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New Project Lets You Install Arch Linux In the Windows Subsystem For Linux

Posted by msmash on from the good-things dept.

prisoninmate writes: Softpedia reports that there's a new project on GitHub, called alwsl, which promises to let you install the Arch Linux operating system on Windows 10's new WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) feature, which allows users to run native Linux command-line tools directly on the Windows operating system alongside their modern desktop and apps. For example, Canonical and Microsoft brought Bash on Ubuntu on Windows using the new WSL functionality. For now, the alwsl project, which is developed by a group of German developers that call themselves "Turbo Developers," offers a .bat file that you can use to install Arch Linux on a WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) host, but the software is in developer preview stage. The first stable release, alwsl 1.0 will be able not only to install Arch Linux on the Windows Subsystem for Linux host in Windows 10 editions that support it, but also to create and manage users and snapshots. Also, it looks like it will get rolling upgrades just like a normal Arch Linux installation gets. The final release is expected to launch on December 2016, and you can monitor its development progress on GitHub.

5 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. The kind of irony that Alanis Morisette loves by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only thing you're not installing is actually the "Linux" part of it -- the Kernel. It's still Windows 10 underneath.

    So, you're just installing the "GNU/" part of the "GNU/Linux" stack. Congratulations on a comprehensive mis-marketing, "Turbo Developers".

    1. Re:The kind of irony that Alanis Morisette loves by DeVilla · · Score: 2

      So, you're just installing the "GNU/" part of the "GNU/Linux" stack.

      What is GNU?

      I can tell U what it's not.....

  2. Re:What does WSL stand for? by gigne · · Score: 3, Informative

    Windows Subsystem for Linux

    --
    Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
  3. A page from history,,, by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 2

    For some reason OS/2 for Windows comes to mind...
    The underlying method may differs, but the marketing approach sounded remarkably similar.

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
  4. Those who cannot remember the past by geekprime · · Score: 2

    'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

    Apparently the devs are too young to remember proven to be real internal Microsoft policy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    From that article...
    >The variation, "embrace, extend and extinguish", was first introduced in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial when a vice president of Intel, Steven
    >McGeady, testified[8] that Microsoft vice president Paul Maritz used the phrase in a 1995 meeting with Intel to describe Microsoft's strategy toward
    >Netscape, Java, and the Internet.[9][10]