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posted by on Thursday March 31 2016, @12:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the conspiring-with-the-enemy dept.

Today at the Microsoft BUILD Conference [keynote video], Kevin Gallow, VP of Windows Developer Platform, announced that the Bash shell is coming to Windows in the form of an Ubuntu image running natively on Windows. This summer, an update will be available to Windows 10 that will allow you to run user mode Linux shells and command line tools, unchanged. According to Scott Hanselman, once you have the update, you can download Ubuntu on Windows from Canonical from the Windows store which will install a real Linux binary. Dustin Kirkland, part of Canonical's Ubuntu Product and Strategy team, explains this magic in more detail here.

From the last link:

"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.


Editor's note: This story is very much related to this one, but that one doesn't mention the actual Ubuntu-Microsoft cooperation, or Ubuntu's involvement at all. Also, this isn't an April Fools joke, despite me thinking it was one originally.

Original Submission

Related Stories

The Linux Subsystem for Windows 55 comments

MS is getting more and more odd.

Several places have covered a new MS project bringing a Linux subsystem to Windows kernel components. From an Ars article:

the company has developed some Windows kernel components (lxcore.sys, lxss.sys, presumably standing for "Linux core" and "Linux subsystem," respectively) that support the major Linux kernel APIs. These components are not GPLed and do not appear to contain Linux code themselves; instead, they implement the Linux kernel API using the native Windows NT API that the Windows kernel provides. Microsoft is calling this the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL).

[...] Our understanding is that these are not recompiled or ported versions of the programs (as are used in tools aiming to provide a Unix-like environment on Windows such as Cygwin) but instead unmodified programs. Microsoft is describing this in terms of providing a Linux-like command-line environment at the moment, but from what we can gather, there's little fundamental restriction to this, potentially opening the door to running a wide range of Linux programs natively on Windows.

Also of note in the Ars article:

Microsoft [says] that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will include the ability to run the popular bash shell from Unix, along with the rest of a typical Unix command-line environment.

Other sources: Zdnet, winbeta.org, AnandTech, The Register.


Original Submission

Ubuntu on Windows Followup 52 comments

Here is a really nice blog post from one of the developers of The Linux Subsystem for Windows or Ubuntu on Windows. This blog is by one of the developers, and does a good job of explaining what it will look like as well as presents motivation (although we have no way of knowing MS's true motivation).

Is everything working exactly as expected? No, not quite. Not yet, at least. The vast majority of the LTP passes and works well. But there are some imperfections still, especially around tty's an[d] the vt100. My beloved byobu, screen, and tmux don't quite work yet, but they're getting close!

And while the current image is Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, we're expecting to see Ubuntu 16.04 LTS replacing Ubuntu 14.04 in the Windows Store very, very soon.

Finally, I imagine some of you -- long time Windows and Ubuntu users alike -- are still wondering, perhaps, "Why?!?" Having dedicated most of the past two decades of my career to free and open source software, this is an almost surreal endorsement by Microsoft on the importance of open source to developers. Indeed, what a fantastic opportunity to bridge the world of free and open source technology directly into any Windows 10 desktop on the planet. And what a wonderful vector into learning and using more Ubuntu and Linux in public clouds like Azure. From Microsoft's perspective, a variety of surveys and user studies have pointed to bash and Linux tools -- very specifically, Ubuntu -- be available in Windows, and without resource-heavy full virtualization.


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:19PM

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:19PM (#325244) Journal

    MS: powershell is so much better than unix!
    *deluge of shills in forums touting the OO of powershell, forgetting that linux is chock full of OO scripting*
    FF some years
    MS: good news everyone we run bash!

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:43PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:43PM (#325344)

      > linux is chock full of OO scripting

      Really? I'll admit it's been a few years since I've done any but the most trivial Linux scripting, but I don't recall any object-oriented features. Not that I've noticed any when I glanced at Powershell either.

      Details? Or a good place to get an overview (of one or both).

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by ThePhilips on Monday April 04 2016, @09:32AM

        by ThePhilips (5677) on Monday April 04 2016, @09:32AM (#326822)

        Python & Ruby both support OO scripting. Even Perl, with some fairly obscure syntax.

        P.S. If you have expected OO in bash, then sorry, no. But the stuff people do in PowerShell is really closer to the Python/Ruby/Perl than to the pure shell. (Well, the difference is that people Windows have only PowerShell, while on Linux you have much broader spectrum of generic and specialized scripting facilities.)

        P.P.S. Perl + Win32::OLE does the job on Windows nicely. Now if one would add a decent shell, then it would make life much easier on Windows.

    • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:11PM

      by bitstream (6144) on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:11PM (#325355) Journal

      What do you mean by "OO scripting" ?

