Ubuntu on Windows

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101681

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103211

It's a bit more than UNIXy, (the proper term is Unix-like), it literally is UNIX. It meets the UNIX 03 specifications.

Also, the motivations for these move predate the rise in popularity of Apple. For years, one of the biggest complaints about Windows was the lack of a good command line interface. There was the legacy CMD.EXE, which provided support for DOS commands and batch files, and PowerShell, which people either love or hate. The reality, however, is that overwhelmingly, the combination of bash/zsh and coreutils, binutils, util-linux, etc. won out a long time ago. Most schools use a flavor of Linux (maybe Solaris) for teaching Computer Science (and related disciplines), so many people who have formal training are used to those. Those people tend to teach other people to use them, etc.

Some people bemoan the fact that the CLI never evolved past its UNIX origins, but the reality is these tools work just fine. There's never been a reason to evolve them.

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3612.htm

- What about lack of all the Linux/OS X GUI software?

- What about lack of all the UNIX OS features?

- What about all those billions and billions of Windows malware, viruses, adware etc.

- What about all the spying and restrictions that Microsoft has integrated into the Windows? (e.g. cannot block Microsoft spy server in the hosts-file, forced updates etc.)

- What about the fact that OS X and Linux have always been at least decent from developers point of view but Windows has always had problems and then things like Vista and Win8 happen.

- What about the advertisements served to you in the login screen?

- What about all the future shit MS will throw at you?

- Other stuff can't remember now

If and IF this will actually work out well, I would say this finally makes Windows usable for software development however I don't see any reason why anyone would change from UNIX based system to Windows unless they plan to make even bigger changes in the future...( like rewriting whole Windows to be UNIX based for example. :) )

As a side note, Windows NT had a POSIX layer as one of its three main APIs (Along with Win32 and OS/2), so in theory, at least, it should have been easy to port true UNIX apps to it. I have no idea what state the POSIX layer is in now; probably in a similar state to the OS/2 layer.

> What about lack of all the Linux/OS X GUI software?

Windows prolly has more GUI applications than both those OSes combined. That's not necessarily a good thing but it's not bad either. It just means there is a Win substitute for everything.

> What about lack of all the UNIX OS features?

Same answer as above.

> What about all those billions and billions of Windows malware, viruses, adware etc.

I download a lot of crap on my home Win computer and haven't had a virus once in the past 6 or 7 years. There are likely more Android viruses active now than Windows.

> What about all the spying and restrictions that Microsoft has integrated into the Windows?

If you don't give permission the action is not taken. Granted I am currently getting spammed to update my home computer from win 7 to 10 but it hasn't force installed on me. Likewise for automatic updates.

> What about the fact that OS X and Linux have always been at least decent from developers point of view but Windows has always had problems and then things like Vista and Win8 happen.

Which is what this new initiative is trying to fix.

Don't get me wrong. I love my osx for dev and my *nix boxes for servers. But if I can get one machine/OS for desktop development of nix and windows without having to run silly emulators or switch between VMs then I'm sold.

I switched to Mac for my personal development in 2001 but still used Windows at work. I have found over the last couple years that I have been migrating back to Windows for quite a few things. For me personally, I find the UI in Windows to be more productive and faster. The features Apple has been adding are not things I'm very interested in and I haven't been using my 2009 MBP for much anymore except syncing with my iPhone. A number of Linux VM's are always around for development work and if I can do it all now in Windows, I'm all in.

I've been holding off buying a new laptop and, if this new feature works as advertised I will not be buying Apple.

Haven't had malware in years. Vista and Windows 8? Advertisements? Future shit and other awfulness you can't remember? Yeah those really sound like valid points.

There's nothing lucky about being prudent.

As for which OS (Win/Mac/nix) controls the majority share of developer desktops, I feel like it's always going to depend on what you're developing, so talking about the overall "biggest slice of the pie" for developers is less meaningful than talking about who has the biggest slice in the consumer space.

