[HN Gopher] Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused l...
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       Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS
        
       Author : aktau
       Score  : 380 points
       Date   : 2026-02-06 15:13 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | aktau wrote:
       | From the GitHub page:
       | 
       | LiteBox is a sandboxing library OS that drastically cuts down the
       | interface to the host, thereby reducing attack surface. It
       | focuses on easy interop of various "North" shims and "South"
       | platforms. LiteBox is designed for usage in both kernel and non-
       | kernel scenarios.
       | 
       | LiteBox exposes a Rust-y nix/rustix-inspired "North" interface
       | when it is provided a Platform interface at its "South". These
       | interfaces allow for a wide variety of use-cases, easily allowing
       | for connection between any of the North--South pairs.
       | 
       | Example use cases include:                 - Running unmodified
       | Linux programs on Windows       - Sandboxing Linux applications
       | on Linux       - Run programs on top of SEV SNP       - Running
       | OP-TEE programs on Linux       - Running on LVBS
        
         | aktau wrote:
         | More links with discussion:
         | 
         | Reddit discussion:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1qw4r71/microsofts_n...
         | 
         | Project lead James Morris announcing it on social.kernel.org:
         | https://social.kernel.org/notice/B2xBkzWsBX0NerohSC
        
           | xjamesmorris wrote:
           | FYI, I am not the project lead for Litebox. It is led by
           | Microsoft Research.
        
         | a-dub wrote:
         | is this wslv1.2 (wslv1 redux) in now a more general cross-
         | platform library firewall type thing?
        
         | rbanffy wrote:
         | > - Running unmodified Linux programs on Windows
         | 
         | This might actually be my favourite use: I always thought WSL2
         | was a kludge, and WSL1 to be somewhat the fulfilment of the
         | "personality modules" promise of Windows NT.
        
           | dixie_land wrote:
           | Yup WSL feels closer to the Services for Unix which has been
           | around since NT 4/5.
           | 
           | It was sad to see WSL2 taking the path of least resistance,
           | that decision has always felt TPM driven ("we got unexpected
           | success with WSL and people are asking for more, deliver xxx
           | by Q4! No I don't care _how_ you do it!")
        
           | unixhero wrote:
           | Personality was an OS aphorism that went longer back than NT
           | I believe. But my memory is fuzzy on this.
           | 
           | Edit! Memory unfuzzed: It was Workplace OS,
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_OS
        
             | rbanffy wrote:
             | I know that, but Windows NT actually succeeded.
        
         | oofbey wrote:
         | The amount of techno jargon marketing speak in this readme is
         | impressive. I'm pretty well versed in most things computers,
         | but it took me a long time to figure out what the heck this
         | thing is good for. Leave it to Microsoft to try to rename lots
         | of existing ideas and try to claim they've invented something
         | amazing when it's IMHO not all that useful.
        
       | kvuj wrote:
       | The cargo.lock file is 2200+ lines long. Did they spend a
       | reasonable amount of time auditing these dependencies?
        
         | Andrex wrote:
         | They ran it through Copilot which gave it the all-clear.
        
         | shikon7 wrote:
         | What would be a reasonable amount of time to audit the
         | dependencies?
        
           | kvuj wrote:
           | I would let them decide based on their security policy.
           | 
           | If Microsoft states that they don't have any for a project
           | like this, I would be wary of taking it too seriously.
        
         | adolph wrote:
         | grep 'name = ' ms-litebox-Cargo.lock | wc -l          238
         | 
         | edit:                 grep 'name = ' ms-litebox-Cargo.lock |
         | sort -u | wc -l          221
        
           | dizhn wrote:
           | I've always done 'sort | uniq'. Never bothered to check for
           | the the unique flag to sort. Although 'uniq -c' is quite nice
           | to have.                      -c, --count
           | prefix lines by the number of occurrences
        
             | adolph wrote:
             | Yeah, to see the packages with multiple versions:
             | grep 'name = ' ms-litebox-Cargo.lock | sort | uniq -c |
             | grep -v '1 name' | sort -n
             | 
             | Package windows-sys has the highest number of versions
             | included, 3: 0.59.0, 0.60.2, and 0.61.2.
             | 
             | Edit: Also, beware of the unsorted uniq count:
             | cat <<EOF | uniq -c       > a       > a       > b       > a
             | > a       > EOF        2 a        1 b        2 a
        
               | dundarious wrote:
               | grep -v '1 name' excludes 11, 21, etc., but I take your
               | point.
        
         | CodesInChaos wrote:
         | That's 238 dependencies (counting multiple versions of the same
         | crate).
         | 
         | * Many of them are part of families of crates maintained by the
         | same people (e.g. rust-crypto, windows, rand or regex).
         | 
         | * Most of them are popular crates I'm familiar with.
         | 
         | * Several are only needed to support old compiler versions and
         | can be removed once the MSRV is raised
         | 
         | So it's not as bad as it looks at first glance.
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | Given, you know, Microsoft, I'd demand proof even if they said
         | they did.
        
       | anon291 wrote:
       | A library os to me would typically mean it's aimed at hosting a
       | single user program on bare hardware. I don't see that here, but
       | maybe I'm just confused
        
         | richardlblair wrote:
         | The reddit conversation seems to allude to you being correct.
        
         | bri3d wrote:
         | It's both; it's aimed at hosting a single user program on
         | another userspace, but also seems to have its own kernel as
         | well?
         | 
         | The "North" part seems to be what I think you'd traditionally
         | think of as a library OS, and then the "South" part seems to be
         | shims to use various userlands and TEEs as the host (rather
         | than the bare hardware in your example).
         | 
         | I'm really confused by the complete lack of documentation and
         | examples, though. I think the "runners" are the closest thing
         | there is.
        
       | ukuina wrote:
       | No deployment instructions?
        
       | CasualSuperman wrote:
       | With how buggy their flagship OS has become, why would I trust
       | anything else they release to be better? Or even if it does work
       | well now, why should I expect it to stay that way? Microsoft has
       | burned through all possible goodwill at this point, at least for
       | me.
        
         | rafram wrote:
         | This isn't supposed to replace Windows, and it isn't a GUI
         | desktop operating system at all. I doubt anyone working on this
         | has anything to do with the modern Windows desktop UX.
        
           | dspillett wrote:
           | _> This isn 't supposed to replace Windows,_
           | 
           | OP wasn't suggesting it was, just that the lack of quality in
           | one significant area of the company's output leads to a lack
           | of confidence in other products that they release.
        
             | viraptor wrote:
             | Given anything the size of Microsoft, it's not a good
             | assumption. MS has large research teams that produce really
             | interesting things. Their output is unrelated to released
             | products.
        
           | Reddit_MLP2 wrote:
           | but if the host OS is already comprised, what is the point of
           | sandbox inside of it?
        
             | necovek wrote:
             | Maybe we need secure attestation for sandbox to be
             | protected against compromised host :)
             | 
             | It does sound hard, and might need to employ homomorphic
             | encryption with hw help for any memory access after code
             | has been also verifiably unaltered through (uncompromised)
             | hw attestation.
        
