Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10

[simonlang]

According to sources at Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, and Microsoft, you'll soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10.

 

This will be more than just running theBash shell on Windows 10. After all, thanks to programs such as Cygwin or MSYS utilities, hardcore Unix users have long been able to run the popular Bash command line interface (CLI) on Windows.

With this new addition, Ubuntu users will be able to run Ubuntu simultaneously with Windows. This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10.

The details won't be revealed until tomorrow's morning keynote speech at Microsoft Build. It is believed that Ubuntu will run on top of Windows 10's recently and quietly introduced Linux subsystems in a new Windows 10 Redstone build.

Microsoft and Canonical will not, however, sources say, be integrating Linux per se into Windows. Instead, Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries. This would indicate that while Microsoft is still hard at work on bringing containers to Windows 10 in project Barcelona, this isn't the path Ubuntu has taken to Windows.

 

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That said, Canonical and Microsoft have been working on bringing containers to Windows since last summer. They've been doing this using LXD. This is an open-source hypervisor designed specifically for use with containers instead of virtual machines (VMs). The fruits of that project are more likely to show up in Azure than Windows 10.

It also seems unlikely that Ubuntu will be bringing its Unity interface with it. Instead the focus will be on Bash and other CLI tools, such as make, gawk and grep.

Could you run a Linux desktop such as Unity, GNOME, or KDE on it? Probably, but that's not the purpose of this partnership.

 

Canonical and Microsoft are doing this because Ubuntu on Windows' target audience is developers, not desktop users. In particular, asMicrosoft and Canonical continue to work more closely together on cloud projects, I expect to find tools that will make it easy for programmers to use Ubuntu to write programs for Ubuntu on the Azure cloud.

So is this MS-Linux? No. Is it a major step forward in the integration of Windows and Linux on the developer desktop? Yes, yes it is.

 

source

Edited March 30, 2016 by Simon Lang 9047

[Circaflex]

not sure where it was copied from but this is super hard to read, hopefully my screenshot can help the mods pass on the info

[simonlang]

copied from zdnet. and yes it looks the same way here too. i have no idea why. 

ah looks like i have to remove the formatation before posting. this seems to be bad implemented

[Noir Angel]

I hope this also applies to Kubuntu, I much prefer KDE to gnome. That said it's nice to see Microsoft working so closely with the FOSS community to integrate their products. I've been critical of a lot of their recent stuff but this particular change in their corporate ethos is a laudable one I think they deserve a lot of credit for.

[Unobscured Vision]

Wow. That's an interesting development.

 

And here I thought the big announcement was going to be almost the reverse -- "Windows as a Service". Pretty much the "we know you folks have WINE; but now we're going to provide the real thing as a System Service".

 

But I'm with Javik on this one. It's a good turnaround for Microsoft compared to five years ago. And I don't mind using the Commandline to start with.

[simplezz]

Well that was unexpected. Perhaps Microsoft has finally embraced Linux and FOSS. Here's hoping so. There's no reason the two can't co-exist and get along. I have to admit, Satya Nadella is a breath of fresh air compared to Ballmer. Whether this is all out of self-interest/-preservation is another question entirely.

[chrisj1968]

On 3/30/2016 at 11:19 PM, Javik said:

I hope this also applies to Kubuntu, I much prefer KDE to gnome. That said it's nice to see Microsoft working so closely with the FOSS community to integrate their products. I've been critical of a lot of their recent stuff but this particular change in their corporate ethos is a laudable one I think they deserve a lot of credit for.

This should also help get around issues with uefi boot systems and do it within windows. I had 14316 installed but, my system doesn't shutdown nor restart. no biggie. 

[Unobscured Vision]

Remember folks, it's not really running GUI applications yet (that requires Xorg). Those will come later, when the Graphics Subsystem has been set up. No Gnome-Shell or KDE yet.

 

(Unless I'm missing something and it's already there ... )

[adrynalyne]

31 minutes ago, chrisj1968 said:

This should also help get around issues with uefi boot systems and do it within windows. I had 14316 installed but, my system doesn't shutdown nor restart. no biggie. 

What issues would those be?

[Circaflex]

33 minutes ago, chrisj1968 said:

This should also help get around issues with uefi boot systems and do it within windows. I had 14316 installed but, my system doesn't shutdown nor restart. no biggie. 

Can you explain what it is you are trying to say? I don't follow.

[PGHammer]

8 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

What issues would those be?

I'd like to know that as well, as I have run different Linux distributions (including Kubuntu, Sabayon, and SteamOS) on UEFI (desktops and notebooks) and in Hyper-V (which is itself UEFI by default).  The only issues I have had with sleep in Windows in general have had to do with sloppy sleep implementations (chipset issues - not BIOS/UEFI issues); and all of those happened with the CSM Intel chipsets (with traditional BIOSes) and with Windows 7 and earlier.  Baby Pavilion (from which I am typing this) has a hybrid (Insyde) BIOS sourced from MSI - and is, in fact, running 14316 sans quibbles.

