Microsoft's foray into the land of *nix is 20 years in the making

Announced at the Build 2016 Conference in March.  We are back in the days of one of my specialties, command line OSes and command scripts.  Bash comes to Windows.  Ubuntu runs on Windows.

This isn't really that new, is it?  Utilities and SDK for Subsystem for UNIX-Based Applications (USDKSUNIX-B?) is the unfortunate name of GNU utilities on Windows, formerly known as SFU 1.0, released in 1999.  Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications?   So much for catchy names like Tinkerpop, Flume, Kafka, Storm, Solr, Spark, Hive, Pig, YARN, or Mahout.  And oh yes, Java.  Hasn't Java had portability across platforms for awhile?  

The efficiency and performance of Ubuntu on Windows is really what is impressive here.

Why is this happening? Did Microsoft give up on Powershell?  Is Powershell coming to Linux?  Is Windows 11 going to run on SPARCstations?  I am so confused...

For those making the transition, a helpful MS-DOS - Bash help sheet, courtesy of Red Hat.
awk, ed, sed, grep, top, locate, tail, head, cat, vim, perl, ssh... 

Apparently 60% of Azure is now running Linux.  At least 15% of the world's power is being consumed by data centers.  A UNIVAC consumed around 67 kilowatts.  The world consumed around 105,000 Terawatts in 2012.  Power is a huge driver in terms of cost and efficiency is super important when a server is running 8,760 hours / 365 days a year.  Using a minimalist operating system (or none at all?) could help with additional savings.

It is the year two thousand and sixteen, the 21st century.  Shouldn't we be celebrating our separation from monitors, mice and keyboards with augmented, virtual reality, neural impulse actuators, heads-up displays and immersive operating systems that feed us information via telepathy?

Apparently there is some delay, though it's not caused by Microsoft.  Hololens is shipping now.  Oculus, not so much.

I bought an OCZ NIA brain mouse a few years ago. It has been collecting dust ever since I decided I had better things to do than to train my brain to play pong.  My eyes hurt from blinking to shoot in Unreal Tournament, turning my face away from the screen to look around was a bit counter intuitive, and the grounding strap required to keep signals level didn't add to the experience.  Plus I still needed my mouse and keyboard.

It is still impressive to me that we have the technology today (and 8 years ago!) to read brain waves for under $100.  And we now have the technology to write them using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), for the low low price of $39.95!

And to think that Nikola Tesla used to squish his toes together 100 times a night to stimulate his brain cells, when a 9-volt battery and a wet sponge could have done the same trick.

So what's next? SQL 2016 on Linux?
http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/07/announcing-sql-server-on-linux/

Free SQL Licenses for Oracle customers?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/server-cloud/sql-license-migration.aspx

In 1998, Cygwin 2.0 introduced the Windows world to GNU tools.
http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/gnu-on-windows.html

In 2016, oh my zsh comes to Windows...
https://twitter.com/ohmyzsh

Tomorrow, I'm installing this!
sudo yum install byobu -y --enablerepo=epel-testing

Convergence was the buzzword a few years ago.  This year's buzzword should be... convergence?

Well, back to reading copies of Computerworld magazine from 1997 for new product ideas...  did you hear PC market leader Compaq is pushing their new Windows NT models as a Unix alternative?