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Ubuntu on Windows

blog.dustinkirkland.com

821–830 of 933 posts

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#821
post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a key point that is being missed here is most of the people excited about this probably run OSX, not Linux. OSX has long been the "'Linux' for people who don't really want to run Linux" (not really meant as an insult, I'm typing this from OSX right now). Apple is just as proprietary, commercial and anti-competitive as Microsoft here. FWIW, this excites me because it potentially means I can go from two machine…

> Apple is just as proprietary, commercial and anti-competitive as Microsoft here. I respectfully disagree. The OSX kernel XNU is open source, as are a ton of its components. That's huge in a lot of situations. Some things - not a lot, granted, but some, like FreeBSD's C++ stack and compiler - are even upstreamed back to mainstream open source projects by Apple employees.

I agree that Apple is much more pragmatic right now. IMHO Microsoft is looking to emulate Apple in this regard: leverage open source when it makes sense, release code back to open source projects when it makes sense.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#822
post #820

I'm not being deliberately obtuse: I don't really understand how this helps anyone particularly much. (OK, I assume there's a small number of developers who develop, or at least debug, for both systems and prefer windows as a development environment, but I assume that number is small, at least on Microsoft's scale). If you're developing to deploy on Linux but are more of a Windows dev, this helps you, but that doesn'…

Never having to run Cygwin again sounds pretty great to me!

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#823
post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the XPS 15. It is almost identical to a Macbook Pro. Build quality is really awesome. Super super happy with it. The new one with the infinity edge screen is super friggin' sexy, and will absolutely be my next computer. I know a bunch of other devs on the XPS 15 as well, also very happy (we run Ubuntu, but I'm sure it's even better in Windows).

Which one do you have? How is it specs-wise?

I have one that is now 2.5 years old. Specs-wise, it was basically top of the line. Quad Core i7, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, 3200x1800 touchscreen, GeForce 750m GPU (which was one of the best mobile GPUs back then). It has a lot of nice touches that lower end models don't have, like 2 or 3 USB3 ports, with 2 or 3 USB ports that have power even when the laptop is off (super handy for charging a phone on an airplane while your laptop is still in your bag, for example). Wireless N networking, HDMI and MiniDP connections, able to drive two external monitors at once along with the laptop screen (up to 1920x1200 over HDMI and 4k over miniDP). The touchpad is pretty decent. backlit chicklet keyboard with variable brightness. SD card slot, 1/4" headset port... the only thing it's missing is an ethernet port, but that's just because it's too thin for the port. A USB3 gigabit ethernet adapter is cheap and works great.

And it's pretty damn light for a 15" laptop. Easily one-handable (I think it's like 2 pounds IIRC).

And what's great is that you can crack it open and replace stuff - I swapped out the hard drive and replaced a malfunctioning battery myself with just a torx screw driver (super tiny torx, but still, no glue or special tools or anything).

It was pretty expensive - like $1900 IIRC. You're paying for the high res screen, better build quality, and thinness/lightness. But it's still like $500+ less than an equivalent macbook.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#824
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NTFS limit is 32768 wchars, though the standard Win32 API doesn't really expose it very well... fingers crossed they used it!

I'm pretty sure I saw something in one of the articles that mentions they explicitly use the extended \\?\ form of paths, which gets around the 255 character path limit.

Just to verify, watched a video that explicitly said that it does get around the path limit (though if you then go look at those files in explorer, explorer "has problems" whatever that means).... but that's just because explorer still uses the legacy APIs that do have a path limit.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#825
post #820

I'm not being deliberately obtuse: I don't really understand how this helps anyone particularly much. (OK, I assume there's a small number of developers who develop, or at least debug, for both systems and prefer windows as a development environment, but I assume that number is small, at least on Microsoft's scale). If you're developing to deploy on Linux but are more of a Windows dev, this helps you, but that doesn'…

> If you're developing to deploy on Linux but are more of a Windows dev, this helps you, but that doesn't help Microsoft ship more server OS licenses.

Could it be something to do with helping Microsoft sign up more Azure customers using Linux? Windows dev, Linux on Azure deploy, end to end Microsoft.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#826
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…

If any software company would decide to use the same strategy adopted 25 years ago, then all of them would horribly fail. Context is different, mission and vision as well. I honestly dont see how is this similar to any of the examples you mention. This is MS targeting developers like me that decided to buy an MBP over a Windows laptop (In my case: A MBP over an XPS). IF I would have bash, I'd buy XPS.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#827
post #820

I'm not being deliberately obtuse: I don't really understand how this helps anyone particularly much. (OK, I assume there's a small number of developers who develop, or at least debug, for both systems and prefer windows as a development environment, but I assume that number is small, at least on Microsoft's scale). If you're developing to deploy on Linux but are more of a Windows dev, this helps you, but that doesn'…

I work on a platform agnostic python tool. It's just so much easier developing python on a nix system, but I'm restricted to either an old version of enterprise linux or OSX. I love linux, but I don't love having to customize everything to get a workable environment. I tolerate OSX, but if it wasn't nix I would never touch it.

Now Windows has some pretty major issues (utf-8 in CMD is agonizing), but it comes out of the box more usable (to me) than either OSX or the vast majority of linux distros. If I can have my nice window management and also the ubuntu user space, I'll be a very happy camper.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#829
I'm interested in the security implications that this will bring. Extra features bring extra potential attack vectors, and this is one doozy of a feature.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My Lumia 640 has replaceable battery. It might be a windows phone though.

Hah! You're right. Microsoft's own devices actually do all have replaceable batteries, only (most of) the older Nokia-branded Lumias have soldered batteries.
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