For someone who fears change, I spend a lot of time and effort pursuing it. Right now the object of my quest is Windows 10 build 1607, because it has the first major release of the "Bash On Windows" subsystem (which is really a user mode linux ported to Windows). Using that as a base you can install an Ubuntu-esque base system, and that will let you run, quote, "real linux programs directly on Windows". If this works it'll be huge -- no more need to run a VM for Linux stuff. I'll even use Ubuntu.
So in pursuit of said build, I have been pestering my local Windows admin as to when 1607 will be released to us, since we are gate-keepered by the domain WSUS system. It turns out that for Windows 10 there are a lot more "knobs" that can be set in WSUS, and he made some changes -- the result of one of which was that I suddenly got offered the Windows 10 build 1511. And that's what you see installing up there.
1607 should be released to us over the next week, and from there I can finally try this "Bash On Windows" thing. I'm hopeful, but not so much that I'll be disappointed when it doesn't work.
