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Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment can run in Windows (wordpress.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
"This is one of the coolest tickets I've seen on GitHub," writes Ubuntu developer Adolfo Jayme Barrientos, adding "this kind of surreal compatibility between platforms is now enabled...the fact that you can execute and use Linux window managers there, without virtual machines, is simply mind-blowing."
"The Windows 10 Anniversary Update coming in August includes an unusual feature aimed at developers: an Ubuntu sub-system that lets you run Linux software using a command-line interface," explains Liliputing.com "Preview versions have been available since April, and while Microsoft and Canonical worked together to bring support for the Bash terminal to Windows 10, it didn't take long for some users to figure out that they could get some desktop Linux apps to run in Windows. Now it looks like you can even load Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment, making windows 10 look like Ubuntu.
"The Windows 10 Anniversary Update coming in August includes an unusual feature aimed at developers: an Ubuntu sub-system that lets you run Linux software using a command-line interface," explains Liliputing.com "Preview versions have been available since April, and while Microsoft and Canonical worked together to bring support for the Bash terminal to Windows 10, it didn't take long for some users to figure out that they could get some desktop Linux apps to run in Windows. Now it looks like you can even load Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment, making windows 10 look like Ubuntu.
Hm? ANSWER ME!
I used/supported Windows for close to 20 years before I retired in 2010. At that time I decided I was done with using MS products, and moved all of my home machines over to single-boot Ubuntu. After seeing what a "turd_in_the_punchbowl" Windows 10 is, privacy-wise, I couldn't be happier with my decision.. I suppose for those who are *forced* to use Windows, either by their job or perhaps they just *think* they *have* to use Windows, this might be useful, but not for those of us who don't care to be MS's "product" and use Linux natively...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
After all those decades of various Linux distributions unsuccessfully trying to look like Windows, now you can make Windows actually look like one such distributions - Ubuntu.
Oh, the irony. It seems that the Year of Linux on the Desktop has finally arrived, but not in a way anyone could have anticipated :)
If only 'they' can come up with a Linux desktop environment that is actually mindblowing. That would be nice.
The sooner I can ditch my mac mini and aging macbook pro after the linux update is released instead of only in developer mode.
Only reason I kept either was for the integrated shell to connect to unix machines. Now they are paperweights with this update. Not a fan of Ubuntu, but linux is linux underneath, I'll take what I can get without having to run VM's with limited resources on a Surface Pro.
Now lets give them systemd
None of the linked article explain how this is done. Can anyone chime in and explain? Are the binaries in ELF or in PE? Did they finally complete a POSIX-compatible libc or did they implement the Linux kernel syscall API? Is there some kind of host process that intercepts the syscalls and implements them in user space?
I had Ubuntu in my dell laptop but I uninstalled and put windows. The only reason is that i am not used to Ubuntu interface
If they can get a build environment going, then NetBSD's pkgsrc collection ported over, we are in good shape.
If small developers with limited time budgets can just target their game at Linux, and have it automagically run on Windows, this might be quite the attractive option. No porting, just write for one "lowest common denominator" and let the OSes themselves sort it out. I would assume things intended to be cross-platform, like Vulkan, would also fit into this "it just works, everywhere" paradigm.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Ok - I fail to see how this is news. Cygwin has provided Gnu tools in windows forever. Cygwin-X has provided X11 in Windows forever.
So now Ubuntu has repacked the existing capability and it is news?
I fail to see what is new here.
I have had access to Bash on Windows since at least 2000.
Do we all just forget what we had before and then decide it's new when we see it again?
Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment can run in Windows
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish...
So you can run Unity in Windows.
"Now it looks like you can even load Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment, making windows 10 look like Ubuntu."
First off, isn't that kind of like buying a Ferrari rag top and driving it around with reins and a buggy whip?
Second off, why on Earth would anyone want to inflict Unity on Windows. I don't much care for Windows, but have a heart!
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
Well, ht young kiddies use Ubuntu, and for them everything is new.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
i just put Debian Jessie on an older laptop to fart around with some LinuxCNC after several years of using *buntu near exclusively. I like it, there's something reassuring in having a definite root user account again. Xfce is crisp on this old celeron with 500MB memory...
