Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10

I think eventually, we'll see Windows transform into a Linux distro with a Windows UI.

I'm not trying to wrinkle anyone's shorts, but this just makes a lot of financial sense. Let the "community" do most of the OS development and only maintain the Windows UI. This allows them to focus more on services and Azure.

Severely doubt it.

Let me dream.

>I think eventually, we'll see Windows transform into a Linux distro with a Windows UI.

As long as you consider OSX to be a Linux distro (lol) with a Apple UI, then sure.

But I doubt Microsoft ever gets any closer to unix-like systems than Apple is.

Ten years ago I would have said that's ridiculous thinking.

But today kernel software is practically commoditized by Linux. Competing feature wise is a fools errand - it's just too costly and slow to go it alone.

FreeBSD could be another choice also. Lots of industry support.

Why? There are many more Windows applications than Linux ones.

Microsoft is probably going to make a lot of money from selling apps/games on win-10. Why would they lose that for and commoditize their OS and the API layer ?

It would look like that's the direction they're moving in if this product were a Windows environment on Linux. Something like a Microsoft supported version of Wine.

As it is, it looks more like a Linux environment on Windows. Analogous to a Cannonical supported version of Cygwin.

I'd love to see Windows as Linux distro because I'd prefer to give full access to my hardware to Linux and only pull out a Windows environment when an application requires it. Desktop Linux users are in the minority though, so I expect there's a lot more demand for the reverse.

As I see it, Windows 10 is an abstraction layer on top of...well increasingly, on top of anything. The current iteration is a more robust abstraction over diverse hardware (where Windows for the Desktop has always found its strength) -- but now the stack is more unified from micro-controllers to just short of big iron.

Pushing operating systems under the abstraction is just the next step after decoupling Windows from hardware. In a sense that's been a theme for Windows since the development of .NET.

The value of Windows has been as an ecosystem and it almost certainly will remain one. The tradeoff of running Windows is a tradeoff and it comes with big advantages for some users.

See previous episodes: NeXT with a Mac UI, VMS with a Windows UI despite relative dearth of NeXT and VMS apps.

> But I doubt Microsoft ever gets any closer to unix-like systems than Apple is.

I'm confused by this comment. OS X is literally UNIX. In fact, I think it's the ONLY UNIX system available to consumers.

You can get solaris for free from oracle.

umm.. FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris.

OSX is a thin layer of UNIX with a lot of non-UNIX like stuff. Aqua over X. Self-contained apps over package management (unless you want to count the app store).

I find it more like a broken borked *NIX system than anything.

My guess: It'll be a lot like how Android works. The kernel is OSS, but "Windows(Google) Services" requires a proprietary license.

Android's license is "you need to put the Google Play Store and the Google App ecosystem on the phone". Window's license might still be, "pay us money".

You wouldn't pay for the kernel (because of GPL) but you would pay for branding and support (like RHEL) and you would pay for the ability to run the "Windows Application Compatibility Layer".

Neither FreeBSD nor NetBSD have been submitted to the Open Group for certification, and are thus considered "Unix-like". When I say OSX is literally Unix, I mean it has passed certification and can legally use UNIX trademark.

I knew that, but I left it out because I don't consider it consumer-grade. It's not something you'd find on a PC you'd buy at Best Buy, Tiger Direct, Amazon, etc, nor is it something you'd give to a non technical user and expect them to use.

It could make sense if they want developers to start creating Linux focused apps, and then over time deprecate the win32 parts.

The cynic in me sees this from the opposite direction.

Microsoft has already gone out of it's way to take control of the hardware and kernel (think secure boot on intel and the _total_ control on arm). They're now allowing you the privilege of running some posix userland applications (which have no real power) so people don't complain too much when they make it impossible to boot a custom kernel on newer hardware.

"What do you mean you can't boot linux? Don't be silly, you're already running ubuntu!"