Microsoft Open-Sources WSL Sample To Let More Linux Distributions Run On Windows

[patstew]

You are in minority if you believe if devs are the only people behind a computer. I am glad that wsl solves your daily task, and I am glad if this will help any other devs every 10K computers, but the other 9999 people every one dev, when will try any distro with wsl will think that Linux is a crap, fortunately your work still continues to be fine!

WSL is squarely aimed at devs, you have to specifically enable the feature in windows and there's no built in GUI support. You can get it working with a windows X server, but I don't think anyone will mistake that for real linux.

[kneekoo]

We are the Windows. We will install Linux. Resistance is futile.

[Danielsan]

...

That is true but I believe is only temporarily, soon it will be easier run a full stack distro. From a marketing perspective it is so powerful, with the a price of a Win license you can get 10 linux distro fro free... It is so genial!!!

[ssokolow]

What would be useful is if Linux binaries started to come a universal standard.

As far as library compatibility goes, that's what things like GOG.com's bundled libraries and Flatpak are aiming to accomplish.

As for the ISA...

On the one hand, Linux distros are starting to drop support for 32-bit x86 processors, which means it's reasonable for developers to ship only 64-bit x86 binaries.

On the other, unlike mainline/desktop/server builds of Windows, Linux supports many more architectures than x86. How many would you expect to have built? amd64 obviously, but what about the stuff you see on cheapo dev boards like the RasPi and the like. ARMv7? AArch64? MIPS? etc.

[FishB8]

I use WSL all day every day at work. It fills some gaps that have existed for quite some time, but it is not by any means a replacement. It has some serious issues. Some of it may be Ubuntu specific, but I've tried several WSL distros and Ubuntu has been the most stable so far.

Much of it is due to the NTFS file system it sits on top of. Directory traversal does not work the same as Linux, and that can bite you hard. There is file locking, which Linux doesn't truly deal with, so contention on file locks leads to undefined states.

Unix Sockets aren't supported, though a small sub-set of sockets is in-the-works supposedly. But that's only a sub-set. No data-gram or abstract sockets.

DNS lookups only use the first server listed in resolv.conf.

Korn shell can't use pipes (unless you run as root).

I could go on. The point is if you have to actually use it in a serious capacity you will keep finding weird and annoying deviations. But then again, I can use the same config / plugins for neovim that I use on my linux desktops. Ruby/python/perl/whatever can install and run in a posix environment. So there are some real advantages when a linux desktop is not available.

[bregma]

AFAIK, I am not a specialist

Indeed.

There is no Linux kernel. No microkernel running inside of the Windows kernel. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not a single sausage link of Linux code.

It's a pure GNU/Windows system. They ripped out the Linux kernel, added a shim between the GNU libc and the Windows kernel, and viola, a plain vanilla GNU system running with a Windows kernel. Beautiful Free software forced to mate with a fat old sweaty rich guy with a comb over, a fake tan, and gold chains dangling on his hairy chest all for a little bit of money.

Now we have GNU/Linux, Android/Linux, and GNU/Windows. We also have Windows/Windows and whatever Frankenstein's Monsters Mac OS and iOS are in their myriad layers of open source petticoats and constrained software back braces covered in a slick coat of glitter paint.

But hey, it's better to be able to use Free software for everything above the kernel level, and eventually embrace it wholeheartedly. Maybe when you find the userland is better (and it is) consider replacing the kernel itself with a Free one, like Linux.

I notice that RMS has been silent on this hybridization. I suspect that while he's not wholly satisfied, he might just find some pleasure in seeing some progress like this.

[GizmoChicken]

Beautiful Free software forced to mate with a fat old sweaty rich guy with a comb over, a fake tan, and gold chains dangling on his hairy chest all for a little bit of money.

Seems maybe you've imagined this scene before?

[duby229]

I'm kind of worried this might be EEE...

it definitely is.

[unixfan2001]

Beautiful Free software forced to mate with a fat old sweaty rich guy with a comb over, a fake tan, and gold chains dangling on his hairy chest all for a little bit of money.

Hey now! Donald Trump isn't that hairy... Lol

I quite like WSL. And I quite like the fact that some development software (including some npm packages actually distributed by Microsoft themselves) doesn't even run properly under CMD/Powershell anymore.

Hell. It took one developer virtually ages to fix Facebook Docusaurus' build command, so it would work properly under Windows without WSL.

[makam]

When will we have a Linux subsystem for Windows? Or when will Microsoft give official support to the Wine devs? Or maybe release MS Office for Linux?
Or when will Microsoft drop the frankenstein monster that is Windows?

Microsoft needs to show some <3 to desktop Linux.