For example, a backend web developer might look at this "Winbuntu" thing and suddenly be attracted to the idea that they could trade their Mac in for a PC that lets them do all the UNIXy stuff they need for their job, but at the end of the day lets them play the latest PC games...

...unless SteamOS continues to grow in popularity, in which case Microsoft loses share because a Linux-based laptop suddenly seems like the best choice for a gamer-developer.

On the other hand, if we're talking about a company handing work laptops out to employees, frontend developer-designers are likely to continue preferring (requiring, really) Macs for a long time to come, and that likely means that it makes more sense to keep a common platform and hand Macs out to everyone, since so many server devs are already well-accustomed to using Macs. And though Windows might eventually become attractive enough to professional designers, Linux is deeply neglected in the design-oriented space.

But that's all just web development, which has much more fluidity than other types of development. Game developers will continue to develop on the platforms that they intend to support (or Windows for consoles, at least for the time being). iOS developers will continue to develop on Macs. Mac developers will develop on Macs, Windows developers will develop on Windows, and Linux developers will develop on Linux. I'm barely an Android developer, but it seems to be slightly more natural to work on a Mac or Linux machine, and yet "Winbuntu" would likely remove that advantage.

I agree that with Windows embracing Linux so deeply like this, it certainly opens the door for a lot of people to make the switch-- personally, I bought a Surface Book because I was excited by the hardware, but quickly returned it once I realized how unhappy I was without native access to a terminal. If Ubuntu continues to flourish as a fully-fledged aspect of Windows, I might consider buying the Surface Book 2.

But my personal anecdote also illustrates the greater point-- this opens the door, but it doesn't push anyone through it. I was tempted away from Apple because they've stopped innovating on their laptops. In order for developers to switch to Windows, they'll have to be tempted for their own reasons. And old habits do die hard.

Some perspective is needed here. Windows has more GUI applications than both those OSes combined and multiplied by some large number. A windows PC can run every Windows application made in the last twenty years, with some exceptions, and it's an infinitely larger market for commercial software.

> - What about lack of all the Linux/OS X GUI software?

What about the lack of windows software on those platforms? It goes both ways.

> - What about lack of all the UNIX OS features?

Which features? What about the Windows OS features you do't get on a UNIX OS? Again, it goes both ways.

> - What about all those billions and billions of Windows malware, viruses, adware etc.

There are plenty of windows Viruses and malware, but I will say the most problematic security problems I've had have all been on Linux boxes. I would still count Windows as more problematic overall due to the quantity, but I believe the focus on security from Microsoft in the recent years has paid off, and it's nowhere bad as it used to be. Also, to some degree, the prevalence of malware and viruses are because of the popularity, and the popularity comes with it's own advantages (more supported software). It's a trade-off using a platform where some software you like may not be available (e.g. games).

> - What about the fact that OS X and Linux have always been at least decent from developers point of view but Windows has always had problems and then things like Vista and Win8 happen.

Am I supposed to know what this means? People have been using Windows as a development platform for a long time. Those that want to use Visual Studio still do. Windows Vista was crap, but I didn't find Windows 8 bad at all. Around Windows 7 is when it started actually being viable for me to run, and I think it's gotten consistently better over time. The biggest problem I know of that people had with Windows 8 is the start menu change, which to be honest is a really small thing, people just didn't like it and it was front and center.

- What about the advertisements served to you in the login screen?

I haven't seen any.

> - What about all the future shit MS will throw at you?

I'm not sure how this puts Windows in any different light than OS X.

> - Other stuff can't remember now

Seriously?

> - What about all the spying and restrictions that Microsoft has integrated into the Windows? (e.g. cannot block Microsoft spy server in the hosts-file, forced updates etc.)

This is valid, and would be my number one reason for not running Windows at this point if other considerations didn't outweigh it for me.

1: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH

Seriously, you just asked someone for a counterpoint to "other stuff I can't remember".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964

On the contrary; there have been many valid reasons to evolve them, but backward compatibility was deemed more important.

Example #1: it is possible to write a sh/csh/bash/?sh script that handles file names with spaces, slashes, quotes, question marks, etc, but one would hope that would be made a bit easier, almost half a century later.

