back to article Bash on Windows. Repeat, Microsoft demos Bash on Windows

Microsoft is bringing the Linux Bash shell command line to Windows 10, running as a native Ubuntu binary on a Windows subsystem. Developer director Kevin Gallo demonstrated the shell at the opening keynote of Build 2016, Microsoft's developer conference in San Francisco. The primary goal, said Gallo, is to enable developers to …

  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Coat

    Hell is indeed freezing over

    mines the one with a copy of Dante's Inferno in the pocket.

    1. NoneSuch Silver badge
      Big Brother

      The power of Linux combined with the security flaws of Windows. Together at last.

      The last thing I'll be doing is tapping into my Linux servers from a Windows NSA Spyware box.

      1. Phil W

        "The last thing I'll be doing is tapping into my Linux servers from a Windows NSA Spyware box."

        Interesting statement. Do you use SELinux at all?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

      Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

      Next you'll be telling me they remade Ghostbusters with an all-female cast...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

        Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

        Fixed that for you.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

        "Next you'll be telling me they remade Ghostbusters with an all-female cast..."

        Another re-boot (rip off by an industry devoid of original ideas) That I will definitely avoid. Its not like they are remaking 50 year old films that are pretty much out of living memory... and don't get me started on the whole total recall thing lol

        Anyone noticed how fast these wonderful "re-imaginings" (am I alone in hating that b/s?) end up in the bargain bin at stores?

        Get the message microshaft you were dumped.. I wouldn't have your spyware anywhere near my network even if you nail bits of Linux on to it in an effort to remain relevant to those of us who understand privacy.

    3. roytrubshaw
      Coat

      Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

      "mines the one with a copy of Dante's Inferno in the pocket"

      <pedant>

      The final circle of hell is a frozen lake. Just sayin'

      </pedant>

      Mine's the one with the well thumbed copies of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise

    4. TheVogon

      Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

      Yep - just the new version of Services for Unix - which was able to run a *NIX shell and utilities on Windows since at least a decade ago, and was supported up to Windows 7. Move along, nothing to see here...

      Although I suppose it's the only way we will ever see "the year of Linux on the desktop" - seeing as there are already over 275 million Windows 10 installs out there....

      1. MacroRodent
        Linux

        Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

        Yep - just the new version of Services for Unix - which was able to run a *NIX shell and utilities on Windows since at least a decade ago,

        No, this is different: In the "Services for Unix" you had to recompile, but now you can run actual Linux binaries directly, giving you immediate access to a far larger collection of programs.

        However, there will still be a lot of impedance mismatch between the Windows and Linux universes. Anyone who does not want to fight with strange compatibility quirks at every turn will still use a real Linux distribution to get work done.

        1. Peter X
          Happy

          Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

          However, there will still be a lot of impedance mismatch between the Windows and Linux universes. Anyone who does not want to fight with strange compatibility quirks at every turn will still use a real Linux distribution to get work done.

          It's an interesting one that... because initially when I heard about this, I thought that this is the "embrace" phase, and next things will be written to target the Microsoft version of Linux. But it is perhaps more likely that open-source projects that currently target Windows and Linux, can now just focus on Linux and thus be more reliable and easier to maintain?

          I certainly think that's what cross-platform open-source projects should be looking to do!

      2. Bitcrazed
        Alert

        Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

        Slight correction: Unlike SFU, for which you had to rebuild your source code, Bash/WSL runs native ELF64 binaries so that everything in apt-get should work*.

        * Note: There are gaps in this first version - some things will break. But as we continue to improve our syscall implementation coverage and depth, you should see more and more sceanrios "just work"

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

      I hope it's not installed by default. I don't want the next critical BASH vulnerability (and the hundreds of other Linux security holes) on Windows..

      1. Loud Speaker

        Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

        Don't be such a spoil-sport. Windows has always needed a good bashing!

    6. John Sanders
      Holmes

      Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

      Repeat with me children....

      EMBRACE EXTEND EXTINGUISH

      On the other hand we now know how they got SSH and the corresponding VT100 emulator on Windows.

      Microsoft surely:

      a) Doesn't know what to put on Windows to stay relevant

      b) Doesn't know what to do to kill Linux

      c) Knows how to destroy competition, watch out Canonical, the MS' kiss of death is upon you.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hell is indeed freezing over

        Just the sort of dumb-arse comment we've grown used to around here.

        Far easier to just lurk on forums and shit on everything that doesn't fit your little view of the world than actually deliver anything yourself

  2. davidp231

    So what they've basically done is resurrect Services for Unix and change it to Linux?

    1. admiraljkb

      @davidp231 - Looks like it. Windows NT has always had the ability for multiple subsystems like this. That was one of the cool design features of NT back in the day. This was how it ran Win16 and OS/2 apps in the beginning after all. It was part of the original design work for NT3.1, but largely just got pi$$ed away when Ballmer decided they didn't want compatibility with anyone other than themselves in the naughts. Nice to see another Ballmer policy going buhbye.

      1. Andy Davies

        @admiraljkb

        My cynical side thinks that far too many people saw the change to Win10 as a leap too far, and if they had to handle that much change they might as well go for Ubuntu/ Mint, this would allow these people to put a foot into that camp while remaining firmly tied to ms' apron strings.

        My whimsical side remembers a PC User Group meeting in London around 1985: a senior honcho from ms UK said that the next version of msDos would be binary compatible with Unix..... at a meeting a couple of months later this was completely pooh-poohed -then they handed out free copies of Windows 1.0 - on a good commercial PC of the time the windows part was so slow as to be unusable (the underlying was still Dos).

        My realistic side sees this as a possible alternative to Win10/Ubuntu dual booters.

        (The tricky bit may be threads/ processes).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Deprecated before then removed in 2012 R2.

      1. Steven Raith

        Hmm.

        It's almost like - and brace yourself for this - MS have stopped being insular and started realising that interoperating a bit more nicely with other platforms is of benefit to them. Imagine!

        Now all we need is for AMD to make a decent linux proprietary driver*, me to get a job, and me to get laid, and we can safely say the apocomalypse is on the way.

        Steven R

        *I'm just a bit narked that 16.04 won't have a working proprietary AMD graphics as far as I can see; I do game lightly on my box and I really don't want to change distro just to game, I'm waaaay too lazy for that.

        1. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: Hmm.

          It's almost like - and brace yourself for this - MS have stopped being insular and started realising that interoperating a bit more nicely with other platforms is of benefit to them.

          Well given the problems MS have been having with a unified UI that is usable across servers, desktops, tablets and phones, perhaps MS have decided to simplify their task and make the business server and desktop UI Linux...

          Given the number of platforms MS are now supporting for Office, this does mean the (as yet unannounced WINE free) port of Office to Linux would run on Windows...

        2. AdamWill

          Re: Hmm.

          AMD is putting their efforts lately into improving the free driver, which is a *much* better idea. It's not quite up to the performance of the proprietary driver yet, but it's getting there.

          1. John Sanders
            Linux

            Re: Hmm.

            Having tested both on Ubuntu 14.04.4 and 15.10 I can say to you that you will have not only one but two wonderful ATI drivers.

            On many steam games I get now 60+ FPS with both RadeonSI+Mesa 11.3git and AMDGPU (catalyst replacement) drivers on a stock R290 with no glitches whatsoever.

            The future looks bright indeed.

            1. Steven Raith

              Re: Hmm.

              John Sanders - I suppose the real question is, what games? Something in the class of The Binding Of Isaac or other graphically light (but still pleasant) games at 60fps is a different beast to Metro Last Light, Bioshock Infinite or even something like Brutal Doom in Zandronum!

              I'm running an R280, which concerns me as I think that might be one of the GPUs that isn't really targetted well by AMDGPU?

              Steven "Guess what I play a lot" R

        3. Mikel

          Re: Hmm.

          >*I'm just a bit narked that 16.04 won't have a working proprietary AMD graphics as far as I can see;

          Vulkan is coming. You won't need a proprietary driver soon.

          1. TheVogon

            Re: Hmm.

            "Vulkan is coming. You won't need a proprietary driver soon".

            PC gamers probably won't care by the time it arrives. Direct-X 12 is here with similar performance and feature benefits now.

    3. bazza Silver badge

      Right?

      "So what they've basically done is resurrect Services for Unix and change it to Linux?"

      Wrong. SFU was a Unix runtime. To use it you had to compile software specifically for it, and it was primarily focused on making unixy services (nfs, etc) available on Windows.

      This is a system call shim, something completely different and is aimed at allowing userland applications to run unmodified.

      Linux system call shims have been done before. Solaris and QNX both have one.

      Now what I want to know is do Linux process limits still apply? In Linux you can typically open 1024 file descriptors in a process. I understood that the equivalent limit in Windows was rather less.

      And how have they emulated select() and epoll(). The way cygwin had to do it was very poor - a polling thread per file descriptor. This was because the Win32 API they had available just doesn't do a select() properly, and that's because fundamentally the OS and it's device drivers cannot do it. So how have MS changed that?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Right?

        Now what I want to know is do Linux process limits still apply? In Linux you can typically open 1024 file descriptors in a process. I understood that the equivalent limit in Windows was rather less.

        Actually, in Linux it's whatever /etc/security/limits.conf says it is. By default it is 1024, but if you set it in that file, you can make it quite large indeed.

