Ubuntu Arrives in the Windows Store, Suse and Fedora Are Coming To the Windows Subsystem For Linux (venturebeat.com) 212
At its Build developer conference today, Microsoft announced that Ubuntu has arrived in the Windows Store. From a report: The company also revealed that it is working with Fedora and Suse to bring their distributions to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10. At the conference last year, Microsoft announced plans to bring the Bash shell to Windows. The fruits of that labor was WSL, a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) natively on Windows, which arrived with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update released in August 2016. Microsoft also partnered with Canonical to allow Ubuntu tools and utilities to run natively on top of the WSL. By bringing Ubuntu to the Windows Store, the company is now making it even easier for developers to install the tools and run Windows and Linux apps side by side. Working with other Linux firms shows that Microsoft's deal with Canonical was not a one-time affair, but rather part of a long-term investment in the Linux world.
Welcome to our new corporate overlords (Score:3, Interesting)
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And Linux has never been dominant in the desktop either, so this actually may increase the number of users in that space.
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This is the alternate path to that goal though.
Get developers that are used to working with Linux-based servers accustomed to a hybrid environment, and get managers that are not exactly happy with the Linux-based approach requiring the use of brain power to evaluate to make decisions now instead have more means to present pretty graphs. Eventually people push to start running real servers this way, and then to migrate to Windows entirely.
The problem with GUI is that while it makes some tasks legitimately e
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Total dominance in the Server world? Please. You must think "little apache servers on the Internet" is the "Server Market". Some of you guys are so completely clueless about the real world.
Linux is obviously a huge piece of the market, but "total dominance"? Not out here in reality where the rest of us live.
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It is just a matter of time. Windows application servers are already becoming a constant problem in many application landscapes. They always need something special, when Linux, xBSD, Solaris, etc. basically use the same services and tools. And the are always helpless when you just explain the standard approach to them and they are expected to port that to the island of incompatibility that Windows still is. Sure, initially these solutions may sometimes be cheaper, but with a bit of a longer-term scope, Wind
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You need a monopoly in the relevant field to Embrace Extend and Extinguish. MS lacks that in any field of Linux worth extending and extinguishing (server and cloud).
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You don't need a monopoly. If you HAD a monopoly, you wouldn't have to worry about extinguishing anything. You just have to have SOME portion of the user-base.
Hell, let's say that the boys at Ubuntu decided the next release would use NTFS and followed Microsoft's standard and protocol. And then 2 years later decided to add a fancy dancy feature of an added bit to every bloody folder declaring the contents were free(asinbeer) or not. Let's further pretend that at least SOME people loved this extended fe
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Sure you do. Without the monopoly you can only embrace. If you still have money you can extend, but in order to bridge from extend to extinguish you need support from either third parties or customers. Without a significant control over the market no extinguishing takes place.
only difference is the number of people
You say the only difference, I say the *critical* difference. You can't extinguish an opponent if you don't have an incredibly dominant position from which to do so.
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and the correct response to this? not sure, but i'm pretty sure getting your tin-foil hat out is step one.
Great idea! (Score:2)
The Windows Store should be graced with every Linux distro. Only a few thousand of 'em, right? ;)
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You mean like installing Cygwin or MobaXterm?
Think of it this way (Score:2, Interesting)
Step 2. Teach children that learn on the ubiquitous windows that Linux runs on Windows
Step 3. Those children when they grow up, think Linux is something to run on Windows
Step 4. When Microsoft pulls the plug, the children don't think they've lost anything.
This is exactly how the RIAA and the MPAA have eroded copyright in the US.
Assimilate them, don't let them assimilate us (Score:5, Informative)
Run Windows in a VM on Linux, don't run Linux apps on Windows.
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Don't run windows at all. That was the whole point.
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No fear, Linux is already running on other processors. And ARM processors already outnumber Intel / AMD processors, just not in PCs. And ARM processors inevitably run Linux, not that Microsoft hasn't failingly tried to get Windows on it.
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Arm also has a secret CPU underneath it's main CPU and uses firmware just like Intel.
Yes Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
The security of Windows with the application availability of Linux.
That combination simply cannot be beat!
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I laughed, if it's any consolation.
Can you say SuSE! (Score:2)
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Man, you bring up that black macbook every single opportunity you have.
It's a legendary Apple product. I get a lot of attention when I bring it into the Apple Store. Most people have heard of the black MacBook but haven't actually seen one since the white MacBook was more common.
