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Microsoft's 'Windows Subsystem For Linux' Finally Leaves Beta (microsoft.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the ghost-in-the-shell dept.

An anonymous reader quotes Microsoft's Developer blog: Early adopters on the Windows Insider program will notice that Windows Subsystem for Linux is no longer marked as a beta feature as of Insider build 16251. This will be great news for those who've held-back from employing WSL as a mainline toolset: You'll now be able to leverage WSL as a day-to-day developer toolset, and become ever more productive when building, testing, deploying, and managing your apps and systems on Windows 10... What will change is that you will gain the added advantage of being able to file issues on WSL and its Windows tooling via our normal support mechanisms if you want/need to follow a more formal issue resolution process. You can also provide feedback via Windows 10 Feedback Hub app, which delivers feedback directly to the team.
Microsoft points out that distro-publishers are still responsible for supporting and fixing the internals of their distros -- and they have no plans to support X/GUI apps or desktops. And of course, Linux files are not currently accessible from Windows -- though Microsoft says they're working on a fix.

3 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by Misagon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Shouldn't it be called "Linux Subsystem for Windows", because it is running under Windows and not the other way around?

    --
    "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      you must be new to Microsoft's way of thinking. Windows is the center of the universe and all else is subservient to it. So this addon to MS Windows is a subsystem FOR Linux. ie it is a subsystem for Linux to help it run on Windows so in Microserf speak it's a Windows subsystem for Linux.

      Reminds me of what Bill Gates said in a product development meeting discussing the integration of Java and Java products into/on Windows. He had to yell out "Does anyone remember Windows?"

  2. Win32 and other NT subsystems by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    On the NT kernel, Windows itself runs in a container called the "Win32 subsystem". WSL is a container that uses the Linux ABI. There used to be an OS/2 subsystem as well.