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Red Hat Enterprise Linux Comes To Windows 10 in the Form of WLinux Enterprise (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: Earlier in the year open-source software startup Whitewater Foundry brought WLinux to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Not content with creating the first native Linux distribution for WSL, the company has now gone a step further, targeting enterprise users with WLinux Enterprise. Whitewater Foundry says that WLinux Enterprise is the first product to support the industry-standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Oh my God job security here I come
Ultimately, the best Linux distribution will be the one that doesn't contain the Linux kernel...
Poettering announced today that from now on systemd will include an integrated kernel as part of systemd. Systemd-kernel is a mostly compatible replacement for the Linux kernel, but is a hybrid between Linux and MS DOS 2.0.
The kernel integration was fast-tracked, having previously been scheduled to occur only after the integration of the new systemd-officesuite and renaming of systemd to Officed.
Responding to criticism that systemd just keeps getting bigger, Poettering pointed out that some things are actually being removed. Specifically, they plan to separate out the systemd / Officed init system and make that a separate project. The newly independent init system will be called SysFkdInit.
I thought the definition of a Linux distribution was that the distribution was based on and included the Linux kernel. But WSL contains a emulation layer for the M$ kernel to implement the Linux system calls.
Therefore, this Red Hat distribution is a WSL distribution. Sigh.
This is M$ strategy of killing off the Linux kernel.
This subsystem thing makes no sense for me. After all, the point of using Linux is to not use Windows!
Circumcision is child abuse.
I went out to *BSD's grave on Decoration Day. The old forgotten cemetery is to be found adjacent to the dark woods beyond the edge of town. There within olfactory distance of the municipal treatment plant you will find *BSD's final resting place.
*BSD's tombstone was shrouded by thick mosses and knots of noxious ivy. A mournful funerary crow sounded the requiem, as I gently pulled aside the tangled twists of thorns, and cleaned the decaying marker the best I could. A suffocating melancholia filled my heart, while I pondered that this indeed was *BSD's figurative charnel house of which so many have plaintively spoken.
Nothing is so pitiful as an untended grave, a loved one now forgotten. The short sad life of this doomed and fated OS makes us realize that there but for the grace of God go all of us.
I planted some wilting marigolds, found discarded in the waste heap behind the caretaker's shack, wishing that by some miracle these fleurs de mort might take root and bring a modicum of cheer to *BSD's God forsaken plot. My fervent hope is that the torpid colored boy, who so carelessly mows the grounds, doesn't slice them down, inadvertently mirroring *BSD's own doomed encounter with death's irresistible scythe.
Funny how things work out. Linux, that brilliant nova stella, now runs the Internet and the world's fastest computers, while *BSD lies moldering within its forgotten crypt. Let the barren silence of *BSD's tomb be a mute reminder that hubris and braggadocio were no defense on that woeful day when the Angel of Death's bleak umbra was cast upon *BSD.
I don't see who would actually want to deploy this The primary reason I use Linux is for it to be a stable underpinning to either host Windows or other Linux or applications. The reasons not to use Windows is because it's basically a desktop OS. Live patching the kernel still doesn't happen on Windows and even though Linux is on more systems than ever, so the market share argument doesn't hold anymore, Windows bugs are still major issues all the time requiring reboots for even the simplest of subsystems.
On the other hand, if I need Linux on a Workstation, it's because the Windows systems doesn't have good hardware support (eg. gpGPU, Real-Time timing support, configurable interrupts, InfiniBand, ASIC, 10/40/100G networking) so a subsystem of Windows wouldn't do me any good.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"This is M$ strategy of killing off the Linux kernel."
The actual long-term effect: Microsoft is being self-destructive.
> After all, the point of using Linux is to not use Windows!
Not for me. The point of using Linux, for me, is to use good software. Originally, almost 20 years ago, the reason I used Linux was because I needed a network operating system that had .... At the time, Windows was very much not a network operating system. It was Personal Computer OS that until recently was called Disk Operating System to distinguish it from multi-user network operating systems. So it wasn't even an option on the list. It wasn't even the right category.
