
Microsoft is going to ship a full Linux kernel in Windows 10 - oldjokes
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18534687/microsoft-windows-10-linux-kernel-feature
======
stevehiehn
Makes you wonder if the endgame is to eventually just gut windows completely
and have a Microsoft GUI running on Linux.

~~~
andrewstuart
You've misunderstood what this is. It is a full kernel for the Linux
subsystem, which provides the ability to run Linux code in Windows. As I
understand it, the existing solution maps Linux kernel calls to the Windows
kernel. I can imagine it would be much easier to just provide a true Linux
kernel rather than try to support a brittle mapping layer.

They are not putting in a Linux kernel for Windows. Huge difference.

~~~
stevehiehn
I have a decent understanding of what this is. I don't think WSL was added
because they thought it would be cool to have two OS's. The bigger picture is
every day windows becomes less relevant. Microsoft is now a powerful cloud
company. I'm not sure even they even care about windows clients beyond legacy
contracts. I think before thier users have no choice but to leave they want to
say hey look, you are already using Linux, no need to go anywhere.

~~~
newnewpdro
I'm pretty confident in saying Microsoft has _zero_ intention of running Linux
directly on the bare-metal serving as the driver layer for Windows.

This is nothing more than a way for Microsoft to provide a *NIX userspace
competitive with Apple, you know, so developers actually consider using their
products instead of Apple's.

Edit:

We're actually in the midst of quite the opposite happening with the Linux
kernel. After Android pivots to Fuchsia/Zircon, it'll only be a matter of time
before Linux running on the bare-metal outside of datacenters will be
exclusively the niche domain of Raspberry Pi style tinkerer devices and the
tiny population of Linux enthusiasts running them on increasingly poorly
supported PCs.

PC owners will be increasingly less compelled to bother even trying a Linux
installation when their OEM Windows install already contains it as a
compatibility shim.

This all translates into Linux's native support for modern desktops and
laptops deteriorating for lack of users, I fear it's not going to be a growing
market.

~~~
jchw
Wow, I can’t think of a future I’d like less. Thankfully this is nonsense ;)

It is true that desktop Linux users are a niche case. Hell, I would not be
surprised if that niche got smaller, even; but I have some pretty intense
doubts that it’s dying or even going in that direction. In fact I would argue
that the desktop platform as a whole has been on a decline, whereas desktop
Linux has merely stagnated. The average user who is either gaming or just
Facebooking on Windows PCs are finding increasingly less use out of their
desktops. The gaming market on PC is healthy, but it’s cracking: the
fragmentation of PC game stores and the increasing power and versatility of
game consoles probably poses a threat in the long term. For all other use
cases, mobile operating systems like iOS and Android are rapidly becoming not
only usable, but preferable. Banking on my iPhone feels like the future,
compared to the shoddy web UIs full of age old cruft.

So Microsoft has made wonderful strides for developers using Windows. No
sarcasm here; I’ve been developing software on Windows since Visual C++6 and
it’s been nothing but improvements. But I develop software for servers and
browsers. The Microsoft ecosystem does not appeal to me. .NET Core is great
but there’s still a lot of work to go _and_ it’s reaching maturity in a world
where we have amazing languages like Go and Rust. I have still dabbled a bit
in .NET Core and I’m impressed, but they would’ve probably had more success if
it had kicked off years earlier than it did.

So what’s going on with Linux? Frankly, quite a lot!

\- Wayland is finally reaching maturity, slowly. For now, this is causing
loads of problems, but as those issues clear up it’s looking like this might
finally work out!

\- Valve continues to improve Steam, with integrated Windows emulation. It’ll
never be a substitute for real ports, but it’s still cool.

\- The reproducibility and immutability bug has bit a few hands. New, advanced
distributions like GuixSD and NixOS offer a pretty unique, extremely
predictable experience (even if that predictable experience is not exactly
compatible with the full range of existing software.) Fedora has rolled out
OStree-based system upgrades too, which is awesome. This is one of those
things where desktop Linux was really awful that is becoming a strength.

