←back to thread

Ubuntu on Windows

(blog.dustinkirkland.com)
2049 points bpierre | 1 comments | 30 Mar 16 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
takeda ◴[30 Mar 16 19:39 UTC] No.11392296[source]▶
Surprised I don't see anyone else mentioning this.

This looks to me like typical Microsoft strategy that they utilized a lot 25 years ago.

1. when not leader in given market, make your product fully compatible with competitor

2. start gaining momentum (e.g. why should I use Linux, when on Windows I can run both Linux and Windows applications)

3. once becoming leader break up compatibility

4. rinse and repeat

Happened with MS-DOS, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and others.

replies(23): >>11392494 #>>11393099 #>>11393276 #>>11393408 #>>11393449 #>>11393546 #>>11393585 #>>11394255 #>>11394392 #>>11395372 #>>11395436 #>>11395525 #>>11395526 #>>11395634 #>>11395700 #>>11395784 #>>11396366 #>>11396861 #>>11397608 #>>11397942 #>>11398467 #>>11398629 #>>11403675 #
chrisdotcode ◴[31 Mar 16 13:10 UTC] No.11396861[source]▶
> A team of sharp developers at Microsoft has been hard at work adapting some Microsoft research technology to basically perform real time translation of Linux syscalls into Windows OS syscalls.

We've actually even seen this before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem

(EDIT: To nitpick, I think the MS POSIX subsystem actually implemented the POSIXy standards as native code, as opposed to the translation layer that's mentioned here).

replies(1): >>11397045 #
1. facorreia ◴[31 Mar 16 13:41 UTC] No.11397045[source]▶
Also similar to the discontinued Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) and Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA).

And reminescent of Cooperative Linux, although that worked at the driver level and allowed the actual Linux kernel to be used.