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Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

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Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#31

Post by [deleted] »

bluejekyll wrote: post #15
rukittenme wrote: post #3

Wow 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…

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#32

Post by stenius »

I'm personally a fan of Ubuntu's Unity and I can see the potential in this. I've been using linux for 10+ years and I can't efficiently navigate multiple windows in Windows as easily as under Linux.

Since lot's of mobile devices don't perform as well running Linux as Windows and you want to get the maximum performance out of your device (think battery life), Windows is really you best choice.

In the past, I replaced the windows shell with a couple different BlackBox ports that were compiled for Windows but I was still missing out on all the command line tools so it didn't meet my work flows.

But now that Microsoft let's you run BASH on Windows, I think if I gave it another shot, this setup would work for me but at the moment I don't have any requirements that depend on Windows that would cause me to switch OSs.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#33

Post by ksk »

bluejekyll wrote: post #15
rukittenme wrote: post #3

Wow 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…

>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.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#36

Post by temac »

ccallebs wrote: post #30
bluejekyll wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

> 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? If this is indeed close to native performance, you wouldn't get anywhere close to that with a VM. I could be oblivious to some optimization techniques but Linux VM's on Windows have always performed drastically worse than native.

In my experience it's quite the opposite for some workloads: Linux FS and process spawning speeds are typically way faster than Windows one (with or without WSL), so much that even when in a VM with dozen of % of overhead, it is still faster than running on Windows for some workloads (just cold open a random man page under WSL, compared to a VM, and you will understand how much Windows lag behind Linux in some areas -- next you can try to build a big program: same result: Windows is really slow)

Now this does not render WSL useless; launch time for any random small tool is better with WSL than booting a complete VM, the memory is not partitioned, integration with the Windows Drive FS is slightly better, etc. But tons of use cases are better covered by a VM -- and with a huge margin.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#37

Post by youdontknowtho »

temac wrote: post #36
ccallebs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? If this is indeed close to native performance, you wouldn't get anywhere close to that with a VM. I could be oblivious to some optimization techniques but Linux VM's on Windows have always performed drastically worse than native.

In my experience it's quite the opposite for some workloads: Linux FS and process spawning speeds are typically way faster than Windows one (with or without WSL), so much that even when in a VM with dozen of % of overhead, it is still faster than running on Windows for some workloads (just cold open a random man page under WSL, compared to a VM, and you will understand how much Windows lag behind Linux in some areas…

File System and process spawning...I'm not sure what you mean? When working in WSL? or natively in Windows?

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#39

Post by TillE »

skruvmejsel wrote: post #8
curiousgal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Why would you run Wine on Windows?

To play older Windows games that for various reasons won't run on Windows 10, for example.

The conventional wisdom has always been that Microsoft is hyper-focused on backwards compatibility, but there's only limited truth in that. Even if you pick Windows XP as a starting point (just considering NT kernels), tons of stuff broke with Vista.

Compatibility Mode has never been very good, though I don't think there's anything preventing Microsoft from making a more Wine-like compatibility layer if they really wanted to.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#40

Post by [deleted] »

ksk wrote: post #33
bluejekyll wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

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