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Ubuntu on Windows

(blog.dustinkirkland.com)
2049 points bpierre | 1 comments | 30 Mar 16 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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zymhan ◴[30 Mar 16 17:09 UTC] No.11390932[source]▶
"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 your own.

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UK-AL ◴[30 Mar 16 17:17 UTC] No.11391011[source]▶
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.

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mpweiher ◴[30 Mar 16 18:44 UTC] No.11391846[source]▶
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

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1. JdeBP ◴[12 Apr 16 16:09 UTC] No.11480800[source]▶
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.