         | hudo wrote:
         | UI of Windows is buggy and inconsistent. Kernel and low level
         | stuff are actually very stable and good.
        
           | joe_mamba wrote:
           | _> Kernel and low level stuff are actually very stable and
           | good._
           | 
           | This. A while ago a build of Win 11 was shared/leaked that
           | was tailored for the Chinese government called "Windows G"
           | and it had all the ads, games, telemetry, anti-malware and
           | other bullshit removed and it flew on 4GB RAM. So Microsoft
           | CAN DO IT, if they actually want to, they just don't want to
           | for users.
           | 
           | You can get something similar yourself at home running all
           | the debloat tools out there but since they're not officially
           | supported, either you'll break future windows updates, or the
           | future windows updates will break your setup, so it's not
           | worth it.
        
             | TkTech wrote:
             | Is this not just Windows LTSB/LTSC? Which has been a thing
             | forever.
        
               | joe_mamba wrote:
               | Maybe, could also be that for a 9 figure government
               | contract they'll provide a custom LTSC branch just for
               | you with only the features you want.
        
             | RajT88 wrote:
             | Talked about back in the Vista days publicly (I cannot find
             | the articles now) - Microsoft has commitments to their
             | hardware partners to help keep the hardware market from
             | collapsing.
             | 
             | So they are not incentivized to keep Win32_Lean_N_Mean, but
             | instead to put up artificial limits on how old of hardware
             | can run W11.
             | 
             | I have no insider knowledge here, just this is a thing
             | which get talked about around major Windows releases
             | historically.
        
               | joe_mamba wrote:
               | _> Microsoft has commitments to their hardware partners
               | to help keep the hardware market from collapsing._
               | 
               | Citation needed since that makes no logical sense. You
               | want to sell your SW product to the most common
               | denominator to increase your sales, not to a market of HW
               | that people don't yet have. Sounds like FUD.
               | 
               |  _> but instead to put up artificial limits on how old of
               | hardware can run W11_
               | 
               | They're not artificial. POPCNT / SSE4.2 became a hard
               | requirement starting with Windows 11 24H2 (2024) (but
               | that's for older CPUs), and only intel 8th gen and up
               | have well functioning support for Virtualization-Based
               | Security (VBS), HVCI (Hypervisor-protected Code
               | Integrity), and MBEC (Mode-Based Execution Control).
               | That's besides the TPM 2.0 which isn't actually a hard
               | requirement or feature used by everyone, the other ones
               | are way more important.
               | 
               | So at which point do we consider HW-based security a
               | necessity instead of an artificial limit? With the ever
               | increase in vulnerabilities and attack vectors, you gotta
               | rip the bandaid at some point.
        
               | ssl-3 wrote:
               | Windows 11 is running on my ThinkPad T530. Its CPU is
               | very nearly 14 years old.
               | 
               | What is missing here that was present when this same
               | computer was running Windows 10?
        
               | joe_mamba wrote:
               | _> Windows 11 is running on my ThinkPad T530. Its CPU is
               | very nearly 14 years old._
               | 
               | Yes, you can bypass HW checks to install it on a pentium
               | 4 if you want, nothing new here.
               | 
               |  _> What is missing here that was present when this same
               | computer was running Windows 10?_
               | 
               | All the security features I listed in the comment above.
        
               | ssl-3 wrote:
               | So, if I'm hearing this right:
               | 
               | This computer had the security features that you listed
               | while it was running Windows 10, and now that it is
               | running Windows 11 it is lacking them?
               | 
               | (I'm not trying to be snarky. That's simply an
               | astonishing concept to me.)
        
               | 9dev wrote:
               | It hadn't. Windows 11 has them, due to support for new
               | hardware mitigation features. What is it you don't
               | understand in particular?
        
               | ssl-3 wrote:
               | There's a lot here that is hard to understand:
               | 
               | > > What is missing here that was present when this same
               | computer was running Windows 10?
               | 
               | > All the security features I listed in the comment
               | above.
        
               | RajT88 wrote:
               | You are just arguing the requirements are the
               | requirements.
               | 
               | Are they as important as stated? Microsoft says so.
               | Everyone here loves and trusts them, right?
        
               | magicalhippo wrote:
               | > You want to sell your SW product to the most common
               | denominator to increase your sales, not to a market of HW
               | that people don't yet have.
               | 
               | A key difference between regular software and Windows is
               | that almost nobody buys Windows, they get it pre-
               | installed on a new PC. So a new PC purchase means a new
               | Windows license.
        
               | necovek wrote:
               | If anything, Microsoft has a lot of problems because they
               | support a wide variety of crappy hardware and allow just
               | about anyone to write kernel level sw (drivers). Not sure
               | if this changed, but they used to run in the ring0 even.
               | 
               | This was most evident back in the 90s when they shipped
               | NT4: extremely stable as opposed to Win95 which
               | introduced the infamous BSOD. But it supported
               | everything, and NT4 had HW support on par with Linux
               | (i.e. almost nothing from the cheap vendors).
        
               | mjevans wrote:
               | NT4 started with a kernel mode, user mode, security model
               | and drivers had to be written and validated accordingly.
               | 
               | 9x, me, and even compatibility parts of XP (up to some
               | service patch IIRC? Might have been SP2) would still
               | allow dos mode realtime BS for any driver that wanted.
               | 
               | I loath all the dang software modems too cheep to ship a
               | decent device in a single unit and instead slice off the
               | user's already constrained resources.
        
               | necovek wrote:
               | Heh, who else remembers the golden benchmark, a US
               | Robotics 56k hw modem (the only one I could find locally
               | was an external one too) to get online in either NT4 or
               | Linux. But when I finally did save for one, I could fully
               | leave Windows behind in 1998.
        
             | hilti wrote:
             | Never heard of Windows G .. that sounds exactly what I want
             | for my older Thinkpads :-)
        
               | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
               | > Windows G .. sounds exactly what I want for my older
               | Thinkpads
               | 
               | I'm running 11 IoT Ent LTSC on a some T420; it runs
               | pretty okay.
        
               | qingcharles wrote:
               | I've been starting with Tiny11 and then running the
               | debloat scripts against it. Reduces the memory footprint
               | to about 2GB and have found zero compatibility problems
               | with doing this. You just have to use curl or something
               | to download a browser because you won't even have Edge.
        
             | bcraven wrote:
             | Something similar, or indeed, exactly the same:
             | 
             | https://www.windowscentral.com/software-
             | apps/windows-11/leak...
        
             | drnick1 wrote:
             | Microsoft should just open source Windows at this point.
        
             | workfromspace wrote:
             | I geniunely wonder if Windows G's start menu also use React
             | and if the start menu, right click or Windows Search still
             | sucks in Windows G or not :)
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | React Native, halfway between Web and native.
        
               | chris_wot wrote:
               | No, he's talking about ReactOS.
        
           | exceptione wrote:
           | NTFS, not so great.
        
             | p_ing wrote:
             | NTFS is just fine. Stable, reliable, fast, plenty of
             | features for a general purpose file system.
        