      • (Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:39PM

        by tftp (806) on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:39PM (#325368) Homepage

        Perhaps, Perl or Python or any other script that supports OOP?

        class Employee:
           'Common base class for all employees'
           empCount = 0

           def __init__(self, name, salary):
              self.name = name
              self.salary = salary
              Employee.empCount += 1

        • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:29PM

          by Bot (3902) on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:29PM (#325431) Journal

          Yes, being able to script using smalltalk or whatever other interpreted language that lets you spit and parse objects should you choose to go the json way.

          --
          Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 2) by WillR on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:30PM

    by WillR (2012) on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:30PM (#325246)
    So, is there some secret sauce in the Ubuntu userland that's required for this to work, or could we package up Fedora or Debian or Arch as a .appx Windows app and have it work the same way?
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:50PM (#325254)

      From what I have been reading it will run the elf binary natively in windows. That means they have had to have ported some parts of the linux kernel into a NT subsystem. For example Win32 is one of the few subsystems in windows. There used to be an OS/2 (1.3) subsystem and a posix subsystem. Think they removed them at some point. It sounds like they are adding in a linux one.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_2000_architecture.svg [wikipedia.org]

      So long as they can stub out the memory areas correctly and get the jump tables correct from the POV of the application it would just look like another linux distro. In this case Ubuntu with all of your drives mounted under /mnt.

      To pull that off they will need someone who is fairly familiar with both kernels. As what we as developers deal with normally is not the NT kernel exec services but the Win32 abstraction layer which does it on our behalf. Which is probably why they partnered with Canonical who has been neck deep in linux for years.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:50PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:50PM (#325346)

        Is porting the right word though? That would imply starting with Linux source code and ending with an open-source (or illegal) implementation. Not that I'd completely rule that out, but it doesn't seem like Microsoft's style.

        Contrast with WINE, which as I understand it does basically the same thing in reverse, but without using any MS source code as a starting point - building a reimplementation of core OS interfaces based on system documentation and reverse engineering. Should be much simpler for Microsoft since Linux internals tend to have much better public documentation, and you can go to the source for definitive details.

        Perhaps I should actually RTFA.

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:53PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:53PM (#325347)

          From tfa: "(No, it's not open source at this time.):

          So yeah, I was right - it must be a reimplementation, not a port. They even made my WINE comparison.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jcross on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:02PM

      by jcross (4009) on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:02PM (#325260)

      It sounds like they wrote something like WINE in reverse. I thought I'd never see the day.

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by Nerdfest on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:16PM

        by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:16PM (#325266)

        Cool. This should help people move to Linux a little more easily.

        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday April 01 2016, @12:50AM

          by edIII (791) on Friday April 01 2016, @12:50AM (#325560)

          I'm actually a little pissed :)

          I've been using MS for years as my development/entertainment machine, and Linux for all the real work. Now I can have a full shell on my development machine to do things with?

          Great. Now if only I could stomach the mass surveillance....

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:30PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:30PM (#325275) Journal

        The last time I checked, the biggest roadblock to reverse Wine was the fact that Linux traditionally allows mmap at VM page granularity (4K), while NT limits it to 64K.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:00PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:00PM (#325282) Journal

          Of course Microsoft, as the developers of the NT kernel, can implement whatever it takes to run Linux binaries on Windows. The only restriction is that they have to stay clear from including any GPLed code in the kernel, unless they are happy with the NT kernel being GPLed as well (which I don't assume).

          The interesting thing about this is that, despite being only for command line tools, it actually also should open up Windows for X based Linux applications: There exist X servers for Windows, and ultimately the communication of X programs with the X server is standard TCP/IP. So unless they somehow restrict TCP/IP communication for Linux programs, it should be trivial to run those X clients on Windows, unless they require special abilities (I guess there will not be any memory sharing between Windows and Linux programs, and I could imagine that OpenGL will also not work).

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by schad on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:42PM

            by schad (2398) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:42PM (#325306)

            I imagine Linux programs will be able to interoperate quite well with Windows programs and vice versa. This move doesn't really make any sense otherwise. Nobody wants to run just a bash shell on Windows. You can do that today with Cygwin, and for the sorts of things people use bash to do, it will work exactly as well as bash-on-Windows. No, the point is to run the more bleeding-edge things, which tend to run on Linux (or OSX) only. Someone mentioned Docker. There are also plenty of OSS tools that have a Windows port, but the port maybe isn't a first-class citizen. Maybe there's no package available (compiling from source is beyond the ken of most Windows guys), maybe it's updated only infrequently, maybe not all the functionality is there. That's actually really common. Those are the cases where this will really help.

            But then we get into the question: "Yes, but why?" If you're running some Linux program, why not just run Linux? That's why it's crucial that these programs be able to work with Windows programs. You want your Linux program to talk directly to SQL Server (or SSIS or whatever you've got layered on top of it). You want to put IIS in a Docker container. That stuff's only possible if you allow tight integration between Windows and... I guess they're calling it Windows-on-Linux, even though the other way around makes more sense to me.

