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Ubuntu on Windows

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Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#801
post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this move by MS is wonderful and I support it completely - but there is one concern that you've left out that makes me more worried than anything. I'm someone who doggedly persisted trying to dev on my windows box because the stability, speed, app support, GUI niceness of windows is just far superior to Ubuntu (I won't speak to OS X since I've only done minimal dev on it). I won't go into a lengthy defense of…

> So - I ditched vagrant and shared folders and use a totally contained VM with the ubuntu GUI... it's slow and horrid and it makes me cry... Is it really that bad? At one former job I ran Ubuntu under VirtualBox with guest additions installed (new Linux team in an old MS shop). Performance was OK, at least for the things I used - terminals, vim, Firefox. The only thing that really annoyed me in this setup was the ne…

>Is it really that bad?

I was going to agree with you and admit I was being melodramatic...(well - I mean, saying that it makes me cry was certainly melodramatic - I don't really), but y'know what... it's definitely not ideal.

e.g. Scrolling in my ide.. sometimes lines of code don't refresh properly until I scroll back and forward a few times.

And with dev server, webpack watchers, test watchers open plus browser with a few tabs... yeah - it can get pretty sluggish. Maybe I'll try throwing a few more gig ram at the VM.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has contributed to key open source projects such as LLVM and WebKit. They have also open sourced Swift. They have identified the core of their business and they feel comfortable there. They get a 30% royalty for each App Store transaction, they make large profits selling iPhones and Macs. They monetize their software indirectly as a part of a larger end-to-end solution. Microsoft during their monopolic era was…

> Microsoft during their monopolic era was much more beyond that, they were going for all. Yes, absolutely. Bill Gates was not a "nice" man. These days many people fawn over him "oh he's so lovey dovey, he's going to save the world with all his money as a philanthropist". LOL -- how many have actually sat at the same table (behind closed doors) with Billy boy pounding the table telling everyone attending (ISPs, major…

Explain to me how it could be a Trojan horse when it's their own OS that they are modifying? They aren't exactly going in and sabotaging the Linux kernel project here...

There's also a logical fallacy that because Nadella worked for MS for the past twenty five years, he's as power hungry as Gates. This reeks of the type of elitist nonsense the keeps people from wanting to adopt Linux.

EDIT: Removed insult, came with arguments instead.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#803
post #233

Surprised I don't see anyone else mentioning this. This looks to me like typical Microsoft strategy that they utilized a lot 25 years ago. 1. when not leader in given market, make your product fully compatible with competitor 2. start gaining momentum (e.g. why should I use Linux, when on Windows I can run both Linux and Windows applications) 3. once becoming leader break up compatibility 4. rinse and repeat Happened…

Even more surprised that no one seems to recall that they did exactly this back in the day. There was a version of the NT4 kernel that could run Unix programs. "Great, the program selection of Unix with the stability of windows!" people sneered, but still there was a market for it.

But that was a whac-a-mole, probably for getting boxes checked for whatever it is that audit departments did before sarbanes oxley. That they've gone with linux here shows that their focus is mainstream developers. Consider - it their main focus here had been EEE then BSD would have been a far better starting point. The GPL is far more restrictive than the BSD license. The one major area where linux wins over BSD is in drivers and that's irrelevant here. Apart from drivers and package management, BSD is a better platform. They could have found (or bought) a partner in the NetBSD community to do the Canonical stuff.

Now some here would respond to this as - well - what they've done just shows how big the conspiracy is and how far it extends! There's never a full comeback to that. But I think there's a more straightforward explanation.

The straightforward explanation would be this. Windows is no longer relevant in the way it once was - the cloud is the new platform, and people use tablets and phones. And - a lot of developers hate Windows. OSX has emerged as the dominant developer desktop.

They've realised some combination of this, and formed a company directive, "make developers love us".

Even if it means giving developers non-Windows platforms to work with. Like dot net for linux. Or MSSQL for linux. Or free Visual Studio for linux. Or linux that runs on a Windows kernel. Making a solid effort to do linux for azure. And basically giving away Windows as a desktop. Whatever. The things developers need, they're trying to do that. They want to be where the developer are. They're putting their back into it.

The business case is the kind of vague thing that startups take - find some users, make them love us, and then we'll work out how to make money from it.

