Can someone explain me the so what? Like it is impressive, but why do we need it?
Sometimes people do cool things for fun, without the express intent of maximizing their BALANCE integer in their bank's SQL table.
Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
121–130 of 265 posts
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#122The NT kernel (used in NT 3.1 through 2000, XP, and eventually backported to Windows 10/11's WSL) was designed from scratch in 1993 with a POSIX subsystem from day one. The whole design philosophy was "multiple personalities" - handle syscalls from different environments by translating them to native NT kernel calls. WSL1 in 2016 essentially reimplemented that same trick for Linux.
Windows 9x, by contrast, was DOS-derived. Running Linux inside it would require fundamentally different (and messier) hacks - which is probably why nobody did it at the time. The very fact that this works at all is a testament to how ahead-of-its-time NT's architecture was.
For a practical answer: you'd need something like this for legacy locked-in situations. Old medical or industrial software that only runs on Windows 98, or specialized hardware without modern drivers. That said, if you have a 486 handy in 2026, running Linux natively is almost certainly more useful than running it inside a 30-year-old DOS derivative.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#123Is this person a wizard? To me, this seems an impossible feat. But I wonder how it seems to people who understand how it works? I'm reminded of this joke: Two mathematicians are talking. One says a theorem is trivial. After two hours of explanation, the other agrees that it is indeed trivial.
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As the repo says
> Proudly written without AI.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#124Can someone explain me the so what? Like it is impressive, but why do we need it?
Not everything needs to be "needed".
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#125Is this person a wizard? To me, this seems an impossible feat. But I wonder how it seems to people who understand how it works? I'm reminded of this joke: Two mathematicians are talking. One says a theorem is trivial. After two hours of explanation, the other agrees that it is indeed trivial.
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The README states:
> Proudly written without AI.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#126Is this person a wizard? To me, this seems an impossible feat. But I wonder how it seems to people who understand how it works? I'm reminded of this joke: Two mathematicians are talking. One says a theorem is trivial. After two hours of explanation, the other agrees that it is indeed trivial.
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Stuff like this is far above the capabilities of today’s top AIs.
It’ll produce something, sure, but it won’t actually work, and making it work takes as much effort as building it from scratch.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#127The NT kernel (used in NT 3.1 through 2000, XP, and eventually backported to Windows 10/11's WSL) was designed from scratch in 1993 with a POSIX subsystem from day one. The whole design philosophy was "multiple personalities" - handle syscalls from different environments by translating them to native NT kernel calls. WSL1 in 2016 essentially reimplemented that same trick for Linux. Windows 9x, by contrast, was DOS-de…
All of this is true, but this is not unprecedented: after all Windows 9x was able to run DOS, and that took no shortage of wizardry
Some interesting reading:
1. What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95? (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20071224-00/?p=24...)
2. Why doesn’t Windows 95 format floppy disks smoothly? (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090102-00/?p=19...)
3. Running MS-DOS programs in a window alongside other Windows programs (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20231127-00/?p=10...)
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#128Before 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…
Nope, the best way was VMWare Workstation, followed by Virtual Box.
And before those Virtual PC by Connectix. Which Microsoft bought and dumped.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#129Is this person a wizard? To me, this seems an impossible feat. But I wonder how it seems to people who understand how it works? I'm reminded of this joke: Two mathematicians are talking. One says a theorem is trivial. After two hours of explanation, the other agrees that it is indeed trivial.
> this seems an impossible feat
What makes you think so?