I am a little scared from the distinction we are start to make between "computers" and "developers' computers"<p>In most computer nowadays you cannot code (tables and smartphones), are computers doomed to be an expensive tool for few "nerd" ? What will be the impact on computer literacy ?
As I understand it, Microsoft has copied the Linux kernel system call interfaces and provided their own underlying implementation.<p>Given that Microsoft supported Oracle's view that the structure, sequence, and organization of the Java programming interfaces were covered by copyright law, then surely they would also agree that the same holds true for the Linux kernel system call interfaces.<p>I don't like the APIs-are-copyrightable decision, but given that's the current state, why aren't we talking about how this is a violation of the Linux kernel copyright license -- the GPL?
I have to say after the initial excitement, I'm a bit disappointed about how this is implemented. Apparently, there is no or little interaction between the Linux world and the Windows world in this system. I don't see the benefits over running a classical Linux-as-a-process like coLinux, or something like Cygwin or MinGW.<p>The option to run unmodified executables is nice if you have closed-source linux binaries, but they are rare, and this is directed towards developers and not deployment anyway (where this might be a useful feature).<p>When I heard "Linux subsystem", I was hoping for a fuller integration. Mapping Linux users to Windows users, Linux processes to Windows processes etc.. I want to do "top" in a cmd.exe window and see windows and linux processes. Or for a more useful example, I want to use bash scripts to automate windows tools, e.g. hairy VC++ builds. And I thought it would be possible to throw a dlopen in a Linux program and load Windows DLLs. Since I don't need to run unmodified Linux binaries, I don't see what this brings to me over cygwin.<p>I am hoping though that this might be a bit more stable (due to ubuntu packages) and faster than Cygwin, and that it might push improvements of the native Windows "console" window.
I wonder who came up with the "Bash on Windows" tagline. That was a really smart idea. I think most of us would have run with "Emulated Linux syscall layer from user mode processes on Windows". Promoting bash specifically seems to me like engineering marketing genius -- less technically knowledgeable people are more likely to be familiar with bash, while the more knowledgeable are going to think "wait...what? how do they do that? that would mean...", which works better than simply saying what they have done.
Smart move by Windows. I guess that developer usage of an OS ultimately results in developer developments <i>for</i> the OS, though I don't have any number for this. It seems to me that a lot of developers, especially at startups, have switched to OS X with its shiny GUI and UNIX compatibility. I'd hazard the guess that this will ultimately result in OS X becoming more of a developer target over time. Initially for developer-related stuff (see Dash as an example that is only available for OS X (and Zeal for Linux)), but later probably for other stuff as well.<p>What's illustrative for the dominance of *NIXes in development are the number of projects on Github that contain only +NIX installation instructions and no Windows instructions (again, anecdata).<p>So if Windows wants to remain competitive, they need to retain developers. And as the +nix way of developing seems to be dominant now in quite a number of fields, Microsoft needs to adapt.<p>Why, you're asking, do I think that the +NIX way of development is dominant today? In a nutshell, Web -> Unix Servers -> POSIX shells -> Languages that work best with POSIX -> OSs that are POSIX-compliant.<p>Edit: Asterisks don't work as expected here. At least not in a Markdown-compatible way.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Windows, is in fact, GNU/Windows, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Windows.
I'll be interested in hearing from anyone who uses this and finds it offers them more than they are currently getting from cygwin or VMware+Linux VM. I realize it's a very different beast from cygwin - an entire User Mode Linux environment, as opposed to being able to download windows versions of the Linux Environment, but, on a day to day basis, It will be interesting to see what people do differently, and why they would use WSL as opposed to just running a Linux VM on their workstation if cygwin isn't sufficient.
Can anyone comment to how nice or awful running some sort of Linux VM (maybe under Hyper-V) and using Putty to SSH to it for development on Windows would be? This work is promising, but doesn't appear "quite there", yet. I run OSX now, but don't really ever develop directly on the machine and am mostly SSH'ed to Linux hosts for development.
What a time to be alive! I'm holding out on upgrading to Win10 until I buy a new PC since my 7 -> 10 upgrade ties to hardware, but I hope to have that done by the end of next month. I can't wait to try this out.<p>edit: Specifically, I want to understand to what extent - if any - will it allow some of the horror problems you have working with certain Python libraries (compiling Numpy on Windows is like pulling teeth) to be a thing of the past. I'd be more than happy to work in WinBash for Python if it means having the easy Linux install processes available for some of the more scientific packages.
Maybe it's because I haven't been following this very closely but I'm confused. Does this mean I can do things like compile Haskell or OCaml from terminal as easily as I do on my Linux install? Can I use apt-get?
Man i do think this is a big step for windows , it's 2016 and still complex to pull a du -sh or df on windows.
Things we take for granted on *nixes.
Much love.
I honestly don't really see the point in this.<p>If you like Ubuntu/Linux more, then just install Ubuntu/Linux on the computer without Windows. Why go through the additional layer of Windows?<p>Perhaps the use case is limited to people who need to run Windows/Mac-only software like AutoCAD or some Adobe software.
