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Windows 10 Spring Update Improves Linux On WSL With Unix Sockets and More (anandtech.com)

Billly Gates writes: Windows 10 build 1803 has come out this month, but with some problems. AnandTech has a deep-dive with the review examing many new features including the much better support for Linux. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) now has native Curt and Tar from the command prompt as well as a utility to convert Unix to Windows pathnames called WSLpath.exe which is documented here. In addition it was mentioned on Slashdot in the past about OpenSSH being ported natively to Win32 in certain early builds. It now seems the reason was for Linux interoperability with this Spring Update 2. Unix sockets mean you can run Kali Linux on Windows 10 for penetration testing or run an Apache server in the background with full Linux networking support. Deemons now run in the background even with the command prompt closed. [...]

127 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Getting smarter? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    Never?

  2. Running it from another drive? by fireball74 · · Score: 2

    They can get Linux to run as a layer or app under Windows, but can't figure out how to get it to run from a different drive. Some of us have a smaller SSD as C drive and would like to at least play with this without having to jump through hoops. Yes, I know about symlinks in Windows, but it's kind of a crappy fix, if it works at all.

    1. Re: Running it from another drive? by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Funny

      Be patient. Eventually the Linux subsystem will be all that's left of Windows. Maybe a legacy support module on the side.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re: Running it from another drive? by tonique · · Score: 1

      You'd have to call it the Linux supersystem by then, I think. Also "mission accomplished"!

    3. Re:Running it from another drive? by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      Some of us have a smaller SSD as C drive...

      Wow, C drive, I almost forgot about that. I hope that does not trigger any other ancient, painful memories. How is life, back there in Hell?

      Backslash for path separator :-)

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    4. Re:Running it from another drive? by eneville · · Score: 2

      Some of us have a smaller SSD as C drive...

      Wow, C drive, I almost forgot about that. I hope that does not trigger any other ancient, painful memories. How is life, back there in Hell?

      Backslash for path separator :-)

      The registry for config

    5. Re:Running it from another drive? by stooo · · Score: 1

      >> Backslash for path separator :-)
      The backlash for backslash is huge.
      seriously, MS should modernize now.

      --
      aaaaaaa
    6. Re:Running it from another drive? by jawtheshark · · Score: 1

      In all fairness, GNOME users have gconfig, which is just as bad.

      --
      Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    7. Re:Running it from another drive? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Modernise? Backslash is actually the newer - hence more modern - way.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    8. Re: Running it from another drive? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You'd have to call it the Linux supersystem by then, I think. Also "mission accomplished"!

      If you're Steve Ballmer, perhaps.

      Remember the WSL doesn't contain any Linux. It's Ubuntu on the Windows kernel, or as RMS would call it GNU/NT.

    9. Re: Running it from another drive? by greenwow · · Score: 2

      You misspelled KDE.

    10. Re:Running it from another drive? by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      Okay, you mentioned 'different drive', so I'll ask here. Since I installed this update, Windows 10 has refused to allow apps run from a remote drive to open sockets. The same app, when copied to the C: drive works fine. A simple example is PuTty.

      I'm sure this is some new security feature - but I need to disable it, since a win32 app I work on lives on a LAN drive (so, y'know, it gets backed up). I can build it there, but I can run it or debug it from there. I can run it if I copy it to my C: drive. There has to be a way to flag a LAN folder as 'trusted' in order to bypass this, but i can't find it.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    11. Re:Running it from another drive? by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      meant to say "I can't run it or debug it from there"

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    12. Re:Running it from another drive? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Modern, or just failing to learn from the past?

      I spent a few weeks in Germany on a German keyboard programming in C and Unix. This was a bit painful, you needed to press AltGr (right Alt key) to get a backslash, vertical bar, curly brackets, and square brackets(?). As a touch typist, this drove me nuts. Not just with hunt-and-peck but the difficulty of pushing AltGr every 3rd character. For the command line I had not set up autocomplete (not my computer) so using that backslash slowed me way down.

    13. Re:Running it from another drive? by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      hmmm. It worked fine for me until I applied the update last week.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    14. Re:Running it from another drive? by dissy · · Score: 1

      Some of us have a smaller SSD as C drive...

      Wow, C drive, I almost forgot about that. I hope that does not trigger any other ancient, painful memories. How is life, back there in Hell?

      Hey now, CP/M and CMS wasn't that bad! It was a perfectly acceptable OS for your 80's multi-architecture and single user needs.

      Of course it is strange parent poster didn't use the SSD to replace their A: hard drive.
      Gotta really wonder what SSD is being made that is smaller than the C: floppy disk used originally.
      Especially seeing as they only replaced the second floppy drive!

    15. Re:Running it from another drive? by I4ko · · Score: 1

      Why another drive? NTFS has had junction points for ages (at least since XP). You can mount a partition as a folder, just like you do on *nix. Check it out.

    16. Re:Running it from another drive? by spongman · · Score: 1

      did you check your ACLs?

