Microsoft Makes Open-Source Windows Forms, WinUI, WPF

[jrdls]

"Separately making the rounds today is how Microsoft is reportedly abandoning their Edge web-browser in favor of developing a new solution based upon Chromium." --> Can you give us a source for that, please?

Ars Technica has the story: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018...-chrome-clone/

[ryad]

That's actually great news towards the diffusion of client-side dotnet. Looks like, C# is becoming a real alternative to Java desktop applications in the next few years.

[mhartzel]

Pretty soon now, Microsoft is going to abandon the Windows Kernel and move Windows 10 rather seemlessly onto the Linux kernel and a Wayland display server.

I would like to see this happen but unfortunately I believe it is technically impossible. The services in windows and Linux kernels are not compatible with each other and most programs use some kernel services.

[uid313]

I think this is absolutely amazing, even though I wish this had happened sooner!

This is great news for .NET developers and for developers using .NET Core and NuGet.

Windows Forms is a legacy technology, and modern apps use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or the newer UWP.
Windows Forms is a wrapper over Win32 APIs such as GDI+, so its not portable to Linux. However since Wine implements Win32 and GDI+ maybe it can somehow be used together with Mono and/or Wine.
Or the interface and API of Windows Forms could be implemented on Mono to wrap over POSIX and GTK+ or Qt.
But it is not likely that open sourcing Windows Form will of any benefit to Linux, its more of benefit to Windows developers.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) uses DirectX, but maybe it could be implemented using vkd3d or DXVK.

UWP is more responsive, mobile friendly, and touch friendly. I don't know if this could be used on Linux.

Both WPF and UWP uses XAML (which is like QML for Qt or GtkBuilder for GTK+). Xamarin Forms (which is cross-platform) also use XAML. Unfortunately there are many different dialects of XAML. Hopefully the XAML Standard can unify this.

.NET Core is amazing! I would really love to be able to build cross-platform UI applications with it.


i think it is sad to see Microsoft abandoning their EdgeHTML and Chakra JavaScript engine and building a browser on Chromium (Blink engine and V8 JavaScript engine).
This will result in a stronger ownership of the web by Google and Chrome. This is bad for innovation, diversity and security.
Also Chromium needs to be an big, complicated, abstraction to run on all platforms, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, etc. With Edge Microsoft can tightly integrate it with the Windows stack and the technology of the Windows platform to make a fast, secure and resource effective browser.

[ssokolow]

Windows is a huge thorn in their side. It's a 50m lines-of-code Cathedral based on the foundations of DOS 2.11. Wouldn't you wanna dump it for Linux? Abso-fn-lutely.

Unless I'm mistaken, Windows ME was the last one based on the foundations of DOS 2.11, and the Win32 subsystem of the NT kernel is constrained by API and ABI compatibility requirements, not old code.

That said, I really wish I could find a good explanation of what compatibility requirement prevents them from implementing the UNIX solution to deleting an in-use file. (Open file handles being refcounted handles on an inode, just like hard links, with the file being deleted when the total count reaches zero)

[vegabook]

Unless I'm mistaken, Windows ME was the last one based on the foundations of DOS 2.11, and the Win32 subsystem of the NT kernel is constrained by API and ABI compatibility requirements, not old code.

That said, I really wish I could find a good explanation of what compatibility requirement prevents them from implementing the UNIX solution to deleting an in-use file. (Open file handles being refcounted handles on an inode, just like hard links, with the file being deleted when the total count reaches zero)

The culture of Microsoft traces an uninterruped thread back to DOS. To the extent that you're still backslashing around in the command prompt. There have been a bunch of "hotswap" kernel changes but culturally thing will never be able to shake DOS off its back. The very premise of the entire system is a cheap, get-it-out-the-door-first mentality. That includes large chunks of the NT codebase. They had to get this sucker out. To this day Windows is a worse technical system because of the marketing people's perogatives. It's analogous to the cultural change from "cost plus" engineering purity to "planned obsolescence" in the car industry. It's their cross to bare and they know it. They want out because there's a superior, FREE, OS out there. The only thing that is unequivocally better from MS on the desktop, is Office. The rest is inferior. Edge, and Windows. Why fight a losing battle? Why spend vast amounts on a losing strategy when dumping said strategy literally costs you nothing and saves you a fortune! I'm willing to bet that Windows makes no money especially with the new "Windows 10 forever" idea. Why upgrade??

Can you imagine how much dough Microsoft could make if it could take all its Programming language and applications expertise and stick it on Linux? I bet this would make them easily 50% more money than limiting themselves to their own shitheap of an operating system. Indeed I'm willing to bet that their devs are sick to death of Windows and just the motivational increase itself to their long-suffering devs would be worth it.

Sidebet: Ubuntu will be called Microsoft Ubuntu within 12 months.

[AsuMagic]

Okay... I have to admit I wasn't expecting this at all.

[ryao]

OK, this is crazy.

I hope this is a step towards running most C# applications under Linux. (Let's make LinForms)

it is not:

“We also do not intend to accept contributions that provide cross-platform implementations for Windows Forms or WPF.”

https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/blob/master/Documentation/contributing.md

[ryao]

I would like to see this happen but unfortunately I believe it is technically impossible. The services in windows and Linux kernels are not compatible with each other and most programs use some kernel services.

It is possible. See Microsoft Drawbridge.

For a working example of how Windows software can run on Linux, see wine.

[ryao]

Pretty soon now, Microsoft is going to abandon the Windows Kernel and move Windows 10 rather seemlessly onto the Linux kernel and a Wayland display server. I can assure you that it will happen fairly soon and that Microsoft is going to implement the Windows look/feel on Wayland, it will look like the current UI but the underlying architecture will be Wayland and Linux. This will include an improved NTFS driver for Linux and the Win32/64 and DIrectX code being ported over to Wayland rendering backend, ensuring compatability for Windows apps on the new Linux based Windows. There is also going to be a driver compatability layer for using Windows drivers on Linux.

It will be a fairly seamless transition therefore.

Microsoft is doing this to make better use of its developer resources by moving to Linux, it can unburden itself form Windows kernel maintenance. This is also why it is moving to Chromium as well. Windows will contribute developer resources now to developing and improving Linux and Chromium and can share development costs with other companies that also use this code.

Microsoft is already making contributions to the Linux kernel to show that this is indeed happening and the future of Windows is Linux.

Their Linux contributions are solely to enable them to get Linux software running on top of their platform be it Azure or the NT kernel. They have zero interest in switching to Linux and this is just another iteration of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. We are in the Embrace stage at the moment.