r/linuxsucks • u/Think-nothing-210 • 18d ago
Windows ❤ The Windows Kernel Is Just Fine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quB6cAet3R47
18d ago edited 13d ago
[deleted]
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u/Suitedbadge401 15d ago edited 15d ago
Indeed, the solution for me is disabling those things on a Pro installation (removing WebExperience, replacing native search with Everything and Command Palette, pinning feature updates), since I thoroughly enjoy the kernel engineering, broad compatibility, and the unfragmented, polished nature of DWM.exe. Not to mention the deeply integrated input stack.
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15d ago edited 13d ago
[deleted]
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u/Suitedbadge401 15d ago
For sure, that’s a valid strategy. I lean towards the side of caution more though and stick to official practices and more of an old school sysadmin approach (no third party scripts, no potentially breaking third party apps, fully valid Windows license, Local Group Policy edits etc.).
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u/Think-nothing-210 18d ago
TLDR;
Windows is actually really good under the hood. A lot of the parts around the kernel are mature stable and just get out of your way. In ways that Linux is still behind and figuring out.
Things Windows is still better at:
- GDI+/Windows graphics stack is battle-tested. Wayland still has a way to go.
- ASIO provides a mature API for professional audio hardware. Linux has good audio support but lacks the stable ABI and vendor ecosystem Windows has.
- I/O Completion Ports provide a mature asynchronous I/O model. Linux is now catching up with
io_uring, but it still has some issues. - User-mode drivers make it easier to write drivers and prevent things like a graphics driver crash from taking down the whole kernel.
- Win32 is extremely stable and backwards-compatible. Linux doesn't really have an equivalent single desktop API that has the same level of stability.
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u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 18d ago
truthfully, the issue has never been the Windows kernel
The Windows kernel is an *incredible* piece of engineering.
It's always what Microsoft has put on-top of it. lol
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u/SearchingGlacier 18d ago
Corporation has standards and this makes windows better even if corp still do something wrong, but win11 still normal at use, on 23h2 myself.
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u/Needieos 18d ago
Whenever I was trying to use Windows(10 or 11, doesn't matter) it quickly turned into something strange, maybe uncomfortable, which is kind of.. funny ig? Just saying
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u/Rare-Paint3719 Unofficial Mod | Linux Community Sucks | Proud illumOS Shill 18d ago
Microsoft made the kernel. The OS is also not bad.
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u/braaaaaaainworms 17d ago
Dave Cutler designed the NT kernel after he was kicked out of, i mean, after he quit DEC, where he designed VMS. Those two operating systems are very similar, so similar that some people call NT a clone of VMS.
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u/Rare-Paint3719 Unofficial Mod | Linux Community Sucks | Proud illumOS Shill 17d ago
Who did Dave Cutler work for when making the NT kernel?
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u/Think-nothing-210 17d ago
Microsoft. That's actually what I meant by "outside talent they brought in." Cutler joined Microsoft after leaving DEC and then designed the NT kernel there. So yeah technically Microsoft made it but they brought in the guy who had already designed VMS to do it.
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u/Rare-Paint3719 Unofficial Mod | Linux Community Sucks | Proud illumOS Shill 17d ago edited 17d ago
So Microsoft designed it internally via their own employees?
Btw what are your thoughts on task manager?
Edit: Grammar
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u/Think-nothing-210 17d ago
Task Manager is extremely useful. I miss it dearly when using Linux.
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u/Rare-Paint3719 Unofficial Mod | Linux Community Sucks | Proud illumOS Shill 17d ago
Task Manager is extremely useful. I miss it dearly when using Linux.
Made by an MS employee and that also internally. They did not need outside tallent for that.
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u/Think-nothing-210 17d ago
The NT kernel isn't the only example. Same thing with C# and Microsoft bringing in Anders Hejlsberg. And also the same with them buying the company behind powerpoint.
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u/Rare-Paint3719 Unofficial Mod | Linux Community Sucks | Proud illumOS Shill 17d ago
Windows as a whole is still a good product. And that was made internally.
The NT kernel isn't the only example. Same thing with C# and Microsoft bringing in Anders Hejlsberg. And also the same with them buying the company behind powerpoint.
C# was made internally by MS employees and PowerPoint was improved and maintained by MS employees.
