15 ms·

Ubuntu now available from the Windows store

229 points by yomritoyj 9y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
This removes one of the major reasons to use a Mac for Linux development. Many people used Macs because they had nice hardware that just works, as well as a Unix (but not Linux) environment. Now, you can buy a Windows laptop and have Windows manage all the tricky bits like power management and graphics while having a bona fide Linux distro for development. Plus, you can also play games :)
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  As far as I can tell, one still have to run an Xserver on Windows if you want to do graphics (set display to localhost:0) and so no acceleration, hoping that changes at some point.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    That's true but almost all the draw of Linux for developers is the non-graphical tools. GUI software for Windows tends to be much better, especially for stuff that you'd need acceleration for.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > Now, you can buy a Windows laptop and have Windows manage all the tricky bits like power management and graphics while having a bona fide Linux distro for development. Not to detract from this very nice development, but it's still the case on many laptops that installing Linux tends to extend battery life substantially, not to mention make graphics more stable (at least, given FOSS-friendly graphics hardware). But if you need both Windows and Linux readily available, and spend a lot of time in both rather than favoring one over the other, this certainly offers a compelling alternative to a Windows VM.
  - supremesaboteur 9y ago
    I installed Linux on my company Mac and it feels like my battery charge lasts less long
    - Kenji 9y ago
      Can confirm. Also, Windows actually saves batteries compared to a vanilla Ubuntu install. I don't know why but Linux GUI is extremely wasteful for some reason.
      - amarant 9y ago
        It's not the GUI, power management tools in Linux are somewhat behind the curve. Or so I'm told anyway
    - 8draco8 9y ago
      Linux on mac will always have shorter battery live. That's mostly because of Apple proprietary code required for power management.
      - beerbaron23 9y ago
        I will say it's mostly due to the amount of effort creating power-saving features in OSX that are not present in other OS's. It's quite interesting all the little things they do to prolong the battery. I have Fedora 25 with TLP, it operates fine, there is nothing proprietary blocking it (but you do need TLP, install it asap to get any batt life out of Linux) on my macbook and I can almost reach 5 1/2 hours web browsing (Opera with battery saver). On OSX I can easily obtain 9 hours doing similar work. This is all on a 6 year old battery too.
  - rifung 9y ago
    > Not to detract from this very nice development, but it's still the case on many laptops that installing Linux tends to extend battery life substantially, not to mention make graphics more stable (at least, given FOSS-friendly graphics hardware). I have never heard this and in fact have only ever heard the opposite.
- cyphar 9y ago
  > Now, you can buy a Windows laptop and have Windows manage all the tricky bits like power management and graphics while having a bona fide Linux distro for development. I know I'm being "that guy", but I've never personally had a problem with Linux's power management or graphics. And I really like my tiling window managers and free software stack. I understand that some people have, but usually it's the fault of proprietary drivers and not Linux (and I don't purchase machines that require proprietary drivers to use). But again, whatever floats your boat. I've personally started playing OpenMW (a free software implementation of "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind" engine) which works excellently under GNU/Linux.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    I second that, I've never had a PM or major GPU driver issue on Linux. I've always found that battery life improved from Windows to Linux on a given machine. Granted, you could call this unfair since I run a lot fewer daemons on my Linux boxes than run by default on Windows, but I'd call that a strength.
    - aries1980 9y ago
      The Nvidia Optimus support doesn't work and forget Wayland.
      - trankas 9y ago
        This.
      - Kubuxu 9y ago
        There is Bumblebee that works on Linux as a replacement for Nvidia Optimus, getting it working isn't trivial but Nvidia is to blame here not Linux.
    - ac29 9y ago
      SATA Active Link Power Management is or was broken on my laptop. Too bad, it is required for the CPU package as a whole to reach the lowest power state and dramatically improved battery life. It also ate a ton of files on day 3 or 4 of me using it (not even files that were open, it just randomly corrupted ~5-10% of the drive). Probably wont be checking to see if that is fixed anytime soon.
- staofbur 9y ago
  As someone who just switched from windows to Mac, when you pick windows you also gain periodic show stopping problems, kafkaesque hoops to jump through randomly in the middle of your workflow, a slightly terrible security architecture and the ability for family and friends to see you using windows and are clearly an expert and then ask you to fix their crapware ridden death boxes. At least you gain thousands of google results for every problem coming your way. Incidentally yesterday I ran out of disk space on my old windows laptop. There was a windows problem reporting process that ate 100MiB once an hour. Eventually over the space of weeks you lose your entire disk then spend an hour googling the numerous incantations that need to be applied to fix this most of which don't work. Random shit like this happens at least once a week or so and just ruins an afternoon. Also don't think that the built in ubuntu or windows shell stuff actually works properly. There are many horrible bugs. Nothing on windows works properly for months if not years. Even with creators update, I used putty and virtual box because it was that bad. Also you're going to miss things like keychain in OSX. Edit: also my old T440 which I was running windows on, Lenovo couldn't ship working drivers for creators update and the moment that got rolled out TSHTF. This resulted in the SATA controller hanging for 30 seconds every five minutes and locking the machine up. I wasted six hours trying to find a combination of drivers and PM config that actually didn't do this. That's a whole day of work down the pan. There is just ZERO quality on the platform and I'm done with it.
  - ivan_gammel 9y ago
    Looks like your problem was in using Lenovo, not Windows. Btw, what kinds of tasks did you do there?
    - staofbur 9y ago
      No it's really not. I've been using windows since 1992 across tens of vendors and it's the same story. It has literally never changed. I find Lenovo to be the least crap. I was 50/50 Linux/windows dev. Windows dev is dead for me now (my hair is growing back). Tasks are now python, Postgres, ansible, vim, ssh and a browser and not a lot else. I've worked with Linux for about 18 years as well for ref.
- stephenr 9y ago
  > This removes one of the major reasons to use a Mac for Linux development I find it hard to believe many people using a Mac for Linux development, will (want|be able) to use this the same way. Anything that needs to simulate prod-ish environments for developers, will be using a VM (and if you're not, you should be) often via Vagrant. This also limits you specifically to Ubuntu, so it's automatically going to be invalid for a lot of things that either a) are tested/built for multiple distros anyway or b) targeted at a specific distro that isn't Ubuntu. Edit: additionally, using a Mac means you (via VM's) run any OS (or Browser, if it's a web project) you need, to test the software.
  - gpvos 9y ago
    As the article states, SUSE and Redhat will be available in a week or two. WSL should be able to support other distros or self-built Linux too, although I wouldn't know how to go about that.