               | repelsteeltje wrote:
               | ...But no way can you wrap it into something that looks
               | posix-y from the inside
        
               | p_ing wrote:
               | Why would you want to?
        
               | repelsteeltje wrote:
               | From the article, first use case:
               | 
               | > Example use cases include:
               | 
               | > * Running unmodified Linux programs on Windows
               | 
               | > * ...
               | 
               | That won't work if the unplugged Linux program assumes
               | that mv replaces a file atomically; ntfs can't offer
               | that.
        
               | p_ing wrote:
               | NTFS uses atomic transactions, that's the only way it has
               | the ability to recover after a fault.
               | 
               | You can read more if you wish in 'Inside the Windows NT
               | File System' by Helen Custer, page 15.
        
               | exceptione wrote:
               | Even with Defender etc off, it is not fun. Lots of small
               | file IO brings it on its knees. Some wants to blame the
               | Windows I/O system, I don't know, but what I do know is
               | that when people choose NTFS it is because they haven't
               | an alternative. Nobody chooses it based on its quality
               | attributes. I dare to say there is no NTFS system that is
               | faster than an EXT4 system.
               | 
               | If even MS internal teams rather want to avoid it, it
               | seems like it isn't a great offering.
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41085376#41086062
        
               | p_ing wrote:
               | NTFS on Linux should be near-par with ext4 on Linux.
               | 
               | Remember, I said the _file system_ was just fine. It's
               | that extensible architecture above all file systems on NT
               | that causes grief.
               | 
               | The only method to 'turn off' Defender is to use
               | DevDrive, which enforces ReFS, and even then you only get
               | async Defender, it's not possible to completely disable.
        
               | sunaookami wrote:
               | NTFS is infamous for being super slow. Even using EXT4
               | through WSL is faster.
        
           | mananaysiempre wrote:
           | > Kernel and low level stuff are actually very stable and
           | good.
           | 
           | In their intended applications, which might or might not be
           | the ones you need.
           | 
           | The slowness of the filesystem that necessitated a whole
           | custom caching layer in Git for Windows, or the slowness of
           | process creation that necessitated adding "picoprocesses" to
           | the kernel so that WSL1 would perform acceptably and still
           | wasn't enough for it to survive, those are entirely due to
           | the kernel's archtecture.
           | 
           | It's not necessarily a huge deal that NT makes a bad
           | substrate for Unix, even if POSIX support has been in the
           | product requirements since before Win32 was conceived. I
           | agree with the MSR paper[1] on fork(), for instance. But for
           | a Unix-head, the "good" in your statement comes with
           | important caveats. The filesystem is in particular so slow
           | that Windows users will unironically claim that Ripgrep is
           | slow and build their own NTFS parsers to sell as the fix[2].
           | 
           | [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/785430/
           | 
           | [2] https://nitter.net/CharlieMQV/status/1972647630653227054
        
             | jph00 wrote:
             | This is not due to slowness of the file system. Native ntfs
             | tools are much faster than Unix ones in some situations.
             | The issue is that running Unix software on windows will
             | naturally have a performance impact. You see the same thing
             | in reverse using Wine on Linux. Windows uses a different
             | design for IO so requires software to be written with that
             | design in mind.
        
               | MadnessASAP wrote:
               | It's pretty typical these days for software, particularly
               | games of the DX9-11 eras to perform better on Wine/Proton
               | then they do under native Windows on the same hardware.
        
               | m132 wrote:
               | > Native ntfs tools are much faster than Unix ones in
               | some situations. The issue is that running Unix software
               | on windows will naturally have a performance impact. You
               | see the same thing in reverse using Wine on Linux.
               | 
               | Not true. There are increasingly more cases where Windows
               | software, written with Windows in mind and only tested on
               | Windows, performs better atop Wine.
               | 
               | Sure, there are interface incompatibilities that
               | naturally create performance penalties, but a lot of
               | stuff maps 1:1, and Windows was historically designed to
               | support multiple user-space ABIs; Win32 calls are broken
               | down into native kernel calls by kernel32, advapi32,
               | etc., for example, similar to how libc works on Unix-like
               | operating systems.
        
             | dgxyz wrote:
             | This is on the mark.
             | 
             | But there's another issue which is what cripples windows
             | for dev! NTFS has a terrible design flaw which is the fact
             | that small files, under 640 bytes, are stored in the MFT.
             | The MFT ends up having serious lock contention so lots of
             | small file changes are slow. This screws up anything Unixy
             | and git horribly.
             | 
             | WSL1 was built on top of that problem which was one of the
             | many reasons it was slow as molasses.
             | 
             | Also why ReFS and "dev drive" exist...
        
               | mananaysiempre wrote:
               | > NTFS has a terrible design flaw which is the fact that
               | small files, under 640 bytes, are stored in the MFT.
               | 
               | Ext4 also stores small (~150B) files inside the inode[1],
               | and so do a number of other filesystems[2]? NTFS was
               | unusually early to the party, but if you're right that
               | it's problematic there then something else must also be
               | wrong (perhaps with the locking?) to make it so.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/ex
               | t4/inli...
               | 
               | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_syst
               | ems#All..., the "Inline data" column.
        
             | p_ing wrote:
             | The file system isn't slow. The slowness will be present in
             | any file system due to the file system filters that all
             | file system calls pass though.
        
               | mananaysiempre wrote:
               | Right, by "file system" here I mean all of the layers
               | between the application talking in terms of named files
               | and whatever first starts talking in terms of block
               | addresses.
               | 
               | Also, as far as my (very limited) understanding goes,
               | there are more architectural performance problems than
               | just filters (and, to me, filters don't necessarily sound
               | like performance bankruptcy, provided the filter in
               | question isn't mandatory, un-removable Microsoft
               | Defender). I seem to remember that path parsing is
               | accomplished in NT by each handler chopping off the
               | initial portion that it understands and passing the
               | remaining suffix to the next one _as an uninterpreted
               | string_ (cf. COM monikers), unlike Unix where the slash-
               | separated list is baked into the architecture, and the
               | former design makes it much harder to have (what Unix
               | calls) a "dentry cache" that would allow the kernel to
               | look up meanings of popular names without going through
               | the filesystem(s).
        
               | p_ing wrote:
               | NTFS will perform directory B+-tree lookups (this is
               | where it walks the path) until it finds the requested
               | file. The Cache Manager caches these B+-trees.
               | 
               | From there, it hits the MFT, finds the specific record
               | for the file, loads the MFT record, and ultimately
               | returns the FILE_OBJECT to the I/O Manager and it bubbles
               | up the chain back to (presumably) Win32. The MFT is just
               | a linear array of records, which include file and
               | directories (directory records are just a record with
               | directory = true, essentially).
               | 
               | Obviously simplified. Windows Internals will be your
               | friend, if you want to know more.
        
