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Microsoft Works To Port Ubuntu To Windows ARM (neowin.net)

Billly Gates shares a report: It was this time last year that Microsoft announced that it was bringing Ubuntu to the Windows Store (now the Microsoft Store), along with other Linux distributions. If you check out the app in the Store now though, you'll find that it only works on x64 devices, meaning that you can't run it on any of the new Windows 10 on ARM PCs. That's all about to change though. In a session at Microsoft's Build 2018 developer conference today called Windows 10 on ARM for Developers, the company showed off Ubuntu running on an ARM PC, with the app coming from the Microsoft Store. It will finally support ARM64 PCs, although x86 devices are still out of luck.

17 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. It's *not* Linux! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not "running Linux" by definition, because Linux is only a kernel and it is completely absent. Instead, MS is providing an emulation of the Linux syscall interface enabling unaltered Linux applications to run.

    (That said, this will probably prove to be the simplest way of running "Linux" on an ARM laptop, thanks to the joys of ARM SoC vendors not providing sane drivers..)

    1. Re:It's *not* Linux! by darthsilun · · Score: 2

      ... providing an emulation of the Linux syscall interface enabling unaltered Linux applications to run.

      Something FreeBSD has been doing for the better part of 20 years. It's not rocket surgery.

    2. Re:It's *not* Linux! by sconeu · · Score: 2

      As I recall, SCO did something similar as well (before they turned evil). It was used as evidence in part of the trial.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    3. Re: It's *not* Linux! by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Informative

      It only looks, smells and tastes like Linux until you find that your app doesn't run on Linux in production because you did your development on "Linux" on Windows.

      Microsoft has an incentive to make this happen in the future so that people in crisis mode will throw up their hands and just switch to Microsoft-Linux, and then maybe get rid of Linux altogether.

      Microsoft tried to do the same with Java. Introduce sweet addictive delicious Microsoft-only APIs into Java, hoping lazy developers wouldn't notice that these APIs are only on Microsoft's Java. This was in directly violation of the black-letter language of the written contract. Sun sued. Won $1.2 Billion. Microsoft abandoned Java and created .NET because the Java story was just too compelling. Here we are today where Java popularity (on various sites like TIOBE) exceeds .NET popularity.

      Too bad nobody will ensure the "purity" of Linux. And who says Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is dead?

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    4. Re:It's *not* Linux! by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      As I recall, SCO did something similar as well (before they turned evil). It was used as evidence in part of the trial.

      It was called iBCS. A Linux version came into being later, which begat or was renamed (don't know) the Linux ABI Project.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re: It's *not* Linux! by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nobody will ensure the "purity" of Linux, because that's what the GPL does. I'm not sure what specific FUD you're trying to imply with the EEE remarks, but the evidence for chicanery is pretty weak, and you're sort of pointing out that they aren't that effective at it.

      And not to defend Microsoft, but .NET is better than Java in most respects, and Java's popularity has been propped up by Android. I'm not sure where .NET is headed, but Kotlin is likely to start cutting into Java on mobile in a big way.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  2. who's still selling x86 hardware? by vm · · Score: 2

    ...and why would you buy an x86 desktop or laptop to run Linux under Windows Subsystem for Linux? If you're talking about low power embedded hardware then that's got to be a VERY niche use case.

  3. It's like the year 2001 again by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Embrace, extend, and extinguish -- United States v. Microsoft Corp., 2001

    Microsoft's long history makes them untrustworthy. I think we should be very skeptical of relying on any technology out of Redmond, and view it as a potential trap.

    It seems obvious that MS would like every Linux computer to have a copy of Windows installed. And for people to run their favorite Linux application along side Office 365 or whatever. I can't really blame them, it's a reasonable business strategy. But once MS has power over a market they aren't likely to act in their customer's best interests. Ultimately us consumers need to be cautious of what bargains we strike.

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    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re:It's like the year 2001 again by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Microsoft dominates the desktop and laptop market

    2. Re:It's like the year 2001 again by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2

      I'd be concerned by Google. They're the "don't be evil" guys and I'm typing this on a Google branded device but food for thought.

