Linux founder tells Intel to stop inventing 'magic instructions' and'start fixing real problems'

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 at 15:22:44, VanguardLH wrote:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jul 2020 at 13:42:37, VanguardLH wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote:

Linus Torvalds' comments came from this article: https://is.gd/6zpZRL

Full URL:
https://www.pcgamer.com/linux-founde...inventing-magi
c-instructions-and-start-fixing-real-problems/#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fww
w.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=ht tps%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgamer.c
om%2Flinux-founder-tells-intel-to-stop-inventing-magic-instructions-and-
start-fixing-real-problems%2F

I'm a little surprised at VLH for the above: surely it's rather _more_
than a Full URL: I think you could truncate it before the # sign. What
[]
I gave the full URL that the *OP* provided with the shortened version.

Fairy nuff.
[]
Tweaking hardware to look good in benchmarks is news to you? Video
[]
Not exclusive to computing hardware of course! The last _big_ one I can
remember is Volkswagen getting _caught_ detecting when their engines
[]
I wonder how a car knows a gas sniffer is poking up its ahole. Oooh,
warm that up first before sticking it in. I suppose the car's computer
could notice the car wheels weren't rotating when the engine got revved
up and the steering wheel wasn't turning.

Could be. If done for a long time, maybe.

My state dropped emissions testing (for consumer vehicles which the
owner had to pay an $8 fee before they could get tabs) a long time ago.

Interesting; I didn't know some states didn't have any limits.
[]
testing despite our state has a green light. Must've been in sub-EPA or
more green-centric states where VW got busted for cheating.

There is a world outside "the states" (-:! Given that that particular
violation was Diesel engines, and I don't think Diesel cars are that
popular in the USA, it might well have first come to light somewhere in
EU. Ironically, the Germans are particularly keen on "green" matters.
(Though are also rather against nuclear, which is again ironic, as a lot
of their coal output is a rather dirty variety.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.
It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
-Robert Maynard Hutchins, educator (1899-1977)

VanguardLH wrote:
You didn't provide a timemark for the related content, and I wasn't
going to watch all of the 22 minute video, so I moved the slider to skim
through it. The author started talking about Steam on Linux which could
now detect the native OS platform to know which game titles to present.
Steam represents about 78% of the marketshare for computer games. I saw
something about them using a compatibility shim to run Windows games on
Linux platforms eliminating the need to run Steam and the Windows games
inside of WINE. Wonder how the benchmarks reflect the performance of a
Windows game running inside of WINE versus running the Windows game atop
Steam's shim.

No all Steam games on Linux are Windows games running in WINE, many are
truly ported. I've got the Borderland games and they are ports not
running in WINE. Proton and WINE just extend selection for old games
avoiding the need to port.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

On 2020-07-16 14:01, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

Is Linus even a gamer? Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for
Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming. Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho

You didn't provide a timemark for the related content, and I wasn't
going to watch all of the 22 minute video, so I moved the slider to skim
through it. The author started talking about Steam on Linux which could
now detect the native OS platform to know which game titles to present.
Steam represents about 78% of the marketshare for computer games. I saw
something about them using a compatibility shim to run Windows games on
Linux platforms eliminating the need to run Steam and the Windows games
inside of WINE. Wonder how the benchmarks reflect the performance of a
Windows game running inside of WINE versus running the Windows game atop
Steam's shim.

https://itsfoss.com/steam-play/

Oh, so Steam Play simply provides a fork of WINE as its shim between the
native OS platform and the Windows-only game. The Windows games will
likely be impacted the same whether ran inside of WINE or Steam's
variant of WINE. I didn't even bother to address running anything
Windows inside of WINE or via any other emulation layer, like VMWare
Player for Linux running Windows as a guest OS and then running a
Windows game inside of that virtual machine. That something is doable
doesn't mean it should be.

That still means the games were *not* developed for the Linux platform.
They were written for the Windows platform. Guess I should've qualified
my statement by saying:

"Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection of native Linux games."