            Besides, how else would embrace-extend-extinguish work? You're not gonna lock anybody into any Microsoft products if all their Linux programs run in a Linux-only sandbox on a Windows server, and don't permit them to communicate with Windows programs or the outside world. All you're really doing is, at most, taking a couple bucks away from Red Hat, because now people don't need an entire VM-and-OS (the VM part is already "free," remember, with Hyper-V) to run one piddly little Linux program.

            No, this only makes sense if what you're really doing is opening up Linux programs to lock-in, and that means interop is a crucial need.

            I will say, though, that if not for the deservedly awful reputation MS has, this would be a really good thing. I hope it somehow works out that way, even though I don't have much faith that it will.

            • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:06PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:06PM (#325316)

              Nobody wants to run just a bash shell on Windows. You can do that today with Cygwin, and for the sorts of things people use bash to do, it will work exactly as well as bash-on-Windows.

              Speed. A few years back I had to use Cygwin to compile and run some Linux-only codes, and to run scripts. The compilation was abysmally slow compared to running it on Linux on the same machine. And so was the execution time.

              I'm talking benchmarked one to two orders of magnitude slower here (i.e. 20 to 100 times slower), not numbers out of thin air. Granted, maybe Cygwin improved over the past few years?

              In the article they claim that the ELF binaries run very close to native speed, so that would have been a big win for us.

              • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:17PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:17PM (#325357)

                I'm talking benchmarked one to two orders of magnitude slower here (i.e. 20 to 100 times slower), not numbers out of thin air. Granted, maybe Cygwin improved over the past few years?

                On Unix-like systems, there is a function called fork which (perhaps until now) has no equivalent on Windows. Because of this, the cygwin implementation of this function is very slow (probably at least 100 times slower than the implementation in Linux). This is the main cause for things like shell scripts (which tend to use fork a lot), especially the ones used in build systems, performing very badly in Cygwin.

                If they truly can run bash with performance comparable to Linux, then I guess Microsoft has finally implemented a fast fork on Windows?

              • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:17PM

                by bitstream (6144) on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:17PM (#325477) Journal

                Whenever someone gets access to this Microsoft Linux syscall thing. It would be interesting to see the performance difference.

                And if fork(), mmap()-4k etc is supported without a severe performance penalty.
                Let's not forget messaging between programs in Rexx style between the platforms.

                Btw, Just a fun idea. The BSD Unixes use a BSD license.. and have some Linux emulation and ought to have some quirks. Anyone cares to see if those are present? perhaps it's even "bug compatible" ? ;-)

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @07:49AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @07:49AM (#325631)

                In the article they claim that the ELF binaries run very close to native speed, so that would have been a big win for us.

                When there are two systems being compared, "native speed" without a qualifier can mean either.

                It may mean "native Windows speed", as in Vim will start just as fast as Visual Studio.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @12:38PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @12:38PM (#325700)

                  You might be right, I re-read the main Canonical developer's blog post [dustinkirkland.com] and it says:

                  Oh, and it's totally shit hot! The sysbench utility is showing nearly equivalent cpu, memory, and io performance.

                  but indeed, he doesn't say equivalent to what ... I'd read that as: "equivalent to the same binaries running on Linux" but it might go both ways.

              • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 04 2016, @10:40AM

                by cubancigar11 (330) on Monday April 04 2016, @10:40AM (#326837) Homepage Journal

                There are several ways to improve Cygwin's speed such as having a better passwd/groups file and pruning $PATH of non-cygwin directories (by default it has sytem32 and what not in it). It also helps to keep non-executable files as non-executable (by default every thing on FAT32 is marked exectuable and hence clutters path variable).

                But true - cygwin has actually only gotten slower with time.

            • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:03PM

              by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:03PM (#325352)

              Lots of developers stuck on Windows would love just to have Bash scripting. The Windows command line is horribly underpowered and annoying. Even just Bash would be a huge feature.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @12:31PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @12:31PM (#325697)

                If you install Git for Windows, it comes with a bash terminal (and vim) and unix commands. One of the first thing I install on Windows when I have to use it. Very practical.

              • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday April 01 2016, @02:06PM

                by Pino P (4721) on Friday April 01 2016, @02:06PM (#325742) Journal

                MSYS already gives you Bash, Make, and Coreutils, and PowerShell (included with recent Windows) gives you something at least better than cmd.exe.

            • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 04 2016, @09:39AM

              by cubancigar11 (330) on Monday April 04 2016, @09:39AM (#326825) Homepage Journal

              With Windows 10, the rolling release, the 'user satisfaction program' aka surveillance, windows store exclusive games, dx12, free licensing, etc. the threat to all the companies that are running their own stores on Windows is VERY VERY real and immediate. The only reason people have stuck to Windows over Linux/Mac is gaming. And with this move, Microsoft has silently kicked Valve's SteamOS in the nuts and shown who is the boss. Now games for Windows 10 will run exclusively on Windows 10, but games for SteamOS will run on Windows 10 too. So what incentive is there for a gamer to switch to SteamOS? Or for a game publisher to develop by OpenGL?

