
New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store - runesoerensen
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/11/new-distros-coming-to-bashwsl-via-windows-store/
======
komali2
Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just
running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to
just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the
returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep
blue.

Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a
terminal on a mac or a nicely configured ubuntu terminal.

~~~
petetnt
I use zsh with Hyper ([https://hyper.is/](https://hyper.is/)) using "atom-
dark" ([https://www.npmjs.com/package/hyperterm-atom-
dark](https://www.npmjs.com/package/hyperterm-atom-dark)) theme and it's quite
decent sans the hideous text background colors:

[http://i.imgur.com/l4Oi2up.png](http://i.imgur.com/l4Oi2up.png)

~~~
pingec
Woah it uses 250MB of space when installed, this really surprised me, even for
a js app. I like the terminal though.

------
Mister_Snuggles
The primary reason I even looked at a Mac, way back in the MacOS 10.2 days,
was because there is a Unix underneath the pretty interface. I bought my first
Mac and never looked back.

Stuff like this is making me look at Windows machines again.

~~~
corysama
I'm betting this is the real end-goal of WSL. MacBooks were once expensive,
but high-quality, grab-and-go unixy development machines. Now, they're mostly
just expensive.

When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-
and-go unixy dev machine. It'll probably be easier and more reliable than
installing Ubuntu directly! At that point, web and server devs will migrate en
mass from Mac to Windows.

Then they will discover Clang for Windows and that dev tools for Windows in
general are actually pretty nice. And, since they are already running their
server code on WSL, it becomes much easier and more interesting to get it
running in Windows directly. Bang! Huge uptick in open-source server
development on Windows.

~~~
posguy
Huh? MacBooks are unlikely to disappear, companies love how slowly they
depreciate (and are easily sellable), while it is by far the most optimized
unix system out there. Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing
more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts
to rectify this.

Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a
Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere? The tooling is third rate, the WSL
(which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own
admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current
state.

I just don't see why you'd choose a platform that does pants on head retarded
shit like making wget open IE 11 rather than downloading the file at a given
URL. This isn't rocket science here, I know all the MS people across the water
in Redmond & Bellevue can fix this without much work, but apparently worse
than non-existent is the best MS can do.

~~~
riquito
> Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows
> or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

The repairable/upgradable thinkpads are probably better in this regard

~~~
derefr
Why would you want to repair/upgrade (and so pay the salaries of hardware IT
staff) when you could get business-leased commodity computers with scheduled
"upgrades" by return-for-replacement, for the same cost?

~~~
monkmartinez
I want to repair and upgrade my computer. I suspect there are many people like
me that would like the option to upgrade components on my laptop as well. I
used to be able to do that with a MBP (2012-ish), now I can't...

The WSL is compelling and to be honest, one of the main reasons I switched to
OSX was the command line. Now, I can have a command line and not have to run
VM's for 3d stuff, games, and more. Pretty compelling...

~~~
derefr
That's a personal desire. The context here was corporate buying and
depreciation. Why would a _corporation_ want to repair its computers, any more
than it would want to repair e.g. its office furniture?

~~~
quickben
Because swapping a burned out power supply is 5min job while waiting for a
[company] technician to bring that replacement computer can be a day+ several
others to get the original back?

It boils down to how much the downtime costs. "Do it all in the Cloud" simply
doesn't apply across the board.

~~~
derefr
Why wait? In most companies I've worked at (a few startups; IBM), if your
computer isn't working, they take your current one and then hand you a spare
out of a pile they have in a closet. The original gets sent for replacement,
but you're already at your desk re-doing the documented onboarding process on
the new machine.

------
arca_vorago
If anyone trusts microsoft right now after the past year or two worth of
things we've learned I highly doubt their dedication to a free and open source
vision of the future.

I actually have a hard time beleiving some of these comments are even
organic... (web and server devs are going to migrate to windows!). What world
do these people live in? It's like people live in fantasy land and have
forgotten the 90's truth of MS.

Embrace. Extend.

 _Extinguish_.

RMS was and is right. Either the user controls the program or the program
controls the user. Microsoft has shown they are only interested in controlling
the user, and not in giving the user control.

I say this as a senior sysadmin who has dealt with every aspect of their OS's
in production for a long time, and I'm fed up with it. Honestly I think
Win8/10 was the final straw for me, for what it's worth.

