Open source or not WSL is just a long game embrace, extend, extinguish and particularly designed to stop *NIX OSs gaining a foothold in the enterprise development space.
I am not defending Microsoft but I have a different take.
Microsoft has already lost a the enterprise to Linux. They know it but no longer care that much. This is because the real money is in Azure (the Cloud and “the agentic web”). Microsoft makes a tonne of money off Linux and Kubernetes in the cloud. They hope to make even more money off AI. They are ok that this stuff is all Linux based. They get plenty of lock-in from volume contracts and Azure only APIs and services (especially AI sandboxes ).
However, Microsoft knows the importance of developer mindshare and influence. It is still “developers, developers, developers”. They know they cannot really stop devs from using containers and Linux but they want devs using MS software. So, they are building Linux into the Windows desktop.
They hope, I believe, that the devs will prefer the “best of both worlds” Windows experience over the “all in on Linux only” Linux one.
In some ways, they are competing more with macOS. Devs using Linux on the server had been flocking to macOS on the desktop because it is “also UNIX” but with commercial software support and a nice UX. If Linux had won on the server, Microsoft is defending the Pro desktop.
I wish they’d open source the name.
It should be called the “Linux Subsystem for Windows”.
I totally agree it is wrong. It is historical.
When Windows NT was new, they had this idea that it would be compatible with many different application ecosystems via “sub-systems”. So there were going to be many different “Windows sub-systems” for various things.
There was the “Windows sub-system for OS/2” for example. And the “Windows sub-system for POSIX”. The names still sound backwards to me but I guess it makes sense if you think “This is a Windows sub-system, which one is it?”. And if you have 50 Windows sub-systems, saying “for Windows” at the end of all of them also seems a little weird.
So that naming convention was already in place when they added support for Linux. Hence the “Windows Subsystem for Linux”.
It’s so annoying, because both are technically grammatically correct, but the current one just sounds the opposite
Microsoft really has a knack for that. I also like
WoW64, which contains the binaries for running 32 bit applications on Windows 64 bit. For historical reasons, the 64 bit binaries live insystem32, obviously.Again, it is because it is part of a series.
They already had WoW (Windows on Windows) which was Win16 on Win32. The new one is Win32 on Win64.
And if say “Windows on Windows 64” it makes sense. It is Windows emulation on top of Windows 64 (64 bit Windows). When they named it, all Windows was 32 bit Windows and 64 bit Windows was the future thing. So “emulating current Windows on Win64” was what WoW64 was doing.
It did not age well though. I agree.
Yeah but it also shows the weird naming of WSL. It’s Windows (32) on Windows 64, but Windows Subsystem for Linux instead of Linux on Windows 64 (which would at least have fit the pattern).
There you can see that only drunks work at Microaoft.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
I would like to see Flatpak ported to Windows. WSL provides everything you need to support Flatpak including a Linux kernel to run on and deep GUI and network integration.
From the point of view of a user, a Flatpak app (built for Linux) could install and run natively on Windows. Flathub could be just neither App Store.
Small app developers could choose to target Flatpak instead of Win32 and have their app run on both Windows and Linux. Only one app bundle to distribute and support.
Thank of all the applications this could bring to Linux. And, once everything runs on Linux, why use Windows?
Wake me up when they open source windows…
OSS or not, if its Windows I will take a shit on it
I guess it won’t be long before someone launches Windows 3.11 Subsystem for Linux.
That is WINE.
What exactly is a windows subsystem? Is it like VM?
Pretty much. It’s hyper-v under the hood giving you a linux VM that’s integrated just enough to keep up some sort of linux workflow. I’m happy to shit on it as much as the next person, but for many who are locked into a ms corporate ecosystem because work policy, it’s a decent little window in your jail cell.
So if I use a subsystem of linux in windows, then i wouldn’t risk losing data and it would be much more efficient than VM?
It’s not going to randomly disappear your data, but I don’t particularly trust it either. As with anything, keep to a back up strategy. As far as efficiency goes, if you bear in mind it is still a VM but with most of the configuration hidden away for a simpler experience, I would say it is more convenient than a VM under virtualbox or vmware player, especially if you have no need for a full linux desktop environment.
Sounds like they’re basically abandoning it but at least giving the code out so the community can still use and keep it up until it becomes incompatible with Windows. It is one of the few ways I’m able to get my Windiws 11 work computer to do what I need with all the security and tracking junk my company installs on our laptops, even for developers, so I hope it sticks around for a while.
