Why Microsoft needed to make Windows run Linux software

And how it could leapfrog Apple as the dev platform of choice.

Read the whole story

 

[Alhazred]

neonspark[/url]":56hw2esa]yes, but also, besides web developers which are a minority source of revenue: azure, azure, azure. Making BILLIONS for microsoft linux. Yes kids. MS has monetized linux big time and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

So by making windows more friendly to linux devs, it also introduces them to the MS ecosystem in azure via tools like visual studio, sql server (which is on its way to linux), etc.

So the plan is to assimilate linux (borg pun) into their azure cloud and make linux based enterprises pay for the azure compute time they use, instead of having them pay for windows which was a far less profitable model.

So overall windows is just the gateway drug into azure, and based on the response, the linux crowd is sniffing it hard!

Except of course AWS is eating Azure's lunch and running windows there is just a silly idea that jacks your EC2 costs by 100% for no benefit.

I'd note that in this vein there are a number of things that 'Linuxizing' Win10 might do for you in this environment. It might make windows a LOT more amenable to integration with various tools on AWS, including BeanStalk, Cloudfront, etc, which are all critical to any realistic deployment there. Beyond that things like Chef, Puppet, and Ansible, just to name a few of the big devops tools, will be much happier on such a system (though the registry is always a challenge!).

So, my guess is MS is mostly trying to keep at least a toehold on the premiere cloud platform, one that has already seemingly won the race to establish the defacto operating standard for this phase of the evolution of commodity computing. Porting MS SQL Server seems like it fits that pattern too. You may not want to run it on expensive windows instances, but it is considerably more appealing when packed onto a $0.47/hr m3.medium Linux instance.

 

[gabest11]

This installation of Windows was brought to you by a fine mile long PERL script.

 

[koolraap]

DrPizza[/url]":35lmnt16]

drspock11[/url]":35lmnt16]This is the 2nd ridiculous article I've read that more or less claims Windows has long been a black sheep for developers but maybe this announcement will start to change things. This is totally absurd.

The vast majority of the world's PCs run Windows; the vast majority of PC development takes place on Windows and has for decades. You'd be hard pressed to find a many major corporations outside of Silicon Valley or web startups that doesn't use Windows for the majority of its software (thus requiring Windows for software development).

I fully agree that Microsoft has for the most part always catered well to "traditional Windows developers".

I also continue to believe that it was missing out on a new generation of developers.

Anecdotally, I agree. I have boarder renting a spare room, he's early 20s, and I'm 40 something. We're both developers -- he lives in a world where Windows is irrelevant to the point it may as well not exist (for work).

 

[sty]

vartec[/url]"g4zla10]

zogus[/url]"g4zla10]

vartec[/url]"g4zla10]

zogus[/url]"g4zla10]

Fast forward to February 2016.
[...]
Well, again, I was surprised that the situation is still the same--the cheap Windows laptops are hobbled with huge 15" chassis coupled with crappy displays, and the nice ones with SSDs and retina-grade displays are as expensive as equivalent Macs. At least the trackpads are much better today. My wife takes one last look at Surface Book, shrugs at the sticker price, and says "At this kind of a price, I'd rather get the Mac."

You must be living in some parallel universe. In my universe MBA 13" has crappy 1440x900 screen, while MB 12" is seriously underpowered and costs $1300 + tax for basic version.

Meanwhile you can get ASUS UX305 with Skylake CPU for $700.

Yeah, I think we do live in different universes, because I clearly wrote my wife was benchmarking machines against the MBP, not MBA or 12" MB (which I had left out of the consideration because they're both overdue for renewals) and you blithely ignored that. Also in my parallel universe, the Skylake ASUS costs $1200 where I live (Japan).

So you're saying that how much is quad-core Skylake i7 MBP in Japan?

Just checked. 2197.8USD with tax, without shipping.

This is the cheap, 2.2GHz version without AMD graphics.

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

tipoo[/url]":106p9s2z]

Uxorious[/url]":106p9s2z]First, Apple ported their OS to UNIX and now Microsoft embeds Linux, what's next? Windows on GitHub?

