Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Microsoft just announced that three different versions of the free Linux operating system — Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora — are coming to the Windows Store, the app market in Windows 10.
It sounds weird, but it makes perfect sense. In early 2016, Microsoft announced the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), a way for developers to use full versions of Linux within Windows 10 itself.
Putting aside the historical ramifications here — Microsoft spent the 90s unsuccessfully trying to stamp out Linux, a free alternative to Windows — it was a move intended to bait programmers into using Windows 10.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-store-gets-ubuntu-suse-fedora-linux-2017-5
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Microsoft Store Gets Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora Linux
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(Score: 3, Informative) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Sunday May 14 2017, @03:32PM (5 children)
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/31/ms_ballmer_linux_is_communism/ [theregister.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @03:36PM
And Microsoft is Mussolini :p
Ballmer has strengths, like being the richest chair thrower in the world!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @09:44PM (3 children)
https://m.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/#content [theregister.co.uk]
If you consider that each user of Linux is an equal owner of the OS, it sorta meets the Socialist paradigm.
Contrast this with Capitalist M$:
Maximize profits for the ownership class (where the user owns nothing--classic rent-seeking); exploit the workers; manipulate and exploit the users.
If you go by the Communist "From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs" thing, with FOSS you have kernel devs, app devs, artsy guys, language translators, installfest guys, help forum guys, advocates... with all of them doing the Stone Soup thing [wikipedia.org] and each getting the software they need.
...so, that pretty much fits too.
What's not to like?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 15 2017, @09:30AM (2 children)
Someone putting systemd into the soup.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @11:23AM
Someone putting systemd into the soup
# ps auxwww |grep -i systemd
anon777 77 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 777 0:00 grep --color=auto -i systemd
#
seems as though the Windows Subsystem for Linux is one of the easier ways to get a modern linux userspace without systemd.
I've never used a Windows desktop in my life, having gone straight from Dos to Linux. I've supported every version since 95 and admined every version since NT4, but never used it on my own desktop machine. Been using Windows 10 with subsystem for linux for quite a few months now and it is 100% usable. I'm thinking Windows 10 is a codeword for windows 1.0, it is the first usable version of Windows. Decent user interface, decent command line userspace, turns out I care less about the kernel then I thought I did (which wasn't much actually, been a long time since I recompiled a kernel).
Linux project is compromised anyway, what difference does it make which sell-out operating system is spying on me? Still prefer Slackware though, for its sane package management policies, i.e. no automatic updates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @06:58PM
In many cases, systemd is NOT the default init; it is available as a condiment for those who want it.
Free and Open-Source (FOSS) operating systems without systemd in the default installation [without-systemd.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @03:34PM (4 children)
It will be telemetrified such that it will be worthless for secrecy. Not really full Unix, though one can probably make use of Microsoft (video) drivers. Also lack the uptime stability of a proper installation.
The end game is to let Microsoft users have the benefits of Unix software but not letting Unix have the benefit of Microsoft software.. or just about anything. I can see the next wave open source programs..
Not running Microsoft environment ..... [FAIL]
No use for you!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:05PM (1 child)
What does uname -a report under Ubuntu on Windows?
Occurred to me I would like to be able to check if running under windows so applications could report that their security is insecure for purposes of ensuring conversations are not intentionally logged by unauthorized third parties. (M$/NSA)
That is actually something worth submitting to security conscious open source projects that run on both Windows and Linux. If running on Windows 7-10 and using pidgin+otr for instance, it should send a warning during initial private conversation handshake that the user is running an operating system that may be logging you even if neither end is.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:50PM
I think uname won't give it away. But the finer details of syscalls and timing response probably will or simple low level calls /dev/io /dev/mem or ip_raw etc.. Another approach is to try to grab some hardware resource that Microsoft also want and then push by testing that not only is the operation permitted at open() but it will also work when operation are commenced and returned.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @01:31AM
The end game is to let Microsoft users have the benefits of Unix software but not letting Unix have the benefit of Microsoft software.. or just about anything. I can see the next wave open source programs..
