The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source • Hacker News Board

Post by lproven » Mon, May 26, 2025, 2:02 PM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #997

lproven wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the reverse WSL on Linux, where Windows is deeply embedded and you have all the Windows features in your hands? https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps Enjoy.

Late I am, but this reminded me of someone else here posting about https://usebottles.com ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44025837 ) Seems to be based on very polished https://www.winehq.org , so no full VM, but maybe it's less 'heavy'?

I am experimenting with Bottles for an article right now, as it happens -- but no, it does not seem to me that Bottles is at all comparable to WinApps.

WinApps runs the apps on real native Windows in a VM, but integrates their UI with the host OS.

WINE does this anyway, and it's an inherent property of WINE because there is no host OS. WINE does some fakery and indirection to make Unix filesystems appear on drive letters and things, but the app is still executing on the host OS, just via a translation layer.

Bottles runs the apps on top of WINE, but maintains separate WINE instances for each app and allows different onces to have different auxiliary tools, such as games-compatibility libraries, different versions of WINE, etc.