Ubuntu's Unity Desktop Can Now Run Natively On Windows

[L_A_G]

I'm personally having a hard time figuring out what's the point in this? In principle it's hardly all that different from running another OS using a VM and the only reason I've ever done that is so that I can run software that isn't available on the host OS (in my case it was a few old games games and Atmel AVR Studio). I could definitely see a point to it if it the OSs were reversed, but most of the software available on Linux, but not on Windows, tends to be some pretty niche stuff.

The way I see it, this is a nice convenience for people who are currently dualbooting to Linux just to run these niche applications, but for people who are completely comfortable on Linux this is pretty much pointless. As for the driver argument, it's not 2005 anymore and if don't want to use closed source source drivers it's not like the Windows drivers for the same hardware are any more open.

[PsynoKhi0]

This is actually really awesome. With this, not only can we take advantage of the full extent of hardware device drivers available for Windows, we can also run a Linux session from within Windows.

Very tempted to move back to Windows 10 pronto. I'm officially sick and tired of having to deal with buggy nouveau drivers on my notebook with an onboard Intel GPU and an Nvidia 940m GPU.

Ouch. Personally I think this is completely upside-down, just like Linux servers on azure. If I were to ever run win10, it'd be *ATOP* a Linux installation, neatly locked down so I keep some kind of visibility before my data gets dumped into the wire.
Also, if nouveau on your 940m is the main reason for you considering the switch, I'd like to know why you simply don't use the proprietary nvidia drivers. Or better yet, eBay your laptop and get another with more FOSS-friendly hardware.

[Luke_Wolf]

You are looking at it from the wrong perspective.

* Microsoft has lost developer mindshare to OS X
* Microsoft want to be "cool and hip" again
* Microsoft now has a compat layer that lets you run your prod software with an "apt-get install" (if it's not in the debian world, it's probably not something a windows user will install)
* Apt is still more complete than any of the OS X repo projects (homebrew etc)
* Canonical want more market share, if the first taste of linux a windows user has in Ubuntu, then they are likely to stick with it (the same reason why students get cheap Apple stuff).

Getting Linux running on Windows is not for Linux users. It's for Windows users, and that my friend is the game that is being played.

Canonical is being rather smart here - why fight for a percentage share of 2% of the desktop market, when you can take the cream off the top of the 90%

Microsoft Has POSIX compat layer -> Microsoft Drops POSIX compat layer -> Microsoft announces Bridges for iOS and Android -> Microsoft scraps the Android Bridge but holds onto the Linux-Compat Layer.

Obviously they're chasing after Apple, it couldn't be that Microsoft had a failed effort to push into mobile that still produced useful software that they're still toying with and testing the limitations of.

I'm personally having a hard time figuring out what's the point in this? In principle it's hardly all that different from running another OS using a VM and the only reason I've ever done that is so that I can run software that isn't available on the host OS (in my case it was a few old games games and Atmel AVR Studio). I could definitely see a point to it if it the OSs were reversed, but most of the software available on Linux, but not on Windows, tends to be some pretty niche stuff.

The way I see it, this is a nice convenience for people who are currently dualbooting to Linux just to run these niche applications, but for people who are completely comfortable on Linux this is pretty much pointless. As for the driver argument, it's not 2005 anymore and if don't want to use closed source source drivers it's not like the Windows drivers for the same hardware are any more open.

The point was to run Android APKs, Microsoft gave up on that because they couldn't do it without massive slowdowns, but since they had already developed a Linux Compatibility layer in order to do that, they decided why not keep it and put it to good use, and so made it so that you could run Ubuntu 14.04 with the Windows Kernel, and then marketed that towards sysadmins. Getting Unity to run is really just tooling around to see what they could do with it.

[starshipeleven]

I'm personally having a hard time figuring out what's the point in this? In principle it's hardly all that different from running another OS using a VM

It's actually the same thing done by Wine, not a VM. Easier integration, less resource wasted.

Anyway, my joke of windows becoming Ubuntu isn't so far fetched.

[Mez']

This is PROOF that Canonical is sockpuppet of MS. Too much coordination in features, too much money sunk in turd project.

I'm eagerly waiting the time MS will "buy" Canonical and adopt Ubuntu as their new Windows.

Canonical IS stupid, as what you said is indeed what they want, but they have chosen the MS Way^TM to do so, which for an opensource project isn't a good choice.

Yawning.

[starshipeleven]

And this my friends is why we can all tell Canonical is screwing us. When MS fanboys and Canonical fanboys are one and the same...........

I KNEW IT!!! I SAID IT SINCE AGES AGO AND NONE LISTENED TO ME!!!! YOU CALLED ME MAD!!!! IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!!! WE HAVE PROOF!!!!

(hehehehehe, still kidding)

[Guest]

This is actually really awesome. With this, not only can we take advantage of the full extent of hardware device drivers available for Windows, we can also run a Linux session from within Windows.

Very tempted to move back to Windows 10 pronto. I'm officially sick and tired of having to deal with buggy nouveau drivers on my notebook with an onboard Intel GPU and an Nvidia 940m GPU.

Maxwell afaik has no reclocking, so even if nouveau manages to work with your GPU, it won't be very performing.

In any case, if you're using Optimus, why are you trying to use the dGPU for anything with nouveau? Perhaps once reclocking arrives for Maxwell, it may be worthwhile to try, but until then, I don't really see how it would be useful. By-default, everything should be rendered on the Intel iGPU, which should work fine aside from high-performance workloads maybe. So basically, as it stands currently, you can chose between a properly power-managed Intel iGPU, or the dGPU stuck in the lowest performance state

If you really want to use your NVIDIA dGPU and have decent performance, you'll need the proprietary driver. If you want it to work without extreme hassle, use Ubuntu, as that is the only distro that seems to have any interest in having multi-GPU machines working for new users. Other distros require a more manual process.

I have a GeForce 945M chip and Optimus with some Intel chip (520?). I've never seen such a horrible driver experience (pertaining to the NVIDIA proprietary driver and not nouveau) on Linux prior to this. Ubuntu handled the set-up without issue though and it's as simple as adding a repo, installing the driver through apt-get, and rebooting (simple enough to be a one-liner command even; same exact process for any NVIDIA GPU set-up, Optimus or not). Ubuntu's GPU Manager takes care of the rest behind-the-scenes by generating a working xorg.conf.

[liam]

A while ago a similar situation happened with web developers and now most of them use linux.

Most web developers use Linux? That is absolutely not my experience.

[starshipeleven]

Most web developers use Linux? That is absolutely not my experience.

Wasn't it OSX? Most of those I know use a MacBook Pro.

[microcode]

Wasn't it OSX? Most of those I know use a MacBook Pro.

Actually, most of them use Windows. In richer economies, however, most use OS X and Linux. I use Linux in my work, but sadly have to spend a considerable time testing for Safari on OS X and iOS; since they require extra hacks. We also do a lot of work with Cordova, so I have to use OS X at least for iOS builds.

Apple is literally satan, and if their users had any compassion for developers, they would boycott.