Microsoft Releases New Tool To Get More Distros on Windows (zdnet.com)

Microsoft has released a tool to help Linux distribution maintainers bring their distros to the Windows Store to run on Windows 10's Windows Subsystem for Linux. From a report: Microsoft describes the tool as a "reference implementation for a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distribution installer application," which is aimed at both distribution maintainers and developers who want to create custom Linux distributions for running on WSL. "We know that many Linux distros rely entirely on open-source software, so we would like to bring WSL closer to the OSS community," said Tara Raj of Microsoft's WSL team. "We hope open-sourcing this project will help increase community engagement and bring more of your favorite distros to the Microsoft Store." WSL helps programmers build a full Linux development environment for testing production code on a Windows machine.

Comments

Maybe they can first fix Win10 so updates work

[Anonymous Coward]

I have one computer now that been trying to get Win10 1709 for over 3 months. Keeps getting 83% done then bows off, reloads old version of Win10, then starts at it all over again starting with the download. There is no way to stop it or control it.

You want Linux to run on such a broken system? My Linux boxes are going on over 100 days of uptime (moved from one room to another). Maybe Win10 should be a subsystem to Linux? At least I know Linux is stable enough to run a subsystem.

So..., we can trust Microsoft now?

[Mr Foobar]

I mean, when /. first started, it was all "embrace, extend, extinguish" with MS using a Borg Gates avatar.
Is this the "embrace" part or the "extend" part of that whole process? Or can we really trust them?

Re:So..., we can trust Microsoft now?

[drinkypoo]

Is this the "embrace" part or the "extend" part of that whole process? Or can we really trust them?

Microsoft is a publicly traded corporation controlled by a board, so anyone who trusts them (regardless of their history) really could not get any dumber. However, they could seem dumber if they ignored Microsoft's history, which proves conclusively that no one should trust them.

Re:So..., we can trust Microsoft now?

[UnknownSoldier]

One _single_ act doesn't magically negate the 20 years of why Microshaft sucks.

Have they disabled telemetry in Windows 10 yet? Why was ON in the _first_ place??

Can I buy an license for Windows 7? Forced upgrades are bullshit.

Can Explorer show me folder sizes yet? This isn't fucking rocket science, just basic computer science.

There are numerous technical reasons why Windows is still crap.

Microshit's "innovation" is total joke.

missing the point of open source entirely.

[nimbius]

Open source wasnt developed as a 'feature' or a clever gimmick that people wanted as part of their computing experience. Open source was developed in direct opposition to the types of traditional licenses and restrictions placed on code and programs from Microsoft and other companies like them. The fact is Linux never needed windows support, and no one has explained the net-gain from supporting the execution of free software that has run stand-alone for decades other than the potential to sell more licenses for the proprietary OS under which it is being made to run.

in other words, given the chance, no one is going to intentionally shell out cash to run GCC on a copy of windows.

Reversed

[rtkluttz]

Linux on windows = stupid. Windows on linux = ok, but still stupid. Windows is a bloated, fat OS where FAR greater than 75% of its code is there to LIMIT what you can do in some way. It is always working against you and policing what you can do on your own system. Why would you allow it to be the base OS?

Re:How is this different than Cygwin?

[Dwedit]

Cygwin is slow to create or fork processes, while WSL is much faster there. So things like autotools, config scripts, or make run a lot faster under WSL than Cygwin.

Also, there is more software and library availability for the Linux distros than on Cygwin.

WSL isn't very good

[bangular]

I know a lot of people have ideological objections to WSL, but from a practical standpoint WSL isn't even very good. I tried it for about two weeks before abandoning it.

First, windows has a terrible terminal emulator. I don't think it's improved since Windows 95. Basic stuff like copy/paste is not intuitive, let alone nice features like tabs. I tried an alternative (cmder I think) and it was OK, but something as important as the terminal emulator should not be an afterthought.

Raw sockets didn't seem to work correctly (or at all). I tried a few network tools and they generally fell flat on their face.

It seems really slow. Maybe it's just my imagination, but sometimes I'd do something as simple as an 'ls' and patiently wait.

There was no GUI support out of the box. I had to setup Xming on the windows side. Again, not super complicated, but it seems like little thought was put into it. I don't need a GUI very often (usually just to display plots I generated), but there should have been more effort.

The goal was to basically have python, R, a C compiler, some networking tools, etc, available when I am in Windows and not have to boot a Linux box for basic things. The quality was just too low and went back to using a combination of VMWare and native windows versions.

Maybe it will get better, but it seems like it's trying to solve a problem most people don't have.