      2. Mark Bertenshaw

        Re: Right?

        Actually, the limit has been 2048/process since WinXP. Looks as if Linux need to catch up. :-)

      3. /dev/null

        Re: Right?

        "Linux system call shims have been done before. Solaris and QNX both have one."

        Not to mention NetBSD, which has provided binary emulation of various other flavours of Unix for yonks...

        NetBSD Binary Emulation

      4. patrickstar

        Re: Right?

        If you are hitting a limit of 1024, it's in the C runtime and not the Win32 API or NT kernel. The actual limit is...much higher. I have a process on my Win box (leaking handles, fuck you HP) which currently has 483 211 open.

        The usual way of doing async I/O on Windows is through overlapped I/O. This has semantics not-entirely-dissimilar from SIGIO. Since you can take SIGIO and make it behave like epoll and friends from the callers point of view on *ix (see any number of async I/O abstraction layers), surely you can do the same with overlapped I/O as well. Or am I overlooking something here?

    4. Bitcrazed

      Nope. See here: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2823866

  3. John Crisp

    Embrace....

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

    They wouldn't do that. Would they ?

    :-)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Embrace....

      Each time Microsoft seek to use their monopoly as leverage someone will inevitably bring out the "Embrace, extend and extinguish" quote. And they always get down-voted for it. Why? This is not just tin-foil-hat paranoia. It is originally from Microsoft staff (albeit slightly paraphrased). It is proven to be a deliberate and conscious strategy. How prejudiced must you be to attack someone for bringing up recorded history?

      1. Lars Silver badge
        Linux

        Re: Embrace....

        "How prejudiced must you be to attack someone for bringing up recorded history?". I think there is a feeling that it's just too late for the FUD to work any more and that MS has got it too and has decided to not drop out of the picture. Time will tell.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Embrace....

        The thing is, despite how you perceive Microsoft as a company, the people who work for them are genuine human beings. Many of them are former and indeed current open source developers in their spare time.

        Power shell was created by Jeffrey Snover, a former Unix guy, as were most of his team. In the first version of power shell, most Unix shell commands were accepted as pre-defined aliases for their windows counter-parts (assuming of course they had a counter-part).

        It is comical the way people play the evil company card, as if the people working for them are part of some dark evil empire, while the Angels of open source and anti-capitalism will save the world.

        No it's just people working and making stuff in what they think is the best way. Sure it may go well, it may go disastrously wrong. Some people want to make a living from what they do, and others do it for a hobby. Others do it for many other reasons, and while I can't pretend I can argue for the reasoning behind some corporate decisions, I am sure the employees are much less a part of a plan for world domination than you seem to believe.

        1. Mr.Bill

          Re: Embrace....

          You just have to follow the $$$, the business model, and that always dictates what the company will do. If feeding the sick and poor maximized revenue, MS would look like saints. No one has some evil plot planned per-se, it just ends up that way. Now that azure is more profitable than windows, that explains their actions at this point.

          1. Naselus

            Re: Embrace....

            "No one has some evil plot planned per-se, it just ends up that way. "

            Except Monsanto. Seriously, some of the shit they pull implies that they insist on a plan being at least 50% pure evil before it's even considered.

        2. Mikel

          Re: Embrace....

          >The thing is, despite how you perceive Microsoft as a company, the people who work for them are genuine human beings. Many of them are former and indeed current open source developers in their spare time.

          "Mopping Up can be a lot of fun. In the Mopping Up phase, Evangelism’s goal is to put the final nail into the competing technology’s coffin, and bury it in the burning depths of the earth. Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, “he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2.” Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry." - James Plamondon, Microsoft Technology Evangelist, official company evangelism training curriculum.

        3. John Sanders
          Holmes

          Re: Embrace....

          Dear we're not personally attacking Jim in development or HR Steve at Microsoft,

          I will give you an example that you'll understand better:

          Take a tower of glasses, one pyramid shaped I mean, if you pour a spirit drink on the top one, what overflows and reach the bottom glasses and table is nice spirit. yummy!

          However if you're pouring liquid shit at the top, it is shit what overflows and reach the table. It doesn't matter how shiny the glasses in the tower are.

          That's essentially is what companies/corporations are, and look they are all made of people instead of glasses. And it doesn't matter that Jim is nice or that Steve is a nice dad. MS constantly spills shit at industrial scales downwards, and I'm not talking software quality here.

          Microsoft is on a mission to lock the IT industry for themselves and themselves only, they do not know what to do to achieve an Android-like or IPhone-like domination of everything in sight. Because that's how they operate since they exist. Do you think that has changed because "Microsoft loves Linux"?

          Come on.

        4. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: Embrace....

          > Power shell was created by Jeffrey Snover, a former Unix guy

          In which case he did a *very* poor job of bringing bash-like features to Powershell. At least unix/linux the case sensitivity is implemented in a sort-of-consistent way.

          Unlike ShowerPell.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Embrace....

            Your knocking powershell because it isn't case sensitive?

            you grey ponytail guys really crack me up

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Embrace....

            "In which case he did a *very* poor job of bringing bash-like features to Powershell. "

            They started from a clean sheet so don't expect them to just copy BASH - generally Powershell is far more powerful and flexible than BASH or other *NIX type shells.

      3. azaks

        Re: Embrace....

        You may not have noticed (or be to zealous to allow yourself to notice) that the Nadella-era MS is very different from the Ballmer-era MS. Of course the zealots will say its just a ploy and the real motive is EEE. The days of making a ton of money selling operating systems and on-prem software are declining, and the next cash cow is online services. Allowing people to run whatever they want (rather than trying to dictate what they should run) will encourage them to choose their services over someone else's services. Its pretty obvious to anyone that looks at the industry with an open mind.

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
    3. tempemeaty

      Re: Embrace....

      John Crisp I want to hug you!

      Last time I mentioned this Microsoft strategic behavior and an one of the examples of it shown in that article, it fell on def ears. I thought I was the last one in the room who remembered and understood this. I also didn't know that it was discovered in "United States v. Microsoft antitrust". Thank you for that link and for Remembering.

    4. John Bailey

      Re: Embrace....

      Quite possibly.

      Like OS2 ran Windows software.

      Sorry sweetie.. that worked with the old MS. And only in areas they were the biggest.

      To make the "extend" bit work, one has to become the dominant player. Any other scenario, it just breaks stuff and pisses people off. Just joining in is not actually enough.

      But you did successfully quote a meme.. have a biscuit.

    5. J 3
      Pirate

      Re: Embrace....

      Embrace and extend, sure, possible. But how can they extinguish free software?

  4. Ouroborus

    Does this mean Windows will finally get fork()?

    1. PNGuinn
      Go

      Does this mean Windows will finally get fork()?

      No.

      I told it to fork off years ago.

    2. Dave Pickles

      "Does this mean Windows will finally get fork()?"

      I'm not up-to-date on the Windows kernel, but since it started as a rewrite of VMS I suspect it has a similar process creation model. Under VMS process creation is a much more resource-intensive operation than under Unix - basically it's a new login - and the concept of re-using the address space of one process when creating another does not exist.

      1. Lars Silver badge

        @ Dave Pickles

        It's true that MS employed a guy who did work on VMS but as far as I have understood claiming the NT a rewrite of VMS is more than a bit silly. Then again this topic was discussed in more detail about twenty years ago.

        What save us then moving customers from Unix to the NT was utilities produced in Utah with stuff like sed and grep and similar, free then to use.

        Eventually the happy days ended for MS. The interesting thing, but rather frustrating for the new happy NT users was that they, or the sells persons, lived in an illusion that if the old Unix hardware was X MHz then 2X MHz would result in a faster system. It never worked like that and as far as I remember each and every customer had to upgrade their hardware very soon as everything got slower. An other funny thing was the number of bosses who with some slight knowledge of the PC in front of them though they now entered easy days, saving money as the servers were running Windows (their speciality) and not that cryptic Unix. That was never the case. And then suddenly there was all the viruses and all the kids in the town breaking into their systems. I sometimes felt sorry for some of my customers, but what the heck I got my salary all the same.

        1. Mikel

          Stealing VMS

          >It's true that MS employed a guy who did work on VMS but as far as I have understood claiming the NT a rewrite of VMS is more than a bit silly. Then again this topic was discussed in more detail about twenty years ago.

          His name is Dave Cutler. He remains employed at Microsoft as a "Senior Technical Fellow". He brought some people and ideas over from Digital, but consensus is that his grasp was far from complete and what they did with what they managed to steal is legendary for poor function and abysmal security. The one thing he got wholly right - cross platform being a critical key - was overruled by the MBAs until it was too late.

          1. patrickstar

            Re: Stealing VMS

            NT is definitely cross-platform. At some point in time, it has existed for Alpha, MIPS, ARM, probably some arch I forgot, and i860 - hell, the latter is what the name "NT" (as in N-Ten, the codename for the i860 - development of NT actually started before it was commercially available and for quite some time had to take place on emulators) comes from. The original name of the project, as can still be seen today in "NTOSKRNL", was NT OS/2. As in OS/2 for NT.

            1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

              Re: Stealing VMS

              Surely that name is short for nothing more than "NT OS KERNEL", no reference to OS/2 at all? But, yes it was cross-platform. I remember seeing NT running on Motorola PowerPC hardware way back in the mid-1990s.

