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Ubuntu on Windows

blog.dustinkirkland.com

71–80 of 933 posts

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#71
post #4

"Linux geeks can think of it sort of the inverse of "wine" -- Ubuntu binaries running natively in Windows. Microsoft calls it their "Windows Subsystem for Linux"." I find it amazing that you can have such a functional Ubuntu environment by translating system calls. Microsoft does have the advantage of Linux being open-source I suppose, while the Wine project had to reverse engineer DLLs. Or have you supply them on yo…

I would rather have the opposite. I would even pay for an official "Windows on Linux". There is a handful of games I would like to play, but other than that I have no interest in windows.

I cannot possibly imagine a world where Microsoft cannibalizes their Windows Server sales by creating a Windows Emulation Layer for Linux.

Crossover is probably the best you'll get: https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-linux

Otherwise, if you only need Windows to game, I'd highly suggested PCI Passthrough so that you can use your GPU in a Windows VM: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM...

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#72
post #33

Scott Hanselman has a good write-up here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DevelopersCanRunBashShellAndUs... Google Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...

Thanks. This link has a lot more (real) information.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to completely miss the point of what they did. It is not a simple Bash recompilation for Windows. It is a way to run Linux (Ubuntu) binaries on Windows.

Well I, for one, think he has a point. Part of what makes the shell so useful on Linux is, say, highlight-to-select. When the CMD.EXE doesn't understand line breaks in copied text, it's substantially crippled. You need a proper terminal to take advantage of a proper shell. They go hand-in-hand.

Nothing about what they implemented prevents you from using a different terminal.

Also cmd.exe on Windows 10 does support line breaks in copied text from what my minor test just showed.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#75
post #8

So what OS you're going to get when you run an application under this? So if I run this: node -e 'console.log(require("os").type())' What it's going to print?

Depends if the node is a Windows executable or a Linux binary.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#76
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally doable. Use KVM to virtualize Windows and (the important part) make sure your CPU and motherboard support VT-d. Then you can pass a graphics card (separate from the one you run Linux with, naturally) to the VM and get >95% of native performance. There's lots of videos of folks doing this.

That's still "VM" not "Native". You aren't running them "side by side"... you are running them "One inside the other". Not exactly an apple-to-apple comparison.

That's a distinction without a difference if you're using a modern processor with special virtualization silicon like Intel VT-i/x/d or AMD-V. With these features, IO and memory management is completely isolated between different virtual machines at the hardware level so there is almost zero overhead. With VT-d, which allows you to dedicate DMA channels to a guest VM, you can completely bypass the the host for all types of hardware including PCI/e, USB, etc.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#77

What is up with the unix-y directory structure in this screenshot? http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-global/dims3/GLOB/resize/1345x666/q... It's been a while since I've used Windows but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a unix directory structure... is it the case that they map / to a folder inside windows?

Yes, as mentioned in the article, / on the Linux side maps to C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Lxss\rootfs\, and C:\ on the Windows side maps to /mnt/c/ on the Linux side.

Think of it as an Ubuntu chroot on Windows, with C:\ bind-mounted into the chroot.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#78
post #29

What? This is sick!? I can't wait for this to happen! Maybe I am gonna get one of those Surface Books after all... though I am gonna miss my i3 setup... I wonder if X (or wayland! or wayland...) can run as well... Native Emacs FTW :)

I frigging love i3, but not a big fan of thinkpad and linux desktop combo.

I ordered a surface pro 4 and planning to run i3 in a VM with my existing nixOS configuration. I wonder how this news will affect my workflow.

I have emacs running as a systemd service and client emacs connecting to it, so it's quite a killer combo for development.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#79
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still "VM" not "Native". You aren't running them "side by side"... you are running them "One inside the other". Not exactly an apple-to-apple comparison.

The performance hit is so negligible on modern hardware that the distinction doesn't really matter.

Except, it does matter.

Not having a unified filesystem, not having a unified window manager, etc are quite some issues.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#80

How do they handle various NTFS related issues? https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-specialnames.html

I'm reading between the lines, but it looks like the linux subsystem is using a separate file system. So you'll have the usual problems when using files from /mnt/c, but other files are mounted in a unixy file system of some sort. The Ubuntu file system is mounted onto your Windows subsystem at C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Lxss\rootfs\, according to the article.
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