Confirmed: Microsoft and Canonical Partner To Bring Ubuntu To Windows 10 (zdnet.com)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports for ZDNet: According to sources at Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, and Microsoft, you'll soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10. This will be more than just running the Bash shell on Windows 10. After all, thanks to programs such as Cygwin or MSYS utilities, hardcore Unix users have long been able to run the popular Bash command line interface (CLI) on Windows. With this new addition, Ubuntu users will be able to run Ubuntu simultaneously with Windows. This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10. [...] Microsoft and Canonical will not, however, sources say, be integrating Linux per se into Windows. Instead, Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries. Update: 03/30 16:16 GMT by M : At its developer conference Build 2016, Microsoft on Wednesday confirmed that it is bringing native support for Bash on Windows 10. Scott Hanselman writes: This isn't Bash or Ubuntu running in a VM. This is a real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself. It's fast and lightweight and it's the real binaries. This is a genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed, grep, vi, etc. It's fast and it's lightweight. The binaries are downloaded by you - using apt-get - just as on Linux, because it is Linux. You can apt-get and download other tools like Ruby, Redis, emacs, and on and on. This is brilliant for developers that use a diverse set of tools like me.

Comments

Ew, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason I'd ever bother with Ubuntu is to get away from Windows. I don't want them together.

Re:Ew, no

[tripleevenfall]

It's The Year of Linux on Windows (TM)

Re:Ew, no

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You forgot the important part. It's The Year of Linux on Windows on the desktop (TM).

Re: Ew, no

[Thanshin]

No worries. We don't want your Linux crap on our machines either.

NO! Don't say that!

Now Microsoft will put it as "recommended update" and soon later just silently install it!

Re:Ew, no

[phrostie]

So they put the win10 equivalent of linux on windows 10?

lol
Lol
LOL
ROTFLMAO

Shhhhhh

no one tell them.

Re:Ew, no

[Thud457]

Satya Nadella is in South Africa giving a speech:
"Soon, you'll soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10. "
The crowd replies with a enthusiastic cry of "UBUNTU"!

"This will be more than just running the Bash shell on Windows 10. After all, thanks to programs such as Cygwin or MSYS utilities, hardcore Unix users have long been able to run the popular Bash command line interface (CLI) on Windows. "
The crowd exuberatly reponds with "UBUNTU"!

"With this new addition, Ubuntu users will be able to run Ubuntu simultaneously with Windows. This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10. "
The audience shouts "UBUNTU"!

"Microsoft and Canonical will not, however, be integrating Linux per se into Windows. Instead, Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries."
The congregtation replies with a resounding "UBUNTU"!

After the presentation, as Nadella is being led out the back of the conference center past some cattle pens, his guide warns him "be careful, don't step in the UBUNTU".

Re:Ew, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Many reasons that some run Ubuntu has a guest on Windows is their PC came with a OEM windows license that you cannot transfer to the VM. So you could not get rid of Windows as the Host OS, install Ubuntu, and then run Windows in the VM with the OEM license you already have. If your PC came with Windows, even if you deleted that copy, you would have to buy a new license to run Windows in a VM.

Re:Ew, no

[syswalla]

YOLOW (TM)

Re:Ew, no

[GargamelSpaceman]

What about devices where Windows is supported but much of the other hardware is not? You might run Windows, only to run Ubuntu on top of it. I know this is a developer oriented Windows 10 release, but maybe the long term idea is that you would end up buying a Windows phone and running Ubuntu 'Apps' on top of it.
Also, if there's Windows in there between the hardware and Linux, maybe DRM stuff could work somehow?
From a user perspective, Windows is a pain in the ass to use, always getting in the way. Linux is a pleasure. But sometimes there is a thing, some app or whatever, you need Windows for.
From a developer perspective, developers would rather develop for Linux. But often they have to develop for Windows because that is what their users have. This would let developers just develop for Linux, and the users would have it.
From Microsoft's perspective, I wonder if this might eventually give them a way to shift focus away from the Windows desktop front-end, where the money isn't, keep collecting their Windows tax, and potentially be compatible with linux based apps that would be developed, ( or I dunno, maybe android apps could be easily made to work with a setup like this )

Re:Ew, no

[ichthus]

Funniest thing I've read all week.

Re:Ew, no

[K. S. Kyosuke]

On some recent x86 tablets, you might also want to run a Linux distros or applications for various reasons but you don't have supported and/or decent drivers.

Re:Ew, no

[Anonymous Coward]

So they put the win10 equivalent of linux on windows 10?

The version that's really popular despite basement dwelling spergs acting like their edge case negative reactions are the norm? Sounds about right.

Re:Ew, no

[rubycodez]

eh, been moving my oem Windows into vmware fusion for years so I can run a real OS on my box, and it is "genuine" and activated

Re: Ew, no

[rubycodez]

nonsense, cygwin is trivial to set up and works wonderfully, have been using that for 20 years. cron and at jobs and all the major scripting languages, ssh/sftp/scp and yes even the X11 xterm works well

Re:Ew, no

[MightyMartian]

The way this is being described, it really does sound like a mingw/cygwin compatibility layer. Maybe they're going to beef up the Posix subsystem (level 1 still lurks in the Windows 10 kernel, or so I gather). At the end of the day it's going to be some sort of plug-in subsystem that emulates/integrates some significant piece of the Linux kernel.

Re:Ew, no

[MightyMartian]

We choose Linux for some servers simply because it does those jobs well, and we save a helluva lot on licensing.

Re:Ew, no

[phantomfive]

Windows provides around 10% of Microsoft revenue now. Source. At that point, it's just not the cash cow it used to be. Their CEO is heavily focused on building up their cloud offerings, and doesn't seem to care about the desktop much.

So yeah, by the end of the decade, Windows could be essentially on life support.

Re: Ew, no

[Bengie]

You reboot your computers more often than once a month? What's wrong with you? The only good solution is everything works transparently. No configuration, no rebooting. Just works.

Re: Ew, no

[Dorianny]

nonsense, cygwin is trivial to set up and works wonderfully, have been using that for 20 years. cron and at jobs and all the major scripting languages, ssh/sftp/scp and yes even the X11 xterm works well

From their website cygwin is: a large collection of GNU and Open Source tools which provide functionality similar to a Linux distribution on Windows. a DLL (cygwin1.dll) which provides substantial POSIX API functionality.

I think the poster was confused by the ambiguous announcement and his lack of Linux/GNU knowledge. It doesn't look like Canonical is doing anything more then repackaging cygwin wither their branded installer.

Re: Ew, no

[jcdr]

Mostly agree. Ubuntu has the advantage of his Debian base and the disadvantage of some bad software architecture decisions. But it's undeniable that Canonical successfully pushed Ubuntu in many area like no others distributions was able to do. As long at Ubuntu stay close enough to Debian, this is fine.

Re:Ew, no

[jcdr]

You are very wrong. The vast majority of Linux devices today are Android smartphones and tablet, TV, routers, and a lot of embedded systems. On those markets, Microsoft simply failed to deliver a competitive solution.

Re:Ew, no

[fredgiblet]

Canonical presumably likes money. Getting Linux working on Windows will increase the number of people willing to play with it, and look! They're using Canonical's version of Linux! So if they decide to go all out they'll probably pick that one!

It's not rocket surgery.

Re: Ew, no

[rubycodez]

so if that's what Ubuntu is doing I can't imaging what functionality would be provided that cygwin doesn't. cygwin is so easy to install too, pick a directory and the packages you want and *bam*. ditto for updating. for situations where I'm stuck on windows it's great to have POSIX shell with all the goodies and great to have xterm

Re:Ew, no

[Coren22]

VMware Fusion? So you are illegally running OSX on a computer sold with Windows?

Or perhaps did you mean VMware player or VMware Workstation?

Re:Ew, no

[Coren22]

You only live once Wigger?

Re:Ew, no

[sciengin]

Not to mention that even where it tried to deliver a competitive solution it often failed.

Let me tell you something that might be more interesting to mechanical engineers than computer scientists, but shows the problem with Microsoft nonetheless:

A couple of years ago I attended a week long training course at Siemens in Germany, where they taught us how to use their CNC systems, Sinumerik mostly.
Now in the decades past CNC was very primitive, one could implement it with punchcards. Today's CNC is a completely different beast: Its a full computer stuffed with ASICs and other high tech stuff to be able to come close to the hard realtime requirements that you need when you control a multi-kW mill mounted on a 12 axis robot going as fast as the drive allows because every second shaved of the manufacturing process is worth money.

(Just to set the scene)

This is a little story the trainer there told us when I asked him how it came to be that Linux was running on those devices, which for an ultra-conservative corporation like Siemens, seemed a bit odd to me:

Siemens apparently used Windows XP on those boxes, modified of course. In fact to ease the communication with Microsoft, Siemens even has/had some of its employees working on site at Microsoft.
Apparently however even that level of cooperation was not ideal when it came to implementing new features and working around the weaknesses of Windows.
What really caused them to drop Windows was that one day the Engineers wanted to know if a certain feature could be implemented on Windows and how (The trainer did not say what feature it was).
For six weeks Microsoft said nothing, only to eventually tell them that it was not possible at all.
On a whim and mostly for fun, one engineer asked the same question about this feature on a Linux discussion board.

Result:
30 minutes later he had the answer that this feature was possible on Linux along with detailed step-by-step instructions how to do it.

Ever since then the Sinumerik boxes use Linux and the engineers at Siemens could not be happier about it.

Re:Ew, no

[spire3661]

Calling Android Linux at this point is absolutely pointless. Its Tivo-ization 2.0

Re:Ew, no

[Dogtanian]

So they put the win10 equivalent of linux on windows 10?

Yo dawg.

Re: Ew, no

[nukenerd]

Ubuntu has the advantage of his Debian base

Plenty of other distros use Debian as a base (directly, not via Ubuntu), not to mention Debian itself; I'm using SolydX for example. So not a reason in itself to use Ubuntu.

I lost interest in Ubuntu a long time ago.

Re:Ew, no

[Swe3tDave]

Ew is right indeed, i think i'm gonna puke ubuntu out of my computer...

Re:Ew, no

[flopsquad]

You Only Lose Owning Windows

Re: Ew, no

[Ambassador Kosh]

I just hibernate my computers when I am not using them.

No need to actually reboot.

Re:Ew, no

[jedidiah]

Despite appearances, NT is a modular system and there's no reason that the NT kernel can't run a Linux personality or even a MacOS one. They don't really have to go through Canonical to do it either. It's likely a "branding" thing.

Re: Ew, no

[jedidiah]

Cygwin is inferior to the real thing. It's nice to have when there isn't another option but you really are better off with a proper Unix that's not running as a "fish out of water".

Re:Ew, no

[shutdown -p now]

There's no reason why the same thing can't be done to any other distro. All this does is replace the kernel, userspace remains the same, essentially. So if you wanted to run Slackware or Arch, it should be entirely possible.

Re:Ew, no

[exomondo]

Calling Android Linux at this point is absolutely pointless. Its Tivo-ization 2.0

It appears you aren't very familiar with the history of Linux. While nobody is calling Android Linux (because Android is software that encapsulates the Linux kernel much like Ubuntu or Slackware), Android systems are indeed using Linux as their kernel and Tivoization is encouraged. Torvalds himself says "I think Tivoization is *good*." It's the Free Software advocates that say Tivoization is bad and Linux is not a vehicle for the FSF to push their agenda, hence the license preamble (preceding the GPL) in the COPYING file, lack of copyright assignment and the refusal to engage even considering a move to GPLv3.

Re:Ew, no

[Darinbob]

Do we get forced updates that we can't defer for Ubuntu? Ubuntu spyware? Ubuntu store? Ubuntu customer monetization plan 9?

Re:Ew, no

[sydbarrett74]

Apple was about building a good product.

FTFY. One could make that argument when Jobs was still alive. Under Cook's tenure, we've had quite a few clusterfucks, the latest being the iOS 9.3 disaster. Cook is proving to be a ho-hum CEO in the vein of Gil Amelio and company.

Re:Ew, no

[sumdumass]

How exactly does canonical make money from installs?

I'm betting it has more to do with unix services of some sort in which enterprise software can run natively on a Windows desktop without porting it. Perhaps tied into cloud offerings and such. From what I can tell, that seems like their revenue model anyways.

