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Ubuntu on Windows

(blog.dustinkirkland.com)
2049 points bpierre | 6 comments | 30 Mar 16 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.622s | source | bottom
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AimHere ◴[30 Mar 16 20:52 UTC] No.11392908[source]▶
It's time that people stopped using the term 'Windows' for this operating system. The Free Software Foundation created the bulk of the userspace, under terms that allow anyone to share, modify and fork the programs, and then Microsoft came along with the one last missing piece of the puzzle - the kernel, and completed the full operating system, which, to be frank, users find completely unusable and worthless without the free software provided by GNU.

The kernel is an important part of the system, sure, but only one among many important parts. We therefore think that, to give full credit to the authors, the whole system should be termed GNU/Windows.

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iamcurious ◴[30 Mar 16 21:32 UTC] No.11393200[source]▶
You jest, but I agree. I might accept a GNU/Windows machine as a working computer, but I would be a lot more weary of accepting just a Windows machine.
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1. stingraycharles ◴[30 Mar 16 21:38 UTC] No.11393240[source]▶
Would this be possible? How far could anyone (outside of Microsoft) strip down Windows to leave behind just a kernel with a functioning GNU environment (let's say, a shell and file access) ?
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2. lmm ◴[30 Mar 16 21:55 UTC] No.11393349[source]▶
I ran bb4win as my window manager for a while. You can get a full suite of userspace applications e.g. KDE for windows. If you're too much of a purist to use cygwin you can (or could until recently) build everything against SUA and then you just need to run a windows X server, but at that point you're still running explorer as the graphical shell/window manager.
3. 794CD01 ◴[30 Mar 16 21:55 UTC] No.11393351[source]▶
Since 2008R2, Windows has had a Server Core version that is trying to move closer and closer to that goal.
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4. McGlockenshire ◴[30 Mar 16 22:55 UTC] No.11393661[source]▶
MS is also adding an SSH server to Windows.

If they also add Linux userland support to Windows Server, in the near future you will be able to SSH in and get bash prompt on your Windows infrastructure... natively.

I'm kind of liking the future.

5. bradyd ◴[31 Mar 16 04:39 UTC] No.11395032[source]▶
The install environment for Windows, Windows PE[0], is an extremely stripped down version of Windows. It's based on the same code base as the main Windows, but basically only comes with the command prompt and task manager. It's available free as part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Enviro...

6. mappu ◴[31 Mar 16 04:59 UTC] No.11395082[source]▶
There's at least one free (gratis) version of Windows available (Hyper-V Server) that's missing the Explorer shell and some other parts.

I have successfully installed KDE on this (via Cygwin plus a mesa/llvmpipe build of opengl32.dll). It seemed to work OK.