Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes tons of sense if you understand marketing and that the brand "Windows" must always come first.
Does that explain Word for Windows?
Don't you mean Copilot 365 .NET SharePoint Document Platform for Windows?
Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
151–160 of 265 posts
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#152Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#153Before 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 is way older than CoLinux. CoLinux is from 2004. Cygwin was first released in 1995. The problem with Cygwin as I remember it was DLL hell. You'd have applications (such as a OpenSSH port for Windows) which would include their own cygwin1.dll and then you'd have issues with different versions of said DLL. Cygwin had less overhead which mattered in a world of limited RAM and heavy, limited swapping (x86-32, limi…
Cygwin works fine if I am compiling stuff locally for my own use, but that cygwin1.dll (plus any dependencies) is a problem for distribution.
What I usually do is make sure my code builds with both Cygwin and MingW, and distribute the binaries built with MingW.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#154By microsoft's naming scheme this should be Linux Subsystem for Windows
Yeah this has never made sense...
It runs Linux with Windows underneath it, hence Windows is the subsystem being subordinate (in the most literal sense where it simply means "order" with no further implications) to Linux.
Per wongarsu's post, something like the OS/2 Subsystem is an OS/2 system with Windows beneath it, but the OS/2 Subsystem is much smaller and less consequential, thus subsidiary (in the auxiliary sense) to Windows as a whole.
Isn't marketing fun?
This is how we end up with hundreds of products that provide "solutions" to your business problems and "retain customers" and upwards of a dozen other similar phrases they all slather on their frontpages, even though one is a distributed database, one is a metrics analysis system, one handles usage-based billing, one is a consulting service, one is a hosted provider for authentication... so frustrating trying to figure out just what a product is sometimes with naming conventions that make "Windows Subsystem for Linux" look like a paragon of clarity. At least "Linux" was directly referenced and it wasn't Windows Subsystem for Alternate Binary Formats or something.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#155This being on the front page the same day as "Show HN submissions tripled and now mostly have the same vibe-coded look" is nice to see. One person spends 6 years understanding Win9x internals to run a modern Linux kernel inside it. The other thread is full of apps that took 20 minutes to prompt into existence. Posts like this make me happy.
And likely the prompt itself was generated. Instead of "create me an owl app" write: "create me a comprehensive prompt to create an owl app". Then paste that prompt to next AI session.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#156Is 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.
I remember myself on my first year of CS, set theory classes, at the whiteboard, trying to make a proof, but there something I was not able to prove at all, so I said 'it's trivial' and the doctor said 'yeah, it's trivial' and we went further.
Maybe it wasn't trivial at all for both of you ...
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#157Before 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.
Why not? That is just a matter of porting stuff over, like a FreeBSD ports collection, an apt repo, or a bunch of scripts for Proton/Wine such as Lutris.
Cygwin started in 1995. Microsoft wasn't cooperative with FOSS at all at that point. They were practicing EEE, and eating some expensive Unix/VMS machines with WNT.
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cygwin is way older than CoLinux. CoLinux is from 2004. Cygwin was first released in 1995. The problem with Cygwin as I remember it was DLL hell. You'd have applications (such as a OpenSSH port for Windows) which would include their own cygwin1.dll and then you'd have issues with different versions of said DLL. Cygwin had less overhead which mattered in a world of limited RAM and heavy, limited swapping (x86-32, limi…
> Java specifically had a bad name, and back then not even a coherent UI toolkit. Java was ahead of its time, now nothing has a coherent UI toolkit.
Qt looks nice as a user and gnome gtk isn’t too bad either
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought WSL2 is functionally a virtual machine with deep host integration. That’s why you need HyperV.
Sort of. Technically speaking, just enabling hyper-v turns your base windows install into a VM. Wsl2 then just runs along side
Huh that’s interesting I didn’t realize that
Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
#160Is 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.
The win9x kernel famously doesn't do very much, which seems like it can give you ample room to port some of Linux's low level functionality to it.