Re: Ew, no

[johnsmithperson123]

Don't worry, support is improving. Debian multiarch and Ubuntu 16.04 beta both have native 32-bit EFI support, clearing one of the biggest hurdles for us fellows who bought Baytrail tablets hoping to install Linux.

Re: Ew, no

[johnsmithperson123]

The main advantage is that Ubuntu and related distros are user friendly. I do run Ubuntu on a tablet, since it has a decent touch interface, but I've been leaning towards Gentoo for my workstations. I would never expose family & friends to anything so advanced, they'd just panic.

Re:Ew, no

[CSMoran]

On my Ubuntu box I have Windblows 7,8, 10, and OSX 10 all playing nice together. I'm just baffled as to why one would buy a Windsucks box and publish on this forum?

What, you have them integrated within the same runtime, like these guys (promise)? Or as an exclusive boot-time choice, which is a different matter. Or as guest VMs running on an Ubuntu host, which is yet a different matter. If the first option, you gonna be rich, man! If the latter two, this is off topic, regardless which OS you'd like to diss.

Re: Ew, no

[AmazingRuss]

You must save tens of cents every year eschewing sleep mode.

Re: Ew, no

[p91paul]

Yes, unless your company only allows to run windows on your work PC. Then you'll find cygwin lovely, and this ubuntu thing, especially if it can run desktop programs natively (which is not necessarily the case, as focus is clearly on servers), seems even better.

Re: Ew, no

[gl4ss]

ms is free to rename anything it owns. the windows kernel has been windows for a long time now. they were free to rename window ce as windows mobile and as windows phone later and zune as metro and then dename metro as... well fuck nobody knows as what.

windows 95 as well essentially left dos mode on entering win95. as much as loadlin left dos in fact.

Re: Ew, no

[gl4ss]

well sure if they just give it free..

Re:Ew, no

[Coren22]

Apparently I can read better than you.

VMware Fusion is a OSX only software, so moving an OEM copy of Windows (which is tied to a specific computer) to VMware Fusion, could only happen if the Fusion install was performed on an OSX install on the same computer

Re: Ew, no

[rubycodez]

haven't tried the sshfs but NFS in cygwin is *less* level of effort than on typical enterprise Linux distro like RHEL or SLES

Re:Ew, no

[vandamme]

Old Soapy Williams joke (or was it LBJ's?), but nice rework.

Re: Ew, no

[vandamme]

What choice do they have? The competition is free, and better. Handwriting's on the wall. Hasta la Vista, Windows!

Re: Ew, no

[Coren22]

The fact that he is running the Windows inside of Fusion, a piece of software that only runs on OSX, says that he is doing so, not me misreading anything.

Re:Ew, no

[RockDoctor]

[1] buy el cheapo machine.
[2] fiddle BIOS to remove UEFI bullshit.
[3] pull hard drive and stick it in a bag somewhere.
[4] insert new blank hard drive
[5] install OS of choice.
[6] If Windows needed, turn machine off and swap hard drives.
It ain't rocket science.

Re:Ew, no

[RockDoctor]

Now on the topic at hand.. WTF is Canonical smoking to want to have ANYTHING to do with MS??

That is the big question.

MS probably is slipping a few million to Canonical to get this kind of insanity on the table...

And that's the odd thing. Shuttleworth is presumably rich enough to not be effectively bribable, so ... WTF?

Re: Ew, no

[Flavianoep]

That's the craziest thing I've ever heard on Slashdot.

Re: Ew, no

[Maritz]

Either I can't see who you're replying to or you're talking to yourself. Both also works. Maybe neither. Hey, it's friday!

Re: Ew, no

[Coren22]

Just click the Parent button all the way up. I could just be arguing with myself though as the arguments are pretty odd.

Re:Ew, no

[movdqa]

I recently installed an Ubuntu VM on my OSX system to log into work. I have Windows 7 and XP VMs on this system but I need Windows 7 for another application and our workplace doesn't allow Windows XP (boots them off the network). So I could buy another W7 license (and receive a lot of annoying popups to upgrade to Windows 10) or I could just install Ubuntu. So I installed Ubuntu - works with VPN and VNC just fine. Unfortunately there are two programs that I still use on Windows and one of them isn't going to be ported to anything else and it's a unique program (QuoteTracker). There are alternatives for the other program but it will take me some effort to go through them to find something that I can live with. Windows, especially 8, 8.1 and 10, are really pushing me away. When 2020 comes along and W7 is desupported, I'll look into WINE for that one application that I'll still need. WINE is a pain or at least it was several years ago when I tried it, but it may be getting better.

Re: Ew, no

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Don't get my hopes up! Or rather do, please. BTW, does that mean the system would be 32-bit only? That would suck.

The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoying

[LichtSpektren]

So what the hell does "Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries" mean? "Ubuntu" is an OS with the Linux kernel and pre-configured utilities, programs and drivers put on top of that, but TFS is indicating that "Ubuntu" in this case is not including a kernel, utilities, or drivers. Unless this is an extremely mangled, obscure, and moronic way of saying that Windows 10 will be including a Linux compatibility layer sponsored by Ubuntu.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[elrous0]

As if thousands of Linux fans suddenly cried out in pain.

I fear something terrible has happened.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[Nidi62]

As if thousands of Linux fans suddenly cried out in pain.

I fear something terrible has happened.

They've been screaming for years about the year of Linux on the Desktop. Well, be careful what you wish for.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[Billly Gates]

Why?

You get the compatibility of Linux apps with the world class stability and reliability of Windows 10. Who could want anything more??

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[armanox]

Stability and reliability with Windows 10? I now have apple pieces on my monitor - thank you very much, My experience with Windows 10 has been far from that.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[Zeroko]

Back when I used Windows, I always wanted to be able to run Geomview, but it was only available for Linux & other Unix-like OSes (& I had never heard of Cygwin).

People complain about Windows stability...running DOS programs in Windows 98 was vastly more stable (at least for the programs I ran) than in Windows 95 (& even more stable in XP for those DOS programs that would still work), although Windows programs brought the system down often enough.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[Cro Magnon]

I don't get bluescreens, but I have had slowdowns and problems waking from sleep on my laptop. Granted, it's a far cry from W9X, but IME, W10 is the least stable Windows since they moved to the NT kernel.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[phantomfive]

Don't know, I'm cheering because I never have to target the Win32 API ever again. If I can completely forget about HANDLE and DWORD my life will be happy

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[John Allsup]

For real twisted fun, consider running wine on the resulting GNU/Linux/Win64 OS. This would, however, allow for Windows developers to easily test and adapt their software to work better with wine. The other interesting thing would be the opposite, namely a port of Windows to run as a proprietary program on Linux.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[atikare]

logged in just to say I can relate to your sig.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[MightyMartian]

Windows 10 has its share of issues, at least in a AD environment with roaming profiles. We've had to kill profiles on a number of occasions due to the Start Menu and search functionality croaking. We've also forced through GPOs to ensure that Microsoft Edge is *not* the default browser because of issues a number of staff have had. So while BSODs are pretty damned uncommon these days, there are all sorts of other problems that I still consider to be stability issues. There are still plenty of issues that amount to "go into the registry" or "add a new user/delete profile".

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[Jeremi]

Don't know, I'm cheering because I never have to target the Win32 API ever again. If I can completely forget about HANDLE and DWORD my life will be happy

That would be awesome, but somehow I doubt this product is going to give you that. For one thing, I suspect that any program you write using this API will only run on Windows boxes that have UbuntuWindowsThingy installed, i.e. almost none of them. So if you want to write Windows software that the vast majority of Windows users can just download, install, and run, without having to download a big Linux-compatibility-package first, you'll need a different solution. (If I'm wrong about this, someone please correct me!)

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[phantomfive]

For one thing, I suspect that any program you write using this API will only run on Windows boxes that have UbuntuWindowsThingy installed, i.e. almost none of them.

If it's not installed by default, then I'll probably just go back to Cygwin.

In other words

[Billly Gates]

MS Hyper-V team is working on porting the Linux drive for the guest services to be compatible with the latest version.

SFU?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

So like the Interix/SFU of old, but actually in a way that someone might actually want to use?

because we need more bloat in Windows?

[jsepeta]

I don't see why anyone would want this.

You can

[Thanshin]

"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." - Lt. Col. Carlos A. Keasler

And for their next trick...

[lisaparratt]

I'm keenly awaiting their VBA backend for GNU Emacs Lisp, so it can finally take its rightful place inside Word!

A little early

[Anonymous Coward]

A little early for April Fool's, don't you think?

Now vulnerable to Windows and Linux Security Bugs!

[CloneRanger]

More updates, more often...

Will it be a 64bit port of coLinux?

[dermoth666]

That thing - coLinux - was the best thing I've ever used in terms of Linux over Windows... I was really sad they couldn't get it running on 64bit hardware.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I guess the point is that you don't need the kernel or drivers because the Windows kernel can actually provide the necessary services. You might want user-space utilities, obviously. But a way of running Whatever-ix userspace apps on Windows would be rather nice. No more weird/costly ports of UI toolkits?

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[dosius]

MS had SFU/Interix, which they dropped.

Could this be a port of Ubuntu to that, much as Debian ported their OS to FreeBSD and the HURD?

Re: The lack of technical precision in TFS is anno

[lisaparratt]

Surely they just need to port systemd so it can run on the NT kernel?

LINE!

[Gamasta]

LINE Is Not an Emulator

Re:LINE!

[oik]

You may joke but this is exactly what they are doing:

==
"Hum, well it's like cygwin perhaps?" Nope! Cygwin includes open source utilities are recompiled from source to run natively in Windows. Here, we're talking about bit-for-bit, checksum-for-checksum Ubuntu ELF binaries running directly in Windows.

[long pause]

"So maybe something like a Linux emulator?" Now you're getting warmer! A team of sharp developers at Microsoft has been hard at work adapting some Microsoft research technology to basically perform real time translation of Linux syscalls into Windows OS syscalls. Linux geeks can think of it sort of the inverse of "wine" -- Ubuntu binaries running natively in Windows. Microsoft calls it their "Windows Subsystem for Linux". (No, it's not open source at this time.)
==

Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[bigdady92]

The only thing keeping me on my mac is the heavy integration of native *NIX tools for the command line.

Yes I could install cygwin (it's a mess), I could use putty (has limitations) for ssh, or other apps that mirror the functionality of *NIX CLI tools, but none work as good as having everything built into the core of the OS.

If this allows me to open up a cmd.exe and ssh to systems right off the bat, I'm scrapping the macbook and getting a surface pro.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[Junta]

FWIW, I downloaded git for windows and have been using the bundled environment (under the mintty terminal they provide). I like it over cygwin and/or MobaXterm as those environments try to make an island of *nix rather than map well to the general filesystem.

Screw cmd.exe, I start bash in mintty straight.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[bigdady92]

Have you even used Windows 10? Is the hatred of M$ still that strong on here after all these years that the mouth breathing haters trot out this line ?

Windows 10 an amazing OS that has many of the enterprise features that I need for my day to day tasks with integrated applications that the business requires. The system is rock stable and have yet to see a problem even deployed on some of the worst 'power users' I have that frequently do stupid things.

OSX has most of these tools I need with the addition of *NIX shell applications. Once those shell applications are tied into the baseline OS, Windows 10 100%.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[The-Ixian]

I find that by just including the Cygwin bin path in the system PATH variable gives me seamless command-line functionality without an issue.

Open CMD and use any command you need. This has the benefit of being able to mix Windows and UNIX commands together on the same command line.

I am also not sure what limitations you are running into with PuTTY... I have never run into any situation that PuTTY is not able to handle (port redirection, pass through agent authentication, X11 redirection, keep alive, etc). Not only does it do all the SSH stuff, but it also has functionality similar to telnet and screen.

That said, if I could get a native X11 interface inline with Windows... that would be great! No more need for PuTTY + Xming + remote linux box. I know that you can run a local X11 server though Cygwin... but that is definitely a mess and is very slow.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[Virtucon]

Windows amazing? No. It has core apps that businesses still hook onto, Office for one. The only reason I haven't completely dumped it is a) I have customers that I have to support that use Windows and 2) LibreOffice although it's getting better isn't Office

Without that I have no need for Windows 10.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[LichtSpektren]

Yes, I have used Windows 10, and I have experienced my monitor and wifi being hosed by unstoppable (because I don't have "Enterprise" edition) automatic driver updates. Many of my friends have also experienced similar issues. Sounds like you're shilling for MS. "The Microsoft Surface Pro© is an amazing system with the best enterprise OS on the market!"