    17. Re:Running it from another drive? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Oh, I know, I am German and I develop in C++ for Linux and it sucks. Normal slash is actually even worse on a German keyboard - shift+7, so a backslash is pleasant in comparison.
      C, with its character salad syntax, is very specifically designed for the American keyboard layout, this is probably one of the reasons Pascal was so popular in Germany - it is simply less strain to type begin end; than {}

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    18. Re:Running it from another drive? by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      Yes. No problem there. Obviously, It's letting me execute the app. It simply fails when the app tries to open a socket. And only when it's run from a LAN drive. The same executable works fine if I copy it to C:. Unless there's some ACL property for that, what would the issue be? And why would a Windows update change ACL's?

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    19. Re: Running it from another drive? by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      You may need to add the IP of the lan folder to trusted locations (Internet options in control panel). There's probably a GPO as well. When I couldn't run an app the other day due to a system policy, I checked the Event Viewer and realized it was from CrypoPrevent, which tries to prevent malware. Had to add exclusion and reboot.

  3. If the end game for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If the end game for this is for windows to eventually become a front end that runs on linux and acts as a compatibility layer for windows programs to run inside linux like ms is making a compatibility layer for win32 programs to run on arm then I would appraud ms's efforts but I fear the ONLY reason ms is doing this is to further advance azure's penetration and to get more linux admins on windows systems.

    1. Re: If the end game for this by juanoviedo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "There is nothing that microsoft has contributed for open source which doesnt help their competing operating system, windows in some way." Dude, once again, they are a company. They make profit out of it. You can have them contribute to open source and make profit from it, or make propietary code, and make profit for it. Plain and simple.

    2. Re:If the end game for this by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      I had always been dubious of this, not being a Microsoft fan, but if this works then that's a good thing.

      In the past, the POSIX layer in the Windows kernel was highly dubious, it had basic file support but no access to anything in Win32 where all the UI, services, networking, etc. It seems like it existed solely to get past some DoD contract requirements (even mainframe MVS had some POSIX just get some deals).

      If there's a standard tool to easily convert to/from Unix filenames then that is very useful also. That's a headache I have with Cygwin trying to work with some Windows command line tools, and it's always been painful with makefiles.

      Been a bit nervous as we were acquired by a heavily Windows and Cloud oriented mothership, and someday I expect they'll want us to start using Windows so having a unix layer would come in handy. (engineers from the mothership have expressed envy that we don't have to use VSTS)

    3. Re:If the end game for this by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Why? The purpose of GPL is the SHARE software.

    4. Re:If the end game for this by spongman · · Score: 1

      why?

  4. pointless extensions. by nimbius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All this work to be compatible with Linux is only being done because Microsoft is desperately trying to get a ticket on the cloud moneytrain its ignored for nearly a decade. So far bootstrapping things like Kinect, office, and exchange to their cloud offering has boosted its presence in much the same way that paying hosting providers to switch their park-web sites to IIS static pages improved their netcraft numbers.

    Curt and Tar from the command prompt

    i presume we mean curl but this is moot. Anyone who needed curl or tar "from the command prompt" (as if it came anywhere else?) has their macbook, or their linux system...and they have it for free in the amazon cloud as well as the 40 some other openstack players that exist.

    it was mentioned on Slashdot in the past about OpenSSH being ported natively to Win32 in certain early builds.

    Embrace extend extinguish only works when theres a product with a bottom line people are willing to choose. "becoming linux" isnt doing anything to Redmond but wasting programmer hours trying to catch a lizard. Larry Ellison learned this fact with MySQL. GPL is an armored license that prohibits the type of early nineties chicanery Microsoft was absolutely legendary for pulling on small companies and startup projects.

    Deemons now run in the background even with the command prompt closed.

    Daemons,Welcome to 1991. You could also just pick a cloud provider with a competent ecosystem that will natively run any of five or more major linux distributions that your programmers are already familiar with.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:pointless extensions. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The job of WSL isn't to eat Linux. The job of WSL is to eat Cygwin.

    2. Re:pointless extensions. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      So far bootstrapping things like Kinect, office, and exchange to their cloud offering has boosted its presence in much the same way that paying hosting providers to switch their park-web sites to IIS static pages improved their netcraft numbers.

      So ... translated into very real income and marketshare making it the most profitable part of the company?

       

    3. Re:pointless extensions. by greenwow · · Score: 1

      > Daemons,Welcome to 1991.

      It's a lot older than that. I remember using nohup in BSD 4.3 in 1987, over thirty years ago.

    4. Re:pointless extensions. by spongman · · Score: 1

      i used Cygwin for the better part of 15 years. i uninstalled it shortly after installing Ubuntu on WSL. Cygwin was great. now it's dead.

    5. Re:pointless extensions. by execthis · · Score: 1

      If that's true, WSL has a really long way to go before it obsoletes Cygwin. Presently, even with the new touted ability to background tasks, it's not much more than a toy.