               | mananaysiempre wrote:
               | Thanks for the explanation! Linux, meanwhile, will[1] in
               | the normal case walk a sequence[2] of hash tables
               | (representing incomplete but up-to-date views of
               | directories) before hitting the filesystem's vtable or
               | the block I/O layer at all, and on the fast path[3]
               | taking no locks other than the RCU read lock.
               | 
               | [1]
               | https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/path-
               | look...
               | 
               | [2] I was under the impression that it could look up an
               | entire path at once when I wrote my grandparent comment;
               | it seems I was wrong, which on reflection makes sense
               | given you can move directories.
               | 
               | [3]
               | https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/path-
               | look...
        
               | Rapzid wrote:
               | Heh, first I've heard of Windows Internals. New friends
               | for The Linux Programming Interface!
        
               | p_ing wrote:
               | Yes, won't be that quite in depth given no source code,
               | but you can easily look up the NT4 source code on GitHub
               | if you want to dive that deep. I would assume much of
               | that code should still be relevant today.
               | 
               | Also worth tracking down a copy of the NT OS/2 Design
               | Workbook on the web (another leak).
               | 
               | And Inside the Windows NT File System by Helen Custer is
               | a very short book but describes the very early state of
               | NTFS capabilities/functions.
        
             | BrouteMinou wrote:
             | The Windows filesystem isn't slow per se, it's a slowness
             | caused by "a thousand cuts" type of problem.
             | 
             | https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-42
             | 5...
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | Microsoft doesn't have a very good track record with security
         | or privacy. Maybe it works, but yeah you'll probably get
         | screwed over at some point.
         | 
         | Still, the fact that it's open source is a good thing. People
         | can now take that code and make something better (ripping out
         | the AI for example) or just use bits and pieces for their own
         | totally unrelated projects. I can't see that as anything but a
         | win. I have no problem giving shitty companies credit where its
         | due and they've done a good thing here.
        
         | simonw wrote:
         | Microsoft employ over 100,000 engineers. I'd advise against
         | assuming that everything produced by any of them is bad because
         | of bugs in Windows.
        
           | lysace wrote:
           | This is also still small/unimportant enough not to be
           | poisoned by their broken corporate culture.
        
           | replooda wrote:
           | The criticism was directed at the company's product, not the
           | employees...
        
             | trimethylpurine wrote:
             | The response appears to be pointing out that with so many
             | employees (engineers), it's unlikely that they all work on
             | Windows.
        
               | mcmcmc wrote:
               | And yet they still work for a company that has shown it
               | isn't overly concerned about quality or reliability in
               | its products.
        
               | 1f60c wrote:
               | Thaaat's _capitalism_
        
               | trimethylpurine wrote:
               | I don't think people typically have so much choice about
               | it. Everyone is just trying to feed their families and
               | enjoy their life. The job market is a little tough right
               | now, I think, for software engineers. No?
               | 
               | I know a few personally that left their stable job to be
               | hired and fired in the same month and remain unemployed
               | six months later. Very sad.
        
               | mcmcmc wrote:
               | What a ridiculous excuse. People who join ICE to
               | brutalize minorities and protestors are just trying to
               | feed their families too, then. No?
               | 
               | Working for Microsoft doesn't make them bad engineers or
               | bad people, but it does make them Microsoft employees.
               | And they get to bear its reputation whether they want to
               | or not. If it makes them uncomfortable then they should
               | make a change or grow thicker skin.
               | 
               | Oversaturation of the labor supply for software engineers
               | has been looming for a while now. Gen Z was sold on
               | infinite growth in the ZIRP era which was never going to
               | happen, but everyone still jumped in. What we're seeing
               | is structural unemployment. Not everyone's gonna make it.
        
               | trimethylpurine wrote:
               | Do you have kids? If not, I agree with you. Make the hard
               | decision and take a loss. And thank you for your
               | sacrifice.
               | 
               | If you do, I can't agree with you.
               | 
               | Also I wouldn't compare software development for a
               | marketing company with a violent disagreeable effort.
               | There's bad and there's worse, objectively.
               | 
               | Anyway, not saying you're wrong, but I'm not so quick to
               | judge someone by a job that they probably hate.
               | 
               | Or to wrap 100,000 people in the same blanket. We're all
               | individuals. No one should be judged by the actions of
               | others.
        
               | bionsystem wrote:
               | There are companies I wouldn't candidate for, even with
               | kids I think, although it's hard to say, I don't have
               | kids, and apparently there is a mind-shift happening when
               | you get one. Oracle, Palantir come to mind. But maybe not
               | Microsoft, I don't know about that one. It's probably
               | bad, but maybe not "I prefer to watch my kids starving"
               | kind of bad.
        
               | mcmcmc wrote:
               | Having kids is also a bullshit excuse. Choosing comfort
               | over conscience is your prerogative but you're just
               | teaching your kids the same values.
               | 
               | Yeah, tech monopolist that enables genocide to
               | contemporary gestapo isn't an equal comparison. But my
               | point was that you can't ignore the moral hazards of
               | employment by handwaving "gotta eat somehow". There are a
               | million ways to feed your kids. Saying you have to work a
               | high paid job to feed them non-GMO certified organic
               | produce from Erewhon because that's the only standard of
               | living you can possibly survive with, that's a choice.
               | 
               | I also want to reiterate that I'm not judging the people
               | who choose to work there. I'm just saying that by signing
               | the employment contract they accept the reasonable public
               | perception that the products they work on are shit. And
               | to some marginal degree, they are complicit in all their
               | employer's wrongdoings.
        
               | TacticalCoder wrote:
               | > People who join ICE to brutalize minorities and
               | protestors are just trying to feed their families too,
               | then.
               | 
               | 1400 ISIS (the islamist state) terrorists who made their
               | way to the US, identified by the DHS.
               | 
               | https://www.dhs.gov/wow
               | 
               | Look at the list here. 2084 pages already, 12 entries per
               | page: that's 25 000 criminals. They're listing their
               | crimes. 25 000 criminals already arrested is a huge lot.
               | 
               | Be honest with yourself and think about the victims.
               | 
               | I'd say a lot of the people joining ICE do believe the US
               | has already enough criminals that are US citizens and
               | want to help stop the insanity that is mass uncontrolled
               | migration.
               | 
               | Out of 600 000 people arrested by ICE, as I understand it
               | already 25 000 are violent criminals _that we know of_.
               | That 's more nearly 5% of all those arrested. 1 in 20
               | people.
               | 
               | Where do you draw the limit? You want full open borders,
               | but at what cost?
               | 
               | I read a lot of _" Arrested for: kidnapping, rape"_.
               | 
               | Is, say, 1 in 100 people coming in being a criminal OK?
               | 
               | Where do _you_ draw the line?
               | 
               | Dems are literally fighting so that sanctuary cities do
               | not hand over convicted criminals to ICE: so that one day
               | they can be released in the streets.
               | 
               | Is this what you want to fight for?
               | 
               | Are you that convinced, from your moral high ground where
               | you judge Microsoft employees and ICE agents, that you'll
               | be on the right side of history?
        
               | int_19h wrote:
               | > Are you that convinced, from your moral high ground
               | where you judge Microsoft employees and ICE agents, that
               | you'll be on the right side of history?
               | 
               | Yes.
               | 
               | It really isn't difficult to figure out who the bad guys
               | are, at the moment.
        