I'm old-school and was getting into computers before Microsoft was much of anything. They have epitomized all that is wrong with corporate power from the beginning. I don't trust them. I don't want anything to do with them. I don't want to be tied to anything that's tied to them at all, if at all possible.
"The love of money is the root of all evil." When you see evil in something, it is wise to separate yourself from it...
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Some compare this to embrace and extend. Some IE features such as XMLHTTPRequest that Microsoft added to the web actually made interactive web possible for things like messaging apps. Instead of balking at Microsoft's ideas, why not adopt them into open source projects? If microsoft had not adopted Web technology it would have instead made its own entirely proprietary protocol. I dont know, it sounds like its much easier to emulate a few Microsoft extensions to an open protocol than to try to emulate an entirely proprietary protocol. Why not emulate Microsofts extensions instead of just complain? Thats what doesnt make sense about the embrace extend argument, if they make entirely their own proprietary protocol, does that make things easier for you to support? It was a while before Linux could support additional filesystem permissions like inherited permissions and a seperate create and modify bit, does it today, even, features found in Windows for some time.
Fortunately much of Linux userland is under GPL so if Microsoft does make any change to a Linux userland tool, it would have to contribute it.
I am undecided on the effect this could cause. On one hand, it might make it easier for more people to get used to using Linux apps as a stepping stone to going with a Linux system. On the other hand, it allows people to get a Linux userland without the Linux kernel, perhaps reducing usage of the Linux kernel.
Instead of working with Microsoft. I think Canonical should be working with Dell, Lenovo, HP etc to get Linux to support more PC hardware adn get Linux installed as an alternative on off the shelf computers. These makers could also fund WINE and a Windows driver compatability layer for Linux, which would eventually payoff in freeing them from MS royalties.
With much tinkering I found an even better way of using bash and unity. If anyone is interested here is how I did it:
1. Uninstalled the bloatware called Windows 10.
2. Installed Linux.
3. Now all the ransomware nag prompts from those shady folks in Redmond don't bother me anymore.
Flush, and the glasses on the tray are refilled.
The seamless integration you always have dreamt of.
Now, the POSIX system calls are not run completely in user space.
The SFU/SUA crap did this for Windows since NT 4.
You will NEED the speed - because Win 10 abuses use of hardware to the point of teary-eyed frustration.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Wine on Linux, but, the other way around.
Also, see iBCS under Linux. I'd used this nearly 20 years ago to run other OS binaries directly on Linux (without virtualization).
Canonical doesn't see Windows as reins and a buggy whip, but as a monetizing layer. If Microsoft gives Canonical a kickback for every Ubuntu-on-Windows-10 user, then Canonical might discontinue profitless standalone-Ubuntu.
to Microsoft?
How long before MS buys Canonical?
all I do know is that in recent times Ubuntu has reduced the quality of its software to align itself with MS (continual beta)
Lipstick on a pig..
Or in this case, Shit on the Pigs face.
Boy, that's got to be something a whole two masochists would want to do. Take the worst part of Linux and run it in Windows! Wow! I think I'd rather put toothpicks under my fingernails.
I don't respond to AC's.
Nice Microsoft Windows 10 is going to have this. But seriously, the one thing I don't like about Ubuntu is Unity.
You could have already done this in a VM in Windows. The idea of actually running Linux applications in Windows without a VM seems nice, but actually, it integrates so poorly with normal Windows apps that you might as well be running a VM. Trying to access the same files from Windows and Ubuntu within the root file system leads to problems. You can only do that within the drives, such as /mnt/c. You cannot run Windows applications from the Linux command line or Linux applications from the Windows command line. If you want to run a desktop environment you've got two separate desktops, similar to a VM.
Two great sucks that can suck together!
For those people who hate both Unity and Windows.
So now I can overlay one dreadful GUI with another equally dreadful GUI.
Why would I want to do this?
Are the three letter agencies are so desperate to get everyone onto the Windows 10 spyware platform that they'll try and persuade people this is a cool idea? Or is it embrace, extend, extinguish? I think open software, allowing people the freedom to choose not to give all their data to some massive state/corporate owned database, is something that annoys some of the powers that be so much that they'll try to get people into their clutches by any means.
