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:
Making WSL open source could actually lead to some useful contributions and better transparency overall ; and good for Linux tools?
sudo apt-get assorted -lettuce -cheese -onion
Thanks for the kek
Great! With this source code out, I can finally complete the port to Linux. I call it WSL24L, aka “Windows Subsystem For Linux 2, For Linux”
some who can read code tell me why it sucks ass
but… you need to run it on microsoft, which isn’t open source…
nice try. get fucked, microsoft.
This is for WSL2, not for WSL1. WSL2 is just a VM, not a big deal it it’s open-sourced. WSL1 is superior to WSL2 in every way. BTW, WSL2 is not a continuation of WSL1, they are being developed in parallel. I still try to use WSL1 whenever possible. For Linux specific features, like systemd dependancy and mounting file systems, I’d use full-featured VM instead of WSL2.
I thought WSL2 had a few specific advantages over WSL1, something about disk writes and/or Docker? But yeah, WSL1 was such a cool concept. My understanding is they implemented all the syscalls and API in it so it’s basically native.
I tried to use them, as I do most tools like that. On Windows I have always stuck with the MSYS environment that Git for Windows gives you. It’s easy enough to work with and has most everything I care about. Plus it’s easy to set up. With wsl it’s more like a separate thing, it wasn’t as easy to run in place. A lot of times I still used batch or powershell scripts so it wasn’t totally bash. Like Docker is easier to use from not bash in Windows because the syntax is so wonky.
But now I don’t use Windows at all.
fuck microsoft and windows so hard. had to reinstall that shitshow on my mothers computer because a driver update fucked the whole networkstack… they throw error codes and what not but give no help whatsoever. the conclusion of everyone for every problem is to reinstall windows… shitshow of an os, keep your dirty hands of linux!! can’t wait to nuke it and install linux there and have no windows machine left
I reinstalled Windows and had to shit my pants because I was so disgusted in myself. Fuck windows
Garbage on top of garbage. The true nature of macroshafts desperate grasp to get control of linux.
Its a godsend when you have to use Windows for whatever reason and you can have a functional OS to do things with.
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I know there’s a lot of hate for Microsoft on Lemmy, but WSL is one of the best parts of Windows. It’s really powerful and well integrated to Windows. Since I still can’t leave for pure Linux install, I’m glad for WSL.
Microsoft hate is justified.
The only Windows PC I use is my work computer.
GPO blocked WSL.
I can’t even escape to a command line with the right flavour of slashes between directories. For eight hours a day, all hope is lost.
Funny that the Linux is best part of Windows lmao
Doubly ironic since Win32 is the only stable ABI on Linux.
WSL made windows tolerable in the time I had to use a windows machine for work.
macOS is still the better choice for corp approved work, integrates decently with IT systems and is a “real” unix system underneath.
Linux on a corporate desktop is mostly about how well you know the IT guys and do they trust you. And of course the software stack.
Linux on a corporate desktop is mostly about how well you know the IT guys and do they trust you. And of course the software stack.
I would say it depends more on the commitment of the IT admins to support and manage a fleet of Linux workstations. There are Linux “Active Directory” servers, configuration provisioning tools, ways to centrally and automatically rollout updates, etc. It really depends on if the IT guys invest the same amount of effort to support them or not.
2000 people, 3k+ devices and one dude wants a Linux laptop.
Not happening 😀
But it did work in a smaller company of around 30 people, mostly because the IT guy was a Linux user too
Well I worked for a while at a large international corporation that maintained (and AFAIK is still continuing) a managed Linux system, which worked well enough. And there where a lot more people, especially the people that were the most productive, interested in it.
Sure that might have just been a nice island inside the larger company, but the people there were the internal consultants, which often had to pull other projects out of the gutter.
If you over your specialists ways to use the tools they need, you will improve the whole company.
IT just said no for WSL “ask your manager”
My manager barely knows how to read his email
and doesn’t understand why I want 3rd screen
Just buy a single 45" curved one then.
He doesn’t like that my cubicle computer would not be all the others
WSL is EEE
Pretend I’m an idiot (should be easy), and tell me what this all is up in here.
Classic Microsoft Business Strategy
Embrace- Extend
- Extinguish
Means that now anyone can fork the project and make changes or iterate on it without needing to wait for Microsoft to fix things.
Fanks
Np! Also forgot to add, I haven’t checked the license but generally with proper open source projects (as in not just source available) it means that even if Microsoft tries to revert this at any point, having forks of this version and continuing to develop and distribute versions of it is A-OK
I am legit excited to install WINE Subsystem for Linux
Or how about KDE on ReactOS on WSL?
The possibilities are endless
Also try out winegui.
ReactOS has SUCH potential. I really wanna see it thrive.
Unfortunately building it was a disaster a few years ago, I should give it another go.
Why were you trying to build it? You can find both ““stable”” release and nightly builds on ReactOS website.
ReactOS 0.4.16 was just released, but I do recommend just getting a nightly build, unless it doesn’t work and you have enough patience to try out the regular version as well.