Do hardcore gamers even bother with WINE? Conversely, everything Linux
can be played on Windows, too, so the user could use a Windows platform
to play native Windows games and emulated Linux games. Is there much
draw for that scenario? You can even play Android apps on Windows by
using a shim aka emulator, like Bluestacks. There's native-on-native,
and then there are less-than-ideal workarounds.


Titus starts in with Lutris at about 7:25

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-07-16 1:35 p.m., T wrote:
On 2020-07-15 11:42, VanguardLH wrote:
Is Linus
even a gamer? Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming. Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho

You make joke, Yes? :-)

Rene


Are we playing "Sodoku" yet ?

Paul

"Jonathan N. Little" wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

The author started talking about Steam on Linux which could now
detect the native OS platform to know which game titles to present.
Steam represents about 78% of the marketshare for computer games. I
saw something about them using a compatibility shim to run Windows
games on Linux platforms eliminating the need to run Steam and the
Windows games inside of WINE.

No all Steam games on Linux are Windows games running in WINE, many
are truly ported. I've got the Borderland games and they are ports
not running in WINE. Proton and WINE just extend selection for old
games avoiding the need to port.

And does that somehow lopside the bias of game count to make native
Linux games far exceed those native games available on Windows? Of
course not. A game that had been ported to be a native Linux app is
obviously no longer a Windows app. A ported Windows game becomes a
native Linux game. The count of Linux games, whether native or ported
to make native, are still meager compared to the count of native games
on Windows.

Steam Play (Steam for Linux) detects the platform for the game probably
via a manifest for the game specifying its native platform. If it's a
native Linux game, it just loads it in Linux. If a Windows game, it
uses its WINE variant (aka Proton) to run the Windows game in that
emulator running atop Linux.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2...ows-only-games

The confirmed list of Windows-only games that are compatible atop
Steam's Proton variant of is small. That's just the ones that Steam has
confirmed are compatible.

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Proton

has a hyperlink pointing to a list of app manifests/mappings for 100+
compatible Windows games. There's also a link to user-reported game
compatibility.

Proton converts the DX 10/11 calls to Vulkan to help keep game
performance similar to the Windows game when ran native on Windows.
That is dependent on the available of proprietary Linux drivers for
video hardware, the efficiency in coding the Linux video driver, and
compatibility of the Linux driver provided by the video maker to run on
other Linux variants (most don't list just Linux but some variant as
supported).

Regardless of the workarounds, they still don't alter which are native
Linux games and which are native Windows games, and the huge disparity
in counts between them. As noted, you can run Linux stuff on Windows,
but that doesn't magically mutate them into native Windows apps. Linux
marketshare floats around 2%, so obviously the game authors are going to
target the market that has the biggest ROI. That's not Linux.

I'm not a Windows proselytizer or Linux defender. I believe in using
the platform that best suits the task. Sorry, I still don't see Linux
as the best choice for a gaming platform.

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:22:44 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jul 2020 at 13:42:37, VanguardLH wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote:

Linus Torvalds' comments came from this article: https://is.gd/6zpZRL

Full URL:
https://www.pcgamer.com/linux-founde...inventing-magi
c-instructions-and-start-fixing-real-problems/#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fww
w.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=ht tps%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgamer.c
om%2Flinux-founder-tells-intel-to-stop-inventing-magic-instructions-and-
start-fixing-real-problems%2F

I'm a little surprised at VLH for the above: surely it's rather _more_
than a Full URL: I think you could truncate it before the # sign. What
follows are "referrer" and "From", with another couple of URLs in there
(with the "://"s and subsequent "/"s turned into their hex equivalents).

is.gd, the URL shortening service that the OP used, does not provide a
preview mode. With TinyURL, you can add the "preview" hostname to see
where shortened URL points.

Well, is.gd does have a preview mode, but it's clumsy. You go to:

https://is.gd/previews.php

click on the "... see preview page ...", leave the web browser open, and
then click on the shortened URL the OP provided. Their page then shows
the full original URL and, yep, it has all that crap in it. Or you can
use on of the URL lengthener sites to reveal the original URL.