Linux on desktop... (Score:4, Funny)
Linux on desktop... finally arrives in 2017 !!!
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Linux on the desktop arrived a long time ago, it's called ChromeOS.
GNU/Linux is another matter.
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But if you put Ubuntu on a Chromebook, the Chromebook firmware asks the user at every boot to put it out of its misery. The suggested call to action in developer mode ("Press SPACE" then "Press ENTER") leads to data loss [slashdot.org].
And so what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm still struggling to understand the use case for this.
Everyone who really needed Windows and Linux on one box has already setup dual-boot or virtualization. You can even pick which OS to use on bare metal and which to virtualize these days. It's great.
Does Microsoft envision themselves selling Linux apps in the Windows Store (like they sell MySQL and PostgreSQL on Azure)? I don't see that working because anyone can distribute a free version outside of the store.
Telemetry in Windows 7/8/10 proves that Microsoft is perfectly willing to sell out their customers for a marginal benefit. But I don't really see what benefit WSL gives them that they don't already get with Hyper-V.
Re: And so what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Its because Microsoft plans on forcing vendors to lock out Linux in secure boot. This way Microsoft can say "but all your Linux apps run on our platform so you won't lose anything. Plus its more secure because everyone knows that bios malware is the most common threat to the average PC user." If you run Linux applications on Windows it ruins the point of running Linux apps which is exactly the point of Windows trying to coerce users into doing it.
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SecureBoot isn't designed primarily to stop BIOS malware. It is designed to prevent rootkits from tampering with the boot sector and OS bootstrap by validating the signatures on all executables it loads. That way, you know you have a good kernel before you hand off to it. Technically, a rootkit could still infect those files, but the system will not boot again after that happens.
RedHat has a signed bootloader that works with most OEM PCs out of the box, and you can import the keys for other distros if they
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I'm still struggling to understand the use case for this. Everyone who really needed Windows and Linux on one box has already setup dual-boot or virtualization. You can even pick which OS to use on bare metal and which to virtualize these days. It's great.
IIRC (and it's kind of vague) one of the more interesting ideas in the architecture of Windows is that binary execution in general is done within a "subsystem for " - the primary subsystem being for Windows (of course), but there was also a subsystem for DOS at one point, with the 'capability' to have a subsystem for other OSes (Like VMS, Unix, OS/2, what have you...). I seem to recall the idea was so Windows could be a "Universal" OS, provided somebody wrote an appropriate subsystem. That way Windows is ab
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I'm still struggling to understand the use case for this.
in 2006 i worked for NC3A Research, where windows had been made mandatory some years before (through offering them a uniform pricing discount... that of course did not involve future products. or upgrades). this made it an absolute bitch to do any kind of development, so i investigated installing a wide range of software, including Cygwin, MSYS and other tools which made my life bearable. i even at one point installed userspace linux.
being able to install straight debian on top of the POSIX subsystem wou
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Everyone who really needed Windows and Linux on one box has already setup dual-boot or virtualization.
I don't. I don't have the space disk space for it. You want a use case? WSL seems to run a shitload better and integrate much more easily with Windows than Cygwin. Remember Cygwin? That open source program widely used which does the same thing as WSL? That program which has had many use cases over the years? Yeah that one.
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You can even pick which OS to use on bare metal and which to virtualize these days. It's great.
It is almost magical being able to boot your installed windows OS in vmware from your linux partition, isn't it?
This could be a big win for users of Free Software (Score:2)
If this allows end users to install Sandstorm [sandstorm.io], and the project becomes popular because of it, it could be a big push for open source & Free software.
A big hurdle to overcome for using 95% web applications found in Git is managing to install them in the first place, if you don't already have a web development stack running in your desktop.
With a platform like Sandbox, anyone could install server-based web applications on their Windows PC, making using Free Software finally as convenient as any walled gar
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One problem Sandstorm has is that it needs a wildcard TLS certificate because it generates a unique hostname per session. Let's Encrypt had no plans to issue those last I checked.
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What problems would that create for end users? Maybe an impossibility to check the origin of the applications installed?
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An impossibility of using sensitive JavaScript APIs that are restricted to secure contexts [pineight.com].