This appears to be an attempt at the old Microsoft strategy: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
I hope Linux is robust enough to survive this relatively unscathed. Meanwhile, I think I'm going to be using Mint and Debian as my distros of choice. I can't say I'm entirely comfortable using any of the listed distros any longer, especially considering Ubuntu tried to stick its toe in the telemetry pool before.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday May 15 2017, @09:45PM
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked, the Linux subsystem does not have access to the graphics hardware.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:25PM (8 children)
There is a reason why many *nix users are willing to use a MS VM. The VM can be jailed, quite nicely, and examined. All traffic can be intercepted, easily, and examined. Or, traffic can be stopped cold, if that's what you want. With a MS VM on Linux, Microsoft is tamed, and secure, or at least as secure as you want/need it to be.
So, Microsoft is providing a "subsystem" for Linux. Awesome. As AC asks, what does uname -a report? Does the Linux know that it is inside of a VM, or is it ignorant of that fact? I won't even ask about Microsoft monitoring. All that telemetry is "good" for you, because it ensures everything runs correctly, right?
"Subsystem". Alright, we won't call it a hypervisor, or any of the other more common names. But, bottom line, Microsoft will control Linux. Which means, it ain't really Linux.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday May 14 2017, @05:46PM (3 children)
The NSA will also have a nice built-in keylogger and accompanying "telemetry".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @11:36AM (2 children)
The NSA will also have a nice built-in keylogger and accompanying "telemetry".
You guys are all behaving as though the Linux project is not compromised and feeding data to the NSA. Unless you're using one of a very few distributions that have refused insecure by design software products such as systemd (and so many more, I could start a sidebar just to list them) and insecure by design practices such as automatic updates, chances are your linux box is watching you anyway.
Here's a clue. If you are anywhere near a box, large or small that has eyes, ears and a chattery connection to billions of other similar boxes, assume such boxes are watching you, listening to you and talking to each other about it. If you assume your operating system is secure because so and so is a great guy and somebody had the time on their hands to go through a gazillion lines of code and make sure there is nothing malicious in the linux kernel or any of the user space, you are deluding yourself. All popular systems are compromised and it is so by design.
Lots of people got rich building a fantastic surveillance system for even richer people to use to watch us and I'm busy using that surveillance system to talk about that surveillance system. Would you expect anything else from the post-modern pre-apocalyptic era?
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday May 15 2017, @09:56PM (1 child)
This can be easily verified with an appropriate router that lets you inspect the data going back and forth.
People made the same claim about MacOS/OSX/whateverkidscallitthesedays, and someone went ahead and did an actual test. When they disabled Siri, iCloud, error reporting, and all the other cloudy bits, OSX didn't send so much as a single bit back to Apple, or anywhere else for that matter, that the user didn't didn't specifically ask for.
The Linux ecosystem may not be as iron fisted as Apple, but I'm inclined to believe that such an experiment would have a similar result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:15PM
disabled Siri, iCloud, error reporting
um.... yeah these so called features and their alikes on other systems are the trojan horses. this is how your information is getting to the NSA, et. al. automatic updates is how they open and close backdoors in your system. this stuff is obvious to anybody who has been using computers since before the shit soup that passes for an operating system these days
can we have a a bug duh for the dunces
thanks
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday May 14 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
Most likely it doesn't even know it's not Linux but a syscall layer on top of the Windows kernel which looks like Linux. GNU/Lindows sounds more appropriate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @11:38AM
Agreed, it is not Linux, it is the GNU userland running on top of windows by faking a linux interface to system calls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:23PM
Yup. A FOSS OS inside a proprietary VM under a proprietary OS??
That's doing it exactly backwards.
Avoid the NSA backdoors in Windoze during your main OS activities by using Linux as your main/host OS.
If you have a Windoze-only app that you simply can't break away from, put -that- stuff in a VM running under Linux.
The Telemetry thing is greatly reduced this way.
As an AC way down the (meta)thread notes (and Roy Schestowitz said the other day), this is the first E in E,E,E.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @07:48AM
It's not a VM, it's a subsystem on top of the NT kernel, like the Win32 subsystem and the earlier Posix and OS/2 subsystems. The subsystem provides Linux system calls and translates them to NT system calls.
It's more comparable to Wine, which provides Win32 system calls and translates them to Linux system calls.
