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New Custom Linux Distro is Systemd-Free, Debian-Based, and Optimized for Windows 10 (mspoweruser.com)

An anonymous reader quotes MSPowerUser: Nearly every Linux distro is already available in the Microsoft Store, allowing developers to use Linux scripting and other tools running on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Now another distro has popped up in the Store, and unlike the others it claims to be specifically optimised for WSL, meaning a smaller and more appropriate package with sane defaults which helps developers get up and running faster.

WLinux is based on Debian, and the developer, Whitewater Foundry, claims their custom distro will also allow faster patching of security and compatibility issues that appear from time to time between upstream distros and WSL... Popular development tools, including git and python3, are pre-installed. Additional packages can be easily installed via the apt package management system... A handful of unnecessary packages, such as systemd, have been removed to improve stability and security.

The distro also offers out of the box support for GUI apps with your choice of X client, according to the original submission.

WLinux is open source under the MIT license, and is available for free on GitHub. It can also be downloaded from Microsoft Store at a 50% discount, with the development company promising the revenue will be invested back into new features.

17 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Re:systemd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And some people like systemd... posting anonymously for a friend.

  2. Re: What's the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    When a distribution is configured to use systemd it takes the place of initd as the initializing process. It is not something you can simply uninstall. It runs as the first process in the kernel. You have to rebuild the entire distribution to go back to initd.

  3. Have they replaced systemd with by devslash0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    windowsd?

  4. Nearly every distro? Not really... by Tog+Klim · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is an outdated opensuse, and no fedora at all. How about a few distros?

  5. Re:Available for FREE or at 50% discount from MS$? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Informative

    WLinux is based on Debian, and the developer, Whitewater Foundry

    It's developed by Whitewater Foundry, not Microsoft. And yes, you can sell GPL software if you also distribute the source.

    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

    BTW, I searched for "Linux" on the MS Store, and found five explicitly listed Linux distros (Ubundu, openSuze, Suze Linux Enterprise, Debian, and Kali)... but not WLinux. I had to specifically search for it by name before I found it on the store. I'm not sure why they think anyone would pay $10 for a Linux distro when there are plenty of free and well-known alternatives.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  6. Re:Stop peddling your WSL EEE bait, Microsoft! by LVSlushdat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah.. Those of us who spent most all of our working life playing a "Windows janitor" and left that shitshow behind when we retired, and now strictly use Linux don't give a rats ass for this bullshit... If EVER I found a need to run Windows, it would only be as a seriously locked down virtual machine, but I really don't see that ever happening.. Come on, say it with me, "FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!" (you KNOW you want to..)

    --
    THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
  7. Re:Available for FREE or at 50% discount from MS$? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    microsoft isn't the ones setting the price here.. it's the distro packager.. err 'customizer'. microsoft gets their cut of the store sales, however.

    the custom code for the 'distro' is mit licensed, meaning they can charge whatever the fuck they want and they don't even have to give you their code. they could package everything in binaries and tell you to fuck off if you ever asked for more.

    gpl is adhered to, mostly (and with the help of debian repositories since this other distro isn't supplying debian sources themselves), because the distro is only really an installer of debian for wsl with their own (and let's be real here.. MINOR) customizations.

    i see this as some guy's attempt to make a cash grab from the few moronic hypocrites who are militantly against systemd yet run (the even-worse) windows 10.

  8. Re:Is this useful? by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's not a virtual machine. It's also not cygwin. I recommend some research, you may find it useful.

  9. Re:systemd by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    People actually use systemd?

    Only in Russia. Everywhere else systemd uses you.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  10. Re: What's the big deal? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They've been difficult to maintain, partly because systemd is now also replacing syslog and publishing logs in a binary, distinct format from the more easily read flat text formats.

  11. Re:What's the big deal? by Aighearach · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One of the big things Linux zealots like to yell about is how you only install what you want. How about just don't install systemd? And if you did, just delete it? Seriously, I don't understand.