Example #2: the hack that is xargs for handling large numbers of arguments. To write a truly robust script that handles directories with an arbitrary number of files, one should run a pipeline using find and xargs, instructing xargs to do the actual work (and you cannot even use find and xargs with their default settings; you need -print0 and -0 flags to handle file names with spaces, etc)

If programs received arguments unexpanded, and the system had a library for expanding arguments, many use cases would become a lot simpler, and scripts could become more robust.

And yes, that could have been evolved. Headers of executables could easily contain a bit indicating "I'll handle wild-card expansion myself".

Example #3: man pages, IMO, should be stored in a special section inside binaries. That ensures that the man page you read is the man page for the executable you have.

Example #4: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/24182/how-to-get-the... shows that things _have_ evolved. Reading and parsing /etc/mtab isn't a reliable way to find all mount points, just as reading /etc/passwd file isn't the way to find password hashes anymore, ar has long been upgraded to support file names longer than 14 characters, and zip knows more file attributes than it used to.

i miss absolutely zero windows software.

After all you can only auto update microsoft and store apps. Other apps will either handle updates themselves probably with an annoying UAC prompt and possibly at inconvenient times when you actually want to use the apps. Some have processes that constantly sit in the background sucking up your resources to pop up annoying prompts to update application foo during which you must watch for them changing your browser preferences and installing adware. Others you will simply have to go to their website and download an exe or msi.

Meanwhile you are missing the fact that people don't want to avoid automatic updates to fix security holes. They want to avoid updating to the next undesirable update foisted on the users before its ready and much to peoples annoyance. Example the windows 8 UI change.

Unbelievably staying on an older still supported platform until you are ready to update is a feature you have to pay money for!

Lest you misunderstand I'm not talking about clinging to windows xp till they claw it from your cold dead hands 3 years after end of life I'm talking about the future equivalent of staying with windows 7 and upgrading to windows 10 because 8 sucks.

Personally I think someone interested in graphics/cad/audio production might find something compelling even if alternatives exist on linux for the above. I don't see much in the way of gui softare that anyone would care for as a developer. You can bring up visual studio if you like but I don't find it compelling.

2) Now paralell is better

3) Never. You should be able to check the man pages even if you can't access the binaries.

2. GNU Parallel is actually my choice for this, because xargs has a few known issues. Parallel gets the most right, and I used it a lot in my research to run scripts on lots of data.

3. Hell no. Distributions do this job perfectly fine, and you should be able to read the man pages without having read permissions for the binary (since in UNIX you can have 111 as permissions on a binary).

> If you don't give permission the action is not taken. Granted I am currently getting spammed to update my home computer from win 7 to 10 but it hasn't force installed on me. Likewise for automatic updates.

Except for the actions that the operating system doesn't tell you about, and you can't be sure about becuase it's proprietary (Windows has at least 3 backdoors and spy features that we know of, and none of them ask for permission). And all of the DRM and related malicious functionality that stops you from doing things you'd obviously want to do with your computer.

We are a Python, Java and Scala shop.

No, it actually won't. There are so many tricks and caveats with shell expansions, wildcard handling etc, that regularly old unix hats I know get it wrong (and I've started on Sun OS, probably before half of HN was born).

This is like saying "pointers are nothing, you can learn them in a day" ignoring the obvious fact that the interplay with pointers in a large app is something entirely different than merely understanding indirection, and than even the best kernel/driver/crypto/etc programmers still get pointer related bugs after decades of writing C.

>3. Hell no. Distributions do this job perfectly fine, and you should be able to read the man pages without having read permissions for the binary (since in UNIX you can have 111 as permissions on a binary).

Actually, no, they don't do it at all. One can have 3-4 different versions of a userland program, and never know (unless they explicitly check versions) for which the man page is.

Never made sense to me. It was driven by IT because of control issues. I introduced Linux (this was 10 years ago) and then slowly ever Dev switched to develop on Linux because it was a better development experience. Unix is by hackers for hackers. IT was forced to incorporate these systems, which wasn't hard.

