- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- linux@programming.dev
Today we’re very excited to announce the open-source release of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This is the result of a multiyear effort to prepare for this, and a great closure to the first ever issue raised on the Microsoft/WSL repo:
Don’t you think this is another Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy from Microsoft?
That’s exactly what it is. Any time now you’ll see “the best way to run Linux: on windows” or similar.
Does Lemmy even know what EEE means anymore or are we regurgitating words we heard from some article now?
What’s it going to embrace and extend? WSL has existed for ages and is just a way to run Linux in a convenient container on top of Windows. That’s it. It’s not an attempt to “extenguish” Linux, literally just make the development experience on Windows less painful so people don’t switch to another OS. This has nothing to do with EEE.
Open sourcing it with a permissive license can only be a good thing, and again they’re doing it to be more appealing to devs and maybe get free bug fixes from the open source community. It isn’t some grand conspiracy. But of course this community will react to news of “proprietary blob is now open source” with pessimism.
I think it’s an attempt to keep people on their platform who need easy access to a unix-like shell. Linux has it and so does mac os. Windows didn’t until they introduced wsl.
Well windows had cygwin and mingw
I had to move back to those a few times instead of using WSL during the early days. There were quite a few growing pains.
Fixed it fully by installing Linux.
Ye, and cygwin, mingw and msys are terrible compared to wsl
has, they still work great and keep me sane
MSYS2 is my current choice for GNU/Windows
I think it’s more embrace. They have to compete against so many more entities now.
This is my thought, they’ve all but lost the battle for cloud servers and they’d rather the developers computers were Windows. WSL allows that.
Azure is their primary revenue source now, they didn’t lose anything
I think you’re probably right. Microsoft seems less invested in winning an operating system battle at this point. They’re positioning services and abstractions that care less about the end device’s operating system, more so that they’re at least on that device.
I wouldn’t be surprised we see Microsoft “embrace” Proton and Wine in the next 5 to 10 years as it’s far easier to let “the community” predominantly handle supporting legacy Windows versions that have to handle it themselves.
They can’t suddenly lose that entire OS revenue machine however and would need to transition. But I doubt that Redmond are naive to the disruption Wine and Proton are having and how technical users are starting to jump ship.
It’s kind of the opposite in my mind, WSL is (was) Microsoft capitulating to the fact that Linux is not going away, same with Azure. WSL is mostly for companies. Some companies have a huge contract with Microsoft and manage all laptops with it. Then they grow big enough that they can’t ignore Linux because they have people who need to work on Linux. WSL is the way Microsoft keeps their clients, because otherwise they move to Apple based IT.
EEE would have been investing in PowerShell, PuTTY, or similar.
Normally I would say yes, but WSL is so incredibly necessary for a developer that it might be legit.
Personally I never use it except for docker desktop. I just use powershell
Docker doesn’t exist in a usable state on Windows, so its an attempt to allow management of servers using Windows, as Windows Server fades away from usage entirely.
Docker works with windows containers, plus wsl can be used as the backend for docker. I use it all the time
No real reason to extinguish here, Microsoft is a services company and can offer those services on Windows and Linux.
I’d wager you’re more likely to see an official compatibility layer on Linux supported by Microsoft before you see them move to extinguish.
It could be another Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy from Microsoft, because if the increase in Linux user share leads to an increase in malware, most of those users aren’t experts.
So there will be an increase in antivirus software for Linux, but that will also lead to DRM in Linux, and Linux may become what I swore to destroy. While BSD distributions, Redox OS, and other systems take over to become the new Linux as it was in its beginnings.
Anyone who’s running WSL is probably closer to an “expert” than the average windows user
I wish people would let the EEE meme die. It’s not the 90’s anymore grandpa. Parroting the same pointless meme without applying critical thinking gets old.
Are you suggesting an alternative motive for Microsoft that does beyond profit?
The profit is getting nerds on the internet to fix bugs in wsl for free
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Maybe don’t just toss around non sequiturs.