Imagine the first reaction in the Redmond office when someone read out the feedback post asking for vi and apt-get. Groans all around. But someone in that room responded to the laughter with an "I know, I know" smile and asked, "OK, but what would it take?" And then everyone perked up, and had some fun with the conversation. And they came up with this. And someone saying "shit, we /could/ do that, and it would be amazing!" The people who were in that room will remember that as a career event.

I think it's cool. I want to play with it.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#804
I won't be running Ubuntu on Windows 10, because I'd never run Windows 10. It's like inviting Microsoft to take up permanent residence with me, and eventually, I'm sure I'll be the one paying for the privilege.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#805
Does anyone See any possible security problems with that Setup?

It looks so promising and fun, i hope you can secure all that additonal capabilities.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is pretty user-hostile. Moreso than MS in my estimation. Try changing the battery in your iphone, or getting music on it without using itunes.

> Try changing the battery in your iphone Try changing the battery in your Lumia.

And I'll try changing it in my Nexus. We're at the point where the inability to change your battery is pretty common place on flagship phones.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#807
post #613
post #538

Ubuntu desktop can do pretty much all Windows can do these days, not to mention mostly all I need is just a browser now. I spent 364 out of 365 days with a Ubuntu and it works fine(yes the one day left is for Turbotax that needs the Windows). Maybe the real reason that MS is moving super fast towards open source nowadays is to damage the open source goodies from within after they failed to attack it heads on many yea…

I've been running TurboTax on Linux for over a decade now …

how did you do it? wine or virtualbox? am I missing something?

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#808
post #441

Can someone explain how is an "NT subsystem" or "NT personality" (which the linux ABI is supposedly an example of) different than any other library? Answers I've received before is "it can call the native API", but any program can call the native API. So, what's in a subsystem?

It's mostly a matter of layering. Think of a "subsystem" as a "pluggable system call interface layer". The Win32 layer (mostly) sits on top of the Native layer. The Native API is mostly implemented by the kernel itself, ntoskrnl.exe, which has a system call table (KiServiceTable). Most of the native API is exposed to userspace via ntdll.dll, which calls through that system call table. This API is available from very…

So does this mean that creating a process (or forking one) can be fast if you omit the Win32 state table and initialisation for the new process? And if so, do you think it would be possible to get fast forking by using Native processes instead of using the Linux emulation layer (assuming that NT actually has an API to CoW-map an existing process' memory, which might be internal to the Linux-on-Windows subsystem)?

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#809
post #233

Surprised I don't see anyone else mentioning this. This looks to me like typical Microsoft strategy that they utilized a lot 25 years ago. 1. when not leader in given market, make your product fully compatible with competitor 2. start gaining momentum (e.g. why should I use Linux, when on Windows I can run both Linux and Windows applications) 3. once becoming leader break up compatibility 4. rinse and repeat Happened…

> A team of sharp developers at Microsoft has been hard at work adapting some Microsoft research technology to basically perform real time translation of Linux syscalls into Windows OS syscalls.

We've actually even seen this before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem

(EDIT: To nitpick, I think the MS POSIX subsystem actually implemented the POSIXy standards as native code, as opposed to the translation layer that's mentioned here).

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a lot of assumptions here. I thing the major point is that Windows will be less a pain in the ass if you have to deal and develop for Linux production systems. So IF I ever have to use Windows I don't need to deal with Cygwin anymore. But for me the biggest reason not to switch is the hardware. Sorry @all Windows folks but Macbooks are playing in another higher league for me. I would never ever switch away from Macbo…

Surface Book and things like the Razer Blade are looking to change that. Honestly your money goes further with Windows hardware, and you can get stuff like the Lenovo mobile workstation with a mobile Xeon CPU and ECC RAM. However, they can't run a blessed OS X. IMO, if Apple really wanted to mess with Microsoft, they could make OS X installable (without EFI hacking and overriding the CPU identifier etc -- yes I've ha…

> if Apple really wanted to mess with Microsoft, they could make OS X installable

Microsoft once offered to help Apple to make Mac OS a widely-used industry standard. Apple decided it would rather sell $2,500 PCs than $50 software ;-)

http://scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html

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