Support NeoGAF

[Godslay]

And encrypted with GPG

In the middle of trimming his toenails with his mouth, in public of course.

 

[GravityMan]

This is great news. *claps*

 

[Khaz]

It's a Microsoft / Ubuntu partnership then? I don't see what Ubuntu is gaining from that. Microsoft is obviously trying to keep their (tech) userbase from fleeing to a different OS, and Ubuntu is... is what? I feel there will only be one winner in the long term.

 

[mclem]

Well, if nothing else, it's a 50:50 chance whether I'll type 'dir' or 'ls' in an arbitrary command prompt, so shifting me one way or the other will save time half the time.

 

[SigSig]

Ohhhh! This is really neat, even if only for running *nix cli stuff. Windows builds are so awkward without good packetmanagers, often depend on shit that just straight out doesn't work on windows etc.
While Powershell is a great shell to script for, it's strengths are kinda useless most of the time, since the applications themselves just don't work as well as they do on *nix.
If this will be as good as it sounds, i'll get rid of a lot of headaches soon.
Finally a system with a sane cli and Adobe CC which doesn't require a Macbook.

 

[TheSeks]

Ahhh, okay. So it's more of a development environment thing? That makes sense. Should be good stuff. I guess it isn't super relevant to my workflow on an all windows network, since I spend a lot of my time remoted into a windows server, working in AD and in powershell. But this makes sense that it'd be a huge get to be able to work with git without installing anything else.

In theory (and what I'm hoping for) you'll be able to use Bash to command-line things similar to *NIX/BSD, and OS X in regards to management and development. Instead of windows-only/command prompt commands you'll be able to learn one "shell"/command-line interface and use it across three OS's with no issues.

That is if MS allows you to use the bash shell to create directories outside the Linux "sandbox" (that isn't a sandbox) since they're allowing you to see C:/ and other letter drives in the Bash shell.

 

[Fragamemnon]

That is if MS allows you to use the bash shell to create directories outside the Linux "sandbox" (that isn't a sandbox) since they're allowing you to see C:/ and other letter drives in the Bash shell.

/mnt/c is read-write, have fun.

 

[captive]

Doubt it'll run much Linux software all that smoothly but it would be awesome to have curl and ls work

(I use GitHub Shell for that currently)

In general: good on MS for chipping away at the walled garden.

can elaborate on this walled garden?

In theory (and what I'm hoping for) you'll be able to use Bash to command-line things similar to *NIX/BSD, and OS X in regards to management and development. Instead of windows-only/command prompt commands you'll be able to learn one "shell"/command-line interface and use it across three OS's with no issues.

That is if MS allows you to use the bash shell to create directories outside the Linux "sandbox" (that isn't a sandbox) since they're allowing you to see C:/ and other letter drives in the Bash shell.

you can do all that with powershell.

 

[captive]

just saw on twitter "third, note that BASH and Linux Tools cannot interact with Windows applications and tools, and vice versa. So you won't be able to run Notepad from BASH, or run Ruby in BASH from PowerShell."

@rlinev

 

[UnemployedVillain]

Well, if nothing else, it's a 50:50 chance whether I'll type 'dir' or 'ls' in an arbitrary command prompt, so shifting me one way or the other will save time half the time.

Every fucking time I type "ls" without thinking before seeing it doesn't work

 

[MartyStu]

you can do all that with powershell.

Not really.

Powershell may be a significant improvement, but it pales in comparison to bash.

 

[Lonely1]

I didn't like Cygwin much anyway.

I believe Codeacious is wrong; this blog post is from an MS employee showing it off:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Devel...ndUsermodeUbuntuLinuxBinariesOnWindows10.aspx



It's Ubuntu on Windows.

This looks great!

 

[coughlanio]

As a software engineer who jumps between Windows, OSX and Linux on a daily basis, this is incredible news. Bash (or other flavors such as Fish or ZSH) are what always bring me back to Linux and OSX.

