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Ubuntu (CLI) now available on the Windows Store

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Deozaan:
You can now download the Ubuntu command-line interface (AKA shell) from the Windows Store, with some caveats.

The store listing appears, but it says it's only compatible with Windows 10 version 16190.0 or higher, which is only available as part of the Windows Insiders program at the moment.

Even still. This is an interesting and useful development for anyone who ever fired up a VM just to run a few Linux commands.

wraith808:
I hope they don't get rid of the current way of doing it without Windows Store involved.  I have software that I've purchased from the store, and I never use it, because I hate having to go into the stupid interface of the start menu in order to get to them.

Ath:
I can't fully comprehend why I should want to have an ubuntu in my Windows? If I want that now I'll use Cygwin, on any Windows release I like, not just that insider preview. If I want a full Linux, I'll run a full, official, distro in a local or hosted VM, or on bare hardware. And using shared data from both Windows and Linux is as 'easy' as using shared storage. So, can someone please enlighten me?

wraith808:
I can't fully comprehend why I should want to have an ubuntu in my Windows? If I want that now I'll use Cygwin, on any Windows release I like, not just that insider preview. If I want a full Linux, I'll run a full, official, distro in a local or hosted VM, or on bare hardware. And using shared data from both Windows and Linux is as 'easy' as using shared storage. So, can someone please enlighten me?
-Ath (July 11, 2017, 02:55 PM)
--- End quote ---

There's a fundamental difference:

In Cygwin you have to re-compile the Linux program from source in order for them to work with the integration layer that Cygwin provides.

That's fine, as long as you only want to use open source projects and don't mind compiling them yourself, or if they're available in cygwin's repository.

With the new bash/Ubuntu integration, actual Linux executables will be able to run directly in Windows without the need to recompile anything, and with access to Ubuntu's humongous repository as well as third party repositories.  Now that I've gotten into firmware level programming, it's very welcome to be able to use the linux toolchain to build a linux executable rather than cygwin's toolchain which builds windows executables.

Explained better here: http://hackaday.com/2016/03/30/windows-and-ubuntu-cygwin-can-suck-it/

Ath:
But what's wrong with building software on a real Linux system?

I'm not building software on/for/with Cygwin, just using it as a bash-like scripting environment to avoid the horrible cmd scripting, and re-use it on a real Linux box, if I want it. Powershell isn't going to fix that in the near future, and I'm not fixing the PS-blindness in my head for a while either :o

Most of the stuff I build is either Java or C# (also on Linux, see SedTester ;)) and a really small portion of C/C++ (next to a sleuth of other languages like Cobol, Delphi and whatnot), and a lot of that can also run on some taste of *ux OS.

The current offering is still quite restrictive, and keeps being restricted to insider previews it seems, I recall it was available a year ago, before the 1607 release of Win 10? Or was that another incarnation/beta. (MS policy: Buy our next version!) ?

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