              This has been a smart move. One I don't like.

          • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:33PM

            by opinionated_science (4031) on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:33PM (#325333)

            yes, it's amazing what you can do when you have the source code...../s

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:41PM (#325250)

    Whether this is part of a secret plan in Redmond to eventually replace the crufty old Windows API with a Unix style kernel, probably BSD because of the license? Once again, Apple showed them how it could be done. They would still have .NET running on top as their "main" application framework.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:09PM

      by theluggage (1797) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:09PM (#325285)

      I think its more like this: Windows still rules the desktop so the API ain't going anywhere soon, but Linux's* main stronghold is in the server market, and lots of trendy new server-side technologies are either Linux-dependent (e.g. Docker) or at home in a *nix environment (...like, well, practically everything worth running on a server except Microsoft's own stuff - and they've just announced that they're porting SQL Server to Linux). This development could allow Linux services and Windows services to co-exist on a Windows server - long-term, MS could even move their server-side products to Linux without having to maintain separate Windows versions (why compete with Linux on the server when your real leverage is in Exchange, SQL Server, Active Directory etc. which could happily run on Linux?)

      *OTOH, to possibly contradict my own point, if Windows can run Linux binaries and host a Ubuntu userland then, presumably, it could host an Android userland and run Android apps...?

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:39PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:39PM (#325404)

        Why would they want to port Exchange, etc. to Linux? As you say, that's their real leverage. Perhaps they could move their business model to selling Exchange, AD, etc. and not caring about the OS, but it seems more likely that they're trying to position Windows as a "Linux+" platform for those programs: Yeah, you could be running Linux, but run Windows instead and you get all that PLUS access to all these other MS-specific addons...

        That would be much more in line with their usual strategy.

        Essentially it seems they're positioning themselves as the "omni-OS" - seamlessly run both Linux Windows stuff (and it's probably a great foundation for Android compatibility too) , while simultaneously tempting the Linux-based developers to incorporate their "value added" features. If you can't beat them head on, embrace them. Extend their functionality even further. And *then* extinguish. Doesn't address MacOS, but then who cares? There's precious little serious MacOS-specific software in existence any more, even their old allies like Adobe are no longer treating them as the primary target platform.

        In the short-term I heartily approve. In the long term... it seems very likely MS is looking to leverage this for all it's worth. They're an empire in decline after all, and the only way they can hope to hold on to their astounding, illegally-gained market share is to ruthlessly crush the competition, whatever it takes. That sort of position would tempt even the most honest company to... dishonorable conduct. And Microsoft has NEVER been the most honest of companies.

        It seems to me this move is them finally admitting that Linux poses an existential threat. They're now incorporating compatibility of the sort they included for OS/2, and for much the same reason. Make it in everybody's short-term interest to adopt your omni-OS, and it's much easier to then starve out the competition. That they're theoretically in a position to more easily migrate their add-ons to another platform is an added bonus I doubt they're overly concerned with.

        • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:21PM

          by bitstream (6144) on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:21PM (#325478) Journal

          So how did they extinguish OS/2 with their API compatibility?

          Anyone know how users and filesystem is mapped?

        • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:35PM

          by theluggage (1797) on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:35PM (#325541)

          Why would they want to port Exchange, etc. to Linux?

          You're right. Microsoft would never port their enterprise apps to Linux.Oh, wait....

          Serious answer: so they could sell them to customers with Linux systems.

          Perhaps they could move their business model to selling Exchange, AD, etc. and not caring about the OS

          ...I'd suggest that already *is* their business model on the server side, and that server customers don't buy windows, they buy Exchange, AD, SQL Server etc. and get the OS that it runs on. Their main OS competitor in the server space - Linux - is given away for free (or, at least, for the price of support and 'value added') so, going forwards, they can't make money from Windows itself.

          Even on the desktop, the backbone of their "monopoly" has been as much based on Office as it has with Windows itself. When you shift users to Linux, its OpenOffice that's the sticking point, not the Linux desktop. However, there's still the huge mass of legacy & third-party software keeping Windows safe on the desktop.

          Essentially it seems they're positioning themselves as the "omni-OS" - seamlessly run both Linux Windows stuff

          True, but thinking long-term, if you need to support Linux anyway (given their decision to port SQL Server its obviously an issue) and your OS can run both Linux and Windows - why continue to develop the Windows-only version?

          However, in the age of Docker and all that, the Omin-OS* also has the huge advantage that it could potentially host both Windows and Linux containers side-by-side. That could be a killer. Heck, that might tempt me away from my Mac...

