[GTALUG] ​Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10 | ZDNet

[Giles Orr]

On 31 March 2016 at 21:39, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh at mimosa.com> wrote:
> | From: James Knott <james.knott at rogers.com>
>
> | Lessee now...  If I run Windows in a virtual machine, as I do now, then
> | I'd have Linux running on Windows running on Linux.  I guess 2 out of 3
> | ain't bad!  :-)
> |
> | http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-and-canonical-partner-to-bring-ubuntu-to-windows-10/?tag=nl.e539&s_cid=e539&ttag=e539&ftag=TRE17cfd61
>
> A slightly more informative article from the same source:
> <http://www.zdnet.com/article/ubuntu-not-linux-on-windows-how-it-works/>
>
> Interesting.  I don't think that an X application will run.  No Linux
> desktop.  Even programs like screen don't work, but that may be easy
> to fix.
>
> It isn't clear how useful this can be.
>
> If you really want linux on Windows, I would guess virtualbox or the
> like would do a better job.
>
> If you want command-line tools to muck within the Windows environment,
> cygwin probably does the job as well.  Both would have a translation
> layer, at least for pathnames.  And PowerShell ought to be a better
> choice.  It won't have an impedance mismatch with Windows.  The design
> of PowerShell (Monad) looked good to me when it came out (but I have
> never tried it).

Here's the logic as it seems to me.

At work, we use mostly Macs because it's easier to deal with our
mostly Linux-based servers - Mac supports almost all the same command
line utilities, and most people (read "most people not on this list")
sadly prefer Macs to Linux.  Some offices use Linux to deal with their
remote servers.  Most people try to avoid Windows because of, as you
put it, an "impedance mismatch."  So - if this Ubuntu-on-Windows is as
transparent as the puff pieces we've seen so far suggest, you can now
use Linux utilities on Windows - you can bundle your gems, you can
lint your Javascript, you can do a lot more server-side stuff locally.
More easily (although it sounds like some path translation will still
be necessary).  So corporate IT departments get more of what they want
(a Windows monoculture), and Microsoft brings some of the Apple and
Linux faithful back into the fold because it's "good enough."  And
then, because you're already running your dev environment on Windows
with the Linux tools you love, some people think "hey, wouldn't it be
great if we had exactly the same environment in the server room?"

Or, as a friend of mine put it, 'the concept of "embrace, extend,
extinguish" hasn't been lost.'

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com