Microsoft built its own custom Linux kernel for its new IoT service

https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/16/microsoft-built-its-own-custom-linux-kernel-for-its-new-iot-service/

by dbasedweeb • 8 years ago

321 286 8 years ago

JudasGoat• 8 years ago

Someone has been predicting that Microsoft would in the future produce their own Linux Distro on Slashdot for the last 5 years. I remember thinking it sounded impossible for for the first few years. Seems prophetic now.

Operyl• 8 years ago

If you say the same thing long enough one day it’ll be true in some way (little or big).

drbojingle• 8 years ago

To bad your statement isn't one of those things.

quickthrower2• 8 years ago

Linus is going to write his own Windows distribution

squarefoot2• 8 years ago

Rather than their Linux distro I think they will do what Google did with Android, that is, making their ecosystem run under the Linux kernel (plus MS services) so that they will save a huge load of money by not having to maintain their own kernel. Think about not having to write drivers for every piece of hardware that gets produced; they would probably just audit and test the code to certify the driver as fully compatible.

This may seem good, but my paranoid half (make it 9/10) thinks they could "hijack" the Linux user base by releasing software certified as Linux compatible that runs only under their Linux, and by being platinum members of the Linux Foundation they could be entitled to say that their Linux is the only true one.

lalaithion• 8 years ago

And then Linus would fork it, and everyone would follow his fork instead of Microsoft's.

yndoendo• 8 years ago

Still cannot understand the IoT mentality. It is actually the CoT Communication of Things. Internet shouldn't be required to turn your lights on or off nor be the device communication backbone in an industrial enviornment. Internet should always be the last resort for communicating because of the distance.

duxup2• 8 years ago

I can't monitor you or turn your light switch into a "service" that involves reoccurring payments if we don't use the internet to connect.... /s

bsder• 8 years ago

And you also can't get a security update when someone figures out how to turn your lightbulbs into a botnet.

cgh• 8 years ago

You are correct, particularly in an industrial environment with lots of sensors etc. These are typically on a closed network, which gives us the Network of Things, or NoT.

jasonkostempski• 8 years ago

Or just "network". That there are "things" being networked has always gone without saying.

voltagex_• 8 years ago

I agree, but I'm still finding it very useful for turning off a light I forgot or powering off/on my PC via a smart socket. Not everyone can set up a port-forwarded and secured service to access their stuff away from home.

walrus012• 8 years ago

https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en

russellbeattie• 8 years ago

Totally with you. Maybe I'm a pessimist or a luddite or something, but I really don't think IoT devices should be connected directly to the Internet. Most are just too simple, underpowered or cheaply made to adequately defend themselves from attacks. IoT gadgets should always talk to a more powerful/secure hub of some sort, which then is exposed to the Internet. Seriously, my WiFi lightbulb switch just has no business doing anything outside my internal network...

And god help us when all these IoT devices start talking IPv6... With no NAT and anemic firewalls on most routers? Oof.

HoppyHaus• 8 years ago

Absolutely. I love small devices I can modify and the such, but when I do it, it's some assurance that i have a bit of security-by-obscurity, as well as an open-source background that usually comes with the random-modification scene. But when a commercial entity wants my lights to connect to the internet, chances are they are less-modifiable than a few hacked-together circuits.

hvidgaard• 8 years ago

I've had this conversation before. I want "IoT" stuff to connect to a bridge I control. Even that does not need to go outside of the network, I can VPN into my network if I need access.

But John Doe does not care, he wants convenience to the point where the IoT manufacturer knows everything about how they use the product.

dingaling• 8 years ago

Just because a device supports IPv6 doesn't mean you have to route that prefix to the Internet.

Assign Unique Locals ( ULA ) to untrusted LAN devices and no Internet router will carry them.

Then your laptop or phone can additionally receive a routed prefix. Remember with IPv6 you can assign an arbitrary number of prefixes and addresses to each interface, or just one. It makes for very flexible routing.

smacktoward• 8 years ago

But then how am I supposed to turn the garage doors of all the other houses on my cul-de-sac into the world's largest game of Hungry Hungry Hippos?

lightbulbjim• 8 years ago

The full acronym is IOTWSNBCTTI, or Internet Of Things Which Should Not Be Connected To The Internet.

gonzo• 8 years ago

Inherently Dangerous Internet of Things.

