Run any Linux application natively on Windows (Vista and 7) without Cygwin • Hacker News Board

Re: Run any Linux application natively on Windows (Vista and 7) without Cygwin

#11

Post by zokier » Sun, Jan 09, 2011, 8:22 AM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #7

Article is from 2006. SFU was officially dropped by Microsoft circa 2009. Last version I could find doesn't even list Vista/7 as supported OSes. WTH?

It's mentioned in the article: "Microsoft is transitioning the product line again, integrating it directly into Windows, with the Posix component being renamed to Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA)."

It's included in Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions, you can enable it from "Windows Features" dialog.

Re: Run any Linux application natively on Windows (Vista and 7) without Cygwin

#12

Post by spcmnspff » Sun, Jan 09, 2011, 8:26 AM UTC

From what I read, you can get Debian and Gentoo system running with this.

http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_Gentoo_on_WINDOWS

http://www.debian-interix.net/

Would love to try get Gentoo but MSDNAA offers Professional rather than Ultimate.

Re: Run any Linux application natively on Windows (Vista and 7) without Cygwin

#13

Post by nitrogen » Sun, Jan 09, 2011, 9:59 AM UTC

Quite a misleading headline: SFU/SUA doesn't allow one to run native Linux binaries on Windows, which would require emulating Linux's syscall interface, libc, dynamic linker, etc. It allows one to port (i.e. recompile) POSIX-compliant applications. Linux (as the term is popularly used) is a significantly-larger superset of the interfaces and utilities specified by POSIX.

Re: Run any Linux application natively on Windows (Vista and 7) without Cygwin

#14

Post by daeken » Sun, Jan 09, 2011, 10:42 AM UTC

niktech wrote: post #4

roadnottaken wrote: post #3

How is this different from Cygwin? Cygwin's software repositories are free so it seems superior, at least in that respect. Everything else the article describes sounds exactly like Cygwin.

This approach is higher performance, officially supported by Microsoft and comes with all Ultimate Vista/7 installations. Cygwin runs as a user-mode app that emulates the POSIX environment using the underlying Windows APIs. SUA is an integrated subsystem that is on the same level in the kernel stack as the Windows subsystem (that's being used by every Windows app out there). By being so close to the kernel, SUA is ab…

As far as I'm aware, Interix (SUA) uses no undocumented interfaces. The kernel subsystem interfaces are actually quite nicely documented; I was working on a Darwin subsystem for a while, using SUA as a nice reference ("along with Windows Internals"), and it's really quite nice.