Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 18 submissions in the queue.

Ubuntu on Windows Followup

posted by martyb on Sunday April 03 2016, @09:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-deep-can-you-stack-the-turtles? dept.

CoolHand writes:

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

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Ubuntu on Windows Followup | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 52 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday April 03 2016, @10:37PM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday April 03 2016, @10:37PM (#326630) Journal

    I thought they already had their own Linux?

    They had to turn to it in their Azure platform. http://www.wired.com/2015/09/microsoft-using-linux-run-cloud/ [wired.com]

    When they bought Hot Mail, they couldn't get it to run on their own servers, and were running it on Linux, (and not Suse, but Red Hat). They did that for like two or three years, and learned a lot. Its not that hard to hack your own distro these days.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday April 03 2016, @11:18PM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <{axehandle} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday April 03 2016, @11:18PM (#326637)

    I thought they already had their own Linux?

    When I read that first thing I thought of was SCO.

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by rufty on Sunday April 03 2016, @11:32PM

    by rufty (381) on Sunday April 03 2016, @11:32PM (#326643)
    Er, Hotmail originally ran on FreeBSD [theregister.co.uk].

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 04 2016, @01:04AM

      by frojack (1554) on Monday April 04 2016, @01:04AM (#326667) Journal

      oops, my bad. I knew it was some nix, but forget it was Free.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 04 2016, @09:28AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday April 04 2016, @09:28AM (#326820) Journal

    Maybe that's the real reason why they bring Ubuntu to Windows: That way they finally can run those services on Windows machines! ;-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 04 2016, @03:55PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Monday April 04 2016, @03:55PM (#326957)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix [wikipedia.org]

    --
    "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 Monday April 04 2016, @10:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04 2016, @10:56PM (#327244)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix [wikipedia.org]

      Microsoft [...] purchased a license for Version 7 Unix from AT&T in 1978, and announced on August 25, 1980, that it would make it available for the 16-bit microcomputer market. Because Microsoft was not able to license the "UNIX" name itself, the company gave it an original name.

      Microsoft, in turn, did not sell Xenix directly to end users ; instead, they licensed it to OEMs such as IBM, Intel, Management Systems Development, Tandy, Altos, SCO, and Siemens (SINIX) who then ported it to their own proprietary computer architectures.

      [...]the first [shipment to a customer of a device running Xenix] was January 1981
      [...]
      Microsoft [...] planned to over time improve MS-DOS so it would be almost indistinguishable from single-user Xenix
      [...]
      AT&T started selling System V, however, after the breakup of the Bell System [in January 1982]. Microsoft, believing that it could not compete with Unix's developer, decided to abandon Xenix.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]