              Re an earlier poster's comment: For the record, Dave Cutler didn't "do work on" VMS. He was one of the three people who led its design and implementation. Big difference.

              NT, the kernel, is a very clever design, and it's this clever architecture that makes it possible for Microsoft to shim the Linux syscalls so efficiently. The facility to do this was designed in from the beginning. Basically, you've got a core kernel, very much like a microkernel in that it deals only with abstract resources, above that, you have more concrete services, but unlike a true microkernel, these services run directly in the kernel address space. You get most of the speed of a monolithic kernel, and most of the stability and flexibility of a microkernel.

              The flexibility extends to hosting multiple userspaces interfaces with the same kernel, which is what MS has done here. Here, a "Linux Personality Layer" effectively allows the Linux binaries to interact with the NT kernel without recompilation. The syscall interfaces presented by the personality layer are translated into messages for the NT kernel and the various Windows services running on it.

              This isn't a new idea: QNX did a similar thing to get Android apps working on Blackberry devices (QNX is another kernel with very clear separation of concerns), but the fact that it's Microsoft doing it is more newsworthy.

              1. HmmmYes

                Re: Stealing VMS

                I did have an early version of NT - pre 4.0 - and I did go through the Inside NT books as they evolved.

                The NT kernel is pretty well designed.

                Its a bit slow on spawning processes but Id guess thats due to where it comes from.

                I just have a problem with the services that run on top of he kernel.

                I know it was possible to strip stuff away but these days I cannot be arsed.

                1. TheVogon

                  Re: Stealing VMS

                  "Its a bit slow on spawning processes"

                  Which you need to do relatively rarely. However it's lightening fast at starting threads and fibres...

            2. admiraljkb

              Re: Stealing VMS

              @patrickstar - you're close - WinNT's original name was OS/2-NT 3 (as it actually was OS/2, and still is by lineage). IBM was tasked with the last legacy x86 OS/2, v2.x, while MS was tasked with the portable microkernel version that would run on anything and everything (this arch was violated by NT4+, but thats a different issue). Then that whole MS vs IBM flap about Presentation Manager vs Program Manager, and several other arguments behind the scenes. Needless to say, Presentation Manager was swapped out for Program Manager, the product was renamed to Windows NT 3.1, and IBM and MS's source code sharing agreements ceased with OS/2 1.x, DOS, and Win3.1. MS left in the OS/2 1.x subsystem, which meant that WinNT could still NATIVELY run OS/2 1.x text apps, but couldn't run OS/2 2.x apps.

              1. patrickstar

                Re: Stealing VMS

                It's referred to as "NT OS/2" in the original design documents atleast, eg:

                Portable Systems Group - NT OS/2 System Startup Design Note

                Author: Mark Lucovsky - Revision 1.2, July 26, 1990 - Original Draft May 31, 1990

                but I don't know what the marketing name was.

                That's also why I'm assuming NTOSKRNL refers to NT OS/2 as I haven't seen any references to "NT OS" anywhere (well, except for the name of the source tree!) - in the newer docs it's universally called Windows NT. And yes, "Portable Systems Group" was the original name of the NT team!

                1. admiraljkb

                  Re: Stealing VMS

                  There was no marketing name back then for OS/2 NT since it never saw the light of day, well not exactly anyway. WinNT3.1 was *mostly* OS/2 NT. Technically the only thing actually missing would have been the OS/2 2.x subsystem and presentation manager. The OS2 1.x subsystem was still included and HPFS was still a native filesystem and remained so until NT4.0. I was pretty excited by the prospect of OS/2 2.0, and then the 3.0 variant shortly after to get us out of the DOS era. good times. :)

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Stealing VMS

                  Patrick, and other OS/2 faithful: you may want to read this substantial article which draws heavily on contributions from Marc Lucovsky:

                  http://winsupersite.com/windows/supersite-flashback-nt-s-first-decade

                  Highlights include (1) Lucovsky came from DEC, with Cutler. (2) OS/2 hardly gets a mention, except in contexts like this: "[NT] was basically Windows on steroids, and not OS/2, which used a completely different programming model.""

        2. Exit Stage Right

          I am surprised no-one has yet mentioned that if you add take the next char in the sequence VMS you get WNT; similar to if you take the previous char from the sequence IBM you get HAL.

    3. patrickstar

      Windows has it already, since many moons ago.

      See ntos\mm\forksup.c in the Windows kernel source: "This module contains the routines which support the POSIX fork operation."

      Though as someone else mentioned already, it's a poor fit performance-wise for the Windows way of doing process-y memory management-y things.

      Reusing the address space of an existing process is definitely supported however, though not exposed by the Win32 API AFAIK.

    4. tempemeaty
      Pirate

      "Does this mean Windows will finally get fork()?"

      More like this is MS trying to pose Windows as a fork to other things in order to direct resources and interest away from what they see as competition.

    5. hplasm
      Linux

      It means-

      'Stick a fork in Windows, it's done.'

      Hopefully.

    6. Bitcrazed

      "Does this mean Windows will finally get fork()?"

      The Windows kernel has always had a fork() facility, but it was never exposed as a Win32 API.

  5. Dwarf

    Keep going

    Keep going Microsoft.

    Because Windows is getting less and less relevant to more and more people.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Keep going

      "Because Windows is getting less and less relevant to more and more people."

      Yeah, sure, that must be why Windows 10 is by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever?

      1. raving angry loony

        Re: Keep going

        writes " far the fastest adopted version of Windows"

        Yeah, but forcing people to upgrade through shady and downright misleading "optional updates" and constant, unrelenting pushing doesn't really count as "choice". Not in this universe.

        That's not "adoption". That's "getting it foisted on you".

      2. hplasm
        Gimp

        Re: Keep going

        "Yeah, sure, that must be why Windows 10 is by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever?"

        If by 'adopted' you mean finding your house full of kids you've never seen before.

      3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Re: "by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever"

        Of course it is. Microsoft is stuffing it down as many people as it can, forcing its download and pushing "critical updates" that continually reorient people towards it.

        And you know what ? It is still at less than 12% of market share as of December 2015. After having started admittedly strong in August 2015 at over 5%.

        So that is a 7 point progress over 4 months.

        For a product that is free.

        And all you need to do to get it is acknowledge one of the many, many adverts Microsoft is pushing at you - adverts that you practically cannot ignore if you wanted to.

        By all rights Windows 1 0 should have over 70% of market share right now. Every clueless user of Vista, 7 and 8.x should have fallen over themselves in their rush to get a free update that, reportedly, makes their PC work faster.

        Instead, less than 12% market share after five months.

        So you go crowing about "fastest adoption rate ever", like your kind has been doing for every Windows release since 98.

        The truth is, people are not flocking to a free product. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

        1. thondwe

          Re: "by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever"

          Except that a huge %age of Windows desktops are corporate, and these get refreshed at a speed of a nailed down snail. So far the "converts" will be home users with new gadgets, Microsoft consultancies and Surfaces being "product placed" in shows like Elementary, NCIS, etc...

        2. Naselus

          Re: "by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever"

          "So that is a 7 point progress over 4 months.

          For a product that is free."

          Reminder me how all the desktop Linux distros combined are doing after 20 years...? Because that's not a ringing endorsement of a free product either, but I doubt we'll find anyone on this site who thinks Linux is anything short of an excellent OS (well, some distros).

          Look, no-one actually LIKES Microsoft (who used to be hated when they were just nakedly evil under Gates/Ballmer, but have now also become annoyingly pathetic under 'Microsoft just wants a hug' Nadella), but saying that Windows is becoming irrelevant is the same Utopian balderdash that 'this is the year of Linux on the desktop' guys have been saying since 1995. After 20 years of being told Windows is over because the latest version doesn't hit 90% market share within X months of release, it's getting tired (not least because 50% of the market are corporate clients with scheduled upgrade cycles measured in years).

          Windows phone is irrelevant. Always was, always will be, even with continuum. Windows server is a competitive offering that is slowly but surely losing out to variations of Linux. But Windows Desktop is still completely dominant and will remain so, to the point where the only serious competition Windows ever has on the desktop is from other versions of itself. MacOS's market share remains single-digit even after Apple's rehabilitation to be considered as a serious company. Individual Linux distros are practically rounding errors.

          Basically, the world has made up it's mind, and it wants Windows on the desktop, Android on the smartphone (barring the increasingly tiny proportion centered on the anglosphere who like iOS) and Linux on the server (along with most appliances, and pretty much the whole IoT if it ever takes off). While there's potentially an argument over whether the desktop will remain relevant in an era of tablets and smartphones (and imo it will, for much the same reason that the the smart phone will remain relevant when my fridge has a computer in it - different devices do different things), as long as the desktop remains a thing Windows will remain pretty important.

          1. raving angry loony

            Re: "by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever"

            @Naselus - can't disagree with most of what you wrote except "the world has made up it's mind" bit. I'd say that it was more "the world has had its mind made up for it". If I could play the games I want on something other than Windows, I would. But I can't, so I use that operating system. As, I'm sure, do many others who are locked into an operating system because Microsoft has been incredibly aggressive in making sure that key applications ONLY run on their operating system.

