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Ubuntu on Windows

(blog.dustinkirkland.com)
2049 points bpierre | 1 comments | 30 Mar 16 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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.

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jupiter2 ◴[30 Mar 16 21:44 UTC] No.11393276[source]▶
Thank you for mentioning this! Really bothered by all the positive comments, especially coming from savvy HN users.

Gave this a long look and my main beef is that I couldn't possibly do anything on a Windows Machine in its' current state. Linux isn't just about running apps - there's a philosophy behind the system. Users first!

As long as Microsoft continues to disrespect the rights of users in regard to privacy, data-collection, data-sharing with unnamed sources, tracking, uncontrollable OS operations (updates, etc) - I will never go near it.

I find it especially offensive that ex-open source and ex-Linux users (working for Microsoft) have the audacity to come on here and try to sell this as a 'Linux on Windows' system when most of what makes Linux special (respect for the user) has been stripped away.

It's like giving a man who is dying of thirst sea water.

Most comments here appear to be positive and that's fine... whatever. To anyone reading this... please don't sell your souls and the future of software technology for ease of use and abusive business practices. /rant

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city41 ◴[31 Mar 16 03:28 UTC] No.11394793[source]▶
I think a key point that is being missed here is most of the people excited about this probably run OSX, not Linux. OSX has long been the "'Linux' for people who don't really want to run Linux" (not really meant as an insult, I'm typing this from OSX right now).

Apple is just as proprietary, commercial and anti-competitive as Microsoft here.

FWIW, this excites me because it potentially means I can go from two machines to one, and always have IE/Edge at my fingertips. It will greatly improve my dev workflow if it pans out like people are hoping it does.

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disagree1_ ◴[31 Mar 16 08:06 UTC] No.11395667[source]▶
> Apple is just as proprietary, commercial and anti-competitive as Microsoft here.

I respectfully disagree. The OSX kernel XNU is open source, as are a ton of its components. That's huge in a lot of situations. Some things - not a lot, granted, but some, like FreeBSD's C++ stack and compiler - are even upstreamed back to mainstream open source projects by Apple employees.

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1. dr_zoidberg ◴[31 Mar 16 15:09 UTC] No.11397715[source]▶
While not open source, I've seen parts of the windows source (never really had the time to read it in full detail) in my work, most probably coming from the MS vs EC situation some years back[0]. Yes, there are still hidden parts (docs mostly, I recall my friends doing memory forensics research had a "fun" time to get information on IP connection structures for example), but it's not as secretive as many people think it is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission#Si...