Why on earth would anyone use the incredible retarded Unity UI on an unstable server like Windows.
Its like going for worst of both worlds on purpose.
Windows quality UI on a Unix backend - yes, I would pay for that ... oh wait isnt that MacOS?
Let's see- Unity or MS-Windows 10 interfaces? What kind of choice is that? Just shoot me! I think I will stick with KDE, Mate, Cinnamon, LXDE, or XFCE!
Being able to run Linux apps in Windows is like bragging that gold leaf will float in a sewage tank.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Sounds awesome! Sign me up.
Interesting thought... though unfortunately, when it comes to games, the biggest issue is that they are (usually) tied to Direct X, which is Microsoft Only.
There are efforts to port Direct X to Linux (the WINE guys), its an uphill battle as it requires tonnes of reverse engineering and testing, plus MS likes to make massive changes in new versions.
If game developers were to move away from Direct X, and on to something cross-platform, then the bar is much lower to supporting Linux and friends.
Pathetic
Wow. havent seen that in a long time.
So Windows got linux/ubuntu emulator?
Should we call it "Uine" or better yet "Line"?
"Line" is not an emulator?
4wdloop
microsoft trying to kill off linux?
Unity can run natively under Windows?
I knew it was bad, but this is really damning evidence. I think I'll stick with MATE.
... the subject says it all.
"It also opens the door to running alternate desktop environments if youâ(TM)re not a fan of the Windows user interface (although the method described in that link uses Cygwin rather than Ubuntu on Windows."
Now if you could only get rid of that pesky spyware laden operating system under it then you would be golden.
Both suck like fuck.
use anything else. Redhat is also microsoft's bitch.
Grab Virtualbox and/or YUMI and install a bunch of them.
If game developers were to move away from Direct X, and on to something cross-platform, then the bar is much lower to supporting Linux and friends.
Speaking as a game developer... I'd suggest its not any technical hurdles that keep games away from Linux. Most game engines, whether commercial or custum, are written in portable C++, and use abstraction layers to hide any platform-specific code. In my own game engine, I'd estimate that platform-specific code only amounts to less than 5% of the total code.
Rather, I think it's simply the market-share of Linux... or rather, the lack thereof. Many games have Mac ports, meaning they obviously have an OpenGL renderer and POSIX compliant backend, but still no Linux support. It's pretty hard to get motivated to support an entirely new platform that only has 1% market-share, and it doesn't help matters when that 1% is further fragmented into a bunch of different distros, further complicating support and compatibility testing.
It's the same problem Windows phones have. By all accounts, Windows phones are pretty nice, but no one makes apps for them because of the abysmal market-share, which in turn drives more users away. It's sort of a catch-22 for platforms with a small market-share, making it extremely difficult to break in.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
run that turd of a desktop on Linux. Never mind Windows.
Unity was born when there was some plan to have Ubuntu touch interfaces on tablets and phones. By the time anything was delivered that mostly worked, that ship had sailed. Apple and Android had both markets locked up.
In a sense it's not that different from the UI from Windows 8 that was intended to have similar ubiquity, and was largely as reviled.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Does this mean this will be the end of Linux on the Desktop? Thanks Ubuntu.
This is exactly where Vulkan and perhaps OpenGL have to take up the slack. For all the things Notch did wrong coding Minecraft, he made a fundamentally sound decision to not be tied to any particular OS or hardware platform. So long as the cross-compatibility can be maintained while ditching the pitfalls of Java, that part of the model is something other developers should look to emulate, because it worked out very well. Minecraft "just runs" on pretty much anything with sufficient power to run it. Unfortunately the bar of "sufficient" is rather high because Java, but the underlying concept has been proven.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I understand about market share. Say Linux is 10%, OS X is 20%, and Windows is 70%, just for the sake of argument. Right now it seems to pay to develop for the 70%, then maybe port for the 20%. What I'm proposing is that the mechanism works the other way around. Target the 10% knowing that the other 90% will be able to just run it unchanged. It may not have the right "skin" for that platform, but I can't think of many games that do, and the "authorized look and feel" changes from time to time anyhow. This doesn't break older software, it just makes them stand out as being older.