I've since moved completely off windows to gnu+linux, despite the rough points
such as gaming. It's been a freeing experience I wish more people had the guts
to be a part of. I'm also heavily considering refusing to support windows
systems in general, something I think we should all consider.

~~~
Lazare
Isn't it a bit ironic, given your concern with 90s-era Microsoft practices...

...that your comment is basically just FUD?

I'm not saying your wrong! But your comment is, clearly, intended to make
people feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Microsoft, the Windows
platform, what MS may choose to do in the future, etc. And you don't have any
particular factual claims to back it up (classic FUD tactic), just an appeal
to authority ("as a senior sysadmin") and some handwaving about events that
took place long before most of us were actually in the workforce. I mean, I'm
the oldest dev on my team, and I was a teenager when the Halloween Documents
were published.

We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn't abuse their
power if they could, but you know...what power? And how does WSL provide them
an opening? At this point, I'm much, much more concerned about Facebook than
Microsoft, and I think the onus is on MS critics to explain exactly what they
fear. And no, chanting "embrace, extend, extinguish" is not an explanation.

~~~
beagle3
Some of OPs comment is hyperbolic, but I think

> Microsoft has shown they are only interested in controlling the user, and
> not in giving the user control.

Is very well supported by their recent we'll-do-everything-possible to get
Win10 on people's machines, force upgrades, forced (and ultra comprehensive,
but mostly secretive until a month ago) telemetry.

> We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn't abuse their
> power if they could, but you know...what power?

They have spent the last year and a half abusing their power of Win7 updates
to force people into Win10, which takes away the power that people had to
resist the Win7->Win10 upgrade. If you missed that, we truly do live in
different worlds.

~~~
koffiezet
I agree that the telemetry is very very dodgy. However, on the forced update
front, I have to side with Microsoft here.

From their POV, regular and forced windows updates are the best way to ensure
we don't have XP-like situations, where people just keep running out-dated
software with horribly exploitable browsers. This creates a maintenance
nightmare for software developers. Could you imagine running a 16 year old
piece of software, refusing to upgrade to a newer-one but still expect
security updates? And Windows 7 is well on it's way to become the 'next XP',
it's almost 8 years old now...

~~~
beagle3
I might agree with you from a "public goods" perspective (but only if win10
had user control comparable to win7, and it doesn't)

However, Microsoft is in it for themselves. Not for the public good, not for
the people who want to keep running their old system, not for the developers.
Furthermore, whoever bought win7 was guaranteed support until 2020.

Your siding with Microsoft in 2016 is siding with "we already got the
customer's money, now let's try to do the easiest thing for us rather than
keep our promises; use dark patterns if we need, because it is easier to get
forgiveness than permission". I am sorry, but I disagree with this attitude.

------
ajross
Would be nicer if they would just document the bootstrap process for
initializing a WSL "container" (or whatever their term is) so the community
can do this on its own.

~~~
zadjii
Stay tuned - This is just the beginning ;)

------
Sephr
Some of these distros come with browsers and JavaScript engines that can run
in the console (such as node.js, w3m, lynx, etc.).

Third-party HTML and JavaScript engines are banned in the Windows Store, so
can someone explain how this uneven enforcement of their own rules is ethical?

Consider this quote[1] from a Microsoft spokesperson on May 9:

> Windows Store apps that browse the web must use HTML and JavaScript engines
> provided by the Windows Platform. All Windows Store content is certified by
> Microsoft to help ensure a quality experience and keep your devices safer.

[1]: [http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-wont-be-
allowed-o...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-wont-be-allowed-on-
windows-10-s/)

~~~
flukus
Windows store or UWP apps is the gimped version of windows that no one cares
about. It's about as successful as the windows phone OS that started it.

------
gigatexal
They can do this all they want but no amount of linux in windows is going to
get me back to using it on my main home desktop. I have no choice at work (an
all MS stack: c# and sqlserver) but yeah I'll just stick to VMs, docker, or
linux on bare-metal. I get the latest kernels, the ability to run anything in
the _nix ecosystem without arbitrary_ drawbacks.

*Arbitrary is harsh, they did a lot of heavy lifting to get Windows, but it's still early and still rough imo.

~~~
electricEmu
I didn't realize staying on the bleeding edge kernels was such a performance
boost, that it's worth shying away from an entire ecosystem. It sounds a bit
elitist.

Alternatively, when I use Windows now I'll get both PowerShell and a full Unix
environment. For my development work so far, none of those arbitrary drawbacks
have stopped WSFL from being a champ. On the plus side, I don't constantly
have to edit configuration files after every update because my wireless
card/window manager/etc broke.

~~~
mysterydip
For me, it's the opposite: I don't want to be on the bleeding edge of forced
windows updates, so I'll run a linux system and VM an older-but-still-
compatible windows system where I can keep the environment stable without
worrying about security updates (due to it being in a sandbox). I realize this
doesn't fit everyone's use case, but wanted to offer an additional
perspective.