IDIoT

komali26• 8 years ago

There are use cases for which internet becomes the most effective solution. Mostly "extremely distributed products," like a sensor sold by a company offering analysis and preventative maintenance services alongside the product.

Do the security right and the classic internet of shit botnet type vulnerabilities aren't really an issue (knock on wood...)

Anyway, we've managed to survive pitching internet connectivity instead of local network, and several customers have found use cases for it that I don't think local would be feasible for.

In the end it's not just "technically a LAN would be the most secure option here," I mean that's always the case. It can be more "our partners and solution are offering a so-far-unbroken security model, and connecting via the Internet makes the whole manufacturing, distribution, on-site enrolling, and monitoring cheaper and working out of the box."

0xsfv• 8 years ago

Agreed. The term you are looking for is called pervasive computing. Moreover when the so called "connected devices" can be mobile, then we are speaking about ubiquitous computing. IoT is a way of utilising pervasive computing through the internet. Unfortunately the media and therefore the majority of the tech community has wrongly decided to use IoT for everything which results in a lot of misconceptions. Probably a marketing trick, who knows.

pfarnsworth• 8 years ago

Microsoft has a lot of great engineers that have no religious bias against Linux. This was strictly a Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer thing. The smartest thing Nadella did was get rid of the Windows religion aspect to their work and let their engineers do the best thing, and not be afraid of Linux.

ekianjo2• 8 years ago

where is the office suite for Linux then?

kerng2• 8 years ago

I think that's a pure business decision, they have Office for Android and iOS. Office for Linux might not make that much sense given the low market share on client - but Office 365 has most as WebApps anyway also.

kelnos2• 8 years ago

I doubt that has much to do with "religion"; they simply don't think a Linux version of Office will bring in enough revenue to be worth the development and support costs... and I probably wouldn't disagree with that assessment.

Linux has large (majority?) market share in the server and IoT markets, but a very tiny market share when it comes to desktop.

shakna• 8 years ago

Office 365 is supposed to be the cross-platform, run-anywhere, version of Office.

dingo_bat• 8 years ago

It's known as office 365. And it is superior to any other office suite available for Linux.

naikrovek2• 8 years ago

In the browser, and it works really well.

partiallypro2• 8 years ago

You can run the web app in your browser. It's no different than what Google does with ChromeOS. A fully capable web app. I haven't used it in a while, but on the feature front the only place it seemed to lag was collaboration, but I think even that is now on par with Google.

pjmlp4• 8 years ago

If Linux users don't have any issues putting their documents on Google's servers, they can do the same with Office 365.

doggydogs94• 8 years ago

As soon as Linux gets up to 5% market share (currently 1% tops), you might see a Linux version.

mda• 8 years ago

They had a good relation with Linux . in the business of shaking down conpanies with bogus patents. Nadella is no different.

lobster_johnson• 8 years ago

The article pretends to answer why they're using Linux instead of the NT kernel, but the answer is either incomplete or a non sequitur; it seems to imply that since the devices has very little power, their kernel isn't a good fit. I thought the NT kernel was pretty good at low power, and also has a highly respected internal design?

jonathanyc• 8 years ago

Good point; but if I’m reading the article correctly, it sounds like it’s because the Linux kernel is open source:

The Microsoft-secured Linux kernel used in the Azure Sphere IoT OS is shared under an OSS license so that silicon partners can rapidly enable new silicon innovations.” And those partners are also very comfortable with taking an open-source release and integrating that with their products.

I think it’d be cool if they released an open-source NT kernel for this, for diversity of kernels and because of NT’s reputation like you mentioned previously, but maybe they’re betting on there being many more engineers with Linux-based IoT development experience.

As an aside, really impressed with Microsoft recently. I’m still grossed out by the privacy policy of Windows 10, but it really seems like they’ve come up with an excellent strategy for the next decade.

WorldMaker2• 8 years ago

It looks like Windows IoT Core is currently between Commercial Licensing Terms (it currently just links to a survey form to fill out to request info): https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/getstarted...

For a while it was basically free (as in beer) up to an absurdly high volume (IIRC, million-ish devices?).

Maybe you are correct that there might not be a huge interest unless the solution is also free as in speech simply because of auditing needs of some of the IoT manufacturers.