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[Blaskowicz]

Xming is a local X11 server, as evidenced by windows showing on your desktop? Perhaps there isn't anything worth using with it other than remote ssh sessions, I don't know of X11 Windows software.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[phayes]

I jumped ship to a rMBP+Fusion in the Win8 timeframe after decades of Win+Cygwin+Workstation and a few aborted moves to Linux+VMWare/Xen/KVM.

The rMBP was better/faster/lighter hardware that my colleagues are only now catching up to and OSX's Unix integration has been more than I have ever needed.

Open bash and use commands mostly works with cygwin.

Putty barfs when you attempt to use it to paste a large config file and still doesn't grock command lines like ssh://user@host.

The cygwin X server was more than fast enough for me to run the odd X utility, but then I wasn't doing major work in X.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[CrashNBrn]

I find UnxUtils + Putty pretty much obviates the need of Cygwin for me.

:: UnxUtils ::

*zsh, *_type, *agrep, *ansi2knr, *basename, *bc, *bison, *bunzip2, *bzip2, *bzip2recover, *cat, *chgrp, *chmod, *chown, *cksum, *cmp, *comm, *cp, *csplit, *cut, *date, *dc, *dd, *df, *diff, *diff3, *dircolors, *dirname, *du, *egrep, *env, *expand, *expr, *factor, *fgrep, *flex, *fmt, *fold, *fsplit, *gawk, *gclip, *gCompress, *gDate, *gEcho, *gFind, *gplay, *grep, *gSort, *gUnzip, *gzip, *head, *id, *indent, *install, *join, *jwhois, *less, *lesskey, *ln, *logname, *m4, *make, *makedepend, *makemsg, *man, *md5sum, *mkdir, *mkfifo, *mknod, more.com, *mv, *mvdir, *nl, *od, *paste, *patch, *pathchk, *pclip, *pr, *printenv, *printf, *ptx, *pwd, *recode, *rm, *rman, *rmdir, *sdiff, *sed, *seq, *sha1sum, *shar, *sleep, *split, *stego, *su, *sum, *sync, *tac, *tail, *tar, *tee, *test, *touch, *tr, *tsort, *uname, *unexpand, *uniq, *unrar, *unshar, *unzip, *uudecode, *uuencode, *wc, *wget, *which, *whoami, *xargs, *yes, *zcat, *zip

The most updated release used to be on Google Code... Looks like its on Sourceforge now.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[Billly Gates]

Windows 10 makes Vista the grandchild of stability.

I write pro MS comments here since 2011 when I gave up on Unix on the desktop these days from my past. However, I still use Windows 8.1 with a start menu replacement due to so many problems I wrote here listing my compliants.

Folks Windows has improved tremendously and is no longer the POS of win98 ... with the exception of 10.

SAP, Oracle, and many products do not work right yet and HP printers will get constant disconnects with NFS so IT IS NOT ENTERPRISE READY.

Personally, I do not see the pint of this in 2016. If you need Linux or better yet if you need Windows use a VM. SSD's and ram are cheap and Windows 8.1 and later come with Hyper-V and Virtualbox is available too for Linux. Run the OS for hte job you need. Windows Powershell deals with objects and would be better than Bash in an win32 environment. Apple is at least based on Unix. So if you love Bash and mysql fire up a VM. I have like a dozen on my pc at home.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[wahaa]

Also worth to mention: busybox-w32

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[d0rp]

I had a windows 10 update completely hose my system. It got stuck in a loop when booting up trying "auto fix" the problem, and absolutely none of the options in the recovery program helped. My wife's computer did the same thing several weeks before. My only option was to put my Windows 7 disk in it and reinstall from scratch. I haven't upgraded to windows 10 again (even though it keeps bugging me to do so several times a day).

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[MightyMartian]

Cygwin is a lot of things, but other than for rudimentary tasks, seamless it is not. It's slow, bloated and unstable.

That being said, I actually got a Radius server to compile under it many a long day ago. That was an interesting adventure.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[The-Ixian]

My hands..... are HUGE! .... they can touch anything but themselves.... oh wait...

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[Cro Magnon]

My Windows 10 desktop lost internet access after an update. I installed Ubuntu as a dual-boot and it worked fine - until I dual-booted Windows, which wiped out my ability to boot to Ubuntu.

My W10 laptop didn't get hosed, but I had problems with it for awhile, including problems waking from sleep-mode.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[armanox]

Have you even used Windows 10? Is the hatred of M$ still that strong on here after all these years that the mouth breathing haters trot out this line ?

Yes, I use it quite often, along with every version of Windows going back to Windows 2000. I'll pick OS X over Windows anyday, and Linux or Solaris over Windows most days too.

Windows 10 an amazing OS that has many of the enterprise features that I need for my day to day tasks with integrated applications that the business requires. The system is rock stable and have yet to see a problem even deployed on some of the worst 'power users' I have that frequently do stupid things.

And what features would they be? Windows 10 is not stable, frequently breaks drivers (oh, I'm just going to install an updated nvidia driver that is not compatible with your Quadro FX 880 and you can't stop me), and has big compatibility issues with older applications. The real question is, have YOU actually used Windows 10, or are you just trolling?

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[phantomfive]

I like it over cygwin and/or MobaXterm as those environments try to make an island of *nix rather than map well to the general filesystem.

I find that "ln -s hd /cygdrive/c/Users/phantomfive/" so that I can just do "cd hd" to get to my windows home directory makes Cygwin feel a lot more integrated.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[The-Ixian]

I completely agree with the statement that Win10 is not enterprise ready. Hell, the GPOs for Win10 haven't even been out for more than a few months and some of them don't even work still.

However, the bit about Win10 being worse than Win98 is pretty funny. At least Windows 10 has USB support out of the box ;)

Every major Windows release has had a period of several months where drivers are not 100% and application makers need to update their code to work properly.

In a year or two I expect Win10 will be the new Win7 in the enterprise.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[Billly Gates]

I completely agree with the statement that Win10 is not enterprise ready. Hell, the GPOs for Win10 haven't even been out for more than a few months and some of them don't even work still.

However, the bit about Win10 being worse than Win98 is pretty funny. At least Windows 10 has USB support out of the box ;)

Every major Windows release has had a period of several months where drivers are not 100% and application makers need to update their code to work properly.

In a year or two I expect Win10 will be the new Win7 in the enterprise.

Windows 98SE had some bugs but WORKED.

Windows 7 worked great. Windows 2000 worked great. Windows XP mostly were great but with some glitches until SP 2 here and there and some app compatibilities.

Windows 10 ... it is still changing. Just look at the control panel vs pc settings. Things vanish from the start menu. Windows Update breaks. Corruption which SFC and DISM can not fix. Windows U pdates that break the system. NFS not keeping persistent connections. EDGE crashing worse than IE 6 back in the day.

These are not driver issues but a shift to Firefox style agile development which is hostile to the user but great for project managers. In my opinion, Windows 10 should have not been released until Redstone later this year. It is a beta

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[Mryll]

It is possible to eliminate the driver updates from Windows Update in 10, though buried a bit.

http://www.askvg.com/fixing-windows-10-automatic-updates-install-problem/

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[shutdown -p now]

If this allows me to open up a cmd.exe and ssh to systems right off the bat, I'm scrapping the macbook and getting a surface pro.

Yes, it does exactly that.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[macklin01]

Have you tried mingw-w64 / msys? The CLI tools integrate pretty well (make, ls, tail, head, etc.), and they have a package manager to grab these things.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[MightyMartian]

If we could move away from Exchange/Office we would. Licensing is absurdly expensive for enterprise licenses, and the only real argument beyond Exchange/Outlook is that OpenOffice/LibreOffice is still iffy on the newest OOXML versions.

But thus far, despite many claims, the real gravity well that keeps us in the Microsoft sphere is Exchange. We could probably even live without Active Directory and with compatibility issues with LibreOffice, but way too much corporate functionality is built on Exchange.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[MightyMartian]

Windows 10 Remote Administration tools don't even have a DHCP management console yet. It's absolutely bizarre. I actually have to log on to one of our Servers to manage DHCP servers. I should feel lucky, as it was like November before MS had any kind of RSAT toolkit available for Win10.

Re:Does this give me native CLI tools or not

[klui]

These utilities have a Windows-ized behavior with quotes. You must use double quotes or else they won't work. Cygwin is more portable.

I guess I see the point of this

[LichtSpektren]

The only reasons people use Windows is because (a) it's familiar to office drones, and (b) legacy Win x86 applications. The only reasons people DON'T use Linux desktop are basically the inverse of the above: (a) it's not familiar to the tech-retarded who have a psychological block to learning anything new, and (b) it won't run legacy enterprise cruft. So what Microsoft is proposing is that they use their shitty unstable insecure spyware base OS that will nevertheless (a) have the Windows desktop and (b) still run legacy enterprise cruft, and try to graft an actually usable OS on top of it by having Ubuntu's CLI utilities run on top of it. Perhaps a slight improvement, but I doubt it'll sway very many people from just using Linux.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[thsths]

The main reason people are not running Linux is that it is not pre-installed. And the next reason is that it is hard to install on modern machines, especially on laptops (which, as you should have heard, are more popular than desktops).

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[chispito]

The only reasons people DON'T use Linux desktop are basically the inverse of the above: (a) it's not familiar to the tech-retarded who have a psychological block to learning anything new, and (b) it won't run legacy enterprise cruft.

Do decent A/V editing tools qualify as "legacy enterprise cruft?"

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Nidi62]

The only reasons people use Windows is because (a) it's familiar to office drones, and (b) legacy Win x86 applications. The only reasons people DON'T use Linux desktop are basically the inverse of the above: (a) it's not familiar to the tech-retarded who have a psychological block to learning anything new, and (b) it won't run legacy enterprise cruft.

I recently installed Ubuntu on my desktop along with Windows, but I haven't really used it at all. The main reason for that is I use my desktop's wireless card as the wifi access point for my house and I'm worried it'll be a pain (if even possible) to do the same through Ubuntu. As someone with literally zero experience with Linux (and honestly programming in general besides what I've been exposed to here on Slashdot which might actually mean less than zero experience), just looking at some of the guides Google brings up (posted by Ubuntu) is extremely daunting. I also however do not consider myself "tech-retarded".

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[ilsaloving]

IMO, installation isn't a problem. Current versions of Linux are dead-easy to install now-a-days.

Now, configuring them AFTER installation, that's a whole other mess entirely. I mean, hell, Linux *still* doesn't reliably handle things like suspend/resume. And heaven forbid you need to configure anything that's more complicated than the basic settings you're presented with. You may as well just switch to gentoo at that point, cause you're going to have to get familiar with config files 'n whatnot.

That's why I went to Mac. It's basically linux without the bullshit. Having Ubuntu integrated into Windows 10 may well be a game-changer (provided MS knocks it off with the privacy invasion).

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[d0rp]

You forgot one other main reason people run Windows: games. Steam has done a lot and there is an increasing number of games that'll run naively in Linux, but there are still a great many games (including most of the AAA titles) that only run in Windows.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[ttucker]

and (b) legacy Win x86 applications.

What about modern applications? How about a functional wifi driver in your laptop? The lack of commercial software in Linux is a major problem, and no amount of talking shit about how stupid end users are is going to solve that.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Cro Magnon]

I had the opposite situation. W10 broke my wifi. Ubuntu worked perfectly with it. As always, YMMV.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[LVSlushdat]

God I wish I hadn't commented already so I could mod THIS up... Frankly I don't think its gonna be very long at all before those of us who use Linux and don't suck at the MS teat will be targeted.. first, just by marginalization, then further on, being persecuted/arrested/jailed due to some regulation that some government bureaucracy decides to add to the infinite "rules/regulations" that these unelected crooks keep coming up with. I seem to recall a couple of years ago, some Congresscritter called Linux a terrorists tool... Call me a conspiracy nut, but remember you heard it here first...

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[phantomfive]

Do decent A/V editing tools qualify as "legacy enterprise cruft?"

Yes. Eventually they will run on Unix, because that will be the way to target both OSX and Windows users. (And there's a pretty large market for that on A/V editing tools on OSX).

