For the last ten years or so, computing has been divided into two camps: Windows, and everything else with a *nix suffix. Want a computing paradigm where everything is a file? That’s Linux. Want easy shell scripting that makes the command line easy? Linux. Want a baroque registry with random percent signs and dollar symbols? That would be Windows. Want to run the most professional productivity apps for design and engineering? Sadly, that’s Windows as well.
*nix runs nearly the entire Internet, the top 500 supercomputers in the world, and is the build environment for every non-Windows developer. Yet Windows is the most popular operating system. The divide between Windows and *nix isn’t so much a rivalry, as much as people who still spell Microsoft with a dollar sign would tell you. It’s just the way personal computing evolved by way of legacy apps and IT directors.
Now, this great divide in the world of computing is slowly closing. At Microsoft’s Build 2016 developer’s conference, Microsoft and Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, announced a partnership that will allow Ubuntu to run using native Windows libraries.
In short, this announcement means bash and the Linux command line is coming to Windows 10. The command line is great, but userland is where it’s at, and here this partnership really shines. Unlike Cygwin, the current way to get *nix stuff running in a Windows environment, Windows’ bash will allow unmodified Linux programs to run unmodified on Windows 10.
It is not an understatement to say this is the most important development in operating systems in the last 10 years. For the last decade, every developer who is not purely a Windows developer has picked up a MacBook for the sole reason of having BSD under the hood. If you’re looking for a reason Apple is popular with devs, it’s *nix under the hood. This announcement changes all of that.
Would be nice to see some efforts in the other way as well. This is not a partnership, but more of a unidirectional contribution.
Microsoft had Xenix in the early eighties, a bit more runnable on lower end computers. You could get it for the Radio Shack 68000-based system, among others.
They partnered with SCO.
I gather later some bits landed back in Unix, from whence it came.
Michael
I believe that was the Model 12.
Are you dismissing the value of having Microsoft developers intimately familiar with the kernel and MS libraries collaborating on the project, or have you seen some indication somewhere that they won’t be?
I am not making any statement. As I read the article, it is made to run Linux applications on Windows and hence for Linux developers who want a compatibility with their libraries in Windows, without having to use Cygwin or different libraries.
Right, because the whole wine, ntfs drivers, samba and several other projects in the last decade obviously don’t count as “effort in the other way”?
Where’s Microsoft’s contribution to that… hmmm??
You mean aside from the entire API?
Yes, exactly. The Linux API is going to be wholly absorbed by windows, but not even a little the other way?
Microsoft ‘designed’ the API, but they didn’t help with any of that.
Where were you in the late 90s and early 2000s? I can’t believe how quickly people forget that Microsoft fought these initiatives tooth and nail, with all the dirty tricks in the book.
Let’s take Samba. It had to be reverse engineered, and Microsoft tried to shut it down many a times. Microsoft is cancer for anything open. Learn about “Embrace, extend, and extinguish”.
@sirmo I don’t think anyone forgets Microsoft from the 90’s, but Microsoft is a completely different company now than it was 20 years ago. A lot can change in 20 years.
Frank, I don’t think MS has got better. Just every other corporation has got worse. So we don’t notice it as much. Our outrage muscles are all worn out, now we’re cynical and don’t expect any better.
in the Linux kernel https://lwn.net/Articles/342470/
That means Linux can run better under the Microsoft Virtual Machine engine. Hardly a stellar contribution.
Linux turns into a common standard that is supported almost everywhere. Developing a linux applications means that you’re also supporting OS X and Windows. Developers may now develop for linux first instead of it being an afterthought.
That’s a good thought. Would be nice if that pans out. O think this really deals with Linux dominating the cloud ecosystem.
Agreed.
The question is why run a secure reliable OS on top of an insecure unreliable one? That’s the bit that doesn’t make sense to me ;^/
Yup, getting Windows programs running on Linux would be the better way round. Wine would benefit from the information MS have. Of course they won’t. This is just a lame attempt to get all the Linux network and scientific stuff, and whatever else, onto Windows as a server. Then MS will add some incompatible “features” to claw it all back again.
I dunno why they don’t just give up. Windows is never going to do what Linux does, and part of the difference is the capitalist / anarchist way they’re produced. The other part of the difference is things like MS famously hiring people straight out of college, then teaching them the Microsoft Way to do things. Microsoft’s culture is wrong, to produce proper, working stuff. They produce consumer-product software, that’s what they are, how they were built, what they wanted to be. It’s not what they’re good at. They’re good at nothing. If they didn’t have their monopoly they wouldn’t exist.
Christ, someone’s in desperate need of a cuddle.
I have a guy for that. I’ll give him a call.
If comments like this don’t already have a name, they sure need one.
+1
> Microsoft’s culture is wrong, to produce proper, working stuff. They produce consumer-product software,
And this is the reason why they’ve become market leader for everything consumer and enterprise? Is that the reason why large global companies opt for having close to 99% of their systems running microsoft software? Because Microsoft has the wrong culture? Because they only produce consumer-product software? Fuck me, you must have met some interesting consumers for them to be running Sharepoint, OneDrive, Exchange and Active Directory in their tiny little home network.
Seriously, if you want to be a hater, at least be a profound one.
Microsoft’s current success is built of the backs of those they’ve embraced, extended, and extinguished.
There’s a reason why 45% of their workforce is in Engineering while Sales and Marketing has close to 49%. It shows where their priorities are.
They get the front end right-ish, they understand user interface, and do it as best they can, which isn’t great. They make stuff people can use, which Linux so far hasn’t, really. There’s also the huge inertial, businesses started using Microsoft, so they continue cos people are trained into it, schools even teach how to use Microsoft stuff.
Their network stuff comes from a history of DOS and Novell. Networks grew step by step, version by version.
But their software is just “good enough”. Their predatory business practices are why they’ve done so well. They’re a business. You don’t do well in business by making the best product, there’s a million examples of that.
+1
“They’re good at nothing. If they didn’t have their monopoly they wouldn’t exist.”
I really think you should have a good long think on those sentences. Here’s a clue, they are contradictions.
“Were it not for their anti-competitive business practices, they would have to face fair competition. The low quality of their products would lead to them going out of business, and other companies providing software for the same job.”
It’s not a contradiction. You don’t get a monopoly by being the best at something. Partly it’s down to the famous IBM / QDOS story. Partly it’s the monopolism thing. Partly it’s Compaq inventing the IBM clone. They started off with an advantage and exploited it. With questionable legality.
Getting a monopoly often leads to terrible products. Who wants Windows 10 to spy on them? But millions of people put up with it anyway. Why would they? Other Windows versions “up”grade themselves to 10, whether you like it or not. Nobody chooses it. That’s not fair competition, is it? Why are Microsoft so widely hated? Is it just sour grapes? Does everyone who complains about them have a failed operating system of their own to blame Microsoft for?
Microsoft has ‘teamed up’ with more companies in the past, only to shutdown those business…
Microsoft has ‘teamed up’ with more companies in the past, only to leave those companies alone…
If you’re going to try to shit-talk someone, don’t try to hide it behind conveniently chosen facts; just do the shit-talking you want to do. Virtually every company has ‘teamed up’ with other companies then absorbed them or otherwise shut down the company or partnership. It’s not special to Microsoft by any means.
No, but the dynamic being discussed currently is special to Microsoft in that it involves Microsoft.
The problem is monopolism, and predatory practices. Y’know, like that court case in the 1990s. This isn’t just some paranoids on the Internet, plenty of people have complained about how they do business. They buy up companies that might otherwise grow to compete with them, for that reason solely. That’s bad for competition, which is bad for consumers.
A day early ?
you are so right :)
let this be a remainder for the next day to not get fooled
Not an April Fools joke:
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/C906
I hope so.
March has 31 days.
I’m sure that in multiple places around the globe it is now the 31st.
Two days early, March has 31 days.
Michael
I’m sure that in multiple places around the globe it is now the 31st. Not everyone lives in the US.
Yes, at the moment in Sydney, Australia it is 8:45am on the 31st March.
Duh
I just switched over to linux, and the “everything is a file” paradigm doesn’t apply to everything.
I’ve got a zillion applications thrown in a heap on the start menu, and I’d *like* to identify them as to type and function. I’ve even got a system that I used to use on Windows that works well with my work flow – a series of directories (that I name) containing links to applications that are appropriate to the directory name.
