Don’t rub your eyes: you’re not misreading the headline.
Microsoft and Canonical are working together to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10 desktops, according to a reliable rumour out of ZDNet.
In what is likely an early contender for Linux scoop of the year, venerable tech journalist Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols says we’ll “soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10.”
Not that anyone should recoil in terror; we’re not staring down some future Frankenstein merger of the two operating systems, as SJVN himself notes once the meat of the headline has been uncomfortably digested: this is aimed at developers, not home users.
Still, Microsoft and Canonical will go further than many would think; Ubuntu isn’t coming to Windows as traditional virtual machine, but running on top of it – think Wine, but for Windows (Line? lol):
Microsoft and Canonical will not …be integrating Linux per se into Windows. Instead, Ubuntu will primarily run on a foundation of native Windows libraries.
Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols
It’s already possible to use some familiar Linux command line tools in Windows, including bash, through projects like Cygwin. It’s that sort of approach this endeavour will tack to, but taking it much further than before:
The focus will be on Bash and other CLI tools, such as make, gawk and grep. Canonical and Microsoft are doing this because Ubuntu on Windows’ target audience is developers, not desktop users.
Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols
Given that this work is set to be unveiled at a developer conference full of, y’know, developers, it makes sense that the point, purpose and potential benefit of this will be of a developer bent.
Mom and Pop users who’ve just managed to adapt to a rejigged Start Menu and the lack of Internet Explorer won’t now find themselves assailed by a Linux bash interloper.
More details on this—unexpected—integration (and the possibilities it will bring to developers) are set to be announced at the Microsoft BUILD conference, being held March 30 – April 1, 2016 in San Francisco, CA.
The opening keynote of Build 2016 is being streamed live online for viewing pleasure — assuming you’re reading this before it happens, and not after…
How to Process this Information?
First things first: breathe through your nose and out through your mouth. Keep calm and use Linux; this partnership is not a portent of impending apocalypse for the future of Linux as we’ve come to know it.
Canonical and Microsoft are hardly strangers, having worked together closely for several years on cloud and server.
Plus, Microsoft is embracing Linux as a development platform. It released its Visual Studio Code for Linux last year, and more recently acquired Xamarin, a company founded by the creators of Mono, the one-time controversial open-source .NET implementation.
So I say, lower any well-worn pitchforks, save the sharpie ink by not daubing ‘Embrace, Extend, Extinguish’ on some old cardboard, and maintain perspective: this is not the beginning of the end of the beginning of the end of Linux.
—based on what we know so far, that is.
Fact is, board strokes aside, we know little on about what’s planned. It may be a few simple UNIX command line tools are available in Microsoft’s command prompt tool, or it could open the flood gates to Linux binaries and apps running natively on Windows.
Either way, we’ll find out the full details soon!