How to run Linux desktop apps on Windows

If Win-bash is aimed at developers, what does does Win-bash provide over Cygwin? Performance? For what purpose?

I'm not sure I understand the hoopla. I haven't run Windows in long long time, but when I did -- I remember being able to write and compile code with gcc... all I needed to do was make sure I had cygwin1.dll and include the dll in anything I distributed.

I'm sure if I look hard enough, I could find a Win95 screenshot with xeyes running.

Besides, if you write an application in something easy, fun, and old like tcl/tk things mostly just work between platforms... sometimes ugly - but functional - and that's what I care about for my purposes.

The thing I found most interesting in the article was this line; "Since Ubuntu on WSL automatically runs as root, you don't need to add sudo to the command for it to run."

There are herds of Lemmings over there in the Windows world. If Microsoft hints that something is "the next big thing" then there are automatically multitudes of people ready to jump off the next MS cliff.

Already we see ways that the implementation is being crippled. The beauty of the Linux priv mechanism is evidently being reduced so that it matches the Windows "least common denominator". Pretty soon MS will find that without protections there will be viruses in MS Linux and, voila, a new anti-virus market will be created. Microsoft can then say "see, Linux is just as virus prone as our Windows product".

If this wasn't so sick I would be laughing.

Ubuntu is for whatever reason being used as a "filler" for containers these days.

Thus what this brings over cygwin is that you can fire up the terminal, apt-get directly from the Ubuntu repository, and start "hacking" away at whatever grand "app" you have envisioned.

@750:

Ahh... containers.

OK.

So... it's an Azure developer selling point.

> So... it's an Azure developer selling point.

Microsoft has made no secret of that.

They are doing this so the brain dead corporations can keep their malware infected windows desktops so they can have all the back doors on their employees desktop.

Otherwise they would actually have to manage their employees or actually (GASP!) trust their employees.

People are realizing they don't need windows any more and corporations have a conundrum.

Yep, any time MS do something "good" vs Linux you can assume there is an "on Azure" subtext to it. Everywhere else Linux is still the devil incarnate as far as MS is concerned (because there they can't monetize it).

BTW, i didn't fully digest the story beforehand. But now i find myself wondering how much flexibility will be lost once Wayland supplants X11.

You see something similar over at Android, where you can use a chroot "app" and a X-on-SDL app to basically run desktop Linux on top of Android.

But with Wayland being hog tied to OpenGL, and therefore demanding direct access to the underlying hardware, i sense a massive conflict growing.

> Yep, any time MS do something "good" vs Linux you can assume there is an "on Azure" subtext to it.

As Christine Hall says: “When I say I love chicken, that’s not a good thing for chickens.”

Technically, it's not a container per se, nor is it virtualized. The subsystem being used is more of a compatibility layer (think WINE on Linux, BSD, etc...). This is Microsoft's attempt to cut into Apple hardware sales as plenty of developers write on Macs due to the availability of the Bash shell along with other Unix-style utilities. It's so developers don't have to use Cygwin, virtualization software, etc for accessing remote servers that run Linux, etc. This would allow certain binaries to run without being recompiled.

Now whether it may be of use to everybody is up for debate, but that's what I gathered.