that only leads to tears. One of the basic laws of the universe.
The people who created GPL knew this from day 1. That's exactly why they created it to be the way it is. Irt was an act of sabotage. This knowledge is currently far above your level however, and is likely to remain so for a long time to come; probably forever.
The world is not falling and BSD is winning the license war for good reason. End of discussion. It's all over but your crying.
>If you're not the industry leader however, because you really only had one good idea and Big Company has more, then what right do you have to try and Stop Progress just for your own selfish ends? That's what this all boils down to: selfishness, due to insecurity.
How the fuck is a GPL library stopping progress? Why does Big Company feel tied up due to a library being GPL? You said it yourself, they could redo it inhouse? If they were such hot shit they'd do it and continue the march of progress anyways.
Its very simple, its so simple I am not even sure I am talking to a functional level of iq: do you think more progress is made from less eyes on an idea? If the changes made by Big Co were available to the public, that's a much larger pool of engineers to take it in all sorts of directions. You are so fucking dumb its beyond words.
>...or they just decide to develop their own version from scratch instead, keep it closed source from day one, and you get nothing at all. Happens all the time.
You again seem very confused. Its exactly the same as they closing up a bsd fork. So how is the outcome or incentive any different? With bsd they can do that without any effort, with gpl at least they have the friction and may deem it too much of a friction. Google's fuchsia attempt failed despite its behemoth size, Android is still linux.
How exactly is it a sabotage? You are again making up utter absolute fucking crap out of thin air and acting retarded making up an entire fantasy universe in your head.
Since you are such a smartass wanker, tell me this, how is the other company being forced to release their changes making the market less competitive? On contrary, this makes it more competitive, since everyone is forced to compete to this level now, they themselves will have to keep developing something better, and again paying the inhouse cost if they wanna be jealous.
AGPL is strongly avoided by...yes companies who live off of turning existing libraries into websites...who'd have thought, hardly a surprise why and who avoids it.
Big company can add a good idea, but big company has big resources. I am telling you that you can now pivot on their changes and putting them under the pressure cooker again: more competition. Competition is nice.
How the fuck is a simple license that nobody is forced to use a "sabotage", are you really even thinking? How much fucked in the head can someone be to think a completely legal and simple license is a "sabotage"? A "sabotage" against what or whom? If its a sabotage, then protest whatever legal framework allowed it. Do you disagree with copyright, is that what you are saying?
If you disagree with copyright, then I hope you have no problem with taking the source code of competitors by any means. After all, if licenses are bad, and government enforcement of copyright is bad, why should copying and releasing a company's internal sources be bad?
If this is a "scarcity" mentality, then the entire history of Mathematics for the past few centuries is a scarcity mentality. If you are man enough to follow through, then say it out right in the reply that you believe Mathematics is a scarcity mentality.
I mean if I wanted to win at all costs, why shouldn't I steal your code and release it and make life harder for you. Or if I wanted to be a real winner, why don't I go and shoot you.
Tell me again moron, how the fuck does a license "force" you, who the fuck is "forcing" you to use gpl if you dislike gpl? I don't even know how deep a level of mental illness one can have to imagine someone with guns is coming out to kill you and rape you and force you to use GPL programs and libraries. Are you even thinking man? This is literal violent paranoid psychosis level of insanity. You are fucked in the head beyond repair.
You seem to be unaware of the basic fact that government--laws and legal systems--is men with guns.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington
It's difficult to have a conversation with someone so profoundly ignorant of reality. Do some research and stop wasting our time with your angry rantings.
I had a feeling you'd be too fucking stupid to be able to respond to any of the points and duly vanish just as I expected from your sackless kind.
You also still failed to have the balls to say out loud you think Mathematics is a scarcity mentality. Be a man.
You are the one who chimped out with a long rant to a perfectly calm explanation man. You are still acting mentally ill. Yeah duh, govt is men with guns. And where in all this are you seeing this supposed "sabotage" of you being forced to use GPL? If you don't like GPL, don't use GPL software. Very simple. Nobody pressured you to. Since government enforcement of copyright is not something you like, I think it's a perfectly fine sentiment to have. I hope you don't mind people releasing all the materials of competitors to the public then. Tell me again , I am not sure its any point trying to reach the skull of someone this mentally ill but I'll still try. If I release something as GPL, whos coming in to your house with guns blazing forcing you to use my library? You choose to not use it, its simple. The government will use violent force to enforce any law, but in this case its easy since you already dislike GPL, just don't use it, government will have no interest in killing you. What a fucking brain dead moron, man.
That's true, but some of the arguably worst ideas are the ones which makes it the most approachable, hackable and understandable.
Hindsight is an interesting thing. Makes mistakes more visible while making Chesterton's Fences invisible.