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Kjella]

The only reasons people DON'T use Linux desktop are basically the inverse of the above: (a) it's not familiar to the tech-retarded who have a psychological block to learning anything new, and (b) it won't run legacy enterprise cruft. (...) Perhaps a slight improvement, but I doubt it'll sway very many people from just using Linux.

Seriously? You talk as Linux was the one with 85% market share and Windows the old legacy holdout. From StatCounter, OS (desktop only), this month:

Windows:
XP: 7.51%
Vista: 1.53%
7: 45.75%
8: 3.46%
8.1: 11.01%
10: 16.47%
WinOther: 0.19%

Total: 85.92%. And most the people who don't run Windows, use Mac instead with 9.36% with the rest divided between Linux, ChromeOS and unknown. The only people who use Linux are those who for some reason feel like wiping what their OEM put on the machine and install their own OS, so they can run the same web or cross-platform tools they could have run anyway. And usually you have to tinker with it just to get back to the functionality you used to have before you started.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Sara Chan]

Extremely interesting! I hope that this comment gets modded up.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Toshito]

The main reason people are not running Linux is that it is not pre-installed. And the next reason is that it is hard to install on modern machines, especially on laptops (which, as you should have heard, are more popular than desktops).

And the lack of games.

And the sloppy sleep/hibernate that doesn't always work.

And the little snags with hardware, like the touchpad that doesn't work at all.

And the reduced battery life.

And the poorly performing garphic drivers.

And the multitude of applications that are mostly crappy, and are poorly made clones of windows applications.

I just installed linux Mint on my step son's laptop (because we discovered that his windows license was invalid) and I was reminded of all these problems. Like trying to install the latest version of Java, which means downloading a .tar.gzip and installing it on the command line? WTF? We're in 2016, it should install by clicking on a link and entering root's password.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Bathroom Humor]

I agree that this is an interesting project they are doing. I might end up trying it myself... But at the end of the day, the reasons I use Ubuntu extend beyond the interface and utilities it offers. Windows 10 is in many ways a privacy nightmare, and I use Linux as a way to get AWAY from that. I might fiddle with this as a way to play around while using Windows compatible software but It certainly won't replace Linux on my computer.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[StormReaver]

The main reason people are not running Linux is that it is not pre-installed.

Partially true, but not much. People use applications, not operating systems. The main reason that people are not running Linux is that they are tied to Windows-only applications. Migrating people to Free apps on Windows makes the transition to Linux fairly easy.

And the next reason is that it is hard to install on modern machines, especially on laptops....

This is complete and utter bullshit. Installing Linux is almost trivially easy, and has been for years. It does all the work for you, if you're using a desktop distribution like Kubuntu.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Chryana]

Keep on believing that. I've used Linux over a span of years as a desktop OS, and still run it in a VM, but I run Windows now. I could give you a dozen reasons why I prefer Windows, which you probably already heard (I recommend the comment of Toshito, which I totally agree with), so I won't waste my time doing that. If the people developing Linux are half as smug as you and blind to the weaknesses of Linux on the desktop, Microsoft has nothing to fear.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[thegarbz]

I don't run it because half of the time shit just basically doesn't work.

Ubuntu 15.10 on my desktop doesn't power off during shutdown.
It decimated the battery life on my notebook
It didn't resume from suspend.
It needed endless screwing around on the command line to properly connect to windows shares.
I'll leave out what I hate about the desktop environment because a lot of that is personal opinion, suffice to say that I'm given two extremes with whatever I use: a system so damn simple that it's impossible to configure, and a system so damn complicated with so many options that it's impossible to configure.

so I'm going to give you another one (c) because it's too much effort.

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Blaskowicz]

There's also assembling your own hardware, in which case there is no Windows to wipe out.
Newegg kind of on-line store that will assemble a PC if you ask it to, or a local and physical shop.
Quite a few million PCs are like that (with most of them ending up with Windows still)

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[Blaskowicz]

and d) : "But you choose the wrong version! Non-LTS Ubuntu is considered unusable, now. Wait for 16.04. But perhaps you really need to wait for 16.04.1. But wait, you should be on 14.04.5". "By the way, your desktop needs to be 5 to 10 year-old, but the graphics card is best if 2 to 4 year-old". "Why did you install SoftwareFoo version 2.9? It's a transitional package. Don't do that!"
"SoftwareFoo version 3.0 has been released! We removed the popular support for tabs, the menu bar and added exciting new features. It now murders puppies and mutilates unmarried women."

Re:I guess I see the point of this

[david_thornley]

By far the biggest advantage Windows has is its ability to run Windows-compatible software, which includes but is not limited to legacy enterprise cruft. Since people buy computers to run applications, and most of the popular ones are Windows-compatible, this gives Windows a huge edge.

For someone who uses a computer only for web surfing (including Facebook, etc.), email, and light word processing, they'd get along just fine with Ubuntu - or, for that matter, a tablet with a keyboard. When they start wanting to run more software than that, they probably want Windows.

Whut?

[DancesWithRobots]

I'm off to check the temperature of the underworld.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[tsqr]

you don't need the kernel

I'm pretty sure that if you don't have the Linux kernel, you don't have Linux at all.

OS/3 lives

[ole_timer]

'nuff said

How long before

[vlad30]

Microsoft claims they wrote ubuntu and linux and sues everyone else. Yes I know its highly unlikely but i is microsoft we are talking about

Re:How long before

[pr0fessor]

MS buys out Canonical and... makes an MS Ubuntu !linux Azure hybrid

Re:Step one:

[NotInHere]

Exactly. If this is indeed a true story and not an april's fool joke (which may be very well possible), then this is only done in order to promote windows. Microsoft is the strong party here, not canonical.

Microsoft is doing a giant PR campaign about how much they love Linux, and when the cameras are off, they behave like a patent troll, claiming to have patents on Linux technology, and forcing companies to pay them money.

miracle hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

It reminds me of Homer quote
"Soon I will have a miracle hybrid, with the loyalty of a cat and the cleanliness of a dog"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stJ3XKExTdM

I tried to tell you!

[kheldan]

I tried to tell you but you didn't listen! Microsoft is getting involved in things like FOSS and Linux so they can subvert it.. just like they're doing here. Why the actual FUCK would you even do what they're offering here instead of just running Ubuntu instead? So you can still be spied on by Microsoft even using some pseudo-Linux OS-on-Microsoft's-leash? This makes ZERO sense.

Re:I tried to tell you!

[NotInHere]

Microsoft can do so many things to promote open source:

* not threaten companies that build products basing on linux because of patent infringement

* support open GL / Vulkan on xbox

* actually make their office product based on an open standard, and not apply corruption-like strategies for people who use open source competition

I don't see anything happening. One thing is fortunate however, the browser market is very rough, and Microsoft really has improved with Edge. But most of the "Microsoft loves open source" stuff is just greenwashing.

This move by microsoft is very smart: I interpret that they want to enable developers to develop cloud applications on windows (instead of on the ubuntu desktop), and then deploy it to ubuntu servers.

This is the first step. It promotes tools like Microsoft Visual studio, which of course only run on windows. New tools will be only developed for windows of course, and for the "extended" toolset provided by Microsoft, that only runs on Win. The second step will be that microsoft announces a hybrid OS, that's partly windows, partly ubuntu, for the server part. Then, once Microsoft has enough market share, they can cut off the connections to open source. They will maintain some pseudo open source products that require this windows+ubuntu server system to run, and point to it when they say "Microsoft loves open source".

I don't trust anything coming from this company.

Re:I tried to tell you!

[kheldan]

You are under the mistaken impression that the OS is for fashion

What are you talking about? The 'impression' I'm getting is about as clear as getting smashed in the face with a shovel: Microsoft wants to subvert Linux and twist it into just some other part of Windows so they can control that too. They can get fucked. The more I hear from Microsoft these days the more urgent my need to dump it off my computers at home (which are still running XP by the way) and put some, ANY, version of Linux on them instead, and get away from Microsoft and their authoritarian dictatorial bullshit forever. Die, die, die, Microsoft.

Re:I tried to tell you!

[shawn2772]

Why the actual FUCK would you even do what they're offering here instead of just running Ubuntu instead?

Because you like Unix-style CLI tools but have to use Windows for some reason? I see this as potentially a better and less fiddly alternative to Cygwin, and Cygwin definitely makes a lot of sense for those who are forced to use Windows.

Re:I tried to tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

It promotes tools like Microsoft Visual studio, which of course only run on windows. New tools will be only developed for windows of course, and for the "extended" toolset provided by Microsoft, that only runs on Win.

Do you mean tools like Visual Studio Code which is cross-platform?

https://code.visualstudio.com/

Re:I tried to tell you!

[nine-times]

Why the actual FUCK would you even do what they're offering here instead of just running Ubuntu instead?

Well let's say you had to run Windows for whatever particular reason. Let's say you have a business critical app that runs on Windows, doesn't run in WINE-- it doesn't really matter what. But you want to run some bash scripts and make use of linux utilities. Now you will be able to, without using cygwin (and they say it will work better than cygwin).

It seems like that's why you'd want this. I administer a lot of Macs and Windows machines, and it would be nice to be able to write one bash script that will run on both. Even if I need to detect the OS and set some variables based on that, having the ability to do that is preferable to not having the ability to do that.

Re:I tried to tell you!

[snadrus]

MS is a haven of badly-documented code whose developers left long ago. Even if they wanted to do good like opening-up the Office codebase, they cannot because they've forgotten how many pieces are third-party licensed. Integrations are easy to do, but often ugly to maintain, so this will only last for a short while. In-fact MS did this before with OS/2 Warp.

This is about the same as Ubuntu integrating with Palm OS: Past its prime, Old/Buggy, but with lots of dying black-and-white apps. The only significant difference is userbase size. I'd rather see them partner with Chrome OS to get into the hardware/vendor channels.

Re:I tried to tell you!

[shutdown -p now]

Because you prefer Windows overall for a multitude of reasons, but also want some of the conveniences of Linux command line?

Because there's that one killer app that Linux has that you want to use?

Because you are developing a cross-platform app that needs to run on both Windows and Linux, and want to test and debug it easily?

Re:I tried to tell you!

[david_thornley]

For one thing, Ubuntu might not install easily on the computer in question (I've had problems with a laptop). For another, the user might want to use both Windows and Linux software on the machine at the same time, or at least without having to reboot between switching applications. Alternately, this might be a work computer that is required to be running Windows, or just somebody else's computer.

Re: The lack of technical precision in TFS is anno

[Hognoxious]

It probably has an NT emulator embedded in it. After all, it has pretty much everything else.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[secretsquirel]

Well ya, Linux is just the most commonly used kernel in the GNU operating system.

The dark side making a slightly dark side darker

[evolutionary]

Don't really trust Canonical because they showed they were willing to sell out the public in a sneaky way with Amazon and desktop searches. Now these two are working together? Interesting...but..birds of a feather right. The dark side possibly corrupting an already slightly darkened corporation. I'd advise sticking to Linux Mint or ElementaryOS for user friendly distros anyway.

The fact Microsoft is willing to with a Linux distro maintainer suggests Windows 10 is not doing all that well in the light of mobile devices and tablets (where they failed to get any real traction). Plus many business sectors with confidential data put clients at risk the moment Windows 10 enters their environment.

How's this for an idea: run Windows 10 in a virtual environment using VirtualBox, and cut off all network access from Windows 10 (you can do this in VirtualBox easily, and maybe open up specific non-http/https ports for mmo) to keep your private data while getting your windows 10 gaming fix. (The only real reason for running Windows 10 these days is for gamers. You can do everything else in the standard consumer activities list in Linux or MacOS, and we are with Android and iOS anyway. (to Microsoft's detriment). Times seems to be changing.

Unity on top of NT POSIX and SFU/SUA?

[bobo_1968]

Can someone with more knowledge of Microsoft's relationship to POSIX/Unix chime in? It looks like in NT there was a POSIX subsystem, and then later a Windows Services for Unix (SFU) later replaced in Vista/Win 7 with a Subsystem for UNIX-based applications (SUA).

The wikipedia articles don't mention any collaboration with Canonical. Does anyone know if TFS is actually just talking about running a desktop environment like Unity ontop of SUA in Win 10?

Re:Unity on top of NT POSIX and SFU/SUA?

