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Why Microsoft needed to make Windows run Linux software

33 points by edward 11y ago

sargas 11y ago
I still don't think Windows will become the best dev platform for everyone even with Bash support, even though it is a great addition to the OS. But I think Microsoft is headed the right direction. Windows really needed a better "native" CLI. This truly solves that issue.
dsfyu404ed 11y ago
I do agree that Windows support for the Linux CLI is a good thing but I hope it doesn't lead the device manufacturers caring less about Linux drivers for consumer hardware. "What Apple did was to give every computer science and software engineering student a three-pound Unix workstation for not very much money, and unsurprisingly, they proliferated" Haha, this is a joke, right? College students can rarely afford "premium" things. Maybe the author was some sort of arts major? Apple doesn't make low end laptops. A CS student is much more likely than the general public to "spec out" a laptop and if you're spec'ing out a mid range or lower laptop and don't have a lot of money to throw at a brand then you're very unlikely to wind up with a Mac. The vast majority of the CS major at UM was running a mid-low end laptop. There was a horribly dated Debain VM that was supposedly used to test run student code that students were encouraged to write their code on. People with tended to stick to Windows with a Linux VM lying around for use if needed. As they got to the classes requiring lower level system calls (threading) they made more use of the Linux VM and a lot of people transferred over completely as they became more comfortable with Linux. There was a direct correlation between available hardware resources and how quickly people switched to Linux. The people who played video games held out the longest. Apple laptops and newer cars did get more common in senior year because more people had summer internships and could afford to drop big money on something. However, there was a pretty big divide in the hardware everyone was running. People had old laptops with batteries that lasted 1min from fully charged and people had new laptops and not much in between. I think there's a lot of truth truth to academia pushing people toward *nix but I don't think apple laptops affected that one way or the other. Just spending a lot of time in an environment where everything is built LAMP stack or run on the same machine that used to run a LAMP stack for something else is a far bigger influence.

33 points by edward 11y ago

I still don't think Windows will become the best dev platform for everyone even with Bash support, even though it is a great addition to the OS. But I think Microsoft is headed the right direction. Windows really needed a better "native" CLI. This truly solves that issue.

dsfyu404ed 11y ago

I do agree that Windows support for the Linux CLI is a good thing but I hope it doesn't lead the device manufacturers caring less about Linux drivers for consumer hardware. "What Apple did was to give every computer science and software engineering student a three-pound Unix workstation for not very much money, and unsurprisingly, they proliferated" Haha, this is a joke, right? College students can rarely afford "premium" things. Maybe the author was some sort of arts major? Apple doesn't make low end laptops. A CS student is much more likely than the general public to "spec out" a laptop and if you're spec'ing out a mid range or lower laptop and don't have a lot of money to throw at a brand then you're very unlikely to wind up with a Mac. The vast majority of the CS major at UM was running a mid-low end laptop. There was a horribly dated Debain VM that was supposedly used to test run student code that students were encouraged to write their code on. People with tended to stick to Windows with a Linux VM lying around for use if needed. As they got to the classes requiring lower level system calls (threading) they made more use of the Linux VM and a lot of people transferred over completely as they became more comfortable with Linux. There was a direct correlation between available hardware resources and how quickly people switched to Linux. The people who played video games held out the longest. Apple laptops and newer cars did get more common in senior year because more people had summer internships and could afford to drop big money on something. However, there was a pretty big divide in the hardware everyone was running. People had old laptops with batteries that lasted 1min from fully charged and people had new laptops and not much in between. I think there's a lot of truth truth to academia pushing people toward *nix but I don't think apple laptops affected that one way or the other. Just spending a lot of time in an environment where everything is built LAMP stack or run on the same machine that used to run a LAMP stack for something else is a far bigger influence.