Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10

Sounds like this is an experiment to me - the first step towards a hybrid OS. Do they want to try and eat into the OSX/development stack in an effort to make windows relevant to that market? Or is there a bigger picture here where they eventually want to blur the lines between linux and windows? Perhaps they will "pull an android" on the patent front but have a free alternative that you can use. I guess I've been around too long and seen too much.

It's not really an experiment. Or if it is, it was one that was performed in 1988. Windows NT has from the start been designed to have this, multiple operating system "personalities" layered as "subsystems" over a single kernel. As someone who has been around long and seen much, you should recall the OS/2 1.x subsystem aimed at pulling in the OS/2 1.x market, the "NT Virtual DOS Machines" aimed at pulling in the DOS market, the (original) POSIX subsystem that people characterized as little more than marketing checkboxery, and so forth.

Gradually all of the subsystems, and processor architectures, fell by the wayside. The excitement for some is less that this is some fundamental architectural change in Windows NT. It isn't. It's that this is the first new thing in (desktop/laptop/server) Windows NT for a while that isn't "The customer can have any subsystem and processor architecture that he wants, as long as it is WinNN and Intel/AMD.".

It would be good to see the Interix subsystem come back, too. And maybe a second processor architecture, as well. (-: