Ubuntu on Windows

microsoft is leveraging FOSS Linux to get Mac users. I think it's a real smart move.

The author points to using grep and Xargs and some other tools to quickly update a package. That's the key here. These bash/Linux utilities are productivy boosters for all the Linux and Mac/bsd people out there. I can't imagine living without them and they're necessary for any system I develop on (which is currently a Mac).

I completely agree. I only really switched to OSX because getting node tools to work on windows and cygwin is a pita.

Wait, getting node to work on windows is a pita?

I know of no language runtime and ecosystem that has better cross-platform support than Node (hm ok maybe Java also). I develop solely on Windows (I just like it better) and virtually all of NPM just works on my box. Even stuff people never tested elsewhere than on their Macs, it just works. Express, webpack, mocha, phantomjs, it's really quite impressive if you ask me.

99% of the painful Node stuff on Windows comes down to native packages. To even compile, you have to install Visual Studio. Then you have to hope the module developer has a build definition that even works for Windows.