[Circaflex]

34 minutes ago, PGHammer said:

I'd like to know that as well, as I have run different Linux distributions (including Kubuntu, Sabayon, and SteamOS) on UEFI (desktops and notebooks) and in Hyper-V (which is itself UEFI by default).  The only issues I have had with sleep in Windows in general have had to do with sloppy sleep implementations (chipset issues - not BIOS/UEFI issues); and all of those happened with the CSM Intel chipsets (with traditional BIOSes) and with Windows 7 and earlier.  Baby Pavilion (from which I am typing this) has a hybrid (Insyde) BIOS sourced from MSI - and is, in fact, running 14316 sans quibbles.

The more I think about it, I believe he is referring to a bug where you could not restart the computer, only shut down worked or maybe vice versa, but I thought that was many builds ago. I still don't see what that has to do with the article and Ubuntu, unless he is referring to losing the ability to reboot and select Ubuntu if he was dual booting? I dont know, hopefully @chrisj1968can explain what he meant and not disappear from the thread after making a claim like he did.

[chrisj1968]

4 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

The more I think about it, I believe he is referring to a bug where you could not restart the computer, only shut down worked or maybe vice versa, but I thought that was many builds ago. I still don't see what that has to do with the article and Ubuntu, unless he is referring to losing the ability to reboot and select Ubuntu if he was dual booting? I dont know, hopefully @chrisj1968can explain what he meant and not disappear from the thread after making a claim like he did.

I was referring to clarify that the build gave me no restart nor shutdown. It would just hang with the circling balls. it became a hassle. But I'm not angry, this is a test build. but I heard about a nfs: /scannow

[Circaflex]

2 minutes ago, chrisj1968 said:

I was referring to clarify that the build gave me no restart nor shutdown. It would just hang with the circling balls. it became a hassle. But I'm not angry, this is a test build. but I heard about a nfs: /scannow

Ok, that makes a little more sense but how does this relate to bash within Windows now? Also, it would be sfc /scannow

[Gerowen]

I wonder if we'll see some form of reciprocation.  I know Microsoft charges for Windows, but I'd like to see some kind of "official" Windows compatibility layer for Linux, even if it is restricted to Ubuntu.  Wine is "OK", "sometimes", and that's about as good as you're going to get when you're trying to reverse engineer a proprietary system.  What's weird is that years and years back I played World of Warcraft on Ubuntu with Wine and actually had faster load times and higher framerates than when I ran WoW on the same computer running Windows,   However, it was a constant battle to keep it going.  One day you might install a patch for the game and some particle effect would be bugged, or the launcher UI was all screwy, etc.  The Wine tweaks that make one program run might cause another one to break.  These issues are sort of alleviated by solutions like PlayOnLinux that allow you to containerize multiple Wine installs for running multiple applications that run better with different versions or tweaks, but the end result is the same; if you dislike the Windows operating system but have one or two programs that only run on Windows, you're forced to either dual boot two operating systems just to run those programs, or you can take your chances with an unofficial, 3rd party band-aid that may or not work with the specific software you need to run.

 

Since Microsoft is implementing Linux compatibility in partnership with Canonical, maybe, hopefully, we'll see something in return for Linux users.  Even if it costs money since that's how Microsoft makes money, I'd pay for it (within reason).  I don't run Linux because I'm too cheap to pay for a good product, I just dislike Windows, but there's some things where I need it to run specific pieces of software.  I shouldn't have to boot a VM just to update my GPS, :-(

 

/sigh, anyway, I'm rambling.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Gerowen

[PGHammer]

On 4/7/2016 at 6:28 PM, Gerowen said:

I wonder if we'll see some form of reciprocation.  I know Microsoft charges for Windows, but I'd like to see some kind of "official" Windows compatibility layer for Linux, even if it is restricted to Ubuntu.  Wine is "OK", "sometimes", and that's about as good as you're going to get when you're trying to reverse engineer a proprietary system.  What's weird is that years and years back I played World of Warcraft on Ubuntu with Wine and actually had faster load times and higher framerates than when I ran WoW on the same computer running Windows,   However, it was a constant battle to keep it going.  One day you might install a patch for the game and some particle effect would be bugged, or the launcher UI was all screwy, etc.  The Wine tweaks that make one program run might cause another one to break.  These issues are sort of alleviated by solutions like PlayOnLinux that allow you to containerize multiple Wine installs for running multiple applications that run better with different versions or tweaks, but the end result is the same; if you dislike the Windows operating system but have one or two programs that only run on Windows, you're forced to either dual boot two operating systems just to run those programs, or you can take your chances with an unofficial, 3rd party band-aid that may or not work with the specific software you need to run.

 

Since Microsoft is implementing Linux compatibility in partnership with Canonical, maybe, hopefully, we'll see something in return for Linux users.  Even if it costs money since that's how Microsoft makes money, I'd pay for it (within reason).  I don't run Linux because I'm too cheap to pay for a good product, I just dislike Windows, but there's some things where I need it to run specific pieces of software.  I shouldn't have to boot a VM just to update my GPS, :-(

 

/sigh, anyway, I'm rambling.

That is, in fact, a major driver for virtualization in Linux distributions (vmWare and OVB); the reverse, of course, being equally true with Windows (VirtualPC in Windows 7, and Hyper-V in Windows 8 and later) - desktop virtualization, not server virtualization, such as Xen).