Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10

Well, this has increased the changes of my next laptop being a Surface Book by around 100%. I already loved the form factor of the thing, but lack of bash was absolutely causing me to hesitate and wonder if I could justify doing all my work in a Linux VM or something (I can't).

I'm genuinely very tired of OS X, which (to my perception at least) has gotten steadily worse with every version. I for one will be happy to switch.

Me too, but to be honest I am not quite sure what I don't like about Mac OS X anymore. At work I got Arch with i3 which is (extremely) addictive, but at home I have Mac OS X (and I use for work too). I don't really have any specific problems (compared to Arch :) with Mac OS X. Still I was thinking to put Arch on it, but I don't want to tinker to be able to watch netflix after a long flight in that 'weird' network which the wifi driver version X.Y doesn't like :) Windows felt weird after getting used NIX-ish systems so it was out of the question.

I have tried to figure out why I want a non-mac for my laptop and concluded I just like change... :) I was almost settled on that dell xps with ubuntu, but if the Surface Books get thunderbolt 3 and this before the autumn I am pretty sure I can't resist anymore...

EDIT: typo

Why don't you just use Linux in a VM on Windows? I don't really understand why native bash (and full Linux ABI) would make Windows a better development environment than just running a Linux VM.

If you plan on using the Linux environment and having it interact with the Windows environment you're going to have the same limitations that you would with a VM, OR you'll have to change your workflow because the way a program running under a Linux environment interacts with some windows service is going to be a completely new thing.

Will I be able to use a windows only service to interact with a command line program written in python running in the Linux layer? If I can't interact with the windows layer completely then it's very much like a VM or a container running inside a jail.

What happens when I install python or nodejs and stuff just doesn't work right? Like say I have a database running on windows and I want to interact with it with python. Will I have to rely in Windows making sure the compatibility layer always work?

Honestly: don't know... :) I suppose when looking for a new fancy (and expensive) gadget I would like it to work like I want it to out of the box. I can admit it is not a rational thing: I would have to install stuff either way, but it makes me _want_ it less... I know it doesn't make sense, but I believe that is it... :)