\- There is apparently genuine demand for OEM Linux. We see not one, but two
vendors that appear to be thriving: Purism, and System76. I want one of those
darn Helios boxes just to look nice in the living room (and yes, I run Linux
in the living room, and it’s been way less horrible than I would’ve imagined.)

(There’s more; like btrfs and other innovations that benefit desktop AND
server use cases)

There’s more. And it goes without saying that there have also been negatives.
Like graphics drivers from our green logoed friends. But by and large, I’ve
had a great past decade with Linux. Aside from a small audio issue, my
desktops have been free of any hardware compatibility issues throughout
upgrades. Intel offers GPU passthrough that you can use in your KVM boxes for
better virtualization. AMD IOMMU is reliable for nearly any Ryzen setup (got a
GPU passthrough setup going great over here, and it didn’t even take a whole
weekend to set up.)

Is Linux dying? Hell no. Is it the year of the Linux desktop? Also no. These
claims both come up constantly and neither ever materialize. Desktop Linux has
its niche and it probably will for the foreseeable future. Don’t extrapolate
the ebb and flow too far.

~~~
collyw
Really? Maybe its because I work with biologists, but I have seen more and
more non-techies with Linux desktops in recent years.

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cs702
_> Microsoft’s integration of Linux in Windows 10 will interface with a
userspace installed via the Windows Store..._

Given Microsoft's history, I can't help but wonder if this wholehearted
embrace of Linux is part of a classic Microsoft embrace-extend-extinguish
strategy.[a]

Is the endgame a Windows-only userspace layered on top of the Linux kernel?

[a]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish)

~~~
lake99
They can embrace Linux, but they can't extend it in any meaningful way. By
which I mean they can't ever create a Microsoft brand of packaged Linux. The
Linux marketshare is already flooded with distros, and any software that earns
revenue running on Linux runs on all the major distros more or less equally
well. What could Microsoft create for which Microsoft Linux would be an option
so compelling that companies would pay money to buy Microsoft Linux?

For example, MS could create a whole new graphical alternative to X and
Wayland that works better than them both. Their challenge for capitalizing on
that would be to create a software that works only somewhat well on X or
Wayland, but works perfectly on MS Linux. I predict the Linux crowd will not
use it. At best, they'll end up providing an alternative for the benefit of MS
aficionados.

~~~
dleslie
Why not? Google did it.

Android was an embracing of Linux, they extended it with Google Play Services,
and now they're moving toward extinguishing it.

~~~
kelnos
But that doesn't negatively impact all the prior uses of Linux. The
"extinguish" part means that they ruin Linux for everyone else. If Google
stops using Linux as the kernel for Android... so what?

~~~
ufo
The embrace-extend-extinguish approach deprived us from non-Android (and non-
Google) Linux on smartphones.

------
s3cur3
Previous discussion, with the official source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842817)

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AtHeartEngineer
I want native bash commands in Windows shell. I know powershell supports some
commands, but and actual Linux shell to interface with the rest of windows
will be awesome. WSL is getting there, sucks I've gotta install Python and
node/npm twice.

~~~
echeese
The interop is pretty good, I don't have cowsay on Windows and I don't have
node in wsl, but this still works:

    
    
        C:\Users\Ryan>wsl cowsay hello
         _______
        < hello >
         -------
                \   ^__^
                 \  (oo)\_______
                    (__)\       )\/\
                        ||----w |
                        ||     ||
        
        C:\Users\Ryan>wsl
        ryan@DESKTOP:/mnt/c/Users/Ryan$ notepad.exe test.js
        ryan@DESKTOP:/mnt/c/Users/Ryan$ node.exe test.js
        hello, world!

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Do you need to do something special for "wsl" to send a command to wsl? I only
get an error on my win 10 machine (that "wsl" is not a known command/let).

~~~
echeese
Do you have WSL installed? It's not part of Windows by default (at least not
since I checked)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Yes, it's enabled- I can use bash and all.

