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Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10

(www.zdnet.com)
535 points raddad | 9 comments | 30 Mar 16 11:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.665s | source | bottom
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hobs ◴[30 Mar 16 16:36 UTC] No.11390553[source]▶
Some additional details from Scott Hanselman:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DevelopersCanRunBashShellAndUs...

"This is a real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself. It's fast and lightweight and it's the real binaries. This is an genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed, grep, vi, etc. It's fast and it's lightweight. The binaries are downloaded by you - using apt-get - just as on Linux, because it is Linux. You can apt-get and download other tools like Ruby, Redis, emacs, and on and on. This is brilliant for developers that use a diverse set of tools like me."

"This runs on 64-bit Windows and doesn't use virtual machines. Where does bash on Windows fit in to your life as a developer?

If you want to run Bash on Windows, you've historically had a few choices.

Cygwin - GNU command line utilities compiled for Win32 with great native Windows integration. But it's not Linux. HyperV and Ubuntu - Run an entire Linux VM (dedicating x gigs of RAM, and x gigs of disk) and then remote into it (RDP, VNC, ssh) Docker is also an option to run a Linux container, under a HyperV VM Running bash on Windows hits in the sweet spot. It behaves like Linux because it executes real Linux binaries. Just hit the Windows Key and type bash. "

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drinchev ◴[30 Mar 16 16:38 UTC] No.11390574[source]▶
> This is a real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself.

How does it work without VM? I'm super curious!

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teamhappy ◴[30 Mar 16 16:45 UTC] No.11390652[source]▶
Have a look at FreeBSD's linuxulator. It basically maps syscalls (and a bunch of other stuff) from one OS to another. Alexander Leidinger has written a whole lot of blog posts about it - this one's a good start: http://www.leidinger.net/blog/2010/10/27/the-freebsd-linuxul...
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stormbrew ◴[30 Mar 16 16:49 UTC] No.11390723[source]▶
Is there a source for this being a syscall emulation layer and not some kind of colocation of the linux kernel in a subsystem somehow?

The latter would be much more interesting to me, since what I really want out of "running linux on my desktop" is for it to actually act like the linux machines my code is targeting, and I'm dubious that a syscall layer will achieve that to the degree I want.

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1. xenadu02 ◴[30 Mar 16 17:22 UTC] No.11391062[source]▶
One of my coworkers is from MS and worked on the Android apps on Windows project. This comes out of that cancelled work: It's a full implementation of Linux syscalls in user mode that registers a driver to perform kernel-mode tasks on behalf of the subsystem. The NT kernel has always been fairly agnostic and not tied specifically to Win32; it originally had an OS/2 text-mode and POSIX subsystem in addition to Win32. The NT kernel even uses a Unix-like "\\?\" root filesystem where disks, kernel objects, sockets, etc are mounted.

From what I can gather Microsoft is paying Canonical to help with a few user-mode bits and the Windows apt-get stuff uses the official Canonical sources.

As I said to him: "NT is the only major OS I know of that has always had personality subsystems. Cutler’s vision finally pays off after 3 decades of waiting"

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2. nbevans ◴[30 Mar 16 17:38 UTC] No.11391247[source]▶
I love your last paragraph. Exactly what I was thinking. NT Subsystems were its party trick and its taken far too long for them to be introduced on the grand stage. I bet Dave Cutler is smiling his face off!
3. keithpeter ◴[30 Mar 16 17:40 UTC] No.11391274[source]▶
Thankyou for this concise summary. Much clearer now.
4. bitcrazed ◴[30 Mar 16 18:46 UTC] No.11391860[source]▶
Close, except ...

There is NO Windows "apt-get stuff" - it's just apt-get. From Ubuntu.

5. beagle3 ◴[30 Mar 16 19:27 UTC] No.11392212[source]▶
> "NT is the only major OS I know of that has always had personality subsystems."

In what way is a "subsystem" different than a "library" or a "process" or a "driver" (if it runs in kernel space)?

Any process can use the native API. What's special about a "subsystem"?

6. vram22 ◴[30 Mar 16 20:07 UTC] No.11392526[source]▶
What was his vision?

I know that Dave Cutler was heavily involved in designing NT, and was earlier the same with DEC VMS. (Had read the book Inside Windows NT.)

But don't know what vision you refer to. Was it about the personality subsystems?

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7. JdeBP ◴[03 Apr 16 15:19 UTC] No.11416392[source]▶
> "Cutler’s vision finally pays off after 3 decades of waiting."

Quite!

But only because the Interix-derived POSIX subsytem was, and is, little-known and vastly underappreciated. Had it been better known, the payoff might have come a decade or more sooner. There are a fair number of questions being asked now, about the new Linux subsystem, where the answer is "No; but the old POSIX subsystem had that.".

* Does it support pseudo-terminals? No, according to the demonstration video; but the old POSIX subsystem did. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11415843)

* Does it let you kill Win32 processes? No; but the old POSIX subsystem did. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11415872)

* Does it support managing daemons? No; but the old POSIX subsystem did. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11416376)

* Does it support GUI programs? No (say the people behind it themselves, although I suspect that it could run X clients); but the old POSIX subsystem did. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11391961) (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb463223.aspx)

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8. ch_123 ◴[07 Apr 16 13:55 UTC] No.11447245[source]▶
Before leaving for MS, Cutler worked on an OS codenamed "Mica" which ran on top of an architecture named PRISM (which was a predecessor to the Alpha). The idea behind Mica was that it was a microkernel which hosted VMS and Unix personalities on top.

It is widely claimed and believed that when he moved with his team to MS that he reimplemented Mica as the NT kernel. http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/dec/prism/mica/

9. dwm ◴[08 Apr 16 09:38 UTC] No.11453556[source]▶
I remember having a Microsoft developer (I'm afraid I forget her name — Six?) come and visit us several years ago to demonstrate the then-new SFU 3.0.

Seeing her send SIGSTOP to a running MSWORD.EXE process and observe it stop updating its window in response to expose events was splendid. :-)