               | ngcazz wrote:
               | Blackshirt elegy over here folks.
        
               | bionsystem wrote:
               | You are missing out the entire point. In a justice
               | system, a single innocent in prison is a thousand times
               | worse than a free criminal. This is where most people
               | draw the line if they think about it. Because when you
               | put innocents under arrest, suddenly you are no better
               | than dictatorships and terrorist state.
               | 
               | The real justice is investing in a security system that
               | tracks, investigates, and condemn actual criminals, in a
               | targetted way, so that honest people can live securely
               | and free. Believe it or not, plenty of countries manage
               | to do that pretty well.
        
               | biaachmonkie wrote:
               | Well considering the administration has repeatedly called
               | Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good "TERRORISTS", I would
               | consider "1400 ISIS terrorists" a highly dubious
               | statistic, in fact in a brief search for a reputable
               | source of your claim of "1400 ISIS terrorists" I've not
               | found any source for that, link???
               | 
               | You ask "Is, say, 1 in 100 people coming in being a
               | criminal OK?"
               | 
               | Well considering that about 1.4% of the overall
               | population is current incarcerated in our "Land of the
               | Free", yeah 1 in 100 would be an improvement!
               | 
               | People are against ICE in growing numbers because of
               | their tactics of run around hide their identities like
               | bandits and gestapo thugs. Their ignoring of court
               | orders, constant lies, constant blatant violations of the
               | 1st, 2nd, 4th amendments constantly, and violations of
               | rights of people such as immigrants following the
               | processes of asylum, several citizens that have been
               | arrested wrongly, and the terrible tortuous treatment an
               | the joy and pride this corrupt disgusting administration
               | takes in being cruel to people!
        
               | replooda wrote:
               | Maybe. But interpreting it thus requires too much
               | charitableness for it not to have been uncharitable,
               | whether intentionally or otherwise.
        
               | trimethylpurine wrote:
               | You mean interpreting it honestly. Yeah. I caught that.
        
               | sharts wrote:
               | Don't the best of the best typically work on OS
               | fundamentals though?
        
               | trimethylpurine wrote:
               | Which developer has the best of the best on operating
               | systems?
        
               | vlovich123 wrote:
               | OS is such a broad term, especially when applied to
               | Windows which is closer to a Linux distro. Is it the
               | kernel? Windows is fine there as by all accounts the
               | issues are higher up. They've had some problems with
               | their update process which is surprising - historically
               | that team would have been populated by the better
               | engineers. most of the other problems have been in the
               | shell and UI where good engineering discipline is not to
               | be quite as expected.
        
               | bionsystem wrote:
               | Maybe not, there are plenty of hard things to do at
               | Microsoft scale, hypervisors (which I guess could count
               | as "OS" but maybe not "Windows" in the consumer-product
               | line sense), compilers, languages, hardware since
               | Microsoft is doing that too, browsers (although the hard
               | part is chrome-based, probably they contribute to it),
               | databases, distributed systems for cloud products, etc.
               | Plenty of hard things to do.
        
               | wongarsu wrote:
               | The windows kernel is great. It's the stuff built on top
               | of that that sucks. I doubt MS puts the best of the best
               | on coding the start menu
        
               | mavhc wrote:
               | Yes, but the OS fundamentals are for Azure first, Windows
               | last.
               | 
               | Azure makes money, 50% of Windows computers are basically
               | free and need to get you to sign up for a subscription
               | some how. The other 50% are Windows Pro/Enterprise, but
               | MS assumes they'll get that money forever so doesn't put
               | any resources into that. In 10 years the kids switching
               | to Linux on desktop today will be in charge of the
               | business deals and switch corporations to linux because
               | they're not scared of it like the current business IT
               | leaders
        
               | OtomotO wrote:
               | They are not free. OEM costs money. Hence with every
               | laptop with Windows preinstalled, you pay a fraction to
               | Microsoft, even if you immediately uninstall and add
               | Linux.
        
               | mavhc wrote:
               | But probably only $10
        
               | OtomotO wrote:
               | I don't argue with that. But every cent paid to Microslop
               | is a cent too much.
        
             | ray_v wrote:
             | I always wish that people would make this distinction more
             | often ... the people=good, the product=bad ... people!=bad
        
               | replooda wrote:
               | If product->quality_x, I'm okay with employee->?quality_x
               | -- but not with either employee->quality_x or
               | employer->!quality_x. A better thing to remember is that
               | people have themselves to feed. Of those 100k engineers,
               | how many can say "no, you don't, Satya, ain't no
               | besmirching my code with slop"?
        
           | workfromspace wrote:
           | Not op, and I generally agree with your assumption but not
           | for Microsoft, as I don't think it's limited to Windows:
           | 
           | Teams, Office (especially online), One Drive, SharePoint,
           | Azure, GitHub, LinkedIn, all became very shitty and partially
           | unusable with increasing number of weird bugs or problems
           | lately.
        
             | zx8080 wrote:
             | But M$ share price goes up! Investors are smart as they are
             | rich! And they do believe in this all!
             | 
             | /sarcasm
        
             | ymck wrote:
             | And it's not just Microsoft. Apple and other are having the
             | same issue. Something fundamental seems to have happened
             | post Covid but before AI.
             | 
             | WFH, flood of Dev hiring, increasingly hostile worker
             | relations, a bunch of web 2.0 folks finally retiring, VC
             | money drying up...
             | 
             | take your pick.
             | 
             | Software is just crappy these days.
        
           | ddtaylor wrote:
           | They seem to be alienating a lot of their users right now in
           | a lot of different products. There's a significant surge in
           | open source software right now and Linux and all the people
           | that are coming over are a bit more than usual. Their
           | customer base seems tired of the game.
        
           | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
           | The problems with Windows today have nothing to do with bugs
           | but with the strategic vision of Nadella.
        
             | jzb wrote:
             | And it's the employees that'll be laid off if the strategy
             | doesn't succeed because they just didn't copilot hard
             | enough or something.
        
           | solarkraft wrote:
           | This is not about individual employees. It's in the nature of
           | being an employee to be beholden to what's incentivized by
           | their company's management and structure.
        
             | sharts wrote:
             | Don't employees have any say in some of the design ,
             | implementation, and quality bar? Management folks are
             | employees as well. But perhaps they prefer the paycheck to
             | voicing concerns around bad decisions. Nothing wrong with
             | that but throwing all the blame on faceless management and
             | structure seems not right since it evolves from collective
             | activities.
        
               | solarkraft wrote:
               | "Show me the incentives and I'll tell you the outcome" is
               | exactly about this situation. People who do what they
               | feel is right may be able to do so as long as it doesn't
               | conflict with company policy, but when it does (say you
               | spend a little more time on perfecting a feature), it
               | gets noticed and eventually corrected.
        
           | petterroea wrote:
           | Skilled engineers in an environment that doesn't care about
           | quality may become dull, or simply be forced by the system
           | they are in to not care. In practice they are just like us
           | and so I assume they would find outlets in their free time.
           | 
           | I haven't spoken to a Microsoft developer in a while because
           | there are few in the hacker communities I'm around (go
           | figure?) so not entirely sure though. I want to understand.
        