Apple did what now? NeXTSTEP was in the Unix family and thus OSX always was. Anything before was not. There wasn't any porting involved, though they did recently-ish get a POSIX and UNIX 03 *certification* (like Leopard recent iirc, which, holy crap, was 9 years ago), not porting, as it already was UNIX, just with some steps to get in compliance.

A/UX was Apple porting many portions of its "Classic" Mac userland to UNIX. I even ran it on a Quadra 650 at one point many, many years ago to play around with it.

Though... that of course has nothing to do with what either of you are really talking about.

 

[Ian Easson]

Maybe I missed it, but Windows has had a POSIX subsystem for over a decade, that supports all the standard UNIX-like scripts.

Or do I have the details wrong?

(I haven't looked at the POSIX subsystem for a very long time. Maybe it was deprecated?)

 

[HeadlessRoland]

BeowulfSchaeffer[/url]":1hr78wta]"Linux for various reasons still may not be the most comfortable desktop platform..."

I've had both Windows and Linux Mint on my computer for about a year I think. I put Mint on to "try it out" and I like it quite a lot. I rarely go back to windows (7 Pro) and whenever I do, I have to update all of the software and restart the machine, sometimes multiple times. I have to say, Linux just... works.

Not sure why the Downvotes, except that they are totally expected in any Win V. Linux article. I am in the same situation especially since having an 85/15 Linux to Windows workload at the paycheck-house, I try to do likewise at the family-house. So much so, that when I took the work-provided Linux laptop from the SO and replaced with a Windows laptop that I bought, she immediately started complaining that "the other one was just so easy to use, this one just gives me pop-ups and wants to reboot...and it's slow" (last-gen Linux vs. bleeding-edge Win). Linux would be my full-timer if all of the web-video providers other than You-Tube would make make their products accessible. Having to resort to kludge-y and unreliable work-abounds just to get products (Netflix, HBONow, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video) that I have paid for gets tiresome.

 

[aleph_nought]

Bashing around in Windows might be fun but I'll stick with a Linux VM or a real Linux install for web development. Even Powershell feels like a bad copy of a Unix shell, hacking together arcane commands with that awful DOS command prompt.

My portable dev environment of choice is a Macbook with a bunch of Linux VMs - stuff just works, especially the hardware. It's also easier to roll back changes on a VM. I've used Windows laptops and I hated them all, except for the gorgeous ThinkPad X1 that costs even more than a typical Macbook Air.

 

[ctthoqqua]

Since pkgsrc works on Interix (aka Services For Unix) and Cygwin to compile native Posix utilities, I suspect it's only a matter of time before we see other package managers start to proliferate.

 

[CmdrKeene]

BeowulfSchaeffer[/url]":1jk22ex9]"Linux for various reasons still may not be the most comfortable desktop platform..."

I've had both Windows and Linux Mint on my computer for about a year I think. I put Mint on to "try it out" and I like it quite a lot. I rarely go back to windows (7 Pro) and whenever I do, I have to update all of the software and restart the machine, sometimes multiple times. I have to say, Linux just... works.

So getting updates you don't see since you're not using it is a detriment? Wouldn't Linux also have pending updates you'd need to install if your usage pattern was reversed for a while?

 

[JanneM]

CmdrKeene[/url]":1eslvaem]
So getting updates you don't see since you're not using it is a detriment? Wouldn't Linux also have pending updates you'd need to install if your usage pattern was reversed for a while?

They happen in the background, though, take much less time, and you can interrupt at any time. I had a Windows 7 partition that I used once every few months, and I'd always have to wait 30 minutes or more before I was allowed to shut it down and reboot because it was downloading and applying updates.

Made me more resistant to reboot into it, which of course just piled up even more updates...

