[SOLVED] Please add Kubuntu to the Windows Store

[WSLuser]

Ubuntu is already available on the Windows Store and has been the only distro that's been around since the beginning of WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). I would like to see the expansion of distros in the store such as Kubuntu. I personally prefer KDE versions over native distros and that is no different for Ubuntu, especially Ubuntu. So please make Kubuntu available to the Windows Store by reaching out to @richturner and/or @tararaj on Twitter to begin talks on how to accomplish this ask. I made a similar ask on your Twitter feed.

+1 this if you are fan of Kubuntu who'd like to see it available on WSL.

[jglen490]

Many, not all, but many of us have no use for Windows, so to advocate for the Windows store to do anything is probably not an interest item - just for your awareness, so don't take it personally. The *buntus are available free or for small fees in literally 100's of places already. I know, there are people who dual boot for a variety of valid reasons, and that's their choice, but in general it's probably better to just leave each other alone.

[WSLuser]

@jglen490, do you even know what WSL is for and what the benefits of using it are? I suggest you do your research before stating "so to advocate for the Windows store to do anything is probably not an interest item". WSL has come a long way since it's beginning. Many have no use for Windows you say, well that's due to ignorance. People have been hating on Windows for so long that when a good thing happens, they turn a blind eye! Despite this, there are in fact more and more Linux developers switching to using WSL. Even those who were using Cygwin and the other emulators. The WSL community is growing and eventually will outgrow any one Linux community. It's just a matter of time and how far Microsoft is willing to go before even normal Linux users start using it to use as many distros as they want as well as Windows with no need for Wine and able to use any app on Windows or Linux. It's already a fairly close to that now even if with some unofficial methods at this current moment in time.

[TWPonKubuntu]

WSLuser:

With as much respect as you (IMO) deserve, you have been assimilated, in the Borg sense.

I am one of those who "have no use for Windows(r)" and that is based on decades of usage, before I chose to dump them.

Yes, I agree that some people, because of job requirements, must run a version of Windows(r). We who do not need Windows(r) have made a choice also.

I'll not try to change your mind, but simply ask that you respect our right to make this choice.

[oshunluvr]

***DELETED***

Feel free to stay and learn about Linux and our choice of Kubuntu, but do not insult the members of this forum.

[GreyGeek]

Please add Kubuntu to the Windows Store

... Many have no use for Windows you say, well that's due to ignorance. People have been hating on Windows for so long that when a good thing happens, they turn a blind eye! Despite this, there are in fact more and more Linux developers switching to using WSL. Even those who were using Cygwin and the other emulators. The WSL community is growing and eventually will outgrow any one Linux community. It's just a matter of time and how far Microsoft is willing to go before even normal Linux users start using it to use as many distros as they want as well as Windows with no need for Wine and able to use any app on Windows or Linux. It's already a fairly close to that now even if with some unofficial methods at this current moment in time.

First, having no use for Windows isn't because of ignorance, it is because of experience.

You must be young, or are new to computing in general.

I used to be a Windows fanboi. I even have an Explorer T-shirt for being one of the first 10,000 to order it. I began with MSDOS and ran Win287 on top of it. Then I heard about DRDOS 4 and tried it. Much better. When Win3 came out I tried to install it on DRDOS but it wouldn't install. Then I read an article in Dr Dobbs Journal about how MS latest release of Win3 checked for DRDOS and claimed it wouldn't run well on it and quit. Fortunately, DDJ also published a fix, noop'ing severy bytes in the img file. I did that and it installed easily and ran just fine.

That got me wondering about other things MS might be doing to trick me. I learned about Embrace, Extend and Extinguish, a method MS used to steal tech from startups and/or bury them. GoPen, for example. Win3.11FWG had a crashing problem but ran well in the DOS box on OS/2, so that's how I ran it.

On Dec 29, 1997, I purchased a brand new Sony VAIO desktop with Triniton monitor. It came with the much praised Win95 preinstalled. (I learned later in reading the transcripts of the MS v Combs trial that the "praise" was paid for by MS, not real users experience). Win95 crashed continually. It got to the point where I routinely saved my code at the end of every line or two because it was crashing unpredictably about every 5-10 minutes! Between Jan 1, 1998 and May 1, 1998 I had to re-install Win95 FIVE times.

I got tired of it and decided to return to running Win3.11FWG under OS/2. I went to Barnes & Nobel looking for another copy of OS/2 and while there found a paperback titled "Learn Linux in 24 Hours", by Bill Brush. It had a copy of RH 5.0 in back. For $25 how could I lose? OS/2 was 10X as much. I took it home and installed it. From May 1, till the middle of September, 1998 my Sony never crashed once! That's when I switched to SuSE 5.3 because it had KDE 1.0 Beta in it.