[Wargames]

I use SUA (Microsoft Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications). It comes as an addon with Win 7 Ultimate and you can run it on Win 7 Enterprise. It isn't perfect but it allows me to run a Korn shell under Windows and do most standard commands like find, grep, ls, tail -f, and vi. It got phased out with Win 8 (MS please stop taking functionality away!!!). I hope this UBUNTU thing will be similar and better, there is alot of room for improvement with SUA but it sure beats not having it for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Unity on top of NT POSIX and SFU/SUA?

[shutdown -p now]

Canonical was involved. This explains what exactly it does:

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com...

Note the name: "Windows Subsystem for Linux"

Re:Unity on top of NT POSIX and SFU/SUA?

[Blaskowicz]

It was a pain in the butt to install Windows 7 Pro and not have SUA available. Not that I really had used SFU before (on XP Pro), but I just wanted the shell and a few commands etc.
Fuck!
(the "pro" feature was to not come with minesweeper and hearts etc.)

Windows 7 was actually a pretty shitty release!
Network settings are impossible to find unless you run "control ncpa.cpl" or make a shortcut to it. Takes three or four fucking hours to update. Every day use's kinda slow with TWO GIGABYTES of memory. Shitty UI you can't change back here and there (such as "show desktop" on the wrong side unless you get to good pseudo-hacking lengths to get another one). But of course it's Windows thus it never crashes, your video drivers are perfect, old games run at 100 fps on crappy hardware etc. Despite that I would say most of the love for Windows 7 is Stockholm's syndrome.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[The Grim Reefer]

So what the hell does "Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries" mean?

It means you'll be able to run Ubuntu with all of the "stability" of Windows. And use 5 times the resources compared to just running Ubuntu alone. I think it's a way for Microsoft to show just how resource intensive, difficult and unstable, they want the world to think, Linux is.

similar like

[e**(i pi)-1]

its a bit like the idea of strapping a VR google on while riding a roller coaster http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/04... where it says: "Users will still physically be on a roller coaster as usual, but the headsets will add extra sensory experiences." It will be a thrill to be able to run linux on an operating system where the dangers of falling of the tracks are so real. The simulation of adventure can not be more authentic.

SubjectIsSubject

[p0p0]

This is the closest you'll get to Year of the Linux Desktop. Is it everything you'd imagined?

Ubuntu will run on native Windows libraries

[khz6955]

"Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries."

Does that mean that users of Microsoft Ubuntu will be paying Microsoft for the use of the native Windows libraries?

Will these libraries be incorporated into the Ubuntu that the rest of us use?

GeNToo

[iTrawl]

You mean they'll make this thing for real?

Re: The lack of technical precision in TFS is anno

[Anonymous Coward]

if only it had a decent init system.

Response to Mac OS X

[PineHall]

A lot of developers use Macs because of the Unix foundation and the nice interface. It makes it easy to develop applications and put them on a linux web server. I think Microsoft is doing this to provide a familiar Unix foundation for developers, and making it Ubuntu compatible may make it easier to use than the Max OS X.

Re:Response to Mac OS X

[e432776]

From TFA, it seems like you have hit the nail on the head. This move seems targeted at developers.

Remember Novell?

[houghi]

They wanted to partner with Linux as well when they still owned openSUSE and SUSE. Only way less serious than this.

Let's see if people drop Ubuntu like a brick as well over this.

(and queue the replies why Ubuntu is good and Novell was bad working together with Microsoft)

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[RavenLrD20k]

Could call it Microsoft Eunuchs.

Re: The lack of technical precision in TFS is anno

[Anonymous Coward]

URINE Really Is Not an Emulator.

Life finds a way

[BobSwi]

They were so preoccupied with whether they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should

Date?

[phorm]

Uh, I think you posted this story two days early... it's not Apr1 yet.

But realistically, who *wants* to run Ubuntu on windows. If anything, it would be the other way around (being able to run windows apps on Ubuntu/Linux). Running 'nix on MSFT libraries is pretty much taking away most of the reason you'd run it in the first place

Relevance

[Virtucon]

I can already run most windows apps under Linux, except for Office....

LibreOffice is getting better and better....
Linux tools/desktops and Ubuntu are getting better and better....
Run Ubuntu apps on Windows...

It's Microsoft trying to stay relevant. If they really wanted to be relevant they'd offer Office on Linux.

Re:Relevance

[LichtSpektren]

I concur with this completely. There's really nothing Windows offers anymore except PC gaming, which is going to quickly slip from their hands as Metal and Vulkan are developed. Everything else is done better by OS X and Linux on the desktop.

Re:Relevance

[Wahakalaka]

Office 2010 32 bit will work in wine.

Re:Relevance

[tepples]

There's really nothing Windows offers anymore except PC gaming

And being preinstalled on PCs sold in brick-and-mortar stores. And a (relatively) easy path from Windows game development to console game development, for those genres that do work better on consoles than PCs.

Wrong date ...???

[schini]

Is it April somewhere already?

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Hognoxious]

I hope they call it Ubuntu Runner.

Who In Hell Cares?

[LifesABeach]

Windows? Why waste my time with this deceased carcass?

Re:Who In Hell Cares?

[JustNiz]

Spoken like a real windows troll. You need to check your facts, for example do you even know that Linux actually supports more hardware than windows??? no? Thought not.

Re:Who In Hell Cares?

[cbhacking]

Conventional PC hardware? Citation *very badly* needed. If weighted by the popularity of the hardware in question - which is the only intellectually honest way to measure such things - I'm just going to assume you're full of bullshit.

Nobody cares what the line count of your hardware compatibility list is. What people actually want to know is whether *all* their hardware will work, *correctly* and with more than basic functionality, under each OS. For PC hardware, that's far more likely to be true under Windows than Linux.

Re:Who In Hell Cares?

[JustNiz]

I've had far more hardware work correctly on Linux than Windows.
Just one example: About 4 months ago I made the fatal mistake of so-called "upgrading" from windows 7 to widows 10 now my HP all-in-one printer/scanner (PSC 950) wont work properly anymore. HP dont even provide drivers for it since they're meant to be already included under windows 10.
Guess what, it (continues to) work perfectly under linux, just like it always has, without ever needing to install any drivers at all.

Re:Who In Hell Cares?

[JustNiz]

Conventional PC hardware? Citation *very badly* needed.
How about this one:
https://www.vg247.com/2016/01/...

>> I'm just going to assume you're full of bullshit.
How very scientific and unbiassed of you. NOT. Not really just another sheeplike windows fanboi at all I see.

>> For PC hardware, that's far more likely to be true under Windows than Linux.

Citation "VERY BADLY" needed. Pot meet kettle.

Hardcore unix users...

[colin_faber]

Like myself boot Linux directly and don't bother with the windows noise. I have a duel boot setup, which does boot windows 10, for the rare events that I actually need windows for something. Also, I'm less interested in bash support (which is already present with cygwin (and works reasonably well). Combining that with unix services for windows to allow me to mount my NFS (which by the way seems faster than the same mount on linux {drivers?}) I really want to see remote shell support. To me that would be extremely useful, and no, RDP is not what I'm asking for.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[jrumney]

If you strip out all the underlying kernel, libraries and utilities from Ubuntu, what you have left is the privacy destroying "Unity Lenses". That seems like a perfect fit for Windows 10.

Great idea!

[fustakrakich]

What better way to solidify Microsoft's Linux patents? Has anybody totaled up how much they already collect?

/etc/init.d/telemetryd

[alantus]

#!/usr/bin/wine
#
# Start/start telemetry daemon in Microsoft Ubuntu
#
# Copyright Microsoft (r) 2016
#

CONFIG="/Program Files (x86)/Micorosoft/Telemetry 2016/etc/Teleme~0.ini"

. "$CONFIG"

case $1 in

start)
    if [ x"$telemetry_enabled" = "xyes" ]; then
        "/Program Files (x86)/Micorosoft/Telemetry 2016/sbin/Teleme~0.exe" -o StealthMode=yes -o IgnoreUserConfig=yes
    else
        sed -i -e 's|telemetry_enabled=.*|telemetry_enabled=yes|g' "$CONFIG"
        $0 start
    fi
    ;;
stop)
    $0 start
    ;;
*)
    echo "usage: $0 start"
    ;;
esac

Re:/etc/init.d/telemetryd

[ADRA]

Shut it! You're being too prescient!

Re:/etc/init.d/telemetryd

[Anonymous Coward]

Init script? That's so 2014.

systemd unit file please.

Re:/etc/init.d/telemetryd

[WallyL]

As requested, systemd unit file. Due to the lack of tags working properly for me, I give it to you at the discount price of $0. Please enjoy your new installation of telemd!

[Unit]
Description=Microsoft Bug Fixes
After=network.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target
Documentation=man:telemd(8)

[Service]
Type=notify
EnvironmentFile=/Windows/system32/telemd
ExecStart=/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Telemetry 2016/sbin/Teleme~0.exe $OPTIONS -DFOREGROUND
ExecReload=/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Telemetry 2016/sbin/Teleme~0.exe $OPTIONS -k graceful
ExecStop=/bin/true
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Penguinisto]

I guess the point is that you don't need the kernel or drivers because the Windows kernel can actually provide the necessary services. You might want user-space utilities, obviously. But a way of running Whatever-ix userspace apps on Windows would be rather nice. No more weird/costly ports of UI toolkits?

Unless it's a work machine where I'm 100% stuck with having Windows on the thing? Err, why?

I'd rather have a real UNIX/Linux on the metal... and most of those have had Linux binary compat libs for, like, ever.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[jittles]

So what the hell does "Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries" mean? "Ubuntu" is an OS with the Linux kernel and pre-configured utilities, programs and drivers put on top of that, but TFS is indicating that "Ubuntu" in this case is not including a kernel, utilities, or drivers. Unless this is an extremely mangled, obscure, and moronic way of saying that Windows 10 will be including a Linux compatibility layer sponsored by Ubuntu.

Well they're currently working on a set of libraries called LINE, which stands for LINE is Not an Emulator. The point of the project is to allow poor Windows users to have access to some of the great software that has been available on Linux for forever. This should also allow some businesses who have been hesitant to make the transition to Windows finally jump in feet first.

Trying to decide...

[Not-a-Neg]

Which app store is worse, Windows 10 or Ubuntu's? Both are filled with a lot of poorly named crap that looks like it came from the example section of a school kid's programming lesson book.

The new OS/2

[Blaskowicz]

Windows : a better Linux than Linux!

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[squiggleslash]

Yes, but they're talking about Ubuntu, not "Linux". Ubuntu can be whatever Canonical wants it to be, but even allowing for that loophole, they certainly can make a Ubuntu that feels like Ubuntu but eschews Linux in favor of another kernel.

It actually would be relatively easy for them replace Linux with the FreeBSD kernel, for example. Windows is a harder project, but it's do-able.

Unsupported hardware

[tepples]

One reason to run Windows 10 happens if System76 doesn't make a laptop in the form factor you want, and other major laptop makers can't be rectumed to certify their chipsets' compatibility with Linux. Unlike preinstalled Windows 10, aftermarket Linux occasionally fails to correctly set up Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound, webcam, or suspend. You want to run Windows 10 because presumably it's better than not having a computer at all.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[TheGratefulNet]

I hope they call it Ubuntu Runner.

then, will they change their email client's name to 'strong-bad email'?

(GOML)

Commence Pedantry

[mattventura]

Ironically, there's no actual Linux (as in the kernel) to be found here. Just userspace stuff.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[pnutjam]

So Lindows isn't finally here?

Re:Commence Pedantry

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is what you're looking for.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[phantomfive]

So what is it exactly? A Linux compatibility layer (like BSD has)? Or did they finally finish POSIX? Or are Linux specific system calls supported?

Re:Commence Pedantry

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean GNU, as in GNU/Windows?

Re:Commence Pedantry

[shutdown -p now]

Based on what I've seen so far, it's basically a Linux syscall emulation layer + ELF loader. So kernel is emulated, but userspace is entirely native.

Filesystem is mapped both ways (Windows sees Linux root as a folder, Linux sees Windows drive letters under /mnt).