    6. Re:pointless extensions. by execthis · · Score: 1

      What do you do to replace Cygwin sshd? No way to run persistent daemons with WSL. Everything stops when you close terminal session. No services - no init system integrated with Windows...

  5. and nothing of value was gained by Revek · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why would I want this?

    1. Re:and nothing of value was gained by AlanBDee · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You may not but I do. My work requires that I use Windows. With WSL I can use all the classic Linux commands that I've been using for 15 years. The better they make it the happier I am.

    2. Re:and nothing of value was gained by Bert64 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      My work requires that i get various tasks done, how i achieve them doesn't matter so long as they get done. If they are performed more efficiently using Linux then that's where they are performed.
      If you're being forced to use tools which make your work inefficient then you should raise it as a problem, or consider moving jobs.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    3. Re: and nothing of value was gained by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

      Or you could just do it the sane way and run Linux, with Windows in a VM for running the one (or few) applications that you absolutely must have Windows to run.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    4. Re:and nothing of value was gained by eneville · · Score: 1

      You might also want a system that doesn't report your data and activity to Microsoft.

      Not you personally, but you know. Thinking people.

      How would the container (MS Windows) not know what the WSL is doing? By definition, it is a subsystem, therefore the same kernel is collecting the same telemetry.

    5. Re:and nothing of value was gained by nyet · · Score: 1

      and you aren't competent enough to install cygwin?

    6. Re:and nothing of value was gained by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Why would I want this?

      If you don't know why you want this then how do you know that nothing of value was gained?

    7. Re:and nothing of value was gained by johnsie · · Score: 2

      I don't care what you want, but I use it so that I can use some nice Linux commands in Windows. For example wget, cloc etc. Those can be installed in native windows, but it's more quicker to install them in the wsl. It's a better version of "command line". Unfortunately I don't get to choose my work OS.

    8. Re: and nothing of value was gained by Revek · · Score: 1

      Clean you're room!

    9. Re:and nothing of value was gained by eneville · · Score: 1

      I don't think the container would ever know the /truth/. Ultimately it could have a debugger attached, you may know about this in a thin sense like when you try and strace the same process twice. In an emulated sense it would be entirely possible. I believe at the kernel level things like dtrace/systemtap can run simultaneously, just like debugfs. At that level Windows MS can target you based on what processes are doing. Lets say, for example, all mail server data written to disk could be scanned and you could get advertiser mined that way.

    10. Re:and nothing of value was gained by AlanBDee · · Score: 2

      They do it because they have an SOE, and people stepping outside the SOE costs them money, time and frustration.

      This. It would be petty of me to change jobs because I can't use the OS of my choice. Windows works and does the job fine. The company I work for is very particular about treating everyone fairly. For example, I did make a stink about additional monitors because I work better with three monitors. Now, everyone on my floor has three monitors, the two standard 21" screens and one 34" curved 3440 x 1440 monitor.

      But I couldn't make a honest compelling argument to use Linux. Sure I prefer it but tools like Cygwin, MobaXterm, and now WSL allow me to do what I need. Integrating it with Active Directory and setting up Remote Desktop so that I can remote in to their Windows Servers would take time for me and that of the system administrators.

    11. Re: and nothing of value was gained by nyet · · Score: 1

      I'm room?

    12. Re: and nothing of value was gained by nyet · · Score: 1

      Because VMs are for chumps and I need bash/make/git et al tools to co-exist side by side in the same machine/fs etc? You know you can start windows binaries natively from cygwin, right?

    13. Re: and nothing of value was gained by Revek · · Score: 1

      are you ac?

    14. Re:and nothing of value was gained by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Ok, the first one is easy - "It's not a problem, use Windows like everyone else", back to square 1.

      Then you're back to being inefficient again.
        WSL is good, but not everyone is on Windows 10, and WSL is still very new and needs a lot of work. It's a good step though. Meanwhile Cygwin does the job. Cygwin is imperfect certainly, but so is WSL.

      I use Cygwin for some very basic stuff, not even development. Ie, I unzipped some files and now I want to explore them and see what's in them. Windows Explorer is ok for basic browsing, but inevitably the window pops up and says I need to find an application to open an unknown type of file, and the searching in Explorer is terrible.

    15. Re:and nothing of value was gained by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      In engineering usually you get to choose the best tools. The whole company doesn't get these tools though as they're expensive, but if a company can't make an exception to allow someone a matlab license then it's not really an engineering company. Sure, they may want a site license if more than one user wants the same application, but that's no reason to force a department to be unproductive just because Microsoft isn't the publisher of application they want.

      This isn't even about regulations. I've worked in highly regulated medical equipment companies, and we could download applications we needed. The problem usually starts with IT staff wanting to have cookie cutter Windows PCs everywhere with only basic office applications. Especially in large corporations where all the IT staff are cookie cutter certificate holders.

    16. Re: and nothing of value was gained by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      If you can. Most companies are the other way, because the IT staff have literally zero experience with anything other than Windows.

