Windows 10 Gets A New Linux: openSUSE (fossbytes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "Running Linux binaries natively on Windows... that sounds awesome indeed," writes Hannes Kuhnemund, the senior product manager for SUSE Linux Enterprise. He's written a blog post describing how to run openSUSE Leap 42.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 on Windows 10, according to Fossbytes, which reports that currently users have two options -- openSUSE Leap 42.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2. Currently it's Ubuntu that's enabled by default in the Windows Subsystem for Linux, although there's already a project on GitHub that also lets you install Arch Linux. "It's quite unfortunate that Microsoft enabled the wrong Linux (that's my personal opinion) by default within the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)," writes Kuhnemund, "and it is time to change it to the real stuff.

Comments

Re:Why is that useful?

[swb]

You said it yourself -- "large organizations".

They're aiming for some kind of economies of scale in purchasing, application deployment and security that go way beyond the single-digit percentage of user base that developers represent.

They could just hand over the hardware and let the developers run their own machines, but this has all kinds of security implications and often bleed developer productivity in desktop maintenance overhead.

Running dev machines natively in Linux makes some sense, but may cut them off from other Windows-only applications they need to be part of the larger organization. as well as lack of visibility in enterprise management software. Running it in a VM has the same problems plus the added complexity of two environments.

I doubt Microsoft's solution is designed principally as a developer solution, either, but probably a long-term gambit to make it a more universal platform to retain users when the year of Linux on the Desktop rolls around. They must see some future in their crystal ball where enough Linux desktops exist that *not* being able to run some application is an existential risk to Windows.

sounds awesome but means nothing.

[nimbius]

this functionality exists for multinationals governed by micromanagement and committee. companies that view changing their break room coffee with the same bureaucratic mentality as changing the mission statement. The ability to run Linux natively in Windows is the compromise insecure managers want to drive their "microsoft only" environment that crosses its T's and dots its I's of formal standards and compliance regulatory navel gazing. While it sounds wildly pointless to the average slashdotter, this "containerized" linux is exactly what the doctor ordered for companies that cant decide whether they want to enable emoji support in the office chat program without four or five rounds of meetings and an agenda signed by a director.

the only comfort you can take if your company does indeed decide to do this, is that while trading in your redhat licenses for whatever under-the-table credits Redmond is going to grease you with you can rest assured that thanks to high leadership turnover at your boat-without-a-sail megacompany youll eventually through the laws of statistical probability be gifted a manager that find Microsoft Linux on Windows to be just as insane as it sounds. the downside is that youll have to spend another year undoing this debacle.

Re:Said before, but bears repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

Said before, but no longer true-- This isn't eee (that's old news), this is "dear God-- We have to support linux containers or we're screwed".

And of course, docker containers are a fantastic way to extend the whole software-as-a-service thing. The cloud may be open source, but you don't own it, and you can't control it.

Have a nice doomsday.

Re: Real Stuff

[pak9rabid]

If you need RedHat, then it's because you have incompetent tech workers who need a support contract, not because you need "real" Linux.

Or, you run something shitty like Oracle DBMS, where the company will refuse to support you unless you run one of their approved OS's (i.e., Red Hat).

Yup, GNU/NT-Kernel

[DrYak]

If I understand it right, it's a GNU/Linux distro without a Linux kernel on top of a compatibility layer on Windows, right?

Yup, mostly(*).

So "GNU/Windows NT Kernel" is better than "Linux" - That actually one of the rare few occastion a typical "GNU/Linux" distro gets used without the Linux kernel part.

But because "Linux" has brand recognition, it's still used.

---

(*): there's no separate compatibility layer (unlike things like Cygwin which are a user-mode compatibility layer that translates POSIX API-calls into Win32 calls - and thus enables soure compatibility).
The NT-Kernel has a bizare peculiarity : it can export several different ABI's to usermode software - it has different "personnalities".
- Win32 is just *one* of the set of ABI available.
- A long time ago, that made it possible to run OS/2 software on Windows NT.
- A little bit less longer time ago, Windows NT also had a "Unix" personality.
- Now WSL is actually the NT kernel exhibiting a small subset of the ABI featured by the linux kernel - about the bare minimum to get a few basic user-mode software (e,.g.: the "GNU" part of "GNU/Linux") run unmodified.

These are straight ABI available from the NT-Kernel, not a mere Linux-to-Win32 API conversion like Cygwin.

e.g.:
- Among other defaults Win32 has a poor multi-processing (forking is expensive). Cygwin application have to rely on that poorer cousin in order to provide multi-processing to POSIX.
- The recent kernels of Windows NT intoduced pico-thread which are very cheap, weren't available in the Win32 API back when introduced, but where exposed through the "Linux-lite" API that is WSL in order to make a usefull multiprocessing.

On the other hand WSL is far from complete. There is tons of stuff that you can do on your GNU/Linux that you can't do with WSL (e.g.: filesystem drivers)