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Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
24 days ago
- Microsoft is losing developers, who are switching to macOS and Linux, with only content creation and gaming initially keeping them on Windows.
- Windows Lite is a stripped-down Windows version without telemetry, ads, AI, or .NET, focusing on win32 with a lightweight shell and graphics drivers.
- Targeted at gamers and developers, it offers a stable, backward-compatible platform with monthly patches and manual update control.
- If successful, Windows Lite could attract ordinary users, institutions, and governments, becoming the primary Windows version with lower costs and increased revenue.
- It is priced at $49 for a permanent license without subscriptions.
Why Linux is not ready for the desktop (2024)
18 days ago
- Linux distributions struggle with long-term binary compatibility, unlike Windows which maintains support for decades-old software.
- Software distribution on Linux relies heavily on distro-specific packages or cumbersome solutions like Flatpaks/Snaps/AppImages, which act as lightweight VMs but don't fully solve compatibility issues.
- The Linux kernel's monolithic nature means driver updates require full kernel updates, potentially introducing regressions, and there's no universally stable kernel version for desktops.
- Linux lacks native, user-friendly file sharing comparable to Windows; Samba is complex to configure, and alternatives like SSHFS/NFS are not intuitive for average users.
- Hardware support on Linux is often delayed, especially for new devices, due to reliance on kernel versions and limited OEM driver development compared to Windows.
- Desktop Linux suffers from underfunding, leading to persistent bugs in audio/video subsystems and fewer native applications, especially AAA games.
- Security updates in Linux depend on volunteer packagers, causing delays, and default distros may not meet enterprise needs like centralized management or stable APIs.
- The Linux community can be unwelcoming to newcomers, often responding to issues with suggestions to use the command line or switch distributions rather than providing accessible solutions.
Fable 5 wrote a Windows kernel in 38 minutes
15 days ago
- The ntoskrnl-rs project successfully rewrote the Windows NT kernel in Rust, booting in QEMU and passing self-tests.
- Claude Fable 5 generated the core kernel (about 5,100 lines) in 38 minutes, including scheduling, memory management, and I/O subsystems.
- The kernel loads unmodified Windows drivers and binaries, providing a sandbox for analysis and debugging.
- Verification remains a bottleneck, as AI-authored code requires extensive testing for trust and correctness.
- Model choice matters: Fable excelled at greenfield generation, while Opus handled iterative debugging and security work.
- This demonstrates AI's potential to rewrite legacy critical infrastructure, reducing costs and memory-safety bugs.
SuperPass: Fast-Tracking Blocking Threads to Mitigate Priority Inversion
9 hours ago
- Priority inversion occurs frequently on Android, causing high-priority threads like UI threads to be blocked by lower-priority threads for up to 210 ms, leading to dropped frames.
- Existing real-time system solutions (e.g., priority inheritance, real-time UI promotion, Proxy Execution) fail to eliminate long priority-inversion blockings on Android and may introduce high overhead.
- Two key insights: long blockings stem from accumulated CPU waiting time of low-priority blocking threads, not critical-section latency; tracking a limited number of concurrent readers is sufficient for good responsiveness with low overhead.
- SuperPass is a lightweight kernel mechanism that fast-tracks low-priority threads blocking latency-critical threads, using a scheduler fast track and a lock-level detector to identify most such threads.
- Evaluation on Google Pixel 8 shows: 72.0% reduction in 99.9th-percentile blocking duration, 47.7% reduction in blocking count, 29.2% reduction in janky frames, with only 0.74% CPU overhead.

Hasty Briefsbeta

#operating systems

Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

Why Linux is not ready for the desktop (2024)

Fable 5 wrote a Windows kernel in 38 minutes

SuperPass: Fast-Tracking Blocking Threads to Mitigate Priority Inversion