    17. Re: and nothing of value was gained by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      Actually it is 2018 now

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  6. Who are Curt and Tar ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ... and why would I want Curt there ? Or even Tar (with capital T) :)

  7. Re:Editors? We don’t need no steekin’ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nope. On Windows you can type 'Curt' and it runs just fine.

    Windows 10 introduces entire filesystem-insensitivity.

  8. Am I the only one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    who sees Microsoft using all of their friendliness towards open source, and Linux in particular, to "soften" the stance of using Linux as a standalone solution in lieu of actually using Linux. In the last few years, Linux has been its own worst enemy. What with systemd, utter balkanization, no "usable" desktop to go mainstream with (save Red Hat using Gnome internally), getting into bed with Azure.

    As a former Unix sysadmin who had to move cross country for family reasons, I have been forced into Windows jobs because I have to live in flyover country in a small town, which already has a dearth of remotely decent IT jobs. Windows is slowly killing the independence of Linux and in my mind, at least, no one seems to care. The "cloud" is the death of IT as we know it. Anymore, unless you're a programmer or hardware designer, you are working in and supporting the "cloud". I remember vast data centers teeming with talented people working on FreeBSD/OpenBSD Web servers with PostGreSQL backends. I remember running *nix-based firewalls and proxy servers, running CheckPoint atop Nokia IPSO boxes. I remember running and writing tons of sh and Perl scripts before the advent of stupidity like PHP and Word Press. We are seeing before our eyes, the dumbing down of *nix. I for one sorely miss pure Sun Solaris environments running atop Sun Sparc workstations. I'd happily take an FVWM WM over anything today. What the hell happened? Anymore, consumers buy machines that are only fit for consumption, not creation. We have given away the family silver.

    1. Re:Am I the only one... by novakyu · · Score: 2

      Eh. As a user who have no choice but to use Windows, I welcome our new Bash-friendly Windows overlords. My choice is not whether to use Windows or Linux; my choice is whether to have a Linux dual-boot install which I hardly ever use (and have a Cygwin install which does not work well), or to have have access to Linux toolchain (without a reboot or a second device) while being able to use applications that my job requires me to use.

    2. Re:Am I the only one... by swb · · Score: 1

      I often wonder what the Windows/Linux balance of power would look like if MS had released PowerShell with full BASH support, GNU tools and then the Microsoft-specific PowerShell commands as just extensions.

      I know PS advocates make a lot of noise about PS being object oriented but I don't see why that demands a completely new command line syntax. The shell may need object awareness to handle pipelining between PS object generators/consumers, but a totally new syntax from the ground up seems to be just a barrier.

    3. Re:Am I the only one... by godefroi · · Score: 2

      What does "full BASH support" mean? You seem hung up on the syntax. If bash's syntax was universally accepted as "the best", then we wouldn't have things like csh, zsh, fish, etc with differing syntax.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    4. Re:Am I the only one... by Srin+Tuar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem you are facing is more that sysadmin as a career is fading away to be replaced by devops.

      Linux is easy enough to admin that linux IT dept were always a fraction of the windows departments.

      Now that most linux admin work is scripted/automated, Linux IT jobs are all but non-existent.

      Windows IT jobs may last a bit longer, but as you can see, not much.

    5. Re:Am I the only one... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      I thought devops was being split apart again now that experience shows that combining developers and operators was counter productive?

    6. Re:Am I the only one... by swb · · Score: 1

      Most "sh" variants are pretty close and derivative, leading to reasonable portability among them.

      I don't know that bash is "the best" but it is pretty widely used and basing PowerShell off its syntax would have provided a lot of existing compatibility. I guess Microsoft was really looking to do something else.

    7. Re:Am I the only one... by spongman · · Score: 1

      why fire up a VM (and configure shared folder, network shares, bridged/NAT network cards, open ports in firewalls, etc...) when you can just run these tools natively. don't get me wrong, VMs are great for some things, but what this does, is not that.

    8. Re:Am I the only one... by godefroi · · Score: 1

      I mean, personally, I find bash's syntax awful, and powershell's functional-ish syntax not so bad, but that's just me. At least they didn't base it off of Windows' batch language.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
  9. Re:Curt? by gweihir · · Score: 1

    This is Windows, remember? Case aware, but not case sensitive, i.e. the worst choice possible that still works mostly, you know, as MS is reliably making. Does not explain the "curt" though.

    Admittedly, this is the first I hear about "curl" either. Sounds a bit like "wget".

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  10. Re:Editors? We don’t need no steekin’ by Hugh+Jorgen · · Score: 1

    What is this "curt" you speak of? I know what "curl" is and can understand that "Curl" on Windows would work but not "curt"

  11. Re:And it made my OC CPU freq stop responding by Bert64 · · Score: 1

    Why do you need to use the latest version just for playing games?
    Find a stable version and stick to it, use it only for gaming and nothing else. That way you reduce the chance of background cruft or updates breaking or slowing your games.