Re:Commence Pedantry

[shutdown -p now]

Linux user space stuff. This is an emulation layer for Linux userspace-to-kernelspace, substituting the later part. So everything in Ubuntu and Debian archives that doesn't need direct hardware access (e.g. X) should run just fine. And you can probably combine it with some existing Win32 X implementations to get a full-fledged GUI, too.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[phantomfive]

Yeah, that's what I seeing too. I really hope this means the full POSIX networking layer will finally be implemented on Windows. That will make my job a lot easier.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[Vyse of Arcadia]

GNU/NT is what I'd call it.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[keneng]

If I recall correctly, the reason we call our usual distros like Fedora GNU/Linux or Debian GNU/Linux or Arch GNU/Linux is because the GNU part is the userspace stuff and the Linux part is the kernel.

Since the Linux kernel has been replaced with the Microsoft Win64 OS Kernel they could call it "GNU/MS-Win64". There is one huge problem with this.
It's the perfect definition of an oxymoron because GNU which in itself is the very definition of Libre Digital Freedom versus the very opposite that is Microsoft vendor restriction, lock-in hiding source code wherever Microsoft sees fit. Note how they haven't released it as open-source yet. Note they haven't released MS-Win64 as open-source yet either.

Consumers beware of Microsoft. I could understand Canonical's position. They're hurting for cash it seems. It reminds me of all the people working for Trump's propaganda machine to for him. They must have been paid a lot of money to help Trump gain so much reddit.com space and along with those paid to throw mud at Trump's opponents. It this case it's Microsoft doing their best to pay money for making Microsoft look like they love Linux when in fact and behind the scenes they are extorting people for patent violations because they are using Linux or using anything not Microsoft-based they haven't paid MS a levy/tariff for. Microsoft also likes to make all the other non-Microsoft affiliated GNU/Linux distros look less appealing by hiring people to throw mud at those non-Microsoft affiliated GNU/Linux distros. After all GNU/Linux is not aligned with Microsoft's ambitions of Canonical UBUNTU/Win64.

I wouldn't recommend anything Microsoft to anyone. That implies I won't recommend GNU/MS-Win64 or Canonical UBUNTU/Win64 to anyone anytime soon.
BOTTOM LINE: MICROSOFT IS NOT COOL. GNU/LINUX IS.

Re: Commence Pedantry

[shutdown -p now]

It doesn't look like it has its own FS, but rather just maps Unix root to an NTFS folder. This would imply no dedicated partitions (well, I guess you can always create an NTFS partition, and dedicate it entirely to Unix root - but I assume that's not what you meant by "a Unix filesystem partition").

I would assume that soft and hard links would just map to the same in NTFS, since it supports both.

Nothing has been said regarding permissions. It's an interesting question, because NTFS only has ACLs. It should be possible to map Unix permission bits to an ACL, but the reverse is not always true. Still, the older SFU/SUA did something there, so perhaps this does the same thing.

Hard to say about case sensitivity. NTFS itself is case-sensitive, actually, but the Win32 layer that normal Windows apps use to access it enforces case-insensitivity (but preserves case otherwise). If the implementation here is a proper NT subsystem, then it should be able to skip that Win32 translation, and use case-sensitive operations directly. But whether it actually does so or not is an interesting question, because if you were to use that approach to actually create files that only differ by case, accessing them from Win32 world will be problematic (but possible; Cygwin knows how to do that, for example), so it may be deliberately disabled. Hopefully, it is a configurable option.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[ChunderDownunder]

So like installing Ubuntu in a chroot but the host OS is Windows?

Re:Commence Pedantry

[Shompol]

MS emulated Linux system calls to run Linux apps natively. They created the inverse of WINE. https://insights.ubuntu.com/20...

Re:Commence Pedantry

[Teun]

It's called Line
Line Is Not an Emulator.

Re: Commence Pedantry

[Curate]

Hard to say about case sensitivity. NTFS itself is case-sensitive, actually, but the Win32 layer that normal Windows apps use to access it enforces case-insensitivity (but preserves case otherwise). If the implementation here is a proper NT subsystem, then it should be able to skip that Win32 translation, and use case-sensitive operations directly. But whether it actually does so or not is an interesting question, because if you were to use that approach to actually create files that only differ by case, accessing them from Win32 world will be problematic (but possible; Cygwin knows how to do that, for example), so it may be deliberately disabled. Hopefully, it is a configurable option.

Your description is close but not quite accurate. NTFS is case-preserving: file names are stored in an exact case on disk. Case-sensitivity actually has nothing to do with what's on disk, it's a property of a given operation. And NTFS has the ability to support either case-sensitive or case-insensitive operations, as needed, on a per-operation basis. What determines whether a given operation is case-sensitive or not is a combination of 3 factors: a global system setting, the subsystem (e.g. Win32 vs Linux), and the app requesting the operation. Incidentally even if you are a "Win32 app", you can still call NT APIs directly, which negates the subsystem from the list of factors.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[butlerm]

If I recall correctly, the reason we call our usual distros like Fedora GNU/Linux or Debian GNU/Linux or Arch GNU/Linux is because the GNU part is the userspace stuff and the Linux part is the kernel.

Who is "we"? Almost nobody does that, because it is almost pointless. GNU accounts for the most commonly used C compiler, C library, and a handful of other utilities in a typical Linux distribution. The vast majority of the code is developed and owned by someone else. GCC has healthy competition in the form of Clang and with a little competition in the C library and utility space there might be real world Linux distributions without much in the way of GNU code at all.

Re:Commence Pedantry

[keneng]

What you call "Pedantic" which means to be "overly concerned with minute details",
I call being vigilant towards the subtle hopefully under-the-radar tactics Microsoft attempts to use to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" GNU/Linux.
GNU/Linux represents our best interests with respect, preserve and protect to DIGITAL FREEDOMS. MICROSOFT and CANONICAL in this particular arrangement do not.

To demonstrate this further:
0)Microsoft Windows 10 is not open-source. The part that runs the win64 shell for the MS/Canonical stuff is not open-source either.

1)BUILDING YOUR OWN CUSTOMIZED ISO TO INSTALL YOUR CUSTOMIZED OPERATING SYSTEM: I will assume MS/CANONICAL are not going to port live-build, archiso, buildiso
or b2im. These tools are about building custom .iso images that you can build your own bootable thumb drives with. THAT IS DIGITAL FREEDOM. Will these be built to create win64-based CANONICAL iso images with windows 10 included? Let me know when this happens. WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER.

2)BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY/SUPPORT FOR LEGACY OS: Microsoft/CANONICAL do not have the consumers' interests at heart. They have only Microsoft's interests at heart. Their feature has not been demonstrated to work on legacy windows os' nor will Microsoft/Canonical invest any effort towards this. It makes no business sense for them. On the other hand, alternative capability called "MSys2" works on a greater number of Windows OS's NOT JUST Windows 10 in 32-bit and 64-bit. MSys2 behaves exactly the same as ArchLinux with respect to Linux Filesystem Hierarchy, package manager(pacman), compiler tools and GUI API's(GTK/GTKMM).

3)Microsoft's attempt to pollute the open-source code base with win64-only api calls encouraging vendor lock-in. As a result brainshare will increase their efforts/dependency on win64 api calls. That's not in the interest of DIGITAL FREEDOM to encourage or adopt any such thing.
4)Microsoft's attempt to EXTEND the bells and whistles(MOSTLY GUI or PRODUCTIVITY add-ons) with win64-only api calls with their offering further encouraging vendor lock-in.
5)Deliberately missing pieces in the GNU/win64 platform to further encourage/force developers to pay for those missing pieces which they had for free on the regular GNU/LINUX. THAT'S THE HOOK. That's not in the interest of DIGITAL FREEDOM either.

I wouldn't touch this stuff because the behaviour and the entire original offering which is the original GNU/Linux is not exactly the same with respect to preserving your YOUR DIGITAL FREEDOM.

SUMMING IT UP: Don't touch anything to do with Microsoft api's because it leads consumers/developers to a path of contraints/restrictions and vendor lock-in and some kind of Microsoft TAXES ultimately.

You won't find any such taxes within the original GNU/Linux with all its DIGITAL FREEDOMS preserved intact. The original ArchLinux/Debian/Fedora/Suse are what you are looking for. NOT WINDOWS 10.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Dutch Gun]

I suppose one thing I could think of is for ease of porting/cross-platform development. If you have a Windows developer who needs to either write or port an application to support Linux systems, then this might be a convenient solution. I can't imagine that this is really targeted at anyone other than developers. I mean, if a user was interested in running Ubuntu, then as you indicated, they'd just run that OS directly rather than on top of Windows 10.

Keep in mind that Microsoft is focused on cloud and services now, but they also want to keep Windows relevant as a development platform, because that's needed to ensure that developers can easily integrate Microsoft cloud services into their products. That's why they've gone to great lengths to give Visual Studio multi-platform capabilities. You've also seen them take steps in the same direction but with a different tact - porting their own libraries and apps to different platforms.

So, I don't believe the primary point of this is to keep Windows 10 relevant. Windows already has a virtually unbreakable lock on the desktop OS market. If anything, this slightly weakens Windows by providing easy access to a competing OS. My feeling is that this is a move to keep Visual Studio and the Microsoft Azure cloud ecosystem relevant by giving developers an easy way to create and test cross-platform applications using Microsoft-provided tools.

Re: The lack of technical precision in TFS is anno

[Anonymous Coward]

URINE Really Is Not an Emulator?

wait a sec, you're saying...

[smash]

... i can have the reliability, transparency and non-spyware nature of Windows 10 with the application quality and consistency of Ubuntu with the patch downloads for and security vulnerabilities of both?

Sweet, where do i sign?! /s

"DO NOT WANT" tag on story is appropriate.

Re:Just use a VM

[Billly Gates]

I have never in my years used Cygwin or Wine. Run the right OS for it's intended purpose and use a VM for anything else. To me both are not worth the effort.

Why bother with outdated and buggy Cytgwin when you can run the real thing. If you are stuck using Windows at work or need it for work at home and use Windows as a client OS enable Hyper-V as it is a type 1 hypervisor free with the professional edition.

Infact, this is the only reason I ditched 7 for 8.1 with a start menu replacement and Hyper-V as VMWare Workstation is no longer made and does suck.

I use pfsense and have several virtual switches in a VM. I have a GNFS 3 virtual cisco router, Linux Mint 17, FreeBSD 10.2, a ton of virtual domains and other Windows Servers.I use powershell on my windows box and use bash natively on the guest operating systems. Visual Studio too has GIT and ODBC hive support in 2015 community edition so you can remote into your virtual boxes and use Windows strength for great client side apps and use Linux strength as great server apps on the backend if you write code.

This would have been cool 10 years ago before SSD's and cheap ram with lots of cores and hyperthreading was normal. But not today in 2015.

Re:So...

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Don't worry, it's a trap. A future version of systemd will assimilate Windows.

I hope...

[ADRA]

For god sake, I hope Microsoft threw a dump-truck full of money on Canonical's door because otherwise, bad news for them.

All this does is piss off existing Linux customers, bridges a few muddled though mostly gutless windows swappers from booting Linux (Who would probably just use something like VirtualBox with seemless mode and get 100% of the same features / performance). The OS integration layers for UNIX in Windows has existed since NT. Microsoft clearly doesn't give enough sh*ts enough to invest serious money into it, so why waste your time chasing a market that simply doesn't exist? You better be counting your millions or else I'd be seriously sad for you.

Re: Wouldn't it be more robust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but license validation might get in the way.

My green parrot would totally disagree with you.

Too early for April Fool's.

[neurojab]

I suppose that since April Fool's day is two days away that this is not a joke. That said, Canonical has completely lost their collective minds. It started with Unity, then Mir, and now "ubuntu minus Linux". Seriously guys. What the hell IS ubuntu if it is not Linux? Unity for windows? Barf.

Re:Too early for April Fool's.

[shutdown -p now]

It's everything that is in Ubuntu, minus the Linux kernel.

Re:Too early for April Fool's.

[xtronics]

I call it broken Debian

Would have bothered me when Ubuntu mattered

[BrendaEM]

Well, at least it didn't happen to Mint.

I actually have an official Ubuntu install CD from a time before they deployed Unity, and from before a time they had not lost their heart and soul.

Re:Would have bothered me when Ubuntu mattered

[The-Ixian]

Well, at least it didn't happen to Mint.

Yeah, Mint just replaces their ISOs with malware infested versions... ;)

Re:Why bother

[Alain Williams]

So everything you do in this install of Ubuntu will report back to M$ too eh?