          (* some typos are too good to correct!)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:36PM (#325542)

        This set of numbers says that 11 percent [netmarketshare.com] of computer users are running an obsolete version of Windoze.

        Will this run under that?
        Will it run under *any* M$ OS that is not its **current** darling?
        ...or will it be purposely crippled to prevent that?

        .
        ...and another source says that Windoze reached minority status (49.52 percent) in September 2013 [wikimedia.org] with the most recent numbers available (Summer 2015) saying 41.66 percent [wikimedia.org]

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:00AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:00AM (#325633)

          This set of numbers says that 11 percent [netmarketshare.com] of computer users are running an obsolete version of Windoze.

          Windows 7 is approaching EOL, so it wouldn't be wrong to think that upgrading is useless.

          Better get as much out of XP as they can, before they are forced to decide between an iPad and Windows "touch screen edition" 8/8.1/10. A decision which, btw, will be "iPad" for most people.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @07:56AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @07:56AM (#325632)

        I think its more like this: Windows still rules the desktop

        But for how long?

        People hate Windows "touch edition" 8/8.1/10. Microsoft still insists that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows. That means that unless something drastically changes (replace the CEO again?), Windows 7 is going to be the last desktop version of Windows. And Windows 7 will be EOL soon.

        As it is, both iPad and Android are a ton more popular than Surface, so for the majority, the choice will be between keeping Windows 7 or getting an iPad. That leaves us with developers, who will be using Macs to run XCode because they need to sell their stuff to the iPad using public, and gamers.

        How long can gamers keep desktop Windows alive?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:44PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:44PM (#325251)

    >Embrace
    Extend
    Extinguish

    Not surprising that Canonical is involved either.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @03:15AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @03:15AM (#325598)

      So, when will Ubuntu's software center (package manager) start suggesting you install the Windows upgrade? If all your programs can run on Windows, in theory the OS can be transitioned with little to no user impact. Now even Linux users need to worry about automatic updates to Windows 10! Microsoft's upgrade team is really putting in the extra mile.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:50PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:50PM (#325253) Homepage Journal

    The MS strategy seems clear: they want to intercept (and embrace, extend, extinguish) the growing use of Linux for web development, etc..

    However, this can go the other way. This may cause many Windows-based developers and admins to appreciate the Linux world. After all, if it is so good that MS felt the need to support it, well, why not go the rest of the way and just use Linux?

    To me, it reeks of desperation: One MS market after another is dwindling. Most recently, gaming on Linux has become a serious threat. That leaves only MS-Office and corporate networks; the "cloud" could potentially weaken both of those.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:44PM

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:44PM (#325309) Journal

      ...the growing use of Linux for web development, etc..

      Bingo. Though, not so much Linux but OSX. Talk to any webdev and chances are they work on a macbook. The reason is simple, the popular web stacks are all Linux based. Since OSX is "Unix", you already have a high level of compatibility with Linux shell scripts and tools like ssh, scp, rsync, sed, awk, grep etc built right into your OS that also happens to be well supported and easy to use. Where does that leave Windows? There is Cygwin, and I have it on every windows machine I use, but most people want something that works out of the box and Apple gives them just that.

      To me, it reeks of desperation: One MS market after another is dwindling. Most recently, gaming on Linux has become a serious threat. That leaves only MS-Office and corporate networks; the "cloud" could potentially weaken both of those.

      Yup. MS is in a very difficult situation. They built an empire on the PC which is now in a massive decline. The desktop isn't dead (yet), but its role as the primary method of computing has been severely diminished by tablets and phones. Then throw in the fact that any 5-10 year old PC can do 99% of what most people need which is web browsing, media consumption, and office tools. Fewer people are buying new PC's. Consoles took over the gaming side of things and even though MS dove into that arena, they aren't doing very well. They also completely priced themselves out of the web server side of things as well. Their old nickle and dime per client licensing cash cow is dead.

      At this point, MS sees the writing on the wall and is doing whatever it can to keep Windows as a platform relevant.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:01PM (#325315)

        Talk to any webdev and chances are they work on a macbook.

        a disgusting percentage sure, but we're not all yuppy iSlaves.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:15PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:15PM (#325322)

        I do all my web development (including the server code) on my iMac running MAMP. I then test it in a Linux VM, and if all goes as planned I upload it to a Linux VPS. The entire process is painless and my old eyes get to use a 27" retina display.

        • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:39PM

          by LoRdTAW (3755) on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:39PM (#325340) Journal

          I work with a professional web dev shop that does front and back end development. Half of their systems are Mac mini's with dual 24+ inch monitors and the other half, including the bosses setup, are mac books with an external monitor or two (some big, some small). Since they allow BYOD, the devs just unplug their laptop and take it home.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:07AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:07AM (#325636)

        Yup. MS is in a very difficult situation. They built an empire on the PC which is now in a massive decline. The desktop isn't dead (yet), but its role as the primary method of computing has been severely diminished by tablets and phones.