I gave the full URL that the *OP* provided with the shortened version.
Complain to the OP about not truncating URLs to their minimum. If he
had, he would not have needed the URL shortening service. The full URL:

https://www.pcgamer.com/linux-founde...real-problems/

is perhaps longer than the typical line length viewed in NNTP clients,
but slicing up URLs that are longer than the logical (viewed) line
length by injecting newlines (slicing URLs into multiple physical lines)
is a defect of the sender's client. Physical lines can be up to 998
characters long (that's the old-time recommendation). Maybe some NNTP
clients have problems when viewing physical line lengths longer than
their viewable line length making the URL not clickable, and why I've
seen some posters enclose the long URL within angle brackets, like
URL, as a workaround for deficient clients.

With some newsreaders, such as my old copy of Agent 2.0, brackets aren't a
workaround for a deficient client. They are simply markers to let the
composition window know that the configured line length value should be
ignored for text between the brackets.

VanguardLH wrote:
"Jonathan N. Little" wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

snip

Steam Play (Steam for Linux) detects the platform for the game probably
via a manifest for the game specifying its native platform. If it's a
native Linux game, it just loads it in Linux. If a Windows game, it
uses its WINE variant (aka Proton) to run the Windows game in that
emulator running atop Linux.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2...ows-only-games


2 years old. The landscape is changing rapidly. Of the top 100 games 1/3
now ported. More will be in the future with new games.

https://www.protondb.com/

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

T wrote:

On 2020-07-16 14:01, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

Is Linus even a gamer? Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for
Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming. Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho

You didn't provide a timemark for the related content, and I wasn't
going to watch all of the 22 minute video, so I moved the slider to skim
through it. The author started talking about Steam on Linux which could
now detect the native OS platform to know which game titles to present.
Steam represents about 78% of the marketshare for computer games. I saw
something about them using a compatibility shim to run Windows games on
Linux platforms eliminating the need to run Steam and the Windows games
inside of WINE. Wonder how the benchmarks reflect the performance of a
Windows game running inside of WINE versus running the Windows game atop
Steam's shim.

https://itsfoss.com/steam-play/

Oh, so Steam Play simply provides a fork of WINE as its shim between the
native OS platform and the Windows-only game. The Windows games will
likely be impacted the same whether ran inside of WINE or Steam's
variant of WINE. I didn't even bother to address running anything
Windows inside of WINE or via any other emulation layer, like VMWare
Player for Linux running Windows as a guest OS and then running a
Windows game inside of that virtual machine. That something is doable
doesn't mean it should be.

That still means the games were *not* developed for the Linux platform.
They were written for the Windows platform. Guess I should've qualified
my statement by saying:

"Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection of native Linux games."

Do hardcore gamers even bother with WINE? Conversely, everything Linux
can be played on Windows, too, so the user could use a Windows platform
to play native Windows games and emulated Linux games. Is there much
draw for that scenario? You can even play Android apps on Windows by
using a shim aka emulator, like Bluestacks. There's native-on-native,
and then there are less-than-ideal workarounds.


Titus starts in with Lutris at about 7:25

He first shows installing Lutris (Open Gaming Platform) before
installing Steam Play. Is Lutris even needed to use Steam's dispatcher
to decide if a game's manifest says it is Windows-only to then run it
under Steam's Proton variant of WINE? Isn't Lutris a Linux game library
manager and launcher, and perhaps across multiple sources (Steam,
battle.net, GOG)?

The video author says Lutris has no documentation. Really? Learning is
solely by trial-and-error, or pleading for info in a user community?

Before all that, he installed rpmFusion to get all the libs that Redhat
doesn't include on which Lutris and Steam Play might be dependent.
Install this, a must. Maybe install that. Then install Steam Play. I
take it Lutris and Steam Play won't grab, download, and install any libs
they are dependent upon. Seems this could be further streamlined for a
bigger lure to users to leave Windows. Maybe the chained installs are
needed just for Fedora.