Apparently it will have apt-get support too, for installing native Ubuntu CLI packages.

 

[Palculator]

Good article on how the regular Windows command line is rubbish and why an improvement over it is necessary.

 

[riotous]

Good article on how the regular Windows command line is rubbish and why an improvement over it is necessary.

Well if it's true that you can't so much as launch notepad from Windows Bash; it's not really a command line / power shell alternative.

It's Ubuntu Bash running on Windows; without the ability to call any windows binaries.

 

[ersocaster]

Amazing news. I enjoy using Linux, but the UX and gaming keep me tied to Windows. And Visual Studio I guess. This is awesome.

 

[NumberThree]

Well if it's true that you can't so much as launch notepad from Windows Bash; it's not really a command line / power shell alternative.

It's Ubuntu Bash running on Windows; without the ability to call any windows binaries.

Yeah it's not a full replacement, especially if you're a Windows system administrator and need actual system access from the command line. For a lot of developers, including myself, I'd assume it's as good as a full replacement.

So is it GNU/Windows now?

GNU\Windows

 

[riotous]

Yeah it's not a full replacement, especially if you're a Windows system administrator and need actual system access from the command line. For a lot of developers, including myself, I'd assume it's as good as a full replacement.

Yeah of course; the article linked is talking about batch processes via the windows command prompt; which is really not a development tool or really related to this announcement.

Just thougth it was a strange thing to link to (and a strange article in general) and some of the conversations here in general seem a little off base considering it's not anything a windows system admin could really get much use out of.

 

[Monochromaticx]

This is great!

 

[Scalemail Ted]

This is great news. I might give windows 10 a whirl.

 

[NumberThree]

Yeah of course; the article linked is talking about batch processes via the windows command prompt; which is really not a development tool or really related to this announcement.

Just thougth it was a strange thing to link to (and a strange article in general) and some of the conversations here in general seem a little off base considering it's not anything a windows system admin could really get much use out of.

Yeah, these are probably the best writeups about this right now:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Devel...ndUsermodeUbuntuLinuxBinariesOnWindows10.aspx
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html

Definitely seems to be aimed at developers more than anything.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Yeah it's not a full replacement, especially if you're a Windows system administrator and need actual system access from the command line. For a lot of developers, including myself, I'd assume it's as good as a full replacement.

GNU\Windows

Ehh... Idk, if all you can do is run gnu command line utilities, it certainly becomes much less useful. If anywhere in yoru script chain needs to shell out to, like, your compiler, the whole thing is shot. Literally all you can use it for is like grep, sed, awk, rsync, curl, wget, etc.

 

[Blizzard]

This strikes me as like, WINE but the other way around. Such an unexpected piece of news.

 

[Pokemaniac]

This strikes me as like, WINE but the other way around. Such an unexpected piece of news.

It's significantly better than Wine, since Windows' subsystem thing lets them implement things more or less natively.

 

[MartyStu]

Ehh... Idk, if all you can do is run gnu command line utilities, it certainly becomes much less useful. If anywhere in yoru script chain needs to shell out to, like, your compiler, the whole thing is shot. Literally all you can use it for is like grep, sed, awk, rsync, curl, wget, etc.

They demoed actually compiling a simple c program.

Not that I completely disagree with you.

 

[FyreWulff]

This strikes me as like, WINE but the other way around. Such an unexpected piece of news.

That's pretty much what it is, which is pretty cool.

 

[soco]

Now if only they could solve the python headaches with this, but that'd probably require some new devtools.

 

[NumberThree]

Ehh... Idk, if all you can do is run gnu command line utilities, it certainly becomes much less useful. If anywhere in yoru script chain needs to shell out to, like, your compiler, the whole thing is shot. Literally all you can use it for is like grep, sed, awk, rsync, curl, wget, etc.

That's why I didn't say all developers. There's a lot of development that can be done without ever touching a Windows binary. And if you're using an IDE then you don't need to build on the command line and the two never need to interact.

