Why oh why would one want to do this terrible thing?
Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
71–80 of 90 posts
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really except on the broadest definition of Linux, where Linux is ~= Unix. Linux is a kernel. GNU is the Unix environment which they are getting to explore, more specifically with the Ubuntu OS mgmt tools. Now what I don't get, and I'm not trolling here, is why would you want this? Isn't a VM a better option? I assume people using Windows want to because of the UI, not the kernel. Whereas people generally choose…
>Isn't a VM a better option? Please explain how it is better. They've implemented the ABI/syscalls in the kernel allowing for direct execution of unmodified ELF64 binaries.
If you're going for a full Linux/GNU/Ubuntu/Unity stack, the only thing this cuts out is Linux, making his a Windows/GNU/Ubuntu/Unity stack. I know they've replicated the system calls, but they won't perform or always operate identically to a Linux kernel.
Which is why I asked about where people thought Unity on Windows would make sense. Because a VM will most likely generally give a better experience.
If you restrict yourself to bash and standard Unix tools, you'll end up with a similar experience to macOS and terminal (or my preference iTerm2)
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#73Haven't seen anyone write this yet, so: I wonder if this (I mean the whole Linux subsystem for Windows) is gonna be the downfall of Windows in the end. As at this moment, somewhat counter-intuitively, it should actually make more sense to write software purely for Linux , effectively ignoring Windows, as then you'll get Windows compatibility for free. I'm somewhat surprised they didn't actually try to contribute to W…
The purpose of WSL is to bring back developers to Windows.
It is more efficient than Wine and is more useful to Microsoft to get almost native Ubuntu containers than some way to run Windows GUI apps on Linux.
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#74Sounds a little bit like slashdot in here with the pointless Microsoft/Unity hate rants. This is really awesome and I can't wait for more and more integration. This is nothing but awesome
Also useless? As a Windows user I'm not particular troubled by the lack of user facing XFCE applications. On the other hand I'm worried about the resources invested in this project, instead of stability or performance improvements in Windows. In the long term I'm worried about Microsoft's monopoly.
Which project are you referring to? Note that this is a tracker item created by a third party, to share information on how to configure VcXsrv to work with LSW. It's not Microsoft official or anything.
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#75Wow that's really cool. This is pretty close to native performance? This is a really great step for Linux on the desktop. Such an easy way to onboard people.
Not really except on the broadest definition of Linux, where Linux is ~= Unix. Linux is a kernel. GNU is the Unix environment which they are getting to explore, more specifically with the Ubuntu OS mgmt tools. Now what I don't get, and I'm not trolling here, is why would you want this? Isn't a VM a better option? I assume people using Windows want to because of the UI, not the kernel. Whereas people generally choose…
Unity is not particularly valuable, but X itself is.
Suppose you're developing a cross-platform GUI application (hypothetically, its name could be "Visual Studio Code" or something like that...), and your main development environment is Windows. Now you can build and test it on Linux as part of your regular workflow, without having to sync code etc.
Heck, you could even make it so that launching the project (from a Windows IDE) would do a Linux build, and launch the resulting binary.
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also useless? As a Windows user I'm not particular troubled by the lack of user facing XFCE applications. On the other hand I'm worried about the resources invested in this project, instead of stability or performance improvements in Windows. In the long term I'm worried about Microsoft's monopoly.
Which project are you referring to? Note that this is a tracker item created by a third party, to share information on how to configure VcXsrv to work with LSW. It's not Microsoft official or anything.
BashOnWindows
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but only on 32-bit Windows, right?
Indeed - it looks like work on 64 bit was started, but never completed, which I think is a shame.
How much effort would be required to reimplement coLinux as a pico process?
Will it be possible to implement alternative syscall handlers with a future version of the DDK?
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose there's nothing stopping one for doing that tho? I was sitting here and thinking about trying it out with i3. If that works then it is only missing a decent pkg mgmt (in my opinion ofc), at least on the technical level. I sort of enjoy the thought that my current setup (arch) is entirely OSS and hackable though (not on a hw level ofc)... It makes me smile every time I log in :)
I don't think any of Windows 10 window managers is swappable so anything you will run on top will mean significant friction and loss of usability. I think Cygwin is already using Pacman so perhaps you can get it to work without root on Ubuntu and hence on Windows 10.
From the screenshot, all this seems to be doing is running an X server, so it should be trivial to switch from Unity to i3, Xmonad or whatever.
The next level of integration would be running X11 fullscreen and then launching Windows programs inside that environment. e.g. Word 2016 launched and managed from the Unity launcher.
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#79Sounds a little bit like slashdot in here with the pointless Microsoft/Unity hate rants. This is really awesome and I can't wait for more and more integration. This is nothing but awesome
No, seriously. Unity (the ubuntu desktop interface) is an abomination. Not a joke. Very serious.
It is painful to even try to use. It forces so many unnatural behaviors, in favor of... I don't even know why. It's not elegant, it's not pretty, it's not fun to use.
It is bad. Horrendously bad. And suited to the tastes of little more than a very small handful of people, who probably open a browser and read email, and do little else, except maybe script shell commands on the rare occasion.
Their decisions arbitrarily imposed on many, who likely still use the distro, simply due to ease of installation (and probably no other reason), and then shoulder the burden of routinely overriding the default install configuration immediately.
Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10
#80Sounds a little bit like slashdot in here with the pointless Microsoft/Unity hate rants. This is really awesome and I can't wait for more and more integration. This is nothing but awesome
No, seriously. Unity (the ubuntu desktop interface) is an abomination. Not a joke. Very serious. It is painful to even try to use. It forces so many unnatural behaviors, in favor of... I don't even know why. It's not elegant, it's not pretty, it's not fun to use. It is bad. Horrendously bad. And suited to the tastes of little more than a very small handful of people, who probably open a browser and read email, and do…
I'm a software engineer and it's my favorite GUI available for Linux. I've used all the hip things like Xmonad, dwm (for a long time), XFCE (for a very long time), Gnome 2 and 3, KDE 4 and 5, i3 (which I still like a lot), et cetera.
I still prefer Unity nowadays. It's simple, it's fast and stable (at least for me), and it reminds me of OS X (which I also like).
Everyone who runs Linux at my job uses it. No one had to be taught how to use it. No one has had any issues with it or complains about it. It just gets the job done.
I totally get that not everyone likes it, but Canonical is targeting a general audience and I think they're doing a good job. If you don't like it, just apt-get something else. It doesn't need to be super customizable and cater to everyone. Let them focus on their core features for their primary audience.