        It's not phones and tablets that are killing the desktop. It's Microsoft.

        Microsoft may still be able to turn everything around by release a Windows 7.1 (or whatever), and letting Surface OS go the way of Vista, ME and Bob. But it's getting less likely the longer they wait. Windows 10 may very well have been their last chance, but instead they decided to make Windows 10 "Surface OS, telemetry edition".

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by jimbrooking on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:57PM

    by jimbrooking (3465) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:57PM (#325256)

    I suppose the god's eye Win-10 telemetry will let the Redmond folks what's going on in Ubuntuland as well as the Windows Magic Kingdom. Wonder how popular that will be with the Linux crowd...

    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:18PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:18PM (#325267)

      I'm guessing that it won't be. From what I can tell, Windows is designed to be run in a VM.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:10PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:10PM (#325286) Journal

      It won't be popular as the OS of choice of Linux users. But it will be popular for those Linux users with relatives using Windows. Imagine, when asked to help with their Windows problems, you first start a bash shell …

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:21PM

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:21PM (#325268)

    From a market point of view, it's so stupid it beggars belief.

    So, it's a GNU-ish distro on top of a Windows kernel instead of a Linux kernel - sort of, yeah. What's the point? Apart from driver compatibility, it's not like Windows users are desperate to run Ubuntu-only binaries. Most good software that runs on Linux also have a native Windows port.

    It's like if someone decided to market something to adapt Caterham car parts on Toyota cars: it's stupid. Usually it's the other way round: small car makers reuse part from giant car manufacturers. Similarly, this Linux-on-Windows thing is as useless as Wine on Linux is useful.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:26PM (#325272)

      I think it is the 'developers are flocking to macs' that is what has MS scared. I would be too.

      The sentiment seems to be 'visual studio sucks'. Its fine. But you ended up growing a whole generation of developers who have never started up visual studio with that opinion. They moved to things like macs and linux because that is what their job requires. It is how they get things done. MS can not continue to ignore that and continue to get people make programs for them.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @10:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @10:55PM (#325518)

      If Stallman were dead, he'd be spinning in his grave knowing that people could rightly say they use GNU/Windows. But speaking of which, I wonder what his latest thoughts on this are. Probably a good read.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:21AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:21AM (#325638)

        GNU started on SunOS. That's where the whole GNU/whatever came form. GNU/SunOs, GNU/AIX, and later GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd.

        Solaris (current name for SunOS) is owned by Oracle. Do you really think that Microsoft sounds so much more scary than "Let's sue the people keeping Java alive" Oracle?

    • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday March 31 2016, @10:57PM

      by jmorris (4844) on Thursday March 31 2016, @10:57PM (#325521)

      Doesn't look GNUish, more like it is the real deal, straight up Ubuntu running atop a Linux subsystem for the NT kernel that exposes the Linux ABI. No reason you couldn't replace Ubuntu with Debian, Devuan or whatever. Since Canonical was contracted to do a lot of the work it natural that Ubuntu was the distribution first released but there is little reason to suspect it will be the last.

      For a Windows devel it might make some sense, but it is still a worst of all worlds combination of the complexity of UNIX with the instability and insecurity of Windows. And of course it ain't ever going to be RMS pure unless the whole things gets ported to ReactOS. Now that would be head 'sploding to consider.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:23AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2016, @08:23AM (#325639)

        For a Windows devel it might make some sense, but it is still a worst of all worlds combination of the complexity of UNIX with the instability and insecurity of Windows.

        Could be worse. Could be combining the complexity of Windows[1] with the instability and insecurity of Windows.

        [1] HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and friends.

  • (Score: 2) by snick on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:22PM

    by snick (1408) on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:22PM (#325271)

    Does this mean that Docker will now run on Windows without the need for a VM?

    That could be interesting.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:49PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:49PM (#325278)

      I believe that is part of the goal here. Native linux docker support.

      VM's are pretty cool but they do have a fairly heavy footprint. You probably still need VMs and actual hardware for your final integration tests though. Not unless they get it practically perfect, which I doubt.

  • (Score: 2) by srobert on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:29PM

    by srobert (4803) on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:29PM (#325273)

    Big Deal. I've been using Linux binaries under FreeBSD for years.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:21PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:21PM (#325292) Journal

      But FreeBSD is already a POSIX system, so the translation is relatively simple; most Linux calls are just POSIX functionality and thus have a direct BSD equivalent right from the start. Windows is a quite different beast.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:29PM

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 31 2016, @02:29PM (#325274)

    Congrats Soyleynt, you win the "Headline most likely to generate a 'WTF?' response" for the day :)

  • (Score: 2) by slash2phar on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:05PM

    by slash2phar (623) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:05PM (#325284)
    This could be an attempt to preserve the Microsoft Tax... If Windows doesn't support Linux APIs, and the share of customers using Linux-based apps increases, then pre-installed Windows becomes less of a selling point for OEMs.