This is bad for Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
This is harmful to Linux, otherwise Microsoft would not be involved. Its not Linux at all, since you are just running some userland tools on Windows. Something that gives people a reason to not run the fully open source Linux kernel is not healthy for Linux, or open source. Microsofts hope with this is to starve the Linux kernel of userbase by giving people a reason to not install Linux, why install Linux when you can get the userland installed as an app on windows? None of the distros should cooperate with this. Instead, efforts should focus on funding efforts to get WINE to where it can run 99% of windows apps flawlessly.
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Instead, efforts should focus on funding efforts to get WINE to where it can run 99% of windows apps flawlessly.
IBM accomplished this with OS/2 during the Windows 3.1 era, and developers stopped writing programs for OS/2. The simple reasoning was, "If OS/2 can run Windows programs, why develop for OS/2? We'll just develop for Windows." So, in essence, OS/2 was the first version of WINE. WINE has always been a terrible idea, and we all need to be thankful that it sucks at running Windows programs.
The best way to get people to adopt Linux is to get them using FOSS while they're still on Windows. That will build th
Is Canonical getting paid? (Score:2)
Is Microsoft paying Canonical for all this? As I understand it, the Linux subsystem for Windows required Ubuntu up until now. Seems like this would entail some kind of licensing agreement for Ubuntu.
So I wonder if Microsoft is paying Canonical. If the number is large enough, Microsoft could ultimately influence the direction Ubuntu takes.
Eliminate the middle-man (Score:2)
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yeah! dual-boot!
for the convenience.
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windows in Linux not Linux in Windows (Score:2)
Here in corporate windows desktop land, I love WSL (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone is saying "run a VM".
Well I have that as well, but frankly being able to fire up an Ubuntu shell in a window has made me much more productive. It has replaced using putty, winscp, notepad++, TortoiseGIT, and god knows what else I used to have to do just to get stuff done when stuck with the corporate standard Windows desktop.
It is my main interface now to ssh to systems to support them, transfer files back and forth to my desktop, edit files, use git, etc.
I am quite addicted to WSL now myself. It would be even better if there were multiple distros to chose from such as RHEL, Centos, Fedora, Debian etc in addition to Ubuntu.
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Re:Strangely enough... (Score:5, Informative)
Many Linux server developers run Windows. This way they don't need a separate machine or VM.
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Because running a VM is just the hardest thing in the world
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Setting up and using a VM is a lot harder than clicking a checkbox to turn on the WSL feature and then running bash.exe.
Re:Strangely enough... (Score:5, Funny)
running bash.exe
There's blood coming out of my eyes just by reading this part.
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That's not how you're supposed to read Braille.
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WSL has native performance.
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A VM running on the same architecture as the host (in other words, not an emulated CPU) has pretty damn close to native performance as well. What's your point?
Re: Strangely enough... (Score:2)
No, what is your point? You keep using terms that acknowledge the WSL method is at least slightly better than VM, in multiple ways.
Is VM actually better in any way (besides "I already have a good VM setup and don't want to change")?
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It is relatively difficult. It sucks up huge amounts of diskspace for me and in some cases causes significant slowdowns. It never quite works perfectly (I've got an ubuntu image that won't get time from the host system and I can't figure out why). Sharing files can be complicated, any new kernel release has a good chance to break the VMware Tools which then has to be rebuilt, and so forth. Now try putting a team of 30 people doing this and it's going to be a constant administrative headache.
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Seriously? Breaking vmware-tools is your complaint? Who uses those anymore?
Install the open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop packages and let DKMS handle rebuilding the kernel modules for you. Even VMWare recommends using their open source tools over the vmware-tools from their CD images these days.
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Never heard of any of that. I've never talked to VMware, I only use what IT put on my box. I am just a user, I am not IT and have not attended the classes on how to do this, I just want to get work done. It does not work for me and I'm technically very savvy. All online docs refer to versions of vmware I don't have, or talks about ubuntu instead of kubuntu, or is relevant to Windows VMware instead of OSX VMware (Fusion). There is ZERO documentation that came with VMware, how would I know about all of t
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I'm technically very savvy.
I'm technically very savvy.
I'm technically very savvy.
Uhhh, yeah, sure.
1: Can't be bothered to read free online documentation for the tool you are using.
2: can't figure out that the host doesn't matter when the problems are related to the tools installed on the guest OS....
3: can't figure out what to do "since I use Ubuntu with a different default desktop, when everything else is quite literally the same"
4: open-vm-tools is recommended all over the forums from the little I have glanced at them.
5: same as #4 except it is all over the forums AND knowledgebase /
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Because it's so hard to use the native tools that the VM has to mount shares...