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  12. Re:Editors? We don’t need no steekin’ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It depends on what files you have installed. If you only have 'curl' it will run that. But if you have 'cut', it runs that instead. If you have both, it uses a stochastic model to infer which one you probably intended. Otherwise, it selects a file at random and runs that for you.

  13. Great! by the_archer666 · · Score: 2

    A big step towards running systemd on Windows!

  14. Re: Curt? by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    Not that I see eye to eye with you in any way, shape or form, but after seeing his posts on the iproute2 discussion, he isn't qualified to offer an opinion on anything Linux related.

  15. Or - hear me out ... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unix sockets mean you can run Kali Linux on Windows 10 for penetration testing or run an Apache server in the background with full Linux networking support.

    You could just run Linux (and maybe Windows 10 in a VM).

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Or - hear me out ... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Seems excessive if you want to just fire up one Linux app. What next, copy and past the output back into Windows? Why would you run Windows in a VM anyway? Anyone being remotely targeted by WSL is likely running Linux in the VM.

    2. Re:Or - hear me out ... by johnsie · · Score: 2

      Not everyone is allowed to have a custom OS. This is a way to get around this. I installed a Centos VM on my Windows box and within a minute of joining it to the domain I had an IT person asking me why there was a Centos machine on the network. This quite rightly raised a security issue, because they can't just have random machines appearing on the network. However when I installed the WSL nothing came up in that alerting system. So now I can use Linux tools on my machine without registering as another "machine", virtual or otherwise.

    3. Re:Or - hear me out ... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      That's a good point, thanks. I wasn't thinking about a corporate environment. However, I imagine IT should be concerned about WSL as well, at least to some extent, as it's another potential vector into the system.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    4. Re:Or - hear me out ... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      VMs are painful at times. How do you back them up? A lot of backup programs are stupid and want to backup the entire VM image. Also the VMs are huge, taking up much more disk space than the equivalent WSL or Cygwin, and they suck up RAM so that having several VM images actively running will noticeably affect your computer's performance. If you can run things natively then that works better; save the VM for when you can't run things natively.

    5. Re:Or - hear me out ... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Windows itself is a vector into the system!

    6. Re:Or - hear me out ... by spongman · · Score: 1

      so i have to fire up a whole VM just to run `sed`? no thanks.

    7. Re: Or - hear me out ... by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      You could have used sed from gnuwin32 for ages. http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.ne...

  16. They doin't need.... by stooo · · Score: 1

    >> When are they actually going to throw away their kernel and move to an OSS
    They don't need to, we did it for them :))

    --
    aaaaaaa
  17. Re:No sense of history by dromgodis · · Score: 1

    " although to start an argument, case sensitivity is one of the most annoying features of Linux."

    Oh $DEITY I wish this was true.

  18. Re: Curt? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

    Now *that* is hilarious. I am sitting here truly wondering if you have any idea that you just contradicted yourself in a single sentence. Priceless.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  19. Cygwin is useful by stooo · · Score: 1

    We use it to have an acceptable system when we have a Windows system forced down our throats on a work computer.

    --
    aaaaaaa
    1. Re:Cygwin is useful by johnsie · · Score: 1

      WSL does this much better than Cygwin.

    2. Re:Cygwin is useful by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      And if you're on a previous version of Windows? Many people are not on Windows 10. Also WSL is new whereas Cygwin has been around for a long time. Is everyone supposed to upend all their work and switch over immediately when there's something new?

  20. Re: Curt? by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    Sure did! It was an attempt at humor by pointing out a paradox. I'm actually amazed you were able to find enough time out of being wrong about almost everything you say to notice! Congrats, ZK. You're almost not useless

  21. Systemd's plan all along. by DrYak · · Score: 2, Funny

    Eventually the Linux subsystem will be all that's left of Windows. Maybe a legacy support module on the side.

    You'd have to call it the Linux supersystem by then, I think. Also "mission accomplished"!

    Now you understand why the SystemD is on such a big phagocytosis spree :
    Swallowing the whole Microsoft Windows into "system-msctl" was Lennart's secret end goal all along !

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  22. Re: Curt? by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    If your grasp of other technical systems is a shit ass poor as your grasp of reading RFCs and DNS, then I doubt you get anything done "IRL" other than keeping your mom's computer running.
    Yes, it was a joke. I'm however not even remotely surprised that you were too thick to get it.

  23. Differences by DrYak · · Score: 4, Informative

    The differences are :

    - On Windows, the use of .ini files has completely disappeared. Instead the registry hives being an opaque format that can be only access (in theory) with Windows' API of regedit. This would make it impossible to hand access them manually, say from a boot stick. (Well, in practice, there are 3rd party Linux tools able to access the hive format, so fixing from a boot stick is possible, but you got the idea).