------
electrotype
The problem with WSL is that it's young so some integrations are still not
perfect.

For example, the integration with VSCode :

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25033](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25033)

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/24967](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/24967)

But both teams, WSL and VSCode, are very, very responsive. I'm pretty sure in
a couple of months everything will be fine.

~~~
tejinderss
Same reason why I am not making the switch. Whenever I have good integration
of wsl python interpreter running in vscode, I will be a happy person

~~~
int_19h
Not VSCode, but...

[https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/pull/2500](https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/pull/2500)

------
willtim
I want Nix and Nixpkgs. A genuinely innovative and different package manager /
distro alternative.

~~~
robto
Apparently this already works really well:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/64xyd7/nix_package_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/64xyd7/nix_package_manager_works_flawlessly_in_windows/)

------
sidcool
I missed the Windows 10 free upgrade and now regretting it.

~~~
tdb7893
I really like most of windows 10. My main complaint is the start menu, I have
yet to figure out how I'm supposed to use it

~~~
monocasa
I use it the same way I use Spotlight on mac and gnome-do on Ubuntu. I press a
key-combo and it gives me a prompt to start typing a few characters that'll
probably take me to what I'm looking for.

------
discreditable
Can't wait for Arch Linux!

~~~
Semaphor
Arch works fine, the wsl subreddit
([https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/](https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/))
has a guide how to install it manually.

~~~
oridecon
What a nice name for a subreddit

~~~
JadeNB
It's interesting to see how your mind starts chunking it into almost-words if
your eye runs into the middle of it while scanning the page.

------
shmerl
Is there some clear benefit of using it instead of normal VM or running Linux
directly?

~~~
Mahn
Interoperability is one: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/commandline/wsl/interop](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/commandline/wsl/interop)

I also appreciate the fact that it "boots" instantly (i.e. you don't have to
turn it on or off like VM) and that it works out of the box with every up-to-
date W10 computer (great if you need to get something done on a computer that
is not your own).

------
krautsourced
Does the new update fix it working with Windows Firewall? So far it was all or
nothing, you could not block any processes seperately that were running within
the subsystem. I assume that has not changed?

------
tjpnz
I still find it funny that people claim that they code on a Mac because it's
flavor of Unix is somehow close to Linux. There's an ocean of differences
between the two and I'm getting tired of people who perpetuate the false sense
of security that because they're coding on macOS that they'll be fine when
they deploy to a Linux environment. WSL is starting to look like the better
option for those who for whatever reason can't develop for Linux in a Linux
environment.

------
Scarbutt
a bit off-topic, are there cheaper ways to buy a windows 10 license than
directly from microsoft for $200? (I'm not a student).

~~~
ac29
Win 10 Home is only $110 from Newegg or Amazon, and less if you get the "OEM"
version. I forget the restrictions on the OEM version, but I think its
intended for people building systems and reselling them -- I don't think
anything stops you from using it on your own system, its just technically in
violation of the licence.

~~~
rl3
Windows 10 Home doesn't include the Group Policy Editor though, so if you buy
that you're basically stuck having all manner of things shoved down your
throat.

While the Pro version won't necessarily save you entirely from this, it goes a
long way towards giving the user more freedom (at additional cost, of course).

------
j_m_b
As much as I wish this could be compared to what Apple did with MacOS, it's
not an apt comparison. Microsoft is essentially bolting on a Linux distro
whereas Apple rebuilt MacOS from the ground-up using NeXTSTEP. What Microsoft
is doing is more akin to something like Cygwin, except Microsoft is developing
it and you can choose your distro. You might have better integration between
Windows and Linux, but it's hardly a rethink. I would really like to see a
commercial grade UNIX alternative to Mac brought to us by Microsoft, but it
doesn't appear they are headed in that direction.

------
ChuckMcM
I wonder if package maintainers will be able to use this as a way to test
their packages on multiple distributions from a single test system. That would
be pretty cool.

I continue to be impressed with the progress the WSL team has made. The usable
open source development environment on top of a kernel that can correctly
drive all the various peripheral in the box is so very useful to me.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's nothing you can't already do with VMs, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually it is different. The difference might not matter in some cases, and
in other cases it will.

Running on a VM means running on emulated devices, running in a Userland host
means running on native devices. WSL is to windows as Wine is to Linux.

A really trivial example is the buffer cache. On a Linux kernel it will take
big chunks of memory to buffer disk blocks that it has read and dirtied. When
run in a VM it continues to have that behavior so for a given disk you have
two sets of disk caches, one in the VM and one in the host kernel. Twice the
cache with half the management smarts.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm not arguing that VMs vs API compatibility layers aren't different, but
that the specific testbed case you'd mentioned of emulations on a single host
is nothing novel.

A compatabilty layer generally takes away the kernel's role. Is that the case
here?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Generally packages are concerned about interactions in 'user land' and the
package manager of the distro. By not carrying around multiple copies of the
kernel and its internal data structures this compatibility layer provides a
better solution (in terms of resource utilization) for working with several
different distributions on a single system than the VM approach does.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sure, but _that_ is something you can already do in a chroot jail.

------
kej
You can do a lot of this already with this tool [1] that uses the images on
Docker Hub to replace the contents of the lxss folder. It's a little clunky
but worked well enough for my limited needs.

[1] [https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-
Switcher](https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher)

------
2bitencryption
how does this handle SELinux on Fedora? Is SELinux below the userland, so it
doesn't factor in at all?

