In the Build of 2016 Microsoft surprised many with an unexpected announcement and that supposed perhaps the beginning of a romance through the ages: Linux working within Windows thanks to the arrival of the bash console to Windows 10.
This initiative has been evolving and has become what Microsoft calls the Windows Subsystem for Linux or WSL. An environment that looks and behaves exactly like Linux and allows to run in Windows 10 all the code written for Linux, GNU tools and others, without the need for virtual machines.
But Microsoft has not stopped there. Romance lives its best moment today. During the Build 2017 the most recent and novel announcement is the arrival of Ubuntu to the Windows Store. This makes it even easier for developers to install the necessary tools to run Linux and Windows applications side by side.
The Redmond are not working only with Canonical and Ubuntu. Another of yesterday’s announcements includes collaborations with Fedora and Suseto bring their distributions to Windows Susbsystem for Linux, and these will also eventually reach the Store.
All this will allow to run all the tools and utilities of the three distributions natively in Windows 10 .
“If you build it, they will come”
Are you a programmer and do you use Linux? At Microsoft they want you to move to Windows 10 . Microsoft is in a constant campaign to attract developers to its platform. Rich Turner, Director of Senior Program at Microsoft and in charge of giving life to Bash and Linux on Windows, has said it before: ” whatever you normally have in Linux to build your apps, please try to do it in Windows 10″.
We analyzed this last year with the arrival of Bash, the love of Microsoft is not so much towards Linux, but towards its developers . The idea is to be the place where a programmer can work for any other platform . Emulate the behavior of Unix natively with these tools, manages to offer this.
We are Microsoft, we are “cool”
Yes, Microsoft contributes to the Linux kernel. Yes, Microsoft is part of the Linux Foundation as a platinum member . They have released the Chakra code, Edge’s JavaScript engine. They released .NET . They opened a home on GitHub and brought Visual Studio Code to Linux and Mac.
There are many “cool” things that we can blame perhaps mainly Satya Nadella. This tendency to bet on open source, to be more open, to contribute and form a community. Leave behind the days of Ballmer calling cancer open source. It’s a new Microsoft with better ideas, and that seems to have no complaints with anyone. Welcome be Android, iOS, Mac and Linux.
But if something is absolutely transparent, more than the style of Fluent Desing is that there are no desinsteresadas actions, and Microsoft is a company with a strategy in mind. This type of movement helps your image, promotes that feeling of good vibes and collaboration, which eventually would translate into developers. Developers interested in working with Windows and for Windows enriching their platform.
And if something needs an operating system that wants to be successful, they are developers. And this is the way Microsoft has chosen to attract them. It is their work that enriches the application ecosystem, and it is the applications that attract users.
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