Canonical is announcing today, through software engineer Dimitri John Ledkov, the availability of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system as an “App” in the Windows 10 Store.
As we reported the other day, users already spotted the presence of Ubuntu Linux in Microsoft’s Windows Store, as part of the Microsoft WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) initiative to help cross-platform developers test their apps on both platforms without rebooting the computer or running Linux virtualized.
But now Canonical made it official in a public announcement entitled “Windows 10 Loves Ubuntu,” which published a few moments ago, announcing that its long-term supported Ubuntu 16.04 LTS operating system is available as an “app” that users can download and install from the Windows 10 Store on their Windows PCs, but only if they use the most recent Windows Insider builds.
“The newly improved app is created by Canonical in collaboration with the Microsoft WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) team as a result of the work announced at Microsoft Build 2017 Conference,” says Dimitri John Ledkov, Software Engineer at Canonical. “The installation experience has been greatly improved and using Ubuntu on Windows should be now easier than before.”