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Confirmed: Microsoft and Canonical Partner To Bring Ubuntu To Windows 10 (zdnet.com) 492

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports for ZDNet: According to sources at Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, and Microsoft, you'll soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10. This will be more than just running the Bash shell on Windows 10. After all, thanks to programs such as Cygwin or MSYS utilities, hardcore Unix users have long been able to run the popular Bash command line interface (CLI) on Windows. With this new addition, Ubuntu users will be able to run Ubuntu simultaneously with Windows. This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10. [...] Microsoft and Canonical will not, however, sources say, be integrating Linux per se into Windows. Instead, Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries. Update: 03/30 16:16 GMT by M : At its developer conference Build 2016, Microsoft on Wednesday confirmed that it is bringing native support for Bash on Windows 10. Scott Hanselman writes: This isn't Bash or Ubuntu running in a VM. This is a real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself. It's fast and lightweight and it's the real binaries. This is a genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed, grep, vi, etc. It's fast and it's lightweight. The binaries are downloaded by you - using apt-get - just as on Linux, because it is Linux. You can apt-get and download other tools like Ruby, Redis, emacs, and on and on. This is brilliant for developers that use a diverse set of tools like me.
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Confirmed: Microsoft and Canonical Partner To Bring Ubuntu To Windows 10

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  • Ew, no (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:42AM (#51806795)

    The only reason I'd ever bother with Ubuntu is to get away from Windows. I don't want them together.

    • Re:Ew, no (Score:5, Funny)

      by tripleevenfall ( 1990004 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:46AM (#51806827)

      It's The Year of Linux on Windows (TM)

      • Re:Ew, no (Score:5, Insightful)

        by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:53AM (#51806909)
        You forgot the important part. It's The Year of Linux on Windows on the desktop (TM).
        • Re:Ew, no (Score:5, Funny)

          by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:40AM (#51807305) Homepage Journal
          Satya Nadella is in South Africa giving a speech:
          "Soon, you'll soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10. "
          The crowd replies with a enthusiastic cry of "UBUNTU"!

          "This will be more than just running the Bash shell on Windows 10. After all, thanks to programs such as Cygwin or MSYS utilities, hardcore Unix users have long been able to run the popular Bash command line interface (CLI) on Windows. "
          The crowd exuberatly reponds with "UBUNTU"!

          "With this new addition, Ubuntu users will be able to run Ubuntu simultaneously with Windows. This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10. "
          The audience shouts "UBUNTU"!

          "Microsoft and Canonical will not, however, be integrating Linux per se into Windows. Instead, Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries."
          The congregtation replies with a resounding "UBUNTU"!

          After the presentation, as Nadella is being led out the back of the conference center past some cattle pens, his guide warns him "be careful, don't step in the UBUNTU".
    • Re:Ew, no (Score:5, Funny)

      by phrostie ( 121428 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:28AM (#51807219)

      So they put the win10 equivalent of linux on windows 10?

      lol
      Lol
      LOL
      ROTFLMAO

      Shhhhhh

      no one tell them.

    • What about devices where Windows is supported but much of the other hardware is not? You might run Windows, only to run Ubuntu on top of it. I know this is a developer oriented Windows 10 release, but maybe the long term idea is that you would end up buying a Windows phone and running Ubuntu 'Apps' on top of it.
      Also, if there's Windows in there between the hardware and Linux, maybe DRM stuff could work somehow?
      From a user perspective, Windows is a pain in the ass to use, always getting in the way. Linux

      • The way this is being described, it really does sound like a mingw/cygwin compatibility layer. Maybe they're going to beef up the Posix subsystem (level 1 still lurks in the Windows 10 kernel, or so I gather). At the end of the day it's going to be some sort of plug-in subsystem that emulates/integrates some significant piece of the Linux kernel.

    • Commence Pedantry (Score:5, Informative)

      by mattventura ( 1408229 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @10:07AM (#51807493) Homepage
      Ironically, there's no actual Linux (as in the kernel) to be found here. Just userspace stuff.
    • Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

      by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @02:11PM (#51809667) Homepage Journal

      I'm updating my Windows 10 recommendation from "Avoid like the plague" to "Avoid like candy from a stranger in a van."

