Microsoft, just go all in: embrace Linux kernel and make a MS GUI on top of it, call it MSLinux or something. It will save time/money along the way I believe.

One of the main values of Windows today, at least for businesses, is backwards-compatibility- not the GUI. DOS programs still run on it, if that tells you anything. So they aren't going to be dropping Windows Proper in favor of a skinned Linux distro any time soon.

That said, maybe it would be feasible if they built a "Linux subsystem for Windows" that could run any legacy Windows app inside Linux, just like Windows can currently run any legacy DOS app (without actually being based on DOS). An official Wine, if you will.

marcodiego

> DOS programs still run on it,

I don't think that is correct. Any windows after 9x will need something like dosbox to run dos programs.

sumtechguy

NT has NTVDM. It worked on many applications up until they added 64 bit into the mix. At which point they never ported it over. Once you move to any 64 bit version you can no longer do that and need a VM or DOSBox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_DOS_machine

Also NTVDM was kind of hit or miss. So if you are using a 32 bit version of any windows you may still get away with running many DOS and win16 applications. But within a particular set of limitations.

anthk

The only good NTVDM is the ReactOS' one. The one from MS itself is very flakey.

efreak

Try winevdm[1] or ntvdmx64[2], which I believe is based on leaked Microsoft source code. I've successfully gotten Tetris running on win10x64, and I'm happy enough with not needing dosbox+win3x for it.

1: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm 2: https://github.com/leecher1337/ntvdmx64