    - sapphire_tomb 9y ago
      I've been using Arch as my WSL image for about a year I think. I used this tool to get it going : https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher
  - staofbur 9y ago
    Definitely agree with vagrant. Vagrant incidentally is monumentally horrible on windows as well.
    - stephenr 9y ago
      I've heard that Git was (maybe is) not fantastic on Windows either (to the point it has to ship its own bundled version of Bash!?)
      - staofbur 9y ago
        It's actually pretty horrible but that's not windows' fault. It was designed for case sensitive unix systems with the appropriate ssh infrastructure and other shell tools in place which windows didn't have. There are some powershell wrappers that make it better.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  For what it's worth, WSL appears to have pretty terrible filesystem performance. This may not be noticeable for somebody coming from macOS, but definitely very noticeable coming from a real EXT4 or XFS Linux system. I frankly don't understand why anyone would care to run anything but Linux on their workstation if their production deployments are Linux.
  - partiallogic 9y ago
    Exactly, I already choose Macs as the build time on a 15” MacBook Pro from 2015 is half that of a 2016 XPS 15” running Windows 10. It’s twice again if you use WSL on the Dell. Fedora natively on the Dell gets a lot closer to the Mac
- jhasse 9y ago
  > Now There always was Docker or MSYS2, so if someone really wanted to, he could already use Windows for his Linux developments. There are some limitations, yes, but WSL also comes with it own set of problems.
- uranian 9y ago
  I once started with DOS, moved to windows, linux (various distro's), now already for a few years on osx. Windows doesn't even come close to the reliability and comfort of my macbook-pro. I was always reluctant to move to osx, but I have to admit, this is simply the very best and most reliable machine I've ever had! It never crashed once, while I push it to it's limits every day!
- developer2 9y ago
  >> This removes one of the major reasons to use a Mac for Linux development If I wanted Ubuntu, I would have it on my MacBook (dual boot or replacement). I don't want Ubuntu. I want OS X. Apple hardware is great for development, but the real reason I am here is for the operating system and software. So no, Windows+Ubuntu does nothing to replace a MacBook or iMac with OS X.
- Nursie 9y ago
  Linux power management and graphics have generally been fine for me on laptops for some time. I suppose they've mostly been thinkpads, but some other stuff too - eeepc's from back when they were a thing, sony vaios.... all sorts.
- lolive 9y ago
  Linux becoming the subject of a flamewar between mac-its and win-its. That's hilarious, from the perspective of a old-time Linux evangelist. Can I conclude that "we won" ? \o/
  - 43224gg252 9y ago
    The reason Microsoft built a Linux sub-system into Windows is because Windows wasn't as good as Linux for development. Microsoft building a Linux sub-system is Microsoft admitting defeat.
    - hungerstrike 9y ago
      It depends on the type of software that you're developing. Do you see any game developers working on Linux? Hardly. Do you see a lot of IT shops doing development on Linux? Nope. There are way more web developers on Mac and Windows than Linux. What kind of dev work is Linux actually better for then? Servers? Most people are using Macs for that and deploying to Linux.
- simulacrum 9y ago
  Or... I can just use Linux and have it do the tricky bits plus also play games :)
- horusthecat 9y ago
  W/r/t the OP, I have trouble thinking that the Linux Subsystem is as full a solution as it's made out to be, but on-topic discussion isn't not what comments thread brawls are for! I'm consistently amazed that the response is always that "Windows sucks" even as it's gotten better than the 95/XP/Vista experience. It's 2017, .NET runs on Linux now and VS runs on macOS, can't we all just get along? Of course, that sentiment exists for good reason even as Microsoft improves its product offerings. Every stable Windows install is just one third-party enterprise shitware deployment from automating BSOD reboots. Tooling aside--VS is great if you add "finally" and "for some tasks" and if Powershell ever reaches a finished state that'd be good, but I still don't use either--regardless of how slap-dash and inconsistent Windows (lol X11) can be, the part of Windows that sucks the most is working at companies that require its use. If you haven't worked somewhere where people aspire to be "Sharepoint Administrators", where people "fix" prod data in Access and where >25% of your CPU cycles go to black-box antivirus vendor apps that had unpatched CVEs discovered in the past month, you really should so you can remember why you left.
- inertial 9y ago
  Personal experience : Windows becomes sluggish over time (XP, 7, 8, 10 tried all of them). There could be myriad of reasons e.g. "smart" services, too many programs in autostart. I've been a power user and try to disable such things pro-actively but it's not comparable to a fresh install. Whereas with Ubuntu, it says near fresh even after years of use. Again, this is personal experience. YMMV. So, I cannot imagine using Windows as my primary machine. Not sure about Mac, hopefully it's good. Linux is fine so far as my primary desktop / server. That said, this news is quite exciting for both corporate & personal machines and I hope to see it progress.
SpaceManNabs 9y ago
Very excited! Been using the WSL for a bit now to do tensorflow and python stuff. Just a bit of tweaking to get it all to work (less than an hour), and I get to dual boot less frequently now.
- option_greek 9y ago
  Does the performance take a hit when using tensorflow this way ? (when compared to running it straight on the windows)
- kbumsik 9y ago
  Why not installing tensorflow on Windows directly? The WSL does not currently support accessing hardware like GPU so there is no benefit of using tensorflow on WSL.
  - SpaceManNabs 9y ago
    I am not too familiar with developing on windows directly. Don't feel like learning all the tools when I am already so comfortable in Unix like environments.
johnchristopher 9y ago
That's a reverse first bug :-).
- boramalper 9y ago
  For the sake of completeness: "Microsoft has a majority market share" Bug #1 (liberation) reported by Mark Shuttleworth on 2004-08-20 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
m_mueller 9y ago
how are file endings handled with WSL? last time I tried using git & sublime text on Windows with some version of cygwin it would checkout a repo with windows file endings, which broke all the bash scripts. if it uses POSIX file endings, how about opening the files with windows applications like VS? Edit: Also, does the windows terminal now have some sane colour scheme? I could never make it work to not show me some completely unreadable colors, like dark blue text on black ground or light yellow on white.
- petters 9y ago
  As far as line endings etc goes, WSL is Linux. It literally has the same binaries running.
- jstarks 9y ago
  WSL doesn't change the line endings, so you'll want to make sure that if you use Git for Windows along with it, you set it up to use Unix line endings. Most decent editors (including VS and VSCode) can handle LFs just fine. The most annoying gap is Notepad. We are definitely aware of the problems with the terrible color scheme. I don't remember right now if we have done anything about it quite yet... but it should be coming. In the meantime you can adjust the colors manually.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    Btw: I can recommend Notepad2-mod: https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/ https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/ It can replace Notepad and understands LFs. You can install it with Chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/packages/notepad2-mod https://chocolatey.org/packages/notepad2-mod which will automatically set it up as a Notepad replacement :)