We shouldn't forget these. These fences are there for the reasons. Yes, fences can be revised, but shall not be ignored.
My point was, that there’s plenty of ancient things we plod along with, even though they’re not perfect. Many have tried to improve upon them but few have stuck.
You are so vague in your attack on Unix approach that it's borderline trolling. What are your problems with it? Modularity and minimalism have been working perfectly and that systemd does not follow them is a bad thing.
There is a book on that, gets posted every now and then on HN.
In case you never read it, https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
Hardly the piece of OS beauty that gets praised about FOSS circles.
I'm not talking about the OS though but about the approach.
Goes to both, otherwise UNIX authors would not have tried to improve their creations, working on successors to both UNIX and C.
I love that book but isn’t it nearly 30 years old?
And yet many of the pain points are still kind of relevant, go figure.
But that book is a waste. It is just MIT dunning-krugerites who were salty that LISP machines never took off. When it comes to real life, the bell labs approach won, and for several good reasons. Not "worse is better" (another dunning-krugerite cope), but "less is more."
Turns out free beer is great, even when it is warm.
From your perspective, what would be an "OS done right"? I have a running list of things I would change in Unix, but replacing sysvinit with systemd's one-ring-to-rule-them-all would not be on it.
The only good beer is warm beer. If the beer tastes like shit when it's warm, it's not good beer.
But your comment is a waste. It is just HN dunning-krugerites who were salty that the UNIX way never took off. When it comes to real life, the Poettering approach won, and for several good reasons.
The UNIX way is still doing fine on OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Alpine, Gentoo... Poetteringware only won on the distros selling support contracts. "Fixing" what wasn't broken is great for those businesses.
> for several good reasons
Such as money from M$?
I use runit on my production workstation and don't think about it; it just works.
Same with systemd.
Except for all those who've accidentally blown their legs off with it, of course.
Just ask the guy who bricked his motherboard due to a systemd bug where his firmware wasn't write protected and got destroyed by a 'rm -rf' command. lol
No software is perfect. Not sysvinit (and it's bash scripts from different vendors), nor systemd. Errors happen. At least for me systemd is a net positive.
> No software is perfect
Especially when it's a giant blob of buggy C code written by a known hack who has multiple decades' worth of history of foisting shit code upon a less than enthused public.
> At least for me systemd is a net positive
For the moment. Just wait until it finds a way to fuck you. It's plotting and scheming behind your back to do so as we speak.
Systemd for some reason seems to uniquely be the epicenter of giant facepalm bugs like LEAVING THE SYSTEM FIRMWARE VULNERABLE TO AN RM -RF COMMAND, a situation which causes alarm to none of the systemd crowd. They just shrug if off. "What's the big deal? I don't get it," they say.
I used to see the same mentality from Microsoft people back in the day. "Why would you use Linux? I don't get it. Windows is fine."
It's because you lack standards. You're completely used to being surrounded by software and hardware that is Fucking Garbage. Everything is like that in your world. You're happier than a pig in shit, oblivious.
> Systemd for some reason seems to uniquely be the epicenter of giant facepalm bugs like LEAVING THE SYSTEM FIRMWARE VULNERABLE TO AN RM -RF COMMAND
I am very sorry to inform you but efivarfs is something coming from the Linux kernel. Being able to rm -rf it is squarely something that is entirely on the kernel implementation, WHICH THE AUTHOR OF EFIVARFS EVEN ADMITS[0]
[0]: https://lwn.net/Articles/978640/
Thanks for the correction. Yes, I have my bone to pick with the Linux kernel too on many different fronts.
#facepalm
> Implements an init system; does not replace DNS, syslog, inetd, or anything else.
You're confusing systemd the init manager and systemd the project. systemd as an init system only "replaces" initd, syslog and udev.
All other components under the systemd project are optional and not required, nor is there any push to make them required.
>"All other components under the systemd project are optional and not required"
Name two major distros that use 'systemd init system' but doesn't use the other parts.
> Implements an init system; does not replace DNS, syslog, inetd, or anything else
Neither does systemd its init.
Unknowledgeable people keep confusing systemd the init and systemd the daemon / utility suite. You can use just the init system without pulling in resolved or networkd or whatever.
Systemd is the Unix philosophy of lots of modularity. But because all the systemd daemons come from the same shop, you get a lot of creature comforts if you use them together. Nothing bad about that.
> because all the systemd daemons come from the same shop, you get a lot of creature comforts if you use them together. Nothing bad about that.
That's how vendor lock-in works, in which a myth is propagated that having it all come from under one roof is best. In fact, it is a guarantee that best-of-breed alternative solutions cannot be used. Interoperability is thwarted. This is why sensible Unix admins historically knew to keep options open for mixed-vendor sourcing as long as the bosses didn't get roped in to a single vendor or source.
