Ubuntu 16.04 is now available in Windows Store

Following the announcement made by Microsoft on Microsoft Build 2016 conference, Ubuntu 16.04 is now available as an App in Windows Store. Currently this app is  only available Windows Insider (latest development preview of windows) users.

In previous annual summit, Microsoft had announced their plan to develop a windows subsystem for Linux in collaboration with Canonical. This will help windows users to deal with GNU/Linux shell and other programs without need for an emulator. Since the first announcement in Build 2016, WSL(Windows Subsystem for Linux) has evolved a lot and installation and configuration options are relatively easier now.

Courtesy : Ubuntu Isights

Ubuntu 16.04 is now available as an app from the Windows Store for users running Windows Insider builds. The newly improved app is created by Canonical in collaboration with the Microsoft WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) team as a result of the work announced at Microsoft Build 2017 Conference, after the first unveiling at Build 2016 Conference. The installation experience has been greatly improved and using Ubuntu on Windows should be now easier than before.

To use this app, you need to be enrolled in the Windows Insiders programme and upgrade to the latest preview build of Windows. You can join the programme here. Insider builds have an optional feature that allows you to run Ubuntu binaries, natively. This can be activated by searching for “Turn Windows features on or off” and opting-in “Windows Subsystem for Linux”. And then install Ubuntu from the Windows Store.

Original story is published by Canonical in Ubuntu Insights.

Ubuntu Kylin 17.04 resembles Windows 7 in look & feel

Ubuntu Kylin is an official community flavor of Ubuntu targeting Chinese users. It includes exclusive support for Chinese language and includes some high quality applications like WPS office suite having chinese origin. The Ubuntu Kylin 17.04 comes with a brand new desktop environment (which is told as customized version of MATE) which closely resembles windows 7 in it's look & feel.

Courtesy : Distroscreens

The Linux Journal portal has shared a review on Ubuntu Kylin 17.04 and highlights it's close resemblance with windows 7. Various aspects of Ubuntu Kylin 17.04 has been covered in this review and it has been compared with other Ubuntu flavors and also with Microsoft Windows.

The 9th release of Ubuntu Kylin, our latest version 17.04, was released on April 13, 2017. A highlight feature in Ubuntu Kylin 17.04, which is shown in Figure 1, is a desktop environment similar to Microsoft Windows called UKUI (Ubuntu Kylin User Interface). It provides a simpler and more enjoyable experience for browsing, searching and managing your computer. 

Ubuntu Kylin is an official Ubuntu flavor with a featured desktop environment and applications. It resembles Microsoft Windows with UKUI, WPS suite, Youker Assitant and more, and it's especially suitable for users familiar with Microsoft Windows

Complete review can be read in Linux Journal portal.

ReactOS 0.4.3 released, another incremental update

The ReactOS project has announced release of ReactOS 0.4.3, fourth incremental update of independently developed, windows binary compatible, open source operating system inspired by windows 9.x architecture. This release proves that, the projects plan to release incremental updates is on track and going as expected.

With this release, ReactOS has fixed almost 342 issues including text alignment issue which was due since 2006. Another notable highlight of this release is switching to a new winsock library which was undergoing development for several years. This will enable effective support for all network operations in user mode applications and improve ReactOS compatibility with applications like GoG(Good Old Games) client and newer versions of python runtime.

Notable in this release is the switching to a new winsock library that had been started several years ago by Alex Ionescu and imported into trunk by Ged Murphy. Even after it was brought in however significant work remained to be done before it could replace the old winsock library, work which Peter Hater and Andreas Maier undertook. Their effort has now reached a point wherein the team feels it is ready to supplant the original library and 0.4.3 serves as the first release to incorporate it. As the winsock library underpins effectively all network operations in user mode applications, and its improvement should be a significant boon for ReactOS' compatibility with such programs as the Good old Games (GoG) client and newer versions of the Python runtime.