- balakk 9y ago
  Conemu is pretty nice, and works with WSL: https://conemu.github.io https://conemu.github.io
- nenreme 9y ago
  I always configure git and all editors on Windows to use LF line endings. It is so annoying that so many applications use CRLF endings by default, I never understood reason for that, I'm always using LF and have no issues.
laktak 9y ago
Never used the Windows Store - do I need to register or can I download Ubuntu without a Microsoft account?
- staofbur 9y ago
  I haven't seen anything that doesn't require an MS account on the store.
- microtheo 9y ago
  No, everything that is free can be downloaded without account. It's actually the only platform I'm familiar with (android, iOS, MacOS) that allow users to do so. Really convenient for computers that we install at costumer site.
  - Scarblac 9y ago
    Well, Linux distros themselves are an obvious other example, you also don't need to register to apt-get install.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Well i'll be damned. When i looked into this a while back i had to register (used an old hotmail account i have sitting around for when i have to interact with MS) before getting anything done.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Responding to myself here to document a few things. Seems that MS distinguishes between a desktop/laptop install and a tablet install. I have a cheap 8" x86 tablet i picked up, and there i have to log in to grab even free apps. But if i use my laptop, i can grab free apps without logging in.
Fzzr 9y ago
Today in "headlines that would have been April Fools jokes ten years ago"
- userbinator 9y ago
  I think that would be more like "Windows now available from Ubuntu package manager"...
nimitbhardwaj 9y ago
Its really nice
flukus 9y ago
Doesn't this break every policy the app store has about what programs can and can't do? This has full system access and every other app is constraint to the file dialog to get write permissions.
- guftagu 9y ago
  Windows store also has full/legacy Win32 apps. See the Evernote app in the store, its regular old Win32
  - flukus 9y ago
    I thought it had "full win32" support, ie, you can run win32 apps but they have to be modified. It's clear as mud though, MS says one thing but their windows store migration guide says another. The existence of the migration guide is rather telling though.
    - contextfree 9y ago
      Desktop Bridge (Centennial) apps are modified to use the same appx packaging and installer format used by UWP apps. Unlike true UWAs they run with user privileges, not inside an app container, and so they have the same filesystem access as the user. They can be distributed through the store but the onboarding process is much more arduous than with true UWAs (for which the Store acceptance process is largely automated since they're relying on the app container for security). AIUI to submit an unsandboxed app they expect you to already be an established developer and submit a request, wait for them to do a bunch of manual investigation of who you are and get back to you, etc.
- microtheo 9y ago
  Yeah, it's a bit confusing. That's the reason why it won't be available on Windows 10 S...
meritos 9y ago
This sounds like a long waited peace treaty between Microsoft and the developers community. https://media.giphy.com/media/k0MotNKu7p0By/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/k0MotNKu7p0By/giphy.gif
a_imho 9y ago
Even clicked the linked articles and never came across a satisfying answer to the question: why? And I mean practical use cases where one would pick WSL over Linux. Once bitten twice shy, I would not hold against them if people were to be skeptical when MS decides to embrace competing products.
- mastax 9y ago
  > And I mean practical use cases where one would pick WSL over Linux. You don't. You choose it over MSYS2/MinGW/Cygwin.
  - a_imho 9y ago
    That sounds sensible, though the article lacks those comparisons too if that is the intended use case. As well as a couple of others (VM, wubi)
  - etatoby 9y ago
    Except for the fact that you cannot launch (or otherwise control) Windows processes from the Linux environment. That's one serious limitation.
    - jstarks 9y ago
      You can now! You can run .exe files directly from WSL, and we append your Windows path to your Linux path by default to make this easy.
- cillian64 9y ago
  I have a desktop at home. I like things to just work (which in my experience they do better on Windows than Linux) and I like to play games (which aren't available on Linux, and I don't feel like messing with Wine). I also like to do some development and am most comfortable doing that in a Linux environment. So far WSL works great for all my development. I find WSL to be better integrated / less jarring than a Linux VM or dual booting. All the GUI apps I use, I run on Windows. The Linux environment I care about is all terminal-based. My only complaint is the state of terminal emulators. I use wsl-tty but it doesn't do a very good job of emulating xterm/gnome-terminal.
dm319 9y ago
Did you mean gnu/windows? -rms :)
- tremon 9y ago
  It's actually gnu/nt. WSL completely bypasses the windows APIs and talks to the kernel directly, AFAIU.
  - etatoby 9y ago
    That's because Dave Cutler (of DEC VMS fame) specifically designed the NT kernel to make it easy to add new ABIs. NT originally supported running Win32, OS/2, and POSIX executables. Now apparently they added Linux executables.
nnq 9y ago
I never quite get developers that don't use a system most similar with they deployment target... If I develop web apps intended to run on -nix, I use Linux, if I develop Windows stuff, I use Windows etc. It creates a huge understanding gap that slows you down and makes you miss so many shortcuts... Windows, Macos, Linux are all good enough to get shit done these days... so pick whichever suits current needs best. (I reboot to different OS depending on project since this also helps me avoid my dangerous tendency for multitasking... and productivity/office tools are all web apps for me so I can use them anywhere, including phone and tablet).
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  My company lives on Outlook. My dev is fully targetted on Linux. How should I use Linux on my laptop/workstation?
  - popcorncolonel 9y ago
    Internet?
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      Yes?
      - kleim 9y ago
        I think he is refering to the Outlook Web App.
        dingo_bat 9y ago
        Hmmm. To be fair OWA is pretty good.
  - likeclockwork 9y ago
    Run Outlook in a Windows VM on Linux instead of doing your real work in a Linux VM on Windows.
dcow 9y ago
2017: the year of the Linux desktop.
- etatoby 9y ago
  With no actual Linux kernel code. Oh, the irony. At least they have the decency to call it Ubuntu and not Linux in the promotional material. Personally, I would have called it Line (Line Is Not an Emulator) or Eniw
  - rkeene2 9y ago
    LINE was a real thing 16+ years ago, probably still on sourceforge. It allowed you to execute native Linux binaries on Windows, similar to WSL. https://sourceforge.net/projects/line/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/line/
pgl 9y ago
I just wish the issue with symlinks not being interoperable between Windows and the Linux subsystem (and vice versa) could be fixed.
scandox 9y ago
For me one very important aspect of Linux is that the OS is decoupled from any kind of "consumer experience". In other words nothing in the OS is ever asking me: Who I am For Payment Information Would I like to see an Ad Do I need additional products or services So I appreciate that this is handy for some people, but to me it's like avocado ice-cream. A bad idea that tastes like crap.
- xyzxyz998 9y ago
  Wow, you haven't even tried the thing once clearly. Can you elaborate on what is it that is bad about WSL being on Windows? How does it make things bad for anybody? It's called choice.
