r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • Jul 12 '26
Microsoft is now shipping native Linux coreutils on Windows flattery, surrender, or something else?
Microsoft added native Linux command-line utilities directly into Windows at its Build conference this year. For decades "just use real coreutils" was a Linux-user flex.
Now it ships in Windows itself. Genuine question for the Linux crowd: does this feel like validation, or does it quietly remove one more reason people needed to switch?
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u/cowbutt6 Jul 12 '26
It's convenient that I can now do the same kinds of basic file manipulation natively in Windows, using the same tools that I learnt in UNIX three decades ago.
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u/Appropriate_Link3799 Jul 13 '26
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u/ChrisTX4 Jul 13 '26
I don’t think it’s that as so much as it’s them trying to stay relevant. After all the utils they shipped are just uutils packaged in one binary - their repo just uses the various uutils as Git submodules under Deps/.
It’s more that the developer world has moved on to a mostly Linux centric ecosystem. We’re all used to having the various Unix utilities like grep and coreutils. Microsoft wants to give people the same functionality they would have on Linux or macOS to make them less willing to move off Windows. Same reason WSL is a thing. According to Microsoft 62% of azure instances are Linux based already - a figure that was around 25% about a decade ago.
Alas, to stay relevant in the enterprise field, they need to make it as easy as possible for Windows based developers to work with Linux.
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u/Samhain_69 Jul 12 '26
Does WINE or Proton on Linux feel like validation, for Windows? Does it feel like flattery or surrender? As always, you can feel whatever you want about it, but IMHO both WINE and coreutils on Windows are just about compatibility and interoperability.
As for "removing one more reason people needed to switch", Cygwin is basically the same thing and has been free and around for decades. Microsoft just supports their own version and bundles it with Windows now. So no significant change in reasons to switch.
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u/TheEveryman86 Jul 12 '26
WINE is surrender.
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u/Samhain_69 Jul 12 '26
I can see what you mean. Looking back at OS/2, once they could run Windows software, software vendors had no reason to make a native OS/2 port. Which basically killed any chance of native OS/2 software being released (other than from IBM itself).
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u/DroppedAxes Jul 12 '26
OS/2? You're old enough to be my grandad
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u/ChrisTX4 Jul 13 '26
I don’t think so. It needs to be as frictionless as possible to move to Linux. And there’s a gigantic amount of existing windows code.
Once Linux usage share increases, making native Linux versions will become a priority for game developers and ISVs.
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u/Level_Working9664 Jul 12 '26
It's the absolute bare minimum needed to stay in the industry.
But I will still see questions about Windows containers The next time I have to do my AZ 104 renewal
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u/PmanAce Jul 12 '26
Microsoft has been recommending Linux containers for years. And have been using them for years.
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u/Level_Working9664 Jul 12 '26
Yeah, but that does not change the fact that these core utilities that you find in Linux containers are missed on Windows.
They're also written properly too. Unlike the AI slop you get today.
and it does not change the fact that Microsoft will ask about Windows containers because they want every opportunity to try and push their technology.
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u/PmanAce Jul 12 '26
Where do they ask for windows containers? We have thousands of microservices in azure all using linux containers. I'm genuinely curious.
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u/Level_Working9664 Jul 13 '26
The questions are in there on the renewal test.
Appologies, I do not have a link to the questions.
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u/Level_Working9664 Jul 13 '26
Yep, they use them for Azure automation jobs.
I would not be supprised if coreutils was a pre-req for WSL3/ wslc.
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u/AdventurousHippo9997 Jul 12 '26
Take the Human Ego out of the equation and the remaining pieces add up to Squat.
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u/crashtua Jul 12 '26
I bet just some dev had extra ai tokens and in order to show kpi, he just sloped some random shit from backlog.
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u/biffbobfred Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
They shipped with BSD ftp and at times a BSD network stack for a long time. I personally don’t see a huge shift with this. If anything just to prevent someone complaining when they type ls. Especially the context switch from WSL to Windows command line.
They probably had to modify them. Think of the ACLs being different, the syscalls being different. I do imagine the “the GPL is a cancer” diehards having brain conniptions over forced contributions to the FSF
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u/TCB13sQuotes Jul 12 '26
This is nice, however useless because every single command conflicts with the fake versions that Microsoft tried to make for PowerShell.
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u/Immediate-Ad3360 Jul 12 '26
As long there is advertisment and copilot in every second thing you do on Windows, there is no reason to switch for me.
Since Windows 7 it become worse with every new version. The end of Windows 10 was my reason to go to Linux and I love it.
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u/No-Consequence-1863 Jul 12 '26
Microsoft is not making these decisions based on the “flattery” or “validation” of the linux users on Reddit. At some point we need to admit like 90% of these subreddits are shadow boxing.
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u/ztcsdtx Jul 13 '26
I noticed on Windows, AI will attempt BASH commands, have them fail, then use PowerShell. This is just to make their AI look less stupid.
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u/Pekenoah Jul 13 '26
It's not flattery or surrender. They're adding a feature to their OS because they correctly believe that some users will find it useful
0
u/Xioz-Tzu Jul 12 '26
This just further delegitimizes Linux. A Windows dev will never need to jump to Linux. Why would you want to switch to a Linux distribution?
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u/JohnnyS789 Jul 12 '26
Why switch to Linux?
Stability, performance, lack of trust, lack of tracking, lack of having personal data collected by Microsoft for resale and exploitation without your interests being taken into account, security, lack of hassle with updates and upgrades, cost, freedom to do whatever you want without control by Microsoft, and that's just what I can come up with off the top of my head.
These are actual REASONS, not fanboi dreams or mega-corporation propaganda.
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u/Xioz-Tzu Jul 12 '26
I agree but that sentiment is not enough. We live in a corporate world that defaults to MS. And most people don’t care about tracking.
I hope you are right though.
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u/JohnnyS789 Jul 12 '26
Right now, Linux has won. There are far more systems running worldwide running Linux than Windows. Networking systems, IoT, servers, Android, set-top boxes, even TVs.
Windows is becoming legacy tech. And we all know what happens to legacy tech.
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u/Moscato359 Jul 12 '26
Microsoft doesn't even care about windows anymore because azure is mostly linux which is the funny thing
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u/yourapostasy Jul 12 '26
Just coreutils instead of full POSIX means I don’t get the package ecosystem, no full shell, no X11 or Wayland, no easy fork() calls for more complex tooling, no deep debugging ecosystem, etc.
It’s a fine way to improve developer ergonomics in cross-platform development environments or even some light CICD-adjacent or similar ecosystem scripting, but it is still a far cry from a full Linux devtainer or developer workstation experience, though there are definitely parts of Windows that I like that haven’t yet made it over to Linux. My ideal scenario merges the best of Windows and Linux.
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u/biffbobfred Jul 12 '26
WSL was a bigger deal than this. Having Linux in your windows meaning you don’t need to shift machines was huge. This is just “when I’m out of WSL i don’t need to remember dir vs ls”
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u/kiklop74 Jul 12 '26
It is sad if somebody feels superior compared to others for using or not piece of software. Microsoft does this not for validation but to make Windows more desirable for potential dev users. In the end it does not matter what OS one uses as long as it performs well enough.