Doing this on Windows is trivial – it’s just moving files around.
Doing this on Linux is… not so much.
It’s even worse on linux because you have to memorize a codebook to access your applications. What was that program I used to download torrents? What does “Banshee” do again?
(It’s gotten to the point where the programs use the code name and the function in the title. I see “Chromium web browser” and “Gimp image editor” and “GDebi package installer”. But not everything is so informative.)
The menu editor doesn’t work at all – apparently this is a known bug that crops up from time to time. When you install certain things it borks some file and the menu editor can’t deal with it.
The menu system is every bit as labyrinthine and obscure as the Windows registry. It’s a tangled mess of files that #include each other and other directories spread out over the user’s home and system directories, so that it’s nigh impossible to figure out what to edit in order to rearrange the menu manually.
And you can’t just right click->properties either. On Windows you can edit the actual command that way (or copy and make a change). On linux there’s probably an app that lets me edit start menu items, but I have to google that as a question to figure out what the code-name for the app is.
(I’ll wager it’s not something obvious like “shortcut editor” or “menu editor”.)
I’m just about to break open the tangled-spaghetti mess of start menu text-XML files to see if I can edit the start menu, because the jumbled mess I have forces me to type into the “search by name” field every time.
There are definitely things that Windows got right, and there are ways that linux could improve.
Everything you’re describing is a feature or non-feature of your specific window manager, and you didn’t give any information on which one you’re using, nor what version you’re running. Calling it a problem with Linux is tantamount to saying that a or any Ford doesn’t have a backup camera because your specific car doesn’t have one. There are a LOT of different user experiences in Linux whereas Microsoft has control over the only one you’re afforded on Windows.
MIssed the point. I have been a casual user of linux since…. erm… bah, late 90’s. Ubuntu’s great success in a lot of ways is because it is directed by one company, who can prioritize what needs to be done first. Like… Microsoft. Also as a gamer, all my puters have been dual boot since 1998, because I do not have time or energy to be bothered to add this library, do this to wine, buy only these video cards. I got tired of that the first time I went all linux, and have since been a consistent user of windows. People do not want to “give information.” People do not want “tell you the version.” Everyone in the linux community is used to these processes, and I may add, it is not a hard thing to do, but it does take time and effort. Which is where the whole argument breaks down for most people. People want something that works- well if you are a numb nuts, I suggest apple, if you are somewhat clued in I suggest windows, but if you are like me and advanced, I say dual boot, get the best of both worlds and screw apples ivory garden. And yes I know apple has bsd under the hood, I remember the guys in Boulder they bought it from originally. my dual boot was DSL, but when they became inactive I went to Puppy. Small lean and fast, and not a terror to get running like Debian.
And please, this is not a shame thing, its just how different the worlds are, common user compared to linux. I love linux and its communities, but there is a huge difference between the commercial world and the open source, This is exciting news because it will bring even more people into the fold, and yay, i can not dual boot… although I will have puppy dual booted anyways. Or maybe I will drop my windows DAW and go with that studio ubuntu and JACK.
Anyways, my long winded point is you missed his, like most linux users do. He can blame one thing for his problems when it is windows, but unless you are a decently advanced linux user, you dunno whats wrong, you don’t know why all these people are giving you a hard time for not having the proper information, ect. ect. Since I wear both shoes, it would be just great if linux users would stop bitching and start helping. Like I do. Except here. Here I am just being an ass.
That’d be like me bitching that Windows won’t do TCP/IP networking out of the box and doesn’t support filenames longer than 8 characters.
The fact that I might be describing Windows 3.1 may be completely irrelevant.
I personally have found Linux to be much more organised regarding where to find applications than Windows traditionally is. I open my main menu up, and I see submenus like “Development”, “Education”, “Graphics”, “Internet”… I reach over to the Windows laptop here, and I see “7-Zip”, “Accessories”, “ActivePerl 5.8.8 Build 820”, “Administrative Tools”, “BrightCore BACnet Lookout”, “Catalyst Control Center”, “Check Point”, “Cisco”, “Cisco Configuration Agent”…
That hasn’t changed much since I started using Linux back in 1996. Organising things has gotten easier on both platforms, but Windows to me has always been the wild west.
every once in a while (two-three times a year) i try a couple popular and a couple slightly less popular linux distros on my main machine, to see if things have changed since i first tried it back then with redhat 5.something
so far, nothing. Fifteen years of development, fiddling around with the graphics, the animations, the look, but the feel is worse than windows 2k.
the linux community touts variation as freedom of choice for the user
practically though, this brings chaos and confusion
I do like Linux Mint 17.2
People seem to confuse “an alternative to Windows” for “an alternative Windows”. I really dislike KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXDE etc. I consider myself a pretty well read Unix user. I prefer Evilwm, DWM, and a couple of tiling window managers. If you are basing your Unix experience off of clicking around and trying to see how it competes with Windows, you have not even really experience an alternative to Windows. Instead you have sat in front of a desktop environment and tried imagining that it was some how going to be like Windows.
On Windows 7 or older one just right-clicks on the All Programs field in Start Menu and opens it in explorer. Then he can reorganize programs by creating, moving and deleting shortcuts and folder. For newer Windowses(Windowai?) one would need to type in explorer or search field this line: %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\ And this always works…
Thing is, you know what a window manager is, and that there are multiple kinds out there.
I see these sorts of complaints all the time from Windows experts expecting to just load up a Linux distro and hit the ground running. Nope nope nope. What you know about Windows amounts to nothing, and they need to embrace the zen of that nothingness and put forth the effort to read read read read and read some more.
Half of them eventually understand that, while the other half just say Linux sucks instead of learning. Which is a bit better than my experience with 95% of Linux experts bitching and moaning having to do anything on Windows instead of learning.
You are not talking about linux, you are talking about a desktop environment.
We could talk about the object exposed by the kernel that are not files either, but I guess you’ll find another excuse. The kernel is a file on a filesystem, everything in the OS runs through the kernel, so everything is [in that] file. Now Windows on the other hand…
Windows on the other hand, also run over a kernel like any OS. Windows as a monolithic kernel like any *nix system. And in fact for the essential the windows kernel is not very different from any *nix kernel from which Microsoft engigneers got inspired at the beginning. Like *nix system windows kernel is mostly POSIX compliant.
Windows is inspired not by *nix, but by VMS. Cutler thought *nix was a “junk OS designed by a committee of Ph.D.s.”
You couldn’t say something more false if you tried. Windows NT kernel is a microkernel and all windows since win2k has been. The last monolithic kernel was the MS-DOS kernel last used in windows millennium. Windows is not POSIX compliant in any way shape or form, since its not even *nix like.
Windows uses a registry to set its perimeters of the kernel, userland, and rest of the OS (windows), not files that link to other files (*nix like OS).
Then you need to try using a real operating system where everything is a file, and it isn’t a variant of Unix either! http://9front.org/
Dan? The front fell off. Don’t go there. Please.
It is a bit late for that now, they gave me worms.
http://9front.org/img/9kbdfs01.png
Oh gawd. You are making this too weird. Please stop. We are all now un-cum-for-the-bull.
http://9front.org/img/9community01.png
Ah oh I’d better fix that, hang on a moment while I press a few buttons…
http://fqa.9front.org/reactorcat.gif
Seriously, My deepest thanks, my 2400 baud modem jumped to life, started levitating and started to draw in ide cables, it made some sort face like a Tetsuo speaking in some sort of demonic Sumerian language. Keyboard cat played that weirdo off quick. Also No 25,26,27 stopped singing so double epic. Thank you kind sir.
The menu entries of common window managers on Linux are in fact files and contrary to the .lnk files used on Windows they are in a human readable format:
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/
What distro are you using? I am using Linux Mint with Cinnamon and when I click on the big button that’s right where start would be on windows I get a menu with a bunch of categories like “Office”, “Graphics”, etc. Hover over, say, “Graphics” and I am presented with a submenu of programs I can run. What the hell is “GIMP Image Editor”? Well, I can run it and find out, it’s no more obtuse than “Winamp” or “ITunes 8.2”. The things I use often I iconize and put on my task bar, at this point I’m clicking on a little picture and I don’t even care what the name of the program is. Editing the task bar or the “start menu” is as easy as right clicking it and adjusting the properties. When I wanted a better music player I asked google which one was cool, apt-got clementine and now I click the little picture of an orange when I want to jam to tunes.
