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Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

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Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#61
post #30

I thought this was about running windows 9x within linux. Is there such thing without virtualisation?

You can setup handlers to automatically launch windows executables using wine/proton .

This trickery is called binfmt_misc , which is a linux kernel system to associate random binary files with custom userspace 'interpreters'

I have had it working in the past. And while it is kinda neat I prefer manually running 'wine program.exe' to have a bit more control.

I have seen reports that a binfmt_misc setup + wine is good enough to get infected by certain windows viruses ;-P

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#63
post #18
post #5

Okay what is it with WSL naming, this always confuses me. Shouldn't it be Linux subsystem for Windows?

If you google there are many reasonable reasons for it. But the most straight forward is: > Because we cannot name something leading with a trademark owned by someone else. https://xcancel.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s...

Should have called it LINE.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#64
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use ssh from Cygwin. DLL hell was rarely a problem, just always install everything via setup.exe. The single biggest problem it has is slow forking. I learned to write my scripts in pure bash as much as possible, or as a composition of streaming executables, and avoid executing an executable per line of input or similar.

Slow forking is only the second biggest problem IMO. The biggest is the lack of proper signals. There's a bunch of software out there that just isn't architected to work well without non-cooperative preemption.

Huh? Signals have worked fine for a long time under Cygwin.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#66
post #43

By microsoft's naming scheme this should be Linux Subsystem for Windows

Yeah this has never made sense...

Especially since the other subsystems were referred to as the OS/2 subsystem, Posix subsystem, Win32 subsystem, Security subsystem, etc

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#67
post #5

Okay what is it with WSL naming, this always confuses me. Shouldn't it be Linux subsystem for Windows?

The core of the software is a subsystem, specifically a Windows subsystem; you're not running this subsystem on macOS or FreeBSD. The "for Linux" is added because it's a subsystem for Linux applications (originally not leveraging a VM). Microsoft also had the "Microsoft POSIX subsystem" (1993) and "Windows Services for UNIX" (1999) which were built on the "Subsystem for Unix-based Applications" (rather than "Unix-bas…

To me, it sounds like a subsystem that provides Windows Compability for the Linux host.

I do agree it's an issue of English being an imprecise language.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#69
post #10

Before WSL, the best ways to run unmodified Linux binaries inside Windows were CoLinux and flinux. http://www.colinux.org/ https://github.com/wishstudio/flinux flinux essentially had the architecture of WSL1, while CoLinux was more like WSL2 with a Linux kernel side-loaded. Cygwin was technically the correct approach: native POSIX binaries on Windows rather than hacking in some foreign Linux plumbing. Since it was me…

>Cygwin was technically the correct approach

Requiring every single Linux app developer to recompile their app using Cygwin and account for quirks that it may have is not the correct approach. Having Microsoft handle all of the compatibility concerns scales much better.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#70
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core of the software is a subsystem, specifically a Windows subsystem; you're not running this subsystem on macOS or FreeBSD. The "for Linux" is added because it's a subsystem for Linux applications (originally not leveraging a VM). Microsoft also had the "Microsoft POSIX subsystem" (1993) and "Windows Services for UNIX" (1999) which were built on the "Subsystem for Unix-based Applications" (rather than "Unix-bas…

To me, it sounds like a subsystem that provides Windows Compability for the Linux host . I do agree it's an issue of English being an imprecise language.

No natural language is inherently imprecise. Every language has its own system to resolve vagueness or ambiguity and elaborate on the supposedly "missing" features of the language. This issue is relatively settled in linguistics.
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