            If people had a choice, THEN we could argue whether or not "the world has made up it's mind". Until then, it's more a case of "the world hasn't been given much of a choice yet".

          2. gatesy

            Re: "by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever"

            Linux owns every space except desktops. From the tiniest embedded devices, cell phones, servers to supercomputer clusters on earth, and is the #1 OS in space and on mars.

            The only way to avoid Linux is to live like the Unabomber.

            1. Down not across

              Re: "by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever"

              Linux owns every space except desktops. From the tiniest embedded devices, cell phones, servers to supercomputer clusters on earth, and is the #1 OS in space and on mars.

              Not really. I have far more other OS on my servers (FreeBSD,OpenBSD,SunOS 1.x and 5.x (Solaris for you youngsters), Ultrix, OSF/1,HP-UX, VMS and quite a few other more esoteric (these days at least) environments but you get the picture). The closest thing to non-proprietary network kit (in my house) would be running JunOS (based on rather old FreeBSD underneath) not taking into account some pfsense boxes.

              I am, of course, only speaking for myself but just my by own kit refuting your claim of every space. Why, yes perhaps I am splitting hairs, but the point is there are a lot of kit out there that is in no way Linux based regardless of increasing adoption of Linux.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "by far the fastest adopted version of Windows ever"

              "Linux owns every space except desktops. "

              According to Forbes, 75% of the server market is Windows. Makes sense when you consider how many SMEs are out there - and how many corporates have thousands of them....Active Directory and Exchange for instance are fairly close to universal standards in larger companies.

              New Linux installs are mostly just replacing old Unix boxes - and a large percentage of those go to Windows Server.

      4. John Sanders
        Windows

        Re: Keep going

        Not only that, we have been told its the best windows ever!

  6. admiraljkb

    hmmm, in combination with all the other announcements in the last 6 months, It does lend more credence to my "next Windows server after 2016 will have a Linux kernel theory". It WAS a crazy a$$ wild eyed lunch talk with friends theory. (I based it on Apple's great success at effectively outsourcing their lower level OS to BSD while sticking to the API's and GUI that end users actually care about). Its increasingly looking less crazy, but with that said, I'll believe it when/if I see it... I'm waiting for the Balmerites on the board to stage a coup on Nadella and undo all this.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "Apple's great success at effectively outsourcing their lower level OS to BSD while sticking to the API's and GUI that end users actually care about"

      I think I can see the problem MS might have applying that to Windows these days.

    2. Adam 1

      other way round isn't it

      Pretty sure systemd just outsources to svchost.exe these days.

      1. John Sanders
        Meh

        Re: other way round isn't it

        Do yourself a favour and deploy Ubuntu 16.04 beta or CentOS 7, please.

        Write a couple of systemd units that have dependencies on other components.

        then follow any systemd guide on how to analyse and improve the boot sequence.

        After a week tell me you want to go back to upstart.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: other way round isn't it

          I'm running 16.04 in a VM

          The task was to take a containerized application which has a trivial sysV init script which runs 'docker-compose up' (12.04.5) and run it on ubuntu:latest (16.04)

          After several days of banging my head on this, I found systemd unit files to be the product of a deeply disturbed mind. The requirement to be in some magical "multi-target' directory is just pointless different from /etc/init.d

          The ordering is pesudo simple but in practise doesn't seem to work, YMMV but it expended my patience.

          So I stripped it out, and replaced /sbin/init with busybox, suprisinglly all is now well with the world and systemd is voboten on new builds.

          BTW upstart depends on libNIH, which tells you everything you need to know about it.

          a shell really does all I need at that level, and SystemD just is not giving me anything other than a headache, but I'm a Dev, I'm not a sysadmin and maybe it makes more sense to another point of view.

        2. Down not across

          Re: other way round isn't it

          Write a couple of systemd units that have dependencies on other components.

          then follow any systemd guide on how to analyse and improve the boot sequence.

          After a week tell me you want to go back to upstart.

          I've done the equivalent with Solaris SMF where I needed more than init scripts (which was still supported in that Solaris version if that is what you wanted to use).

          I've looked at systemd guide. I've looked at what systemd does. I've reinstalled Centos 6 without any trace of systemd.

          For most dependencies that I have, init scripts are perfectly sufficient. The system only gets rebooted on kernel upgrades (or due to powerfailure (yes I should replace the batteries on the UPS)) so time it takes to boot is largely irrelevant. Having said that, it boots off SSD very quickly.

          For me /etc/init.d approach works perfectly well and has all the flexibility I need.

          I have no need for systemd's claimed benefits.

          If it works for you, great. Glad you're happy. I have no problem it being an option for people who perceive benefit from it.

          It doesn't offer benefits to me, so I don't want it shoved down my throat.

    3. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      hmmm, in combination with all the other announcements in the last 6 months, It does lend more credence to my "next Windows server after 2016 will have a Linux kernel theory". It WAS a crazy a$$ wild eyed lunch talk with friends theory.

      It still is crazy talk but if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over then go ahead.

      Supporting the runtime by intercepting the syscalls means that the (Linux) kernel isn't required – FreeBSD has been doing this for years. In fact, the kernel is in many ways the most interesting part of Windows.

      The big upside for MS for this is that it recognises that lots and lots of people on Windows want to use open source packages that more or less rely on the unix toolchain (especially gcc). Making this available lets these people get on with their work on Windows. Everyone's a winner.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. TVU Silver badge

          Ballmer and Gates must be astounded at these recent events and at Satya Nadella's pragmatism (and treachery!). I do wonder where this is going to end - a proprietary MS Linux Server Edition a la Red Hat, SUSE, etc?

        2. patrickstar

          OS X does not use a BSD kernel. Again, OS X does not use a BSD kernel.

          It's a Mach kernel (not BSD; unlike BSD, Mach is originally a proper microkernel although Apple skipped out on that part) based on NeXTstep (not BSD), with some BSD added to the mix. After all, Apple bought NeXT (and before that was looking at BeOS) when they needed something to replace MacOS Classic. Why would they go to that trouble and expense if all they got from it was free-as-in-speech-and-beer BSD code base with some customizations?

          Hell, a not-insignificant part of OS X kernel code (percentages someone? no idea personally) is C++. When was the last time you saw C++ in kernel land in any BSD?

          I think the whole "OS X is BSD based" thing comes from the userland, but I'm far from an OS X expert.

          Kinda like Microsoft, say, providing a subsystem to run Linux applications and partnering up with someone to provide and package them, perhaps...

  7. MrRimmerSIR!
    Go

    Haters Gonna Hate, but...

    No more fannying around trying to recompile device driver to work with whatever kernel has been jettisoned by Linus or having to battle with the hideousness that is Powershell.

    Seems like a win to me.

    1. Notas Badoff

      Re: Haters Gonna Hate, but...

      "Haters Gonna Hate" - self-referential comment?

      1. MrRimmerSIR!

        Re: Haters Gonna Hate, but...

        No.

        There's good and bad in both camps.

        I happen to think the ability to run a device driver from the XP era (2001) on Windows 7, on balance, is good and that the Linux hardware model is unrefined.

        Never got on with Powershell.

        Doesn't mean I "hate" them.

        Just means I think there are better alternatives.

        Sorry if you're upset by that. Level-headedness isn't universal, I understand.

    2. naive

      Re: Haters Gonna Hate, but...

      That is point on, using Unix shell scripts for nearly 35 years now, watching power shell looks like the ultimate perversion in development of scripting languages.

      So I really do not understand many of the negative reactions, it is possibly also a very wise move of MS. There are not so many sysadmins able to create scripts, the percentage of Unix sysadmin able to write non-trivial scripts is substantially higher than under MS sysadmins, who are used to find their ways in a rain forest of utterly complex stacks of tabbed windows to achieve their objectives.

      Since canonical attaches its name with the project, one can expect it will work fine.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Uh, oh!

    What does /dev/slurp do ?

    1. DryBones
      Pint

      Re: Uh, oh!

      Replaces lines at the beginning of /dev/icee with blank space, obviously.

      1. Spacedinvader
        Trollface

        Re: Uh, oh!

        On the left?

  9. btrower

    How is this different?

    How is this much different than Cygwin through which I routinely access grep, sort, ls, factor, du, df, gcc, etc -- and oh yeah -- bash pretty much daily and have done for years?

    1. Notas Badoff

      Re: How is this different?

      Not sure, as this mention doesn't say how often underlying things will be updated, or where the accompanying utilities need to be located. We'll need to wait and see how the implementation actually helps us.

      I also have been relying on grep, diff, (gnu)find, etc. through Cygwin and have for forever. Together with node.js, I haven't had to rely on MS development tools for ages. Hence, still smiling while coding.

    2. hellwig

      Re: How is this different?

      The difference being you don't need to rely on an outdated Cygwin distribution, you can download Ubuntu binaries directly and run them. This is a run-time translation, meaning you just download the same binary as anyone else running Ubuntu, and it will run on your machine. No configuration, no recompilation. So much easier.

      1. Tom Chiverton 1

        Re: How is this different?

        "you can download Ubuntu binaries directly and run them. "

        that doesn't make any thing clear. you're saying they've ported dpkg and all it's dependencies, plus a chuck of the GNU utils ?