I've been using the bastard-stepchild of virtual machine software, Oracle's free-as-in-beer Virtualbox to run Windows on one of my Linux servers for those few times I need software that runs on Windows, and they made it easy to create share/mappings to connect to directories on the host file system in the guest opeating system. It was no burden to make it work.
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there's also something like sftp net drive, that lets you mount drives via ssh
Re: Strangely enough... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because its so hard to shift gears manually. (Auto transmission)
Because its so hard to reheat things on a stove. (Microwave)
Because its so hard to go to your desktop computer to send email. (Smart phone or laptop)
Because its so hard to get the calculator out to add. (... stupid)
Because its so hard to retype text. (Copy and paste)
With your simple minded thinking no progress should be made. Because its not hard to do anything the old fashion way.
Better get on your horse.
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VirtualBox is also great for working with Vagrant tasks, so that developers not just have the code to build/test, but the actual environment the code runs in. This way, the guy with the ton of oddball applications including an instance of Bonzi Boddy running in a W98 VM gets the same results as everyone else.
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That way round is trivial.
I tried doing it with a Windows 8 host and I couldn't even get VirtualPox to start.
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Let me get this straight. You and the other moron in the GP post basically have the same argument: "because it's so hard" sarcasm?
Guy invents automobile. You morons: "Because it's so hard to hop on my horse? LOL!!!"
Guy invents horn. You morons: "Because it's so hard to shrilly scream out my window LOL??"
Guy invents light bulb. You morons: "Because it's so hard to light a candle LOL!!!"
This place has really become a caricature of itself.
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No, it's because VMware running linux really isn't that easy to use for many people. Guy invents candle and insists that everyone builds their own candles from scratch and please don't use the lightbulb because it's for noobs.
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Because if I'm doing testing, I actually want a real kernel there. This sounds like a bare-minimum set up for ELF binaries, and in no way is an actual full-pop Linux install.
I have a couple of images; Debian and FreeBSD, which I can bring up in Hyper-V or VirtualBox, and I can have a fully functional *nix system up and running in a few minutes. I have no need for something that runs "bash.exe"
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Windows Subsystem for Linux merely provides a Linux kernel personality or API on the Windows kernel. Wouldn't someone developing for Linux want the real Linux kernel? Should your development and testing be done on something as close to the production system as possible?
Surely Microsoft would introduce some "extra" features that are addictively sweet into it's Linux ABI. Just like Microsoft did with J
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I don't think they'll get any more adoption of Win 10 because they offer to run the Bash on Windows. I abandonned Win 10 not because it doesn't run Bash, but because of the Nagware, lack of control over the OS and updates, and the plain sight ads they put in my face on the login screen. Oh and because of
Laptops warranted for Linux tend to cost more (Score:2)
If the case was that Linux costs a lot of money to run
On a laptop, it does. A System76 or ZaReason laptop, which is warranted to run GNU/Linux, costs more than an entry-level Staples special that is warranted to run Windows.
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If the laptops in a particular showroom are not labeled as compatible with GNU/Linux, how should one determine which laptops in the showroom are compatible without having to make one trip to the showroom to write down model numbers, a trip home to look them up, and a second trip to the showroom to try the display and keyboard of the compatible ones?
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How many real Linux developers are on Windows and have trouble with running a VM, or a separate box?
How about not wasting a ton of RAM? Unused reserved RAM (Virtualbox is not a super advanced bare metal hypervisor), duplicate disk caches, further waste of storage such as a virtual swap partition for the VM.
Now think about all the young devs and even old farts using a laptop some of them with 8GB RAM max (8GB is the new 2GB, thanks to software bloat and the javascript web)
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also launching WSL is instant, starting a VM isn't.
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That's like a coal burning power plant expressing concern about pollution caused by someone burning leaves in a barrel.
RAM is cheap. Cheap. I use 32 GB on my workstation at home, and on each of two workstations at work. A local server in my office, for my own use is 64 GB. And production servers can have more. I am a Java developer,
It's just a (small)
Workstation in transit (Score:2)
even old farts using a laptop some of them with 8GB RAM max
RAM is cheap. Cheap. I use 32 GB on my workstation at home, and on each of two workstations at work.
How much RAM is in the workstation that you use while riding the bus between home and work?
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Opposites. (Score:5, Interesting)
How many real Linux developers are on Windows and have trouble with running a VM, or a separate box?