On 2020-07-16 6:08 p.m., Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-07-16 1:35 p.m., T wrote:
On 2020-07-15 11:42, VanguardLH wrote:
Is Linus
even a gamer?Â* Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming.Â* Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho

You make joke, Yes?Â* :-)

Rene


Are we playing "Sodoku" yet ?

Â*Â* Paul

I don't know how to play 'Sodoku'
Too old to start now. :-)

Rene

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 19:06:14 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:

On 2020-07-16 6:08 p.m., Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-07-16 1:35 p.m., T wrote:
On 2020-07-15 11:42, VanguardLH wrote:
Is Linus
even a gamer?* Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming.* Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho

You make joke, Yes?* :-)

Rene


Are we playing "Sodoku" yet ?

** Paul

I don't know how to play 'Sodoku'
Too old to start now. :-)

I know how to play but it's tedious, so I wrote a Sudoku solver in Excel
(using VBA). It's more fun to watch the puzzle being solved.

On 2020-07-16 16:33, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

On 2020-07-16 14:01, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

Is Linus even a gamer? Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for
Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming. Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho

You didn't provide a timemark for the related content, and I wasn't
going to watch all of the 22 minute video, so I moved the slider to skim
through it. The author started talking about Steam on Linux which could
now detect the native OS platform to know which game titles to present.
Steam represents about 78% of the marketshare for computer games. I saw
something about them using a compatibility shim to run Windows games on
Linux platforms eliminating the need to run Steam and the Windows games
inside of WINE. Wonder how the benchmarks reflect the performance of a
Windows game running inside of WINE versus running the Windows game atop
Steam's shim.

https://itsfoss.com/steam-play/

Oh, so Steam Play simply provides a fork of WINE as its shim between the
native OS platform and the Windows-only game. The Windows games will
likely be impacted the same whether ran inside of WINE or Steam's
variant of WINE. I didn't even bother to address running anything
Windows inside of WINE or via any other emulation layer, like VMWare
Player for Linux running Windows as a guest OS and then running a
Windows game inside of that virtual machine. That something is doable
doesn't mean it should be.

That still means the games were *not* developed for the Linux platform.
They were written for the Windows platform. Guess I should've qualified
my statement by saying:

"Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection of native Linux games."

Do hardcore gamers even bother with WINE? Conversely, everything Linux
can be played on Windows, too, so the user could use a Windows platform
to play native Windows games and emulated Linux games. Is there much
draw for that scenario? You can even play Android apps on Windows by
using a shim aka emulator, like Bluestacks. There's native-on-native,
and then there are less-than-ideal workarounds.


Titus starts in with Lutris at about 7:25

He first shows installing Lutris (Open Gaming Platform) before
installing Steam Play. Is Lutris even needed to use Steam's dispatcher
to decide if a game's manifest says it is Windows-only to then run it
under Steam's Proton variant of WINE? Isn't Lutris a Linux game library
manager and launcher, and perhaps across multiple sources (Steam,
battle.net, GOG)?

The video author says Lutris has no documentation. Really? Learning is
solely by trial-and-error, or pleading for info in a user community?

Before all that, he installed rpmFusion to get all the libs that Redhat
doesn't include on which Lutris and Steam Play might be dependent.
Install this, a must. Maybe install that. Then install Steam Play. I
take it Lutris and Steam Play won't grab, download, and install any libs
they are dependent upon. Seems this could be further streamlined for a
bigger lure to users to leave Windows. Maybe the chained installs are
needed just for Fedora.


I can't comment on any of your questions I am not a gamer.

Folks will leave Windows when enough of they applications
they need are ported over. M$ rules the universe when
it comes to applications and some outer ring of hell
when it comes to quality and security.

T wrote:

Folks will leave Windows when enough of they applications they need
are ported over. M$ rules the universe when it comes to applications
and some outer ring of hell when it comes to quality and security.

I think "catch 'em early" works better. School have and still do train
students on Windows. Chromebooks have penetrated schools more then
Linux. Users that, by choice, switch to Linux sometime later in their
lives are doing so due to curiosity, training, job requirements, using
the best platform for a critical task, or enlarge their expertise.
That's why Linux penetration has only been about 2% of the consumer PC
market. There already is good penetration into commercial use.