        1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: How is this different?

          It means Windows intercepts the linux "API" calls (sycalls) and translates them into the equivalent Windows ones.

          Please tell me that working with computers is a hobby and not your day job.

          1. James Loughner

            Re: How is this different?

            Reverse WINE LOL

            1. frank ly

              Re: How is this different?

              Windows Hopes It's a Nice Emulator?

      2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: How is this different?

        @hellwig I've no idea why you've got so many downvotes. I can only apologise.

      3. btrower

        Re: How is this different?

        @hellwig: Upvote for you. Explanation noted.

        Looking around the Web it seems that this is the claim:

        This is not a Cygwin variation, noted Dustin Kirkland, a member of Canonical's Ubuntu Product and Strategy executive team. Cygwin's "open source utilities are recompiled from source to run natively in Windows," said Kirkland. "Here, we're talking about bit-for-bit, checksum-for-checksum Ubuntu ELF binaries running directly in Windows." -- http://www.zdnet.com/article/ubuntu-not-linux-on-windows-how-it-works/

        Huh. Re-reading the 'theregister' article I see that what is said is not inconsistent with that. It is improbable because it is something of a technical feat. I will believe this when I see it actually running a full complement of Ubuntu binaries. It seems to me that there are fundamental conflicts in the absence of virtualization...

        I hope this comes to pass. It might tip the balance for upgrading to Windows 10. It would be fantastically convenient to have a working subsystem like this that is lighter than a VM.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: How is this different?

          Basically

          1) write an ELF loader in C/C++ compile to P/E format

          2) write a wrapper around the exported linux ABI (the syscalls list) in plain C - compile to P/E format

          3) make sure your magic wrapper is specified in the LD_PRELOAD environment variable passed to the ELF loader.

          4) realise cross-compilation is already a thing.

          5) face-palm

      4. hplasm
        Angel

        Re: How is this different?

        "...you just download the same binary as anyone else running Ubuntu, and it will run on your machine."

        Does it run the Ubuntu installer? Oh good!

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How is this different?

        So I can run linux code on windows, great, why do I need windows in this equation?

    3. John M. Drescher

      Re: How is this different?

      I hope performance is improved versus cygwin.

    4. gatesy

      Re: How is this different?

      I never understood Cygwin.

      Just use Linux. It won't spy on you and runs smoothly on much less powerful hardware.

      Try running Windows Server on a 20 MB Ram VM. I use that to run nginx serving static files and have 45% of the RAM to spare.

      1. Down not across

        Re: How is this different?

        I never understood Cygwin.

        Just use Linux. It won't spy on you and runs smoothly on much less powerful hardware.

        One reason could be to make a corporate desktop/laptop more usable.

        1. TheVogon

          Re: How is this different?

          "It won't spy on you and runs smoothly on much less powerful hardware."

          Third party benchmarks at RTM showed that Windows 10 outperformed the latest Ubuntu in many common use scenarios on the same hardware...

  10. dubno

    meh

    All very interesting, humorous and so forth but....

    Personally, I would prefer running Linux natively and having the ability to run few Windows applications rather than vice versa.

    A proper working WINE that lets me run the very few Windows apps that we still require use is more important than having access to the many useful and powerful Linux tools already at my fingertips.

    1. Novex

      Re: meh

      Agreed. However, the only things that make me annoyed in Linux is the lack of a fully working WINE that can run any Windows app without issues, and a way to install devices that only have Windows drivers onto Linux. I have some specialist stuff that simply isn't supported on Linux that means I have to keep a Windows option available - and of course, MS would use that as a way to keep me tied to them, rather than being able to jettison Windows once and for all. It's one of the reasons I have to keep one eye on any retreat to Windows 10 update and telemetry policies as it would mean I could use Windows without having to keep looking over my shoulder all the time with Windows 7.

      1. Tom Chiverton 1

        Re: meh

        "However, the only things that make me annoyed in Linux is the lack of a fully working WINE "

        It's called VirtualBox.

        1. Novex

          Re: meh

          It's called VirtualBox.

          How does that get me away from having to run Windows?

      2. agatum

        Re: meh

        use Windows without having to keep looking over my shoulder all the time

        Your hardware, your system, and still _you_ have to be looking over your shoulder worrying. One of the myriad of reasons I like about my boxes of mint is that I don't have to, look over my shoulder, that is.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: meh

      Use cases: GTA5, or at work I have to run Windows. Agree that Babun/Cygwin is battle tested and gets you a good part of the way. I'd rather see Microsoft develop a terminal window a la mintty that doesn't look and act like it's from 1985. iTerm2 on OSX is a treat.

    3. John Sanders
      Holmes

      Re: meh

      Spot on.

      Still do not understand what is that MS is trying to accomplish here. (Other than causing damage to Canonical)

      1. Wensleydale Cheese
        Unhappy

        Re: meh

        "Still do not understand what is that MS is trying to accomplish here. (Other than causing damage to Canonical)"

        Going on past form, many partners have come off much the worse for collaborating with MS.

        I'd be quite worried if I were Canonical.

  11. alain williams Silver badge

    How complete will it be ?

    I wonder if someone will be able to port and run WINE into this environment.

    Why ? Because it should be possible!

    1. bazza Silver badge

      Re: How complete will it be ?

      Arrrggghhh! What a horrible thought! How am I supposed to get that mind worm out of my brain now?

    2. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

      Re: How complete will it be ?

      <Insert "Yo dawg" meme here>

    3. Fibbles

      Re: How complete will it be ?

      I wonder if after installing WINE we can use that to install Cygwin.

      Let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

  12. frootus
    Thumb Up

    Microsoft (re-)Invents Mingw32 and Cygwin

    Er, um, so now Microsoft has done what Mingw32 and Cygwin have been doing (for free) since the 1990s?

    1. frootus
      FAIL

      Re: Microsoft (re-)Invents Mingw32 and Cygwin

      Actually, not quite. Mingw and Cygwin don't let you run compiled-for-linux binaries on Windows. FAIL because I didn't read TFA properly before posting.

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Microsoft (re-)Invents Mingw32 and Cygwin

      No.

      If anything, CYGWIN merely replicated the old Services for Unix.

      This is a system call shim, not a runtime environment. I presume the loader has also changed so as to recognise ELF binaries. A system call shim is a much thinner layer than a whole runtime, and (depending on the number of system calls they've implemented) means that an entire Linux userland could be plonked on top of Windows and run unmodified, unrecompiled, etc.

      System call shims aren't new. Solaris has had a Linux system call shim for a long time, and QNX also has one. Though in their cases it's much easier - the underlying OSes aren't so very different to Linux (e.g. they implement select() properly - Windows doesn't).

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    This isn't Nan friendly

    The first time she tries "rm -rf /" I won't be responsible for my actions!

    1. jonathanb Silver badge

      Re: This isn't Nan friendly

      Isn't there something similar in DOS? From memory it may be "deltree" but it is ages since I used it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: This isn't Nan friendly

        Your mentioning deltree made me think of xcopy. I haven't been in a Windows environment to see if those are still available for ages.

        1. jonathanb Silver badge

          Re: This isn't Nan friendly

          Apparently it has been replaced with "rd /sq c:\"

        2. FIA Silver badge

          Re: This isn't Nan friendly

          If you want to be really old school: FORMAT c: /autotest

          (add a /s if you're feeling nice. ;) )

    2. PNGuinn
      Megaphone

      Re: This isn't Nan friendly

      But then you can "repair" her box by installing Mint (or....).

      BRING IT ON!

    3. TheVogon

      Re: This isn't Nan friendly

      "The first time she tries "rm -rf /" I won't be responsible for my actions!"

      Fortunately Windows has a proper ACL model that can deny even the "root" user from being able to delete critical files...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: This isn't Nan friendly

        "Fortunately Windows has a proper ACL model that can deny even the "root" user from being able to delete critical files..."

        And fortunately Linux has AppArmour and SELinux (depending on distro) to do that too.

        1. TheVogon

          Re: This isn't Nan friendly

          "And fortunately Linux has AppArmour and SELinux (depending on distro) to do that too."

          But that's a selection of Elastoplasts on top of a broken design, not a proper ACL model to start with...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: This isn't Nan friendly

            "But that's a selection of Elastoplasts..."

            No it's simply just another way to achieve an outcome. Most problems in tech have more than good solution. But it's not like you would let bias influence your thoughts or anything...

      2. hplasm
        Windows

        Re: This isn't Nan friendly

        "Fortunately Windows has a proper ACL model that can deny even the "root" user from being able to delete critical files..."

        The ones that override the security and update settings?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It makes perfect sense

    This move makes perfect sense in context of their attempted move to a subscription model: the more they make you believe they're Linux friendly, the lesser power your arguments will have to move to Linux to avoid this. For the decision maker at the golf course, the two would eventually become indistinguishable and as long as Microsoft gets its monthly pound of flesh I suspect they could not care less what you run.

    It appears there is finally someone smart at the helm there, someone who does not always default to bully mode to get their way. I'd be wary.

    It is also worth observing that this still requires you to succumb to Windows 10..

    1. Mark 85

      Re: It makes perfect sense

      Exactly. It smells like a trap. Be afraid Linux types. Be very afraid.