  - dm319 9y ago
    I think he is referring to the experience of using Windows 10 not WSL - they really do push for you to register/sign-in to an online account just to install creators update - even going so far as placing opt-outs in funny positions on the screen so it isn't obvious that is a possibility. Why does the start menu contain software that isn't installed and adverts? Why do you need an account to download free software from the store? There's certainly a line of argument that says you can have all the linux goodness without all of that.
  - scandox 9y ago
    I have been in my day a very heavy user of Windows. What I object to on both Windows and Mac is the whole "store" experience. When my personal computer asks me for a credit card, I find this to be a profoundly uncomfortable experience - whether that's rational or not is a separate question. So that's why to me it's like Avocado Ice Cream: a choice many people are free to make and enjoy....like the maniacs they are.
    - asendra 9y ago
      The only time your mac ask for your credit card information is when you are trying to pay something with your Apple account and you don't already have it. If you don't want to be uncomfortable then simply don't try to pay for something with your Apple account.
teekert 9y ago
It's the 5th result for me (when searching Ubuntu), after a Linux Cheat Sheet, some PasteBin program and WepUpd8 (whatever that may be), then when I click it, the first line says: "This title is powered by great new feature of the windows insider program, please join at..."... Now should I, do I need to do that? The Get button is greyed out, but no indication why (probably because me company hasn't approved the anniversary update yet). What a crappy experience.
marmaduke 9y ago
PSA: filesystem performance in WSL isn't great, but it's absolutely fantastic under windows' hyperv hypervisor. As a dev env I run CentOS on hyperv and putty into it, and map the drive with dokan+winsshfs, and it's just as performant as Linux/Mac on the same hardware
- jstarks 9y ago
  Do you ever need to go the other direction, e.g. access NTFS-hosted files in the VM?
  - marmaduke 9y ago
    For that, samba/cifs share from windows, then mount from VM should work fine. I haven't tried it though.
- rizalp 9y ago
  Does that mean your code repository is on CentOS inside HyperV, and use code editor from Windows to edit it?
baybal2 9y ago
Microsoft has one problem - it struggles with it being irrelevant. Years after years of shaming from angry penguins did their job. Now Linux is cool and Win is not. Well, Mac is now supposed to be even cooler. Windows can't regain even a second place as a development platform unless, ... , it stops being windows. The negative connotation and "uncoolness," just sticks to anything that remotely touches Microsoft. Unless they can do something like a total market and product production approach U-turn as a company, they can't change their trajectory into the dustbin of history.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Oh, hi guy from Starbucks with lots of stickers on his macbook writing nodejs apps in VIM. Linux was never cool and will probably never will. Mac is cool because they had the amazing marketers, but nowadays it's getting more and more lame.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Well that, and it offered a off the shelf unix with support down the road (or in the university library sometimes). Best i can tell though the unix parts are growing more and mroe stale compared to both the BSDs and GNU (many seems to resort to installing the latter via third party tools).
  - maxscam 9y ago
    You try and defend windows, but give absolutely no defence other than the fact that Unix isnt cool.
    - romanovcode 9y ago
      I had no word "windows" in my comment. Windows never was cool and never will be cool. It just works.
- a_imho 9y ago
etatoby 9y ago
At least they have the decency to call it Ubuntu and not Linux in the promotional material, seeing as it does not contain any Linux kernel code. Personally, I would have called it Line (= Line Is Not an Emulator) or Eniw.
iKenshu 9y ago
But can I access to my desktop, documents, music folder and create archives or more folders to development environment?
- wornohaulus 9y ago
  Yes.. save file in cd /mnt/c/Users/$"%USERPROFILE%"/(Desktop|Documents|Downloads|Music|Video)/
snarfy 9y ago
It's a bit misleading. Unless you're on Windows Insider builds this isn't available until the windows 10 fall update.
tkubacki 9y ago
I just don't care anymore - I keep windows on VM it's way easier (eg. WSL doesn't support docker). I don't use any other Windows app except: VS (from time to time) and Word. VirtualBox is more than enough for this (my host linux desktop is beefy machine though)
cdevs 9y ago
I have a Linux laptop and a windows laptop. I bought the windows laptop for games and to hobby in game development , blender and unreal engine but I can't stand windows even for those basic purposes the popups for updates and other "do you want to set this setting now" when I just quickly want to open a browser and google something drive me nuts. Put notifications in the toolbar in the right with some annoying icon and leave me alone. I know what Linux is doing all the time and if not it's easy to look up but windows Microsoft magic makes me feel like I need tons of more security apps than I would like to have running. I need a windows lite.
vurso 9y ago
While Windows is in a good place right now, its not great. I have been a Windows guy for a long time but for the past couple of years I have been waiting for the day when I can finally ditch it and move over to a pure nix platform. I want to do this because I understand nix, specifically have worked with Debian for a long time so I am aware of how good the base architecture of Unix-Like OSes are - its that good because it was well thought out from the early days. Being a .NET developer I am literally waiting for the moment when I can unshackle myself from Windows 10. Windows 10 is good, its about as good as we will get with the current bloated architecture and while I suspect the direction the OS will take is to become a VMlike app on a version of "windows-is-linux-not-bash" offering from Microsoft that day is a long way off. Its all the little things that destroy productivity and become major time sinks. Individually we could say they are related to whatever product is causing them but collectively they can seriously eff up your professional working day. MacBook's are great, hardware is where Apple really excels and no one can take away the great productivity to be had on the operating system which is based on the awesome BSD but the buy-in is ridiculously expensive. As someone said pound-for-pound we can get better offerings from other vendors which will soften the shitty experience on Windows however what you get with Apple is quality and you can confidently state that you will get a good experience (provided you get good enough Apple hardware). Here is where the problem is, the buy-in is expensive and then you are hurt even more when you realise you need to upgrade to get a better experience later down the line. Conversely we can argue that because the BSD-like OS requires less resources it operates much better for less hardware. I really do hope Windows becomes an "experience" on some BSD/Unix like OS that would open up a world of possibilities.
Lambent 9y ago
How can I have it run a server in the background/after I close the window? (Either that or it already runs in the background)
TheChosen 9y ago
Is it worth installing Ubuntu via the Windows store or would we be better off running it through VirtualBox?
maxscam 9y ago
Is this different from the linux subsystem microsoft already supports? Which is nice, and would,be worthwhile if i had enough motivation to use windows gui programs, but is limited given that you have to jump through an extra hoop to run linux gui programs, and cant even access your linux partitions from it