 

[NinjaNerd56]

Kydaria[/url]":2wpbh4el]

rsfinn[/url]":2wpbh4el]
You do recall that Apple had an OS for their Macs before they acquired Next, right? That was the OS they ported to (run on top of) UNIX. Without this, software vendors like Adobe and Microsoft would have abandoned Apple and the notion of the Mac as the dominant development platform would have been a bizarre fantasy.

No, they did not port Mac OS 9. OS X is derived from NextSTEP, the OS Apple obtained from the acquisition to replace OS 9 entirely. Prior to OS X Apple tried multiple times and failed to create a next generation Mac OS. Mac OS 9 was the last of its kind.

To aid users and developers in transitioning to OS X they provided two things, the Classic Environment and the Carbon API respectively.

Thanks for the clarification, which is precisely correct.

There was an Apple UNIX OS prior to OS/X if you count the Lisa, but that's a little horseshoes and hand grenades to be fair. None of that IP survived that I'm aware of.


NeXT Developer #832

 

[khemnkhaos]

Canonical and Microsoft in sick 69 as DRM Partners.

 

[DrPizza]

Ian Easson[/url]":2ujp38h7]Maybe I missed it, but Windows has had a POSIX subsystem for over a decade, that supports all the standard UNIX-like scripts.

Or do I have the details wrong?

(I haven't looked at the POSIX subsystem for a very long time. Maybe it was deprecated?)

Deprecated in Windows 8, dropped in 8.1, and always awkward since nobody actually targeted it or tested that software built in it. It worked, kinda, but porting apps to it was a pain. I'm sure if Microsoft had made the decision that doing this was important a few years ago then the POSIX subsystem (Interix/SUA/SFU) would have been beefed up somehow, but where things are right now, supporting ELF binaries is probably more useful.

 

[Abhi Beckert]

If I press "Control-A" at a shell prompt, does it move to the start of the line or select all the text ready to copy/paste elsewhere?

It may seem like a small thing, but one of the reasons I dislike doing "real" work on Windows or Linux is all the keyboard shortcut conflicts between the GUI and CLI. None of that exists on OS X – all the GUI shortcuts work in the CLI, and all the CLI shortcuts work in the GUI. I can (and frequently do) type Control-A into this browser window text field and it behaves exactly the same as if I type that shortcut at a bash prompt.

 

[pratnala]

stormcrash[/url]":ke204yj6]

johnny.5[/url]":ke204yj6]

stormcrash[/url]":ke204yj6]I hope they add an X server to WSL. One of the big draws of OSX for me (and the reason I use a mac at work) is the ability to ssh and X forward applications from remote linux systems and work on my normal desktop instead of VNC or NoMachine.

Xming is a windows X server that works exceptionally well with PuTTY. It also supports other X things like xdmcp (which doesn't support encryption, or didn't used too..).

Except I absolutely loathe PuTTY. I've never had a particularly good experience using it.

I use Xming with Git Bash. Also try MTPuTTY

 

[ozmark]

DrPizza[/url]":24zusxfl]

1232[/url]":24zusxfl]

Linux for various reasons still may not be the most comfortable desktop platform (especially for anyone wanting to use it on a brand-new laptop)

Can't write one goddamn article without taking potshots at Linux, Apple or Google, right Peter? By the way, look up the Dell XPS series and other brands like System 76, Sager or zaReason laptops for out of box Linux experience. But hey, don't let facts get in your way of mindless bashing.

The same Dell XPS series that has to ship with a different Wi-Fi card than the Windows version because of driver support?

Yes, please tell me about how Linux is every bit the equal of the Windows experience on brand-new laptops.

I routinely wipe windows laptops - company HP's, and in particular personal Acer's as they offer a windows refund - and EVERYTHING works, no drivers to install. Are you telling me all laptops are good to go with a base windows install and no downloads of driver after driver to get it in ideal shape?

 

[James Markon]

Totally agree with the article. I have asked friends doing security and IT who use Macs: Why a Mac?
Their answer: the terminal.

The only thing I have not seen in the demo is the ability to do "code . " (code dot) and open Visual Studio Code with the current directory you are in.

 

[TheWerewolf]

Whoa..... nelly.