When schools are predominatly training students in an OS then the market
penetration goes up. The students take with them what they learned.
Microsoft learned that long ago. So did Apple. With so many Linux
variants and only a few commercial vendors (e.g., Redhat), free is not a
sufficient reason for mass migration to Linux. Get a gradually larger
student population to take Linux expertise into their homes and
workplace. Capture the minds and hearts of future computer users. Is
Linux deployed in pre-college schools for getting students intimate with
that OS?

http://linuxfederation.com/linux-part-school-education
(Yeah, it's a blog, so no datestamp as typical of blogs.)

https://opensource.com/article/18/3/...orward-schools

For well-rounded computer eduction, students should really be exposed to
multiple operating systems. Learn 'em, and let 'em choose.

However, businesses and even schools need support from the OS vendor.
Free doesn't include technical support. Those institutions don't look
firstly at the cost of a license. They look for support and its cost.
Not having robust support is costly. In-house training still has costs
and adds delay to acquire expertise. Like buying a printer, you figure
the Cost of Ownership is in the rate of use of the consumables (paper,
ink), and lastly consider the cost of the printer. The cost of OS
licenses is never discussed when we plan deployment of hosts, and
supporting them. The loss of use for a critical business app or suite
due to lack of support far exceeds free versus paid OS or software.
Cobol programmers are in high demand ($75K/year average base pay),
because colleges stopped teaching it long ago, so there aren't many
Cobol programmers around after attribtion of old farts that have retired
died off. Same for Fortran nowadays ($80K/year average base salary).
Companies are willing to pay for the expertise that is hard to find.
They couldn't give a gnat's fart about the costs for Cobol compiler
licenses. Losing a critical business program due to no support costs
way more, maybe even cause the company's demise.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Microsoft is planning a migration to a
Linux/Windows hybrid kernel with a Windows GUI. After all, Windows NT,
and up, which had an NT-based kernel still carried along the familiar
desktop GUI from the 9x/DOS frankenjob GUI. First it was Linux in their
Azure cloud service. Then they began releasing apps for Android and
Linux. They rolled in a Linux compatibility layer (Windows Subsystem
for Linux, or WSL, but no Linux kernel code) to run Linux binary
executables. Rolling in subsystems into Windows isn't new. NTFS is a
file subsystem, as are FAT, exFAT, and CDFS. WSL v2 was announced May
2019 which moved to a real Linux kernel (as a subset of Hyper-V
features). In 2016, WSL only provided an Ubuntu image. the Fall
Creators Update in Oct 2017 move to SUSE images. With WSL v2 in May
2019, Linux support moved to a Hyper-V VM-based backend instead of the
system-call adaption (compatibility) layer. We've been familiar with
VMMs (Virtual Machine Managers) using virtual machines running guest
OSes on Windows (or visa versa on Linux) for a long time. Microsoft
decided to use the Hyper-V VMM. They wanted a kernel-mode model instead
of user-mode solutions. Because of the extremely high adoption of
Windows versus Linux, there has been concern that WSL could be a way for
Microsoft to "embrace, extend, and extinguish Linux".

At first, WSL was available only for Pro and Enterprise editions of
Windows 10 x64. On July 2019, they granted its used on Home editions.
I run optionalfeatures.exe (run with admin permissionsto effect
changes), scroll down, and WSL is listed. I haven't yet played with
WSL, so it's currently disabled.

https://betanews.com/2018/03/06/debian-linux-windows/

"I am of the opinion that if you want to run an operating system based
on that open source kernel, then you should just do so natively -- not
on top of Windows."

Well, that is not accurate. Hyper-V (a native hypervisor) is a VMM but
it does *NOT* run in user-mode to manage VMs. It is a kernel-mode
service. Probably because the Linux images are represented as "apps" in
Microsoft's store is why that author thinks it is an app running atop of
Windows.

"Hyper-V implements isolation of virtual machines in terms of a
partition."