Instead of writing for 70% of the market first, why not write for 100% of the market first?
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
If the Game Engines are already abstracting this away, why /not/ provide builds for smaller OS's. I know there are extensions to Visual Studio to build binaries for Linux.
I think what a lot of game developers are missing is that gaming is the /only/ reason many users are keeping Windows. I'm 100% positive I know at least a dozen people personally (and I'm not a very social person) that would ditch Windows completely if they could game easier on Linux. Is that extra 1% effort not worth it to you to provide a choice to your users?
I understand that =<1% is minuscule in many developers minds, but if you remember there are roughly 5.6 Billion people in the developed world with access to a computer and the internet. That 1% equates to 56 Million people. Then you must keep in mind those using Linux are (typically) more technically minded and willing to exert more effort to play something natively in their Distro. There are various fans of specific software that literally make it their duty to build wrappers/packages for specific distributions (Package Maintainers) so things work easier for the distribution as a whole. If you provide an accurate dependency list (which would usually be included in the engine you're using), then the distro package maintainers can handle the rest for you.
If your game is well made, and becomes popular, linux users tend to promote companies that work with the open source community. That's free promotion for simply making an effort to appeal to approx 56,000,000 more users.
That's worth the effort in my books... But as you can probably tell, I'm a Linux user.
Make it exclusive to Windows. Linux will be better place without them. (why not systemd, unity, gnome too?)
Ok - I fail to see how this is news. Cygwin has provided Gnu tools in windows forever. Cygwin-X has provided X11 in Windows forever.
SFL and Cygwin have drastically different performance profiles.
SFL is syscall translation in kernel space running on pico processes; Cygwin is syscall emulation in userspace running Windows processes and Windows threads.
Windows is built around an object oriented philosophy (handles) where, for instance, access rights are established upon handle creation. Handles covers many more types of resources in Windows compared to e.g. file descriptors or inodes in Linux. But the key difference is in lifetime. Under Linux access rights are checked on each access. Under Windows you request access rights on handle creation, a jump table is established with an entry for each operation - some of them pointing to "access denied" - and hence Windows does *not need* to check rights on each access. Now, if you want to emulate Linux inodes/fds, you would need to create/dispose the handle on each access, or design some system with cache/sweep. Either way you are going to sacrifice some performance. And this is just one example.
SFL uses pico processes which do not own Windows handles the way Windows processes do. It is Linux like processes running on top of pico processes. I believe the real work for MS has been in the areas where those processes touch the same interfaces (such as file system) which must allow for the Linux way of accessing resources.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
He's actually writing for 99% of the market, and the other 1% aren't worth the cost.
Honestly, this is a great but I just do not see the point of using linux without using its native filesystem (non ntfs-3g, vfat). If Microsoft were to implement native filesystem access such as ext4 or zfs, the opensource community will take care of the rest. Linux is powerful not because of its front-end, fancy windows etc..., but because all the free software packages that come with it that Windows does not offer. It is nice to completely virtualize X-server in windows, but what about running native ELF executables?
...OTOH, KDE had their stuff on Windows since around the release of KDE4 (see windows.kde.org); KDE only lacked Terminal Support (so no Konsole) because Microsoft didn't have a property PTY/console device; and Plasma was capable of replacing the Explorer shell for most of that time though the option was disabled.
However, as you can see it never took off. So don't expect the same for Ubuntu's Unity.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Does it actually run instead of the Windows 10 desktop or is it just running over it?
It depends on what you mean by "Linux". When you say Windows there are only a couple of actual versions that it would be, if you're talking about Linux it's just the kernel and there are many many different customized Linux-based operating systems and different drivers with varing performance under certain circumstances. For example you have SteamOS and Valve partnered with nVidia to include their proprietary drivers and Gameworks technology in Valve's Linux-based operating system, yes it's Linux but that doesn't mean the games that run on SteamOS will run well, or indeed at all, on other Linux-based operating systems.
