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by sigvef 5205 days ago
"Windows 8, which Microsoft touts as the first operating system to run across multiple devices"

Doesn't Linux already do this? Or does it not count, as it is only a kernel?

2 comments

It's marketing speak, and no one of importance to Microsoft is going to call them on it. I would imagine their line of thinking would be Ubuntu doesn't ship on tablets or phones. OSX doesn't ship on tablets or phones. What they run are stripped down and re-imagined versions of the parent OS.

Approval of the magnitude of this claim is up to the reader.

Still, Linux runs on just about everything between a 68000 and an IBM mainframe. As does NetBSD.

I find the propensity to lie disturbing.

This could get into deep discussions about what is an OS (versus a kernel), what constitutes the "same" OS (versus a modified version of the OS) and even what can be put in the same class as Windows.

I think what Microsoft is getting at is, OSX and Ubuntu don't run the same code on their mobile devices. Windows 8 will. It's marketing, and NetBSD doesn't even cross their mind.

It all depends on where is the line defining what's an OS. A Linux machine doesn't need X to be a Linux machine - Unix machines have been serving terminals for decades. So much, in fact, I joke that, in order to be a serious computer, one has to have no monitor, keyboard and mouse ports - if you really need a physical console, a serial port will do. So, I've seen Linux running programs on a very broad selection of hardware, from ARM to zSeries (68020+ has always been more of a curiosity, albeit there were serious Unix machines using them).

Really, it's marketing. Not truth.

I mean what about previous versions of windows? They ran on tablets and desktops. If you mean non-x86 than windows NT initially was going to target MIPS and later became a x86 first(I believe they still released the MIPS version too).
Windows NT 3 could run on (some) MIPS, Alpha and PPC hardware in addition to x86. NT 4 was also ported PPC, but support was soon dropped and only the x86 and Alpha versions got any updates or support. There was even a release candidate of Windows 2000 for Alpha (I think I still have CD somewhere), but it never got a final release.