229 points by yomritoyj 9y ago

This removes one of the major reasons to use a Mac for Linux development. Many people used Macs because they had nice hardware that just works, as well as a Unix (but not Linux) environment. Now, you can buy a Windows laptop and have Windows manage all the tricky bits like power management and graphics while having a bona fide Linux distro for development. Plus, you can also play games :)

ChuckMcM 9y ago
As far as I can tell, one still have to run an Xserver on Windows if you want to do graphics (set display to localhost:0) and so no acceleration, hoping that changes at some point.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  That's true but almost all the draw of Linux for developers is the non-graphical tools. GUI software for Windows tends to be much better, especially for stuff that you'd need acceleration for.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
> Now, you can buy a Windows laptop and have Windows manage all the tricky bits like power management and graphics while having a bona fide Linux distro for development. Not to detract from this very nice development, but it's still the case on many laptops that installing Linux tends to extend battery life substantially, not to mention make graphics more stable (at least, given FOSS-friendly graphics hardware). But if you need both Windows and Linux readily available, and spend a lot of time in both rather than favoring one over the other, this certainly offers a compelling alternative to a Windows VM.
- supremesaboteur 9y ago
  I installed Linux on my company Mac and it feels like my battery charge lasts less long
  - Kenji 9y ago
    Can confirm. Also, Windows actually saves batteries compared to a vanilla Ubuntu install. I don't know why but Linux GUI is extremely wasteful for some reason.
    - amarant 9y ago
      It's not the GUI, power management tools in Linux are somewhat behind the curve. Or so I'm told anyway
  - 8draco8 9y ago
    Linux on mac will always have shorter battery live. That's mostly because of Apple proprietary code required for power management.
    - beerbaron23 9y ago
      I will say it's mostly due to the amount of effort creating power-saving features in OSX that are not present in other OS's. It's quite interesting all the little things they do to prolong the battery. I have Fedora 25 with TLP, it operates fine, there is nothing proprietary blocking it (but you do need TLP, install it asap to get any batt life out of Linux) on my macbook and I can almost reach 5 1/2 hours web browsing (Opera with battery saver). On OSX I can easily obtain 9 hours doing similar work. This is all on a 6 year old battery too.
- rifung 9y ago
  > Not to detract from this very nice development, but it's still the case on many laptops that installing Linux tends to extend battery life substantially, not to mention make graphics more stable (at least, given FOSS-friendly graphics hardware). I have never heard this and in fact have only ever heard the opposite.
cyphar 9y ago
> Now, you can buy a Windows laptop and have Windows manage all the tricky bits like power management and graphics while having a bona fide Linux distro for development. I know I'm being "that guy", but I've never personally had a problem with Linux's power management or graphics. And I really like my tiling window managers and free software stack. I understand that some people have, but usually it's the fault of proprietary drivers and not Linux (and I don't purchase machines that require proprietary drivers to use). But again, whatever floats your boat. I've personally started playing OpenMW (a free software implementation of "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind" engine) which works excellently under GNU/Linux.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I second that, I've never had a PM or major GPU driver issue on Linux. I've always found that battery life improved from Windows to Linux on a given machine. Granted, you could call this unfair since I run a lot fewer daemons on my Linux boxes than run by default on Windows, but I'd call that a strength.
  - aries1980 9y ago
    The Nvidia Optimus support doesn't work and forget Wayland.
    - trankas 9y ago
      This.
    - Kubuxu 9y ago
      There is Bumblebee that works on Linux as a replacement for Nvidia Optimus, getting it working isn't trivial but Nvidia is to blame here not Linux.
  - ac29 9y ago
    SATA Active Link Power Management is or was broken on my laptop. Too bad, it is required for the CPU package as a whole to reach the lowest power state and dramatically improved battery life. It also ate a ton of files on day 3 or 4 of me using it (not even files that were open, it just randomly corrupted ~5-10% of the drive). Probably wont be checking to see if that is fixed anytime soon.
staofbur 9y ago
As someone who just switched from windows to Mac, when you pick windows you also gain periodic show stopping problems, kafkaesque hoops to jump through randomly in the middle of your workflow, a slightly terrible security architecture and the ability for family and friends to see you using windows and are clearly an expert and then ask you to fix their crapware ridden death boxes. At least you gain thousands of google results for every problem coming your way. Incidentally yesterday I ran out of disk space on my old windows laptop. There was a windows problem reporting process that ate 100MiB once an hour. Eventually over the space of weeks you lose your entire disk then spend an hour googling the numerous incantations that need to be applied to fix this most of which don't work. Random shit like this happens at least once a week or so and just ruins an afternoon. Also don't think that the built in ubuntu or windows shell stuff actually works properly. There are many horrible bugs. Nothing on windows works properly for months if not years. Even with creators update, I used putty and virtual box because it was that bad. Also you're going to miss things like keychain in OSX. Edit: also my old T440 which I was running windows on, Lenovo couldn't ship working drivers for creators update and the moment that got rolled out TSHTF. This resulted in the SATA controller hanging for 30 seconds every five minutes and locking the machine up. I wasted six hours trying to find a combination of drivers and PM config that actually didn't do this. That's a whole day of work down the pan. There is just ZERO quality on the platform and I'm done with it.
- ivan_gammel 9y ago
  Looks like your problem was in using Lenovo, not Windows. Btw, what kinds of tasks did you do there?
  - staofbur 9y ago
    No it's really not. I've been using windows since 1992 across tens of vendors and it's the same story. It has literally never changed. I find Lenovo to be the least crap. I was 50/50 Linux/windows dev. Windows dev is dead for me now (my hair is growing back). Tasks are now python, Postgres, ansible, vim, ssh and a browser and not a lot else. I've worked with Linux for about 18 years as well for ref.
stephenr 9y ago
> This removes one of the major reasons to use a Mac for Linux development I find it hard to believe many people using a Mac for Linux development, will (want|be able) to use this the same way. Anything that needs to simulate prod-ish environments for developers, will be using a VM (and if you're not, you should be) often via Vagrant. This also limits you specifically to Ubuntu, so it's automatically going to be invalid for a lot of things that either a) are tested/built for multiple distros anyway or b) targeted at a specific distro that isn't Ubuntu. Edit: additionally, using a Mac means you (via VM's) run any OS (or Browser, if it's a web project) you need, to test the software.
- gpvos 9y ago
  As the article states, SUSE and Redhat will be available in a week or two. WSL should be able to support other distros or self-built Linux too, although I wouldn't know how to go about that.
  - sapphire_tomb 9y ago
    I've been using Arch as my WSL image for about a year I think. I used this tool to get it going : https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher
- staofbur 9y ago
  Definitely agree with vagrant. Vagrant incidentally is monumentally horrible on windows as well.
  - stephenr 9y ago
    I've heard that Git was (maybe is) not fantastic on Windows either (to the point it has to ship its own bundled version of Bash!?)
    - staofbur 9y ago
      It's actually pretty horrible but that's not windows' fault. It was designed for case sensitive unix systems with the appropriate ssh infrastructure and other shell tools in place which windows didn't have. There are some powershell wrappers that make it better.
microcolonel 9y ago
For what it's worth, WSL appears to have pretty terrible filesystem performance. This may not be noticeable for somebody coming from macOS, but definitely very noticeable coming from a real EXT4 or XFS Linux system. I frankly don't understand why anyone would care to run anything but Linux on their workstation if their production deployments are Linux.
- partiallogic 9y ago
  Exactly, I already choose Macs as the build time on a 15” MacBook Pro from 2015 is half that of a 2016 XPS 15” running Windows 10. It’s twice again if you use WSL on the Dell. Fedora natively on the Dell gets a lot closer to the Mac
jhasse 9y ago
> Now There always was Docker or MSYS2, so if someone really wanted to, he could already use Windows for his Linux developments. There are some limitations, yes, but WSL also comes with it own set of problems.
uranian 9y ago
I once started with DOS, moved to windows, linux (various distro's), now already for a few years on osx. Windows doesn't even come close to the reliability and comfort of my macbook-pro. I was always reluctant to move to osx, but I have to admit, this is simply the very best and most reliable machine I've ever had! It never crashed once, while I push it to it's limits every day!
developer2 9y ago
>> This removes one of the major reasons to use a Mac for Linux development If I wanted Ubuntu, I would have it on my MacBook (dual boot or replacement). I don't want Ubuntu. I want OS X. Apple hardware is great for development, but the real reason I am here is for the operating system and software. So no, Windows+Ubuntu does nothing to replace a MacBook or iMac with OS X.
Nursie 9y ago
Linux power management and graphics have generally been fine for me on laptops for some time. I suppose they've mostly been thinkpads, but some other stuff too - eeepc's from back when they were a thing, sony vaios.... all sorts.
lolive 9y ago
Linux becoming the subject of a flamewar between mac-its and win-its. That's hilarious, from the perspective of a old-time Linux evangelist. Can I conclude that "we won" ? \o/
- 43224gg252 9y ago
  The reason Microsoft built a Linux sub-system into Windows is because Windows wasn't as good as Linux for development. Microsoft building a Linux sub-system is Microsoft admitting defeat.
  - hungerstrike 9y ago
    It depends on the type of software that you're developing. Do you see any game developers working on Linux? Hardly. Do you see a lot of IT shops doing development on Linux? Nope. There are way more web developers on Mac and Windows than Linux. What kind of dev work is Linux actually better for then? Servers? Most people are using Macs for that and deploying to Linux.
simulacrum 9y ago
Or... I can just use Linux and have it do the tricky bits plus also play games :)
horusthecat 9y ago
W/r/t the OP, I have trouble thinking that the Linux Subsystem is as full a solution as it's made out to be, but on-topic discussion isn't not what comments thread brawls are for! I'm consistently amazed that the response is always that "Windows sucks" even as it's gotten better than the 95/XP/Vista experience. It's 2017, .NET runs on Linux now and VS runs on macOS, can't we all just get along? Of course, that sentiment exists for good reason even as Microsoft improves its product offerings. Every stable Windows install is just one third-party enterprise shitware deployment from automating BSOD reboots. Tooling aside--VS is great if you add "finally" and "for some tasks" and if Powershell ever reaches a finished state that'd be good, but I still don't use either--regardless of how slap-dash and inconsistent Windows (lol X11) can be, the part of Windows that sucks the most is working at companies that require its use. If you haven't worked somewhere where people aspire to be "Sharepoint Administrators", where people "fix" prod data in Access and where >25% of your CPU cycles go to black-box antivirus vendor apps that had unpatched CVEs discovered in the past month, you really should so you can remember why you left.
inertial 9y ago
Personal experience : Windows becomes sluggish over time (XP, 7, 8, 10 tried all of them). There could be myriad of reasons e.g. "smart" services, too many programs in autostart. I've been a power user and try to disable such things pro-actively but it's not comparable to a fresh install. Whereas with Ubuntu, it says near fresh even after years of use. Again, this is personal experience. YMMV. So, I cannot imagine using Windows as my primary machine. Not sure about Mac, hopefully it's good. Linux is fine so far as my primary desktop / server. That said, this news is quite exciting for both corporate & personal machines and I hope to see it progress.