MacBooks became popular developer systems for three reasons - none of which had anything to do with OS X 'getting better'.

1. It's built on BSD Unix - which means if you're a *web* developer (who seem to love living in 1980 when it comes to technology), it's got all the tools you need.

2. iOS took off and became a lucrative industry - and to develop for that - you need a Mac of some kind - there are really no other options.

3. Macs can run Windows because Windows is a retail OS, but Windows boxes can't run MacOS X because Apple DRMs it to their own hardware and doesn't allow it to run on anything else.

Even if you're using Xamarin for iOS in Visual Studio, you still need a Mac somewhere in the network to do the actual compiling and emulation of iOS hardware. So, basically, unless there is literally zero chance you'll ever do Mac/iOS development - you might as well get a MacBook and Bootcamp Windows on it.

 

[dustmagnet]

JanneM[/url]":1a8omziv]

CmdrKeene[/url]":1a8omziv]
So getting updates you don't see since you're not using it is a detriment? Wouldn't Linux also have pending updates you'd need to install if your usage pattern was reversed for a while?

They happen in the background, though, take much less time, and you can interrupt at any time. I had a Windows 7 partition that I used once every few months, and I'd always have to wait 30 minutes or more before I was allowed to shut it down and reboot because it was downloading and applying updates.

Made me more resistant to reboot into it, which of course just piled up even more updates...

Windows 8 and Windows 10 update in the background. Windows 10 allows you to schedule a reboot several days in the future if you set it to notify you when a restart is required (default is to reboot at a time Windows knows you rarely use your PC).

 

[michael of the north]

Are you telling me all laptops are good to go with a base windows install and no downloads of driver after driver to get it in ideal shape?

Of course they are!

(As long as you don't mind running Standard VGA Display driver, and a bunch of mystery devices in Other, and looking for oddball Intel drivers that can't be identified by Hardware ID's, and drivers that only HP provides, but all the links are stale, and did you need that WiFi to work? Chipset Driver? Do I need that?).

 

[aleph_nought]

michael of the north[/url]":1ib0gvd4]

Are you telling me all laptops are good to go with a base windows install and no downloads of driver after driver to get it in ideal shape?

Of course they are!

(As long as you don't mind running Standard VGA Display driver, and a bunch of mystery devices in Other, and looking for oddball Intel drivers that can't be identified by Hardware ID's, and drivers that only HP provides, but all the links are stale, and did you need that WiFi to work? Chipset Driver? Do I need that?).

Here's hoping HP makes a decent Linux version of the Spectre lineup. I'd switch to a Linux thin & light laptop in a heartbeat if it had full manufacturer support. As it is, too many things like WiFi drivers, graphics drivers and sleep support don't work properly on Linux. That's the main reason I've been using Macbooks for the past decade - everything works and it's BSD under the hood, not some nasty VMS port called Windows

 

[jopaki]

rain shadow[/url]":ir9x68ul]If not for SFU and cygwin I think I would not have had a career for the last 15 years.

fo sho

 

[Rosyna]

I think the biggest things for Linux/OS X developers in Windows would be POSIX compliance and an actually good C compiler (as Peter said). Although I guess the latter can be achieved with clang in Visual Studio.

Being certified UNIX, OS X is required to have a certain level of POSIX compliance. Linux is mostly POSIX compliant, except when egos got in the way.

I don't think WLS is going to get close enough to either to make a huge difference, but it will help. WLS is also a very interesting architecture in order to get around the GPLv3 patent clauses. GPLv3 is why OS X still ships with the older bash 3.2.53.

I remember the lack of a good C compiler and POSIX compatibility was what held VLC back on Windows RT (Windows on ARM) devices.

 

[Rosyna]

Many developers are very familiar with the bash shell, with building software using make and gcc, and editing text in vi or emacs.

I am offended by the mention of GCC. It's extremely abusive monopoly has harmed developer tools and IDEs because they are unable to integrate properly as GCC lacks a modular design (intentionally, to actively harm developer tools).

