Ubuntu on Windows

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.

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

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.

Apple has contributed to key open source projects such as LLVM and WebKit. They have also open sourced Swift.

They have identified the core of their business and they feel comfortable there. They get a 30% royalty for each App Store transaction, they make large profits selling iPhones and Macs. They monetize their software indirectly as a part of a larger end-to-end solution.

Microsoft during their monopolic era was much more beyond that, they were going for all.