      - In gnome with gconfig the configuration is still stored in sets of plain XML files. Only they are now stored in an organized fashion in a specific set of subdirectories, and there's a centralized API and tool set to access them. But they are still human readable (you could still edit them with your favorite editor - emacs/vim/nano/ed) and easily machine readable (e.g. with your favorite Perl module such as XML::Twig).

    The windows equivalent would have been if the .ini were kept, but now Microsoft defined a specific path to store them (e.g.: in a specifc subfolder tree within %USER_PROFILE% or whatever, instead of all over the place like in good old Win 3.x days) and mandated a specific API to manipulate them.

    The closest thing to Windows' registry in Linux-land would be journald's internal database format, except that it has a very well documented format and journald forwards messages to any of your favorite system logger as soon as that deamon startsup - and it is configured to do so by default on virtually all the GNU/Linux distributions except for the most storage-starved ones in embed systems (e.g.: mercore/Sailfish OS doesn't have a syslog forwarding setup by default because it has to run on your smartphone limited internal flash. But Raspbian forwards to syslog by default).

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Differences by I4ko · · Score: 1

      XML is not human readable for any legal and/or regulatory definition of "human readable"

  24. Re: Curt? by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    Yes, I am in fact the idiot who has been written about in 3 books, invited to speak at a security convention regarding embedded linux kernel attacks, runs 14 DNS servers, and a network serving approximately 10,000 residential and business customers. The idiot who was also categorically correct, as evidenced by your own infallibility metric- whether or not Poettering conceded he was a moron and fixed the problem. You know what now resolves DNS hostnames with underscores? systemd-resolved.

    Good luck learning computers, indeed. Enjoy spreading your ignorance across the internet on the backs of people like me, you dim-witted ingrate.
    Get out of your basement. Get some sun. And maybe an education, or at the very least some lessons in humility.

  25. Android apps too. by DrYak · · Score: 2

    but I fear the ONLY reason ms is doing this is to further advance azure's penetration and to get more linux admins on windows systems.

    (and Linux devs to switch away from Mac OS X systems)

    Well that, and also the initial idea was to offer enough of the Linux API exposed by the Windows kernel so Windows Mobile could eventually run Android applications so that their OS wouldn't have been the irrelevant joke without any significant app ecosystem.

    Except that they didn't manage that even by far. They are light-years away from even running the simplest Android apps, so WSL is what they pivoted to in order to salvage the invested work.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  26. WSL already has Curl by Mike+Sheen · · Score: 1

    I don't recall specifically doing anything to get Curl in WSL - but it's been there over a year for me. If it's not Curl, then what exactly is "curt" ? not many other words come to mind which are similar in spelling to "curt" which the author intended to type... unless it was supposed to be... - oh, my!

  27. No need. by DrYak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Linux and all GPL software should move to GPL4, which should be identical to GPL2 with an added clause stating that Microsoft and Microsoft employees may not use any of it.

    No need, and it would go against the GPL spirit.

    The fundamental idea of GPL is that you should be able to do whatever you want with GPLed code, as long as you make sure that anyone you forward the code can still enjoy the same "whatever you want" freedom that your received. (that last part being the key difference with BSD-like persmissive license).

    Restricting an imaginary GPLv4 against microsoft would go against the "to whatever you want" part. (And wouldn't be of any use, Microsoft would simply spin off a separate company to handle such GPLv4 code).

    Also, by making mandatory to keep the same freedom to the next in line, GPL is pretty robust against EEE : you can't leverage extensions much if you have to publish them due to GPL, and you can't extinguish something that's freely available.
    There's a reason why the older microsoft guard were shitting their pants and calling GPL "cancer" : RMS had designed something that incidentally happens to be completely EEE-proof.

    The modifications of further GPL version were just about patching circumventions that some companies have found around the "keep the same freedom to the next in line" part.

    GPLv1 made it mandatory to make source available together with the software.
    Companies: "here's the code, but you can't legally do anything with it, because it's patent covered and you're violating our IP"
    GPLv2 made it mandatory to grant access to the patents, without royalties.
    Companies (e.g. TiVo): "here's the code, but in practice you can't really modify it because uploading your mods requires our secret cryptographic key"
    GPLv3 made mandatory to provide a way (e.g.: key provided, unlockable bootloader, etc.) to actually be able to use modification in practice.

    Currently there's no apparent need for a GPLv4 : no company has invented a way to give you the code, the patents license and the cryptographic keys, but still prevent you from actually modifying the code.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:No need. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      It could be argued that AGPL is actually a GPLv4.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  28. Curl by DrYak · · Score: 2

    i presume we mean curl but this is moot. Anyone who needed curl or tar "from the command prompt" (as if it came anywhere else?) {...}

    Yes, curl comes anywhere else.
    It has also a library (libcurl) and that library is used for web interface by lots of modules.
    Probably lots of GUI application use curl as their peculiar backend to download stuff.

