Ubuntu's User-Space Ported To Run On Windows 10 By Canonical/Microsoft

[liam]

In one of the in between interviews on Channel 9, it was mentioned that this is from the same subsystem. At the time I wrote that, this hadn't been said, but was a well educated guess.

If you are talking about the kernel infrastructure, it was confirmed in that same interview, but was mentioned in the blog post of this story as well. There is also a video on channel 9 that shows it working, and they make it very clear that this is running on the Windows kernel, using what they are calling the Linux Subsystem for Windows.

Yup. It's basically a "module" that lets them expose foreign (although I think they use the term alien) syscalls.
I'd imagine it's somewhat similar to the BSD Linux compatibility layer.

As the article says, this is a really old feature of ntkrnl (back when nt was actually a real live microkernel).

[david_lynch]

The real April fool's joke is all the people on here in tinfoil hats. Steve Ballmer has been gone more than 2 years and Microsoft is a completely different beast now. They are going to continue to integrate themselves into the community so you can continue with this Luddite thing or actually deal with it head on. They are going to integrate the kernel and/or the userspace so they can snuff out the small traction we have gained in the desktop space and muscle into the server space more aggressively. You think it's a coincidence that this coincides with the consolidation Wayland will provide in the next couple years? Think about how much easier that will make it for this to blow past Wine in a year or two? Is this the real reason they made Mir? I'm not sure what to really think, but I know the dismissive tone on here is the wrong answer.

Right, I'll believe microsoft has changed when they stop waging patent war on Linux -

[david_lynch]

Anybody still using Ubuntu should do themselves a favour and install something else. Debian is the closest thing you can get (I guess Mint too...), but Fedora, Arch, etc. etc. are all great options. For your own sake, give them a fair try.

You won't regret leaving them. The last few years have been like watching a train go full-speed against a wall.

Yep, debian is pretty decent, but I am on ubuntu because of the fantastic support for Linux containers. Every other distro is playing catch up because the main lxc/lxd developers are basing their work on ubuntu. Live migration of running lxc containers on ububtu 16.04 is a reality now. How long before that's working in debian?

[mastercoms]

So as I understand this, this is the reverse of WINE, if it were integrated in the kernel? It seems to work in the same way and they were mentioning implementing system calls.

[Xaero_Vincent]

They've been attempts to make a PS for Linux but it's really difficult.
A large part of the problem, aiui, is that Windows provides a robust object oriented (it's based and built upon .NET) and traditional nix shells deal with raw byts streams. This makes all user facing aspects of guis accessible to Power Shell. We could get some of that functionality by deeply integrating dbus (or something similar) into the shell.
Power Shell really is a next gen shell.

PowerShell for Linux has been somewhat revived a couple years ago. GIT activity as little as 2 days ago and I just tested it today. It is missing some stuff but the basic foundation is there and I tried it today in Arch. It's tied with the Mono .NET framework:

http://s22.postimg.org/ixj8ozhzl/LPowershell.png

https://github.com/Pash-Project/Pash

[triangle]

It feels like Windows 10 is chasing me! D:

Ubuntu is sinking to Micro$oft... I must abandon ship!

Making the switch to Arch when I get the time.

[eidolon]

This isn't the convergence I was expecting.

[eydee]

Prepare for benchmarks of windows programs running in wine on windows 10!

[DanLamb]

That's not what this is about. Of course you can run windows programs on windows. This is about Canonical selling out. You can bet every dollar you have that Shuttleworth knows MS intends to kill them.

Microsoft's OS is competing with other OS's, but I don't see how they "intend to kill" Canonical or Linux beyond normal competitive product improvement. Developers want bash, and Microsoft is actually giving them what they want. That is good.

True full Bash makes Windows much more usable to me, I applaud Microsoft for adding it, but I've switched to Mac and see no reason to go back.

[DanLamb]

They've been attempts to make a PS for Linux but it's really difficult.
A large part of the problem, aiui, is that Windows provides a robust object oriented (it's based and built upon .NET) and traditional nix shells deal with raw byts streams. This makes all user facing aspects of guis accessible to Power Shell. We could get some of that functionality by deeply integrating dbus (or something similar) into the shell.
Power Shell really is a next gen shell.

In the software world, great ideas get copied and imitated. PowerShell isn't being copied. Here, Microsoft is responding to developer demand for a high quality typical *nix bash shell in Windows.

No Linux users are demanding a PowerShell type product. You say PowerShell is fully object oriented instead of simple text streams... Outside of the PowerShell fan club, no one seems to want that.