             | bonesss wrote:
             | These giant firms aren't uniform monoliths, especially MS.
             | 
             | Microsoft has some clear 'A' teams (compilers, industry
             | leading languages, F*, pioneering web tech, OS innovations,
             | etc), but also 'B', 'C' and 'D' teams, and MS is often
             | reactively chasing industry trends. They're industry
             | leaders, but also victims of their Office, Windows, and
             | Cloud teams pooping on one another at critical market
             | junctures.
             | 
             | In .Net land we can inspect their library code. A number of
             | these 'Enterprise' packages around their 'Enterprise'
             | solutions are ... just passable. Often something you'd
             | write a proper version of to avoid clear issues. When our
             | juniors are delivering better than their official
             | offerings, in light of wizardry being displayed elsewhere,
             | I think we are seeing systematic effects of corporate
             | culture and customer base.
        
           | LatencyKills wrote:
           | I spent 15 years as a senior dev on the Visual Studio team
           | followed by 5 years on the Xcode team at Apple.
           | 
           | Individual engineers can be talented, professional, and end-
           | user focused. Most of that effort gets lost when PMs refuse
           | to work with each other in a coherent manner. Most of the
           | major issues we ran into weren't engineering bugs per se,
           | they were the result of management refusing to allow teams to
           | communicate effectively.
           | 
           | When we were first building out the original C#
           | functionality, the C# team refused to talk to the existing
           | compiler teams. I spent more time acting as a go-between than
           | I did solving actual technical problems.
           | 
           | Good people can produce crappy software in that environment.
        
         | necovek wrote:
         | Windows is ultimately a lot more complex, and not open source.
         | This also builds on the Linux ecosystem, so even if it comes
         | from Microsoft, I imagine engineering culture is different from
         | that on Windows and especially their online platforms (that's
         | even worse than Windows if you ask me!).
        
         | dooglius wrote:
         | MSR is a somewhat independent org; you should be making
         | predictions based on other MSR projects
        
         | BrouteMinou wrote:
         | Microsoft US a massive corporation with so many people,
         | business units, departments.
         | 
         | A comment like yours is just like saying: "I know a buggy open-
         | source software, why would I trust that other open-source
         | project? The open-source community burned all possible
         | goodwill".
        
           | CodeMage wrote:
           | Except that a company, no matter how heterogenous, has an
           | overarching organization, whereas the open-source community
           | doesn't.
           | 
           | There is no CEO of open source, there are no open-source
           | shareholders, there are no open-source quarterly earnings
           | reports, there are no open-source P&G policies (with or
           | without stack ranking), and so on.
        
         | b00ty4breakfast wrote:
         | I'm not defending MS in any capacity, but this library is open
         | for viewing if you were so inclined.
        
         | lemonish97 wrote:
         | I know windows 11 is super buggy and riddled with issues (and
         | the copilot mess), but I'm starting to feel there's a weird
         | echo chamber around these forums that don't even bother looking
         | at what the product or repository is, and automatically assume
         | it's bad 'cause it's from Microsoft.
        
           | zelphirkalt wrote:
           | Once the amount of bad software coming out of a shop rises
           | over 50% this becomes a sane assumption, since it is more
           | likely than not, that it is trash coming out of that shop. So
           | in case of MS it does seem a reasonable assumption to make.
        
           | Peanuts99 wrote:
           | I use Windows 11 all day and can't agree it's buggy at all,
           | compared to Windows of the past it's very reliable. The worst
           | I can say is they've made some poor decisions about the
           | defaults around ads in the UI. But all of that is easy to
           | turn off.
        
       | sscarduzio wrote:
       | Can it replace Wine to run Windows apps on Linux?
        
         | marklar423 wrote:
         | IIUC, if you have the source you can recompile said Windows app
         | with LiteBox to statically link in the Windows OS kernel
         | dependencies, so it'll run on any compatible processor
         | regardless of OS (since it won't be making syscalls anymore).
         | It's a unikernel basically.
         | 
         | That's the theory, but I don't know how far LiteBox is along to
         | supporting that workflow.
        
         | johannes1234321 wrote:
         | They say
         | 
         | > It focuses on easy interop of various "North" shims and
         | "South" platforms.
         | 
         | For replacing wine on Linux the "North" would be kernel32 API
         | or similar, the "South" would be Linux sys all API.
         | 
         | However this is meant as a library, thus require linking the
         | Windows program to it and eine is more than the system
         | interface, it has all the GUI parts etc of win32 API
        
       | cbondurant wrote:
       | at first I thought library OS might have meant an OS meant for
       | use at a library.
       | 
       | Honestly far less interesting to know I was wrong.
        
         | KPGv2 wrote:
         | yeah, same here, I was like "wow what an interesting side to
         | their business, a whole operating system intended to serve
         | public and academic libraries!"
        
         | rendaw wrote:
         | Is it not? You link the "library os" and you no longer need an
         | os (when running in a supervisor) IIUC.
        
           | stackghost wrote:
           | I think parent poster was referring to an actual library,
           | i.e. where you would borrow books.
           | 
           | That's also what I thought this was, and came to the comments
           | expecting to see something neat about why libraries might
           | need bespoke operating systems.
        
             | rendaw wrote:
             | Ah right! Yeah, I did think that too..., like locked down
             | so random patrons couldn't do this or that. I was thinking
             | that was quite a pivot for MS though too...
        
         | noumenon1111 wrote:
         | Me too. Honestly I was vibing on nostalgia for this:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynix_(software)
        
       | loufe wrote:
       | The lack of integrated sandboxing in windows compared to
       | android/iphone is still frankly unacceptable. I've become
       | increasingly paranoid about running any application on Windows
       | (not that your average linux distro is even remotely better) and
       | yet Apple and Google seem to be far, far ahead in user
       | permissions (especially with GrapheneOS, god bless that team) and
       | isolation of processes.
       | 
       | Consumers and businesses deserve better. It's crazy to me that in
       | 2026 Notepad++ being compromised means as much potential damage
       | as it does, still.
        
         | digiown wrote:
         | The sandboxing on mobile platforms puts the OS vendor in a
         | special position to enforce a monopoly on apps and features.
         | Apple enforces it aggressively, while Google only reluctantly
         | so far. It also prevents the user from exerting full control of
         | the system. Apple does it by locking things down directly,
         | while Google punishes you for owning your devices with
         | attestation.
         | 
         | There has to be a better way. I think Linux's flatpak is a
         | reasonable approach here, although the execution might be
         | rather poor. I want a basic set of trusted tool that I can do
         | anything with, and run less trusted tools like GUI programs in
         | sandboxes with limited filesystem access.
        