    Except that in WSL's specific case, support for GUI isn't stellar (basically, you need to X-over-network to a Windows native X-Server), so probably nobody is using GUI, and in practice, yes, curl is mostly only used on the command line in Windows-land.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  29. Re: Curt? by gweihir · · Score: 1

    I find that hilarious! I am one of the people that _write_ RFCs. But that is not in the (rather limited) range of things you can comprehend.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  30. Re: Curt? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

    Ah yes ... I forgot about all your fake credentials ;-)

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  31. Re: Curt? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

    Yes you write RFCs, but never heard of curl until yesterday. I don't doubt you write them. Nobody ever read any you wrote without laughing and / or cringing of course :-)

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  32. Re: Curt? by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Hehehehe, the expected demented answer. You have no idea how the RFC process works, obviously. Fits the rest of your incompetence.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  33. Re:Editors? We don’t need no steekin’ by sabbede · · Score: 1
    He works at the tire shop down the road. Only charged me $18 to fix a puncture.

    Thanks Curt!

  34. Cygwin by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2
    Er, yes. I have been using it for ages to:
    • Connect to my laptops for an SSH + X connection. The X protocol still beats "Remote Desktop". If you want to run a program from another computer, the least thing you want is the desktop of the remote machine. I can run graphical SQL clients, etc.
    • Don't laugh, even cygwin + SSH + X + wine works better than remote desktop for the same reason.
    • If you develop a PHP site on Windows, it can greatly help to call the same shell scripts as you would be doing on a Linux server. Cygwin allows you to do just that.
    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. Re:Cygwin by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Cygwin is nice. The goal of it was nice to: using plain old unix source code to make programs that work on Windows. It wasn't always true, because unix tends to be so diverse you inevitably have to use an #ifdef somewhere to find the right headers. But it was a huge step towards getting a usable unix environment on Windows.

      One snag is that you just can't easily create processes willy-nilly on Windows and expect to get good performance. Unix has a model where process creation and deletion is cheap; but on Windows (and many other operating systems) process creation is a relatively expensive operation. Cygwin tries to work around this. But inevitably the shell script that runs like a jackrabbit ona unix box runs a like an armadillo on Windows under Cygwin.

      Still, it's vastly better than trying to use raw Windows as a development or command line environment.

  35. Thank you, Microsoft. by biggaijin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This means that I will be able to run Linux as a bag on the side of your wonderful Windows 10 product with two big advantages over a normal Linux installation: I will have the enormous overhead and slow boot time of Windows to deal with daily. And, Windows 10 will continue to spy on my every move and report it to you without telling me. I can hardly wait to get on the bandwagon with this one.

    1. Re:Thank you, Microsoft. by chispito · · Score: 1

      This means that I will be able to run Linux as a bag on the side of your wonderful Windows 10 product with two big advantages over a normal Linux installation: I will have the enormous overhead and slow boot time of Windows to deal with daily. And, Windows 10 will continue to spy on my every move and report it to you without telling me. I can hardly wait to get on the bandwagon with this one.

      It takes like five or six seconds after the boot splash for Windows to fully boot, unless I fat finger my password.

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    2. Re:Thank you, Microsoft. by chispito · · Score: 1

      It takes like five or six seconds after the boot splash for Windows to fully boot, unless I fat finger my password.

      Wait, are you talking about in an enterprise? Then you're probably waiting on Group Policy, and that's... nearly unavoidable in an enterprise, unfortunately, especially if they haven't optimized it well.

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    3. Re:Thank you, Microsoft. by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Yes, but it gets this 5 seconds to boot because it does not actually shutdown. Instead Windows 8 and up do a system hibernation instead (stops the applications and then hibernates what's left). If you crash or do an upgrade you can see how long a real boot takes. I have had to do a full boot a few times to clear up system issues.

    4. Re:Thank you, Microsoft. by spongman · · Score: 1

      i dual-boot linux & win10 on this machine. the linux machine takes significantly longer to boot than windows.

  36. Congradulations by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    Now that you have proper OS support, just make the move and go to a proper OS! WSL is a joke, it's for users who want to act like their Linux users, without running Linux, so just bite the bullet and move to a proper OS.

  37. Wow my job just got a lot easier by coolmoe2 · · Score: 1
    Whoooohooooo now I can scp files directly to and from my linux boxes without the need for external programs like winscp and putty. I tried it out and work pretty well so not sure what all the hate in this thread is all about.

    At the end of the day I just want to get my work done as easily and quickly as possible and for me this helps a lot.

    On the downside it kinda sucks that this will probably kill both winscp and putty that I have been using for years.

    1. Re: Wow my job just got a lot easier by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      They are useful for profile management. Though, I've been moving on to Remote Desktop Manager. https://remotedesktopmanager.c...

  38. Re: Curt? by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Oh, have I forgotten to mention that I was of course talking about the "Standards Track"? Sorry about that. Hehehehehehe....

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  39. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  40. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  41. Re:Needs driver support by ruir · · Score: 1

    Kali is useless by definition.