If uname returns "Linux" for the kernel name, rather than "NT", it's lying. But this is Microsoft we are talking about, so I'd be surprised if they are not lying.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VanessaE on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:37PM (1 child)
"Microsoft Store Gets Ubuntu, *sues* Fedora Linux".. I was like, shit.... Then I read it again.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 14 2017, @05:23PM
That one is funny. I often misread things, and some of them can be really stunning. :^)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:43PM (1 child)
But then they saw the profits from those *patents*, and voila! Now, they share the Lincoln Bedroom
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:00PM
It would have been better if you had enclosed that with quote marks.
We discussed this nearly 3 years ago.
China Reveals Microsoft's Secret List of Android-killer Patents [soylentnews.org]
It was clear then that it is all a sham.
It's simply a lawyers' duel with no validity to the claims.
It only exists to see which side can keep paying its lawyers the longest.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:48PM (3 children)
Windows 10 + systemd = synergy, baby! What could possibly go wrong?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @06:04PM (1 child)
We need pulseaudio and MS Bob for the full effect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @07:42PM
The only thing I miss from Windows is that nice BSOD every 20 minutes.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday May 14 2017, @07:17PM
More buzzwords please. I'm waiting for hyperconverged virtual IoT icloud Lindows 2.0 now with more store!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Sunday May 14 2017, @07:11PM (1 child)
Interesting that the three Linuxes Microsoft acquired are all commercial (though possibly the free versions of those?). No Debian. No Devuan. No Arch. No ... need I go on?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @07:45PM
They probably started with companies that were willing to put people on the project. You know... money. How most dev work is done and has been done for years. Someone pays you to do it. They probably will rope in the others when they have the budget/time for it. Or they could do it your way and add them all in and create a nightmare that will never get done and drag on for years.
MS within 10 years will be 'all in' on the open source movement. NT/win32 will be a subsystem loader in linux/BSD. The OS for a consumer is bottomed out on a ROI of near 0. Linux saw to that. In the enterprise Linux is eating up pretty much all of the big iron stuff and mid range web serving. MS will move in on it. They will embrace. It is part of their culture. This is just the first moves into it. To see if they can bridge the two together. The only big enterprise that is still putting windows into the server env is those that were already doing it.
MS has huge security problems but they actually have decent clue how to work the issues, triage, and fix them. They learned the hard way. Just as Apple is now starting to learn with their phone and OS. MS will eventually just wall the whole thing off in a cname jail per 'win32' process. My bet is they just buy out one of the big distros, prob red hat. Then get busy smashing the two together. MS will get out of the OS business and back into the consulting and software business they had in the 80s. Linux will eventually win the desktop mindshare. But only because MS makes it happen.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 14 2017, @08:25PM (4 children)
And THAT is cemented to the floor. Why the hell isn't this ringing massive alarm bells with this site's entire audience?! MS never, but *never,* does anything with other projects unless it can subsume, poison, or cripple them. This is embrace extend extinguish and the systemd folks are playing right into their hands. Looks like I may need to go to BSD soon...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 14 2017, @08:33PM
There are so many alarm bells ringing already, that may be why.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by corey on Sunday May 14 2017, @11:12PM
Now they just need to get the secureboot thing really working so that the only way yo run Linux is inside win 10. EEE.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:16AM
Why the hell isn't this ringing massive alarm bells with this site's entire audience?!
It seems to me like it is. I haven't seen a single positive comment, only "EEE", telemetry, what-could-go-wrong, etc.
Looks like I may need to go to BSD soon...
At least "Windows Subsystem for BSD" is unlikely to happen, since it looks too much like "Windows Subsystem for BSoD", aka Windows 95 :)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 15 2017, @09:35AM
Because nobody would hear those additional alarm bells anyway among those many that are already ringing.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 14 2017, @08:31PM (2 children)
- WTF? "Linux, a free alternative to Windows"? They mean, "an OS that actually works, unlike the spycrapware Windows"?
- I hate to remind you of this, but... systemd.
- Alright... *goes to weep in a corner*
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Refugee from beyond on Sunday May 14 2017, @08:41PM (1 child)
systemd does not spy on you yet. Porbably.