SpaceManNabs 9y ago

Very excited! Been using the WSL for a bit now to do tensorflow and python stuff. Just a bit of tweaking to get it all to work (less than an hour), and I get to dual boot less frequently now.

option_greek 9y ago
Does the performance take a hit when using tensorflow this way ? (when compared to running it straight on the windows)
kbumsik 9y ago
Why not installing tensorflow on Windows directly? The WSL does not currently support accessing hardware like GPU so there is no benefit of using tensorflow on WSL.
- SpaceManNabs 9y ago
  I am not too familiar with developing on windows directly. Don't feel like learning all the tools when I am already so comfortable in Unix like environments.

johnchristopher 9y ago

That's a reverse first bug :-).

boramalper 9y ago
For the sake of completeness: "Microsoft has a majority market share" Bug #1 (liberation) reported by Mark Shuttleworth on 2004-08-20 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

m_mueller 9y ago

how are file endings handled with WSL? last time I tried using git & sublime text on Windows with some version of cygwin it would checkout a repo with windows file endings, which broke all the bash scripts. if it uses POSIX file endings, how about opening the files with windows applications like VS? Edit: Also, does the windows terminal now have some sane colour scheme? I could never make it work to not show me some completely unreadable colors, like dark blue text on black ground or light yellow on white.

petters 9y ago
As far as line endings etc goes, WSL is Linux. It literally has the same binaries running.
jstarks 9y ago
WSL doesn't change the line endings, so you'll want to make sure that if you use Git for Windows along with it, you set it up to use Unix line endings. Most decent editors (including VS and VSCode) can handle LFs just fine. The most annoying gap is Notepad. We are definitely aware of the problems with the terrible color scheme. I don't remember right now if we have done anything about it quite yet... but it should be coming. In the meantime you can adjust the colors manually.
- jhasse 9y ago
  Btw: I can recommend Notepad2-mod: https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/ https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/ It can replace Notepad and understands LFs. You can install it with Chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/packages/notepad2-mod https://chocolatey.org/packages/notepad2-mod which will automatically set it up as a Notepad replacement :)
balakk 9y ago
Conemu is pretty nice, and works with WSL: https://conemu.github.io https://conemu.github.io
nenreme 9y ago
I always configure git and all editors on Windows to use LF line endings. It is so annoying that so many applications use CRLF endings by default, I never understood reason for that, I'm always using LF and have no issues.