Does anybody know if this interface is Linux kernel functions + whatever POSIX is required to run Ubuntu stuff? I haven't seen that addressed, which strikes me as strange because it could have some pretty serious implications. Am I worrying over nothing, or could this make POSIX irrelevant pretty quickly as the new portability standard becomes the Linux ABI. I've cheered on Microsoft's recent moves in open source, but if they wanted to deal a serious blow - rendering POSIX irrelevant would be pretty devastating.
Which bash version is it? Is MSFT actually shipping GPLv3 without killing their entire company? Could it be that GPLv3 isn't a death blow to business? Whatever happened to cancer?
What about character sets? Do I still need to 'chcp 65001' from the DOS prompt to type/cat utf-8 encoded text files before running bash?
Why is it promoted with Ubuntu since it's basically - as put here <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446420" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446420</a> - the implementation of the `Linux kernel system call interfaces' ?
This is awesome! Can't wait to get my hands on it. If this works well, it is like a dream come true. I never wanted to abandon Windows because of a lot of music software that I am using. Now I will have the best of both worlds. Neat.
Just switched the the 'fast' ring and have installed all updates, but can't see the new 'Windows Services for Linux' item in 'Features'. Anyone know how to fix it?
I've been using Docker for my dev environment (Python, Django, Postgres, etc). I expose a folder with my code to the Docker container so I can keep editing the code on Windows using Sublime. One thing that has been annoying me is the fact that I can't get Python code completion on sublime because Python and the packages are in the container.
Does anyone know if it's possible to point Sublime to the Linux subsystem and get code completion? Also, has anyone tried installing Tensorflow yet?
They sure seem to deliver. Unfortunately I am not a windows insider. I will probably wait until the anniversary update.<p>I guess this bash on ubuntu on windows won't be available for Windows 7?
I put this on my machine last night, and quite enjoyed playing around with it. apt-get, python and everything I tried worked. Even vim works great, as long as you don't mind 16 colors. The one thing I could not figure out was getting 256 colors out of Command Prompt.<p>Has anyone come up with a solution for that yet? I wonder if you can install something like xterm, and get that running outside of Command Prompt...
I am still on Windows 8.1, so if anyone that tries it can confirm if this works well with ConEmu and if Vim works well? Also, what the performance is like compared to running stuff on full stack linux. Also, does one have access to full hardware, like GPUs? That would be a good start. On Windows, my tool of choice was/is Babun... but damn 32-bit cygwin and it tends to get real slow (git especially so).
Sorry for off-topic, but have a legal question regarding Windows Insider. Is it legal to install Insider build without activation and keep it running if it stay in fast updates ring?<p>Currently updates postpone temporary license expiration, but I can't find an answer how licensing work actually. I only run Windows in VM and I don't want to mess my 8.1 system with genuine license.
Unfortunately it seems that it won't install if you are running as a domain user: <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfZhLruXEAEp56x.jpg:large" rel="nofollow">https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfZhLruXEAEp56x.jpg:large</a><p>It works if I try as a local user on the same machine. Also Windows Store otherwise works fine for that domain user.
I have it installed, and I don't know how you are supposed to set up bash profiles with this folder structure, or for instance if I need to move something to my /bin/ folder to set up commands. I'm sure there is a way, but it's not quite like base Ubuntu since it's using the Windows folder structure and permissions.
Sad that the VM (1) are no update to the #14316 version.<p>(1) <a href="https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/mac/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...</a>
There's a lot of comments related to the legality of this and whether or not it violates either the GPL or at least the Linux trademark. Even if it wasn't technically legal, I don't think the right parties have anything to gain by suing.
Can anyone who's tried this out comment on the terminal?<p>Does it have all the same issues as gitbash/cygwin/mingw/winpty (garbling, bad resizing, etc) or is there finally a decent local terminal on Windows?
Will this be enabled by default ?<p>The ability to do 'curl some-site.com | bash' or ssh <hostname> 'curl some-site.com | bash' without having to worry about platform compatibility would be amazing.
Can I run chron and schedule jobs?<p>I have Win 7, so I was thinking of running a VM with Win 10 to try it out (once it is officially released).<p>It sounds like it runs X/Windows which is fantastic!
Sometimes I feel like Microsoft is spying on me. I've used Windows since I've used computers, a few months ago I 'upgraded' to 10. Sure it was slower and unstable but I figured I'd give Microsoft some time to fix it and struggled on. Then one day I come home and my lock screen is a ad. Right then I downloaded Debian, made a usb drive and said goodbye to Microsoft on my personal machines forever. I'll never look back. A week or two later they announce this. Sorry Microsoft, after you get a taste of the power, customization and flexibility of Linux you never go back.
Why is it called Bash on Ubuntu on Windows ? What benefits does this bring in comparison with running a Ubuntu VM for example ? Sounds interesting although.
And windows now more vulnerable. #bashViruses.<p>From: Alien<p>To: SomeWindowsBashUser<p>Attachment: naked.jpg<p>naked.jpg<p>------------------------<p>#!/bin/bash<p>rm -rf /<p>------------------------