    Right, you don't understand. The people who come to hate on systemd don't have the technical skills to choose for themselves, because it is OS functionality. And the distros, who employ people who understand that stuff, want the advantages of systemd because they do understand what it is and what it does.

  12. Re:systemd by DCFusor · · Score: 3, Informative

    It mostly messed me up with either custom daemons I wrote that wanted to be autostarted - the initial workarounds required were then broken by further systemd updates, and some other kinda - normal apps...that either didn't update for this, or took awhile to start up, and fell afoul of systemd's "helpful" "we'll keep restarting this till it makes it" behavior (which may be gone, I dunno, I figured out enough of how things work to edit that timeout and write scripts for my stuff).
    Mounting network shares in /etc/fstab was broken, and if something failed to mount, then the system hung on shutdown trying to unmount what had never been mounted. The "don't do that, WONT_FIX" response was an insult, frankly. Now, like magic, that works again - obviously it was my fault all along for pointing out that doing nothing about it would have caused some months of downtime.
    And of course, I don't know what I'm doing with only a few decades of experience in the field. Insulting people isn't how you make friends, but evidently the people doing this don't care.
    TightVNC server, oh boy. Finally solved that one using a variant of XDG autostart, but it took the user home one, not the system one, else endless loop. Conky - just had to give up on that one. I could go on for quite awhile. But it wasted my time, and gave me zero new benefit, and took away my choice, as many crucial apps now not only support it, but depend on it. While insulting me - like many of the pro-systemd comments on this thread. Yeah, that'll work. How about calling us deplorables, that'll win you favor every time. Oh, wait...

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  13. Re:systemd by DCFusor · · Score: 2

    Not mounting CIFS or NFS shares. That's the thing - fixing stuff eventually and then pretending it never happened fools some fanboys, but not those who had to keep a fleet of customized machines going. Here's a link to lots of links, that took one second to find:
    https://www.google.com/search?...

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  14. Re: What's the big deal? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2

    I'd especially like to see any code that would publish log reports to an analysis database, and how they handle logs with punctuation and MySQL commands embedded in them. I'm thinking of the XKCD cartoon titled "Exploits of a Mom", at https://xkcd.com/327/

  15. Re:systemd by DCFusor · · Score: 2

    Try it with wifi on the machine that wants to mount stuff.
    Yes, the very race conditions systemd was supposed to fix cause it to fail. Where without it the fstab mounts would either keep trying or just wait. But I think I made my point - a race condition is a bug...naming it doesn't make it start working. I had 15 users down on that alone, and making them manually mount all this crap wasn't going to fly. Especially on machines that were hard to phsically access that wouldn't reboot remotely because systemd hung them forever on shutdown once it hit this.
    And when I did mount.service type of stuff, that fixed it for awhile, but it's one of the suggested workarounds that then broke again when they fixed the original problem.
    One of the big problems, and not just systemd, is that when something like this breaks and really screws people up, workaround are posted all over the net. A year later, those workarounds might not be the right answer anymore. The rush to cram this crap down our throats made it far worse.

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  16. Re:The important question by Z80a · · Score: 2

    Given the fact they're already using it to commit witch hunts against one or more of the biggest contributors or the project, yes, it's quite bad.
    When dealing with this literal cult, it's not about "you will behave for now", it's about "we gonna check every message you ever sent and if we find something we find offensive, we will hunt you down and kill like a dog".
    This is not about left or right or communism or whatever, it's a literal cult that calls itself the left (when its just a tiny part of the actual left) and ruins the life of everyone that dares not following their exact gospel.

  17. Re:Available for FREE or at 50% discount from MS$? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

    You're not paying for the distro - that is free on GitHub. You're paying for the button in Windows Store that installs everything for you. Basically, you're paying to save your time. Those other distros work fine, but you need to configure them if you want, say, X to work. If you know how, it's not hard. But many people don't want to waste time figuring that out.