Correct, reproducible, fast builds for everyone not running Windows
How 'bout we meet in the middle and y'all make the changes the Cygwin guys need? And hey, where'd that POSIX subsystem go? Finally got C99 support almost shipped now how 'bout you reverse that other horrible decision, too?
Also, the default terminal emulator that comes with Cygwin, called MinTTY, is fantastic. It doesn't have the flashy features of many native Linux clients, but it has all the basic features one could want (full color support, nice fonts, very durable, no 'gotchas').
The only problem is that support outside of C-based languages is touch-and-go. Mainline Python works flawlessly since it's implemented in C, and all it's tools also work flawlessly (virtualenv, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, django, flask, etc), but other languages like Go or Rust don't really support Cygwin. I'm unaware how well other languages are supported (e.g. Ruby).
So Cygwin will definitely "give you that Unix feeling" on a Windows machine, but it can't always replace a virtual machine.
It's also great in production - tolerable command-line remote administration, and great for e.g. Nagios plugins that are bash scripts (vastly better than attempting to find a Windows-native plugin that someone else wrote).
I found this really interesting, as after a bit of conversation, the speaker was clearly unaware of how MS' technical and business models around Windows have impeded open source work. A for-pay operating system with a profit-center development toolchain presents a very large barrier to Unix-centric OSS projects. Not to mention the numerous technical impedance mismatches between the $unix and Windows worlds. (And these days we have tools like libuv to help with that, but still.)
I think their goal was a year for everything under .Net to get ported but I don't know off hand. You can already use it via Mono if you wanted to play with it today.
> Will the ports be kept in sync with the Windows versions so we don't need to wait years for updates?
It's all being opened sourced. Every week Microsoft open sources more of their .Net platform and language tools. It will be compilable on all platforms. So yes.
F# doesn't really seem to be the factor there at all, it's just general .NET support. In fact, F# can do a bit better than C#, as F# actually includes a static linker.
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2014/06/06/f-sharp-mono-unix/
I guess it's the same with any new product or language: when there are a lot more great testimonials than cries of pain, then it's actually safe to use that product.
The biggest issue is with complicated frameworks, like ASP.NET, since there could be all sorts of runtime things missing. Fortunately with MS's new open source kick, this should be a thing of the past relatively soon,
The world we're all looking for is one where we'd all like to mix and match our software as much as possible, and not be told to buy a different computer.
5 or 6 years ago I had to have Windows to run CAD software, but I found it easier to have a virtualbox install w/ Ubuntu in it for software development than trying to write code on Windows. The performance was good enough an the usability was pretty good. I imagine it has only gotten better since then.
Not having a unix specific build system work on windows seems to be pretty much the expected behaviour. As opposed to a firewall that runs linux internally requiring windows or OS/X to talk to it...
OpenConnect 'just worked', thankfully.
If you've got the expertise to add it, sounds like it would be welcomed.