  42. Re: Editors? We don’t need no steekin’ by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    The extra 'e' is to get it past the watchers in Texas.
    (http://www.softpanorama.org/Bulletin/Humor/bsd_logo_story.shtml)

  43. RegEdit FTW by Cyberax · · Score: 1

    You can actually access registry files offline. With the stock RegEdit - http://smallvoid.com/article/w...

  44. Cygwin is more easily installed. by emil · · Score: 1

    I am able to load Cygwin on my Windows 10 system at home in the /cygwin64 directory, bring it to work on a flash drive, unzip it on my work desktop, and I suddenly have X-Windows, an ssh suite, and a compiler.

    It is unlikely that I will be getting WSL on my work machine without lots of approval gymnastics, so I will pass on it for now.

  45. Re:Actually, Unix sucks ass. by Darinbob · · Score: 2

    Some unix software has abandoned this, but quite a lot has not. Sure the big name distributions want to go to a single sysadmin tool that does everything, but the real benefit from unix comes from have the small tools that do one or few jobs that are easily composable. Ie, I'm using rep every day, and I use find at least once a week for something, and things like "find . -name \*.xyz | xargs grep mystring" aren't uncommon.

  46. Windows store? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Can you get a linux distribution installed *without* using the Microsoft store?

    1. Re:Windows store? by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      You know this is exactly what most clueless people are going to wonder.

  47. Re:Getting smarter? by I4ko · · Score: 1

    Hopefully never. Latest OS X takes 5+GB of ram just to start. Windows 8.1 professional takes 900mb of ram to start.

  48. Re: Curt? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

    Yes you did, but that is of course because you didn't know there was such a thing until yesterday when you realized that not all RFCs were approved for standards ;-). By all means feel free to cite said RFCs that you claim to have written ...

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  49. Re:Getting smarter? by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

    He created their culture or crushing the little guy, locking in customers, and generally producing shit that is well marketed.

  50. Emulation vs. APIs by DrYak · · Score: 2

    The main issue :

    Emulation - of course, by definition - would require to run a full blown virtual machine emulating a whole freaking Android smartphone.
    On top of the Windows 10 Mobile running smartphone.

    Not many smartphones have enough resource to play at this games. And again the whole point of the effort is to make Android apps available on Windows 10 Mobile to as many users as possible to make it attractive by tapping into the dominant ecosystem. It would be counter productive to advertise "Windows 10 Mobile can now run your favourite Android App - (*only on select few high range phones)".

    That's why in Linux land "Android-in-a-box" efforts are shifting toward "andbox" (lightweight containers, no full blown emulation).
    Past effort have also been running straight a top of the main Linux kernel (e.g.: Alien-dalvik by Myriad, runs the "I can't believe it's not JAva(tm)" JIT simply as another user-space program in a chroot).
    ChromeOS too is relying on containerization.
    But of course that's much easier when you main kernel is having nearly identical API that your target (save for a few android specific things like its peculiar IPC, that you can compile and load as modules anyway). Microsoft are having a much upstream battle. That they are apparently losing (Hey, how does it feel to have a taste of your own medicine ? Ask the wine guys what they are thinking!...)

    Also some minor other issues:

    Also another thing is that you'd have to install the Android VM image.
    Which might bring some licensing issues (Google services are licensed vs. the free AOSP misses pieces that some application might require)
    And make Android app convenient to install (in a VM setting, there should be some android app store available inside the VM - e.g.: aptoid is a popular one).
    Having android as just another userspace layer makes it easier to install apps "from the outside", e.g.: install from the Microsoft app store (real-world example: see how aptoid apps are integrated into the main Jolla Sailfish store).

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  51. Re:Getting smarter? by StuartHankins · · Score: 1
  52. Re:Getting smarter? by I4ko · · Score: 1

    No, I mean 5+GB.
    Both my work macbook pro 14,3 and those on display in apple stores after reboot and opening activity monitor will show Memory Used around 5.2GB. My work mark often however around 15gb memory used + swap used. And there isn't much running - The stupid kernel takes between 1.1 and 4.6gb on its own at any time.
    The last OS X that was actually good was 10.6.8, and they became gradually bloated after that with 10.10 being the first to be completely broken with 0 QA done on it.

  53. Re: No sense of history by Brockmire · · Score: 1

    I lose my shit more often trying to resize fucking windows by needing to be on a very precise spot to get the mouse to grab the edge. I would love to be able to resize and snap windows as easily as I do in windows in linux.

  54. Re: What are the advantages? by Brockmire · · Score: 1

    Does WSL see USB devices? Fuck virtual box and their garbage USB support.

  55. Run Kali? by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    Why would any pen tester ever run Kali as a Windows subsystem/vm? That makes about as much sense as taking a Formula 1 race car, strapping it onto a flatbed tow truck that has all kinds of things clacking on it and racing that in the Indy 500. Yea you can do it, only an idiot would do that. The whole point of Kali is that it's very quiet. The latest one is so quiet it's scary if you're looking for someone using it. Using Linux it's way faster with the network than Windows is.