Canonical releases Ubuntu on Windows Preview with early builds, new tools for the brave Canonical has released a Community Preview of Ubuntu on Windows as "a sandbox for experimenting with new features and functionality" on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2. Ubuntu on Windows is normally installed via the Microsoft Store, and only LTS (Long Term Support) releases are available. By contrast, the new preview, …
Who names these things? Hippos aren’t exactly known for having lots of hair. Or for being friendly or cuddly, despite what certain Disney films may imply. More like a tonne and a half of fast-moving, large tusked, death. They’re more dangerous than lions and crocodiles. Combined.
Admittedly there are those who think that lions are cute, and some who will play silly buggers with crocs, but Charlie Darwin usually takes care of them.
No GUI support?
We have had Win32 Xservers since the early 90's.
XVision, VcXsrv, Xwin, Xmin, X-win32
Take your pick.
https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_display_server
Wayland is around 7.1% market share. Somehow I doubt Microsoft is such a fan of Wayland that it refuses to use current X11 technology unlike the rest of the IT community.
Actually Microsoft is planning to support Linux apps with native rendering through Wayland. And since X11 runs over Wayland, so too will all your X11 apps. Not that many apps are bound to X11 these days because if they use QT or GTK these widget libraries will choose a Wayland / X11 backend at runtime.
Link: http://techrights.org/2008/01/30/evangelism-is-war-memo/
# Title Evangelism is War
# Mission Establish Microsoft platforms as de facto standards
# Enemies Other platfom vendors
*
Yup..............nothing has changed......................
After the CentOS debacle, Ubuntu is right there as the next good choice...
...too bad that it is also Microsoft's easiest next move on their FOSS invasion crusade.
Rumors of this acquisition have been floating for years. I would not be surprised.
I mean, Canonical has basically turned its back on the F/OSS community and all the technical talent that help create it; so why not just finish the job and sell out completelty?
Then people can use MS Linux on their MS Windows to push to MS GitHub and update their MS Office 365 before deploying to their MS Azure. No problem with that. No problem at all. Your resources are totall _NOT_ fully under the control of a private corporation with a history of F/OSS abuse, anti-competitive practices and that doens't answer to you (or anyone really).
Oh, wait, no. The other thing. As in, the exact aopposite of that.
Should be making it possible to run WINDOWS APPLICATIONS on a Linux desktop, like Wine, only officially blessed by Micros~1, like the OSX subsystem they did for Windows XP applications a while back...
(both 32-bit and 64-bit seamlessly on 64-bit systems, which last I checked, Wine had trouble doing)
If Micros~1 released it as an add-on product for Linux, and it required me paying for it, I think I'd pay for it.
I'd like to believe that the Linux suport on Windows is practical but I found it was so feature limited that its not worth messing with. I've used Cygwin for years and its proved to be more than adequate (it even knows how to tame the long obsolete Microsoft letter drives). If I have to develop on an actual 'ix' platform I'll do what I've been doing for decades, I'll just use the PC as a command line or X terminal and remotely access the development system.
A lot of Microsoft's code doesn't work very well but you end up having to use their platform because corporate demands it. This has been an increasing source of irritation over the years as the overall knowledge of how development environment works has been lost on a lot of IT staff, especially younger ones. They're so indoctrinated with the Microsoft way of doing things that they will end up doing really weird things like expecting you to use One Drive instead of shared drives. (They tend to be very good at enforcing corporate whims regardless of the consequences but are totally unable to cope with everyday questions like "What's wrong with this damn USB driver (again)?" -- twenty plus years on and Microsoft still haven't figured out how USB works.....)(I'm fortunate that I can just walk away and retire, leave 'em to it and hope they have fun.)
Not at all.... look at my use case......
I do a lot of Python middle-tier services, build Containers for them (which are tested in a Linux container on a Windows box in Docker), then deployed via Concourse into k8s on AWS.
Very few of us at my company have Linux-based machines, but lots of us use WSL as path on that road.
For many of us, WSL is very handy.
" Can anyone help me see the point of runnig Gimp on Linux in WSL on Windows instead of just runnig it on Windows ? I'm expecting something beyond the 'just because we can'."
No point. gedit's pretty close to notepad, gimp is quick and easy to install ("apt-get install gimp") and exercises the X server a little more.
Microsoft really should just support an X server, there's already a couple vendors that make Windows X servers (.. both running a whole X session in a window if you want the full GUI.. and rootless mode, if you want to start GUI apps up and have them integrate into the Windows desktop better.)
Just to quickly describe rootless mode; in normal operation, starting Unity, gnome, kde, xfce, etc. desktop, some particular app takes over as the "window manager", it takes care of keeping different apps in there own windows, the window borders, and so on; the root window (window 0) is the screen background. In rootless mode, you have no root window, and no X-side window manager, the rootless X server passes whatever through to Windows' window manager takes care of the X app's windows. Start up a Linux-side app and it'll show up seamlessly on your WIndows desktop, like they are aiming to do but... well, I don't know why they don't have it going via X already to be honest.
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