 

[lewax00]

DrPizza[/url]":26hsquge]

1232[/url]":26hsquge]

Linux for various reasons still may not be the most comfortable desktop platform (especially for anyone wanting to use it on a brand-new laptop)

Can't write one goddamn article without taking potshots at Linux, Apple or Google, right Peter? By the way, look up the Dell XPS series and other brands like System 76, Sager or zaReason laptops for out of box Linux experience. But hey, don't let facts get in your way of mindless bashing.

The same Dell XPS series that has to ship with a different Wi-Fi card than the Windows version because of driver support?

Yes, please tell me about how Linux is every bit the equal of the Windows experience on brand-new laptops.

I routinely wipe windows laptops - company HP's, and in particular personal Acer's as they offer a windows refund - and EVERYTHING works, no drivers to install. Are you telling me all laptops are good to go with a base windows install and no downloads of driver after driver to get it in ideal shape?

Windows works better than the experiences I've had with Linux...e.g.:
- Laptop won't shutdown, only reboots unless I hold down the power button (ok, this one finally disappeared a couple months ago)
- Periodic crashes with no apparent cause
- About 25% chance of crash when I plug or unplug a VGA cable
- DP doesn't work at all
- If it stays up for more then a couple days, locking the desktop becomes slower and slower until I'm stuck waiting for it to lock after I've left, done something, and come back to my desk so I can unlock it again, so it needs to be periodically rebooted

And those are just the ones off the top of my head, for one laptop of the multiple I've used Linux on. And unlike Windows, they aren't easily solved by just downloading a driver.

I haven't had any of those issues on a desktop with Linux. Something about laptop hardware just doesn't seem to mesh well with Linux. Hasn't been enough to stop me from using it, and of course, I've just got a few data points of personal experience, but I've never had nearly as many issues with a Windows.

 

[tumblrfan69]

It's awesome to see Ars' own technology editor in this thread trolling

 

[Abhi Beckert]

James Markon[/url]":8b5m7nx0]Totally agree with the article. I have asked friends doing security and IT who use Macs: Why a Mac?
Their answer: the terminal.

It's great to be able to be able to run *nix tools on Windows, but the Window Console GUI still isn't as good as the equivalent GUI on OS X. They only just recently added word wrap for example - it's far from the mature environment Apple has fine tuned since Terminal.app's first public release 26 years ago.

 

[lewax00]

James Markon[/url]":hjy83gb0]Totally agree with the article. I have asked friends doing security and IT who use Macs: Why a Mac?
Their answer: the terminal.

It's great to be able to be able to run *nix tools on Windows, but the Window Console GUI still isn't as good as the equivalent GUI on OS X. They only just recently added word wrap for example - it's far from the mature environment Apple has fine tuned since Terminal.app's first public release 26 years ago.

Sure, but just like Linux (and probably OS X) you can install a third party alternative.

 

[sadsteve]

CmdrKeene[/url]":1povbk8q]

BeowulfSchaeffer[/url]":1povbk8q]"Linux for various reasons still may not be the most comfortable desktop platform..."

I've had both Windows and Linux Mint on my computer for about a year I think. I put Mint on to "try it out" and I like it quite a lot. I rarely go back to windows (7 Pro) and whenever I do, I have to update all of the software and restart the machine, sometimes multiple times. I have to say, Linux just... works.

So getting updates you don't see since you're not using it is a detriment? Wouldn't Linux also have pending updates you'd need to install if your usage pattern was reversed for a while?

At least with Mint Linux I have the option of installing the update or not. Windows 10 pretty much forces them on you.

 

[Danrarbc]

TheWerewolf[/url]":wqhsfx0d]Whoa..... nelly.

MacBooks became popular developer systems for three reasons - none of which had anything to do with OS X 'getting better'.

1. It's built on BSD Unix - which means if you're a *web* developer (who seem to love living in 1980 when it comes to technology), it's got all the tools you need.

2. iOS took off and became a lucrative industry - and to develop for that - you need a Mac of some kind - there are really no other options.