Exactly: would you ever use that as a desktop where you would run ssh to login to anywhere else ? I don't want the NSA to be able to login to the various machines that I can do.

I see the reverse

[HalAtWork]

Whenever people ask me to download office or Photoshop I ask for their credit card. When they say "no" I offer to install an alternative that works just as well. Pretty soon there is no fear of learning new apps because everything they have installed works the same under Linux. Now a lot of people I know are running Mint w/Cinnamon.

Re:I see the reverse

[GuB-42]

And what is your alternative to Office or Photoshop? Because I didn't find any that works just as well, and I already tried LibreOffice and Gimp, to the point of being productive with them, but they are simply no match for MSOffice and Photoshop.

Re:I see the reverse

[HalAtWork]

LibreOffice and Gimp actually are the very ones I set up for them, and it's worked out fine here. Sorry it didn't for you, not all software works for everyone, but these aren't enthusiasts of any kind, just average users. I also usually set up Inkscape as well. One of the people iset this stuff up with ended up using Inkscape to create menus and signage for their restaurant and they look miles better than the low res bitmaps they used to use.

Re:Wouldn't it be more robust ...

[Alain Williams]

to run Windows on Linux, not to mention less dangerous ?

I would not want to do that, but I can see that I might want to run some applications made for MS Windows under Linux. Wine works pretty nicely but still has a way to go, I would much rather that MS put time into that; but I do understand that that would not make commercial/economic sense for them to do so.

I wonder *how* compatible...

[djbckr]

For example, can I "apt-get..." all the stuff from the repositories?

Re:Fuck that for a joke

[rubycodez]

You'll get the stability and rich bundled utility set of windows, with the privacy and security you've come to expect from Microsoft!

win-win-win!

yeah that was sarcasm

Re:Why bother

[Austerity Empowers]

Just take the plunge and drop Windows 10.

Those of us who want to already have, except wherein game developers only release games for the windows platform. So we have a system that is powered off 20/24 hours a day that just plays games. Part of that is because of bad console design: underpwoered, no keyboard/mouse. Meanwhile all the real work gets done on Linux or OS X.

Meanwhile I can now write applications that focus on POSIX, ignore windows entirely and Windows people can run it, allowing me to NEVER use windows and skip the issues cygwin has. So it encourages me to stop targetting Windows at all. In some cases this might be a win for all other OSes, as we can hope users will realize they actually do not need Windows for anything and shed it like excess skin.

I'm not sure how this helps MS any, and certainly does nothing to take their OS out of 3rd place.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Why Linux, anyway? If you can have Debian/kFreeBSD, you can have Debian/NT.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[gtall]

"This should also allow some businesses who have been hesitant to make the transition to Windows finally jump in feet first." Oh, you mean all two of them? This will do nothing for businesses who will still be leery of using anything that is not strictly Windows. It is merely PR, costs them nothing, and promotes their alleged software.

Re:Windows is quite compatible and reliable

[armanox]

Odd, all the 'legacy' Linux software I have (with the exception of a couple of things that use SVGALib) seem to work just fine. I have a whole pile of software at home that will not install on Windows newer then XP.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[tsqr]

Yes, but they're talking about Ubuntu, not "Linux". Ubuntu can be whatever Canonical wants it to be, but even allowing for that loophole, they certainly can make a Ubuntu that feels like Ubuntu but eschews Linux in favor of another kernel.

Yeah, there's no mention of Linux per se in TFS, and TFA avoided mentioning Linux until the final paragraph: "So is this MS-Linux? No. Is it a major step forward in the integration of Windows and Linux on the developer desktop? Yes, yes it is." I really don't want to get religious about this, but I'm thinking it's not a step forward in the integration of Windows and Linux if the Linux kernel is absent.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations. You're the only Slashdot poster so far who has come to the correct conclusion as stated in the TFA. This move is targeted for developers and for sysadmins who manage Window systems that want to run a Ubuntu docker container natively rather inside a VM manager like Virtualbox. I'd say you post deserves a +insightful mod, but apparently the Slashdot nabobs of negativism are having too much fun getting their hate on..

Two days early?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted on 30 March. Should have been posted on 1 April.

Embrace...

[pmontra]

It's only me seeing this as the Embrace phase of Embrace Extend Extinguish?

My take on the likely roadmap:

1) MS will add some extra functionality for the good or the bad
2) Ubuntu for Windows will be modified to use it but Ubuntu for Linux won't, and
3) people will start using Ubuntu Windows on servers too, and
4) it turns out that most of desktop Ubuntus, if not also servers, run on Windows, and
5) MS starts doing all it's Ubuntu development in house?

Et voilà, all Ubuntu users on Windows, nice license fees for MS and Canonical is extinguished.

The only thing that can save Canonical is the cost of the licenses for Windows Servers (step 4) but Ubuntu desktop will be dead because it usually runs on former Windows machines. Maybe it's Canonical's way to tell us that it's leaving the desktop and focusing on the server.

Re:Embrace...

[The-Ixian]

Of course it is.

MS is an underdog in a lot of ways right now and so it is in their interest to embrace.

Once they are back on top (if that ever happens) with a firm grasp then phase 2 and 3 will happen in quick succession.

This is no different than any other profit driven company ever though.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Carewolf]

MS had SFU/Interix, which they dropped.

Could this be a port of Ubuntu to that, much as Debian ported their OS to FreeBSD and the HURD?

Sounds like the most likely.

Debian GNU/Windows ?

Welp

[malditaenvidia]

Time to switch to gentoo.

Re:Welp

[The-Ixian]

I used to be way into Gentoo on my desktop. I haven't run Linux on the desktop in years though.

When I last looked, I saw that Sabayon seemed to be where the old Gentoo users went... is this still the case?

While I find Gentoo to be the most straight forward Linux distro, it does get old when it takes days to install, say, KDE from scratch.

April Fools is tomorrow

[DougReed]

Guys... you jumped the gun. April fools day is tomorrow.

The end of an Epoch

[Ektanoor]

So, after nearly 20 years of trashing and bashing, Windows is finally and officially not ready for prime time...

Ok, so no april fools?

[SlashDread]

But can someone explain how it would be possible to have Linux, the -GPL- kernel, binary compatibility without having Linux, the -GPL- kernel, in Windows? This isn't the eighties, where you can copy an OS by reverse-engineering. Let alone keep it up-to-date.

Re: The lack of technical precision in TFS is anno

[q4Fry]

Ubuntu Runtime Is Not an Emulator

Oh shit

[DMJC]

I think this is designed to suck air out of kernel development. I mean if your busy making your open source apps work in Windows who has time to make Linux work?

Sounds like FreeBSD's linux binary compatibility

[tomxor]

Sounds like FreeBSD's linux binary compatibility... There is no actual Linux kernel of course, just a replication of the interfaces translated for the windows kernel. The sensationalist claims of "because it is Linux" is definitely BS unless the opposite is happening and Microsoft is writing a windows binary compatibility layer for the Linux kernel (aka WINE).

Wrong way around

[Opportunist]

We don't want to run Linux programs on Windows, what we need is an easy way to run PE-Files on Linux (sensibly).

Yeah, yeah, Wine. I said sensibly!

Re:Wrong way around

[TsuruchiBrian]

What's the difference? I have no idea how well this thing will work, but just hypothetically, if you can run all the same apps (e.g. gnome, bash, cron, insert whatever other apps you love), does it really matter what kernel is under the hood?

I get that windows is not free. But for the time being, there is a bunch of stuff developed for windows that doesn't run well under linux. I already own windows 10 because I want to play games. As far as I am concerned, I'd love to have a better cygwin if that's possible. I love cygwin, but it has it's limitations.

Would I rather have a world where game developers made games for linux, and graphics card manufacturers made great open source drivers that ran well on linux? Of course, and we are headed in that direction, and I'm sure we will get there one day.

But it's not as if we can only have one or the other. Until that day comes, why not have an additional tool to make some people's lives a little easier? It's not like you have to use it.

let me guess

[dr.Flake]

More details will follow this Friday ??

Re:What's the point?

[Narcocide]

You're probably one of those people who also thinks we should just delete/burn everything ever written in Latin. You know, because its a "dead language" that "nobody uses anymore."

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Dutch Gun]

Congratulations. You're the only Slashdot poster so far who has come to the correct conclusion as stated in the TFA. This move is targeted for developers and for sysadmins who manage Window systems that want to run a Ubuntu docker container natively rather inside a VM manager like Virtualbox. I'd say you post deserves a +insightful mod, but apparently the Slashdot nabobs of negativism are having too much fun getting their hate on..

What's funny is that I did read about the first half of the article, and then posted. When I went back and read the rest of TFA, I had a head-slapping moment, as it was exactly as they indicated there. I'm not really sure "insightful" is deserved for simply repeating what the article already indicated, but I suppose I'm glad I guessed correctly.

It does sort of sound like an April Fool's Day joke though, doesn't it? Ten years ago, would anyone have seriously predicted that Windows would be "infected" with Linux? Ballmer must be spinning in his chair right about now.

technical details

[phantomfive]

Here are more technical details.
It looks like they are loading the ELF file, then translating Linux syscalls into WinAPI calls on the fly. They've done a good job making it efficient, so it's almost as fast as standard windows calls.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[aliquis]

So what the hell does "Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries" mean? "Ubuntu" is an OS with the Linux kernel and pre-configured utilities, programs and drivers put on top of that, but TFS is indicating that "Ubuntu" in this case is not including a kernel, utilities, or drivers. Unless this is an extremely mangled, obscure, and moronic way of saying that Windows 10 will be including a Linux compatibility layer sponsored by Ubuntu.

You have to parse TFS through sed to get the real message.

"This will not be in a virtual machine"
"Microsoft and Canonical will not, however, sources say, be integrating Linux per se into Windows."
Ok, so it's not Linux. But it's Ubuntu/Windows so to say.

"real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself"
So Windows will be ABI compatible with Linux?

"just as on Linux, because it is Linux"
But earlier you said it wasn't? It's Ubuntu not Linux?

"You can apt-get"
Yeah I know but apt-get isn't Linux specific.

Yeah, Linux sucks!

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

I mean, Linux must suck if this half-assed Windows integration is any threat at all. It's not like tons of dev shops already force its devs to use Windows for some reason, yet still manage to deploy to Linux.

And let's not forget that Microsoft makes the best servers too. Sysadmins have been lamenting for years "If only this web server ran a Windows UI, I would be complete!" The second this integration is complete, every Linux server in the world will be migrated to Winbuntu, because it's obviously better.

Or maybe you need to chill the fuck down and recognize that Linux is still around for legitimate reasons, and a little thing like being more accessible than ever isn't a threat. I have no doubt that Microsoft would love to eat into Linux's market share with this move, but I can't see it happening, and someone who has to use Windows, I can't see this as anything but the best thing ever.

Bottom line, Microsoft has tried to crush Linux in the past, and this isn't going to succeed any better today than the past 2 decades. Today, Linux is running on more devices than Windows could ever dream of.

Re:Yeah, Linux sucks!

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

<sigh> That'll teach me not to preview

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 1981 there was Eunice -- an implementation of Unix on Vax VMS ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_%28software%29 )
all is vanity; there is nothing new under the sun

So how is this different than Cygwin?

[sbaker]

I don't get it...Ubuntu - minus the kernel - presumably minus device drivers - minus the windowing system. Isn't that pretty much just the shell, the various CLI tools...and apt-get...right? Pretty much all of the GUI-based tools are already ported to Windows - GIMP, Inkscape, LibreOffice, browsers...I can't think of any 'big' gui-based tools that I don't already have in Windows. All of the CLI tools and shells are there in Cygwin already...so we're left with...what? apt-get? Cygwin's installer is 'setup' - not quite as handy as apt-get - but hardly a huge deal. There is already a project called 'cyg-get' that does what apt-get does in the Cygwin world.

Yet TFA says that this new thing isn't anything like Cygwin.

Seems to me, it's exactly like Cygwin.

Maybe it's a kind of reverse-WINE? So Linux binaries can run under Win10 without recompiling.

TFA could be a lot clearer about what's going on here.

Re:So how is this different than Cygwin?

[ezelkow1]

Yes, thats exactly what it is,
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com...

