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.

Comments

No Thank you....

[LVSlushdat]

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...

Re: No Thank you....

[dbreeze]

Part of earning my living is done using the gEDA tools to reverse engineer old CNC controls. Linux is no toy for me. I'm sure there's a few network admins and others who are also glad there's a legit alternative to the Microsoft universe for doing real work.

"making windows 10 look like Ubuntu"

[wvmarle]

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 :)

Re:"making windows 10 look like Ubuntu"

[wierd_w]

If unity can run, then other more windows-like managers might also. Say Mint's skinned version of Mate or Cinnamon. Might be an interesting way of evading the adverts plastered into the hackjob of the win10 start menu.

Some part of me sees this as the "embrace" stage of the dreaded trio though.

Re:Windows(tm) or windows as in rectangle?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

GREAT!

Now you can run Unity, the sluggish alternative to Gnome, on top of Microsoft's latest offering - famous for continuous 100% disk I/O utilization for system services!

This could be good for the Linux gaming community.

[Mal-2]

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.

It's a trap

[McGruber]

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish...

Re:How does it work?

[benjymouse]

The subsystem for Linux (SFL) implements a (large) subset of Linux syscalls.It allows unmodified ELF64 binaries to run. The syscalls are implemented in kernel, but acts upon Windows resources.

Re:Windows(tm) or windows as in rectangle?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

It's really not particularly different from the old, OpneNT/Interix/SUA subsystem that MS supported for more than 10 years on NT and XP/Win7.
They finally admitted to having been handed their asses, and submitted meekly to the idea that the world of Linux kernel development had done a better POSIX implementation than a handful of paid engineers who used to work for Softway.

Re:How does it work?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

It's linked in the second page attached to this story:
https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/637

Re:Windows(tm) or windows as in rectangle?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Not to completely dis Softway, the OpenNT guys. Walli and team were a big part of getting POSIX and ISO reconciled in the 90's.

Here's a recent recounting, from the man who made it happen:

Now, six years later, what if you could properly port all of your business-critical UNIX applications to Windows NT and have them behave with absolute fidelity? And by port, I mean type “make” at the command line and fiddle a bit in an afternoon, not rewrite the application over months of time to Win32. What if you no longer had to buy and maintain outrageously priced hardware from the UNIX system vendors, but could buy PC-class hardware? Microsoft was on an explosive growth curve and Windows NT was a proper operating system. Linux was still very much in its infancy and a long way from being proven. The UNIX Systems Labs v. Berkeley Software Design lawsuit had put a chill over the BSD community.

https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/running-linux-apps-on-windows-and-other-stupid-human-tricks-part-i-acbf5a474532#.o7vb5eph9

Great!

[DougReed]

So now I can overlay one dreadful GUI with another equally dreadful GUI.

Why would I want to do this?

Re: This could be good for the Linux gaming commun

[Dutch Gun]

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.