That's not a portion of an HDD or SDD where sectors are allocated in a
group for use by an OS or data. That's a hypervisor partition. IBM
mainframes 30+ years ago used similar hypervisors with OS isolation
partitions. I was helping the sysadmin migrate to a new version of VSE,
MVS, or VM by installing and configuring the new version of the OS in a
different partition that was not accessible to the users. When we were
ready, and late at night when the users were gone and after announcing
the switch (because any users connected to the OS version in the old
partition would get disconnected), we swapped which was the primary OS
partition. The users came in and found a new version of the OS was
ready. If there was a problem, we could switch back to the old OS
partition.

OS partition (Hyper-V) hierarchy
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...px-Hyper-V.png

Yes, every hypervisor is itself an OS, but the working Windows image and
Linux image are not "running atop Windows". Users aren't using the
Hyper-V OS for their work. They're using the VM of Windows managed by
Hyper-V. Well, that's how it works for the server version. Only admins
go into the Hyper-V OS to configure it. That's a distant memory since I
haven't looked at Hyper-V for years.

Char Jackson wrote:

Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Paul wrote:

Are we playing "Sodoku" yet ?

I don't know how to play 'Sodoku'
Too old to start now. :-)

I know how to play but it's tedious, so I wrote a Sudoku solver in Excel
(using VBA). It's more fun to watch the puzzle being solved.

Does it take coffee and bathroom breaks, too?

On 2020-07-16 21:47, VanguardLH wrote:
T wrote:

Folks will leave Windows when enough of they applications they need
are ported over. M$ rules the universe when it comes to applications
and some outer ring of hell when it comes to quality and security.

I think "catch 'em early" works better. School have and still do train
students on Windows. Chromebooks have penetrated schools more then
Linux. Users that, by choice, switch to Linux sometime later in their
lives are doing so due to curiosity, training, job requirements, using
the best platform for a critical task, or enlarge their expertise.
That's why Linux penetration has only been about 2% of the consumer PC
market. There already is good penetration into commercial use.

When schools are predominatly training students in an OS then the market
penetration goes up. The students take with them what they learned.
Microsoft learned that long ago. So did Apple. With so many Linux
variants and only a few commercial vendors (e.g., Redhat), free is not a
sufficient reason for mass migration to Linux. Get a gradually larger
student population to take Linux expertise into their homes and
workplace. Capture the minds and hearts of future computer users. Is
Linux deployed in pre-college schools for getting students intimate with
that OS?

http://linuxfederation.com/linux-part-school-education
(Yeah, it's a blog, so no datestamp as typical of blogs.)

https://opensource.com/article/18/3/...orward-schools

For well-rounded computer eduction, students should really be exposed to
multiple operating systems. Learn 'em, and let 'em choose.

However, businesses and even schools need support from the OS vendor.
Free doesn't include technical support. Those institutions don't look
firstly at the cost of a license. They look for support and its cost.
Not having robust support is costly. In-house training still has costs
and adds delay to acquire expertise. Like buying a printer, you figure
the Cost of Ownership is in the rate of use of the consumables (paper,
ink), and lastly consider the cost of the printer. The cost of OS
licenses is never discussed when we plan deployment of hosts, and
supporting them. The loss of use for a critical business app or suite
due to lack of support far exceeds free versus paid OS or software.
Cobol programmers are in high demand ($75K/year average base pay),
because colleges stopped teaching it long ago, so there aren't many
Cobol programmers around after attribtion of old farts that have retired
died off. Same for Fortran nowadays ($80K/year average base salary).
Companies are willing to pay for the expertise that is hard to find.
They couldn't give a gnat's fart about the costs for Cobol compiler
licenses. Losing a critical business program due to no support costs
way more, maybe even cause the company's demise.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Microsoft is planning a migration to a
Linux/Windows hybrid kernel with a Windows GUI. After all, Windows NT,
and up, which had an NT-based kernel still carried along the familiar
desktop GUI from the 9x/DOS frankenjob GUI. First it was Linux in their
Azure cloud service. Then they began releasing apps for Android and
Linux. They rolled in a Linux compatibility layer (Windows Subsystem
for Linux, or WSL, but no Linux kernel code) to run Linux binary
executables. Rolling in subsystems into Windows isn't new. NTFS is a
file subsystem, as are FAT, exFAT, and CDFS. WSL v2 was announced May
2019 which moved to a real Linux kernel (as a subset of Hyper-V
features). In 2016, WSL only provided an Ubuntu image. the Fall
Creators Update in Oct 2017 move to SUSE images. With WSL v2 in May
2019, Linux support moved to a Hyper-V VM-based backend instead of the
system-call adaption (compatibility) layer. We've been familiar with
VMMs (Virtual Machine Managers) using virtual machines running guest
OSes on Windows (or visa versa on Linux) for a long time. Microsoft
decided to use the Hyper-V VMM. They wanted a kernel-mode model instead
of user-mode solutions. Because of the extremely high adoption of
Windows versus Linux, there has been concern that WSL could be a way for
Microsoft to "embrace, extend, and extinguish Linux".