The opposite also happens :
There are a few scientific fields where nearly everybody uses Linux (e.g.: Life-science research - bioinformatics, etc.)
The servers and clusters run Linux.
The devs run Linux (or Linux VM on laptops with unusual hardware) (or sometime stay on MacOS X because it's still a type of Unix and "Good Enoug" for them).
So the dev write Linux software that end-up being run on Linux compute nodes.
BUT... there are a few research labs with users stuck on Windows (usually the wet labs guys).
They might need to do some data pre-processing locally before uploading onto the cluster (e.g.: because the un-processed files are way to big).
Here there used to be only 2 options :
- the wetlab people install an Ubuntu VM on their machine and run the Linux software this way.
(it's not trivial. Again, we're not talking about the devs or sysadmins, we're talking about the wet lab researchers)
(at least some dev release ready-to-use virtual appliances)
- the dev recompile a windows version using Cygwin.
(but unlike a Linux to Mac OS X port, these tend to be non-trivial, even if you use a full blown POSIX abstraction layer (cygwin) instead of a minimalistic compiéer (mingw) or... gasp... the native Visual Studio)
Now WSL offers a third option :
- just download the Linux version and run it using Bash.EXE
In otherwords : the consumer of software can also have an advantage by using WSL - when in a Linux dominated field (e.g.: research) and not wanting to fumble with Linux/VM installation.
Surely Microsoft would introduce some "extra" features that are addictively sweet into it's Linux ABI. Just like Microsoft did with Java a decade and a half ago -- in violation of the agreement Microsoft signed with Sun -- and got sued for it and cost them $1.2 Billion. Surely nice, friendly Microsoft wouldn't want you to get hooked on something that doesn't exist in the real Linux, and therefore makes you consider deploying Windows in production?
There's a difference :
- back then, in the target market (enterprise servers), Microsoft's own servers (Windows NT OS, running Microsoft IIS web server, etc.) had a significant market share, next to Sun's own Unix machines (solaris, etc.)
So, devs working with Microsoft tools, will end up producing things that work better on the Microsoft servers than on Sun's (due to different extensions) : will lead to some preferences toward the Microsoft servers. (The code just works better here, let's buy more of these).
In other words: The Microsoft E.E.E strategy can work, because there's an actual market share that they can favour while extending the standard as per the second E.
Nowadays, in the target market (Cloud, embed, etc. - i.e.: everything except the desktop) Linux is nearly omni-present.
(With maybe the sole exception of Windows instances being available on the Azure Cloud, I've hear. Does anybody really use those ?)
Now imagine a developer producing a Linux software with Microsoft's extensions that require WSL.
Developer tries it on their cluster/webserver/cloud/raspberry pi/cubesat/whatever... and it doesn't work. Well, to bad. Developer tosses the useless crap and moves on.
In other words, you need an actual monopoly (or even at least some significative market presence) to leverage for the Extend phase to actually work.
Otherwise you're just "that werid company with a non-working product".
Actually, this time, if you think about it, Microsoft is the one on the receiving side.
Linux kernel is developped *extremely fast*, by a very vast community.
On the other hand, Microsoft is only throwing a small finite number of developers at this, and has only currently implemented the strict minimum subset of Linux ABI calls to enable some ELFs to run natively. There are still ton
Re:Opposites. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or just be at a corporation where they use MS Exchange Server so that you need Office tools, or Skype for Business is in common use. That's hard to get working properly on Linux (even on OSX these are substandard implementation, and Visio isn't even available). Windows is entrenched in the enterprise for a reason, and that's not because they hate Linux.
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We use Exchange where I work, but in the nine years I've been here, I've only had Outlook installed for maybe the first month. I had Thunderbird up and running fairly quickly for email. The calendar wasn't as important for me, so I dealt with it through OWA until I figured out DavMail and Lightning. I'm running Windows 7 on the desktop, but Outlook has historically been such a steaming heap (it only supports one inbox, and it pretty much force
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It's true, OWA can work. I really hate it though, the interface is the worst for any web based email I've used. I have had cases where someone in a corporation has used the extra features of Outlook, which means you need Outlook to read it correctly. And calendar is vital in many organizations. A smartphone can help but often there are attachments to a meeting invite which are difficult to read on a phone, and difficult to get back to your computer from the phone. I think the calendar is the primary reason
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How many real Linux developers are on Windows and have trouble with running a VM, or a separate box?
"Separate box" is not practical on a laptop, and last I checked, subnotebooks maxed out at a paltry 4 GB of RAM.