Now with this change I can see why people might switch back, definitely makes it easier to have Windows IT shop, but still be able to target Linux. Personally, Docker has already started resolving this issue for me, but I can see it helping Windows devotees. MS lost my trust back in 1996, and I honestly don't know what they could do to regain it, but this isn't enough for me.

That's not even close to true, you're living in a bubble. Windows and windows apps still dominate the world, by a long shot.

This seems like a prime example of the "Anything I am good at using is objectively easy to use" fallacy that's common to programmers.

I'm someone who doggedly persisted trying to dev on my windows box because the stability, speed, app support, GUI niceness of windows is just far superior to Ubuntu (I won't speak to OS X since I've only done minimal dev on it). I won't go into a lengthy defense of this claim - but will if pressed.

I put up with all the failed python module installations - the hunting around for the right VisualStudio compiler... the 64bit python install issues... on and on... I put up with it all... only to be defeated in the end by various node modules failing to install because they use ridiculous depth in their directory file structure that the windows filesystem can't handle. Our projected needed those dependencies. Something had to give.

So I tried vagrant VM with virtualbox - and shared folders... so I could keep my windows GUIs without needing to sshing everything to the VM. Somehow - even though the shared folders thing means the VM is ultimately using the windows filesystem - the node modules would install okay. BUt then I had problems with symlinks (which was solveable with effort)... But the worst thing was that various files, and sometimes whole directories would randomly have their permissions changed inextricably such that NO ONE - not even an admin user could touch them. The VM would get locked out, I would get locked out... it was horrid. It happened in the middle of a rebase once. Sad times... Sad... sad times.

So - I ditched vagrant and shared folders and use a totally contained VM with the ubuntu GUI... it's slow and horrid and it makes me cry... but at least I can alt-tab and waste time in a browser in the windows GUI if I want to.

So anyhoo - my concern. This approach by MS is going to mean everything plays with the same windows file-structure yeah? Or does the ubuntu thing get it's own self contained filey-bits to play with?

Cause if the former... then I will have the fear... THE FEAR... when I try to use it.

You are making it sound like they are forcing, or even automatically upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 8, or Windows 8 to Windows 10. They aren't. You have to specifically choose the 8->10 update, even if you are getting updates automatically installed.

> I'm talking about the future equivalent of staying with windows 7 and upgrading to windows 10 because 8 sucks.

Which you can do. I'm not sure what exactly your complaint is here. What am I missing?

(Note: I found Windows 8 to be superior to Windows 7 in every way except the start menu. I find Windows 10 superior to Windows 8 in every way except for Privacy :/ )

It'll get better through rewrites, new tools, different infrastructures etc long before it gets better through iteration on the same tools. That's OK though :)

Maybe the other way would be easier, use the VM for all dev file storage as well, and export a SMB share that you can connect to from windows. Same sharing capability (as long as the VM is running), but you don't have to worry about different underlying file system semantics.

> So - I ditched vagrant and shared folders and use a totally contained VM with the ubuntu GUI... it's slow and horrid and it makes me cry... but at least I can alt-tab and waste time in a browser in the windows GUI if I want to.

Personally, I would just SSH for access to the VM though, as I find PuTTY superior to having a desktop as a window on a desktop (I would prefer to RDP to a local Windows VM as well). But I use Vim as my IDE, so it's extremely easy for me to do so.

That said, Visual Studio announced support for targeting Linux today (I assume either through SSH to a local VM or remote box and/or the local Linux support they announced here, so that might be an acceptable route in the future.

right now my initial deploy+vm provisioning scripts are written in windows .cmd scripts, only because it means I don't have to have a C&C server somewhere. I'll be really happy to put all my automation scripts in bash and have it run regardless of dev env!

Err. As a Mac user from when system 7 was fancy looking, and who learned some basic bash in order to do useful stuff like use curl, grep, cat, ls > .txt, rm's based on partial name matches, etc. my only response is "How about we talk about it over breakfast, lunch, and dinner?"

