Ubuntu on Windows – what does this mean

Seeing the recent set of announcements – starting from Office for iPad through buying up Accompli, Sunrise, Xamarin, etc., also announcing Microsoft SQL Server for Linux – it came less of a surprise that Microsoft is bringing Ubuntu on Windows – however comparing it to the Microsoft of the past (Steve Ballmer once considered Linux users a bunch of communist thieves and saw open source itself as a cancer) it still comes as a big surprise. We still lack some of the details there, but we are seeing various Linux subsystems integrated into Windows (does it mean that Bash would be coming for Windows? I think yes). So we are not talking about a Windows-Ubuntu hybrid OS. Neither we talk about a virtual machine. However, as a result of this, Ubuntu would be able to run on native Windows libraries, using the subsystems, and gives access to Ubuntu from within Windows without the overhead of a VM/dual-boot setup.

What else I expect? Some excitement around Ubuntu LXD and using together with containers and Windows would be nice.

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