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @07:53AM
systemd does not spy on you yet.
I'll believe that when I can disable that binary log file that only Micro^H^H^H^H^H Poettering knows what it really contains.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @09:22PM
Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. Stay alert.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:47PM
It sounds weird, but it makes perfect sense.
Just like this story [wikipedia.org].
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @11:02PM
And so now the fox bought into the henhouse and is selling eggs. What next. Hens (henguins) better watch their backs / necks! But not to fear, MicroFox have secret agents implanted already, Poettering up Linux from the inside. Sabotage! Sabotage!
(Score: 2) by Rich on Sunday May 14 2017, @11:45PM (7 children)
"For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program."
This implies that, if Microsoft tries to enforce a patent on about anything they distribute with the images (particularly the mainstream kernels), they could no longer distribute under the GPL 2 (which is the only way to distribute the Linux kernel with its zillion contributors), and they'd commit criminal copyright infringement. The GPL 2 has no lame "pretty please" wordings like V3, so interested parties with a tad of political clout could go in with a BSA style jackboot raid.
I wonder what will come of this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @01:52AM (4 children)
MS is not running a Linux kernel. It is some compatibility layer in the windows kernel that they made to run Android apps that they later extended to be able to run a std. GNU userspace.
Windows sucks at forking (slow!), and probably other windows issues will also make this pretty limited in utility. I think this is pitched as a better cygwin, for when you are forced to run windows at work (of course they probably phrase this differently).
(Score: 2) by Rich on Monday May 15 2017, @02:40AM
MS is not running a Linux kernel.
It's not about running anything. The FSF were adamant about asserting that no acceptance of any license should be needed to run any software. Cf. the whole EULA enforcability and UCITA thing back in the day and the rage about the GPL3 being some kind of EULA, too.
If Microsoft brings any Linux image to their store, they are distributing Linux, and that's where the GPL kicks in. With the explainingly worded section 7 I quoted, and section 6, too: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein." E.g. Microsoft can't assert any patents against GPL code on the images anymore. Splitting hairs, there might be an attempt to sue Linux users outside of their distribution, so users would be only safe when they run Linux under Windows, but in turn there would be the (weird) workaround of replacing the repositories with identical source that once went through Microsoft.
I believe it when I see it actually being done. Maybe there will be a workaround where they only offer "loaders" in the store and leave the "viral" GPL stuff with external providers. But if they're going to provide the actual images, it would mean that desktop Linux as we know it is safe from (direct) Microsoft patent attacks.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @11:45AM (1 child)
for when you are forced to run windows at work
This is the boat I am in, it is better than cygwin which I have used in the past. Also windows 10 provides a really usable UI, seriously best of both worlds between windowed and tiled, they've got multiple desktops now and I've just enabled focus follows mouse and this is really comfortable and not at all offensive looking. I'd say better than most out of the box linux desktop environments I've worked on and I've always considered Linux desktop to be superior to Windows, I hate to say it, but they've really done a great job here at the same time as the linux world f'ked the pooch in the arse by allowing systemd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @01:27PM
Seriously? Troll? Biased much?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday May 15 2017, @03:29PM
I think this is pitched as a better cygwin, for when you are forced to run windows at work (of course they probably phrase this differently).
Or a better Cygwin for when your laptop isn't fully compatible with Linux-on-the-metal, such as WLAN or suspend being broken. This can happen, for example, when no local computer stores are advertising new laptops specifically designed for use with GNU/Linux.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday May 15 2017, @02:26AM (1 child)
I would be interested too - this looks like naked "embrace, extend, extinguish".
(Score: 2) by Rich on Monday May 15 2017, @02:54AM
One thing to remember is that with the branded Linuxes, trademark issues come into play. Hence the weird names of the RHEL spinoffs. Both sides have to play ball. SuSE, via Novell, has been in bed with MS before to the point that this fuckup is immortalized in the GPL3 (though I've never fully understood why the FSF put in that cutoff date), I suspect they get along very well with Red Hat these days, and maybe they cut Shuttleworth some kind of deal for his planned IPO. Also notice that Debian and Mint, preferred choices of Admins and Desktop Nerds are absent from the list.