It’s running great on a pc I assembled myself with parts I haphazardly bought off newegg in 2009.
hehe I like the occasional touch of cynicism/sarcasm.
GIMP image editor, o.k so I googled it and you can get these photos of people in gimp suits that you can edit. I think it is NSFW, hence its better to stick to windows
that is just “unity” getting you down… try gnome classic… I think you might be happier with that…
Gnome sucks. It’s like all the bad decisions that Microsoft made for Windows with none of the good ones. If you want the benefits of Linux but a familiar Windows like UI go for KDE or maybe Trinity if KDE hasn’t gotten their shit together yet since the v4 debacle.
Or MATE, or Cinnamon.
I’m guessing you don’t remember the good old days of DOS, do you?
Why waste the resources to run Windows period…
Because its the largest platform used by home users and professionals alike.
I would switch to a *nix distro for 100% use if they could provide easy, seamless (read:not WINE) integration of Windows applications. I’m talking things like Solidworks or Adobe After Effects which would choke the best consumer VM setup.
I guess that this is more of a user issue than it is the OS. Both have their respective niches, if you will. If *nix is the workshop, then Windows is the living room. I’ll boot into my Arch distro to write disk images, do some simple coding, or configure hardware because its easier there. I’ll boot into Windows to watch Netflix (because it isn’t natively supported…) and play games (Steam is getting better) because its easier to do so there. If I need to work with Unity or any IDE tailored to Windows, I have to boot into Windows. Different tools for different jobs.
I mean, *nix is great for a lot of things. But it is not a plug-and-play, install and forget, OS. Every distro I have installed on every machine (Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, and my most used right now BunsenLabs) has yet to pick up a WiFi chipset without some mucking about in the shell and installing drivers from a disk. The last time I pressed the “Have DIsk” button in Windows was XP. If *nix, and this is where I think Canonical is going with this, wants to grow in market share it needs to be more accessible to the average user. Ubuntu is probably the best distro for that right now. *Nix cannot continue to target academics, IT professionals, hackers, and DIYers if it expects to grow. To do this, it needs to polish away the more harsh elements (lack of 3rd party driver and application support being the PRIME one) but still be true to it’s roots. Is that possible? I don’t know.
Netflix has been supported in Google Chrome on Linux for almost 2 years now.
Also to add, At least for me I’ve managed to live without Windows for ~12 years at my workplace, that said I mostly deal with UNIX and Linux machines… Generally they don’t trust Windows to run critical systems where I work. However I’m a rarity at work, most people use Exceed or VNC to connect to these *NIX machines from their Windows laptops… I find windows absolutely infuriating to work with, but I feel lost without the command prompt. I suppose this is a step in the right direction, but I try not to support Microsoft in any way period.
sadly my work place needs excel with VBA, autocad, inventor, and a host of windows only vendor selection and RFQ generator tools. HVAC OEMs are going to be windows shops for a long time. Even our servers are windows based just because trying to get windows and office volume licenses with anything other than a windows server isn’t much of an option.
There may be reasons to use Windows, but none of them have anything to do with features of the Windows operating system. I can’t think of a good reason to keep running Linux software, but switch the operating system to Windows.
It’s a trap. Embrace and extinguish. M$ will not succeed in this attempt though, because Linux has so many flavors – and so many people that can’t agree on anything :) In this case, that is good – Canonical is only a drop in the bucket.
spyware is inside win10. put linux apps there and guess what happens..
WHY would I ever consider that?
I agree
I gather that the new M$ model for Windows 10 is simple: NSA pays them, and they send all the info they gather from Win users there. It is a good and reliable source of income. The question is: how much spying will the average Joe put up with?
“how much” implies he can stop putting up with it. What else is he gonna do?
Something is funny here.
Windows is an operating system and a desktop environment all in one.
Linux is an operating system, period.
Ununtu is Linux and a bunch of tools, including a desktop (several actually).
Cygwin is a bunch or the *nix command line tools that run on the Windows OS, without the clutter of the desktop.
What is this hybrid Windows Ubuntu thing? It sounds like Cygwin, tools running on the Window operating system.
What advantages is this Windows Ubuntu over Cygwin?
NSA will be able to spy on Linux too :) Easily, that is. So far they had to try a bit.
It sounds like Cygwin with ELF support
No, Linux is a kernel. GNU/Linux is an operating system. Android/Linux is an operating system.
Android still uses the GNU suite though
No it doesn’t they use there own libc (bionic), and there own set of minimal tools. If it still used the gnu userland (or a bsd userland) i would be able to stand using it, and I would have an android phone instead of a flip-phone.
Cygwin is atrocious to work with. I hope this ends up being a much better tool. I haven’t spent much time in Cygwin ( mainly trying to compile stuff ) and it was enough for me to drop Windows as a platform supported by my software. TBH though I prefer using Windows Desktop over just about anything. I keep all my *nixes running on a hyper visor and just connect when I need them. I would assume a tool like this would replace some of the tasks I keep these vms around for.
Far as I can tell, they’re going to integrate all the POSIX functions, and whatever other Linux functions, into Windows. And the ability to load whatever format Linux uses for executables. So no need for Cygwin to catch all the Linux calls and translate them to Windows ones.
For the love of Christ I hope they enforce a .exe style extension for executables. Using the same double-clicking action, for data and programs, is asking for trouble if anything can be executable with no obvious way of knowing.
*nix has the executable bit. There is no reason that any decent file manager wouldn’t read that bit and display executable and non-executable files differently so that it IS obvious. Also.. pretty much every distro I have seen has a .bashrc which has an alias for ls that tells ls to color code directory listings. (among other useful color codings) It is really easy to see then what is an executable file vs a directory vs a data file. For some reason they pretty much all disable this line with a flag you have to switch from no to yes and/or uncomment. There is usually a comment there stating that it is disabled because it might be ‘distracting’.
Really? How much drugs does one have to take before a colored Linux prompt grabs ahold of ones attention so badly that they can no longer work? Talk about tripping!
Anyway.. contrast this to Windows. For years, yes, the .exe (and .com and .bat) extensions did tell you what you need to know. However.. every version since Windows 98 has by default hidden file extensions and every version makes it harder and harder to see such information.
I know, hiding file extensions is why the ridiculous situation of .jpg.exe malware exists. Every file has it’s own colourful icon, programs can choose whatever icon they like, and double-click is used to open data and programs. You already know that, I’m sure, it’s a massive problem.
First thing I do when anyone lets me on their machine is disable extension hiding. I think it was some brainfart to make things more Mac-like, back then.
But for this story, they’re going to let Linux code run in Windows but that doesn’t mean they’re going to use Unix’s file system (which I spent a lot of time programming in college, real Wyse 60 serial terminals, was great!). Executable bits aren’t going to be there. And the “window manager” has no way of warning you what’s a program and what’s not.
Hiding extensions happens because appending metadata with a dot on the end of the filename is an ugly ridiculous hack that MS-DOS inherited as a clone of CP/M. Microsoft now, rightly, feel embarrassed by their stupidity and try to hide it.
People raised on a diet of MS-DOS and Windows think that appending arbitrary fragments of metadata onto the end of a file is a Good Thing(tm) while everyone else thinks it’s idiotic. Random files should not be able to become executable or lose all links to the application that created them just because their name changed.
“For the last decade, every developer who is not purely a Windows developer has picked up a MacBook for the sole reason of having BSD under the hood.”
No.
This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve been in the industry for a while, and I can at least comment on the internet provider front.
Without getting into specifics. I work for a fortune 500 company as a developer of distributed systems, for a large cloud provider. We do zero Windows development. Our swarms of hosts (100k+ servers), run Linux. Of 200 people in my group I’d say about 90% use OS X, 5% is Linux desktop and 5% is Windows.
I don’t know anyone in this field who’s worth their salt who uses Windows.
The only developers I know who use Windows are those who target the Windows platform, which makes sense. But with everything going to the cloud, a lot more software is targeting Linux servers. Even on the client PC is losing marketshare to mobile and even there OS X makes far more sense for Android and iOS dev work.
Windows has its niches in EE and game development, but scientific and internet infrastructure has long been *nix.