Behind the scenes the team has made a major effort to flesh out the test suite, ranging from memory related functionality to the windows shell API. Work also continues on the aptly named Another Rewrite of the Memory Manager Module (ARM3) with the initial implementation of sections support, the last major piece of functionality before it can completely replace the old memory manager.

You can find more highlights, previews and screenshots of this release in a release announcement published by ReactOS project.

Switching to Ubuntu 16.04 from windows 7/10 ecosystem

It is a well known fact that most of the servers around the world are powered by GNU/Linux operating systems. GNU/Linux operating systems are preferred over their competitors because of it's security, features, stability, performance, less prone to virus behavior ..etc.

But despite of several benefits of GNU/Linux over it's competitors, it has comparatively less hold on desktop computers. This is owing historical reasons and non-friendly behavior of GNU/Linux distributions. Over the years, several GNU/Linux based operating systems were emerged and some of them were successful in marking their presence and attracting more users.

Ubuntu - GNU/Linux OS backed by Canonical - is one of the example of modern GNU/Linux distribution. This operating system runs on wide range of platforms including server computers, clouds, mobile devices, desktops, embedded systems ..etc.

Credit : www.pcwdld.com

When it is known that Ubuntu has multiple critical benefits over other operating systems like Windows, the question is why not to shift from Windows to Ubuntu. An article published pcwdld portal is trying to address this issue. It explains how to convert a fresh installation of Ubuntu 16.04 to give a Windows 7/10 experience.

As Network and Sys Admins who’ve been in the business for years now, we’ve been looking for ways to minimize our risk of exploitation and the continual need to update our workstations every Tuesday – so what better way to do that then to jump on the Linux bandwagon and figure out a way to finally make the switch over to Ubuntu.

We’re consistently logging into web servers that run Ubuntu 14.04 to administrate our LEMP Stack and we’ve become rather familiar with NGINX as well. So why not just make the switch over to an Ubuntu Desktop for our primary OS too? One of our engineers decided to take the leap into the unknown and configure his Ubuntu 16.04 LTS setup to mimic his old Windows 10 Workstation that he grew so accustomed to using, day-in and day-out.

Right off the bat, getting Ubuntu installed was a piece of Cake – we initially installed the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on a virtual machine to test it out and try to get it configured in a way that we could utilize some basic tools we needed for every day network management and monitoring tasks.

Read complete article in pcwdld portal.

Italian city Vicenza replaces Windows with Zorin OS

Following many other governments and nations, Italian city Vicenza is also replacing Microsoft Windows with Zorin OS. This process will be taken forward after performing a trial run on a few systems. Zorin OS is selected for replacement owing to it's similarity with Windows and stable Ubuntu base.

The city of Vicenza, Italy is planning to switch its municipality’s computers’ OS from Microsoft Windows to Zorin OS, starting with a pilot run on a number of computers.

Zorin OS, a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, offers a very familiar experience to the users of Microsoft Windows who wants to enter the world of Linux.

Zorin OS development was initially started by Artyom Zorin at 2008. It provides a powerful, yet flexible and easy to use system with a familiar Windows 7-like interface that can be changed to act and look like Windows XP, GNOME 2 as well. As of this moment, according to DistroWatch, Zorin OS is the 10th most popular Linux distro.

For more information, see news article published by itsfoss.

What does bash on windows mean? How does it work?

It was recently microsoft unveiled their plan to implement GNU/Linux shell functionality on windows operating system. Weeks after this announcement in microsoft developer conference, windows insider preview was released with this feature.

Bash on windows, or more specifically windows subsystem for linux is different from cygwin because, cygwin make use of linux utilities modified and compiled for windows. On the other hand, windows subsystem for linux works with same binaries used by linux. It is made possible by creating a platform which will map linux system calls to windows system calls on real time.

Mr Swapnil Bhartiya, an open source blogger has written an article which explains meaning of `bash for windows`, how does it work and who actually benefits from this, windows or ubuntu.

As the enterprise landscape is changing -- in favor of Linux and open source -- companies like Microsoft are embracing Linux. Most recently, Microsoft announced support for the Unix Bash shell on Windows, providing developers and administrators with an important tool for managing Unix and Linux servers.