SteveJS• 8 years ago

Drastically simplified source access for the silicon partners seems more important for the business case. I agree the power aspect, absent more specifics, sounds wrong.

gmueckl3• 8 years ago

Low power is relative: NT is good at saving battery on laptops, but these are supercomputers compared to IoT hardware. The most minimal NT system that I have seen so far was still 50MB. Not sure if MS was able to shrink that further. But in a world where every byte of flash or RAm saved can lead to essential power savings, this is far too big. With a custom linux kernel with no extra drivers and modules and busybox in userspace, you can get much smaller than 50MB.

NiveaGeForce12• 8 years ago

Windows Phone ran on NT since version 8.

jaclaz• 8 years ago

The most minimal NT system that I have seen so far was still 50MB.

Well, it depends on what you want to do.

A really minimal XP with minlogon is around 10 Mb (actually around 20 MB that on NTFS compressed volumes are around 10), of which quite a bit is things that could be removed or greatly reduced in size recompiling the programs/dll's if the source was available, that won't do much, while with a decent amount of base tools it comes out at 30-40 MB or so.

Some references to a dedicated project:

[0] http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/index.html

[1] http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/intro.htm

[2] http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/about.htm

eumenides1• 8 years ago

I think MS looked at the market and thought, well linux already owns the IoT market and doesn't care to take it on.

MS would have to spend money and effort to get NT to be where linux is already, then spend more money and more effort to get people to adopt NT for IoT. In the end, there is no profit in being the OS for IoT.

Instead MS opts to have IoT pay cloud fees for Azure. It helps grow their cloud efforts and profits from existing investments. They don't have to fight linux, just work with it.

jesseryoung• 8 years ago

Am I missing something here? The custom linux kernel part isn't interesting at all - in fact, Microsoft has pretty much admitted they can't scale down Windows.

What's interesting to me here is Microsoft is building an IoT solution that allows manufacturers to delegate security to Microsoft instead of having to roll their own.

gtirloni• 8 years ago

How has it admitted anything like that in light of Windows Core OS / Polaris?

mandeepj• 8 years ago

in fact, Microsoft has pretty much admitted they can't scale down Windows.

Really? Did you check out Windows Nano Server - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/...

justincormack• 8 years ago

Windows Nano is only available as a container OS, it was cancelled as a standalone OS.

komali26• 8 years ago

"Don't roll your own security" has been the marching drum of an entire sector of IoT companies working within the connectivity "slice of the pie."

The general mindset has been that iot has a couple slices: the "thing" (air conditioner vibration sensor), how that thing is connected (Ethernet plugged directly into a smart vibration sensor, or vibration sensor plugged into a connected data-recording device), the transmission/storage of that data (cloud solution? Servers on site? Internet y/n?), Analysis of that data (Microsoft IoT platform? Rolled solution? Now defunct Autodesk iot platform?), and finally the acting upon data collected (chief engineer scheduling repairs/maintenance, project manager ordering new motors, whatever).

So many companies have tried "rolling their own" because they got it working on a raspberry pi or Arduino in a week, then find out their connectivity is not secure at scale (let alone that the solution can't scale at all).

Let specialists specialize. No reason not to let big daddy Microsoft handle the messy bits.

Disclosure, I work at electric imp, thus considering myself firmly in the "secure connection and transmission" slice of the pie.

Disclosure 2, we're partnered with Microsoft for their new IoT push, lol.

JoeAltmaier2• 8 years ago

...and even then, you're not secure forever. So many times the best security practices have been shown to be insufficient. In fact, I wonder what the scoreboard actually would read, 'roll your own' vs 'best practice'? Maybe not all that different.

michaelt• 8 years ago

  Let specialists specialize. No reason not to let
  big daddy Microsoft handle the messy bits.

If you're planning to make a product that will last 20 years - a residential thermostat, for example - using a third-party service as the foundation of your product seems naïve to me.

I mean, Microsoft or AWS is at least better than a startup, in that they're less likely to go bankrupt - but even Windows XP, one of most long-lived products out there, was only supported for 12 years even with 'extended support'.

Not to mention the fact whoever provides the cloud services will likely be looking to make recurring revenue over those 20 years.

ComodoHacker• 8 years ago

"Don't roll your own security" has been the marching drum of an entire sector of IoT companies

And now it gradually translates into "don't own your devices, cause you can't handle security", both for users and small and medium size vendors.

And the meaning of "device" is gradually translating to "any stuff we wear or use". Welcome to the shiny IoT future.

SBArbeit• 8 years ago

Windows runs on IoT devices, Raspberry Pi's... essentially, there aren't many mainstream hardware platforms Windows can't run on. And .NET Core runs on all of them, too.

This is not about Windows technical capability - which is effectively every bit as good as Linux in this space. This is about, "OK, developers, you'd rather have Linux than Windows on your IoT device? Cool. Now get connected to Azure for that IoT data, we'll help you keep that device secure and up-to-date." It's about market share for Azure.

castle-bravo• 8 years ago

Am I paraphrasing this correctly:

Microsoft-branded ARM microcontrollers running an embedded linux distribution. Microsoft rolls out security updates over Azure to reduce the risk of the device becoming part of a botnet.

It sounds great.

tyingq12• 8 years ago

It does. But, it's also pretty surreal for those of us that worked through the anti-linux Microsoft of the 90's. Windows subsystem for Linux, and initiatives like this are a real confirmation that MS finally "gets it". Right tool for the right job. Good for them.

It's also a big swing for me in that I trust MS more than Google now to do the right thing. I'd have thought that impossible a couple of decades ago.

minor3rd2• 8 years ago

I'd have thought that impossible a couple of decades ago.

Me too. Good thing Google exists now :)

paxys• 8 years ago

Generally agree with you, but those of us who knew Microsoft in the 90s are also cautious about the company getting too cozy with the Linux ecosystem, or any competing technology in general.

lsh5• 8 years ago

Have you actually used Windows 10?? The spotlight is squarely on Facebook and it's privacy intrusions right now, but the data collection when you own the OS must be several orders of magnitude larger.

Don't be so eager to forgive them. They're not hugging Linux right now because they're a Good Company trying to Do No Evil.

PaulHoule• 8 years ago

Linux is probably a more compact OS for IoT than Windows, but it is still pretty bloated.

arca_vorago2• 8 years ago

I assure you MS is still not to be trusted. I find this recent uptick in naivety about them dangerous. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me, can't get fooled again.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 8 years ago

Remember the first two E's fellow 90s person. It's the third one that gets you.

jjtheblunt• 8 years ago

a couple of decades ago Google didn't exist, no?

kerng2• 8 years ago

It's been an interesting ride for sure to follow Microsoft the last few years. The work they do with Azure and dev tools and open source is pretty neat. Folks like Scott Guthrie and the new CEO certainly made Microsoft more appealing again. It's kind of funny even how times change and how I think of Microsoft as one of the top cloud and online companies now, even before Google but still behind Amazon. Certainly a personal opinion, but that's how times and my opinion changed.

tudorw• 8 years ago

me too, I've swung back to Bill, amazon, google, youtube, facebook, none of them are going to help us, Bill on the other hand, I trust you Bill, I love your surface book, I love your international approach, make the geeks proud again :)

skepticmoron• 8 years ago

Sounds more like a PR push for Microsoft after lobbying fairly well on the cloud front. But, comparing google to Microsoft? You must be joking.

MichaelMoser123• 8 years ago

Nothing new under the sun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix

reacweb• 8 years ago

Microsoft is huge. Some parts of Microsoft got it, but some others are still in their old stance.

dvfjsdhgfv• 8 years ago

They're being practical. They couldn't win - neither by spreading FUD, calling Linux "a cancer", funding the SCO lawsuit - so they choose to "embrace" Linux and open source whenever it suits them.

On the other hand their contempt for the (paying!) customer is sill blatantly evident, it's right there in Windows 10 telemetry settings being reset.

rbanffy• 8 years ago

MS finally "gets it"

All I can read into it is that it's in their best interest to stop being deliberately hostile towards Linux and open-source. We can trust them doing The Right Thing only as long as The Right Thing benefits them.

Alan_Dillman• 8 years ago

That Redhat commercial was right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE00uo3o_MU

EnderMB• 8 years ago

A lot of the fear I see on here about Microsoft makes me laugh. Many on here haven't got over the Micro$oft mentality from a decade ago.

With that being said, there's a huge difference in acknowledging a company becoming more developer focused, and trusting a company. You shouldn't trust any company to do "the right thing", regardless of how noble their actions may seem on the outside. As Google have shown, your motto can literally be "do not evil" and in the space of a decade you are viewed as a monster.

askvictor• 8 years ago

It does sound great. My main concern is what happens when devices go out of support. Will MS keep on pushing updates indefinitely? Will there be a mechanism to take over the updating process if they decide that a certain set of devices are no longer supported?

walrus012• 8 years ago

over Azure

Microsoft now cares about subscriptions (office365, etc) and monthly recurring "rental" revenue. Anything that gets people to spin up more Azure VMs and pay for them monthly, forever, and possibly get locked into the hosting platform, they're totally OK with. Doesn't matter if it's a Linux VM or a Windows VM running on their hypervisors as long as people are paying the bills.

bpye2• 8 years ago

The videos seem to show an MT3620 device, seems to be made by MediaTek [1]. Looks like they are targeting a Cortex-A7 + Cortex-M4 chip. First time I've seen an A series core in this type of chip.

It looks like a developer gets to program the A7 and 2xM4F cores whilst the WiFi radio and Microsoft's "secure" Pluton thing run on a Andes N9 and Cortex M4 core respectively. I assume it is those cores which will be auto-updated in an attempt to defend against attack.

[1] https://www.mediatek.com/products/azureSphere/mt3620

jlgaddis• 8 years ago

The videos seem to show an MT3620 device, seems to be made by MediaTek [1].

Indeed. The article agrees with you and even goes as far as linking to the same URL that you did. :-)

bpye2• 8 years ago

My bad, didn't see the link in the article.

kelnos2• 8 years ago

I'm confused: they're saying the devices have an ARM A7 chip (presumably they mean Cortex-A7) in them, which is a full 32-bit microprocessor, but they're calling them "microcontrollers"?

I would think Windows could run on a Cortex-A7, no? Perhaps the specific parts they're using have a ridiculously-low clock rate or other painful limitations?

_sh• 8 years ago

You're right, but there is a lot of misunderstanding around this end of the market, mainly because advances have blurred the traditional segmentation. When talking about ARM, the 'M' in Cortex-M means 'microcontroller' whereas the 'A' in Cortex-A means 'application'. Cortex-A systems are often at the centre of 'System-on-Chips' and will run linux, and indeed the NT kernel as well, as they are bundled with enough RAM and fairly modern peripheral interfaces such as HDMI.

Cortex-Ms typically can't run linux (excepting uClinux) as they don't have the RAM and typically don't need to as they address a different need (dedicated function instead of general-purpose compute), and have far fewer peripheral interfaces. It used to be all about power profile, but the recent SoCs are getting pretty competitive there as well.

But as I said the traditional segmentation at this end of the spectrum is being re-cast seemingly every second week, and so terms such as 'microcontroller' are becoming less meaningful all the time. And who the hell can agree on just what 'embedded' means these days?

blendo• 8 years ago

"And who the hell can agree on just what 'embedded' means these days?"

Or what it'll mean in 10 years, as power/radio/processor/sensor specs continue to improve. I'm speculating, but perhaps MS is banking on the low-end to grow, up into the Android/iOS space. So instead of our current 3-10 devices per family we'll have 30-100 devices. Hopefully, those devices will be secure. Maybe they'll be useful :-)

rkangel• 8 years ago

And who the hell can agree on just what 'embedded' means these days?

FWIW, my personal definition is "doesn't have an MMU"

cutler2• 8 years ago

Just curious, how's Microsoft's bogus Linux patents racket doing these days?

bitmapbrother• 8 years ago

I think they've moved on from shaking down companies and customers that use Linux to shaking down companies that use Android.

SEP 20, 2011 Casio agrees to pay Microsoft an undisclosed sum for a deal that includes Microsoft's vow not to sue Casio's customers for using its Linux devices

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.

It's a breathtaking number. (By comparison, for instance, Verizon's (Charts, Fortune 500) patent suit against Vonage (Charts), which now threatens to bankrupt the latter, was based on just seven patents, of which only three were found to be infringing.) "This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement," Gutierrez asserts. "There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed."

cutler2• 8 years ago

I vaguely recall Google making noises about taking-on Microsoft's over their patent mafia tactics but it seem nothing came of it.

joezydeco5• 8 years ago

After seeing this I think the Amazon AWS/FreeRTOS combo is looking like the better architecture for a node solution. FreeRTOS can run on lowly M3s at 120Mhz, like the LPC2478.

A 500MHz A7 part is way too much silicon for an IoT node. How much external SDRAM and Flash are connected to that MediaTek core?

kbenson• 8 years ago

After seeing this I think the Amazon AWS/FreeRTOS combo is looking like the better architecture for a node solution. FreeRTOS can run on lowly M3s at 120Mhz, like the LPC2478

Is that supposed to imply linux can't? Or that linux plus a GNU subsystem can't? I've personally run it on a lot lower end hardware than that seems to be.

joezydeco5• 8 years ago

Oh, it can. I've run ucLinux (MMU-less Linux) on an LPC1788 (Cortex-M3) and it works...okay. Making dynamic libraries work correctly on it is a pain in the ass. It just wasn't worth it at the end and the O/S hogged up most of the processor, RAM, and Flash.

dpeckett• 8 years ago

The Cortex M series is prolific but lacks a proper memory management unit which makes running Linux an iffy business. FreeRTOS is by far the most dominant player in this space.

Different markets really, sounds like Microsoft is targeting items like internet connected cameras (think Mirai endpoints). Where as Amazon is targeting low power prolific devices, eg. IoT buttons.

danellis• 8 years ago

Is that supposed to imply linux can't?

Regular Linux can't. uCLinux might.

jmspring• 8 years ago

FreeRTOS is interesting and useful, but also requires knowledge of the device you are running on as well as implementing drivers. Having done a project involving FreeRTOS, compilation flags need to be customized to the platform one is dealing with.

snvzz3• 8 years ago

Which should be alright, as IoT implies designing both hardware and software.

joezydeco5• 8 years ago

You've just described embedded systems engineering.

gmueckl3• 8 years ago

You call 120MHz lowly? I call that luxury! I am working on a product where we're running an M4 way below 1MHz. And our hardware guys have me counting bytes in software...

FreeRTOS is a pretty good fit for this situation. I am only disappointed that newlib is so ridiculously huge in comparison. Some functions in there are twice the size of FreeRTOS.

joezydeco5• 8 years ago

I typically wouldn't, since I grew up working on 1MHz 8-bit cores. But working with some of these tiny M0 and M3s, there's nothing slower than 60-120MHz now.

progval• 8 years ago

Windows IoT runs on microprocessor units (MPUs) which have at least 100x the power of the MCU.
MediaTek is producing the first set of these new MCUs. These are low-powered, single-core ARM-A7 systems that run at 500MHz

Er... what kind of hardware is Windows IoT supposed to run on?

arnarbi• 8 years ago

They seem either confused about what "MCU" means, or intent on changing the commonly accepted meaning.

anujdeshpande3• 8 years ago

I think its a marketing thing. Engineers wouldn't have let this one slide.

My professors at college taught a simple rule of thumb - if it can't run regular Linux it's probably a MCU. Finer print talked about the presence of a MMU being the key differentiator.

I've stuck to that definition so far. Might have to rewire if this gimmick catches on

nunez2• 8 years ago

Good choice. Windows is too fat for IoT as is.

NiveaGeForce12• 8 years ago

It's not.

nunez2• 8 years ago

Elaborate?

jacksmith21006• 8 years ago

Maybe driven by

http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w... "I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other ...

ifdefdebug• 8 years ago

Always nice to remember: "If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." [1]

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9810/01/whylinux.idg/

johnhenry• 8 years ago

So, I guess Linus super-wins?

ccozan2• 8 years ago

There is an 80% chance that you are carrying a Linux kernel powered device in your pocket right now.

I think is a undisputed win.

rusabd• 8 years ago

If you didn't know Microsoft used to have its own version of Unix a long time ago: Xenix. Never seen it personally though, my first experience with PC was MSDOS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix

pjmlp4• 8 years ago

It was kind of ok.

That is how I learned UNIX back in the day.

As anecdote, given the UNIX prices even for PCs, the teacher would carry a PC with Xenix into our lab and then each group would have about 20 minute turns to test what was already prepared typing on MS-DOS.

This is why getting a C compiler for MS-DOS mattered to many of us, we wanted to maximize our slot as much as possible, it wasn't about its qualities.

antoniuschan992• 8 years ago

Is this a 'fork' of an ARM/MediaTek chip?

I'm currently on the Espressif platform for our stack.

How does it compare overall and in terms of security?

anujdeshpande3• 8 years ago

How are you finding the Espressif stack?

antoniuschan992• 8 years ago

It's not bad. Pretty stable. It still feels very much for the hobbyist though.

sandGorgon• 8 years ago

It would have been much better if they had thrown their weight behind Android Things ( https://developer.android.com/things/index.html) Maybe build an open foundation around it like Kubernetes CNCF.

Google is surprisingly open to build democratic orgs around its tech.

amiraliakbari• 8 years ago

As long as Google is controlling AOSP by all means to lock users in Google services, it can't be trusted to control another fundamental platform.

amq• 8 years ago

In my understanding, MCUs are more like ARM M, with 40MHz and 128KB RAM. But this thing is closer to rpi, with 500MHz, so I wonder what is the power consumption.

u04f061• 8 years ago

Microsoft is becoming the cool company once again by embracing open-source technologies and contributing to various other OS projects. They are refocusing their business all around Azure subscriptions.

nkkollaw2• 8 years ago

I would switch to Windows in a heartbeat if they dropped NT and switched to becoming a Linux distro with a Windows emululator for legacy apps.

NiveaGeForce12• 8 years ago

That would be a downgrade.

nkkollaw2• 8 years ago

Really?

Even just the file locking would make it an upgrade, since it would allow you to avoid restaring your PC after upgrades like 30 years ago.

What makes Windows internals superior to Unix-based systems?

raimue2• 8 years ago

[deleted]

hoschicz• 8 years ago

Those were made by Intel.

raimue2• 8 years ago

Absolute brainfart by me. Need more coffee.

patrickaljord• 8 years ago

Not only that but any company shipping Linux in IoT (or really any kind of hardware) usually compiles its own Linux kernel with needed custom modules. Not sure how this is news besides the IoT thing.

mangecoeur• 8 years ago

Current weather in hell: chilly ;)

jwildeboer• 8 years ago

Maybe I'm just unable to look at the right places, but where is the source code repository?

mattkevan• 8 years ago

Embrace, extend.. and extinguish!

RMarcus• 8 years ago

The move does seem rather troubling, considering the history of Microsoft. Linux seems like it's a little too big for "extinguish," and th GPLv2 should provide some defense against nefarious "extend"ing...

But then again, I wonder how many now-defunct open standards and projects thought the same thing.

iceman2654• 8 years ago

This was my first thought based on the history and culture of the company. I'll be watching this development closely. The optimistic side of me hopes embracing Linux marks a real change in Microsoft, but we'll have to wait and see.

muyuu• 8 years ago

Isn't OSS grand?

wicket• 8 years ago

Meanwhile, The Linux Foundation decided that Linux isn't suitable and developed Zephyr [1] instead for IoT.

[1] https://www.zephyrproject.org/

igravious• 8 years ago

Oh. Ha, wow. This is too delicious.

Who would ever have thought that Microsoft, the great enemy of Linux, would release a product based around a Microsoft branded Linux kernel? Not I for one. Though having said that they have been increasingly opening up and making non-threatening noises towards open source of late. So, it's not _that_ much of a shock but it's still a shock! Microsoft is using Linux for IOT embedded devices, wow.

And then you point out that simultaneously the Linux Foundation, the Linux Foundation, is supporting a non-Linux kernel real-time OS for IOT embedded devices.

You could not make this stuff up.

choudanu4• 8 years ago

But I was under the impression that Linux isn't suitable as a real-time operating system (RTOS)[1] (which Microsoft may very well not require for their IoT systems). So the Linux Foundation providing an alternative free kernel meeting RTOS requirements makes perfect sense.

I'm not as clear on the history, but was Linux ever pitched as capable of being real-time OS? I don't think so. The hard requirements for real-time generally lead to very different systems than general-purpose operating systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system

Microsoft built its own custom Linux kernel for its new IoT service

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