So there is a good amount of truth to the original statement you quoted.
I picked up a desktop Mac about a decade ago, and got rid of it shortly thereafter because it was a neverending stream of hassles, only slightly less annoying than trying to use Cygwin on Windows. Maybe that’s just because I was working with a lot of software that had never been run on anything but a Linux box, but I’ve never felt the urge to try a Mac again.
Sounds to me like an excuse to develop just a linux version of apps and pass on the windoze build.
Did nobody else notice that the article talks about COMMANDLINE apps? That’s not exactly where the Windows world money market is today. I’m assuming that if one installs an X-Server too they will get to run gui apps although that is not being clearly stated. I do this to run things from Cygwin now. Still.. do you really see people who develop software for money going that route… Imagine selling something that doesn’t work until the user downloads Xming, installs it and sets it to auto-start. That would be like back in the old days trying to make a living off of interpreted BASIC .bas programs!
Good luck with that!
“For the last decade, every developer who is not purely a Windows developer has picked up a MacBook for the sole reason of having BSD under the hood”
Uh, think again.
True. there are some developers who are just idiots.
I wouldn’t call them idiots, but I’ve personally been very disappointed with the way some of my developer friends handle this conversation. A lot of people have childish reactions to apple, and it’s something I can’t wrap my head around.
Apple provides a clean platform that provides the best workflow experience I have ever had. But… if I’m doing specific work, I boot up a vm running a linux distro. And I don’t even think about playing games on the macbook; that’s what my windows desktop is for.
I’ve totally gotten to a point where I don’t feel comfortable programming on the desktop though – the macbook and osx are just too well designed for my purposes. I see it as idiotic to not recognize it as a viable platform when it offers many advantages over other systems for a lot of people.
You have a point about not recognizing it as a viable platform, but the part I boldfaced is what we all need to remember: Apple/Windows/*nix may be great for your purposes but it’s not necessarily great for someone else’s purposes.
Yep. That BSD heritage means that OSX tends to be more stable and secure than Windows (I know it has its issues, but on balance it’s true). I even run OSX on non-Apple hardware, and it’s still better than Windows would be on the same hardware, day-in and day-out. I use Windows for gaming, but not for my day-to-day usage.
I was surprised to read in your comment that OSX can run on non-Apple hardware…
Do you buy OSX, or is it downloaded from somewhere?
Just check hackintosh.com they have all the info you need
[Citation needed]
Here Here! [Verify source]!!!
Anyone know of a good pseudo Doppler program for Linux that takes 500Hz (or whatever your pseudo spinning your antennas at) and the sound from your receiver into the other channel and spits out a calibrate-able direction to TX?
There is a few I can find for windows, but nothing for Linux beyond rolling my own which is WAY more than I want to get into.
Actually, would HaD please get one of your ham types or the MIT microwave guy to do an in depth article on the subject of pseudo Doppler DF please!?
Just a thought….
Years ago the NCAR Atmospheric Technology Division (now renamed EOL, I think) was developing Linux/Unix programs for their wx radars. So of the programs IIRC were released to the public…
Doesn’t GNU/Radio have a plugin for that?
Could you please give a link to the few program you found? In the limited search I have done after reading your comment the best I have found is a GNU/Radio plugin.
Keep a close eye on this development. Microsoft is already patent trolling Linux developments so this may well be a ploy to try and veto new developments for linux aswell as leach on the open source community. Dubious news this.
Indeed, it is most disturbing
https://youtu.be/liuSbrghzmk
” Microsoft is already patent trolling Linux developments ”
IBM “embraced” Linux in a similar fashion 16 years ago…
They have a clear head start in the Linux patent trolling business…
From there it is lawyer turtles all the way down…
Good point. If Microsoft get to say what will and won’t run on their Linux-support API, then they can splinter code development, and use incompatibility as a tool. Backwards, compatibility, is how come we have PCs and Windows. If future Linux developers have to worry about pleasing Microsoft, they’re fucked.
I wouldn’t touch this with a barge pole, were I a Linux programmer. Cygwin already exists, keep that up. There’s surely not many people really need to run Linux stuff under Windows. Other way round would be a much bigger help.
Is there an official link to this announcement ;-?
Found:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DevelopersCanRunBashShellAndUsermodeUbuntuLinuxBinariesOnWindows10.aspx
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html
This is an interesting project in terms of getting people away from Microsoft, but please don’t disparage Cygwin so glibly. It’s a long-running project that has been open source and supporting a large number of users for over two decades. It’s extensible. This is just a demo, non-deployed and is still closed source. Also, I haven’t seen a performance evaluation. It’s likely native-compiled apps under Cygwin would outperform the Ubuntu userspace on Windows.
There are tons of software which is not available on linux, and really sucks in virtual machine or emulation. And we are talking about real professional software here, not games. (these softwares can be 10k usd per seat per year !)
when i can get a linux that can run 3ds max (not blender) and photoshop (not gimp), then can run any of the games i want play (without wine), then i might be ready to take the full plunge.
Didn’t hear you bitching that Windows 7 didn’t run native OS X .app files or mount .dmg images.
But yes, it’s utterly disgusting, people should be able to take any application written for any system and run it on any other system natively! I don’t care if the iPhone doesn’t have a 8-inch floppy drive, it should still be able to run WordStar from my 70’s era CP/M computer! I should be able to pour diesel into a petrol-driven engine and have it work perfectly damn it!
No, I don’t agree with that. The reason why that stuff doesn’t work natively is because they are different systems, written by different people, with different goals. The inability for Linux to run Photoshop or 3DS Max is not the fault of the Linux kernel, as it never was a goal to run foreign binaries in the first place.
If you want a Free Open Source Software Windows, have a look at ReactOS. Personally, I’m happy to have an OS on my laptop that is so far, incompatible with Windows malware.
React OS is a joke and has been so for ages.
The ReactOS project seemed to just barely stay alive for many years. Every now and then I would get interested, take a look and it would still be way to incomplete to use. A year or so ago though I checked it out and it had really taken off! Don’t get me wrong.. still not ready. But.. progressing much faster. Maybe eventually it will be good enough for real use! Or maybe it will die down again. I don’t know.
I’m sure ReactOS will never be good for running programs that are written to only work within the current, latest version of Windows. That’s too much of a moving target! Still.. a lot of stuff still runs in XP FCOL! I can imagine an open source Windows that runs a good portion of the current Windows software. It’s mostly just gamers and people that need Photoshop that will be unsuported. I think Adobe makes Photoshop not work outside if Windows on purpose, maybe Mickeysoft pays them to do it… Anyway.. those are the same people who claim WINE is so aweful now.. even while it works just fine for some of us who have different use cases.
Last time I tried a linux distro, it was unable to run some of its own applications because of dependencies, environment settings, phase of Moon, dead chicken waved the wrong way, etc. And in some cases some part of system didn’t work at all because my computers were not made for Linux. Paraphrasing Richard Dawkins: Windows, it works, bi***es!
And that’s why developers of professional software for professional users don’t bother with developing on Linux. Their customer support would be flooded with complaints from users that fell victim to some clueless programmer, whose spaghetti code messed up some dependencies. And some other nitwit would call to complain that the user interface is incompatible with his VT100 terminal or teletype…
Windows development is still very popular in China and India. Note, the software industry went the same way as website developers with a degree in cartography. Take up plumbing like anyone else with economic business sense. Somehow cleaning up peoples shit will seem more rewarding than taking it…
I wouldn’t lift a finger to help Microsoft screw another generation of developers. The fact the Windows ecosystem is beginning to starve due to the exodus of coders/customers is not a negative outcome. Recall, Microsoft owns quite a large chunk of Apple, and still funds the 13 year long SCO legal battle over linux even though its lost in court 5 times already.
My software will now include a “Don’t Be A Douchebag” licence that is identical to other licences like LGPL, BSD or Apache. However, it will include 1 additional clause: “Running within Microsoft OS fascist edition is prohibited”.
+1
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/57068156.jpg
yeah…
Combine the user-friendliness of Linux console applications with the openness and stability of Windows? If this is not an April Fool’s joke, then it’s garbage.
“Combine the delicious stickiness of Peanut butter with the tangy sweetness of jam? If this is not an April Fool’s joke, then it’s garbage.”