laktak 9y ago

Never used the Windows Store - do I need to register or can I download Ubuntu without a Microsoft account?

staofbur 9y ago
I haven't seen anything that doesn't require an MS account on the store.
microtheo 9y ago
No, everything that is free can be downloaded without account. It's actually the only platform I'm familiar with (android, iOS, MacOS) that allow users to do so. Really convenient for computers that we install at costumer site.
- Scarblac 9y ago
  Well, Linux distros themselves are an obvious other example, you also don't need to register to apt-get install.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Well i'll be damned. When i looked into this a while back i had to register (used an old hotmail account i have sitting around for when i have to interact with MS) before getting anything done.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Responding to myself here to document a few things. Seems that MS distinguishes between a desktop/laptop install and a tablet install. I have a cheap 8" x86 tablet i picked up, and there i have to log in to grab even free apps. But if i use my laptop, i can grab free apps without logging in.

Fzzr 9y ago

Today in "headlines that would have been April Fools jokes ten years ago"

userbinator 9y ago
I think that would be more like "Windows now available from Ubuntu package manager"...

nimitbhardwaj 9y ago

Its really nice

flukus 9y ago

Doesn't this break every policy the app store has about what programs can and can't do? This has full system access and every other app is constraint to the file dialog to get write permissions.

guftagu 9y ago
Windows store also has full/legacy Win32 apps. See the Evernote app in the store, its regular old Win32
- flukus 9y ago
  I thought it had "full win32" support, ie, you can run win32 apps but they have to be modified. It's clear as mud though, MS says one thing but their windows store migration guide says another. The existence of the migration guide is rather telling though.
  - contextfree 9y ago
    Desktop Bridge (Centennial) apps are modified to use the same appx packaging and installer format used by UWP apps. Unlike true UWAs they run with user privileges, not inside an app container, and so they have the same filesystem access as the user. They can be distributed through the store but the onboarding process is much more arduous than with true UWAs (for which the Store acceptance process is largely automated since they're relying on the app container for security). AIUI to submit an unsandboxed app they expect you to already be an established developer and submit a request, wait for them to do a bunch of manual investigation of who you are and get back to you, etc.
microtheo 9y ago
Yeah, it's a bit confusing. That's the reason why it won't be available on Windows 10 S...

meritos 9y ago

This sounds like a long waited peace treaty between Microsoft and the developers community. https://media.giphy.com/media/k0MotNKu7p0By/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/k0MotNKu7p0By/giphy.gif

a_imho 9y ago

Even clicked the linked articles and never came across a satisfying answer to the question: why? And I mean practical use cases where one would pick WSL over Linux. Once bitten twice shy, I would not hold against them if people were to be skeptical when MS decides to embrace competing products.

mastax 9y ago
> And I mean practical use cases where one would pick WSL over Linux. You don't. You choose it over MSYS2/MinGW/Cygwin.
- a_imho 9y ago
  That sounds sensible, though the article lacks those comparisons too if that is the intended use case. As well as a couple of others (VM, wubi)
- etatoby 9y ago
  Except for the fact that you cannot launch (or otherwise control) Windows processes from the Linux environment. That's one serious limitation.
  - jstarks 9y ago
    You can now! You can run .exe files directly from WSL, and we append your Windows path to your Linux path by default to make this easy.
cillian64 9y ago
I have a desktop at home. I like things to just work (which in my experience they do better on Windows than Linux) and I like to play games (which aren't available on Linux, and I don't feel like messing with Wine). I also like to do some development and am most comfortable doing that in a Linux environment. So far WSL works great for all my development. I find WSL to be better integrated / less jarring than a Linux VM or dual booting. All the GUI apps I use, I run on Windows. The Linux environment I care about is all terminal-based. My only complaint is the state of terminal emulators. I use wsl-tty but it doesn't do a very good job of emulating xterm/gnome-terminal.

dm319 9y ago

Did you mean gnu/windows? -rms :)

tremon 9y ago
It's actually gnu/nt. WSL completely bypasses the windows APIs and talks to the kernel directly, AFAIU.
- etatoby 9y ago
  That's because Dave Cutler (of DEC VMS fame) specifically designed the NT kernel to make it easy to add new ABIs. NT originally supported running Win32, OS/2, and POSIX executables. Now apparently they added Linux executables.

nnq 9y ago

I never quite get developers that don't use a system most similar with they deployment target... If I develop web apps intended to run on -nix, I use Linux, if I develop Windows stuff, I use Windows etc. It creates a huge understanding gap that slows you down and makes you miss so many shortcuts... Windows, Macos, Linux are all good enough to get shit done these days... so pick whichever suits current needs best. (I reboot to different OS depending on project since this also helps me avoid my dangerous tendency for multitasking... and productivity/office tools are all web apps for me so I can use them anywhere, including phone and tablet).

dingo_bat 9y ago
My company lives on Outlook. My dev is fully targetted on Linux. How should I use Linux on my laptop/workstation?
- popcorncolonel 9y ago
  Internet?
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    Yes?
    - kleim 9y ago
      I think he is refering to the Outlook Web App.
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        Hmmm. To be fair OWA is pretty good.
- likeclockwork 9y ago
  Run Outlook in a Windows VM on Linux instead of doing your real work in a Linux VM on Windows.

dcow 9y ago

2017: the year of the Linux desktop.

etatoby 9y ago
With no actual Linux kernel code. Oh, the irony. At least they have the decency to call it Ubuntu and not Linux in the promotional material. Personally, I would have called it Line (Line Is Not an Emulator) or Eniw
- rkeene2 9y ago
  LINE was a real thing 16+ years ago, probably still on sourceforge. It allowed you to execute native Linux binaries on Windows, similar to WSL. https://sourceforge.net/projects/line/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/line/

pgl 9y ago

I just wish the issue with symlinks not being interoperable between Windows and the Linux subsystem (and vice versa) could be fixed.

scandox 9y ago

For me one very important aspect of Linux is that the OS is decoupled from any kind of "consumer experience". In other words nothing in the OS is ever asking me: Who I am For Payment Information Would I like to see an Ad Do I need additional products or services So I appreciate that this is handy for some people, but to me it's like avocado ice-cream. A bad idea that tastes like crap.

