Ubuntu on Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#641

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:51 AM UTC

samstave wrote: post #196

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #46

microsoft is leveraging FOSS Linux to get Mac users. I think it's a real smart move. The author points to using grep and Xargs and some other tools to quickly update a package. That's the key here. These bash/Linux utilities are productivy boosters for all the Linux and Mac/bsd people out there. I can't imagine living without them and they're necessary for any system I develop on (which is currently a Mac).

Its actually kind of interesting that we dont have a literal "standard base" of tools that any OS should supply. (unless I am missing something) But it would make sense that certain things should be doable on literally any computer. grep, find, vi, edit, etc... etc... I cant come up with a complete list - but it would be great to start that direction.

We have exactly what you're talking about. It's called POSIX.

"The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX)

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#642

Post by timgws » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:55 AM UTC

rsync wrote: post #623

captainmuon wrote: post #47

A few random thoughts: - Wow, hell is really freezing over! - The hardest part of running bash and other posix things under windows is filesystem access. Windows uses drive letters and backslashes, unix has a root filesystem with forward slashes. It seems they are taking the same route as cygwin by "mounting" windows drives in /mnt/c (or /cygdrive/c). - If you just wanted bash and some posix tools, the harder but nic…

"The hardest part of running bash and other posix things under windows is filesystem access. Windows uses drive letters and backslashes, unix has a root filesystem with forward slashes. It seems they are taking the same route as cygwin by "mounting" windows drives in /mnt/c (or /cygdrive/c)." How do these ubuntu tools interact with the rest of the windows system that they are running on ? Can I 'kill -9 explorer.exe'…

PIDs from Windows are not exposed when looking at /proc, so I am guessing you will not be able to `kill -9 explorer.exe` unless there is some real voodoo going on (and then it would not be POSIX compatible, anyways).

I think the command that you meant to say was killall :) `kill` will only kill pids, not process names.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#643

Post by Fice » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:56 AM UTC

gvb wrote: post #9

dukoid wrote: post #2

1. embrace

1. Embrace is good. 2. Extend can be good if done openly and collaboratively, as opposed to closed and hidden. 3. Extinguish - Here be dragons. I'm hopeful the New Kinder Gentler Microsoft stays on steps 1. and 2. (done collaboratively).

There is no "New Kinder Gentler Microsoft". Corporations just do what they see as more profitable. They do not make decisions based on morality per se, but they try to maintain a certain public image when it helps profits.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#644

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:57 AM UTC

jwildeboer wrote: post #401

TL;DR if you don't support the Linux API/ABI you are out of business. The reality is software defined everything and it's based on Linux.

Apple is hardly out of business and they don't support the Linux API or ABI.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#645

Post by petecox » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:57 AM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #561

julian_1 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland might be a cleaner api layer to integrate into the windows display subsystems.

Or we could use X11 right now with one of the several existing X11 display servers that work on Windows :-)

headless, you're still stuck with Windows Explorer as a window manager.

I don't use a particularly fancy WM/DE under Linux but it's the little things such as middle click paste, and window operations such as maximize horizontal/vertical (by using the middle and right mouse buttons) that I miss.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#646

Post by timgws » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:58 AM UTC

drakenot wrote: post #617

dcw303 wrote: post #507

This is good news for developers with Macs, and it has nothing to do with an option to switch platforms. By doing this, Microsoft are legitimising bash as an OS feature for "developers who like unix". This has two effects on Apple: 1. It means they will be less likely to remove their bash CLI from a future OSX / iOS hybrid workstation OS nightmare that we all don't like to think about. 2. They will have to compete wi…

I was thinking this as well. The bash version which is included with OS X is really old[0]. They refuse to ship any software which is licensed under GPLv3. It makes me wonder if they will reverse on that stance? Homebrew also breaks with every major OS X release. It would be really nice to get some 1st party support on a package manager. I feel like Apple does the bare minimum in this area to stay POSIX compliant. I…

Doesn't stop you from installing homebrew, and installing a newer version of bash though.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#647

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 6:02 AM UTC

ramy_d wrote: post #266

NateDad wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. No GUI applications (currently, and no announced future support... and I wouldn't bank on them doing it).

vim?

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#648

Post by ssalazar » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 6:04 AM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #599

ssalazar wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, any company that sells niche or upmarket offerings of commodity products, for one. I.e. Apple, Tesla, a bunch of watch manufacturers. > Plus, Windows is still the leader in the desktop and laptop market until today. They are facing some tough competition but "not leader in given market" is not true. Their position in the server world is not nearly so secure, which is quite possibly what this move is meant to addr…

Jumping on what Mafana said, Tesla is known for being one of the most closed off car systems on the planet. There were several HN posts over the last month or two talking about this, but they will require a full inspection to re-activate a car once it's been sold or written off, and it's almost impossible to get parts from them outside of service centers. You chose literally two of the worst examples out there to try…

My point is that these companies have no evident interest in establishing a monopoly in whatever market they've followed. That they maintain a closed system doesn't contradict that.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#649

Post by stop1234 » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 6:05 AM UTC

So wait... you still get the "cmd.exe console"? After all these decades Microsoft Windows still does not provide a decent terminal out of the box?

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#650

Post by cmurf » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 6:05 AM UTC

Pwngea wrote: post #610

llomlup wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I've been a primarily C# dev for years, I gradually moved to Ubuntu, and then to OSX, all because of the better terminal/s. I like Macs, but OSX, its window management system, finder, is really bad. Having bash environment available on Windows is an incredible feat and a reason alone to reconsider Windows again. Hopefully, it won't be limited to W10.

What do you dislike about Finder? Just curious.

First right-click for a session totally hangs the Finder for ~10 seconds, followed by the beachball, followed by a brief flash of the contextual menu. The next right-click works as expected.