    MS can argue Windows is the OS you gotta have if they can claim MS supports Linux apps better than WINE supports MS apps.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:20PM (#325290)

    In the other camp, Lennart Poettering is working hard with his horrible software projects (PulseAudio, SystemD, Avahi etc.) to make using Linux distros a more frustrating experience than Windows ever were.

    Bash is old hat, we need Poettering to port PowerShell. Keyboard input is so old, we need to remove support for that and have Poettering create a way to use apps to input text on our Linux system, mobile is the future you know.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:26PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:26PM (#325295) Journal

      Are you sure that's from the other camp? I mean what better could it be for Microsoft if Linux gets more frustrating than Windows? And if Windows then runs all your beloved Linux tools on your existing computer right out of the box, while OS X doesn't, then it's an easy choice.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:07PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:07PM (#325317)

        MicroHat Winux, coming to a PC near you in 2022.

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:21PM (#325323)

      port PowerShell

      You misspelled "burn in hell".

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:11PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:11PM (#325385) Journal

        Well, if you change the capitalization of PowerShell, you'll find PowersHell. Coincidence?

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:20PM

    by inertnet (4071) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:20PM (#325291) Journal

    Dear Microsoft, stop trying to get me back on Windows.

    This is getting more silly everyday. It's almost like they don't want me to abandon Windows.

    I recently switched from Windows to Debian. I'm getting comfortable with it and haven't booted my Windows disk for a couple of weeks now. Ever since then I keep seeing news like this, as if they're desperate to get me back. With every related news item it's getting more and more hilarious for me. I wonder what they'll come up with next time, soon I'll be really rolling on the floor.

    • (Score: 2) by SuperCharlie on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:26PM

      by SuperCharlie (2939) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:26PM (#325294)

      I made the jump a few years ago and other than a few bumps and bruises it has been nothing short of liberating. I recently bought 2 laptops and first thing I do is back up the win load and then wipe it with Linux. My distro of choice is Mint, but I would take anything but windows at this point.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:24PM (#325325)

      Im on MInt install with Xfce and pretty much love it. The usual rare exceptions; 1. Word is somewhat unreliable in Wine, and sometimes fails to open documents from collaborators, unless I open it in LibreOffice first. and resave it.. LibreOffice is pretty good, but has been crashing randomly every hour...eeek. 2. A lot of games just don't run in Linux. Ha Ha just kidding.. I don't have time for games.

  • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:38PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:38PM (#325304)

    Still processing what this means. My first take is that we won. Every other model of software development and system use has lost when directly competing with the UNIX model. Windows and their bloated IDEs have lost. (At least among any real hacking - I'm sure code grinders will still use them.) JCL job streams have lost. The idea of having small, modular utilities glued together by scripting languages has won, because it allows incremental innovation. Bash is a nightmare, so we're using Python now. Various utilities have been improved over the decades, and new ones introduced. I've said this before and will say it again, no one does a new programming language release without a GNU Emacs editing mode.

    I don't think this is an embrace, it's a capitulation. Now Windows, Mac, and Linux use the UNIX philosophy. Most mobile OSes are based on some form of Linux or UNIX clone. There ain't much left that isn't UNIX these days, other than legacy COBOL and Visual Basic 6 code.

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:01PM

      by fritsd (4586) on Thursday March 31 2016, @05:01PM (#325349) Journal

      JCL job streams have lost.

      Fucking hell.. That brings back a memory..

      Back when I was studying, I was allowed runtime to run a longish calculation on the mainframe. I had to do something magical in JCL to allocate scratch space, all very neatly described what I was all going to do, and what had to be done to the program's output in a week of time or so.

      Then it was queued and ran.

      At the end of the week, it crashed after the actual calculation had (successfully?) finished.

      JCL complained that I had put a space next to a comma, where it was not allowed, and had deleted all the results of the calculation, to teach me a lesson in JCL syntax :-(

      This shows what a nice feature it is of bash, and other UNIX shells, to crash immediately if it cannot parse your script's syntax...
      and to be lenient with the amount of whitespace the lexer can safely ignore, i.e. if you add a blank line in your shell script for readability, the program won't crash or display a different behaviour suddenly (I know that in Makefiles and python it's different).