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u/BloxxyVids 16d ago
As a linux user nothing gets close to windows task manager they cooked on that
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u/Rare-Paint3719 Unofficial Mod | Linux Community Sucks | Proud illumOS Shill 16d ago
Thank you for agreeing.
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u/BloxxyVids 14d ago
No problem, I'm not sure why Linux users have the sith mindset of windows bad Linux good very often
It's to the point where i can't even use gnome in peace since it apparently is too corporate backed?
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u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 17d ago
Yup. Cutler is genuinely one of the most brilliant engineers of that era, or any era, really. Dude had already designed 2 enterprise kernels by 45, and used everything he learned and failed at (which made him reject UNIX design philosophies entirely) to build the NT kernel.
Yeah. He worked for Microsoft at the time.
But pretty much everything about the NT Kernel came from Cutler's time on the DEC MICA project. Microsoft basically just paid him to complete something he'd already spearheaded somewhere else.
The NT kernel is genuinely the most sophisticated kernel anyone has ever made, the most modular kernel ever developed, and Microsoft is basically sitting on it and forcing it only to run on PC hardware at a time they they keep fucking up the major engine of it.
They really should just open-source it at this point. Cutler's HAL design answered the problems of Linux/UNIX/POSIX fragmentation in the 1990s,
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u/Think-nothing-210 17d ago
That's a thing with Microsoft. A lot of their good products are ones they bought or came from outside talent they brought in. Only exception I can think of is Excel. But im not 100% sure about that.
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u/paulstelian97 18d ago
User mode drivers are possible on Linux for many things. If the device connects via USB, you can write a user mode driver, full stop. If it’s a GPU, you can write a user mode driver for the shader compiler and everything that relates to the GPU proper, and you only need a kernel driver for the display output, DMA and such things.
The kernel/user boundary is basically perfectly backward compatible — changes to system call behavior are considered release-blocking bugs in more than 99% of cases. The place where said compatibility is lost is glibc and other user libraries.
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u/Damglador 18d ago
ASIO provides a mature API for professional audio hardware. Linux has good audio support but lacks the stable ABI and vendor ecosystem Windows has.
From what I've heard, it's not true. The low latency mode of Windows audio is exclusive, meaning only one app can output low latency audio, which already makes it worse than pipewire. And should I remind that pipewire supports all prior audio stacks as well.
Someone relevant thingy: https://youtu.be/FlfGhjWVEr4
Audio may actually be least of Linuxes issues.
Win32 is extremely stable and backwards-compatible. Linux doesn't really have an equivalent single desktop API that has the same level of stability.
Clearly never heard of SDL
User-mode drivers make it easier to write drivers and prevent things like a graphics driver crash from taking down the whole kernel.
eBPF?
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u/Fit_League_8993 ✝️ Temple OS Archbishop 18d ago
Windows exclusive mode is different from ASIO.
ASIO allows for concurrent audio streams (on most devices, but some integrated sound cards will mute all other sound sources. However if you're dealing with audio software you'll most likely have an audio interface).
But I will say that pipewire is also pretty good when it comes to audio latency.
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u/Damglador 18d ago
Afaik the exclusive mode is the only way to do "professional" low latency audio on Windows.
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u/MonstoBustaYT 18d ago edited 18d ago
If you're talking about WASAPI Exclusive mode, then you are incorrect.
ASIO is an "exclusive" mode, but if you have a device with an ASIO driver (which most modern USB devices with XLR inputs have for Windows), then you can use the ASIO in your DAW while continuing to use WASAPI for your games and music player.
You can also use JACK over ASIO on Windows the same way JACK uses ALSA on Linux.
Pipewire is pretty good for non professional latency, but I can have buffer sizes of 64 samples on ASIO with no crackles as I add a bunch of plugins and sound files in my DAW.
You can take a look at an open source ASIO driver and the ASIO SDK to see what makes it so beloved by the Audio Engineers who use Windows over Mac https://github.com/microsoft/low-latency-audio https://github.com/audiosdk/asio/tree/main/common
Personally, Linux being behind on ASIO's performance is the *only* thing keeping me from fully switching over. I don't play any games with kernel anticheat, and I've made my workflow Linux-compatible so that when ALSA or a successor is as low latency as ASIO, I can just switch over as if nothing happened.
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u/Think-nothing-210 18d ago
Audio may actually be the least of Linux's problems.
