Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by newjersey 3708 days ago
Paul Thurrott quoted a Microsoft person that Ubuntu on Windows is a client side thing. It may be possible to use it on Windows server but I believe that is not the meta.

I would say it is easier to just spin up an Ubuntu instance than to use Ubuntu on Windows on the server. What are some use cases that you're thinking of? Am I missing something?
2 comments
riskable 3708 days ago
The use case is being able to run all the zillions of existing Ubuntu-based Docker images on Windows Server. If the Ubuntu-using Dockerfile is mostly made up of 'RUN apt-get install' commands along with a few commands like `RUN cd /tmp; wget https://ourhost.foo/some.config -O /etc/someapp/some.config` then it just might work with the Ubuntu-on-Windows thing.
link
tracker1 3708 days ago
There are two parts... there's the Linux Subsystem for Windows, which is the Linux ABI... Ubuntu for Windows is all the Ubuntu userland running via LSW. It's probable that this Docker system works with LSW as-is.
link
newjersey 3707 days ago
My question is why run on Windows? Wouldn't it be better for the host to be GNU/Linux if you don't need any of the functionality that Windows provides?

I fail to see the benefit of using Windows on the server unless you need Windows. Even Microsoft send to acknowledge that. I must be missing something.

link
tracker1 3705 days ago
They're probably doing it so that docker containers running in Azure infrastructure can be a bit lighter than it currently is. That's probably the main reason. Second, if you are already running windows servers, because you have software/infrastructure that require it, this allows you to also run Docker images, and Linux software without the overhead of full virtualization and/or new hardware.

Beyond this, there are a lot of developers running windows either by choice, or because they have software requirements themselves that can leverage this.

link