[Discuss] Windows Subsystem for Linux

[mark at buttery.org (Shirley Márquez Dúlcey)]

It's been in the Insider Preview builds for a while. Now the general
public is getting a crack at it.

I doubt it will make much of an impression on most Windows users. It
doesn't run GUI apps, and the majority of Windows people rarely touch
the command line or non-GUI applications.

I can see it becoming a big hit with system administrators. Not just
to run Linux applications, but also to use bash as a shell rather than
PowerShell. Admins who work with both Windows and Linux will
appreciate being able to work on both platforms with a single shell.

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 11:02 PM, Rich Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the new features in Windows 10 1607 (aka Anniversary Update) is
> the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It lets you run Linux binaries on Windows.
>
> No, it's not a virtual machine.
>
> No, it's not a container.
>
> No, it's not a Linux kernel compiled as an executable (coLinux).
>
> No, it's not an environment for compiling and running POSIX code on
> Windows (Cygwin).
>
> No, it's not an emulator.
>
> It is similar to WINE. It's a set of libraries/tools/etc that translate
> Linux system calls into Windows system calls on the fly. It runs real
> 64-bit Linux ELF (specifically Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS as of this writing)
> binaries pulled directly from Canonical's distribution mirrors:
>
> ratinox at SKULD:~$ file /bin/bash
> /bin/bash: ELF 64-bit LSB  executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV),
> dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24,
> BuildID[sha1]=54967822da027467f21e65a1eac7576dec7dd821, stripped
> ratinox at SKULD:~$ sha256sum /bin/bash
> 8c4d49445d0050884e0703571f187338b10c7836b08ed822cc5fc6cf15ac76b0  /bin/bash
>
> I wonder if RMS is going to try to get the world to call it
> "GNU/Windows". :)
>
> --
> Rich P.
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