  • by LichtSpektren ( 4201985 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:47AM (#51806835)
    So what the hell does "Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries" mean? "Ubuntu" is an OS with the Linux kernel and pre-configured utilities, programs and drivers put on top of that, but TFS is indicating that "Ubuntu" in this case is not including a kernel, utilities, or drivers. Unless this is an extremely mangled, obscure, and moronic way of saying that Windows 10 will be including a Linux compatibility layer sponsored by Ubuntu.
    • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:51AM (#51806887)
      I guess the point is that you don't need the kernel or drivers because the Windows kernel can actually provide the necessary services. You might want user-space utilities, obviously. But a way of running Whatever-ix userspace apps on Windows would be rather nice. No more weird/costly ports of UI toolkits?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by tsqr ( 808554 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:00AM (#51806973)

        you don't need the kernel

        I'm pretty sure that if you don't have the Linux kernel, you don't have Linux at all.

      • I guess the point is that you don't need the kernel or drivers because the Windows kernel can actually provide the necessary services. You might want user-space utilities, obviously. But a way of running Whatever-ix userspace apps on Windows would be rather nice. No more weird/costly ports of UI toolkits?

        Unless it's a work machine where I'm 100% stuck with having Windows on the thing? Err, why?

        I'd rather have a real UNIX/Linux on the metal... and most of those have had Linux binary compat libs for, like, ever.

        • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @10:08AM (#51807495)

          I suppose one thing I could think of is for ease of porting/cross-platform development. If you have a Windows developer who needs to either write or port an application to support Linux systems, then this might be a convenient solution. I can't imagine that this is really targeted at anyone other than developers. I mean, if a user was interested in running Ubuntu, then as you indicated, they'd just run that OS directly rather than on top of Windows 10.

          Keep in mind that Microsoft is focused on cloud and services now, but they also want to keep Windows relevant as a development platform, because that's needed to ensure that developers can easily integrate Microsoft cloud services into their products. That's why they've gone to great lengths to give Visual Studio multi-platform capabilities. You've also seen them take steps in the same direction but with a different tact - porting their own libraries and apps to different platforms.

          So, I don't believe the primary point of this is to keep Windows 10 relevant. Windows already has a virtually unbreakable lock on the desktop OS market. If anything, this slightly weakens Windows by providing easy access to a competing OS. My feeling is that this is a move to keep Visual Studio and the Microsoft Azure cloud ecosystem relevant by giving developers an easy way to create and test cross-platform applications using Microsoft-provided tools.

    • by dosius ( 230542 )

      MS had SFU/Interix, which they dropped.

      Could this be a port of Ubuntu to that, much as Debian ported their OS to FreeBSD and the HURD?

    • by jrumney ( 197329 )
      If you strip out all the underlying kernel, libraries and utilities from Ubuntu, what you have left is the privacy destroying "Unity Lenses". That seems like a perfect fit for Windows 10.
    • by jittles ( 1613415 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:53AM (#51807405)

      So what the hell does "Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries" mean? "Ubuntu" is an OS with the Linux kernel and pre-configured utilities, programs and drivers put on top of that, but TFS is indicating that "Ubuntu" in this case is not including a kernel, utilities, or drivers. Unless this is an extremely mangled, obscure, and moronic way of saying that Windows 10 will be including a Linux compatibility layer sponsored by Ubuntu.

      Well they're currently working on a set of libraries called LINE, which stands for LINE is Not an Emulator. The point of the project is to allow poor Windows users to have access to some of the great software that has been available on Linux for forever. This should also allow some businesses who have been hesitant to make the transition to Windows finally jump in feet first.

    • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @05:12PM (#51810951) Journal

      Here [dustinkirkland.com] is a better - somewhat more technical - write-up from Ubuntu folks.

  • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:47AM (#51806839)

    As if thousands of Linux fans suddenly cried out in pain.

    I fear something terrible has happened.

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      As if thousands of Linux fans suddenly cried out in pain.

      I fear something terrible has happened.

      They've been screaming for years about the year of Linux on the Desktop. Well, be careful what you wish for.

    • Why?

      You get the compatibility of Linux apps with the world class stability and reliability of Windows 10. Who could want anything more??

  • MS Hyper-V team is working on porting the Linux drive for the guest services to be compatible with the latest version.

  • So like the Interix/SFU of old, but actually in a way that someone might actually want to use?
  • I don't see why anyone would want this.

