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New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

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Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#241
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This project has never been about EEE. It's not about controlling the user. It's the complete opposite. It's all about choice. well, those are the first two 'E's of the picture, if this is the case. with the latest edition of Windows 10 (S, i think?), microsoft have already prepared the stage for the third.

It depends on how you look at it. The classic EEE involved e.g. "embracing" a platform like the web by writing your own browser, and then "extending" said platform by adding nonstandard features to that browser—and encouraging their adoption—to steal mindshare of the platform away from the standard itself and toward your particular implementation, giving you control over the future of the platform. At which point you…

> WSL doesn't look to be "extending" Linux

Yet.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#242
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a personal desire. The context here was corporate buying and depreciation. Why would a corporation want to repair its computers, any more than it would want to repair e.g. its office furniture?

How many large corporations buy macs for everyone in the company? Serious question... I have no idea. My hunch says; Not many.

Indeed. I've seen Macs as an option, and then you sort of get "developers can get Macs, VPs can get them, but others can't" as the TCO is - apparently - higher, and, let's not forget that, remote manageability is way harder than with Windows, which has stuff like group policies, AD integration, etcetera, all built in (the Macs I used at a previous big corp employer had some terribly hack-ish layered software to get to almost the same level).

With Win10 and WSL (which I've been actively testdriving on my personal hardware) I'd be totally fine to get a Lenovo from BigCorpEmployer. For private use, I won't buy any MBPs anymore anyway for the same reason.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#243
post #35

Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep blue. Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely conf…

ConEmu with Bash/WSL has not worked out for me. I came across way too many incompatibilities, and weird behaviour. Some of these are documented in (1). That said, ConEMU was never really designed to support UNIX/VT100 terminal environments from the start. Its more of a cmd.exe replacement. Instead, I've got a pretty good setup using Xming (2), a native win32 X server implementation. In Bash/WSL, I set the DISPLAY var…

Ditto, although I find VcXsrv to be a bit faster than XMing. No scientific testing, though ;-)

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#244
post #35

Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep blue. Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely conf…

ConEmu with Bash/WSL has not worked out for me. I came across way too many incompatibilities, and weird behaviour. Some of these are documented in (1). That said, ConEMU was never really designed to support UNIX/VT100 terminal environments from the start. Its more of a cmd.exe replacement. Instead, I've got a pretty good setup using Xming (2), a native win32 X server implementation. In Bash/WSL, I set the DISPLAY var…

I had some trouble too and tried some complicated setup with wslbridge and other stuff I don't even remember. But in the end I got it easily working by configuring this simple task in ConEmu (everything is working, including arrow keys):

%windir%\system32\bash.exe -c "cd ~ && bash"

If you want the nice Ubuntu icon, add this as task parameter:

-icon "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\lxss\bash.ico"

You can then use the ConEmu theme of your choice and the colors are far more readable than with the default console. See default theme for instance:

https://lut.im/fyFmIT9zwj/IjbmI5FsOHq2ik6z.png

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#245
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't particular care who is trying to sell me shit in the file manager, I care that shit is being sold in the file manager . In an operating system I paid $100 for. Unacceptable.

The shit being sold in the file manager is... space in the cloud for your files. Which is managed by the file manager.

Which I already paid for as part of the operating system. If they want to advertise to me, they can give me my money back.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#246
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a personal desire. The context here was corporate buying and depreciation. Why would a corporation want to repair its computers, any more than it would want to repair e.g. its office furniture?

Because swapping a burned out power supply is 5min job while waiting for a [company] technician to bring that replacement computer can be a day+ several others to get the original back? It boils down to how much the downtime costs. "Do it all in the Cloud" simply doesn't apply across the board.

Why wait? In most companies I've worked at (a few startups; IBM), if your computer isn't working, they take your current one and then hand you a spare out of a pile they have in a closet. The original gets sent for replacement, but you're already at your desk re-doing the documented onboarding process on the new machine.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of OPs comment is hyperbolic, but I think > Microsoft has shown they are only interested in controlling the user, and not in giving the user control. Is very well supported by their recent we'll-do-everything-possible to get Win10 on people's machines, force upgrades, forced (and ultra comprehensive, but mostly secretive until a month ago) telemetry. > We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn'…

I agree that the telemetry is very very dodgy. However, on the forced update front, I have to side with Microsoft here. From their POV, regular and forced windows updates are the best way to ensure we don't have XP-like situations, where people just keep running out-dated software with horribly exploitable browsers. This creates a maintenance nightmare for software developers. Could you imagine running a 16 year old…

I might agree with you from a "public goods" perspective (but only if win10 had user control comparable to win7, and it doesn't)

However, Microsoft is in it for themselves. Not for the public good, not for the people who want to keep running their old system, not for the developers. Furthermore, whoever bought win7 was guaranteed support until 2020.

Your siding with Microsoft in 2016 is siding with "we already got the customer's money, now let's try to do the easiest thing for us rather than keep our promises; use dark patterns if we need, because it is easier to get forgiveness than permission". I am sorry, but I disagree with this attitude.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#248
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What isn't a rotting cesspool in your opinion? iOS or Android?

Debian/Arch are both fairly lively, if you want something battle hardend you'll use SLES like Walmart, Kroger, Fred Meyers, Vons, uses. The desktop is in stasis though, and iOS as a platform is unlikely to grow massively over the next few years. Android is frankly another rotting cesspool of Google's making. Where Microsoft & Apple are able to provide years of updates to every model of phone their software runs on (w…

It's easy to keep devices updated when you reset your platform 3 times (WP7 - WP8 - W10P - WOA)

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a container implementation. Microsoft transcoded Linux system calls to Windows kernel calls. It runs efficiently and natively.

That is: as efficient as possible on top of the windows process model. A process fork is still a magnitude slower and more expensive than on Linux. It is however a massive improvement over Cygwin, but it's still very noticeable when for example running more complex shell-scripts.

It's as native as can be, without being native. It's some amazing computational acrobatics, and it appears to be quite usable for development.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people have a bit of a popular misconception about the Explorer advertising thing. What's happening is that MS is adding a banner to Explorer advertising paid OneDrive subscriptions. I totally agree that it's massively inappropriate, but I do think that most people are imagining third-party advertising which is not what's happening - a lot of people might not consider the current situation to be an "ad" neces…

If this is all it is, then it is not unprecedented. I remember that Windows 95 did something similar with MSN (which at that time was also a dialup service).

Yeah, I recently installed Windows 95 in a VM to run some old software and I was actually quite surprised at how hard it pushes MSN - the "connect to the internet" wizard it presents basically asks if you're on a LAN and, if you say no, tells you to call MSN to sign up.
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