xyzxyz998 9y ago
Wow, you haven't even tried the thing once clearly. Can you elaborate on what is it that is bad about WSL being on Windows? How does it make things bad for anybody? It's called choice.
- dm319 9y ago
  I think he is referring to the experience of using Windows 10 not WSL - they really do push for you to register/sign-in to an online account just to install creators update - even going so far as placing opt-outs in funny positions on the screen so it isn't obvious that is a possibility. Why does the start menu contain software that isn't installed and adverts? Why do you need an account to download free software from the store? There's certainly a line of argument that says you can have all the linux goodness without all of that.
- scandox 9y ago
  I have been in my day a very heavy user of Windows. What I object to on both Windows and Mac is the whole "store" experience. When my personal computer asks me for a credit card, I find this to be a profoundly uncomfortable experience - whether that's rational or not is a separate question. So that's why to me it's like Avocado Ice Cream: a choice many people are free to make and enjoy....like the maniacs they are.
  - asendra 9y ago
    The only time your mac ask for your credit card information is when you are trying to pay something with your Apple account and you don't already have it. If you don't want to be uncomfortable then simply don't try to pay for something with your Apple account.

teekert 9y ago

It's the 5th result for me (when searching Ubuntu), after a Linux Cheat Sheet, some PasteBin program and WepUpd8 (whatever that may be), then when I click it, the first line says: "This title is powered by great new feature of the windows insider program, please join at..."... Now should I, do I need to do that? The Get button is greyed out, but no indication why (probably because me company hasn't approved the anniversary update yet). What a crappy experience.

marmaduke 9y ago

PSA: filesystem performance in WSL isn't great, but it's absolutely fantastic under windows' hyperv hypervisor. As a dev env I run CentOS on hyperv and putty into it, and map the drive with dokan+winsshfs, and it's just as performant as Linux/Mac on the same hardware

jstarks 9y ago
Do you ever need to go the other direction, e.g. access NTFS-hosted files in the VM?
- marmaduke 9y ago
  For that, samba/cifs share from windows, then mount from VM should work fine. I haven't tried it though.
rizalp 9y ago
Does that mean your code repository is on CentOS inside HyperV, and use code editor from Windows to edit it?

baybal2 9y ago

Microsoft has one problem - it struggles with it being irrelevant. Years after years of shaming from angry penguins did their job. Now Linux is cool and Win is not. Well, Mac is now supposed to be even cooler. Windows can't regain even a second place as a development platform unless, ... , it stops being windows. The negative connotation and "uncoolness," just sticks to anything that remotely touches Microsoft. Unless they can do something like a total market and product production approach U-turn as a company, they can't change their trajectory into the dustbin of history.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
romanovcode 9y ago
Oh, hi guy from Starbucks with lots of stickers on his macbook writing nodejs apps in VIM. Linux was never cool and will probably never will. Mac is cool because they had the amazing marketers, but nowadays it's getting more and more lame.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Well that, and it offered a off the shelf unix with support down the road (or in the university library sometimes). Best i can tell though the unix parts are growing more and mroe stale compared to both the BSDs and GNU (many seems to resort to installing the latter via third party tools).
- maxscam 9y ago
  You try and defend windows, but give absolutely no defence other than the fact that Unix isnt cool.
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    I had no word "windows" in my comment. Windows never was cool and never will be cool. It just works.
a_imho 9y ago

etatoby 9y ago

At least they have the decency to call it Ubuntu and not Linux in the promotional material, seeing as it does not contain any Linux kernel code. Personally, I would have called it Line (= Line Is Not an Emulator) or Eniw.

iKenshu 9y ago

But can I access to my desktop, documents, music folder and create archives or more folders to development environment?

wornohaulus 9y ago
Yes.. save file in cd /mnt/c/Users/$"%USERPROFILE%"/(Desktop|Documents|Downloads|Music|Video)/

snarfy 9y ago

It's a bit misleading. Unless you're on Windows Insider builds this isn't available until the windows 10 fall update.

tkubacki 9y ago

I just don't care anymore - I keep windows on VM it's way easier (eg. WSL doesn't support docker). I don't use any other Windows app except: VS (from time to time) and Word. VirtualBox is more than enough for this (my host linux desktop is beefy machine though)

cdevs 9y ago

I have a Linux laptop and a windows laptop. I bought the windows laptop for games and to hobby in game development , blender and unreal engine but I can't stand windows even for those basic purposes the popups for updates and other "do you want to set this setting now" when I just quickly want to open a browser and google something drive me nuts. Put notifications in the toolbar in the right with some annoying icon and leave me alone. I know what Linux is doing all the time and if not it's easy to look up but windows Microsoft magic makes me feel like I need tons of more security apps than I would like to have running. I need a windows lite.

vurso 9y ago

While Windows is in a good place right now, its not great. I have been a Windows guy for a long time but for the past couple of years I have been waiting for the day when I can finally ditch it and move over to a pure nix platform. I want to do this because I understand nix, specifically have worked with Debian for a long time so I am aware of how good the base architecture of Unix-Like OSes are - its that good because it was well thought out from the early days. Being a .NET developer I am literally waiting for the moment when I can unshackle myself from Windows 10. Windows 10 is good, its about as good as we will get with the current bloated architecture and while I suspect the direction the OS will take is to become a VMlike app on a version of "windows-is-linux-not-bash" offering from Microsoft that day is a long way off. Its all the little things that destroy productivity and become major time sinks. Individually we could say they are related to whatever product is causing them but collectively they can seriously eff up your professional working day. MacBook's are great, hardware is where Apple really excels and no one can take away the great productivity to be had on the operating system which is based on the awesome BSD but the buy-in is ridiculously expensive. As someone said pound-for-pound we can get better offerings from other vendors which will soften the shitty experience on Windows however what you get with Apple is quality and you can confidently state that you will get a good experience (provided you get good enough Apple hardware). Here is where the problem is, the buy-in is expensive and then you are hurt even more when you realise you need to upgrade to get a better experience later down the line. Conversely we can argue that because the BSD-like OS requires less resources it operates much better for less hardware. I really do hope Windows becomes an "experience" on some BSD/Unix like OS that would open up a world of possibilities.

Lambent 9y ago

How can I have it run a server in the background/after I close the window? (Either that or it already runs in the background)

TheChosen 9y ago

Is it worth installing Ubuntu via the Windows store or would we be better off running it through VirtualBox?

maxscam 9y ago

Is this different from the linux subsystem microsoft already supports? Which is nice, and would,be worthwhile if i had enough motivation to use windows gui programs, but is limited given that you have to jump through an extra hoop to run linux gui programs, and cant even access your linux partitions from it