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Re: native Linux userland in Windows 10


This new Linux subsystem does have a fork() API call somewhere in
either lxcore.sys or lxss.sys. Presumably lots of other Linux kernel
APIs as well.

It is interesting that this has popped up, though perhaps not as
unexpected as many people think. Does anybody remember that a guy from
Microsoft posted to this list last year about what it would take to
implement a Unix style PTY in the command prompt (IIRC)? They have
obviously been thinking about this for a while.

One driver is that the need for cross-platform tooling is growing with
the .Net Core project's aim to get it running on Linux. People will
not want to maintain PowerShell scripts for Windows and Bash scripts
for Linux, and since there is no chance of PowerShell running on Linux
any time soon it was perhaps inevitable that something like this would
happen.

I am going to try and get it insalled (have had some problems finding
an ISO!) just to check the speed of Magit in Emacs. It's unusably slow
in Cygwin.



On 12 April 2016 at 14:41, Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
> On Apr 12 14:58, Marco Atzeri wrote:
>> On 12/04/2016 14:50, Andrew Schulman wrote:
>> >By now I guess most of us have seen the reports of bash, and in fact a full
>> >Linux userland, running natively in Windows 10:
>> >
>> >http://www.osnews.com/story/29149/Microsoft_and_Canonical_partner_to_bring_Ubuntu_to_Windows_10
>> >http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DevelopersCanRunBashShellAndUsermodeUbuntuLinuxBinariesOnWindows10.aspx
>> >http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html
>> >
>> >It's in beta release and doesn't seem to have been widely tested yet. Apparently
>> >Microsoft has developed an API translation layer, simliar to the Cygwin DLL, to
>> >make this work.  But unlike with Cygwin, Linux apps don't have to be rebuilt -
>> >they can run natively as-is in Windows 10. So you can get, allegedly, the full
>> >Linux userland out-of-the-box.
>> >
>> >The first link cited above suggests that if this is all it claims to be, it
>> >would remove the need for Cygwin. I can see the point.
>> >
>> >Has anyone had a chance to try this new feature?  Does it work as well as is
>> >claimed?
>> >
>> >I realize this may be strictly off-topic here, but it seems to me to be
>> >potentially so important to the future of Cygwin that it's worth discussing here
>> >insted of on cygwin-talk.
>> >
>> >Andrew
>>
>>
>> Before W10 became the standard it will take some time.
>>
>> Considering the previous history of Microsoft with
>> Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) , my feeling is
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeo_Danaos_et_dona_ferentes
>>
>> If they really would like to port Unix on MS, it will be enough to
>> provide Corinna with a simple way to implement fork....
>
> Huh, right.  If only...
>
> https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/afdf1b68-1f3e-47f5-94cf-51e397afe073/
>
>
> Corinna
>
> --
> Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
> Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
> Red Hat



-- 
Philip Daniels.

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