      Since historically, MS has really paid little attention to what users want, for them to suddenly openly embrace Linux to appeal to sysadmins and Linux users is definitely troublesome. It would appear that they're trying to make Windows "more attractive" and allow more of us to say "sure.. install Windows 10".

      And really... how many actually trust MS to play nice?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It makes perfect sense

        I'm not moving for the delights of grep and so on. I'm moving because it's not W10. Couldn't give a toss how many linux-friendly features are on it...it'll still be W10.

  15. kain preacher

    Did some one put whiskey in my coke ? Cause I think I miss read some thing about ubuntu on windows.

  16. Gert Leboski
    Trollface

    It's just like...

    ... putting lipstick on a pig.

    I only hope it has a decent array of userland toys to make it relevant.

    1. TheVogon

      Re: It's just like...

      "... putting lipstick on a pig."

      Well, yes. The Windows 10 GUI is rather an improvement on Unity....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It's just like...

        "rather an improvement on Unity...."

        Hardly an impartial source of opinion are you? Have you used Unity? For more than a few minutes? It's pretty good and these days is more visually consistent than Windows, which has sadly gone backwards in that area somewhat.

        1. TheVogon

          Re: It's just like...

          "Hardly an impartial source of opinion are you?"

          You must point out all the impartial posters on this thread that I am distracting you from? I must have missed them...

  17. qbix
    Linux

    Already available

    Sorry Microsoft.

    These tools and utilities already run under Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems). So what's the point?

    1. PNGuinn
      Joke

      Re: Already available @qbix

      No, No, you don't understand.

      With Notwine (TM) (Vinegar (TM?) you'll be able to run Libre Office natively on windows

      Oh - wait.

  18. keithpeter Silver badge
    Windows

    Bloody Hell

    $ cowsay "Bloody Hell"

    Seriously: they are beginning to realise where the developer activity outside of the existing Microsoft empire might be located.

  19. Camilla Smythe

    Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

    Go Bama!Trump! Go Bama!Trump! Go Bama!Trump!

    Have they got a version of 10 that runs natively on Mint?

    I have not got a fucking clue but given Mint uses Ubuntu suppositories I am looking forward to the invite to Upgrade to Windows 10 appearing via Update Manager or getting slipped in via apt-get. NOT.

    Go on... it's those back door boys from systemd.

    Blah Blah Blah crap.. time for bed.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

        I think he was being deliberately flippant with the use of that word. Your explanation was not pessary.

  20. Joerg

    Only for idiots installing Windows8.2=10 spyware...

    Only for idiots installing Windows8.2=10 spyware...

    ..they add an on-the-fly translator for Linux binaries on the crap that is Windows10 in a hope that more people would love installing that.

    Seriously?

  21. getHandle
    Linux

    Desperate much?

    nuff said

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tremendous.

    After years of never fully being able to kill a machine in the shell (hardware issues aside) I'll be able to experience under windows 10.

    I can't wait.

    1. TheVogon

      "After years of never fully being able to kill a machine in the shell (hardware issues aside) I'll be able to experience under windows 10."

      You have been able to do that from a command prompt for years. Try

      Shutdown -f -r

      Or if you really mean from the shell, you need:

      Restart-Computer

  23. Mage Silver badge
    Linux

    Hardly entirely new ...

    1999 I was running X applications and Unix Shells seemlessly on NT 4.0 Desktop

    Windows Services for UNIX (Wikipedia)

    MS Unix SFW 3.0 (Win2K era, I think it was 3.5 for XP?)

    Really MS should scrap Windows 10 and either give people a MS Linux distro and properly port all their applications as Linux native, or give people what they want, an updated less buggy windows similar to best of NT3.5 / XP with a Win9x Explorer (without the bugs).

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Hardly entirely new ...

      "Really MS should scrap Windows 10 and either give people a MS Linux distro and properly port all their applications as Linux native"

      Whooosh! Way to miss the key point of the last 30 years of Windows hegemony over the desktop. Those apps that don't run on Linux? 99% of them aren't Microsoft apps and for half of them the chances are that *no-one* has the source code anymore. If MS ported their entire product line to Linux tomorrow and offered a completely free internet upgrade to the new versions, most MS customers still couldn't migrate.

      1. TVU Silver badge

        Re: Hardly entirely new ...

        However, I'm pretty sure that any free Microsoft Linux Desktop Edition would get a shed load of publicity and a pretty good take up too if MS Office were to be ported over to Linux as well. That said, I don't think that it'll happen although who would have predicted what's just gone and happened over the past couple of weeks?

  24. Len Goddard

    Meh

    Cygwin gives me all the linuxness I need on my Win 10 system which is basically now a games machine. Just about everything else can be done more easily (and quietly) running linux on an intel NUC. The only real problem is that intel graphics don't play nicely with my 3440x1440 screen.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    " Kirkland sees it as extending Ubuntu's reach.."

    ..into the mouth of a crocodile, probably.

  26. kryptylomese

    It will have the same limitations

    Windows simply cannot do what Linux can do under the hood and the old Windows Unix subsystem and Cygwin show the limitations.

    If you want to run applications in a Linux like way then there are disadvantages to try and do it on a compatibility layer on Windows.

    That said, it might making porting applications over as well as integrating with a Linux environment an easier task which has to be a good thing!

    1. Joerg

      Re: It will have the same limitations

      "Windows simply cannot do what Linux can do under the hood and the old Windows Unix subsystem and Cygwin show the limitations."

      VMS can do everything UNIX systems do under the hood. VMS was created as the main competitor to UNIX in the first place.

      WindowsNT is a new version of VMS that Microsoft paid the creator of VMS to write for them.

      1. kryptylomese

        Re: It will have the same limitations

        Unfortunately, Windows is NOT a new version of VMS (look how well it did against UNIX) although some of the design was influenced by VMS, and cannot act as a direct replacement for Unix so it has no chance of acting as a replacement for Linux which is more advanced that Unix.

        Here is just one example - Windows cannot do "iftop"

        1. patrickstar

          Re: It will have the same limitations

          Troll, but I'll bite in case just in case someone believes him!

          Perfmon. I have a graph right here showing interface stats for a web server. Plus graphs for various aspects of CPU and memory usage including context switches and # of threads. Plus CLR JIT stats. And some other stuff too.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It will have the same limitations

          "Here is just one example - Windows cannot do "iftop""

          Just like Linux cant do say "dcdiag".

          There is no exact match, but you can do pretty much the same with Process Monitor, Network Monitor and Performance Monitor.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It will have the same limitations

        "VMS can do everything UNIX systems do under the hood"

        VMS can do lots of UNIXy things, and used to be able to do more. Things like fork() aren't so easy because of the process+memory model on VMS, but lots of stuff worked well enough back in the days when VMS Integrated POSIX was around. Sufficiently well for VMS to get X/Open branding as a UNIX compatible OS.

        Then VMS Integrated POSIX was withdrawn. The tales about customers wanting vendor independence through open systems were just that - tales. What lots of customers really wanted was cheap to buy (and never mind the lifetime costs).

        "VMS was created as the main competitor to UNIX in the first place."

        Lots of oldtimers might suggest that VMS was created as the unifying logical successor to a variety of previous DEC operating systems, most obviously (but not exclusively) the PDP11 ones (eg RSX11) whose 64kB logical address space and 4MB (say again: 4MB) maximum physical memory were proving to be a bit limiting.

        "WindowsNT is a new version of VMS that Microsoft paid the creator of VMS to write for them."

        Not really. Dave Cutler, one of the VMS architects, and his team had been working on a new OS at DEC. Cutler had already worked on PDP11 software and hardware, on VMS on VAX, and on a lightweight distributed realtime OS for VAX called VAXELN. The NT kernel owes as much to VAXELN as it does to VMS (it says so in Custer's MS Press book Inside Windows NT, except it says it a bit more subtly). But unless you're familiar with VAXELN this statement will mean nothing, so it's rarely mentioned.

        MS saw an opportunity to get a real 32bit successor to Win16 from a team with a proven track record. Cutler took his team to MS and NT was the result of Cutler's work at DEC plus some other stuff.

        Sadly the Gates influence meant that it's been largely downhill since for many of the original NT concepts; not least, the number of occasions when NT's robustness and security had to be sacrificed to allow NT to benchmark faster than its Win16 predecessors. Still, with font handling in kernel mode (and other similar idiocies) in NT, rather than being in separate isolated crash-resistant address spaces, what could possibly go wrong, apart from buffer overflows leading to unauthenticated remote code execution and unauthorised elevation of privilege and...

        Other than that, yes.

        1. bazza Silver badge

          Re: It will have the same limitations

          @AC,

          "VMS can do lots of UNIXy things, and used to be able to do more. Things like fork() aren't so easy because of the process+memory model on VMS, but lots of stuff worked well enough back in the days when VMS Integrated POSIX was around. Sufficiently well for VMS to get X/Open branding as a UNIX compatible OS.

          Then VMS Integrated POSIX was withdrawn. The tales about customers wanting vendor independence through open systems were just that - tales. What lots of customers really wanted was cheap to buy (and never mind the lifetime costs)."

          Of course a big driver of all that was the US Department of Defence, the organisation to whom a lot is owed for their mandating of open standards for defence equipment. On the software front it was POSIX; you couldn't sell to the military unless it supported POSIX or was written for it. [On the hardware side it was things like VME, and equipment is still available even today]. That forced vendors to support these standards, and now we all simply take it for granted.