That’s how I read your post and I don’t understand it. :(
He is being ironic. As in Linux console applications not being very user friendly and Windows not being open and not very stable.
Linux applications are very friendly and predictable, it is just that they have RTFM as a prerequisite and it helps if you have a very good memory too.
Tried vfio gpu passthrough to get my gaming fix within a w10 VM. So I could run everything from just one PC and share the horsepower accordingly. It looks like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37D2bRsthfI ( more info http://vfio.blogspot.com/ http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users ).
It is very unstable! At any moment pray that the next driver update, host update or just ANY update doesn’t wipe the running setup. Had it running in a friends hardware configuration and without benchmarking between native hardware and vm we couldn’t notice any noticeable performance differences. If graphics card vendors would embrace the use of their standard cards in VMs like this, it would be the start of windows power over the desktop!
Right now my desktop runs a linux PC for everything except gaming and a windows pc just for gaming.
Tried vfio gpu passthrough to get my gaming fix within a w10 VM. So I could run everything from just one PC and share the horsepower accordingly. It looks very much like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37D2bRsthfI ( more info http://vfio.blogspot.com/ http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users ).
It is very unstable! At any moment pray that the next driver update, host update or just ANY update doesn’t wipe the running setup. Had it running in a friends hardware configuration and without benchmarking between native hardware and vm we couldn’t notice any noticeable performance differences. If graphics card vendors would embrace the use of their standard cards in VMs like this, it would be the start of the downfall of windows power over the desktop!
Right now my desktop runs a linux PC for everything except gaming and a windows pc just for gaming.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
This will be the death knell to the open-sores cancer known as linux.
This crap should have died decades ago. Its a cancer that infects everything it touches, with it’s piss-poor security, usability, and compatibility. The Microsoft framework will make it less crashy, and the Microsoft GUI will make it usable. For what, who knows? All those poorly documented open-sores applications like GIMP and other porny sounding names that are poor clones of commercial applications.
lololol. Be careful, keep trolling that hard and you’ll pull something!
Whoa, dude, try not to cut yourself on that edge.
For the last twenty years or so, computing has been divided into two camps: Linux and everything else. :)
You mean Linux and cr@p.
No, Windows software that almost always works and Linux software that always almost works.
Well, it has been ~20 years since I last logged into an AS400, but I *still* wish IBM would port it to x86/amd64, even though it wouldn’t be quite as secure or stable. I’ve never met a better multi-user operating system. The granularity of control over user-land processes is incredible. And everything is an object, not a file.
My experience is that GNU/Linux is great as a server OS – it just knuckles down and does the job. As a desktop, not so much, although it’s come a long way. I use a text-mode debian in a VM under Win 7 to create DCPs, and it’s faster than the Windows version (OpenDCP – a great package). As I need to edit and produce videos, there’s *nothing* in linux-land that works nearly as well or seamlessly as the Adobe Suite – not that it doesn’t have its faults, but it’s an amazing suite of software. There is a version for Apple, but the hardware and software restrictions make it more difficult to use, and Adobe just doesn’t need to be made *more* difficult…….
Now, Windows as a server? Slapping a GUI, a few server-side functions and a management console onto Windows 7 DOESN’T make a server. Sure, it’s reasonably robust, but configuring a Windows server via GUI is worse than configuring a GNU/Linux server via command line. Have you seen the Exchange management console? Yuk. I’ve had 2 customers insist on me installing and configuring Windows Small Business Server for *tiny* businesses, I mean, less than 6 employees. Nothing I could do would convince them that a nice GNU/Linux setup would work as well or better, for a lot less money. Well, I made a lot of money from them.
as a windows user i have to say the only thing i like about linux is the compiler. gcc <3. visual studio over complicates things where in linux everything i need sits in a make file. my code is just c and h files. no projects to maintain, and no over complicated configuration menus. just a terminal and a text editor.
You can run Microsoft’s C compiler and Linker (CL.EXE) from make too, if you want. You will of course need to install make first. Sounds like this “Linux apps on Windows” project will make that easier.
Of course, with mingw it’s been possible to use GCC and the rest of the GNU toolchain to compile Windows programs for some time. If you get a copy of GNU make that isn’t linked to Cygwin then it was probably compiled with the mingw GCC.
Wait, so I could go into my local computer store and type in “dd if=/dev/null of=dev/sda” and have fun?
You can do that, I bet you won’t get any bytes out of it though.
/dev/zero might be more interesting however.
Hey! I tried “cat /dev/zero | /dev/full” and the pipe burst! Now my floor is full of tiny zeroes…
Don’t worry you can clean that mess up with some NaN.
This is a great way to clean up all those unwanted files.
ERROR: file not found: dev/sda
Hey, it works if you’re in the / directory.
Don’t forget “general error reading /dev/urandom, abort, retry, fail:”
except you would likely need root permissions on linux
…
ah yes, windows users and their admin account (facepalm)
“CYGWIN CAN SUCK IT”
I’m going to go ahead and duck before the incoming Pulitzer hits me in the head.
Is the project going to be called “WINL” – Windows Is Not Linux? Because it’s not Linux. There is no Linux kernel which is what defines Linux. It’s just a dynamic loader library impedance match to Windows system calls. And very much like Cygwin, a likely incomplete one. There are some things that just don’t map.
It will definitely be incomplete. From the article: “Windows’ bash will allow unmodified Linux programs to run unmodified on Windows 10” My BS detector went nuts on that. It’s not going to happen that way. You’ve got all kinds of toolchains, library dependencies, direct kernel calls, and much more that will prevent you from running linux programs on Windows unmodified. Hell, even with Cygwin, linux GUI programs still require QT, or TCL, or other GUI libraries to be installed in Windows before you have the faintest chance of running a linux program, in addition to needing the X server (which Cygwin does have available). Bash is a shell environment and scripting language; it does not include any GUI capabilities, and you’re only going to be able to run command-line capable programs from within it.
Now, Bash is certainly more powerful than cmd.exe ever dreamed of being, but this isn’t some new paradigm, it’s PowerShell or Cygwin all over again (and I believe that Bash is available under Cygwin, so this isn’t even news).
All of the software, that Microsoft and Canonical wish to run on Windows 10…..will have to be modified and re-compiled (or use a wine-style loader).
And unless they create a loader like wine for windows — the unmodified software has no knowledge about how to run code on windows (that would require using compiler directives and building/cross-compiling for a specific platform) — just as it has been done from the beginning.
So, the whole idea of “Windows’ bash allowing unmodified Linux programs to run unmodified on Windows 10″… is
(just as you have said) pure BS.
They say it is WINE-like (but the other way around — LINE?). I would assume that there is some amount of unimplemented functionality, I would assume anything that tries to talk to a graphics card like X11 or FB won’t work if they’re selling it as “bash”. But they say that it runs unmodified Ubuntu 14.04 binaries, and has apt-get pointing at the ubuntu repositories to install any further dependencies you have.
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html?m=1 explicitly mentions gcc, vim, ssh, imagemagik’s convert, and sysbench as all working unmodified. A screenshot shows libfreetype6 as having been installed. It also says the Linux Test Project’s test suite is almost fully passing.
OTOH, it sounds like the weak point it going to be that cmd.exe is the terminal emulator, which is notoriously incomplete and bad and also very difficult to work around or replace. If it’s using whatever that internal Windows system is called for text-based IO, then it’s basically tied to cmd.exe, no cygwin-like mintty alternatives.
Windows has PowerShell, which is like Linux console, but no one ever uses it, because Windows has GUI that works…
I’m going to build a time machine. Install Xen and go PV_on_HVM just to make sure your birth doesn’t happen. Serious. I’m gonna marry your mom before your are made and make sure I don’t read a essay like above EVER again.
I’m going to build a time machine. Then go back in time to destroy JohnScnow’s time machine the instant it shows up, so we don’t have to read any more of his ridiculous comments.
@Brett – Dude your too late. Your inside the primer I built.
That was a good movie. How long until my ears start to bleed?