  • You can (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:49AM (#51806861)

    "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." - Lt. Col. Carlos A. Keasler

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:49AM (#51806867)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • LINE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gamasta ( 557555 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:54AM (#51806917)

    LINE Is Not an Emulator

  • by bigdady92 ( 635263 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:58AM (#51806945) Homepage
    The only thing keeping me on my mac is the heavy integration of native *NIX tools for the command line.

    Yes I could install cygwin (it's a mess), I could use putty (has limitations) for ssh, or other apps that mirror the functionality of *NIX CLI tools, but none work as good as having everything built into the core of the OS.

    If this allows me to open up a cmd.exe and ssh to systems right off the bat, I'm scrapping the macbook and getting a surface pro.
    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      FWIW, I downloaded git for windows and have been using the bundled environment (under the mintty terminal they provide). I like it over cygwin and/or MobaXterm as those environments try to make an island of *nix rather than map well to the general filesystem.

      Screw cmd.exe, I start bash in mintty straight.

    • by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:22AM (#51807165)

      I find that by just including the Cygwin bin path in the system PATH variable gives me seamless command-line functionality without an issue.

      Open CMD and use any command you need. This has the benefit of being able to mix Windows and UNIX commands together on the same command line.

      I am also not sure what limitations you are running into with PuTTY... I have never run into any situation that PuTTY is not able to handle (port redirection, pass through agent authentication, X11 redirection, keep alive, etc). Not only does it do all the SSH stuff, but it also has functionality similar to telnet and screen.

      That said, if I could get a native X11 interface inline with Windows... that would be great! No more need for PuTTY + Xming + remote linux box. I know that you can run a local X11 server though Cygwin... but that is definitely a mess and is very slow.

      • Xming is a local X11 server, as evidenced by windows showing on your desktop? Perhaps there isn't anything worth using with it other than remote ssh sessions, I don't know of X11 Windows software.

      • I find UnxUtils + Putty pretty much obviates the need of Cygwin for me.

        :: UnxUtils ::

        *zsh, *_type, *agrep, *ansi2knr, *basename, *bc, *bison, *bunzip2, *bzip2, *bzip2recover, *cat, *chgrp, *chmod, *chown, *cksum, *cmp, *comm, *cp, *csplit, *cut, *date, *dc, *dd, *df, *diff, *diff3, *dircolors, *dirname, *du, *egrep, *env, *expand, *expr, *factor, *fgrep, *flex, *fmt, *fold, *fsplit, *gawk, *gclip, *gCompress, *gDate, *gEcho, *gFind, *gplay, *grep, *gSort, *gUnzip, *gzip, *head, *id, *indent, *install,

      • I have never in my years used Cygwin or Wine. Run the right OS for it's intended purpose and use a VM for anything else. To me both are not worth the effort.

        Why bother with outdated and buggy Cytgwin when you can run the real thing. If you are stuck using Windows at work or need it for work at home and use Windows as a client OS enable Hyper-V as it is a type 1 hypervisor free with the professional edition.

        Infact, this is the only reason I ditched 7 for 8.1 with a start menu replacement and Hyper-V as VMWar

      • Cygwin is a lot of things, but other than for rudimentary tasks, seamless it is not. It's slow, bloated and unstable.

        That being said, I actually got a Radius server to compile under it many a long day ago. That was an interesting adventure.

  • by LichtSpektren ( 4201985 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @08:59AM (#51806951)
    The only reasons people use Windows is because (a) it's familiar to office drones, and (b) legacy Win x86 applications. The only reasons people DON'T use Linux desktop are basically the inverse of the above: (a) it's not familiar to the tech-retarded who have a psychological block to learning anything new, and (b) it won't run legacy enterprise cruft. So what Microsoft is proposing is that they use their shitty unstable insecure spyware base OS that will nevertheless (a) have the Windows desktop and (b) still run legacy enterprise cruft, and try to graft an actually usable OS on top of it by having Ubuntu's CLI utilities run on top of it. Perhaps a slight improvement, but I doubt it'll sway very many people from just using Linux.
    • by thsths ( 31372 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:42AM (#51807331)

      The main reason people are not running Linux is that it is not pre-installed. And the next reason is that it is hard to install on modern machines, especially on laptops (which, as you should have heard, are more popular than desktops).

      • IMO, installation isn't a problem. Current versions of Linux are dead-easy to install now-a-days.