I still will never understand why it’s not called Linux Subsystem for Windows.
I think it is because Windows has many subsystems, it’s just that you don’t hear about most of them aside from WSL.
So it is referring to the particular Windows Subsystem (of which there are many) that can run or emulate Linux.
Wait, Windows still has POSIX subsystem or is it only listed for documentation reasons (it was there at least in old NT days)?
There’s a trademark for Linux so Microsoft can’t name a product starting with Linux.
Still doesnt explain why it wasn’t called Windows Linux Subsystem (WLS)
So they can use Linux in the name, just not at the beginning? We’re so stupid. Can they do Windows Subsystem for Coke? Or Windows Subsystem for McDonald’s? Or Windows Subsystem for MacOs?
Good gravy.
Copyright is always stupid
I mean I guess it makes some sense. Linux Subsystem for Windows to the uninitiated might sound like it “comes from the Linux brand”, whilst Windows Subsystem for Linux sounds more like its made by Windows.
I think trademark law has a strange history in the US
I’m sure it does, I was just being facetious.
Disney presents Good Gravy®️
Good Gravy®️ Presentation for Disney
Sorry, “gravy” is a registered trademark of Gravy, Inc.: https://trademarks.justia.com/854/89/gravy-85489026.html
I think this only applies to using the word “gravy” for payment services or a website referring to such a payment service. There was a prior trademark on the word for use with plush toy products.
Indeed, it’s why Apple could be trademarked as the name of an electronics company. But you can’t rock up to the trademark office and register “Pear” for a company selling pear-related products.
Yes, there are a bunch of trademarks on the word “gravy”, in different industries. I was going to link to that one you mentioned, because for some reason despite being plush toy products, the company holding it was Bob Evans. But it’s since been canceled, and the company name doesn’t appear on the page, so I chose an active trademark instead.
Not in the spirit of free software, if you ask me.
I got hung up on this before too but it’s apparently “Windows Subsystem for (using) Linux”
Maybe they just named it like the previous attempt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
Don’t you think this is another Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy from Microsoft?
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.
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
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 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.
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.
Does Lemmy even know what EEE means anymore or are we regurgitating words we heard from some article now?
So either all people of lemmy don’t know shit (you are not included here - implied) or only your assumption is valid: Wrong sources.
What’s it going to embrace and extend?
It embraces the Linux ecosystem and DX on windows. Microsoft is extending the Linux kernel and other Linux projects.
WSL has existed for ages and is just a way to run Linux in a convenient container on top of Windows. That’s it.
To you, yes. Can you speak for any project? Is there not a single project where the userbase are consisting of WSL users with compatability issues? Did you research about it? If so, prompt sources.
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.
Trying to bundle the userbase in their subsystem is literally rendering a dedicated Linux machine obsolete. If all would stay there the rest of the distro community would extinguish.
Open sourcing it with a permissive license can only be a good thing,
Can it? Contributing substracts work hours from other projects. So “only be a good thing” is wrong. There are more perspectives then just yours.
and again they’re doing it to be more appealing to devs and maybe get free bug fixes from the open source community.
You got sources about their intentions? You just said it: They are conquering the labor market of personal devs.
It isn’t some grand conspiracy. But of course this community will react to news of “proprietary blob is now open source” with pessimism.
Did you already review the code? No concerns left? How about pulling private servers for data? Is everything mirrored onto their servers? Any binary blobs there? Tracking/monitoring? Is it safe in regards of privacy and security?
Hopefully you see that you ain’t holding all answers and opinions of the entire world. Cheers.
literally just make the development experience on Windows less painful so people don’t switch to another OS.
You said it right there yourself and don’t seem to realize it.
Why have a laptop or a dual boot with Linux when you can now more easily stay on the proprietary OS ?
This is called market retention.
Preventing migration to another OS, another software ecosystem.
The ‘Embrace’ and ‘Extend’ parts of EEE.
And if it works, then in a few years, MSFT will figure out how to further monetize some other part of its software ecosystem that is either reliant on, or much much easier for an average user of WSL to use than switching their whole setup or stack all the way over to Linux.
Call that EEM for ‘monetization’ if you want, or ‘enshittify’ for another E…
…the commonly used term to describe software or services or platforms that suddenly jump over to making previously free stuff cost money, put ads everywhere, break the previously free features and put the ‘new’ working versions behind some kind of paywall…
… All after you’ve captured your market and dominated as many competitors as possible.
Standard monopolist strategy throughout the entite history of capitalism, same general concept goes back even further.
Why have a laptop or a dual boot with Linux when you can now more easily stay on the proprietary OS ?
This is called market retention.
Preventing migration to another OS, another software ecosystem.
The ‘Embrace’ and ‘Extend’ parts of EEE.
That’s stretching the definition to the point it’s nearly unrecognisable.
What the term meant was for things like Internet Explorer, where MS adopted an existing standard (Embrace), started changing it in incompatible ways (Extend), while using their market power to lock out competitors (Extinguish)
e.g. IE used an incompatible method for sizing and laying out elements than any other browser, so a site that laid out properly in NN4 looked broken in IE6, and vise versa. So most devs targeted IE6 as it was more popular, and NN4 users got more and more broken sites.