Then I learned that MS had paid Congressmen to include a line in a giant omnibus bill that allowed MS to pay its coders writing Win95 with stock options. When the coder cashed in the stock options to buy groceries and pay the rent (after paying the option fee) MS would take a tax deduction for the amount of the option plus fee. IOW, taxpayers paid to for Win95 to be written and they paid again to buy it.

The next lesson is about WinModems and other WinPeripherals which isolated other operating systems from the public market of peripherals. When the Internet first appeared on the scene one connected to it via a phone line and a Hayse or Zoom Modem. When they printed something the printer, connected to the LPT0 or LPT1 port handled everything. They had built in CPUs. MS convinced the peripheral makers to use the CPU in the computer and remover their codes and commands, which Windows would supply. Selling the dumb downed devices for the same or more money they happily agreed. More profit. That left other operating systems without the ability to drive modems, printers, Internet cards, monitors and other peripherals. Their agreement with MS included NDA's for their previously publicly available codes. Linux developers had to use green rooms to write drivers for those devices to avoid MS IP lawsuits. That, and the fact that the price for WinX was hidden in the price of the computer are the number one reasons why MS rapidly gained an overwhelming market share. Their dirty tricks locked out competitors. They'd repeat that trick over the coming years.

Shall I say anything about how MS killed OLPC with their greed? Or how they bribed ISO officials to pass MS's version of the XOML "open source" document standard, which was neither open sourced nor standard? Or how Bill Gates got caught lying on the witness stand, but later got the judge who ruled against MS dismissed from the court and replaced with a hyphenated judge who had taken trips to resorts to study law at MS's expense? Did you ever read GrokLaw and its historical record on MS's dirty tricks?

I don't know why Windows users have a tendency to lie, but they do. A few years after I started using Linux an "uptime" war exploded on a forum I was on. My own longest uptime was 460+ days. Windows fanbois were claiming uptimes of 2, 3 and 4 years. Then, Microsoft announced the patch of a clock bug. When ever the Win95 or XP clock hit 49.7 days the 32 bit counter cycled and rebooted the machine. No uptime of over 50 days was even possible!

At my last place of employment before I retired I was using Visual FoxPro to write client-server applications and visiting the VFP forum on the Universal Thread, a forum which was attended by over 100,000 VFP developers like myself. Suddenly MS announced that VFP was being discontinued and replaced with .NET. The uproar didn't change their mind. That's when I started looking for another tool and, thankfully, found the Qt API. I also found that I could develop and test at least 2x faster writing code on my Linux box than I could on WinXP using VS C++ 6.0. If you want' I'll explain how.

Oh, that .NET tool? MS and its British partner, Ventures Inc, combined to write the trading program for the London Stock Exchange using .NET. It was supposed to achieve sub 2 millisecond transactions times. It never achieved it. The second time the application crashed the LSE was down the entire day and lost over $1 Billion. MS had claimed that .NET was chosen after a "run off" between .NET, Linux and Unix. MS lied. There was no "run off" and their ad campaign the "Highly Reliable Times" was a pure prefabrication. The LSE IT officer was fired and LSE went in search for a stock trading program. They found one running on a small exchange. It was built on Linux and had been running for 5 years without a crash. It's transaction times were 0.2 milliseconds. They bought the entire company and software. During the installation "someone" had bribed some employees to sabotage the installation. They were caught and fired.

Remember the Chinese Olympics? The software for it was written in .NET. It crashed often, the most prominent one being in the Bird Nest, the ceiling of which was covered in a giant BSOD.

Even with Win10 Microsoft is playing catchup. Do they have available a file system like Btrfs that you can use instead of NTFS, or what ever they are using now?

And, finally, why would I want to switch to an OS that can't keep its pants up? It is promiscuous with every piece of malware that happens along because of the way it was written.
Wannacry, Zeus, Edge viruses, etc... the list never ends and the AV don't work until some test dummy gets infected, recognizes that his problem is malware, and sends it in. THEN, it is up to Microsoft to determine when, if ever, it is going to patch that particular malware. It all depends on their bottom line, or as a fortune 1000 how much of a legal threat you are to them.

And you seriously want me to run Windows so that I can run Linux on top of it? Are you crazy, or is someone paying you to troll us?

[vinnywright]

Aaaa ,,,,,,,age x experience=wisdom ,,,,, this I am coming to know ,,,,,,,,,,,as I age.