          This has been genuinely useful. Code for, say, radar systems written around POSIX has been recompiled several times over the last few decades on newer hardware. Indeed some of the better equipment vendors have carried over the idea of API stability to their own specialised libraries, and this has done very well for them in the military equipment market.

          That was an absolute, inviolate requirement for a while, until the DoD relaxed a lot. For example desktop PCs in offices were never likely to have to support running a ship's radar processing, so a POSIX runtime in Windows became non-essential for DoD desktop sales. [And then they did Windows for Warships, but that's another story...]. I'm surprised the POSIX runtime survived in Windows as long as it did...

      3. TheVogon

        Re: It will have the same limitations

        ""Windows simply cannot do what Linux can do under the hood"

        Such as?

        "Windows doesn't need very much to be POSIX compliant, so they may well have added the missing bits."

        Windows is already fully POSIX compliant with SUA etc installed - and has been for many years.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It will have the same limitations

          "Such as?"

          For starters, directly interfacing to block devices from the shell. The 'everything is a file' concept opened my eyes when I got the hang of it and I never looked back to Windows after that.

          The only reason MS are doing this is to try and claw back some loyalty from all those who have jumped ship to Macs, like myself.

          I haven't tried Windows 10 for more than a few hours, but with my experience now I've noticed that for all versions prior Windows has been by far the least featured desktop OS out of the box compared to the alternatives at any given time. Those who don't use anything else will never realise this unfortunately. The only real thing that has kept Windows going over the years has been the momentum from continued dependency on vast numbers of third-party Win32 apps, plus Office. Now that everything is going web based and the world is waking up to that fact, we see other platforms begin to outsell Windows as they do today.

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: It will have the same limitations

            Most of those that don't use anything else don't actually give a shit about how featured the desktop OS is, because the desktop OS is just the way in to the app that they need to use to be productive.

            In fact I've been at my desk for 3.5 hours so far today, and spent about 2 minutes total time using the the desktop OS directly, either logging in and switching between apps. Even files that I've worked on have been plucked out of my "recents" list. But for some design hints, I actually might not know what desktop OS is running under these apps spread across three monitors.

          2. TheVogon

            Re: It will have the same limitations

            "For starters, directly interfacing to block devices from the shell"

            Yes it can. For instance https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/hh849882.aspx

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: It will have the same limitations

              @TheVogon - Um cool, it can write to a file. One would hope so really!

              Note that I said block devices, like writing a bitstream directly to a disk, partition, serial port or any other hardware device in the computer. If that's easily possible from a Windows shell of any sort I'm all ears. Not trolling, I'm genuinely interested as I haven't come across helpful on the topic elsewhere.

      4. nijam Silver badge

        Re: It will have the same limitations

        > VMS can do everything UNIX systems do under the hood. VMS was created as the main competitor to UNIX in the first place.

        Wrong twice (at least). VMS was a new DEC OS designed, hand-in-glove with the VAX hardware design, to encompass the features of DEC's earlier PDP-11 OSes (RSX-11, RSTS/E, etc...) at a time when DEC viewed Unix as a minority academic project. It's arguable whether it could do everything that Unix could, given that, at the time, Unix's most attractive feature ("core competency" if you prefer) was getting the f*** out of the user's way. Finally, as commentards have already mentioned, it is also arguable how much if anything Windows (of any version) was actually based on VMS.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It will have the same limitations

        okay, I'll bite.

        On *NIX its trivial to control order of process startup, on Windows, it's not the case.

        Windows is just not a production ready environment for fine grained control over applications and services that people on *NIX take for granted. If you bought into that ecosystem, you have my sympathy.

        I want you to run a named pipe server which starts prior to WinLogin.exe

        So that a CredentialsProvider can connect to it from WinLogin.exe

        Look at the windows boot process to see what an overengineered poorly implemented mess of an operating system, you are comparing to over 40 years of battle-hardened design principles, systemd not withstanding.

    2. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: It will have the same limitations

      Windows doesn't need very much to be POSIX compliant, so they may well have added the missing bits.

      - Sufficient to run, albeit not necessarily with decent performance.

  27. theloon

    30 years late - but hey

    What next? and RESTful API?

    ;)

  28. Bladeforce

    Wonder why...

    Microsoft is so desperate to get Linux running in house but never desperate enough to get their office suite running on Linux.

    I wonder why indeed....

    1. thondwe

      Re: Wonder why...

      A "version" of Office runs on Android/IOS, so just maybe you'll get your wish - just don't expect Full Fat office?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wonder why...

      "but never desperate enough to get their office suite running on Linux."

      Maybe because Linux on the desktop is even less popular than Windows Mobile?

  29. .@.
    Big Brother

    Wheels within wheels within wheels ...

    This reminds me a lot of the CoLinux project (which seems to have died off, last update 2014). But this time, it comes from Microsoft themselves. We do indeed live in interesting times. Does this mean you'd be able to run Microsoft SQL for Linux inside Windows? Or as someone else suggested, WINE inside Windows. Wheels within wheels ... :)

    For businesses, this allows you to have your cake and eat it. If someone ever manages to make a version of Apache that actually cooperates with HTTP.SYS, you can have your proprietary Windows software, AND your FLOSS software, all running on the same box and all talking to each other, no pesky virtualisation or separate servers needed. It's a brilliant idea, but I see one big danger ...

    Now that (one distribution of) Linux is part of Windows, what incentive does Microsoft have to provide boot keys for signed booting of standalone Linux for normal hardware? 'Why would you want that, we have Ubuntu available!' I hope that doesn't happen ... :(

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Wheels within wheels within wheels ...

      "This reminds me a lot of the CoLinux project (which seems to have died off, last update 2014)."

      And that update says they'd moved their stuff to SourceForge which must have been about the worst time to do that. Cause and effect?

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting development

    I remember Windows Services for Unix, and how terrible it was to use. For the stuff I use, it was next to useless.

    Cygwin isn't much better really. More compatible for sure, and we do use it, but it has its idiosyncrasies. There's a project coming up where we may even use this feature if it's available on a server edition of Windows, but more likely it'll be something under Cygwin.

  31. Fun Fun

    SystemD perspective

    So Microsoft is creeping closer to Linux. Keeping in mind their EEE -method of suffocating, I wonder, is there any way SystemD could be used as a tool to pave the way towards windows running on top of the Linux kernel, and alongside destroy Linux with incompatibility problems.

    I conceive Lennart P. is on Microsoft payroll.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Fun Fun - Re: SystemD perspective

      Yeap! SystemD gulps more and more of the user space and:

      1- Linux is being unified by eliminating the rest of the distros one by one

      2- RedHat/Fedora come with a new proprietary version of systemd (since they are the only contributors they can split it into a wink, wink "community" edition which will be left to die and a new proprietary one being actively developed and with new features added)

      3- RedHat (don't forget, they are a public corporation now) will shake hands with Microsoft who can run whatever it pleases on top of the Linux kernel without fear (à la Android)

      4- RedHat and Microsoft go together laughing at the bank leaving the FOSS burning carcass behind

      Say it ain't so!

  32. asdf

    Bring on the downvotes

    Great just what windows needs another spaghetti code base program increasing it's already huge attack surface(see Shellshock bug family). Easy way to tell if you got yourself a real UNIX is if it ships with ksh but not bash. Oh well Red Hat has already buried POSIX and took a dump on its grave so bring on the hairballs.

  33. Gob Smacked
    Coat

    April fools?

    I'd welcome this. Been a long time user of Cygwin. But April 1 is approaching...

  34. pointyhairmanager

    But it's not April 1 yet!

    I would suggest some hack at el Reg pressed the "publish" button a few days too early?

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm confused?

    Linux on windows by Microsoft

    Microsoft SQL server on Linux

    Is it ground hog day at el reg? Are you stuck on the 1st April?

    Though if office isn't released on Linux within the next 30 days I'll eat a trilby with some piccalilli.

  36. Sven Coenye
    Coat

    Bash Windows

    Don't we do enough of that here already?!

  37. g00se
    Linux

    Original?

    It is "basically real-time translation of Linux syscalls into Windows OS syscalls"

    There should be a name for that. How about ENIW? Geddit?

    1. Chika
      Pint

      Re: Original?

      Basic Equivalent Enumeration Runtime

      Linux Adopted Generation Environment Regime

      Anyone else?

  38. nilfs2
    Linux

    So...

    ...when is Microsoft going to make Windows tools work on Linux just like Canonical is doing with Linux tools? This is not a "win-win, two ways" deal, more like "win-win, Microsoft way" deal.

    This is like a relationship where one partner gives the keys of the apartment to the other, but the other refuses to do the same; Canonical should be banned from the Open Source community for doing such a stupid, selfish thing.

  39. raving angry loony

    Old?

    I'm pretty sure I used to use bash (or at least an sh-like command line shell) on Windows in the early 1990s. Used it and few other tools to automate updates, etc. for Windows 3 and 3.11.

    Glad Microsoft is finally catching up. Slowly.

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A couple of days later..and you would have had me.

