I Am Excited About Ubuntu Coming Atop Windows 10

Now that a few days have passed since it was announced that Microsoft and Canonical had brought the Ubuntu user-space to run on Windows 10 and I've had more time to read about it, I remain excited about being able to run some Ubuntu user-space applications on Windows 10.

...of course, with not regularly running Windows 10, my excitement about it comes down to the prospects of benchmarking! Being able to benchmark the Ubuntu user-space on Windows 10 x64 and compare it to the Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 results on a clean install (currently the Ubuntu Windows packages are based on 14.04 LTS but will be re-based to 16.04 LTS). This should be fun for benchmarking and be interesting to see the difference with the same user-space components but seeing how the native Linux experience compares to Microsoft's Linux subsystem and their kernel.

The Phoronix Test Suite has support for Windows going back years, but it's been limited by the number of test profiles currently ported to Windows (only a few, that I generally do in my limited spare time and mostly just when wanting to run Linux vs. Windows graphics tests). But with this Ubuntu for Windows 10 should be able to run a full arsenal of Linux CLI benchmarks in a fully-automated and reproducible manner in a way that can then be compared to the virgin Ubuntu results on the same systems -- that is, if this Linux subsystem for Windows is as good as Microsoft purports.

So yes, my excitement over Ubuntu for Windows 10 comes down to benchmarking and look forward to starting the benchmarks as soon as getting access to it.

Outside of that, in a Phoronix Twitter poll from a few days ago, 33% were excited about Ubuntu for Windows while 29% wished to "kill it with fire" and an additional 27% were no/neutral over the matter.

Are you excited about @Ubuntu Bash and other user-space utilities for @Microsoft #Windows10? https://t.co/C9vGR7TdMz

— Phoronix (@phoronix) March 31, 2016

Now that you've had a few days to settle down following Microsoft's announcement last week, what are you thinking about their Linux subsystem for Windows? Let us know over in our forums.