      Almost every consumer Linux device includes Google Play, first on Android and now Chrome OS.

        Chrome OS now running desktop Linux apps in a container. So your choices for a 'Linux' laptop are bare metal, a surface pro WSL or a pixel book.

    3. Re:It's like the year 2001 again by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

      I'd be concerned by Google.

      I think that's a false dilemma as Google doing bad thing and Microsoft doing bad things are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, I'd recommend being skeptical of the motives of any business. Things can be great as long the business and customers have complementary desires and act in mutual benefit. Things go awry when there is a power imbalance in a relationship, especially if it is possible to act for a short term gain or for an increase in power.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  4. MS Works? by idontusenumbers · · Score: 3, Funny

    Who's using Microsoft Works to port an operating system? It could barely do simple word processing! Maybe one of the bajillion wizards or templates is for porting.

  5. Just use linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I realize some of you have not yet switched to linux. I believe that the time is now, the microsoft and apple operating systems are simply unfit for most actual use cases due to spying, corporate shenannigans and general untrustworthyness.

    Linux will not spy on you, has a low overhead, an extremely high uptime, better security, and tends to keep their applications small and useful.

    The benefits stretch far into the horizon beyond the points I have brought up. It really is time to just get rid of the spyware and start using a machine properly to get work done. We all want to make money and having issues with updates, instability, lack of control, spying etc etc etc just keep costing more and more money while delivering fewer results.

    If you are a business, a private institution or an individual the reasons to have windows are running out rapidly.

    Linux is easy to install, has wide driver and printer support (at present wider support than microsoft, though not apple as apple is now based off the linux kernal), and by default assumes you are in control of your own machine which you purchased vs your machine simply being a physical dongle to connect to a corporations walled services.

    If games are eliminated as well as specialty applications (which should have been web based and not installed applications to begin with) then what reason is left to run such an abusive thing upon your hardware?

  6. Re: Windows on Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Because as someone who has used nothing but floss software since 2004, my girlfriend is angry at me because I am ethically opposed to installing excell while she thinks libre Office is the biggest pile of crap she has ever seen and thinks it's still lacking functionality from 1993. You can change the libre Office/ms Office juxtaposition for pretty much any software comparison probably. I know when I began I was frustrated at the lack of decent CAD tools. 14 years later the offerings have not improved in the slightest degree. When you are prepared to tinker floss is great. Even fun. For most it's a stinking steaming pile of half assed crap. Crap I love using.

  7. How about Windows running on Linux instead? by molarmass192 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I might actually consider a Windows shell that runs on Ubuntu, but an Ubuntu shell running on Windows, yeah, no thanks. The broken bits are still non-optional.

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    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  8. Re: Windows on Linux by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2
    F/OSS can't be decoupled from the business model. Whatever your licensing model, someone needs to do requirements analysis and needs to pay the developers. For very small projects, the developers can be paid by the product itself: i.e. it saves them more time in the long run than they spend developing it. I've released open source projects for that reason: it costs me nothing to release the code and if I get even one useful bug report with a reduced test case then it's a net win for me. For something like an office suite, you typically have a few hundred million potential users with very similar sets of requirements. It's easy as a proprietary software company with a lot of money in the bank to do the development up-front and then get them all to pay a relatively small amount to cover the costs. It's much harder to get them to agree up front to fund development, and if you do they tend to expect that the features / bugs that are most important to them are prioritised. There's also a business case for picking whatever is the most popular one, because you're sharing the risk with more other companies. Even if the total risk is higher with a proprietary product, because the vendor can move it in a direction you don't like or discontinue it entirely, your company's share of the risk may be lower.

    Open source works very well when you have either a relatively small number of customers, who have a sufficient need that they will fund development directly, or when you have a large number of customers with sufficiently different needs that they all want to pay someone to add the specific features that they need. There are also some half-way steps that are convenient for a lot of companies. A number of big companies don't really use MS Office in important places, they use a custom stack that happens to be implemented on top of the MS Office platform. They get some of the benefits of open source (it can be customised for their use) and those are the ones that they care the most about.

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    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  9. Re:ARM64 by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What we need is a full support of Windows apps on Linux...and then throw Windows away.