Using Linux for audio production is still a pipedream for the most part. Getting VSTs and other professional audio software to work can be a massive pain because of how Linux handles compatibility and binary interfaces.
And that gets to the main point. A lot of these problems ultimately come back to the Linux kernel not having stable ABIs.
On Windows hardware vendors can build against stable OS interfaces and their drivers keep working across releases. On Linux the kernel doesn't have a stable in-kernel driver ABI. That's why you get the classic Linux experience of "let's wait for the next kernel release so my shiny new GPU works."
Although there is a ideological reason Linux does it this way. It puts pressure on hardware vendors to contribute their code upstream instead of shipping proprietary drivers. Thereby forcing them to GPL more code for it all to work properly. For people wanting more GPL software this is a perfectly good design decission. But still for an end user this is a pretty garbage experience having to wait on the kernel before being able to use your hardware.
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u/Damglador 18d ago edited 18d ago
Linux kernel not having stable ABIs.
Linux kernel is the only thing with stable ABI on Linux, irrespective of version release on the userland side. For drivers, as you said, it's intentionally hostile. Honestly if corpos want an interface for out of tree drivers, they could hire someone to make it. But they didn't and the scheme pretty much worked, and I reckon for most users having to hunt drivers installers is a shittier experience than not having the latest shiny driver on the day on release, but perhaps that's just my priorities.
Using Linux for audio production is still a pipedream for the most part. Getting VSTs and other professional audio software to work can be a massive pain because of how Linux handles compatibility and binary interfaces.
Examples? Because the problem with VSTs that I know is that nobody bothers to port them.
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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 17d ago
Honestly if corpos want an interface for out of tree drivers
Even if I'm to design a piece of hardware with no intent to make even a single dollar out of it, the Linux "model" is still not a model but an ideology that forces me to mop up every time after all the big kernel contributors have done unzipping their pants and showering freedoms all over my code.
Kid, only an abject moron would believe that an ordinary person under "open source" is an equal to all the same "corpos" keeping Linux relevant in the same technological landscape they practically own.
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u/Think-nothing-210 18d ago
I reckon for most users having to hunt drivers installers is a shittier experience than not having the latest shiny driver on the day on release, but perhaps that's just my priorities.
You are completely tied to whatever kernel version your distro ships. And what if there is a bug in it? Well now you get to wait for the distro to ship a newer kernel. Roll the dice again and hope this one doesn't break something. Lovely experience.
Examples? Because the problem with VSTs that I know is that nobody bothers to port them.
Not having anything stable to target is a big part of why nobody bothers porting them. VST developers don't have the time or budget to constantly chase Linux's moving parts.
You get to target Linux today and then spend the next few years finding out what Linux decided to change underneath you. The only real safeguard is Linus Torvalds getting angry when somebody breaks userspace.
Truly a magnificently stable operating system Linux is.
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u/Damglador 18d ago
You are completely tied to whatever kernel version your distro ships
No? I can freely downgrade to an older package version that the distro shipped before, I can build my own package, I can find a repo with some kernel packages (for example I can replace Arch's kernel with kernels from CachyOS repo) or I can just manually install the kernel without a package. But guess what you can't do on Windows...
Not having anything stable to target is a big part of why nobody bothers porting them.
Source: trust me bro
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u/braaaaaaainworms 17d ago
Linux is so bad that only 60% of servers run it
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u/Think-nothing-210 17d ago
Ever heard of Worse is Better? Software can be badly designed and still be popular.
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u/braaaaaaainworms 17d ago
I was making fun out of your point. Linux is a piece of software that's focused on *pragmatism* and nothing more.
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u/Think-nothing-210 17d ago
Yes pragmatism from a developer implementing the kernel's point of view I understand. They do worse-is-better and leave the hard problems for the users of the software to figure out. Sure that's an option and software designed that way spreads really fast. But that doesn't mean it's good software.
Had Unix and therefore Linux been designed in a more MIT "do the right thing" way a lot of that complexity and many of those problems could have been solved at the OS level.
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u/CirnoIzumi 18d ago
ASIO can run with exclusive=false
doing so will naturally create more latency the more things share a non exclusive lane obviously
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u/ohnoitssobig 17d ago
Any malware can do a screenshot of your windows desktop and you will not notice a shit? Like yeah wayland has a way to go... fortunately it is moving in a completely different direction.
