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Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10

(www.zdnet.com)
535 points raddad | 3 comments | 30 Mar 16 11:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.56s | source
1. JdeBP ◴[03 Apr 16 13:17 UTC] No.11415985[source]▶
A lot has been written, in this and the other major Hacker News discussion, about Microsoft. Very little has been written about Canonical. Another ZDNet news piece (http://www.zdnet.com/article/ubuntu-not-linux-on-windows-how...) quotes in part a Mark Shuttleworth press statement that is on the Ubuntu WWW site in full (http://partners.ubuntu.com/microsoft).

Another thing that no-one has mentioned at all is how this pairs up with UbuntuBSD.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326457

Michael Hall of Canonical is quoted elsewhere (http://www.cio.com/article/3046588/open-source-tools/ubuntub...) saying that

> I think it's a cool project and I'm looking forward to seeing how far they get with it. It would certainly be an interesting addition to our already varied list of official flavors, if they can get there.

If one has Ubuntu binaries, one can now run them directly on top of 3 operating system kernels:

* On the FreeBSD kernel, with UbuntuBSD.

* On the Linux kernel, with Ubuntu Linux.

* On the Windows NT kernel, with this new Windows NT Linux subsystem.

So whilst RedHat is busy pushing systemd, and the systemd people are busy pushing a convergence of all Linux distributions into systemd operating systems that do a whole lot of things in the same single way, Ubuntu is apparently taking on Debian's "universal operating system" mantle and extending it to places where even Debian is not.

Everyone is focussing on Microsoft. It's important to remember the "and Canonical".

replies(2): >>11416146 #>>11465502 #
2. digi_owl ◴[03 Apr 16 14:12 UTC] No.11416146[source]▶
I think everyone is focusing on Microsoft because MS is the big dog in all this.

And their history is one of appearing to embracing something, and then introducing less and less subtle differences once they have the majority share. Also known as Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

So it may well be that Canonical have a short term win here, but that in the longer term MS will sideline Canonical as the major share of developers have adopted "MS Ubuntu".

3. JdeBP ◴[10 Apr 16 09:09 UTC] No.11465502[source]▶
And going by Canonical's marketing only a few days later, its ubiquity is what they are pushing.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11464703