Okay, so you code the features that dnsmasq is missing that resolved has. Or pay someone to do it. I promise you systemd does not have special verification protocols that stop you from interfacing with certain features. This isn't Apple.
Think about it, you can't obligate the systemd folks to maintain codebases that aren't theirs.. would be madness.
> but it has little relation to the Unix design
It's more like Windows! /duck
I have been saying for years that Microsoft would eventually deprecate WinNT and switch Windows over to a Linux foundation. Things seem to be slowly but continually moving in that direction.
Makes no sense to dump a superior kernel and executive for Linux.
The Win32 layer is the issue, not the underbelly.
I’ve had more hard crashes and BSODs on Windows than any other OS. And I use Linux & Mac more than Windows. Not sure how it’s superior.
More advanced APIs which allow more fine-grained interaction between system and application IF you can figure out how to use them
My favorite example of this is how Windows NT has had async IO forever, while also being notorious for having slower storage performance than Linux. And when Linux finally got an async API worth using, Microsoft immediately set about cloning it for Windows.
Theoretical or aesthetic advantages are no guarantee that the software in question will actually be superior in practice.
ASync I/O isn't limited to just storage, though. It's /all/ I/O.
And yes, the layered storage stack does have a performance penalty to it. But it's also infinitely more flexible, if that is what you need. Linux still lacks IOCP (which io_uring is not a replacement for).
Windows' VMM and OOM is also generally much better.
> this is how Windows NT has had async IO
Pretty much what I was thinking of. My understanding from reading some commentary in this area is the Linux implementation is yet a little botched due to how it handles waiting threads.
The windows NT kernel is in many ways a better design. However they allow third party device drivers, and run on all kinds of really terrible hardware. Both of them will cause the system to be unstable through no fault of the system.
Don't get me wrong, NT also has its share of questionable design decisions. However overall the technical design of the kernel is great.
They might use the NT kernel and their own version of the Linux userland.
I'd be open to the idea, if the kernel were open sourced (MIT licensed?) so I could play with it too.
Why do that when Win32 is what everyone wants?
We’ve already had NT + Linux userland; that was WSLv1.
I think if we're talking about "what everyone wants", Windows 11 obviously isn't it, so that's not necessarily the driving force here.
As I said, everyone wants Win32. What flavor is up to debate, everyone has their own incorrect opinions.
It would be much unlike Microsoft if they didn't bring Win32/Win64 compatibility along for the ride somehow, and very stupid also, because as you say that is the real core of Windows in a lot of ways.
I have no idea what they're planning or why, just guessing, as they seem to be bringing Linux and Windows closer together all the time.
> It would be much unlike Microsoft if they didn't bring Win32/Win64 compatibility along for the ride somehow, and very stupid also, because as you say that is the real core of Windows in a lot of ways.
This requires NT API compatibility due to applications using NT API. Despite Microsoft telling devs don't use the NT API, devs use the NT API and Microsoft makes adjustments to ensure compatibility.
> I have no idea what they're planning or why
Clearly, because the whole idea not only makes no engineering sense, it makes no financial sense. They need to build the NT kernel anyway -- it runs the entirety of Azure services!
> Makes no sense to dump a superior kernel and executive for Linux.
At this point in time, having programmed deep in the internals of both Linux and Windows, I think it is probably incorrect to call either kernel an inferior or superior one.
I mean, it was true for both of them at some point (Overlapped IO was great on Windows and missing on Linux, for example) but today, in 2026, the only differentiating factor is the userland experience.
For me, Windows loses this hands down.
> switch Windows over to a Linux foundation.
Though it seems to be sneaking in through application space on a WinNT foundation
Hackers design hacker-friendly systems, which are easy to learn and extend. Corporation$ design ops-friendly systems, which are cheap to operate.
We need both.
> We need both
Both can devolve into empire building. We need both to be transparent and open.
What we need is actual, proper, mass-education about how computers work, with the goal of increasing their freedom of interaction. Not towards creating more working class peasants using a tool for work, but creating chaotically creative tinkerers using a tool to create whatever they want, more tools included.
Kids and their Parents learned it in the 80s and they had nothing but a manual. Either these people were massively more intelligent, or the same approach, using modern methods, would work again and again and again.
Considering the 1% rule of the internet (it's about the ratios, not the numbers!), shifting more people from the 90% to, at least, the 9%, seems to be one of the better courses of actions to take.
What we, MY FELLOW HUMANS [1], absolutely do not need is more people being optimized towards using a computer solely as a tool for someone else ... especially because AI can replace 99%+ of them anyway.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/totallynotrobots/
Yes, this times a thousand. If we treat people like slaves, they become slaves. Treat them as if they are smart, and they will become smart. It's as simple as that.
[dead]
One might almost say a Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons.