However Windows NT originally was already POSIXy, what it lacked all these years was Microsoft being serious about POSIX subsystem, had that been the case, probably Linux would never taken off among PC, the same experience as OS X would be there in 1993.
EvanAnderson 9 hours ago [-]
> Also, the NT kernel is criminally underrated, and pretty much unknown to hobbyists. It had features that Linux took years and years to come up with its own design for...
A person after my own heart. NT was actually designed, versus being a reimplementation of an existing thing.
jmmv 4 hours ago [-]
I was curious about this a couple of years ago and ended up digging into the history of the NT design, comparing it to contemporary Unix systems, and writing this: https://jmmv.dev/2024/09/windows-nt-vs-unix-design.html . Pretty enlightening exercise.
mvdwoord 3 hours ago [-]
Great read. It reminded me of a talk I attended in Amsterdam by Mark Russinovich.
Windows and Linux: A Tale of Two Kernels - Tech-Ed 2004
Too bad for all the horrible misfeatures that got designed in and that we still have to live with, like the entire I/O Manager/Object Manager/filters/driver stack mess, with no caching anywhere above the drivers.
stonogo 5 hours ago [-]
It sure looks a lot like VMS to me...
mesrik 3 hours ago [-]
It does, and for reason I'm assuming many already know why. But if you weren't joking and were living under a rock. Look up the guy, Dave Cutler, who were mostly responsible putting together both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler
Youtube has many of his interviews. The Computer History Museum (CHM) two part is perhaps most extensive. Links below to these.
So.. Why NT? Is it fast? Is it secure? Does it allow modern features? Is it hackable? Or why?
dvfjsdhgfv 23 minutes ago [-]
I was looking for that line:
> The contract is that the syscalls and low-level interfaces match those of NT, but not the daemons or how the kernel itself is structured. This is in contrast to what ReactOS aims to do, which is an exact recreation of Windows.
phendrenad2 8 hours ago [-]
> None of the substantive code was written by AI.
That is impressive
userbinator 5 hours ago [-]
IMHO this is one of the OSes with the weirdest decisions I've seen on here. I do agree with using PE instead of ELF, as the dynamic linking situation of the latter (and Unix-likes in general) is, to put it bluntly, a horrid mess.
The POSIX functions are split over ucrtbase, iphlpapi, and ws2_32, as on Windows, with anything that Windows doesn't implement put in mnposix.
LOL. POSIX in ucrtbase! Those are words that I never expected to see together.
I used AI to help with the mechanical parts of porting
I feel like it won't be long before someone comes up with a crazy chimera of an OS that can run DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, and macOS binaries. It doesn't look like AI is replacing software developers, but rather boosting them quite significantly; there seems to be a lot of activity and new projects I've seen recently from many who aren't even using AI themselves, but must be somehow being inspired by others to do more.
pjmlp 8 minutes ago [-]
As historical note, not all UNIXes use ELF, not only that came later in UNIX and related clones evolution, some of them like z/UNIX and Aix have gone for a PE like format, COFF.
So in those platforms you can also enjoy having private symbols by default, delayed loading on first call, and the joy of import files.
yjftsjthsd-h 5 hours ago [-]
> it won't be long before someone comes up with a crazy chimera of an OS that can run DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, and macOS binaries
TBF, the only missing part of this is that Darling isn't developed enough to run many Darwin programs; otherwise you can have that today by installing WINE+DOSBox+Darling on Linux or your pick of *BSD or illumos. (Well, running *BSD programs on other systems is a weak point, but otherwise.)
maharmstone 5 hours ago [-]
>LOL. POSIX in ucrtbase! Those are words that I never expected to see together.
There's nothing in Moxnox ucrtbase that's not also in Windows ucrtbase. open(), read(), and write() are all POSIX functions in ucrtbase.
However Windows NT originally was already POSIXy, what it lacked all these years was Microsoft being serious about POSIX subsystem, had that been the case, probably Linux would never taken off among PC, the same experience as OS X would be there in 1993.
A person after my own heart. NT was actually designed, versus being a reimplementation of an existing thing.
Windows and Linux: A Tale of Two Kernels - Tech-Ed 2004
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HdV9QuvgS_w
> The contract is that the syscalls and low-level interfaces match those of NT, but not the daemons or how the kernel itself is structured. This is in contrast to what ReactOS aims to do, which is an exact recreation of Windows.
That is impressive
The POSIX functions are split over ucrtbase, iphlpapi, and ws2_32, as on Windows, with anything that Windows doesn't implement put in mnposix.
LOL. POSIX in ucrtbase! Those are words that I never expected to see together.
I used AI to help with the mechanical parts of porting
I feel like it won't be long before someone comes up with a crazy chimera of an OS that can run DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, and macOS binaries. It doesn't look like AI is replacing software developers, but rather boosting them quite significantly; there seems to be a lot of activity and new projects I've seen recently from many who aren't even using AI themselves, but must be somehow being inspired by others to do more.
So in those platforms you can also enjoy having private symbols by default, delayed loading on first call, and the joy of import files.
TBF, the only missing part of this is that Darling isn't developed enough to run many Darwin programs; otherwise you can have that today by installing WINE+DOSBox+Darling on Linux or your pick of *BSD or illumos. (Well, running *BSD programs on other systems is a weak point, but otherwise.)
There's nothing in Moxnox ucrtbase that's not also in Windows ucrtbase. open(), read(), and write() are all POSIX functions in ucrtbase.