From a canonical dev, its a reverse wine. Win kernel support that has linux syscall translation to windows calls. He wrote the filesystem translation. From what it sounds like they are pretty close to fully functional, just some issues with terminal emulation

Re:So how is this different than Cygwin?

[shutdown -p now]

Cygwin tries to emulate Unix semantics in userspace, layering POSIX on top of Win32. It doesn't work very well, and has perf issues, because the two don't match. E.g. implementing fork() that way is complicated.

And yes, Cygwin requires binaries to be recompiled. This does not.

This is more like WINE in that it loads ELF binaries directly. But it is unlike WINE and Cygwin in that it doesn't try to emulate the userspace API (i.e. POSIX). Instead, it emulates syscalls - the interface between userspace (e.g. glibc) and the kernel. Consequently, because the translation happens on a much lower level, and all code higher than that is reused directly, there's less to break due to emulating incorrectly. And because it runs directly on top of NT rather than Win32 subsystem, it can implement POSIX semantics without jumping through Win32 hoops, and have it all be very fast.

The thing that's most similar to this is Linux binaries support in FreeBSD.

Sweet

[penguinoid]

I'm updating my Windows 10 recommendation from "Avoid like the plague" to "Avoid like candy from a stranger in a van."

Re:Sweet

[flopsquad]

> YOU HEAD WEST AND ENCOUNTER [[STRANGER IN A VAN]].
> [[STRANGER IN A VAN]] OFFERS YOU [[UNIDENTIFIED CANDY]]. WHAT WILL YOU DO?
> YOU ACCEPT [[UNIDENTIFIED CANDY]] FROM [[STRANGER IN A VAN]].
> YOU CONSUME [[UNIDENTIFIED CANDY]].
> . . . . . .
> UNFORTUNATELY, [[UNIDENTIFIED CANDY]] TURNS OUT TO BE A [[MACADAMIA PLAGUE BAR]]. YOU CONTRACT [[THE PLAGUE]] AND DIE A GRUESOME DEATH.
> GAME OVER.

Things I thought I would never hear

[ukoda]

Sounds like time to open that ice skating rink in hell...

Extend, Embrace, Extinguish...

[yusing]

Extend, Embrace, Extinguish... Chapter 66: There Can Be Only One

When I was a boy....

[Jahmbo]

It's all been downhill since Commodore GEOS for me.

What a spleniloquent idea!

[Applehu Akbar]

This OS will combine the broad-based commercial software support of Linux with the legendary security of Windows.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[Anonymous Coward]

Could call it Microsoft Eunuchs.

Reminds me of when I was out of college and looking for a job in 1978. While in college I had done a lot of work on UNIX V6 for the computer science department. I got put in touch with a headhunter who interviewed me over the phone. Little did I know that he was going to create a resume for me and send it out without me ever seeing it. It did get me interviews and at the first one someone asked me what this "Eunuchs" thing was. I cringed, explained that the headhunter had gotten that wrong and that it should be UNIX. He them asked me what this UNIX thing was....

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[cbhacking]

Even on OSes that still support the NT POSIX subsystem (NT-based pre-Win8.1 / pre-Server2012R2), it would take a *lot* of work to get Ubuntu binaries running unmodified. One attempt (since discontinued): http://cowlark.com/lbw/

Part of the problem is that the POSIX subsystem is kind of minimal. It doesn't implement a lot of the stuff the Linux has done on top of POSIX, like new system calls, IOCTLs, etc. Another part is that a fair amount of userspace translation is needed to make things like Windows UIDs comprehensible to Linux programs, which tend to assume things like "root is uid 0" (not true on Windows).

With that said, I'd really like to see the POSIX subsystem come back. When it worked, it was faster and better-integrated than Cygwin, and also supported stuff that Cygwin couldn't do (like setuid). It wasn't binary-compatible with Linux binaries (without something like LBW), but it was source-compatible with many of them (if they didn't assume Linux-specific extensions were present) and had a working build toolchain. I was running OpenSSH server natively on Windows for years before this project started. I was using bash as my default shell, even for running Win32 programs. When I needed to run a *nix program I'd pull a package, or build from source if the package didn't exist, rather than switching OSes or even using a VM.

Gnu

[MSG]

"because it is Linux"

Actually, it's not. It's a GNU system running on Windows. There's no Linux involved, at all. There's just a compatibility layer that implements the Linux system calls on the Windows kernel.

This is GNU/Windows, and it only serves to highlight the fact that the correct name was always GNU/Linux.

Step 1: Embrace

[Namarrgon]

You all remember the next two.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[jonwil]

It sounds like its basically the opposite of what Wine does.
Wine re-implements the Windows API on Linux, it sounds like this new thing re-implements the Linux API (not sure exactly what that means) on top of Windows and lets you run Linux apps.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[John Allsup]

Think http://www.colinux.org/ -- basically porting the kernel to run on Windows rather than bare hardware, and use Windows process management and scheduling etc. Then making a few tweaks to the low level libraries and building stuff on the resulting platform.

Ubuntu posts gives more insights...

[ndykman]

The following article has more technical insights. https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/03/30/ubuntu-on-windows-the-ubuntu-userspace-for-windows-developers

Basically, this is a Windows Subsystem for Linux. The article claimed it is using some technology from MS Research to translate the Linux syscalls to Windows syscalls (probably the Detours group and other OS team members, if I had to bet). The nice part here it is avoids what doomed the older Subsystem for Unix, having to compile apps. This subsystem just runs ELF binaries, intercepting and rewriting syscalls as needed. That's the new piece.

It'll be interesting to see how far they try to push it.

   

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[shutdown -p now]

It's ABI-compatible with Linux on syscall level.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[shutdown -p now]

Here is a better - somewhat more technical - write-up from Ubuntu folks.

Mmmm Lovely

[Greyfox]

All the speed, efficiency and security of Microsoft developers combined with the GUI design acumen of the guys who made Unity. What could go wrong?

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[HiThere]

It would probably let you run some games that haven't been/won't be ported.

Will any ubuntu developers go back to Debian?

[xtronics]

Just seems like there will be some backlash?

Android?

[ChunderDownunder]

Seems to me like exposing a compatibility layer required to run ART apps seamlessly in WP10, only for generic Linux binaries too.

POSIX

[MaxSmoke]

I hope this Ubuntu on Windows leads eventually to extended kernel POSIX support, as the Cygwin POSIX emulation is extremely slow and in practice unusable for any serious IO based workload.
I only wish they went with a RPM distro in first place.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[nateman1352]

So what the hell does "Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries" mean?

Back in the WinXP days when Windows Services for UNIX (formerly known as Interix before Microsoft bought it) was free there where was a community driven effort to use Xming to run KDE and GNOME on Windows Services for UNIX 3.6 by recompiling all the user-space libraries to Interix and using a fork of the BSD package manager to install all the dependencies. After Microsoft starting charging money for Services for UNIX by requiring you to buy the "Ultimate" Windows Vista SKU interest dropped off rapidly. Question is will this be another bait and switch tactic to try to get you to buy the higher end Windows SKU when the next version comes out? It has happened once before.

From a technical standpoint, I honestly don't know how they are doing this, but my guess is that Microsoft has decided to dig up and revitalize Interix. It provided an implementation of POSIX as a WinNT kernel subsystem, similar to Win32 (ignoring that Win32 is given special treatment by the NT kernel.) Most of the work would be to make Interix compatible with ELF binaries and the Linux INT 0x80 syscall interface, make a version of ld that is compatible with Linux ELF binaries, throw in an X server implemented on either Win32 GDI or maybe one of the newer APIs like Direct2D, add a chroot jail and then let Ubuntu provide all the userspace libraries and applications.

Will prople drink the opposite of WINE?

[daboochmeister]

Not sure what the opposite of WINE is, but pretty sure I don't want to drink it ...

Somebody help me understand...

[martinfb]

Why would any competent computer weenei (I mean that in a good context) put Linux/Unix on TOP of Windows? Is it so that you can add the MS vulnerabilities to Linux/Unix?! It makes no sense. Linux/Unix may not be as 3rd party supported (yet) as Windows, yet it is far superior in performance and available security. And, this is evidenced by the fact that MS is push towards Linux now. Ummm. DUH!

Linux Java tarballs 2016

[PincushionMan]

Java can be a bear to install yourself from the tarball. That's why nobody (as far as i know) does it like that. There's a Webupd8 team that has a Debian/Ubuntu/Mint PPA. That'll install recent Javas for you - and keep them up to date, and, additionally, integrating with /etc/alternatives, so that you can have several versions on the machine at once.

That said, running all the different versions at once might not be a good thing for your machine's RAM, but you can - if you have the need to.

BASH rules!

[seabrook]

This move on MS part implies that BASH commands and the BASH approach to solving simple scripting problems will be almost universal since Android and OSX run BASH as do most forms of Linux. Learning to write BASH scripts should be valuable just about everywhere. Furthermore, once you get used to the BASH command line and scripting, switching to Ubuntu (or any other form of Linux) by itself should be easy. Anyone interested in going this direction might want to have a look at using the Xtra-PC USB thumb drive as an interim step since it contains a full implementation of Ubuntu Linux.

It’s a Trap: Microsoft Embrace, Extend, Exti

[goukaradi]

This morning someone called me out in G+ about this so called Kinder Gentler Microsoft. I wrote an article which I am posting links below for. Newsflash: There is no kinder gentler Microsoft. We have Cryptowars again and Microsoft is doing its Embrace, Extend and Extinguish strategy. Please find the links: http://virtualnex.us/its-a-tra... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...

Re:Now vulnerable to Windows and Linux Security Bu

[dl_sledding]

...that take 30 minutes out of your life to install, and then requires a reboot, which takes another 10 minutes out of your life, all the while you just wanted to shut down and go home.

Meanwhile, in Linux-land, install the updates as a background process that doesn't impede your workday, and reboot whenever the hell you feel like it.

This is the biggest reason IMO that Windows 10 is a joke. Come on, Microsoft, can't you do your updates in the background and not waste my time during reboots or bootup? Get into this millennium and start acting like a mature operating system.

How freakin' lame.

Anyone remember colinux?

[Cley Faye]

At some point, we had a nice experiment-thingy called colinux. It was the linux kernel as a windows binary. Obviously they used some "dummy" drivers for networking and stuff, but with an XServer, you could natively run linux binaries on windows. It was fun. If this is anything like that, AND have no trace of microsoft fuckups, I can really see it work out.

Re:Anyone remember colinux?

[JustNiz]

Why?
If want to run a professional-grade OS, why would you want the fuckup that is Windows running under it?

Re:Anyone remember colinux?

[Cley Faye]

Because some places have less than cooperative admins and won't give you the choice of running whatever you want.
I personally develop software that target windows on linux, but I've seen engineers that think it is impossible. And these people can end up having the last word in software choices, sadly.

Re:Why bother

[nullchar]

They may already have access. I hope you have hardened SSH.

But

[ChrisMaple]

Does it run Linux?

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'd rather have a real UNIX/Linux on the metal.

So you never virtualize or paravirtualize, then.

Re:The lack of technical precision in TFS is annoy

[RavenLrD20k]

Score 101, Slashdot? I see what you're doing today... and I'm kinda hating you for it; but at the same time, it's better than some of the recent jokes /. did on this day. Good play.

Unity

[WiWaG]

We come One

what is new here?

[u19925]

Didn't windows have POSIX layer as early as 1995? I have used it and hence I know it. The POSIX layer was written on top of NT kernel (not on top of win32 subsystem) and didn't interact well with rest of Windows. E.g. no gui.

The problem with this and cygwin etc is that the interaction is not seamless. E.g. in unix, everyone uses .jpg for photos. In windows, it could be .JPG or .jpg. Since the filenames are case sensitive in shell, you get different behavior. As a unix/windows user, I have habit of typing "rm *.jpg" on linux and "del *.jpg" on windows. But with bash, you will have to do "rm *.jpg *.JPG". Very soon it gets confusing. Create a file name "a.htm" and "a.html" using bash. Go to cmd and type "del *.htm", your "a.html" gone, something you don't expect. The problem is interoperability between two distinct personalities.

actually - this will be useful for me.

[choke]

Not that I happen to love Ubuntu particularly, or windows particularly but this is a decent bridge for a guy like me who is heavy in Linux, needs windows for some ms-related stuff. I'll definitely make use of it.