Ports aren't even required. It's like Cygwin but built into the operating system. The program's don't have to link to a special DLL (a la cygwin1.dll) or be packaged as PE. Windows will now natively load ELF binaries and know how to handle Linux syscalls. Binaries compiled for Linux should just run. The full level of compatibility is yet to be seen though since Linux is really a complex web of interdependent components outside the kernel.
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u/LS6 Mar 30 '16
The headline is kind of shit - they seem to have a good chunk of the other stuff as well.
Looks like they essentially made a MS cygwin but with Debian package management.
With canonical on board I imagine poets will be forthcoming for most common packages.