Windows 10 Will Soon Let You Access WSL Linux Files From Explorer, Other Improvements

[AsuMagic]

My main issue with WSL is that it confuses the user to think that there is Linux involved.
WSL is a wrapper for the Windows NT kernel that makes it behave like a linux kernel. It is proprietary and closed source.
They should call it GNU/NT software layer for Windows.

But it does translate Linux system calls. It's really meant to run Linux software, it just happens that the userland is usually GNU. The software you run is unmodified Linux binaries.

[cybertraveler]

But it does translate Linux system calls. It's really meant to run Linux software, it just happens that the userland is usually GNU. The software you run is unmodified Linux binaries.

It's really very similar to WINE in that case.

[Weasel]

It's really very similar to WINE in that case.

Similar in a way, but not exactly in another.

WSL doesn't implement any of the userland, just the kernel interface. You use the exact same userland as on Linux. On the other hand, Wine has to implement all the Windows userland APIs, and in fact doesn't implement any system calls whatsoever (because they are unstable in Windows) and it has to implement the userland interface to them (ntdll which is probably the "equivalent" of libc on Linux system, providing wrappers to syscalls).

Obviously, Wine is a much larger undertaking because the Windows userland API is massive compared to the small Linux kernel interface.