           | wat10000 wrote:
           | Those are policy decisions not really connected to the
           | sandboxing technology. They control what sort of signing the
           | system will accept and make it so that it only runs things
           | they approve, and they only approve things that are sandboxed
           | a certain way. The exact same sandboxing could be used with a
           | system where an admin user can decide what gets to run and
           | what kind of sandboxing is required for each thing.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | UWP, and MSIX on Win32 via Appstore.
         | 
         | There is also sandboxing configuration via Intune for
         | enterprises.
        
         | malkia wrote:
         | There are containers, and one of their users is the Windows
         | Sandbox - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
         | us/windows/security/applicati...
        
         | newsoftheday wrote:
         | > I've become increasingly paranoid about running any
         | application on Windows (not that your average linux distro is
         | even remotely better)
         | 
         | Linux excels over Windows in the area of security by a wide
         | margin, I have no qualms about running an app on Linux versus
         | Windows, any day of the week.
        
           | madspindel wrote:
           | > Linux excels over Windows in the area of security by a wide
           | margin
           | 
           | No, this is wrong but might be true if you are talking about
           | Linux package manager vs. Random Windows .exe on internet.
           | But if you are talking about Secure Boot, encrypted disk,
           | sudo etc. Windows is more secure but it looks like
           | https://amutable.com/ will make Linux more secure like
           | Windows.
           | 
           | Edit: Some insecure things on Linux: Dbus (kwallet etc.),
           | sudo, fprint, "secure boot".
        
           | 9dev wrote:
           | And executable you run has access to any file in your home
           | directory, including SSH private keys, secrets in config
           | files, browser cookies, passkeys--all of it. That includes
           | the thousands of npm modules installed as a transient
           | dependency of at least one tool you use that brings node as a
           | dependency.
           | 
           | Windows at least has a proper ACL system; on Linux it just
           | takes a single compromised executable to loose everything.
        
           | aseipp wrote:
           | No, Windows has consistently been ahead of Linux for many
           | years in terms of average-user desktop security, from binary
           | hardening to designs like secure desktop, because average
           | Windows users do not typically have curated software
           | selections, so you assume the worst. (When I wrote the
           | original "binary hardening via compiler flags" RFC for NixOS
           | over 10 years ago, almost everything in it was already done
           | on Windows and had been for years.) It's still not ideal;
           | macOS takes it even further and actually allows things like
           | "storing secrets on disk in a way that can't be read by
           | random programs" because it can e.g. make policy decisions
           | based on code signatures, which are widely deployed. None of
           | this exists in pretty much any Linux distro; you can
           | literally just impersonate password prompts, simply override
           | 'sudo' in a user's shell to capture their password silently,
           | copy every file in $HOME/.config to your evil server, setuid
           | by its very definition is an absolute atrocity, etc. Linux
           | distros make it easy for people to live in their own chosen
           | curated software set, but the security calculus changes when
           | people want to run arbitrary and non-curated software.
           | 
           | You can make a pretty reasonably secure Linux server by doing
           | your homework, it's nowhere close to impossible. An extremely
           | secure server also requires a bit of hardware homework. The
           | Linux desktop, however, is woefully behind macOS and Windows
           | in terms of security by a pretty large margin, and most of it
           | is by design.
           | 
           | (In theory you can probably bolt a macOS-like system onto
           | Linux using tools like SCM_RIGHTS/pidfds/code signatures,
           | along with delegated privilege escalation, no setuid,
           | signature-based policy mechanisms, etc. But there are a lot
           | of cultural and software challenges to overcome to make it
           | all widely usable.)
        
       | gdevenyi wrote:
       | What is a 'library OS'?
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system#Library
        
         | charles_f wrote:
         | I think that's an OS in the form of a library, like Wine for
         | example. From what I get from the description it allows you to
         | run programs on your real OS and make it see a cut down API to
         | your actual system to reduce the attack surface.
        
         | bri3d wrote:
         | It's a library that is linked to in place of an operating
         | system - so whatever interface the OS provided
         | (syscalls+ioctls, SMC methods, etc.) ends up linked / compiled
         | into the application directly, and the "external interface" of
         | the application becomes something different.
         | 
         | This is how most unikernels work; the "OS" is linked directly
         | into the application's address space and the "external
         | interface" becomes either hardware access or hypercalls.
         | 
         | Wine is also arguably a form of "library OS," for example
         | (although it goes deeper than the most strict definition by
         | also re-implementing a lot of the userland libraries).
         | 
         | So for example with this project, you could take a Linux
         | application's codebase, recompile it linked to LiteBox, and run
         | it on SEV-SNP. Or take an OP-TEE TA, link it to LiteBox, and
         | run it on Linux.
         | 
         | The notable thing here is that it tries to cut the interface in
         | the middle down to an intermediate representation that's
         | supposed to be sandbox-able - ie, instead of auditing and
         | limiting hundreds of POSIX syscalls like you might with a
         | traditional kernel capabilities system, you're supposed to be
         | able to control access to just a few primitives that they're
         | condensed down to in the middle.
        
           | kccqzy wrote:
           | > So for example with this project, you could take a Linux
           | application's codebase, recompile it linked to LiteBox
           | 
           | If you have to recompile, you might as well choose to
           | recompile to WASM+WASI. The sandboxing story here is
           | excellent due to its web origins. I thought the point of
           | LiteBox is that recompilation isn't needed.
        
             | bri3d wrote:
             | Looking more closely, it looks like there are some "North"
             | sides (platforms) with ABI shims (currently Linux and OP-
             | TEE), but others (Windows, for example), would still
             | require recompilation.
             | 
             | > If you have to recompile, you might as well choose to
             | recompile to WASM+WASI.
             | 
             | I disagree here; this ignores the entire swath of
             | functionality that an OS or runtime provides? Like, as just
             | as an example, I can't "just recompile" my OP-TEE TA into
             | WASM when it uses the KDF function from the OP-TEE runtime?
        
               | kccqzy wrote:
               | I had previous experience with WASM on TEE. Just use the
               | foreign function interface. Remember WASM isn't native
               | code so you still need other native code to run WASM
               | (such as wasmtime), and you can import other native
               | functions into WASM through the runtime.
        
               | gf000 wrote:
               | Native functions that are no longer sandboxed, defeating
               | the whole purpose.
        
               | kccqzy wrote:
               | Any pure code (WASM or otherwise) that does not perform
               | any input/output is by definition useless. It consumes
               | electricity to do computation and there is no way to
               | communicate its results.
               | 
               | The use case here was to use a KDF function from the TEE,
               | and I assume it serves as an oracle where the actual key
               | material cannot be revealed.
        
               | gf000 wrote:
               | Turing machines have a well-defined input, and output if
               | they halt.
               | 
               | So no, they are absolutely not useless, they are just
               | "single-shot" models of computation. Certain software fit
               | that model very nicely (e.g. compilers), others less so.
        
             | gf000 wrote:
             | It's absolutely trivial to make a very strict sandbox -
             | just a simple, mathematical Turing machine is 100% safe.
             | 
             | The hard part is having actual capabilities, and only WASI
             | (which is much smaller than WASM) helps here, and it's not
             | clear why would it be any better than other options, like
             | LiteBox. Especially that wasm does have a small, but real
             | overhead.
        