Wouldn't someone developing for Linux want the real Linux kernel?
Not for someone who targets GNU in general, caring little whether it's GNU/Linux, GNU/Windows, or GNU/kFreeBSD for that matter [debian.org]. A developer might work with three environments: a production server, a desktop PC at the office configured to resemble production as closely as possible, and a laptop on which to work on a reasonably close replica while riding the bus or train to and from the office.
Surely Microsoft would introduce some "extra" features that are addictively sweet into it's Linux ABI.
Would
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last I checked, subnotebooks maxed out at a paltry 4 GB of RAM.
A quick google search shows otherwise.
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Android makes Microsoft a lot of money on patents, so bringing Android development more and more onto Windows plays to their advantage.
That said, I still use a VM with Ubuntu for building LineageOS for my phone since it's not officially supported.
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Surely Microsoft would introduce some "extra" features that are addictively sweet into it's Linux ABI
Microsoft doesn't have a Linux ABI, even in their 'subsystem for linux'. Ubuntu or RedHat or whoever have their kernel and that kernel runs on top of the Windows kernel.
Just like Microsoft did with Java a decade and a half ago -- in violation of the agreement Microsoft signed with Sun -- and got sued for it and cost them $1.2 Billion.
That's different, ultimately WORA proved to be a crapfest because you were limited to the functionality that Java offered and even that wasn't consistent across platforms. Even when it was tried again with Android people just ended up screaming out for custom APIs and an NDK because Google ended up in the same boat when faced with Java's lim
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You're missing the point. This is not about targeting serious Linux developers. This is about targeting all the Python, Ruby, Node.js etc crowd, who are currently using Macs, because they want a fancy UI, but they also need (or at least prefer) a Unix-like userspace.
If you go to Hacker News and read the comments on this same news story, every third one is, "I'm seriously considering dumping my Mac now". Which is exactly the point.
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Re: Strangely enough... (Score:2)
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Explain how offering Linux in Windows locks "people into cloud computing crap". This is local, nothing to do with the cloud.
They obviously can't lock you in because Ubuntu/Suse/Fedora have always been available outside of Windows... I don't even know how you came up with that bullshit.
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I don't think you understand how much Window$ 10 relies on the internet to properly function. Have you noticed how 2017 laptops still only have 4GB of RAM and 1.2 Gz processing? Cloud computing; anything bought made by M$ in the last few years is notorious for this. A lot of it is stupid little things just for statistic purposes, but it is still a breach in privacy. Using the Linux that a proprietary company provides to you (Linux Foundation members, so they can) means that anything you do on it still ultim
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Your entire premise is this:
I don't think you understand how much Window$ 10 relies on the internet to properly function.
But that is completely false. Does Windows 10 absolutely, 100% require the Internet for any function that existed in previous versions, which in those versions did not require the Internet? No.
Yes, Microsoft does cloud computing. Yes, they want you to do it. No, you are not required to do it. Stop acting like you are.
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I can see it being useful. A lot of people need or want to develop on Linux, however corporate needs also require fully compatible Office applications. So this cuts things down so that you can be a developer but only have one computer. If it works of course. The bootcamp for OSX is not a good solution for this, and VMware is often too resource intensive. The drawaback is that it's the spyware edition of Windows, it would be nicer to see this in Windows 7 and 8.1, though I can understand that it require
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They're appealing to the market that wants spyware for Linux but can't seem to find any, so they're going to just run Linux as a subsystem of the spyware. Fairly ingenius, if you think about it.
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Gamers. Like it or not Windows is where PC gaming happens, and many/most major titles only ship for Windows, never for Linux. So people need a native Windows install, but if they want to run Linux they can do it in WSL and have the best of both worlds.
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And I'm the opposite. I spend 95% of my time in Linux as SSH is my most heavily used application, probably followed by the TFTP server, and the scripting that I wrote to admin the 2700 devices I work with.
I have to go into Windows to manage certain specific domain functions, and for some specific network devices that require proprietary Windows programs to easily administer. For those latter devices in theory the manufacturer is going HTML5 in the next code release, so I'll have even less need for Windows
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I certainly could use Bash in Windows, providing it had hooks into the Operating System so I can replace those horrific Powershell scripts. But I suspect this is very much a one-way street.
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video with VirtualBox is much better than the video with Hyper-V.
have you tried vmware for comparison? I haven't run it on anything later than win7