        Now, configuring them AFTER installation, that's a whole other mess entirely. I mean, hell, Linux *still* doesn't reliably handle things like suspend/resume. And heaven forbid you need to configure anything that's more complicated than the basic settings you're presented with. You may as well just switch to gentoo at that point, cause you're going to have to get familiar with config files 'n whatnot.

        That's w

    • The only reasons people DON'T use Linux desktop are basically the inverse of the above: (a) it's not familiar to the tech-retarded who have a psychological block to learning anything new, and (b) it won't run legacy enterprise cruft.

      Do decent A/V editing tools qualify as "legacy enterprise cruft?"

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      The only reasons people use Windows is because (a) it's familiar to office drones, and (b) legacy Win x86 applications. The only reasons people DON'T use Linux desktop are basically the inverse of the above: (a) it's not familiar to the tech-retarded who have a psychological block to learning anything new, and (b) it won't run legacy enterprise cruft.

      I recently installed Ubuntu on my desktop along with Windows, but I haven't really used it at all. The main reason for that is I use my desktop's wireless card as the wifi access point for my house and I'm worried it'll be a pain (if even possible) to do the same through Ubuntu. As someone with literally zero experience with Linux (and honestly programming in general besides what I've been exposed to here on Slashdot which might actually mean less than zero experience), just looking at some of the guides

    • Whenever people ask me to download office or Photoshop I ask for their credit card. When they say "no" I offer to install an alternative that works just as well. Pretty soon there is no fear of learning new apps because everything they have installed works the same under Linux. Now a lot of people I know are running Mint w/Cinnamon.

  • Microsoft claims they wrote ubuntu and linux and sues everyone else. Yes I know its highly unlikely but i is microsoft we are talking about
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:05AM (#51807011)

    It reminds me of Homer quote
    "Soon I will have a miracle hybrid, with the loyalty of a cat and the cleanliness of a dog"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stJ3XKExTdM [youtube.com]

  • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:07AM (#51807031) Journal
    I tried to tell you but you didn't listen! Microsoft is getting involved in things like FOSS and Linux so they can subvert it.. just like they're doing here. Why the actual FUCK would you even do what they're offering here instead of just running Ubuntu instead? So you can still be spied on by Microsoft even using some pseudo-Linux OS-on-Microsoft's-leash? This makes ZERO sense.
    • by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:23AM (#51807171)

      Microsoft can do so many things to promote open source:

      * not threaten companies that build products basing on linux because of patent infringement

      * support open GL / Vulkan on xbox

      * actually make their office product based on an open standard, and not apply corruption-like strategies for people who use open source competition

      I don't see anything happening. One thing is fortunate however, the browser market is very rough, and Microsoft really has improved with Edge. But most of the "Microsoft loves open source" stuff is just greenwashing.

      This move by microsoft is very smart: I interpret that they want to enable developers to develop cloud applications on windows (instead of on the ubuntu desktop), and then deploy it to ubuntu servers.

      This is the first step. It promotes tools like Microsoft Visual studio, which of course only run on windows. New tools will be only developed for windows of course, and for the "extended" toolset provided by Microsoft, that only runs on Win. The second step will be that microsoft announces a hybrid OS, that's partly windows, partly ubuntu, for the server part. Then, once Microsoft has enough market share, they can cut off the connections to open source. They will maintain some pseudo open source products that require this windows+ubuntu server system to run, and point to it when they say "Microsoft loves open source".

      I don't trust anything coming from this company.

  • Don't really trust Canonical because they showed they were willing to sell out the public in a sneaky way with Amazon and desktop searches. Now these two are working together? Interesting...but..birds of a feather right. The dark side possibly corrupting an already slightly darkened corporation. I'd advise sticking to Linux Mint or ElementaryOS for user friendly distros anyway.

    The fact Microsoft is willing to with a Linux distro maintainer suggests Windows 10 is not doing all that well in the light of m
  • its a bit like the idea of strapping a VR google on while riding a roller coaster http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/04... [cnbc.com] where it says: "Users will still physically be on a roller coaster as usual, but the headsets will add extra sensory experiences." It will be a thrill to be able to run linux on an operating system where the dangers of falling of the tracks are so real. The simulation of adventure can not be more authentic.
  • This is the closest you'll get to Year of the Linux Desktop. Is it everything you'd imagined?
  • Response to Mac OS X (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PineHall ( 206441 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:18AM (#51807133)
    A lot of developers use Macs because of the Unix foundation and the nice interface. It makes it easy to develop applications and put them on a linux web server. I think Microsoft is doing this to provide a familiar Unix foundation for developers, and making it Ubuntu compatible may make it easier to use than the Max OS X.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Relevance (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:33AM (#51807255)

    I can already run most windows apps under Linux, except for Office....

