Ubuntu on Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#631

Post by andor » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:29 AM UTC

madmax96 wrote: post #608

As a FreeBSD user, this does nothing to attract me. I dislike GNU+Linux because it feels like a hacked together mess; now they're going to add that poorly designed system to an even worse system? Count me out.

If you weren't trolling, I'd suggest you to leave your bubble from time to time. There are pros and cons to everything, and finding the good parts is usually more productive.

Just for fun, here's a version of your quote from another perspective:

As a Linux user, FreeBSD does nothing to attract me. I dislike it because it feels like it's stuck in the 70's, with a mess of shell scripts for system and service management. Now with the SCO Unix compatibility layer they added something absolutely prehistoric to what already felt old. Count me out.

Also, how did you post this, is there a browser for FreeBSD now? ;-)

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#632

Post by aristidb » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:32 AM UTC

eggy wrote: post #570

ageofwant wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just use ubuntu... It amazes me that people will rag on linux because its "hard" and then build these elaborate Rube-Goldberg machines to avoid the most obvious solution.

I have been running dual-boot Windows/Linux forever (Minix before Linux took over ;) ). I have purchased programs - Mathematica, Ableton Live, Clip Studio Paint, etc... that I have on Windows along with VS and .NET/F# stuff. This will make my world so much easier, since I only use Linux for the occasional program I don't want to bother compiling on Windows due to dependencies and long make files. Cygwin and MSYS2 hav…

Mathematica at least has a Linux version. :-)

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#633

Post by trill1 » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:33 AM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #381

tostitos1979 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been "stuck" with a 2010 Macbook since Apple isn't refreshing it's laptop hardware soon enough. Plus I'm sick of soldered in RAM and other BS. For devs that do heavy Linux work (but have stuck with a Mac OS for GUI/app reasons), is it time to move (back) to Windows? If so, what would be a good laptop to get at the moment?

> For devs that do heavy Linux work (but have stuck with a Mac OS for GUI/app reasons), is it time to move (back) to Windows? Why not just use Linux? It has a GUI. It has apps. It does everything a modern desktop or laptop needs to do. It really is great.

Right! This whole thread has me scratching my head.

Not long ago Microsoft schemed to stomp out Linux and now they've had a change of heart? Fuck Microsoft! To this day even they engage in anti-competitive bundling with OEMs, not to mention their seedy history in relation to open source.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#634

Post by executesorder66 » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

It's really cool that this can be done. But why would you not run Ubuntu on Linux? What is the advantage of running it on a windows kernel?

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#635

Post by kristianp » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:37 AM UTC

anthk wrote: post #310

mcpherrinm wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately X11 is "network transparent" and there's X11 servers for windows. It shouldn't actually be that hard to make this work (though the perf will probably be pretty bad in a naive implementation). At very worst you could SSH to localhost and X11-forward to the same host -- but you can optimize that.

Nope, XMing works perfectly if you export the display to localhost (the default) and it's really fast, it even has GL support with MESA , with hardware acceleration.

I found apps using xming in a VM to be quite laggy, not fast to the point where I could use them regularly. e.g. SublimeText.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#636

Post by therealmarv » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

riotdash wrote: post #321

talawahdotnet wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I think they are going after developers who use OS X because it is UNIXy. Smart move given how en vogue Apple laptops have become for developers these days.

Let's be honest here. Does this change make some developers actually even consider to change their OS X/Linux Desktops to Windows? Yeah it is really cool thing that we can finally use windows cmd like the terminal on unix systems however: - What about lack of all the Linux/OS X GUI software? - What about lack of all the UNIX OS features? - What about all those billions and billions of Windows malware, viruses, adware…

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 Macbooks because of the build quality.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#637

Post by imron » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:44 AM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #391

I know what is being proposed is a whole lot more, but the GNU command line tools that come with msys git are pretty extensive. The example commands from the article are all available with the git distribution: > cp -a > find | xargs | rename > grep | xargs | sed You can do all that - plus ssh (with ssh-agent) from the DOS prompt (you don't need PS, PuTTY or git bash). There's vim too that comes with syntax highlight…

I've been using Git Bash (installed with Mysys Git) as my Windows command line for years now.

It's not perfect, but I much prefer it over cygwin.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#638

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:45 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #450

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same history here. I did actually use Linux for quite a while but ultimately gave up because Linux just isn't good at the one job only an operating system can do, which is to make the hardware available in a reliable and efficient manner. I just got tired of fixing sound issues, trying to make a scanner work or investigating CPU states to fix heat and battery draining issues on yet another laptop. Ultimately, I think…

> Linux just isn't good at the one job only an operating system can do, which is to make the hardware available in a reliable and efficient manner. It's not the best desktop environment out there, but apart from desktop, linux is the most popular system at every step from small embedded systems to the most powerful supercomputers. That wouldn't be the case if it couldn't make hardware available in a reliable and effi…

It's not the most popular system on phones, unless you are using "Linux" in the correct sense to mean the kernel. But I believe GP was using it in the colloquial sense to mean GNU/Linux, since this thread isn't really about the Linux kernel, but the ""Linux"" userland.

Android certainly doesn't have the userland that is typically (incorrectly) called Linux.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#639

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:50 AM UTC

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #405

samstave wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would argue that gnu coreutils is this base. Available on al *Nix OS, including Mac.

OS X definitely doesn't ship with gnu coreutils. Sure, it's possible to install them manually.

Also, why gnu and not bsd? OS X's find, grep, sed, and so on work fine for me and are not gnu.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#640

Post by jdub » Thu, Mar 31, 2016, 5:51 AM UTC

bcantrill wrote: post #228

This is great to see, as it's very similar to the approach that we took with LX-branded zones on SmartOS[1][2]. I commented at some length on the other thread on this on HN[3], but I have a bunch of questions about apps that we know to be thorny: Go, strace, tcpdump, systemd, etc. As we learned, this approach is entirely possible -- but there are many, many details to be nailed before you get to the point that you ca…

I have incredibly strong doubts that this will ever be open sourced, as Microsoft does not want third parties to implement NT subsystems. If the emulation target is itself an abstraction, then maybe. Maaaaaybe. But that delivers pretty much the same result in practice.