Of course being able to interact with Windows would be awesome, I suspect it'll take a bit more time to reach that point..

They demoed actually compiling a simple c program.

Not that I completely disagree with you.

But that compiled as a Linux binary inside the Linux subsystem. Won't work if you want to compile something for Windows.

 

[Hylian7]

Unexpected, but definitely bring it on. Goodbye Cygwin (soon).

 

[le-seb]

But that compiled as a Linux binary inside the Linux subsystem. Won't work if you want to compile something for Windows.

Just run Wine from your Linux shell! (beware: universe may collapse)

 

[Elaugaufein]

We may actually get Wine on Windows now (Wine on Linux on Windows). Not needing to boot a VM / Dual boot to run Win16 games will be nice.

Be interesting to see if GOG follows through on that (there's not a lot of super good Win16 exclusive games but I'd still like to see them preserved for posterity)

 

[Ribba]

This is huge. The best news from Microsoft in years, easily.

 

[Randdalf]

If it's just Ubuntu, does that mean we can use shells other than Bash?

 

[hateradio]

Sounds interesting. I wonder if this would be enabled by default, as bash has had some severe vulnerabilities.

About damn time.

Spoiler

Now reverse them slashes in the your path...

Pretty sure you can enter C:/Windows/System32 if you wanted in Explorer or cmd.

 

[Sheytan]

Holy shit that's awesome

 

[Elaugaufein]

Sounds interesting. I wonder if this would be enabled by default, as bash has had some severe vulnerabilities.


Pretty sure you can enter C:/Windows/System32 if you wanted in Explorer or cmd.

Yup, you can.

Obviously they aren't going to stop doing paths their way though, considering how much it'd break.

 

[FriedConsole]

I've been using git bash on windows for a while now, but an actual Linux subsystem would be really nice for development. Hopefully it's better supported than the old Unix subsystem.

Same love Git Bash. I just hope the secure it down so we don't get a repeat of the Visual Basic Script viruses.

 

[SigSig]

Is there a good alternative to conhost?

 

[cpp_is_king]

They demoed actually compiling a simple c program.

Not that I completely disagree with you.

With what compiler?

 

[stump sock]

weeeiiird

I like it.

 

[Fragamemnon]

With what compiler?

gcc-the example was through a complete linux toolchain.

 

[riotous]

Ehh... Idk, if all you can do is run gnu command line utilities, it certainly becomes much less useful. If anywhere in yoru script chain needs to shell out to, like, your compiler, the whole thing is shot. Literally all you can use it for is like grep, sed, awk, rsync, curl, wget, etc.

You could also use it to avoid windows versions of typically *nix utilities or servers for development purposes.

I think that's pretty damn useful since it gives you an environment more consistent with where you will be deploying bits without having to use a VM.

 

[cntr]

damn

Now Windows, OS X, and Linux essentially share a command line!

 

[QuantumZebra]

Microsoft has been on a roll lately.

Good decision.

Yea they're killing it.

As an IT guy for a Microsoft partner shop, this makes me happy. Their offerings with Office 365/Azure/etc.. are so good for biz.

 

[BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO]

I believe Codeacious is wrong; this blog post is from an MS employee showing it off:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Devel...ndUsermodeUbuntuLinuxBinariesOnWindows10.aspx



It's Ubuntu on Windows.

Damn

 

[uncelestial]

can elaborate on this walled garden?

Have you used a computer in the last 30 years? I worked at Microsoft for eight of them. Whatever you're trying to do with that snark, I am not interested.

 

[gaugebozo]

Bashed my head against Cygwin until switching to a virtual machine. Could have used this 5 years ago, but I'm glad it's coming.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Bashed my head against Cygwin until switching to a virtual machine. Could have used this 5 years ago, but I'm glad it's coming.

I see what you did there.

 

[Reversed]

Does that mean I could use htop to take care on processes that are in the "Winbuntu" user space, but I cannot, for instance, kill winword.exe with it?

 

[ParityBit]

Some more too ...

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html