    LibreOffice is getting better and better....
    Linux tools/desktops and Ubuntu are getting better and better....
    Run Ubuntu apps on Windows...

    It's Microsoft trying to stay relevant. If they really wanted to be relevant they'd offer Office on Linux.

    • I concur with this completely. There's really nothing Windows offers anymore except PC gaming, which is going to quickly slip from their hands as Metal and Vulkan are developed. Everything else is done better by OS X and Linux on the desktop.
      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        There's really nothing Windows offers anymore except PC gaming

        And being preinstalled on PCs sold in brick-and-mortar stores. And a (relatively) easy path from Windows game development to console game development, for those genres that do work better on consoles than PCs.

  • Is it April somewhere already?
  • by LifesABeach ( 234436 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:37AM (#51807283) Homepage
    Windows? Why waste my time with this deceased carcass?
  • Like myself boot Linux directly and don't bother with the windows noise. I have a duel boot setup, which does boot windows 10, for the rare events that I actually need windows for something. Also, I'm less interested in bash support (which is already present with cygwin (and works reasonably well). Combining that with unix services for windows to allow me to mount my NFS (which by the way seems faster than the same mount on linux {drivers?}) I really want to see remote shell support. To me that would be ex
  • by alantus ( 882150 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @09:46AM (#51807351)
    #!/usr/bin/wine
    #
    # Start/start telemetry daemon in Microsoft Ubuntu
    #
    # Copyright Microsoft (r) 2016
    #

    CONFIG="/Program Files (x86)/Micorosoft/Telemetry 2016/etc/Teleme~0.ini"

    . "$CONFIG"

    case $1 in

    start)
        if [ x"$telemetry_enabled" = "xyes" ]; then
            "/Program Files (x86)/Micorosoft/Telemetry 2016/sbin/Teleme~0.exe" -o StealthMode=yes -o IgnoreUserConfig=yes
        else
            sed -i -e 's|telemetry_enabled=.*|telemetry_enabled=yes|g' "$CONFIG"
            $0 start
        fi
        ;;
    stop)
        $0 start
        ;;
    *)
        echo "usage: $0 start"
        ;;
    esac
    • by ADRA ( 37398 )

      Shut it! You're being too prescient!

  • Which app store is worse, Windows 10 or Ubuntu's? Both are filled with a lot of poorly named crap that looks like it came from the example section of a school kid's programming lesson book.

  • by Blaskowicz ( 634489 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @10:02AM (#51807457)

    Windows : a better Linux than Linux!

  • ... i can have the reliability, transparency and non-spyware nature of Windows 10 with the application quality and consistency of Ubuntu with the patch downloads for and security vulnerabilities of both?

    Sweet, where do i sign?! /s

    "DO NOT WANT" tag on story is appropriate.

  • I hope... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ADRA ( 37398 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @10:29AM (#51807649)

    For god sake, I hope Microsoft threw a dump-truck full of money on Canonical's door because otherwise, bad news for them.

    All this does is piss off existing Linux customers, bridges a few muddled though mostly gutless windows swappers from booting Linux (Who would probably just use something like VirtualBox with seemless mode and get 100% of the same features / performance). The OS integration layers for UNIX in Windows has existed since NT. Microsoft clearly doesn't give enough sh*ts enough to invest serious money into it, so why waste your time chasing a market that simply doesn't exist? You better be counting your millions or else I'd be seriously sad for you.

  • by neurojab ( 15737 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @10:40AM (#51807747)

    I suppose that since April Fool's day is two days away that this is not a joke. That said, Canonical has completely lost their collective minds. It started with Unity, then Mir, and now "ubuntu minus Linux". Seriously guys. What the hell IS ubuntu if it is not Linux? Unity for windows? Barf.

  • Well, at least it didn't happen to Mint.

    I actually have an official Ubuntu install CD from a time before they deployed Unity, and from before a time they had not lost their heart and soul.

  • For example, can I "apt-get..." all the stuff from the repositories?

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