It is an Azure (and WSL) specific Linux based on a general-purpose Linux (fedora). Having this general-purpose foundation will give access to many packages.
My first job in 1994 was using RDB, very soon updated to RDB-Oracle 6 that was very compliant with my book about sql 92. I learned SQL during my studies, so my queries based on joins naturally performed well, unlike the nested SELECT statements in the legacy code. I learned to tune performances. After that, I've encountered Oracle with its share of non-standard syntax and behavior. Now, when I build a backend (flask or fastapi), my CLAUDE.md contains "use sqlite without sqlalchemy" so that I can understand how data is accessed and check that there is no hidden query inside a loop. When the SQL queries generated by AI become unreadable, it’s a sign that the system is no longer functioning properly. In my view, SQL is a good way to maintain control over an application that is largely generated by AI.
I think the current intellectual property system is flawed. Books are knowledge, and we shouldn't be able to limit the spread of knowledge. I imagine that books could be sold at the cost of printing, and there could be a QR code inside so that readers could freely donate money to the author if they enjoyed the book. Strangely enough, I imagine that with such a system, authors would be better paid.
IMHO, Ubuntu is trying to gain market share by targeting non-experts — making Linux simple enough for normies and casual users. Casual users are generally less likely to mess things up on Ubuntu than on Windows.
I think power users are not the main target of Ubuntu.
I have put my parents on Ubuntu (gnome) in 2013 to replace windows XP. My mother is 88 now. I think it is the perfect fit for her (dad is dead years ago).
I use ubuntu gnome because tweaking my computer is not where I want to spend my time. YOLO. Using a "mainstream" desktop that can be explained to "non specialist" has its benefits. I accept to suffer some annoyances and there is always a way to fix the most annoying ones by sacrificing time.
I was student between 1990 and 1993 and Ada was the main language. Compilation speed was not an issue. I remember that Eiffel was very slow to compile, but not Ada. Between 1994 and 1999, I have worked with Ada on Vax machines. The full recompilation took 2 hours because the machine was slow, not because of the language. Other languages were similarly slow (pascal, C). C was slow because of the lack of precompiled headers (many headers had to be parsed many times). With Ada (alsys ada), there were "libraries" that were black boxes directories containing object code and already parsed package specifications.
Between 1999 and 2002, I have handled projects in Ada, C++ and Java. C++ was slightly slower than Ada (slow link). Java was a lots faster.
Nowadays, Ada compilation is faster than C++.
At that time, there was almost no spam because we could report them to abuse@domain...
There was no firewall in front of our campus and we were using rlogin to connect outside. I used export DISPLAY from Brest to Paris (to use xdvi that was not installed locally).
IMO, the security (ssh and killing rlogin) is the main change that is a really useful progress.
make 2>&1 | tee m.log is in my muscle memory, like adding a & at the end of a command to launch a job, or ctrl+z bg when I forget it, or tar cfz (without the minus so that the order is not important). Without this terseness, people would build myriads of personal alias.
This redirection relies on foundational concepts (file descriptors, stdin 0, stdout 1, stderr 2) that need to be well understood when using unix. IMO, this helps to build insight and intuitiveness. A pipe is not magic, it is just a simple operation on file descriptors. Complexity exists (buffering, zombies), but not there.
I am french. Everydays, we use DD/MM/YYYY or DD/MM/YY. Sometimes, I encounter YYYY-MM-DD, for example at the beginning of a document reference or in a file name. For me, it feels natural and I have no issue to make this switch mentally. The only problem I encounter is in english: MM/DD/YYYY. Hopefully less and less people are using this insane order.
How many documentaries do we need to stop using these poisons (and to put these people in jail) ? We are breathing volatile pesticides. IMHO, the short term plan of Mosanto is to make money with weeds by killing concurrent weeds and the long term plan is to make money with drugs to cure all the illness caused by these poisons.