Ubuntu on Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#931

Post by shanselman » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #793

shanselman wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. As Rails would then be running on Linux. I code ruby running in this system (some stuff has issues, it's beta, and I'm doing Sinatra) but using Visual Studio Code as my editor.

Now we're talking. I don't expect it'll ever be as smooth to develop with Rails under Windows as it is under actual Linux, but if it were as good as OS X, I'd say this was a success. But, then again, maybe this subsystem really will make it feel native. As a matter of fact, this was the only use case I could come up with to test the implementation of this announcement. I'd like to think that I speak for enough people…

This is actual Linux (minus the kernel) so it should work 99% the same as under Ubuntu when doing usermode stuff.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#932

Post by JdeBP » Tue, Apr 12, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #156

UK-AL wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows NT had a POSIX subsystem awhile ago, not sure what happened to it. The NT Kernel was designed to have different personalities like Win32, OS/2, POSIX, etc It could be an updated version.

From elsewhere in this thread: "Windows NT was designed from the start to have modular subsystems. It was most infamously used to provide a POSIX subsystem which really only checked boxes on government acquisition forms. :-)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11391290

That makes it seem that the POSIX subsystem only ever did that, which is not true at all. A better explanation is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11392369 , which gives a version number and a time frame for context. The POSIX subsystem was different in later years.

Re: Ubuntu on Windows

#933

Post by JdeBP » Tue, Apr 12, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

jdub wrote: post #63

zymhan wrote: post #4

"Linux geeks can think of it sort of the inverse of "wine" -- Ubuntu binaries running natively in Windows. Microsoft calls it their "Windows Subsystem for Linux"." I find it amazing that you can have such a functional Ubuntu environment by translating system calls. Microsoft does have the advantage of Linux being open-source I suppose, while the Wine project had to reverse engineer DLLs. Or have you supply them on yo…

Windows NT was designed from the start to have modular subsystems. It was most infamously used to provide a POSIX subsystem which really only checked boxes on government acquisition forms. :-) The reason WINE went with the library emulation route is because: (a) the Windows kernel doesn't have a stable system call layer, and (b) the Win32 API is massive anyway. Windows has an easier time emulating Linux at the very l…

This makes it seem that the POSIX subsystem only ever did that, which is not true at all. A better statement is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11392369 .