GG

VINNY

[TWPonKubuntu]

GreyGeek;

First, a big +1 for OS/2. I used and sold it during the OS wars. Great OS. IBM(r), not so much...

Second, you lay out the history of Windows(r) in an excellent way, thanks!

I'm in agreement. Trying to wrap Linux around Windows(r) borders on an obscene act... I'll leave it at that.

I'm glad we have these occasional entertainment threads. They enhance the attraction of Linux...

[whatthefunk]

I can't think of a single reason why I would need Windows. Not one. If I needed to run programs that don't have native Linux equivalents (Word, Photoshop etc.*) I would sooner go with Apple which has all those apps but also a Unix environment and a much more sane, usable, consistent UI. (Seriously, what is up with the Windows UI? I manage our Win 2016 server at work and there are like 20 different themes present. Every window has a UI from a different age it seems. All these windows offer different ways to do the same thing or point to other windows where you can perform whatever action you are trying to do. Worst of all, all of them seem to have different rules they apply to accomplish the action. What's up with that?? Windows is like that one closet everyone has in their house that is packed with stuff from different parts of their lives and has never been cleaned.)

* Yes, yes. I know that some of you are thinking "But we have Libre Office! And Gimp!" Well, while both of these are great, I don't feel like they are adequate replacements for their Windows equivalents. I have constant formatting problems when my Libre Office documents are opened in Word. Gimp just doesn't quite stand up to Photoshop in terms of ease of use and functionality.

[jglen490]

@jglen490, do you even know what WSL is for and what the benefits of using it are? I suggest you do your research before stating "so to advocate for the Windows store to do anything is probably not an interest item". WSL has come a long way since it's beginning. Many have no use for Windows you say, well that's due to ignorance. People have been hating on Windows for so long that when a good thing happens, they turn a blind eye! Despite this, there are in fact more and more Linux developers switching to using WSL. Even those who were using Cygwin and the other emulators. The WSL community is growing and eventually will outgrow any one Linux community. It's just a matter of time and how far Microsoft is willing to go before even normal Linux users start using it to use as many distros as they want as well as Windows with no need for Wine and able to use any app on Windows or Linux. It's already a fairly close to that now even if with some unofficial methods at this current moment in time.

Do not presume to call me ignorant, you know nothing about me.

Your language shows that are nothing but a Microsoft shill, just walk away.

[jglen490]

Do not presume to call me ignorant, you know nothing about me.

Your language shows that are nothing but a Microsoft shill, just walk away.

Aw, I take that back. Don't walk away - RUN ...

[vinnywright]

do you even know what WSL is for and what the benefits of using it are?

No ,,,,No I for one do not ,,,,I have not used Windows in 10 years ,,,,,So if you come back to this ,,,,you could explain to me just this .,,,,,,especially the parts that pertain to running linux in/on it

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

Here's all you need to know, VINNY:
https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-cra...feated-180215/
and, it is a security problem that is exclusive to Windows 10.

[MoonRise]

Actually I have and still use Windows because I have to for work and what I do. To that point I exclusively use Linux at home. Why? Because I'm tired of dealing with the M$ issues throughout the day that I needed a no-fuss system. Linux offers that and to date, none of the M$ OSes have. Like GG I was a M$ fan until I too started seeing their practices for what they were and how that detracted me from using the PC as I want and they way they were intended.

Still, I'm about user choice and if M$ is what one wants then so be it, but please, I know M$ in and out and WSL is just another of those attempts to retain profit and market share and profit and market share only. That is what they are, a company to make money only.

Enough of this soapbox for me.

[Teunis]

GreyGeek, that's a neat list of shortcomings in the Microsoft world.

Yet I believe they make a good computer mouse.

I have to use Windows for work, we run a SCADA system what started life on Unix OS9 (No not MAC OS9) where editing of the source code was done with a utility called µmacs.
With the advent of Windows NT3.5 it was recompiled to run on Windows.

We've been lucky virus infection wise, one reason has no doubt been these systems would only run for a few weeks at most before being re-imaged.
An other reason was they were hardly ever connected to the internet, they were pure stand-alone systems yet the viruses carried on USB flash drives were a threat.
These days we more and more connect to the internet and we also test running it on Win10 but it will be a challenge...

Although the Unix heritage is still very much visible, over the past ~20 years there have been so many developments that returning to a Linux or BSD is going to be very difficult.
Instead of running Linux as a subsystem on Windows I would sooner suggest running Windows on top of Linux, this would give better control over the biggest security issue, chatter of Windows with the mother ship.

To the OP and his request, no need, once you have Ubuntu installed you can swap out Gnome or whatever with the desktop you prefer, the parts are in the repositories.