At first, WSL was available only for Pro and Enterprise editions of
Windows 10 x64. On July 2019, they granted its used on Home editions.
I run optionalfeatures.exe (run with admin permissionsto effect
changes), scroll down, and WSL is listed. I haven't yet played with
WSL, so it's currently disabled.

https://betanews.com/2018/03/06/debian-linux-windows/

"I am of the opinion that if you want to run an operating system based
on that open source kernel, then you should just do so natively -- not
on top of Windows."

Well, that is not accurate. Hyper-V (a native hypervisor) is a VMM but
it does *NOT* run in user-mode to manage VMs. It is a kernel-mode
service. Probably because the Linux images are represented as "apps" in
Microsoft's store is why that author thinks it is an app running atop of
Windows.

"Hyper-V implements isolation of virtual machines in terms of a
partition."

That's not a portion of an HDD or SDD where sectors are allocated in a
group for use by an OS or data. That's a hypervisor partition. IBM
mainframes 30+ years ago used similar hypervisors with OS isolation
partitions. I was helping the sysadmin migrate to a new version of VSE,
MVS, or VM by installing and configuring the new version of the OS in a
different partition that was not accessible to the users. When we were
ready, and late at night when the users were gone and after announcing
the switch (because any users connected to the OS version in the old
partition would get disconnected), we swapped which was the primary OS
partition. The users came in and found a new version of the OS was
ready. If there was a problem, we could switch back to the old OS
partition.

OS partition (Hyper-V) hierarchy
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...px-Hyper-V.png

Yes, every hypervisor is itself an OS, but the working Windows image and
Linux image are not "running atop Windows". Users aren't using the
Hyper-V OS for their work. They're using the VM of Windows managed by
Hyper-V. Well, that's how it works for the server version. Only admins
go into the Hyper-V OS to configure it. That's a distant memory since I
haven't looked at Hyper-V for years.


My experience has been different:

When I was a youngster, the colleges trained on Apple.
The minute grads hit industry, they switched to Windows.

And my current experience with small business I have
constantly tried to figure out how to get folks on
Linux. It is virtually impossible, as the apps they
need only run in Windows.

It is the apps the customer cares about. They could
care less if they were run int Flying Zucchini OS, if
it ran their apps.

I know this to be the case as my customer SELDOM know
what OS they are running.

Also, the recent computer science grads I have come
across make my head spin. They know virtually nothing
about computers or programming. Seriously, they barely
know what a mouse is. And they are in debt up to the
asses with student loans.

On 2020-07-16 14:04, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2020-07-16 1:35 p.m., T wrote:
On 2020-07-15 11:42, VanguardLH wrote:
Is Linus
even a gamer?Â* Oh wait, yeah, not that big a selection for Linux.

Linux is not tied with Windows for gaming.Â* Take
a gander at:

Fedora 31 | Features, Gaming, and New Daily Driver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8oBlOTBho

You make joke, Yes?Â* :-)

Rene


Did you watch the video?