~~~
sp332
Right, the WSL still uses the Windows kernel, so anything at that level
(filesystem permissions etc) will be handled either by the kernel or by the
"pico provider" syscall translators.

------
znedw
Fingers crossed for FUSE support soon, sorely needed IMO.

------
godmodus
Hope for fixes for stuff like npm, too.

~~~
orf
Fixes for what, specifically?

~~~
mcdirty
I initially had problems with max character length for paths. When npm
installed dependencies really deep down, Windows became unable to move or
delete such files. I think it's been fixed with Yarn's flat dependency
structure, which I think npm has also gone or is going to in the near future.

~~~
zadjii
Wait, is that for the Windows npm or the linux npm running on WSL? I don't
believe the second would have ever had that problem

------
eriknstr
Someone on /r/linux said, and I agree, "it's like putting sugar in your cup
full of piss".

------
Thev00d00
Im only interested in Gentoo!

------
smacktoward
Microsoft is _so_ frustrating.

On the one hand, they really seem earnest about wanting to make Windows 10
appealing to people like me who fled Windows for Unix-alike systems long ago.
And steps like this show that they're not just addressing that at a shallow
level, but are willing to dig deep to make it happen, which is sincerely
encouraging.

But then on the _other_ hand, they insist on loading Windows 10 up with
privacy invasions you can't disable and ads in deeply inappropriate places
like Windows Explorer, which is just a huge buzz-kill for the exact type of
person who the other stuff is so clearly meant to appeal to. Which gives the
whole effort a real Keystone Kops aspect.

It feels like there's different groups inside MS that are working from
fundamentally incompatible premises, and Nadella either isn't willing or isn't
able to wrangle them into all pulling in the same direction. I guess it's an
improvement over the Microsoft of old to see the company's basic orientation
go from "competent evil" to "incompetent good," but when you consider how few
good things there are in the universe it's always sad to see a potential new
one kneecapping itself.

~~~
nbevans
I'm not saying it's not true but I am yet to see any advertisement in my
Windows 10 anywhere... even Explorer! Anyone else?

~~~
jcrawfordor
I think people have a bit of a popular misconception about the Explorer
advertising thing. What's happening is that MS is adding a banner to Explorer
advertising paid OneDrive subscriptions.

I totally agree that it's massively inappropriate, but I do think that most
people are imagining third-party advertising which is not what's happening - a
lot of people might not consider the current situation to be an "ad"
necessarily since it is pushing a subscription for OneDrive, a Microsoft
product that you already have installed. It's more of an in-app purchase kind
of offer.

~~~
Karunamon
I don't particular care _who_ is trying to sell me shit in the file manager, I
care that _shit is being sold in the file manager_.

In an operating system I paid $100 for. Unacceptable.

~~~
Rusky
The shit being sold in the file manager is... space in the cloud for your
files. Which is managed by the file manager.

~~~
Karunamon
Which I already paid for as part of the operating system. If they want to
advertise to me, they can give me my money back.

------
akacase
why do people support this company still? sorry to be that guy, but i will
never use a product from them after the jwz fiasco. and no, new leadership
doesn't make up for decades of behavior.

~~~
devrandomguy
What is jwz?

~~~
akacase
[https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html](https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html)

~~~
JadeNB
It's not clear if it's the intended result, but that link (for me, and quite
unexpectedly) redirects to an Imgur picture of a testicle in a teacup, which
is a little funny but which one might not intend to display.

~~~
cthalupa
It seems to be a redirect based on the referring URL. Copy and paste it to get
to the actual site

------
math0ne
I'm super excited about this but the windows store is cancer :(

