Canonical Releases "Ubuntu on Windows Community Preview"

[oleid]

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.

Hm, but what if Linux works better on my hardware? Oo

[evasb]

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.

They let this pretty clear with that patch that piped DirectX to WSL2 without porting DirectX to Linux. Now will be possible to do apps on Linux that will work only on WS2.

I was an Ubuntu supporter in the past, but I'm asking myself if they are an MS shell company at this point.

[ssokolow]

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.

It also doesn't help that the docs for people wanting to build Flatpak packages are poorly written. (I say this both from personal experience, and from observing people like the KeePassXC developers, who have plans to switch from Snap to Flatpak as the one they provide official support for, but who just haven't had time to get sufficiently familiar with Flatpak's build process yet.)

That said, I've seen anecdotes that Flatpak delivers on its "just works" promises more reliability, with people who've used both saying Snap had more trouble with things like not honouring the host desktop's dark mode setting and forcing them to give up when trying to do stuff like sandboxing network access while both were a breeze with Flatpak.

...plus this blog post from 2018.

[Jumbotron]

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.

Agreed with this addendum. Windows as we have known it for the past 30 years is actually in long term maintenance. Microsoft is already quite busy in transitioning WindowOS to a ChromeOS copy where you have a lightweight modular OS with things running in containers. Think of it as Azure Lite for the Local Desktop. Then there is "Enterprise Azure" or what we know as Azure today. But the monolithic standalone Windows OS install is probably going away by end of decade. ChromeOS has shown the way for Microsoft as ChromeOS has leapfrogged MacOS as the #2 most used OS in the world. Add Android to that mix and Google runs the world. Microsoft does NOT like this.

[Nocifer]

They let this pretty clear with that patch that piped DirectX to WSL2 without porting DirectX to Linux. Now will be possible to do apps on Linux that will work only on WS2.

I was an Ubuntu supporter in the past, but I'm asking myself if they are an MS shell company at this point.

This has already been almost a fact ever since Shuttleworth decided out of the blue to close Ubuntu's bug #1 "Microsoft has a majority market share" as FIXED. And oh what a surprise, this was just after Canonical's Mir had proven to be a flop. And then within a few years Microsoft went on to announce WSL, just as Canonical had announced their Ubuntu Phone project (kind of their last hope) as also dead. And guess who was in dire need of money, because even after 12 years of attempts at manhandling Linux as a project and as a community into its own image, was still in the red profit-wise? Also, guess which distro was the first ever first-class citizen in this new WSL thingy? And which distro is still trying to claim Linux as its own turf (queue the proprietary Snaps that only run via Canonical's servers)? And finally, which distro is still operating as merrily as ever, even though it technically should be dead due to running a constant deficit year after year? Yup, Ubuntu. This must surely be a coincidence.

TL;DR Canonical has probably been a willing shill for Microsoft ever since Microsoft discovered it "loves" Linux (...as long as it runs under its thumb). Now shoo people, call me a conspiracy theorist and go host your projects over at Microsoft's Github. Just don't come crying wolf when this whole "Microsoft loves Linux" thing blows up.

[waxhead]

I always disliked Ubuntu and this is just another reason to stay away from that crap. .... Cuddle, crappify and crucify.... If. Microsoft gave us the E's then Canonical have given us the C's for sure....

[TumultuousUnicorn]

TBH, I don't even see the point of using any virtualized Linux on Windows.

When your company forces you to use Windows to manage Linux servers, it may help.

[lyamc]

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

That's WIP by the Microsoft WSL2 team

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-in-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-september-2020/#gui-apps

[szymon_g]

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.

sounds good for me. saves me money for a vm, and finally my battery will last longer than 1 hr of usage

[sn99]

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.

Considering that all linux distros are more or less community "maintained", I will say that callling them childish just because they do not like how Ubuntu is working and ubuntu not listening is bad for ubuntu in long term. Think about it, whenever a new user wants to install a new OS most of the suggestions slowly but surely have been changing from ubuntu to likes of Mint (although ubuntu based but then ubuntu is debian based and they all are kinda different), manjaro, etc. In long term it will harm them more than they think.