Well, we’d have to go back and leave instructions to our parents, then somehow to our grandparents and great-grandparents… Then we kill Hilter and Stalin. Give money to the White Russians, Save Halisi, Kill Khrushchev, Save Kennedy, and Mao. Depose the Queen, Reform the Tort system. Lift Gorbachev Higher. Make Nixon, Carter car sales man. Save Martin Luther King, Prevent Bush Sr. from recruiting Hussien, Osama and Prevent creation of Facebook and Twitter… Brett, we have our work cut out for us…
That’s another element. WINE maps Linux filesystem paths to the paths expected by a Windows application. Cygwin does something similar within Windows, and Bash will have to do the same thing to be compatible, or it must be forked to natively support C:\”this is”\”a stupid”\path\”in Windows.bat”.
No – it is actually an unmodified ubuntu user space running on the NT kernel. They do it by implimenting the Linux system calls in windows. You can use apt to install anything you want. It is command line only at the moment. Watch the video at https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/C906?ocid=relatedsession for the details.
Windows Services for UNIX has been available for 17 years, and by service Microsoft mean like a bull services a cow.
I saw this and walked away from the booth. No freebsd girls. I hear the same thing now? I look around. Still no freebsd girls.
“Software developers on Windows” has been following the same story as “IE6 users on the web” for the last few years.
Ruby on Rails came out over 10 years ago, and had an entire workflow based around a CLI command. It was a total impedance mismatch with the Windows environment, though it could be made to work there with much pain, and yet it grew enormous in spite of Windows. And that same year introduced git, with its friendlier face github in a web browser, but you still needed to be able to run the command locally to use it. Ever since then, *everything* of any impact to the programming world has started outside the Windows world and only been made to work there later with enormous “back-porting” effort.
At first the inevitable “Windows port” was always a planned, and necessary, part of any project. But just like with IE6, the effort to support Windows developers increasingly became an obstruction to progress, slowing down projects and sometimes forcing them to drop features that would be too hard to bring back to win32 land. Just like with IE6, as the marketshare of Windows developers dropped (mainly to OS X and the macbook’s hardware), projects began to choose to press on without concern for Windows support, to implement new features and embrace more developer-friendly UNIX workflows, and either had older, less-featureful “ports” to Windows, or gave up entirely and just pointed Windows developers toward using a VM.
At first Microsoft ignored this trend, they always have an enormous cushion of support to fall back on in the “enterprise” even when the rest of the world leaves them behind (just like with IE6). But eventually they started reacting. First they tried bringing some of the larger projects back to their world, sponsoring Node.js to move to libuv, hiring their own developers to maintain a port of redis, etc. Then they tried filling in the holes in their system with their own “solutions”, doubling down on PowerShell as the one true CLI, announcing a package manager for developers. But a Windows-specific solution no longer holds any importance in the development world, it isn’t enough anymore to provide an alternative for Windows if it will only work on Windows.
And so, just like with Edge, Microsoft has been forced to follow the lead of the rest of the world, and to play catch-up providing actual working support for the “standard” of the programming world. I do look forward to Windows becoming more modern in its abilities for developers, I know I vastly prefer the programming environment outside Windows right now, but having it available inside Windows has me considering moving back. But I worry that this is a bit too late, and that it does nothing to address the new movement toward docker.
http://www.globalnerdy.com/2013/10/19/i-has-the-dumb-or-how-i-embarrassed-myself-in-my-interview-with-google/
Shut up Ruby on Rails Evangelist. Heretic! Apostate! Philistine! Say Ruby once more and we promise to smash your hipster glasses, Chai latte and vegan barrett off your dumb head!
Yep, I remember the early days of msysgit on Windows. Never tried programming in Ruby, but the fact of the matter is that the tide is indeed turning, and I’ve witnessed it first hand.
Been a Linux user for 20 years now, and it has gone from practically unknown, to a part of nearly everyone’s day-to-day life in the form of embedded devices, software-as-a-service offerings, Android, and increasingly, on peoples’ desktops as they get fed up with what Microsoft Windows has become.
People can try and disparage it if they like. Personally I see what Microsoft is doing as a good thing, as there will be use cases where Cygwin isn’t desirable/usable (there’s some software that just doesn’t work there) and where VMs present their own issues. However, I myself am happy where I am.
I made the journey to the Linux land more than a decade ago, and now only return to the Windows land on business trips, with the one exception being the Half-Life installation I have on this laptop, that could be run under WINE if I so desired. The Linux world is home for me now, and I see myself staying there for the foreseeable future.
Cygwin is maintained by Redhat and runs Linux programs unmodified where Windows is able to cope with it. Windows cannot do what Linux can do under the hood e.g. “iftop” is not possible with Windows because Windows subsystems are not as defined and developed as Linux.
Seems Like Microsoft are try to pitch Redhat against Canonical with this offering as well as trying to sucker those not in the know into believing that Windows is a similar platform to Linux.
Third time’s a charm!
Admittedly, the last two had a different audience.
I can’t see anything good about this. To start with Windows 10 is obviously Micro$ofts last stepping stone before they completely switch to a “software as a service” business model. So you pay incrementally for updates and Windows would then have control of what updates are available for the *nix sub system.
As a disclaimer – I have used WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) systems on Windows to develop for *nix web servers. This is not ideal but with the target being a sub system of the *nix platform (PHP) it’s workable.
It would be a different story if I were developing applications for *nix itself. In that case nothing but a duplication of the target system would be suitable for a development environment. For this reason I *don’t* think this will have any effect on *development* at all.
If you are doing anything serious on *nix then it will run dog slow in a Windows emulated environment. So that isn’t really a benefit either – people will still use *nix in these cases.
So who is going to use this anyway. I can’t see a use for it above what is already available,
And yet again the comment section shows the horrendous “better than thou” attitude that is so prevalent among linux people. A truly warm and welcoming community. 20 years later and I still get those wonderful “RTFM” vibes (and I don’t mean the version where F stands for “fantastic”)..
Here’s an idea, how about trying not to be insulting and spewing your unending hatred for Windows (sorry, “windoze”) every chance you get like rabid dogs? Maybe that would encourage more people to give Linux a spin?
It won’t happen, it’s a Linux way. These are sad, lonely people who spent last 10-30 years typing on their teletypes and VT100s, and thus are set in their habits of random rants. We should pity them for they had never experienced the joy of OS that just works out of the box, of stable GUI that is useful and productive, of not having to use console. Let them be. In 50 years when everyone else will be using virtual environments and cyberspace, they still be here, maintaining their terminals and teletypes, showing to new generations, how we used computers in 1970’s…
You two crack me up!
There is a reason almost all web servers use Linux or BSD. It works better than Windows. And it actually comes with almost all the software you can think of, unlike Windows. It looks to me you last used Linux in 1999 or so. Try Mint or Ubuntu and compare it to spyware infested world of Windows today. Linux promotes freedom, and it is just better all around system.
I use Windows at work as a C# developer and at home. I also use Linux. None of my Windows or Linux machines are infested with viruses or spyware, so please, linux users, STFU about fucking spyware already – it’s getting old.
Indeed, we know it’s getting old.
We know a technology is getting old when Microsoft themselves gets in on the act.
The World Wide Web had been around a few years before Microsoft decided to release Internet Explorer with Windows 95. Their vision of the future was set top boxes on television sets.
Debian have had an “app store” concept since the late 90s, but it wasn’t until years after Apple and Google decided to do theirs that Microsoft thought they’d get in on the act too.
And now they’re seeing how much fun the spyware people are having, and decided they’d incorporate it into Windows 10. They’ve been nice enough to let you turn it off, most of it, but not without making you jump through multiple hoops, and they just turn it back on when they feel like it.
At least with earlier releases of Ubuntu, it was one setting to turn off their web search facilities, and it generally stayed off. Ubuntu 16.04 will ship with it turned off.
@Redhatter ZOMFG! UBUNUTU HAS INBUILT SPYWAREZ! I MUST post this information on facebook, twitter and a selfie of my shock response on instagram! I’ll get to that right after i check in my current location of facebook.
I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Knoppix and SuSE in 2010 and 2012. Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) decided that I should be happy to have 640×480 resolution(with 1440×900 monitor), because this is all that console needs to work. Suse decided that my auditory needs can be fulfilled with happy beeps of PC speaker. Knoppix worked but it had no software I’d need…
*nix family is good as server OS, because it was designed that way from the start. But as a day-to-day desktop OS for normal users *nix is as useful and user-friendly as chair with porcupines glued to it. Some distros are better than others, but they all have more issues and problems than Windows ME. And the reason is simple: there are too many *nixes to make them all work properly. If there were 3-4 distributions, one for desktop users, one for servers, one for scientists, and one for something else, the effort of programmers would be more focused on making them better and useful. And with good and stable distributions companies would be more inclined to write their software for them.