3. Macs can run Windows because Windows is a retail OS, but Windows boxes can't run MacOS X because Apple DRMs it to their own hardware and doesn't allow it to run on anything else.

Even if you're using Xamarin for iOS in Visual Studio, you still need a Mac somewhere in the network to do the actual compiling and emulation of iOS hardware. So, basically, unless there is literally zero chance you'll ever do Mac/iOS development - you might as well get a MacBook and Bootcamp Windows on it.

Number three is particularly interesting, because Hackintoshes can work pretty darn well. I've done it and have really not had many issues at all (honestly at this point I'd actually say I've had more issues in Linux than with Hackintoshes, but that wouldn't be a fair comparison as I've been trying Linux for significantly longer)

 

[Abhi Beckert]

lewax00[/url]":1r9aebaw]

James Markon[/url]":1r9aebaw]Totally agree with the article. I have asked friends doing security and IT who use Macs: Why a Mac?
Their answer: the terminal.

It's great to be able to be able to run *nix tools on Windows, but the Window Console GUI still isn't as good as the equivalent GUI on OS X. They only just recently added word wrap for example - it's far from the mature environment Apple has fine tuned since Terminal.app's first public release 26 years ago.

Sure, but just like Linux (and probably OS X) you can install a third party alternative.

...but none of them are anywhere near as good.

 

[lewax00]

lewax00[/url]":2lgpzqc3]

James Markon[/url]":2lgpzqc3]Totally agree with the article. I have asked friends doing security and IT who use Macs: Why a Mac?
Their answer: the terminal.

It's great to be able to be able to run *nix tools on Windows, but the Window Console GUI still isn't as good as the equivalent GUI on OS X. They only just recently added word wrap for example - it's far from the mature environment Apple has fine tuned since Terminal.app's first public release 26 years ago.

Sure, but just like Linux (and probably OS X) you can install a third party alternative.

...but none of them are anywhere near as good.

In what way? ConEmu has every feature I've ever wanted from a terminal emulator. Haven't run into any feature that, for example, a Linux terminal has that ConEmu doesn't have. Unless the one on OS X can also make me breakfast, I'm not sure how much better it could be.

 

[Balderstrom]

vnicolici[/url]":1e18569j]

Muon[/url]":1e18569j]I wonder if this means Windows 10 is going to be case-sensitive now.

Windows is case preserving already. Unless you really need to have two files with the same name but different capitalization in the same folder, it should work fine as it is.

Windows behavior with file casing and the handful of characters that you can't use in filenames is preferable IMHO. Cripes in Linux, you can name files with escape codes, slashes forward and back. There's no restriction at all. Which is a complete pain in the ass to deal with when you are working in the Linux shell.

Like the headache inducing camelCasing and caseRequirements in javaScript.

 

[Canis Lupus]

Salvatore Sanfilippo, developer of top NoSQL data store redis, has refused to accept patches to make the software run on Windows, not out of any particular hostility towards Microsoft, but because he saw no need for it. He supported the idea of forks of the software that supported Windows, but nothing that would impede development of the core product.

Remember, back in the year of the Linux desktop, when Linux enthusiasts flamed well-known third-party software vendors such as Adobe for not wanting to port their star products to Linux? And almost always countering that with random Linux apps which were supposedly much better in that regard because they worked on Linux, *BSD, Hurd etc?

Well...yeah....

 

[d4Njv]

tjukken[/url]":3k2ibubq]"Indeed, for a number of years, it wasn't a huge exaggeration to say that Apple made the only x86 laptops that were both reasonably affordable and pleasant to use."

THAT really was a huge exaggeration. Windows laptops were no harder to use than Apple's. And they were more affordable, as they didn't command the huge premium Apple took for essentially the same hardware.

How many years did it take for Windows laptops to stop shipping with 1366x768 displays or poor trackpads? The display, trackpad, and keyboard are the parts of a laptop that users interact with the most. When those are neglected, nothing else matters much.