You will NEED the speed - because Win 10 abuses use of hardware to the point of teary-eyed frustration.
Can you give a specific example of this? I haven't found this to be true at all, in fact it's the opposite and Win10 is less resource-hungry than its predecessors.
Anecdotally, I have had the begging, pleading ask for help by 3 different users in 2 different continents - because their shiny machines now were so aggressively saturated by background activity that they literally could not open a new browser tab, or a second application.
Because I come from security, the friends mentioned each approached because they thought they must "have a virus" or "been hacked".
All 3 cases were taskman and perfmon checked - 100% disk utilization - in one case for hours. Not slouch machines. Each had 8 GB RAM - an amount I find miniscule, but perfectly functional for the other 3 Macs and 2 Ubuntu machines in my household.
Running through and making many services disabled or manual gave relief to two machines. The third, a Celeron-based Toshiba touch-screen all-in-one, required a forklift to 16 GB RAM.
Two main culprits are aggressive Windows Search and ridiculous memory optimization, with dynamic page compression. Superfetch caching seems to be totally counterproductive as well.
The single, most noticeable change was found here:
What fixed it for me is going to settings, system, notifications, and turning off "show me tips about Windows." I believe that was the one causing problems, though I turned all of them off besides the app notifications. System processes went back down after a restart and haven't spiked since.
https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/3h4wjg/windows_10_high_disk_usage_100_ive_seen_a_thread/
I kid you f-ing not.
After this change, 100% disk IO is still a boot-storm issue, and does not quiesce for 8-15 minutes from startup. However, after this point, the systems are usable, if not head-spinningly fast.
You have a system that is blindly trying to optimize a number of hardware and logical subsystems in different silos. The result is excessive taxing of disk, memory and CPU to pre-fetch, cache and compress - at the expense of performance of the shared resources they try to conserve.
This is the path Linux is headed towards. At least it's still 4-5 years behind. SystemDbusEtc... As they once said in Mad Magazine: "Yecccch."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
There are a few reasons. Many commercial games use a lot of middleware libraries, not just the game engine (just count the logos on some games' splash screen). I was working as a contractor for a port recently, and I think there was easily a dozen middleware components in the game. These types of libraries tend to be licensed on a per-platform basis. Even if they're available on Linux at all, the licensing costs alone might preclude any reasonable chance at profits. Moreover, it's never "free" to develop and deploy to a new platform - especially if your devs don't have a lot of experience there. You need new build servers, new dev and test stations or partitions. You need to officially support the new platform. Beyond that, there's also the sheer inertia of larger companies when making decisions that cost a lot of money or time up front. You actually have to make a business case for supporting a new platform before you can do it.
Indie games tend to have an advantage here because of their lightweight nature. The less middleware you have in your engine and the smaller your game's footprint is, the easier the port is. And if the devs want to support Linux, they don't have to justify it in a business case. They just decide and do it. It's the same reason indie games have such a wealth of creativity compared to larger dev companies. With larger companies, you spend a lot of money developing games, and that tends to make people a bit more risk-averse, which is understandable with many millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs on the line. Indie games can also make a reasonable profit with a lot fewer sales, so niche markets tend to look reasonably attractive to them.
That's why at my latest contract job, I'm helping to port a 100 million dollar game to OS X, but not Linux. As far as I know, no one's seriously even brought it up. For my own game using my own engine, I'll be adding Linux support simply because I want to. I wish it were different, but that's the reality, at least so far as I've seen.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Thank you for your further input.
I guess the TL;DR version is "because bu$ine$$" which is what I always assumed in the first place. I'm guessing very few (if any) managers or higher-ups even know that anything exists beyond Windows and OS X (or "PC" and "Mac" as they usually put it). I can see the uphill battle if a dev team tried to push for it.
Personally I don't actually play video games. I just don't see the appeal when I could be doing something more constructive with my time. I also have a wife and kids, so that restricts my personal time quite a bit as it is.
box-sizing - CSS | MDN
Although, perhaps less incompetent than yourself, as I don't insult others when I don't know what the fuck I am talking about.
The promised year of Linux on the desktop ! or close enough.