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Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

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Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#181

Post by andai »

dlcarrier wrote: post #168
andai wrote: post #93

Is 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 primary function of modern operating systems is to allow multiple programs to run, without interfering with each other, even if they try too. This means that each program can only read its own limited amount of memory and only gets to use the processor for a limited time, before another program gets a turn. Windows did not start using those features until Windows NT, which XP is based off of. Through Windows 98,…

Thank you, that's a great explanation.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#182

Post by pests »

AgentMatt wrote: post #163
ChrisRR wrote: post #43

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

I agree. Don't have a citation now, but I remember reading that this was a copyright problem. They wanted to name it "Linux Subsystem for Windows", but apparently the Linux foundation does not allow unaffiliated projects to have a name beginning with "Linux", or something like that.

also bad for your product name to start with a competitors brand

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#183

Post by mrhottakes »

Paracompact wrote: post #175
pwdisswordfishs wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Trivial" doesn't exclusively mean "easy", though it is often used as a euphemism like that. In a literal sense, it very well may have been trivial, even if neither you nor the professor would have been able to easily show it.

What's your definition of trivial? The one I've always flown with is, trivial means (1) a special case of a more general theory (2) which flattens many of the extra frills and considerations of the general theory and (3) is intuitively clear ("easy") to appreciate and compute. From this perspective, everything is trivial from the relative perspective of a god. I know of no absolute definition of trivial.

the absolute definition of trivial is trivial to show

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#184

Post by jasomill »

barrkel wrote: post #26
Fnoord wrote: post #20

Earlier 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…

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.

On your own system, sure.

As a dependency of a shipping Windows application that needs to cleanly coexist side-by-side with existing Cygwin installations and optionally support silent install/upgrade/uninstall through mechanisms like SCCM, Intune, and Group Policy?

Not so much.

I do use the setup program to build the self-contained Cygwin root that's ultimately bundled into my program's MSI package and installed as a subdirectory of its Program Files directory, however.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#185

Post by ErroneousBosh »

defrost wrote: post #8
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #2

If I can get this to work (haven't tried yet) it directly solves a problem I have right now this week right here in 2026, 30 years after Windows 95 was even a thing. Yes, I have weird problems. I get to look after some very weird shit.

Old still running 24/7 industrial processing circuit with oddball bespoke addons based on DOS / early windows ?? Still got those in this part of the world sharing space with state of the art autonomous 100+ tonne robo trucks.

Similar, radio transmitter stuff.

There is a section of the Forties Pipeline where they have a huge amount of gas handling plant in central Scotland. Last time I was on site (admittedly 15 years ago but I don't see this changing soon) the SCADA outstations were run by absolutely minty box fresh VAXStation 3100s. Plastic not even peeled off the front panel badges fresh.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#186

Post by ErroneousBosh »

thijsvandien wrote: post #12
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #2

If I can get this to work (haven't tried yet) it directly solves a problem I have right now this week right here in 2026, 30 years after Windows 95 was even a thing. Yes, I have weird problems. I get to look after some very weird shit.

Tell us more!

Specialised radio transmitter stuff, involving paging. One manufacturer, still producing turnkey systems that run on Windows 95.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#187

Post by ErroneousBosh »

jesterson wrote: post #68
dnnddidiej wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably works for a bank.

And likely in ATM servicing. Just few months ago seen windows 95 error message on HSBC ATM.

For a long time all the IBM ATMs ran OS/2 Warp 4.

I recently saw that running on special 16 channel DAT recorders used by the 999 service, recently as in "within the past five years". I believe they've been retired but kept around in case they need to recover tapes off them.

I kept my mouth ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SHUT about knowing my way round OS/2 Warp 4.

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#188

Post by ErroneousBosh »

keepamovin wrote: post #76
defrost wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old still running 24/7 industrial processing circuit with oddball bespoke addons based on DOS / early windows ?? Still got those in this part of the world sharing space with state of the art autonomous 100+ tonne robo trucks.

If you're dealing with weird legacy 9x systems in 2026, another headache you've probably run into is getting them to talk to the modern web (since modern TLS and JS completely break old browsers). I actually built a win9x compatibility mode into BrowserBox specifically for this kind of weirdness. You run the server on a modern system and launch it with bbx win9x-run, and it proxies the modern web to legacy clients. I…

Ah! I solved that easily enough. Internet Explorer 8 works okay for the webby front ends to operate the transmitter equipment. How do you run that, in this day and age, safely?

Run it in Windows XP, in a VM.

Now here's the clever bit - qemu will allow you to expose the keyboard, mouse, and framebuffer as a VNC server. So you set up Apache Guacamole to point a VNC client at the VM, and then "normal people" can log in, operate the transmitter, and log out again.

You can do a lot of sneaky things with that, including setting up headless X, running VNC on it pointed at your qemu VM, and then streaming the headless X servers's framebuffer out with ffmpeg.

Yes sometimes work can be a bit boring with not much to do, why do you ask?

Re: Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux

#190

Post by jasomill »

Dwedit wrote: post #178
radiator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays MSYS2, which does depend on cygwin under the hood, offers such a package manager (pacman of Arch Linux) and it is quite a user friendly to run native POSIX binaries on Windows without a linux VM.

MSYS2 is very confusing. When you pick "MSYS2", you are building exclusively for the MSYS2 target environment, and might not have proper compatible windows headers. When you pick "MINGW32/64", you are instead building for the normal windows environment, and get proper windows headers. But if you didn't know that, you would end up confused about why your program is not building. It doesn't help that the package simply…

And just to add insult to injury, you probably don't want MINGW64 either, as it relies on the ancient MSVCRT.DLL C runtime library that lacks support for "new" features like C99 compatibility and the UTF-8 locale, and that Microsoft never supported for use by third-party applications in the first place.

Instead, you either want UCRT64 or CLANG64, depending on whether you want to build with the GNU or LLVM toolchains, as it uses the newer, fully-supported Universal C Runtime instead.

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