~~~
echeese
No idea - sorry!

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
No worries -thanks for replying :)

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bastard_op
Nevermind we tried to curb stomp you for the past 25 years. Haha.

~~~
aceperry
I was thinking that when I read it. We're so far from the days when MS claimed
that Linux had a lot of stolen and copyrighted code in the kernel.

~~~
bubblethink
Not really. We don't have ntfs and exfat drivers in the kernel due to patent
claims. Fedora can't even show fonts properly. This is just usual diplomacy.
Nothing to get too happy (or too worked up) about.

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Quiark
So how will the kernel run? I guess virtualised behind the scenes using
Hyper-V and accessed using the Windows Terminal? Seems that this should
replace the WSL project entirely which is kind of a shame because it was
pretty cool.

Also, unlike others here, I'm not a fan of a computing monoculture where
everything is UNIX going forward.

~~~
zeusk
You might find this interesting,
[https://youtu.be/tG8R5SQGPck?t=24m50s](https://youtu.be/tG8R5SQGPck?t=24m50s)

Checkout the lightweight VMs (start around 38:00)

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shmerl
It replaces Wine-like WSL with some virtualization. Apparently performance of
WSL didn't cut it comparing to VMs.

~~~
josteink
If this improves IO speeds, I will be positively surprised.

Those were always subpar with WSL.

------
continuations
Does GPL require Microsoft to open source Windows 10 then?

~~~
IceWreck
No, the only have to release the source for the custom kernel that they will
use in their subsystem.

------
leshokunin
Wonder what this will mean. Is the ability to run Linux commands and programs
going to be there just so people who like Terminal can do their job without
VMs? Is this a deeper move towards making apps more universal? That would
remind me of when Mac OS migrated to x86 in some fashion.

~~~
bitxbit
This is helpful for some of us doing data science and ML with consumer-grade
GPUs.

------
danalec
systemd versus windows

~~~
anticensor
systemd vs svchost.exe

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ridiculous_fish
Will the kernels be able to interact at all outside of the filesystem? For
example could I write a Linux program which opens a Windows browser?

~~~
zeusk
This already works with WSL1.0, so I'd consider it to be a regression if not.
I just verified with opening vscode from bash in a windows directory from WSL
using `code /mnt/c/Users/zeusk/Desktop/memester`

Also, output of `which code`:

> zeusk@DESKTOP-F776PPQ:/mnt/c/Users/zeusk/Desktop$ which code

> /mnt/c/Users/zeusk/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/bin/code

~~~
ridiculous_fish
WSL1 shares the kernel, but WSL2 uses a hypervisor, so IPC is likely to take a
hit.

~~~
chx
Well, WSL1 has real bad performance with lots of small files and they say
their internal performance tests unzipping a tarball 20x faster and git clone
or npm install going 2-5 times faster. Not sure what IPC would make slower...?

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leemailll
Do they also offer package management?

~~~
techntoke
For Windows? No, that will continue to suck.

~~~
machz
brew (used on MacOS) is working on extending support to Windows and Linux.

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ryan-allen
I'm very excited about this. It's like everything I wanted all in one
operating system!

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mmcdonald3009
OpenSuSE Leap 15 anyone ???

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daotoad
World domination achieved.

~~~
OneWordSoln
Not on my boxen. Never again.

~~~
sixothree
You run Chrome?

~~~
OneWordSoln
FF on Debian and Ubuntu.

~~~
htfy96
* Fx

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ggm
Anyone else here remember "eunice" on Vax/VMS?

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thrownaway954
oh man... if we can finally use native ruby gems on windows and host the sites
through iis without the performance hit... this will be a game changer.

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dzamo_norton
Gonna be a big download.

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inflatableDodo
Sounds great, however I had already assumed that in order to save money,
Windows 10 was probably just an obfuscated linux kernel running some weird MS
fork of Wine.

~~~
cududa
...you seriously thought this?

~~~
inflatableDodo
I seriously thought this not very seriously.