Try Linux Mint. For good old style look, I recommend Mint with MATE. That is your choice – at least 20 major window managers, and many good distributions. Now, I often have issues during the install. So I solve it quickly – just install another distro (typically Mint/Debian/Ubuntu/Lubuntu), and more likely than not, it will just work. Since majority of my ***work*** does not need GUIs, and all Linux flavors come with BASH shell, C and Python, I can always get to work quickly, no matter what Linux distro I’m using. And all other programs are just apt-get away. When I get some more time, I plan to expand my horizons even further, by trying BSD again. As technical people, we cannot say: “I don’t know that.” We can only say: “I will investigate it, and get back to you.” Learning is good, and pays too. Sticking to MS ***only*** now is like sticking to Turbo Pascal in 1995. They are sinking fast.
So I’m seeing defensiveness and blatant anger that shouldn’t be reasonable here. The point has been made time and again; Linux, OS X, and Windows are for three separate markets.
OS X is for people willing to forego power, pay a premium, and get what is essentially the walled garden of Apple. The reward for this is that generally nothing hurts Apple products, until they get to their planned obsolescence date and they die spectacularly. While power users may argue that the BSD origins of OS X are favorable, they aren’t exactly a market segment that Apple is courting.
Windows has always been the middle child. They didn’t wall everything up, so their OS runs on pretty much all modern hardware, To the average user (individuals who don’t know BASH from BOINC), the platform generally runs well enough and there are programs to do just about anything. You click on something, and after a brief installer you’re up and running. Heck, Windows is even getting to the point where automatic updates do a decent job installing drivers. The flexibility and ubiquity are paid for with the need for protection, and occasionally requiring some knowledge to get things running. Most of which can either be ignored, or are explained in online tutorials, such that only mild competence is necessary for the new user.
Linux is… I’m going to call it the ugly sibling. Nobody in their right mind argues that it isn’t flexible and powerful. It can function as a better FEA analyzer than some $10k software packages, and it can run on almost any hardware out there (PI anyone). At the same time, it’s not intuitive for the average user. I’m sure there’ll be people citing otherwise, but get someone who has never run Linux to install something as basic as the latest Nvidia drivers. In Windows it’s a three click download, and about 5 clicks before the restart message. Linux requires black listing generic drivers, a bunch of reboots, and the tutorials are generally worded such that a minimum level of knowledge is required.
Running native Linux programs in Windows without having to jump through hoops is an interesting proposition, but why? I can see the benefits from having to code ~50% less when you’ve got cross platform programs. That’s interesting, but pointless when the average user can find programs that do the same things already coded for their systems. It’s great for people wanting to make the leap from Windows to Linux easier, but there’s still a steep enough learning curve to frighten the average user. While power users can argue all day about MS and Linux, the reality is we’re a fractional percent of the population. MS doesn’t care about us, and Linux already has a flavor for whatever bizarre situation you want. Trying to marry the two is interesting in theory, but in practice it doesn’t strike me as something worth gushing about for the vast majority of users. It honestly seems like Bitlocker in Vista. Yeah having an encryption program is great, but nobody I knew trusted the MS offering because Truecrypt already existed.
+1K
I’ve often thought Linux needs some sort of user-experience team. Something Apple put first, last, and inbetween, and Microsoft have somewhere in their gigantic mess.
Having a problem in Linux shouldn’t be such a show stopper. It shouldn’t escalate into dark, baroque knowledge, every time one thing goes wrong, or you need to do something a bit non-standard. It shouldn’t be such a mash of the whims of dozens of programmers, each one of whom did their bit their own way. And the bloody programs shouldn’t have such stupid, terse names!
Everything in Linux is called either ZQX or Submersible Giraffe. These are code names! Not suitable for actual people to have to use.
Linux has a lot of very clever technical people behind it, but that hasn’t been enough for software since the 1970s. They need people to sort out the user experience, and these people need to have some power, some say, in how things get done.
+1
I’d add that average Windows user has no need to use either command prompt, or regedit. Since I last installed Windows 7 and then upgraded to Windows 10 I had to run regedit twice to fix a problem with power management of PICKit 3 programmer’s driver. I used command prompt few more times for system file integration checking and scandisk’ing a hard drive with file system that got corrupted when computer died. And the only .cfg files I edit are sometimes a settings files of games I enjoy…
Installing and configuring *nix on the other hand is completely different experience. Using console and hand-editing configuration files is a bad experience for Windows users, especially if this is the only way to, for example, change screen resolution. And tutorials explaining this might as well be written in style of occult spell book, something like this:
Thou shall invoke in thine holy console sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old command to save a copy of thine xorg.conf file in case thine file becomes corrupted by demonic miasma of misspelled invocation.
If you took a child that had never used a computer before, i would bet money that they would be able to use something like ubuntu (or even better something running the olpc desktop environment [sugar]) than windows. Second if your using a user friendly distro like mint or ubuntu i believe installing nvidia drivers is as simple as menu button->driver manager (or something along those lines)->check for drivers->click install->click reboot, which is 5 clicks for the entire processes, which is lower than the 8 clicks proposed on windows. Now ill grant you that that if your trying to do something more complicated then linux can come off seeming a little harder, but copy and pasting a few commands off google isn’t much more difficult than getting through a windows installer without accidental installing 30 toolbars. There is also the fact that if your windows system breaks or just becomes unusable you usually have to shell out money for an install disk, whereas linux is almost always repairable, and cheaply reinstall-able.
You “forget” to mention that the first three things in need of some massaging that are supposed to require only 5 clicks will indeed get solved that way, but the fourth will absolutely not relent even after 360 click, and will see you digging through forum posts by the hundreds (none of them being quite applicable verbatim to your specific problem) or pulling in dev libs and compiling from source just to get something mundane like Samba share support in a piece of software that had it deactivated in the mainstream build. It only gets worse from there – much worse…
You are spreading FUD and living in the past when you talk about Linux being the ugly sibling. You can make it look and act like any other operating system including OSX and Windows and it really is child friendly (my 8 year old and his 74 year old grand mother will confirm).
Installing nVidia drivers in Ubuntu is MUCH easier than on Windows, you just go to software and updates and then click on additional drivers and select the nVidia driver. It downloads it for you without having to go looking for it and updates it too.
Can you follow this guide or is your minimum level of knowledge below this?:-
http://www.howtogeek.com/213488/how-to-install-hardware-drivers-on-linux/
Please don’t try and infer that Linux requires lots of reboots you are obviously confusing it with Windows. You can even configure Linux so that even the kernel can be updated without rebooting.
Who want’s to run anything on windows 10? It is still garbage for many industrial and engineering applications I use. Many issues, with no sig ificant benifits. Add some of the improvements from windows ten to windows 7, and toss all the other rubish. That would be useful. Maybe windows 11 will be better?
Nail on the head. Who wants his process control machine rebooting at random times after MS update? Ouch.
“*nix runs nearly the entire Internet, the top 500 supercomputers in the world, and is the build environment for every non-Windows developer.”
