Canonical Releases "Ubuntu on Windows Community Preview"

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical Releases "Ubuntu on Windows Community Preview"

Canonical today announced the release of the "Ubuntu on Windows Community Preview" as a specialized build of Ubuntu catering to Microsoft's WSL2...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-on-Windows-Preview

[skeevy420]

Say it with me now: "Ubuntu Linux on Windows for Windows Subsystem for Linux 2"

[lucrus]

Microsoft loves Linux... and Canonical loves Microsoft: that must be true, otherwise I don't understand the point of making a build just for WSL2. TBH, I don't even see the point of using any virtualized Linux on Windows.

[ddriver]

Microsoft loves Linux... and Canonical loves Microsoft: that must be true, otherwise I don't understand the point of making a build just for WSL2. TBH, I don't even see the point of using any virtualized Linux on Windows.

Money!

[siyia]

My reaction : 🤮

[AsciiWolf]

What about official GUI apps support (and integration into Start menu)? Still nothing?

[Jumbotron]

Microsoft loves Linux... and Canonical loves Microsoft: that must be true, otherwise I don't understand the point of making a build just for WSL2. TBH, I don't even see the point of using any virtualized Linux on Windows.

Someone mentioned on an earlier thread that this is probably mainly for Azure devs and those who manage Ubuntu instances on Azure to test things out on their own Windows workstations before deploying.

On a side note though, I was revisiting the state of Flatpaks vs Snaps. I noticed again the old blurbs by Microsoft big wigs touting Snaps as the way to go in packaging and deploying Linux apps. Which struck me odd when I first read that even though Microsoft's embraced of Linux and particularly Ubuntu was already well known. Then I had a look yesterday at Flathub and the Snap Store. HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL JAM !! If the number of Flapaked apps compared to Snapped apps is any indication then Flapak is in DEEP TROUBLE !! It's not even close! There are LITERALLY hundreds more Linux apps that have been Snapped than Flatpaked. Just the number of games alone that have been Snapped vs Flatpaked is an order of magnitude greater at least! I wonder if Microsoft's acceptance and touting Snap has anything to do with this ??

[evasb]

Good to know that Canonical is happily helping MS' EEE strategy.

[M@GOid]

On a side note though, I was revisiting the state of Flatpaks vs Snaps. I noticed again the old blurbs by Microsoft big wigs touting Snaps as the way to go in packaging and deploying Linux apps. Which struck me odd when I first read that even though Microsoft's embraced of Linux and particularly Ubuntu was already well known. Then I had a look yesterday at Flathub and the Snap Store. HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL JAM !! If the number of Flapaked apps compared to Snapped apps is any indication then Flapak is in DEEP TROUBLE !! It's not even close! There are LITERALLY hundreds more Linux apps that have been Snapped than Flatpaked. Just the number of games alone that have been Snapped vs Flatpaked is an order of magnitude greater at least! I wonder if Microsoft's acceptance and touting Snap has anything to do with this ??

This just shows the size o Ubuntu in the market. Contrary to what some linuxers believe, Ubuntu is the de-facto desktop Linux distro. If you look around, a lot of specialized software out there targets Ubuntu first. Even if they have packages for other distros, Ubuntu is listed first. All big companies out there do the same, like Valve and AMD.

On the other hand, some developers refuse to provide Ubuntu/Debian packages out of spite, shooting themselves on the foot because some childish fanboyism.

[torsionbar28]

Good to know that Canonical is happily helping MS' EEE strategy.

Basically, yes.

You don't need to bother with running those pesky Linux OS's on your hardware. Run Microsoft Windows on your hardware. Then, if you want some Linux, you can layer it on top in a neat little package.

The whole WSL thing is clearly a strategy to keep Windows as the primary OS. Literally all of Microsoft's efforts involving FOSS are to maintain their vendor lock, by positioning Windows OS as the primary OS, with Linux as some secondary containerized little thing. In Microsoft's worldview, they want to make Linux into an App that runs on Windows.