    I'd actually thought of doing an April Fool on zdnet.co.uk stating that Windows had reversed backslash to just slash given its jump into Microsoft SQL on Linux i.e. the C:\Windows had become /dev/sda/Windows

    It wasn't far from the truth.

  41. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Should work well

    "Looks like it. Windows NT has always had the ability for multiple subsystems like this. That was one of the cool design features of NT back in the day. This was how it ran Win16 and OS/2 apps in the beginning after all. It was part of the original design work for NT3.1, but largely just got pi$$ed away when Ballmer decided they didn't want compatibility with anyone other than themselves in the naughts."

    I think rather than using an updated POSIX subsystem (or a new subsystem), this is trapping Linux syscalls and implementing them using equivalent Windows syscalls (and additional code as needed.) This should work pretty well actually.

    qemu's "qemu user" emulation simulates CPU and then maps syscalls (I've used this and it works reasonably well.) When I started using Linux, the kernel had several syscall mapping tables for several contemporary UNIXes to run their binaries (Linux for MIPS had SGI Irix support for instance, which from what I read at the time did work reasonably well.) nestedvm simulates a MIPS-I in java, traps syscalls and implements them with equivalent Java calls. This has to run crosscompiled binaries but also works surprisingly well.

    Interesting times indeed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Should work well

      Linux for MIPS had SGI Irix support for instance, which from what I read at the time did work reasonably well.

      I heard it was a partial mapping of Irix 5.x, and didn't support syscalls like mmap.

      A closer example to what Microsoft is doing is what *BSD has had for some time. I recall once using OpenBSD to run the Linux version of Half-Life Server.

    2. William Towle
      Thumb Up

      Re: Should work well

      > I think rather than using an updated POSIX subsystem (or a new subsystem), this is trapping Linux syscalls and implementing them using equivalent Windows syscalls (and additional code as needed.) This should work pretty well actually.

      I imagined a combination of both, given that enhancing the former would improve your ability to do the latter.

      Next stop ... low-level container support with minimal bloat, perhaps? Minimal bloat with future everything, even?

      > Interesting times indeed.

      Quite.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    This is just the start of *nix on Windows!

    MSFT will replace Cortana with 'Albert' who hopes to visit every 'Spoons in Britain, reminisces about seeking Hawkwind at Glastonbury and offers to 'gopher that for you'.

  43. Alan Potter 1

    Following in its father's footsteps

    As VMS was desperately trying to fight the onslaught of cheap-n-cheerful offerings like SunOS, it gained a POSIX subsystem and became "OpenVMS"

    Now Windows gains a Linux subsystem - will it become OpenWindows?

    And is Windows destined for the same fate as its father?

    1. John Miles 1

      Re: Following in its father's footsteps

      As one of a small number of people using Unix in the late 70's when VMS came out one wondered 'Why on earth didn't DEC make VMS like Unix' (rather than the clunky RSX11 extension it was). In the following years there were a number of 'Unix like wrappers' over VMS, which did not prosper.

      Eventually people realised that they want Unix and they should get real Unix - and Linux arrived to satisfy that need.

      Looks like Microsoft have been forced down the same road - will they end up like the once mighty DEC ?

      1. Down not across

        Re: Following in its father's footsteps

        As one of a small number of people using Unix in the late 70's when VMS came out one wondered 'Why on earth didn't DEC make VMS like Unix' (rather than the clunky RSX11 extension it was). In the following years there were a number of 'Unix like wrappers' over VMS, which did not prosper.

        But they didn't really make it like Unix. Let's face it fair number of people were happy with TWENEX (sorry...I mean TOPS-20) and actually turned to UNIX when DEC killed TOPS-20 off in favour of VMS.

        I'm not fussed, I like both and VMS turned out pretty well. I still prefer VMS clusters over most other attempts at clustering.

  44. NB

    So... Cygwin then...

    This isn't exactly new functionality.

    1. patrickstar

      Cygwin is just a hackish emulation layer over the Win32 API. With mixed results due to fundamental semantic differences.

      Not the same thing as a proper POSIX, Linux, etc. subsystem as I assume this is about - having that means they are just as real/"native" and part of the OS as Win32 is.

      It might be worth pointing out that while Win32 is now the dominant subsystem on Windows, it didn't even exist until quite some time (years) into the development of what was then called NT OS/2.

  45. Jagged

    Checks Date?

    Was this posted early? 1st of April is tomorrow :/

  46. Jagged

    I presume this is all about Docker?

    More freebies for Docker?

  47. phuzz Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Jokes aside, as a Windows admin who now also spends half their time administering Linux machines this could be pretty handy for me. I'm already starting to think of tasks that right now force me to fire up a VM, or use putty to ssh into a linux box, which I could kick off right from my desktop.

    Now, when can I get Powershell integration into bash?

    1. Chika

      Now, when can I get Powershell integration into bash?

      Now that's just evil! Share and Enjoy!

  48. NE-bot

    Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?

    Is anyone else thinking this is part of the drive to make containers a real thing on windows?

  49. leon clarke
    Linux

    A very interesting detail - the root fs is per-user

    The linux root fs is contained in a user directory, which presumably means each user gets their own. This may have all sorts of fun consequences, such as allowing the set of mount points to be different between different users, as is possible on plan 9.

    Of course I have no idea how Linux users relate to Windows users; if you do sudo adduser, will that create another Linux user in your own private root fs, or add a user to Windows?

    Anyway, there are a lot of devils in details about how the 2 systems interact, but it is possible that Windows 10 actually has useful features as an OS for running Ubuntu on which Linux lacks.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A very interesting detail - the root fs is per-user

      The windows model doesn't have the concept of "root".

      Users have attributes which make them root, rather than a fixed uid as Unix does.

      It's likely a kludge to work around this rather than anything more interesting.

      I love to hear the rationale for how you imagine windows could be more suitable for running Linux/Posix applications that Linux/BSD/*nix.

      I write tons of *nix code and without fail, running *nix code on windows require wrapping bits of Win32 to make it look like POSIX. Take select(2), runs nicely across BSD/Linux/OSX tops out at 64 descriptors on Windows. In short, windows sucks at running windows code, never mind POSIX code.

      1. .@.

        Re: A very interesting detail - the root fs is per-user

        The windows model doesn't have the concept of "root".

        Users have attributes which make them root, rather than a fixed uid as Unix does.

        In a way, it does. It is just hard to get to. It's called NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. That's your root equivalent. You can't directly access it but you can get to it by various means (PSEXEC -S being one method).

        The Administrator account also has a fixed relative ID (-500, if I recall correctly).

        However, in general usage you are correct. Administrator access is all via group membership (relative ID 512 IIRC for local admin access).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: A very interesting detail - the root fs is per-user

          Thank you, I did not know this, upvoted.

  50. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    What a great idea!

    Now you'll be able to run MS SQL for Linux on Windows!

    Oh, wait ..

  51. picturethis
    Stop

    Does this mean multi-user support on console?

    Even taking into account that I will never, NEVER use Windows 10, does MS really get it, or is this just "window" dressing, so to speak?

    The real test would be to open 2 bash shells under windows and su <user1> in one and su <user2> in the other. If this doesn't work, then I would have no use for this.

    The other thing is I see a bunch (and a big bunch at that) of script compatibility problems... beginning with drive designators. I know cygwin and others have solved this (for the most part), but we're talking MS here and MS employees have shown in the past a remarkable abiility to re-invent the wheel in MS's own image and a slightly distorted one at that..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      But I've been bashing on Windows for years!

      I'll get me coat..

    2. patrickstar

      Re: Does this mean multi-user support on console?

      What are you asking for exactly - a text mode console with VTY support? A lot of non-Linux POSIX systems don't have that, including many of the classic UNIX systems (eg. Solaris/SPARC).

      I'm assuming here you aren't unaware of the RUNAS command or any of the other ways of starting two command lines/shells/applications as different users on Windows and the question simply is "can I run two interactive things outside of the GUI and switch between them".

  52. breakfast Silver badge

    Gallo

    The name is interesting- as Gallo are a wine maker and this seems to be related to WINE. In fact is it the opposite of WINE?

  53. WB8DXX

    cygwin

    How will this differ from using cygwin?

  54. gatesy

    Ubuntu - One of the worst Linux distros.

    Windows 10 - One of the worst OS's.

    A perfect match!

  55. dshan

    Bashing Windows

    So wake me when they run a real man's shell like cshell or korn. Linux/Unix is all about being able to write indecipherable scripts in any of 27 different shells, until Windows can do that they're just playing at providing "choice".

    And when are they going to start implementing the 49 different desktops and 36 different file managers any self-respecting OS needs if it's to be taken seriously by overweight white men with beards? And what about filesystems, Windows has like what, two or three? Friggin' jokers.

    1. Col_Panek

      Re: Bashing Windows

      You'd like Henry Ford...."any color you want, as long as it's black"

  56. martinusher Silver badge

    Cygwin?

    If you have Cygwin installed on your PC then you can already use bash commands from the DOS prompt. Its better to use the actual shell, though, because Microsoft decided years ago to use the backslash escape character as a path separator.....messy.....

    As for Windows and POSIX Windows used to hide a 'proper' OS until recently -- POSIX compilant, a very useful capability. Then it went away, replaced by a host of MSFT specific BS. If its returned, great, because without it Windows is even less usable.

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