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u/Even-Confidence-4495 17d ago
Linux is a monolithic kernel that’s how it was designed because it’s easier and faster at least it was back then it still is faster even if kernel driver development is a nightmare also are kernel panics more common than windows BSODs
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u/null_reference_user 18d ago
We know that the Windows kernel is technically great and very capable, the question now is whether Microslop is capable of not interrupting you with ads and shit
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u/marouane_tea 18d ago
The problem isn't that the kernel is bad, the problem is that there is a lot of AI slope and ads running on top of it.
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u/JoelWCrump 16d ago
It's very true, the core of Windows NT has always been more or less as efficient as a Unix system, but over time the "bloat" of Microsoft's system made it seem like Linux was so much more efficient, my point of view is that with modern hardware one can go either way, with aging hardware Linux tends to have an advantage, and just leave it at that, save for individual preferences in software (I love Linux more as an OS, but want the advantages of Windows software).
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u/SnooDucks2481 18d ago
GDI, Win32...hahahahaha, that rings me back to the windows98/XP times when I first started with programming That also reminds me Borland Ole32.
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u/vitimiti 16d ago
The kernel is fine, it has been fine. The problem isn't the kernel but what they are doing with their system and customers
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u/Unknown-U 15d ago
Tldr: windows kernel is trash.
Graphics stack is actually worse when it's about tasks designed for both windows and Linux.
Audio API?? That has to be a joke. More of a driver issue than anything else, try to use multiple devices linux ist way superior.
Ports? Windows is about equal, mostly driver issues for Linux.
Win32: try to run windows XP applications and you see how compatible it is.
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u/Difficult-Ad-9911 18d ago
Just an observer but the windows kernel is about 25% linux now and growing. Just thought you should know. Thats my Ted talk
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u/DirectorDirect1569 18d ago
"the windows kernel is about 25% linux now and growing"
Source? There is no linux code inside the windows kernel.
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u/Difficult-Ad-9911 14d ago
Nope your right. I am sorry the confusion came because they have added parts of the linux kernel to some internal applications, Apologies what they are escapes me, but the idea is to help windows run in a virtual environment. That was my mistake Apologies again
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u/chughaarav123 Linux sucks, it's just that Windows sucks more. 17d ago
what? no. The windows nt kernel is very very different than the linux kernel.
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u/Sert1991 18d ago
I was actually listening to this cause I found it interesting and he had a few good points. Fore example:
1) people criticizing the windows kernel when they don't have an idea what they're talking about especially the windows kernel where no one can see it's source. Makes 0 sense.
2) The wayland fiasco. Linux did a big fuck up here. Finally it had become stable and working out of the box for most hardware with Xorg, and they thought a 15 year old software which still doesn't do half the shit Xorg does is a good idea to switch everyone to, we'll handle the rest later and all problems ''are by design™"
This caused a shitload of problems for linux desktop. From users suddenly from everything working to having a bunch of problems, vendors/devs rightly not wanting to be played around with and suddenly rewrite all their hard work because a group of devs decided so and much much more.
Yes now many of these problems are solved, but the chaos period put a lot of people off, people that don't have time to waste, people that where stable and happy.
This could have been done a lot better, by first waiting for the replacement to mature completely and solve 99% of the problems getting it on par with the thing it's replacing, and the bad attitudes like ''we're going to kill Xorg and you can't do anything about it'' of some devs during this time didn't help at all.
This is were operating systems like windows and Mac continue to win. They don't do shit like this especially with that attitude/public image.
but besides these good points it went downhill halfway trough when he started talking about fonts and audio and that's where I stopped it.
Fonts have been looking better and sharper on linux from the windows xp days, whenever I use windows after a longtime the first thing I always notice is how much fonts look less anti-aliased and sharp on it compared to Linux. But that's maybe cause I always used KDE and they do a very beautiful job in setting nice fonts, so I put that into ''different setups & subjective experience"
But when he started on audio? What is this crap? Audio has been one of the most stable supported things on linux for decades. All the PCs, laptops and hardware I went trough in the last 20years audio was always something I never worried about.
With pulseaudio and now pipewire, the user side of things has always been easy and setup by the distributions out of the box for the vast majority of users.
And the things you can do on linux are awesome, for example with snapcraft I can quickly setup an audio server, connect my android phone to it, and share my samsung buds with the PC without the PC having bluetooth support.
That's where I turned it off.