Linux is a dominant player in the enterprise space. Microsoft says that more than 25 percent of machines on Azure Cloud run Linux. This means there’s a huge developer base along with a huge administrator base that manages these machines. And, these people need tools to manage their infrastructure.

Microsoft is aware of this increasing demand, and they have tried to bring some basic capabilities like SSH to their PowerShell, but it’s not enough. Developers can also use Cygwin, MSYS, or run Linux in a virtual machine, but all these “workarounds” have their own disadvantages and some serious overload.

Continue reading complete article published in linux.com.

An Overview of Windows Subystem for Linux

It was recently microsoft announced it's plan to provide a 'windows subsystem for linux' with windows operating system. This subsystem offers provision for windows users to run GNU/Linux binaries without any hypervisor, emulator or nothing like.

The Microsoft Corp. has published an article which describes how windows subsystem for linux works. This article also mentions other subsystems used by windows in past and different services used by windows subsystem for linux.

WSL Components (Source : Microsoft DN)

We recently announced Bash on Ubuntu on Windows which enables native Linux ELF64 binaries to run on Windows via the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This subsystem was created by the Microsoft Windows Kernel team and has generated a lot of excitement. One of the most frequent question we get asked is how is this approach different from a traditional virtual machine. In this first of a series of blog posts, we will provide an overview of WSL that will answer that and other common questions. In future posts we will dive deep into the component areas introduced. 

Read complete article in microsoft developer network blog.

Zorin OS : Linux designed for Windows Users : Review

The tecmint portal has published a review of Zorin OS, an Ubuntu based GNU/Linux distribution that offers traditional desktop experience, or more precisely Windows or OS X like user experience. An integrated app coming with Zorin OS enable people to switch between GNOME 2 and Windows 7 appearance in Zorin OS core and additionaly windows xp and OS X appearance in ultimate edition.

In the advent of Linux’s grand entrance into the PC space back in 1993, has been an insurgency of operating systems and that time also happened to be the wake of a technological-oriented generation adopting computers at a much faster pace than ever before.

In the light of this fact, Debian took off grandly (two years after Linux was born) and through it, a staggering 200 independent distributions have poured out – thanks to Ian Murdock.

We can likewise say thanks to Canonical/Ubuntu for driving the concept of user-friendliness and usability for the “normal human” which other distros like Linux Mint et ‘al have perfected over the years to the extent at which it is more than reliable in this day and age.

Read complete review in tecmint portal

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14316 comes with Ubuntu bash on Windows

The Microsoft Windows development team announced availability of windows 10 insider preview build 14316 which comes with support for Ubuntu bash on Windows. Ubuntu for Windows was announced by microsoft in it's recently held developer conference.

Though the `Ubuntu on Windows project` or more formally Windows subsystem for Linux is not open source, developers can experiment it by downloading free insider preview of microsoft windows.

In this build, you can natively run Bash in Windows as announced last week at Build 2016. To do this, you first need to turn on Developer Mode via Settings > Update & security > For developers. Then search for “Windows Features” and choose “Turn Windows features on or off” and enable Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta). To get Bash installed, open Command Prompt and type “bash”.  

See original announcement in microsoft blog.

Converting Q4OS into a Windows XP clone using XPQ4

Mr Gary Newell has written a tutorial that explains how to convert Q4OS into a windows xp like operating system using XPQ4 which is a theme changer application for Q4OS. Q4OS is a fast and powerful operating system that comes with highly productive Trinity Desktop.

Source : Everyday Linux User's portal

In essence XPQ4 provides a theme changer for Q4OS similar to the one used by Zorin. With XPQ4 you can change the look and feel so that your Linux distribution emulates Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. It is the perfect replacement for Windows XP users not quite ready to give it up yet. Q4OS is really very good and goes down as one of my picks for 2015 with its lightweight look and feel and its attention to detail.

See complete tutorial in everyday linux user's portal.