ACPI was similar, Windows had an extremely lax implementation of it, so motherboards often shipped with bugs that Windows would ignore but would stop anything else from booting. Intentional? Doesn’t really matter, since it sure was helpful in slowing the adoption of things like Linux, that had to come up with workarounds for all the broken hardware.
Linux is a standard they have Embraced.
As a for-profit tech monopolist, they will, very predictably, Extinguish the ability of people who use WSL instead of just actually Linux… to be easily able to… fully transition to a competitor (Linux).
The Extend part just looks different, because the scope of software competition offered by Linux is much more vast than just a particular standard for a particular kind of software.
… Potato, potato.
I used to work for Microsoft.
The ethos is absolutely still there: Create vendor lock in, create ecosystem dependence in every way possible, as well as in ways that 99% of people would not even think are possible.
EEE is just the term they came up with to describe their own, overarching, monopolist general strategy, and if you wanna quibble over the precise technicalities of an internal corporate slogan, well then you’d be the kind of person MSFT is filled with that made me no longer want to work for them.
Careful now, you’re gonna be called a bootlicker for that lol. Everything Microsoft do is evil according to Lemmings.
You’re 100% right though. People on here regurgitate catchphrases and terms that they heard other people in their echo chamber use without understanding what they mean, and because the person who they heard using it also didn’t know what they meant, it’s just a comedy of incorrect usage of terms.
It’s amazing that people still don’t understand Microsoft’s goals despite them being very open and telling everyone over and over and over - they want to be the defacto solutions on everything, so their stuff needs to run on everything. They will start releasing all of their stuff on linux eventually, because even if only 1% of people use Linux, Microsoft want them using Microsoft services.
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
Yeah but imagine if they could collect licence fees after every AWS server as well.
The world is not enough for these companies.
My client is spending waaaaaaay more money on Microsoft Online than it ever used to on software licenses. Every single user in the business is costing 🇦🇺$30 per month alone just for their Office suite. That’s before you get to the Azure stuff. Some hosted apps cost over 🇦🇺$1k/month to host in Azure.
Before you go too strongly after Microsoft for charging so much, this is cheaper than what we used to pay for running our own SharePoint, Exchange etc farms as well as the infrastructure required to host websites/database etc. All that has been outsourced to Microsoft Online and saves significant money.
Microsoft is doing very well out of its own cloud fees and can cope with AWS, Google and all the smaller private cloud operations getting some of that action.
I know they are doing very well, trust me, I’ve seen the inside of the beast. It’s not Microsoft either, any megacorp will talk to you in terms of how much they lost by not fully monopolising a market segment.
And that is my point, not that they don’t make insane amounts of money, but that it will never be enough.
they’ve all but lost the battle for cloud servers
Azure is enormous, what are you talking about?
I meant running windows on them, its enormous and its all linux servers. I know you can run windows but it’ll be a tiny fraction.
Poorly. WSL is awesome but it’s I/O performance is not at a level which will make developers on bigger projects happy.
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.
Xbox is transitioning to “release on everything”, so their upcoming games will all work on proton (apart from COD etc that have anti-cheat, although wouldn’t surprise me if they make that linux compatible eventually). Microsoft would rather you subscribe to game pass to play their games on Linux than not subscribe to game pass and not give them any money. It wouldn’t surprise me if they eventually released a Linux Xbox app.
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
I don’t think that, as Microsoft hasn’t done a lot (any?) of that stuff in recent years. It’s good to be cautious but really what is the problem with opening the source for something that already existed for a while and is embraced by many?
Projects are receiving issues about WSL compatibility issues. So this directly influences FOSS projects.
They would go as far as put bounties for PRs just to get more hold in the community. Just swapping to a permissive license appears to be enough to get contributions.
They can keep their secrets; I won’t ever check this repository out.
It’s because they have pivoted to subscriptions on office, ads on windows and general data harvesting.
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
That’s their playbook. But honestly I think anyone who plays with WSL will either get a taste and begin learning/transitioning to Linux or device to stick with their “safe” windows machine
WSL is just a way to actually get some shit done when there’s a terrible business reason for requiring a native Windows install.
My Microsoft Surface became vastly more useable once I installed Linux on it.
WSL allows me to develop in a Linux environment while still enjoying my very custom Windows setup and programs that I am used to. So no, WSL did not make me choose a side, but instead helps me to get the best of both worlds at once.
Maybe. But Microsoft owns the workplace, so when you get a job they’ll demand you can only use Windows, or if you’re lucky enough to be allowed to use Linux, the Microsoft management software will suck so much you’ll want to use Windows. Microsoft is silently implementing their EEE strategy, and this is only a small part of that. Before long they’ll release their AI-focused cloud-connected Linux distro with Windows Desktop compatibility.
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.
That was 30 years ago, you’re going to have to move on one day.
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.
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long obsolete dos text editor
It’s a full rewrite in Rust, with no direct relation to the old program.
