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Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

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Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#241

Post by pjmlp »

WorldMaker wrote: post #240
creshal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As in, the thing that tried to implement Linux syscall interfaces on top of the Windows kernel? It's really funny, NT was supposed to be great at three things: - be easily ported to different hardware architectures, which then never actually became relevant (and nowadays macOS is the best example for actual architecture migrations!) - have a much more sophisticated and elaborate security model than those filthy uni…

> - be easily ported to different hardware architectures, which then never actually became relevant Commercially relevant, perhaps, but it has remained technically relevant: The NT Kernel has historically operated on lots of different hardware architectures and continues to run on a small variety today. The ARM port is still active and a living branch even if total hardware sales are fewer than projected and Microsof…

As someone that believed into the WinRT dream, I am deeply sour with how WinDev managed the whole story, it wasn't only the users not wanting to adopt the new world.

Microsoft itself made a mess out of the developer experience.

Now I am back to distributed computing, and for anything Windows the classical frameworks are good enough.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#242

Post by WorldMaker »

iggldiggl wrote: post #229
bitwize wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter because lots of Android apps (esp. games) have native-code bits in them that are linked in with JNI.

It's not just games – anything multimedia (video, audio, pictures, even my e-book reader) is another likely candidate for including native libraries, and some other apps, too.

Plus Android for x86 has the same problem that it doesn't have officially supported versions of the Google Play APIs which lead to Microsoft relying on the Amazon Store and Amazon's strange fork of Google Play APIs to get any number of apps to run (which was a tiny subset of what Android users consider "Android apps").

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#243

Post by WorldMaker »

Postosuchus wrote: post #106
pjmlp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rumors are there, because apparently Amazon wants it to be a kind of media center only, and prime products, nothing else. I can understand them, my LG with WebOS is good enough for similar purposes.

> wants it to be a kind of media center only Again, to accomplish this goal, one has to: - Build a credible software stack - from UI kits to audio and video codecs - Convince the streaming companies to build one more flavor of their apps (in addition to Android/FTV, AppleTV, Roku, and a bunch of SmartTV platforms) - Build ad stack and also convince major ad platforms to build their respective ad SDKs for the new plat…

> - Convince the streaming companies to build one more flavor of their apps (in addition to Android/FTV, AppleTV, Roku, and a bunch of SmartTV platforms)

Amazon already has to convince them to support Fire apps today. The userspace fork (no Google Play APIs at all) has already diverged enough that software developers think of it as a very different platform no matter how many Android dev tools they share. I certainly see that reflected in lots of streaming company's release notes.

How much is Amazon actually benefiting from a shared Android kernel when userspace is so vastly different today?

Given they already have a diverged userspace and fewer tethers to Google doesn't that make more sense for Amazon to experiment with something like Tizen than Samsung does? Amazon has way more ability to lift and shift their unique user experience without disrupting their users for first party apps, and with how limited the Amazon App Store has become, probably fewer complaints about third-party apps, too.

(Tizen is just an example, of course, but can't help but think that an Amazon-Samsung partnership on Tizen even sounds like a fascinating political game versus Google at this point. Seems unlikely to happen, Amazon doesn't seem to want partnerships like that, but an interesting idea in theory.)

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#244

Post by WorldMaker »

partitioned wrote: post #141
bsimpson wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual excuse for not open-sourcing is that commercial products aren't developed in a vacuum. Flash, for instance, supposedly included a bunch of codecs that Adobe didn't have the license to redistribute as source. At a bigger company, there are presumably dependencies on in-house build systems, standard libraries, etc. Maintaining open-source versions of those is unfortunately a non-trivial task.

You just make all the dependencies open source at the time the rest of it becomes open source, then you can keep the updates in-house and the community can update the dependencies if necessary and willing

That still assumes the dependencies are first-party. Some well known CVE examples have been how much both macOS and Windows had internal dependencies on Adobe code. Surely Adobe still has a commercial interest in their code even as/when both macOS and Windows dropped the features that relied on those dependencies?

