Canonical Releases "Ubuntu on Windows Community Preview"

[creoflux]

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

Yes, MinGW has some odd bugs as well.

[edwaleni]

Ah it took 6 posts before the obligatory EEE wolf-crying. Smh, gotta step up your game folks.

That is quicker than it took.....

Sybase
Attachmate

and a few others before they figured what had happened.

[mike456]

Last time I've tried WSL it has no gui but I needed it to edit/run scripts, which completely messed up line endings.-

BTW my app only supports Ubuntu, as I don't have to time to test other distros for the sake of ca. 1-2% users only.

[ColdDistance]

This kind of geek elitist attitude is why Linux proper will never budge above 3-5 global desktop usage and no more than 1% usage on Steam. Who in the bloody fu**ing real world wants to hunt down a godamn app when they have been trained now for over a decade by Apple, Google and Microsoft to simply go to an "App Store"? Who gives a shit about freedom if I can't find the bloody fu**ing app quickly in order to use for my needs. I don't give a shit about your developer "freedom" when you take the freedom of you NOT wasting my time away from me by looking here and far for your crappy Flatpaked app on your obscure personal web site. You know who in Linux Land gives more of a shit for the end user. The one who has the best, most compatible desktop experience and a sane App store on top of the Gnome App store. Canonical with Ubuntu and the properly documented Snap package system and an actual Snap store stocked FULL of Snaps. And yet with all the resources of the combined Red Hat/IBM along with Red Hat being a MAJOR contributor to Gnome and the Flatpak group they STILL can't get their shit straight. SMH at the state of Linux and the wider arrogant Linux geek community.

You don't want a libre operating system, you want free (zero money cost) operating system. Flatpak has proven that Snap is expendable because is as easy to use as Snap, and from my experience, Snap gave me more problems than Flatpak and AppImage. I still remind that System Monitor in Ubuntu 18.04 that worked randomly depending on the installation in the same computer. If the system installation was graceful, System Monitor always worked. If the system installation wasn't graceful, System Monitor never worked. I never found the reason why that happened.

Fedora community has demonstrated that it's possible to provide a fully automated desktop operating system fully built with FLOSS technologies. The only proprietary things available by default are the proprietary firmware and drivers approved for the Linux kernel, and the reason of that is to support much more hardware, but the rest of the system is fully Open Source by default, while Ubuntu is providing a partially proprietary vendor lock called Snap.

I supported Ubuntu for a long time, but since the imposition of Snap I can't support Ubuntu and Canonical anymore (installing and using Flatpak on Ubuntu is much more difficult than any other distro). I supported systemd and Flatpak against many Unix philosophers and I still support them because they are truly libre technologies that contribute to make an operating system as automated as Windows and macOS. Promoting Linux and software libre through the same proprietary ways as Microsoft and Apple makes Linux nonsense as an alternative to proprietary operating systems. To do the same things as Microsoft and Apple we already have Microsoft and Apple.

Canonical is not moving to be a software libre leader, but an Apple wannabe using Linux.

[royce]

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 ??

No, it's just the fact that Ubuntu is the most popular linux distribution on the desktop by far.

[Mez']

You don't want a libre operating system, you want free (zero money cost) operating system. Flatpak has proven that Snap is expendable because is as easy to use as Snap, and from my experience, Snap gave me more problems than Flatpak and AppImage. I still remind that System Monitor in Ubuntu 18.04 that worked randomly depending on the installation in the same computer. If the system installation was graceful, System Monitor always worked. If the system installation wasn't graceful, System Monitor never worked. I never found the reason why that happened.

Fedora community has demonstrated that it's possible to provide a fully automated desktop operating system fully built with FLOSS technologies. The only proprietary things available by default are the proprietary firmware and drivers approved for the Linux kernel, and the reason of that is to support much more hardware, but the rest of the system is fully Open Source by default, while Ubuntu is providing a partially proprietary vendor lock called Snap.

I supported Ubuntu for a long time, but since the imposition of Snap I can't support Ubuntu and Canonical anymore (installing and using Flatpak on Ubuntu is much more difficult than any other distro). I supported systemd and Flatpak against many Unix philosophers and I still support them because they are truly libre technologies that contribute to make an operating system as automated as Windows and macOS. Promoting Linux and software libre through the same proprietary ways as Microsoft and Apple makes Linux nonsense as an alternative to proprietary operating systems. To do the same things as Microsoft and Apple we already have Microsoft and Apple.

Canonical is not moving to be a software libre leader, but an Apple wannabe using Linux.

Or maybe Linux (i.e. each separate Linux distro as an OS) is just better than Windows/MacOS and we use it because of that and independently of the respective costs or FLOSS philosophy.
In that way, pragmatism is welcome. I personally don't care so much if it's free or not. If it is feature equivalent, I will go for the FLOSS solution, but I will not dismiss the wonderful capabilities of Spotify, Steam and the likes on that criteria only.

[ColdDistance]

Or maybe Linux (i.e. each separate Linux distro as an OS) is just better than Windows/MacOS and we use it because of that and independently of the respective costs or FLOSS philosophy.
In that way, pragmatism is welcome. I personally don't care so much if it's free or not. If it is feature equivalent, I will go for the FLOSS solution, but I will not dismiss the wonderful capabilities of Spotify, Steam and the likes on that criteria only.

Avoiding the use of proprietary software is impossible for common uses today. I really like videogames, so I always have Steam installed and I need proprietary codecs to get a full multimedia support. But Chrome, Steam and proprietary codecs are external components you can install if you want, while Snap is a core part of Ubuntu that Canonical forces you to use.

I have been discussing for a long time with Unix philosophers to explain them that a more pragmatic vision of software libre isn't against of GPL license, even the standard GPLv3, but Canonical is not making free software pragmatic, it's making with Ubuntu a macOS-like system. To have a macOS clone I buy a Mac computer and a true macOS system.

[BesiegedAce]

I'll put it this way, do you see Microsoft contributing to Wine?

No because of legal stuff. Hasn't this been discussed before? To my understanding WINE's development is "clean-room reverse engineering", and they have to be careful to not accept potentially proprietary code, since that would open up big legal issues if they were to.

Besides if Microsoft did suddenly turn around and say "hey we're gonna contribute to WINE now" I'm sure people would cry EEE at that too.

[jo-erlend]

[snip]
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 ??

It certainly doesn't hurt. But there's no reason for Flatpak to be in trouble just because Snap is successful. They're not conflicting, so this is not a zero-sum game; when Flatpak makes Linux more popular, it is good for Snap, and when Snap makes Linux more popular, it's good for Flatpak.

One thing to note about Snap is that it has a much larger scope. That means there's a bigger potential for Snap packagers than there is for Flatpak, simply because there's more things to package. You may learn how to Snap some software for Raspberry Pi or some server stuff and then you also know pretty much all you need to know in order to Snap your favorite game or some other desktop thing.

I also really don't think it helps Flatpak that so many of its users are communicating the idea that Snaps and Flatpaks are competing entities and that people should choose sides. Because if I have to use Snaps for my non-desktop stuff and have started packaging it, then if I'm supposed to choose sides, then I already have and it wasn't Flatpak. It doesn't have to be this way, because Flatpak and Snap are both non-conflicting systems, and they can each have pros and cons without interference. On Windows, users aren't trying to convince other users not to use Install Shield packages because they themselves prefer MSI. If we could end this nonsense, it would be good for all of us.

[jo-erlend]

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.

You're free to believe that the situation in Personal Computing has not changed since 2004, but most people will disagree with you and say that actually, Android is a huge presence in Personal Computing.