Depending on how you read the last part of this statement, it could be false. I often program embedded ARM systems in Windows. I wouldn’t call myself a Windows developer because I never develop anything FOR Windows…
WARNING: more click bait below…..
linux vs windows might as well debate/whine/argue which programming language is better. They all have their pros and cons.
stereotype apple is a bit expensive but they cater to the ones who can afford it and don’t want to spend time trying to figure out things with a command line. stereo type Windows is for the cheap folks who want stuff (stuff being basic chat/browsing chores) done and want the flexibility of allowing some folks to do the command line stuff occasionally. stereo type *nix is for the people who have the time /desire/or knack with *nix command lines. And or have the time to spend on the web sites to find the correct way to do something per their distro and their boss hasn’t figured out that they have wasted time on 30 to 100+ sites to find that documentation or their bosses don’t know better, unless their are windows fans then if the linux guy shows he is having trouble he is gone and or possibly so is *nix. I spent some personal time with a couple of different *nix, was using ubuntu server for a home server and that was great till ubuntu decoded to make it cloud only and my processor didn’t work on that distro and I couldn’t get the distro I needed again, and I didn’t feel like spenind the more then the already 2 hours to find it.. And no I didn’t feel like taking the time to try and find the “right” forum to help me get what I wanted done and no I didn’t have a knack for dealing with any of the upteen *nix’s out there. So I don’t bother any more. Sadly windows is going to so close to apple they seem to have forgotten that a lot of factory floors use their stuff on PC’s. Why use a windows PC there, cause it’s way easier to get a nice gui to show the operator what needs to be done even with the .net framework which VB6 did a great job at. For a long time DDE (sure I’ll here whining about that) worked perfectly with VB 3 through 6 to talk to a RS Linx program to communicate and control a PLC. Sure now there’s OPC but why loose DDE? I understand what the direction was for microsoft for awhile and maybe they are still pushing towards their goal of one operating system to rule all processors which is nuts. Like someone isn’t going to find a new set of instructions for the 128/256 bit processors I’m sur are waiting in the industry clean rooms, M$ could have left things the way they were and factory floors would not have a need for any new improved OS or hardware. There’s a lot of different areas for computers to be used and many require specific details.
If I won the lottery I’d still try and buy XP along with the VB6 and the dies to make the last stable set of 32 bit machines for the factory floors. Although maybe in a couple of years the PI will be up to handling XP comfortably and everything old will be new again. I’ve been curious to see if the computer industry will follow the fashion industry and repeat itself every so many years. For fashion it’s roughly 30 years.
“Want to run the most professional productivity apps for design and engineering? Sadly, that’s Windows as well.”
Not entirely true. Almost all IC design software suites run exclusively on Linux only. Linux is the workhorse of IC design industry.
So much better than having an old boring Ubuntu machine to begin with, you know, to run Ubuntu stuff.
…and btw, this is 1993 calling, can I have my NetWare back?
I know right! That shit was mad epic easy to admin. *tears well up* This…This life.*sobs* why outsource! Damn it why. Even the worst Lotus Notes admin was cool. *uncontrolled sobbing* Fuck Info Tech. Fuck this life. Get Lost. Leave me alone you bastards. All you managerial bastards do is watch Tayne all day long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWX4GUYGQXQ
http://celeryman.alexmeub.com/
Yeah Microsoft can say and do whatever it wants. The fact of the matter is that ‘real’ Linux distributions will always be superior to Microsoft Windows any which way you look at it. Using Microsoft Windows is like driving an automatic and using Linux distros is like driving stick. Sure MSWindows will get the job done and there maybe less of a learning curve but it is a much more dumbed down, non-exhilarating technology experience.
And to those few remaining companies that still make MSWindows only dev tools (I’m looking at you Cypress, and National Instruments) shame on you.
In addition to being technically superior, Linux distributions tend to be community driven. Especially ones like Debian & Arch. These distributions are not necessarily designed for purely financial gains and they don’t have backdoors that are intentionally created by the creators like cough cough Microsoft. It seems that most people these days…at least the ones on hackaday don’t give a rats ass about their privacy and about participating in, and help maintain organic communities that contribute to building free & open software tools for all.
BTW I hate apple pie and no I’m not a communist.
Of course it remains to be seen if Windows can shake off its rep for endless updates and bloating over time. And as to design and engineering apps being on Windows, well they’re on Mac and Linux, too, and you’d be hard pressed to see a difference…
And still, the *primary* difference between ‘nix (including Macs) and Windows is the purchase price of expensive software, with endless, forced upgrades, each with a fee. Many equivalents on ‘Nix are still free, and way more stable.
While I have loved Linux for years, discovering PowerShell really changed my perspective of what a CLI could be. 10 years ago I would have laughed out loud if someone told me that Microsoft would produce a shell makes bash look painful and clumsy, but now I can barely give a meh. I’m currently typing this on Mint 17.3 because Win10 bricked during a re-install, but despite the long history of spectacularly crappy desktop experiences I still prefer to code in a Microsoft environment. Visual Studio is the best IDE I’ve seen, TFS is awesome has native GIT support and first class support for agile methodologies. .NET is perhaps the richest and most advanced development framework around. Who doesn’t like C# (any Unity3d devs out there)? Sql Server is top notch. I love IIS and ASP.NET with MVC and Web API (WebForms and WCF not so much). Add in NuGet and R# and AD and ADFS and WPF and Entity Framework on and on…all for the price of a modest Azure subscription. That’s hard to beat and there are plenty of jobs paying great money for these skills. For lower level development, (kernel, compiler, drivers, embedded, networking, security, etc.) Linux is great if you know it well.
It will be interesting to see what happens with .NET Core (cross platform and open source) matures. Wine and to a lesser extent Mono never gained much traction, but I think .NET Core is going to change the landscape. Maybe we’ll even get to see PowerShell with first class support on Linux.
+1
I’m waiting for powershell on top of .net core on top of linux too. It is almost there.
wow such negativity! I must be the only one thinking that getting native linux apps to run in linux in an NT subsystem (like os2 and posix) is a pretty cool technical achievement. The very attitudes being espoused here are the very reasons MS is getting dusted in the market. Adapt or die. Now that they are adapting you still want them to die. Sad.
Some of us are somewhat longer in the business.
And we remember very well what Microsoft has done in the past.
The always have an agenda.
Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
oh look, someone at microsoft reimplemented coLinux 10 years after the fact, NiH at its best.
well they had POSIX subsystem already in windows NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem and later Services for Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX so they always tried in some way
Nice try, Microsoft.
http://techrights.org/2016/03/10/charm-offensives-distract/
Go f*** yourself.
“The command line is great, but userland is where it’s at” You have no idea what you are talking about, lookup what the userland is.
Back when I used OS/2, there was a really nice package called EMX that allowed OS/2 to run *nix apps. It sounds like microsoft is doing something similar here. Only took them about 12 years to get there.
Didn’t Warp also have a Window Add on, where you could run 3.0/3.1 programs also?
Or am I thinking of something else?
No need to get so condescendent towards Cygwin (Disclaimer: It’s a Red Hat product and I work at Red Hat).
Cygwin has helped thousands of developers and users with their tools for a very, very long time. Now when you llok a bit deeper at how this new thing is done, you’ll note that it actually is a shim layer approah that translates Linux syscalls into Windows calls. It is a proprietary piece of code and it is unclear which kernel version (API/ABI) is implemented and how complete that is.
So saying this is somehow Linux on Windows is technically wrong. There is no Linux kernel involved here.
Jan
“Microsoft and Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, announced a partnership…”
This statement concerns me the most. Historically, most of the companies that have “entered into a partnership” with Microsoft, have ended up becoming part of Microsoft.
Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/acquisition-history.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft
What I don’t get is why Microsoft continues to use the NT kernel. Windows just wasn’t designed for today’s networked environment. Microsoft did well by focussing on end-user experience while forgoing the reliability, multitasking and io requirements of what we now call enterprise. Now they want to own the server market. So. they continue to try to beat Windows into something that it is not.
Microsoft has already proven that they can take the Windows API and user interface and transplant them onto a completely foreign kernel. They did this with the move from 9x to NT. Why don’t they just take a page from Apple’s book and switch to a BSD kernel? Their non-techie users won’t mind. It will still look the same and assuming they add a layer for legacy executables all their old software will keep working. But.. they will finally be able to remain stable while doing large amounts of multitasking and IO in a networked environment.
Don’t get me wrong.. Microsoft has come a long on their own but.. why bother?
And no, it’s not like switching kernels will make them suddenly ‘not windows’ and open the flood gates for people to seemlessly switch from BSD-Windows to other BSDs. It’s not like everything would suddenly be X and QT or GTK. Just like OSX is CoCo everything Windows would still be forever locked in, tied to the Windows API.
I stopped using the dollar sign in MS around the time Bill Gate$ sold that large chuck of MS shares :)
All kidding aside, I sometimes used the dollar sign merely to avoid confusion about multiple sclerosis which also is commonly abbreviated as MS, and if it’s not abundantly clear it’s convenient to have that trick available. But at some point people (probably mostly US people) got all hysterical, taking it all so serious and assumed you were super sarcastic about the money and for some reason got really really upset about it, like a bunch of Trumps on steroids, and using M$ was worse than seeming to be talking about multiple sclerosis.