(For other examples, the game industry is full of well known third-party "middleware" like Bink, SpeedTree, and much more because those middleware like to force their logos into places for advertising as a part of their licensing terms. If Windows had opening or closing credits it might be a surprise how many logos might be forced to show up in it.)

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#245

Post by qingcharles »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #18

So, this is the second time a "run your Android apps on Windows" initiative fizzles out: before WSA (which was Amazon-centric), there was a late-2020 "Your Phone" feature that (briefly) allowed Samsung apps on Windows desktops. Not sure if this means anything other than "phone apps run best on, well, a phone", especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop, other than i…

There are a huge number of phone apps which are not on the desktop and you have to use them on your phone. Tons of banking apps, e.g. Cash App, Venmo etc, are not supported on the Web. Other apps, like TikTok have Web versions which are so broken to the point where they are unusable.

I have to keep a Chromebook to be able to run Android apps on the desktop, unless anyone has another solution?

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#246

Post by anticensor »

creshal wrote: post #105
mook wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would have been WSL1, right? As in, the thing that tried to implement Linux syscall interfaces on top of the Windows kernel? The current thing (WSL2) is "just" a VM (with lots of work to make it work nicer)…

> As in, the thing that tried to implement Linux syscall interfaces on top of the Windows kernel? It's really funny, NT was supposed to be great at three things: - be easily ported to different hardware architectures, which then never actually became relevant (and nowadays macOS is the best example for actual architecture migrations!) - have a much more sophisticated and elaborate security model than those filthy uni…

Unix is not RIP, thanks to WSL1 still being maintained on Windows 11. Original Unix subsystem is discontinued though.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#247

Post by anticensor »

nwah1 wrote: post #122

WSA was becoming an alternative to the Android Emulator for MAUI development. This is the only reason that I'm sad. They should just open source this and let the community maintain it.

That would be a huge boon to ReactOS.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#248

Post by syntheticnature »

Postosuchus wrote: post #50
syntheticnature wrote: post #15

The fact they're ending this makes me wonder if the rumors of Amazon fully abandoning AOSP as the basis for FireOS are true. If so, it would be ending it because there won't be an appstore with updated apps before long.

Doesn't make much sense. Building an ecosystem is far, far more difficult than throwing together a small embedded OS. Just ask Samsung and LG (and Google for that matter). Maybe Amazon has enough clout to force all streaming app developers (and game developers, which is the new frontier, and ad platforms) to suck it down and build support for the new platform but I doubt it - plus the ROI is just not there. Why destr…

Got busy yesterday, but I see no one pointed out they already replaced AOSP on the Echo Show: https://9to5google.com/2023/11/14/amazon-android-echo-show-r... -- and it no longer supports Netflix.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#249

Post by syntheticnature »

pquki4 wrote: post #115
syntheticnature wrote: post #15

The fact they're ending this makes me wonder if the rumors of Amazon fully abandoning AOSP as the basis for FireOS are true. If so, it would be ending it because there won't be an appstore with updated apps before long.

It's not possible before Amazon can build their own browser that runs on their own OS. (Or, if they can somehow get the Android/Linux version of Chrome run on the OS.) As simple as that.

As I mentioned elsewhere, they have that: https://9to5google.com/2023/11/14/amazon-android-echo-show-r...

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#250

Post by ComputerGuru »

electroly wrote: post #206
int_19h wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the tech was shared with WSL 1 (the one that emulates Linux syscalls). But these days WSL2 (the one that runs Linux in a VM) gets all the love.

You're thinking of Project Astoria. WSA is a separate and much more recent project that uses a virtual machine like WSL2 does.

That’s why I’m surprised. It’s literally just maintaining a virtual machine image and some emulation, very little upkeep from Windows core. But it does seem like there was an Amazon component to this story.
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