       | tombert wrote:
       | I'm not sure I understand what a library OS is; can someone here
       | elaborate?
        
         | greatgib wrote:
         | My understanding of this is that it is a sandbox. Providing a
         | common interface like if it was an OS for the program to run
         | inside, but avoiding the program to use the OS directly.
         | 
         | What is unclear is if it uses its own common ABI or if you use
         | the one of the host os. I don't know why but from the project
         | description I have a little bit of feeling that this is another
         | vibe coded project.
        
         | wrs wrote:
         | A library OS is an OS that is linked directly to your program
         | instead of being a separate program accessed through a syscall
         | to kernel mode. About the same as a "unikernel", but a more
         | recent term.
         | 
         | Basically it lets your program run directly on a hypervisor VM,
         | though this one will also run as a Linux/Windows/BSD process.
        
       | hypfer wrote:
       | "We did not find any viable commercial use for it, but maybe you
       | will."
        
       | burnermore wrote:
       | Baaah! Microsoft, security-focused in a single sentence!
        
       | bendover690 wrote:
       | Cool
        
       | throwoutway wrote:
       | No mention of starting with a design specification & then tied to
       | formal verification the whole way?
       | 
       | It sounds interesting and a step forward (never heard of library
       | Os itll now), but why won't this run into hundreds of the same
       | security bugs that plague Windows if it's not spec'd and
       | verified?
        
         | anon291 wrote:
         | People seem to believe writing things in rust means it's
         | correct.
        
       | R_Spaghetti wrote:
       | I'm not sure whether Microsoft, the makers of Windows 95 (after
       | which I stopped taking them seriously), are the sharpest tool in
       | the box when it comes to security.
        
       | ementally wrote:
       | Copilot
       | 
       | https://github.com/microsoft/litebox/blob/main/.github/copil...
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | To be expected, given how many organisations now require
         | employees to use AI if they want to meet their OKRs, especially
         | all that sell AI tools.
        
           | outofpaper wrote:
           | What's dumb, on top of everything, is needing to store non
           | special standard operating procedures in specific AI folders
           | and files when wanting to work with AI tooling.
        
             | WorldMaker wrote:
             | Copilot today supports the top-level AGENTS.md approach as
             | well, which seems to be the cross-tool "standard".
        
               | int_19h wrote:
               | It is a standard in a sense that they will all read it
               | (although last I checked you still need to adjust the
               | default config with Gemini). But feature support varies
               | between different tooling. For example, only Claude
               | supports @including other files.
        
               | WorldMaker wrote:
               | The "standard" AGENTS.md suggestion for that is [regular
               | markdown links](./like-this.md)
        
             | AlfeG wrote:
             | Like needing to store IDE specific files?
        
         | embedding-shape wrote:
         | > Extremely simple changes do not require explicit unit tests.
         | 
         | I haven't used Copilot much, because people keep saying how bad
         | it is, but generally if you add escape hatches like this
         | without hard requirements of when the LLM can take them, they
         | won't follow that rule in a intuitive way most of the time.
        
           | sandos wrote:
           | Yeah, I tried various very sane-looking instrucions file when
           | starting to use copilot 6 months ago. Turned out it was not
           | really useful. It mostly follows the rules anyway, but it
           | also often forgot to. So turns out, especially with the fast
           | turnaround with models today, it was better to just forego
           | these instructions files.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | It is kind of alright, I use mostly on VS when coding C# or
           | C++, for code completions, error analysis, check code quality
           | and such.
           | 
           | As agent, or writing everything for me, not yet.
        
             | bwat49 wrote:
             | the $10 plan makes a great backup to claude or codex and
             | the inline completions are nice
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | It doesn't say much really. At this point we can assume almost
         | every project has some generated code in it. Unless you're sure
         | that every single author hates the idea and there are no
         | external contributions. Agent configuration just makes it
         | clear.
        
       | ho_schi wrote:
       | Another layer (ouch) to abstract away Windows (ouch * ouch).
       | 
       | Use Linux or BSD and ignore that approach for _Vendor Lock-in*
       | into their "library OS"._
        
       | 5o1ecist wrote:
       | Hmmm. Another, admittedly interesting, step towards the complete
       | digital lockdown. Isolate and virtualize everything, now also
       | governed by AI!
       | 
       | I wonder if they, the industry as a whole, eventually will make
       | being able to freely use a PC a subscription, bastardizing
       | "freedom" completely.
        
         | 5o1ecist wrote:
         | Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4e-Kt02rfc
         | 
         | HP now offers subscription-notebooks. :)
        
       | runjake wrote:
       | For others as lost as I am and want the tl;dr:
       | 
       | A library OS is an operating system design where traditional OS
       | services are provided as application-linked libraries, rather
       | than a single, shared kernel serving all the programs.
        
       | cmrdporcupine wrote:
       | I know we're not supposed to complain about comment quality, but
       | -- I came here to look for interesting technical analysis but
       | instead it's Slashdot level snipes about Microsoft the company.
       | And yes, I also dislike Windows and Microsoft generally but this
       | looks like a very interesting project and I'm frankly frustrated
       | at the level of discussion here, it's juvenile. This has nothing
       | to do with Windows, and it looks like most people didn't even
       | read past the title.
       | 
       | I'll play with this later today after work and see how mature it
       | is and hopefully have something concrete and constructive to say.
       | Hopefully others will, too.
        
         | BrouteMinou wrote:
         | I am with you on that. HN is becoming a "14 years old edgy
         | mini-tech" Facebook.
         | 
         | "Microsoft bad, Linux good" kind of comments are all over the
         | place. There is no more in depth discussions about projects
         | anymore. Add the people linking their blogs only to sell you
         | thier services for an imaginary problem, and you get HN 2026.
         | 
         | It's maybe the time to find another tech media. If you know
         | one, I would be glad to know.
        
       | bg24 wrote:
       | Would be nice to see an OCI runtime and if it can give high-
       | performant I/O as opposed to other we have today (eg. Gvisor).
        
       | dzonga wrote:
       | Microsoft gonna release a windows flavored Linux Distro soon ;)
        
       | Brian_K_White wrote:
       | Aliens come to visit. I have to tell one the difference between
       | an app linked against a "library os" running on a hypervisor, and
       | an app running on a kernel. I couldn't do it with a straight
       | face.
        
         | perbu wrote:
         | A proper library OS doesn't have syscalls. Everything operates
         | in the same space, no user/kernel split.
        
       | palata wrote:
       | First time I hear the concept of "library OS".
       | 
       | Is it similar to e.g. gVisor? Like would gVisor count as a
       | library OS, too?
        
       | zx8080 wrote:
       | Microsoft? No, thank you.
        
       | hulitu wrote:
       | Seeing Microsoft and security-focused in the same semtence makes
       | me suspicious.
        
       | tnodir wrote:
       | It'll be interesting if MS allows to write e.g. WFP callout
       | drivers via LiteBox and not requiring attestation signing. It'll
       | still work in kernel mode, unlike NetworkExtensions in MacOS.
        
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       (page generated 2026-02-07 23:01 UTC)