Bash is simultaneously graceful and nimble, yet clumsy. While it's certainly appropriate to worry that any reduction of the clumsy side would have a net negative effect, to not see, or not ack the many issues just continues to deny its utility to non-expert users.

Is it really that bad? At one former job I ran Ubuntu under VirtualBox with guest additions installed (new Linux team in an old MS shop).

Performance was OK, at least for the things I used - terminals, vim, Firefox. The only thing that really annoyed me in this setup was the need to switch between the VM and Outlook every now and then. Fortunately, Outlook's notifications worked even in VM running fullscreen (IIRC).

I honestly have never found a problem with the Finder and miss a lot of its features (column view, drag file to file dialog, high-resolution previews for most file types, Quick View, and much more) when I'm in Windows or Linux.

In every release there is something removed and a new replacement to relearn.

As funny as it sounds, it's GNU/Windows. No Linux there - they made it work by emulating Linux.

You are right. My english is not very good and I did not read what OP wrote carefully about this. Maybe it was the silliness of the word "slave" being used like this that threw me off ;)

Those third apps updates can be annoying but I honestly cannot complain about all those problems you talk about, like processes sucking up resources, popups, and adware automatic installation on updates. I do not even see this happening with (very) non tech people around me. So I think it is a very suspicious argument. Even worst would be to suggest that those are problems are Microsofts blame. Maybe you get those adwares exactly because you think UAC is annoying. Can we blame Google when a user get a virus ridden app from a place other than the official store and ignore the OS warnings?

But if this is the reality, it is another good argument for the push for windows 10 update and the adoption of UWP. In fact, I think microsoft should push even harder for windows 10 updates, it is the right move.

Also, I think that the idea of maintaining a Windows machine updated with only the parts the user wants is hilarious. And I do not know who are those people you talk about. I love to test OS previews and I have never heard a person who already do not liked Microsoft for whatever reason make a big deal about a UI update (windows 8 "metro" mode was shit but easily ignored, windows 10 UI is better and amazing).

The more updates and innovation, the better. I am not afraid :)

Apple ran a fairly successful campaign in a number of highly technical publications shortly after OS X came out pushing the concept OS X was not only Real UNIX(tm) but also that a Mac was the best Unix workstation you could buy. I'm guessing that's the one, it certainly worked on me.

Here's one of the ads: http://www.brainmapping.org/MarkCohen/UNIXad.pdf

I think there where a few others. I seem to recall one showing OS X running matlab.

That's not true. They're automatically upgrading computers. Read some of the thousands of below comments to hear the stories. My Windows 8.1 laptop automatically scheduled itself to upgrade, and I was fortunate enough to be paying close attention to cancel it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a5edx/psa_window...

I was going to agree with you and admit I was being melodramatic...(well - I mean, saying that it makes me cry was certainly melodramatic - I don't really), but y'know what... it's definitely not ideal.

e.g. Scrolling in my ide.. sometimes lines of code don't refresh properly until I scroll back and forward a few times.

And with dev server, webpack watchers, test watchers open plus browser with a few tabs... yeah - it can get pretty sluggish. Maybe I'll try throwing a few more gig ram at the VM.

Microsoft once offered to help Apple to make Mac OS a widely-used industry standard. Apple decided it would rather sell $2,500 PCs than $50 software ;-)

http://scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html

MS have been pushing Win10 onto Win7/8(.1) end users for what seems like a few months now, continually escalating how forceful they're being.

eg recent IT media about it:

  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/17/microsoft_windows_10_upgrade_gwx_vs_humanity/

Personally, it would be useful to know what their end game is justifying all of this bad karma. It'd have to be fantastic. Either that, or someone inside MS is seriously out of control. :(

It's not good, but it's not forcing upgrades either (which is liable to get them sued).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11285488

Unless... There's some fundamental core security problem in earlier Windows versions that isn't in Windows 10 and they don't want to tip off anyone to what it is, because it's so large and egregious it opens them up to a lot of liability and lawsuits. Okay, I'll take my tinfoil hat off now...