      Look what I just found: if you think Linux scripting is hard (not you obviously, Pizzarollplinket, I'm curious how you experienced JCL tho), read this & weep:
      JCL example [ibm.com]

      or this one:

      note the 8-line program IEBCOPY to copy a file [blogspot.se]

      ISTR that for each file your program was going to use (input output or temporary) you had to specify it in the script, along with the record length, block size, expected amount of disk space, etc. , but maybe that's just a bad nightmare & not actually true.

      oh and that last example "concatenation" line 000500, for a new file that your program makes, you have to say (1) it's new, (2) it has to get a name and not be discarded (default behaviour), (3) delete it if it already exists, instead of crashing when this output file is opend (default behaviour)

      I had forgotten JCL. Thanks for reminding me how wonderful UNIX scripting actually is :-D

      • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:14PM

        by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:14PM (#325423)

        My JCL experience came from building standard C and C++ programs to run on a mainframe. It started making sense to me when I realized the syntax was based on assembler, and was supposed to be familiar to early mainframe developers, not obscure. I did it long enough to need shock treatments afterwards.

        They make a magic potion that makes you forget about JCL ... it's called bleach!

        --
        (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @10:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @10:07PM (#325499)

        Oh come on. That isn't that bad.
        Show a superc example :)

  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:42PM

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:42PM (#325308) Journal
    ""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."

    So it's not like cygwin, it's worse.

    Why?

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:59PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:59PM (#325313)

      Why is it "worse than Cygwin"?

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 1) by Arik on Friday April 01 2016, @01:40AM

        by Arik (4543) on Friday April 01 2016, @01:40AM (#325574) Journal
        Well I quoted the exact text.

        Instead of compiling a native binary they are using some sort of translation layer. Inherently inferior solution.

        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:09PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:09PM (#325319) Journal

    What keeps MS from borking the functionality of Ubuntu linux:

    They make it work not so well, and people think: "This is supposed to be the easiest and 'best' linux out there, and it doesn't work very fast/doesn't work well/it messed up my file" and they decide linux isn't good.

    I guess maybe i don't know enough about the whole thing???? Or could they bork it and have the fallout kill linux usage from rising????

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:30PM (#325331)

      linux's popularity everywhere else besides the desktop is so far in the lead that MS can no longer hurt it with dirty tricks

      since this port is about non-gui programs it has little to do with the desktop

      therefore this isn't about some nefarious ulterior motive, it is about MS no longer being the 800lb gorilla

      • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:33PM

        by bitstream (6144) on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:33PM (#325482) Journal

        So Linux programs on this Windows (10?) will not be able to put up some graphic window?

        • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:04PM

          by jmorris (4844) on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:04PM (#325523)

          There are X11 servers for Windows, most run rootless and can thus mix/match native and X11 apps on the same desktop. Since we already know this new Linux subsystem for Windows has networking support it is reasonable to assume one could connect. What isn't known is whether shared memory will be possible between the native Win32 X11 server and the Linux clients. Without that performance would be more like networked X11 instead of the typical case where server and client run on the same machine. I also do not know if any of the free X11 servers for Windows support OpenGL at all and/or well enough to support modern applications.

          • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:34PM

            by bitstream (6144) on Thursday March 31 2016, @11:34PM (#325539) Journal

            Is shared memory the only requirement for efficient and thus real life inter program communication?

            • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday April 01 2016, @12:18AM

              by jmorris (4844) on Friday April 01 2016, @12:18AM (#325552)

              It is the big one. Without it you are limited to serializing everything over a network (UNIX Domain or IP) socket. This wasn't a problem in the early days of X11 but in the modern era of client side font rendering, large textures and bitmaps, video frames and GPGPU work it is very noticeable when it isn't there. Try starting up X and disabling the MIT-SHM extension.

              • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday April 01 2016, @01:32AM

                by bitstream (6144) on Friday April 01 2016, @01:32AM (#325573) Journal

                Will be interesting when someone gets their hands on this Microsoft Embrace build and compile a win32/64 and a Linux-ELF and make them try to open a MIT-SHM channel between them. The result of that would then show if Microsoft is serious along with the other stuff already mentioned.

                So "summer 2016" to find out.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:42PM (#325343)

    The Transmission devs, after months of work, recently added an official Windows build [torrentfreak.com]... I can imagine all of the headdesking once they heard you may soon be able to run native Linux binaries :)

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:36PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:36PM (#325400) Journal

      Well, the native Linux binaries are only running on Windows "Big Brother" 10. I guess the port also runs on earlier versions of Windows.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:58PM (#325443)

    Now MS can partner with Intel to make the next generation of UEFI such that you can't switch OS kernels at all. ("Want to use Linux with Windows? Well, we've incorporated it into Windows for you, so you have no need of dual booting anymore....")

  • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:52PM

    by bitstream (6144) on Thursday March 31 2016, @09:52PM (#325490) Journal

    Internet never forgets..

      * 2003 Microsoft acquisition of RAV shocks Linux community [computerweekly.com] (hint: Buy and withdraw from market)
      * 2014 Skype killed, 2016 unable to join calls [nickforall.nl].

    I'm sure there's plenty more.