Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10

Would anyone be able to give insight on why this would be useful? Im curious, sure, but I'm at a loss to think of a use case.

You would not be running ubuntu in virtualbox but "natively" on Windows. Allowing you to have a unix layer for your interpreters,runtimes whatever.

You could still develop stuff for server OS while having the ability to play games without having to reboot or use wine inside linux.

Maybe to be able to run linux programs on a windows machine? Could be good for developers targeting the linux platform, especially with the now ported .NET platform, MSSQL and so on.

As well as what others have said, it might long-term give an easier path for developing things that work across platforms too.

Lots of companies spend a lot of effort to run code on multiple platforms (SQL Server recently announced Linux support; .NET core has supported runtimes on Linux too and tons of OS languages have runtimes for multiple platforms). It would be great for both devs and end-users if the number of things that are different between platforms was reduced.

Perhaps avoid dual-booting or VMs in environments where you need both Linux and Windows.

This sounds either a bit like CoLinux, or like the POSIX subsystem revived. Remember: Windows has kernel support for different userspace APIs, and the well-known Windows API is just that: A user-mode subsystem running atop the kernel (there have been OS/2 and POSIX subsystems before).

I'm not sure I fall in the "usual" scenario, but my primary OS is linux (slackware) from years. I just miss some AAA games on my windows machine

My guess for the marketing target is developers who use Macs because their tools of choice are native to POSIX, with Windows API implementations as second-class citizens at best.

Maybe things have improved since, but at least a few years ago, it was always a crapshoot to try to get some new open source tool set up on Windows/Visual Studio, vs. batting close to 1.000 on Mac with configure && make && make install.

Another way to put this is that the world Terminal.app gives you access to is a huge selling point for developers, and this is part of Microsoft's attempt to provide something as useful.

Docker containers would be an excellent use case.

Instead of supporting a hybrid/dual boot desktop you support Windows, and run Linux applications on top.

First stage of EEE strategy.

They haven't and this is exactly it, as least for me as a web developer.

I can't +1 this one enough. I have some developers on my team who insist on using Docker on a Windows setup, and it is painful to use with VirtualBox.

OSX is better because it doesn't feel too different from Linux (aside from setting docker machine ENV variables). Still virtualized so you take a performance hit.

My office IT will only allow and manage Windows PCs on directory server. So I need to run VirtualBox everywhere to develop in Linux. If I could cut that step out, that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Docker recently announced a beta where they are using native systems in both Windows and OS X though. So I doubt this is the driving force for that.

Shell and command line tools: Linux users can be more productive in Windows now. The command line interface is very confortable for do a lot of things. If you need to do batch work (rename a lot of files, onvert some images, add metadata to your mp3 collection), you can do it now in the console. Before this, the alternative in windows was to use a sub-par shell, or install several graphical application and expend your evening clicking here and there.

Applications: Now you can install and configure applications like apache, postquesql, etc. on windows in the same way you do in linux/other unix platforms.

Strategically, this is a big win for Microsoft. Now they can go to their clients that are moving or thinking about moving to Linux and tell them "There's no need to migrate, just install your apps in Windows."

It's more complicated than that:

The beta announced a few days back by Docker uses HyperV to boot a Linux kernel to run Linux Docker.

The preview announced around a year ago by Microsoft and Docker is a native Windows implementation of Docker, running on the next Windows OS.

[later]

But...

This new layer should let you run most Linux containers straight on top of the next Windows.

Interesting...

The Docker beta that was announced is using Windows 10 builtin virtualization APIs. In theory when utilizing kernel virtualization features there will be less overhead (closer to the metal), but still overhead.

I wonder how they will make Ubuntu happen on Windows. Reading some of the comments, some speculate a subsystem, while others suggest an interoperable interface.

Edit: reading bitcrazed's comments it looks like it will be implemented a la WINE. No need to recompile binaries made for Linux x86; you'll be able to run apt packages from Ubuntu out of the box.

You'd almost certainly be in for a nasty shock.

IT departments not worrying much about what you do as the superuser inside a virtual machine that is running only with your user credentials, is one thing. But tell them that you're now going to be installing and running random Ubuntu softwares, not in a virtual machine but natively within Windows, and they will prick up their ears and start to take notice. Even the ones who are alright about what's being installed will want to think about things like control over what packages can be installed and locally-hosted repositories. "So, tell me how I set group policy for your apt-get installer?"

And if that is not a worry, let me relate some personal experience of using the Windows NT POSIX subsystem. Anti-virus programs, particularly the ones with the whizz-o features of "let's check what 'the crowd' said about this program" or "let's run this program for a little bit in my controlled execution environment to see whether it does malware-type things", don't like this a lot. I had to go through the unblocking of "/bin/foo is a rare program" so often, for everything from "ls" to "ftp", that it was in danger of becoming an automatic reflex.

Goodness knows what the likes of DeepGuard will make of programs that use a wholly new set of system call entrypoints into the kernel. (-:

Very good point. Looks like I'm sticking with Virtualbox. =)