One of the biggest surprises at Microsoft’s Build developer conference last year was that the company was building support for the Bash shell on top of an Ubuntu-based Linux subsystem right into Windows 10. This feature launched widely with the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary update and over the course of the last few months, it built upon this project with frequent updates, but it remained Ubuntu-based. As the company announced today, though, it’s now also adding support for OpenSuSE and Fedora, too.
Microsoft really wants Windows to be the platform of choice for developers. They also showed off the Xamarin Live Player, allowing you to deply iOS applications on iOS devices using Visual Studio.
Edited 2017-05-11 22:28 UTC
Give it time. It’s a ridiculous policy from Apple.
What specifically does it mean that it supports different distros?
That, instead of installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, it installs Fedora or OpenSUSE?
So, instead of using apt to update your packages, you’d use yum/dnf or zypper
[delorted]
Edited 2017-05-12 13:52 UTC
I’d imagine it means they have tweaked it so that it runs fine with the slightly different Glibc, binutils, GCC and etc. versions found in SuSE and Fedora. Improved the syscall layer, accounted for more edge cases etc. It would just mean you are able to use one of these userlands instead of the Ubuntu one if you so choose.
No, it means they’ve officially sanctioned it and uploaded custom versions of Fedora and openSUSE. Both of them, as well as Gentoo, Arch, classic Debian, and even Slackware and Buildroot-based stuff have run fine on this (within Microsoft’s definition of fine for Ubuntu) since the start. The only difference now is that you don’t have to bend over backwards to get Fedora or openSUSE running in it.
What do you mean by ‘custom’ versions? Like ‘MS Fedora’? And if so, what are the chances they’re actually going to keep these things updated?
Edited 2017-05-12 22:02 UTC
Not custom versions, actually.
Updates are pulled directly from Ubuntu’s repos – the exact same .deb files a regular Ubuntu user does.
Custom versions in that they don’t have certain things that aren’t needed when running in a container (which is what WSL is) but are installed anyway in the default installation.
I’m dubious about them keeping things up to date, but in theory you might be able to get Fedora Rawhide or openSUSE Tumbleweed running under WSL, and then you just find a way to disable the store updates for it and keep it completely up-to-date yourself.
Custom spins, to use the Fedora terminology.
Same principle as things like installing Ubuntu Server or Kubuntu or Xubuntu or Lubuntu or Edubuntu instead of the main Ubuntu distro.
There was an interview with Rich Turner (mr. Bash from Microsoft) that goes into everything you might want to know in an easy to understand way about 3 weeks ago: https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/514?autostart=false. His part is from hour 1 to hour 2.
They also discussed that they partnered with Canonical to get things done quickly and that bugfixing and feature requests “accidentally” started to make other distro’s be supported as well.
TLDR: basically they did what Wine (minus GUI-support) does in about a year because it is what developers requested.
Direct link to the start of that interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiekJGfzsHM&t=3620
To The Linux Subsystem People at Microsoft.
They want Windows 10 to be the developers’ platform of choice… but until I can initiate a compile of a large application, walk away, and be damned sure I’ll come back to the results of that compilation (and not the login screen from an update/restart cycle) they can forget it. I really am getting sick of that. Sure I have the luxury of putting an end to it with Windows 10 Enterprise at work. Outside of work though, I’m not so lucky using my own machines. I guess Microsoft says we shouldn’t be developing large projects anymore.
What applications are taking you a month to build? Because, there’s a setting, easy enough to find, that defers updates for up to 30 days.
Reboots after updates can be deferred for, what, a week? Two weeks?
Regardless, it’s really easy to not have your work interrupted.
Edited 2017-05-12 23:04 UTC
I think the problem is “Update will be applied in … seconds unless you defer it” popping up while AFK.
I don’t see how deferring updates for a month would help. What’s necessary is a way to snap updates to specific time windows.
…which is exactly what Active hours is for: “Set active hours to let us know when you typically use this device. We won’t automatically restart it during active hours, and we won’t restart without checking if you’re using it.”
I guess Windows already provided everything that you asked for and already was “the ultimate development platform”
I’m not the guy you were originally talking to and I haven’t used Windows for anything more significant than my quarantined retro-gaming subnet since I got fed up with Windows XP in 2004.
The only reason I consider myself knowledgeable enough to chime in is because I have gamer brothers who still run Windows. (Though they’re planning to switch to Linux once Windows 7 is no longer a viable option, with one of them already spending more time on the Linux side of his dual-boot.)
Edited 2017-05-16 20:34 UTC