A lot of corporations are trapped on Windows. Vendor lock-in is real. WSL makes it less urgent for them to get off Windows - they can run good software and legacy Windows desktop stuff together on the same machine.
If I want two OS', I use a hypervisor or a virtual machine. OS-in-OS works with Linux running in Linux or RTAI because Linux and RTAI are fast.
Windows is slow, violently unstable, insecure, doesn't provide the necessary low level support, and was only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A lot of corporations are trapped on Windows. Vendor lock-in is real.
Are they though? Software like Office runs everywhere, maybe they wrote a few of their own Windows-only line-of-business apps but in terms of the vendor locking them in I don't they are any more locked in than if they wrote their LoB apps for macOS, it's of their own making.
WSL makes it less urgent for them to get off Windows
Or makes it easier to transition to Linux.
they can run good software and legacy Windows desktop stuff together on the same machine.
What software can they run now that they previously couldn't? Aside from pre-compiled Linux binaries of course.
Honestly the fact that you must WLinux through the Windows Store should've been enough of a red flag, but it was half price at the time.
As an aside- someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell Win16 execution using WINE requires 32 bit WINE binaries, which isn't possible on WSL which supports 64 bit only.
>The point of using Linux, for me, is to use good software.
As I said, the point of using Linux is to not use a crap system. Same thing but from a different angle.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Subsytem seems to imply who's the dog and who's the tail. Can we call linux and overboot or uber system for windows?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
the key advantage is that DOS is not available on Linux.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It was in Windows 5.0 that Microsoft announced a deal with Citrix to integrate parts of the Citrix app into Windows. The Citrix application code would add a) separate users b) remove access, Microsoft announced.
So none of this is true:
> Windows NT was already pretty mature, and was built from the ground up to be part of a network, to support multiple users
It was designed as a local desktop operating system, not a network operating system, and even in 5.0 "multi-year" was a third-party application tacked on to hide other users' files in File Explorer. To see files in the other person's directory, you had to use the command prompt, write a script, or cleverly navigate to C:\ first in Explorer. Same with remote access - a third party app tacked on in version 5. A network operating system is one that *assumes* use is over the network by default. You can recognize them because local access is via 127.0.0.1. CUPS is a printing and scanning system for network operating systems. It runs on port 631, so you connect to whatever-machine:631. If the print spool you want to use happens to be on the same machine you logged into, that would be localhost:631. X11 is a windowing system for network operating systems, it runs port 6000, so to run a program local machine you use localhost:6000 - precisely the same way you'd run it on any other machine on the network.
Setting the graphical shell to hide the other guy's "My Documents" folder is not what makes a multi-user, network OS.
"Are they though?"
Yes. Yes they are. While there are drop in-ish replacements for things like Office and other highly popular software, lots of businesses run custom software that requires Windows.
if customers willingly develop their custom programs for one specific vendor that's their own fault.
lots of businesses run custom software that requires Windows.
Well they aren't really locked in then, they've decided to stick with Windows and they would just need to port their applications to some other platform. Again, feels like a problem of their own making.
I use WSL with so-called Debian every day. It's useful for programming but very limited and not production quality. Microsoft explicitly states that WSL is not intended or recommended for production applications.
One issue I ran into was writing to the end of an r+ open file. Explicitly placing a new record at the end by byte-number is inconsistent between openings of the file. I found that the exact positioning is a byte off via the Linux VFS verses the NTFS. If you check environment, your code can thus account for this. However, when using WSL, it's inconsistent between each time you open the file. Open once and read/write all you want. Close and re-open and it's scewed by one byte position.
I imagine there are other issues. Overall, I am happy that WSL exists but yes, they did not name it properly. It's not Linux at all. And the Debian for it, is not Debian, either.. Also, it would be so nice if they could make Xorg work...
If I were a Microsoft executive, I would have created Microsoft Linux a long time ago... Build in .Net and PowerShell. Give Red Hat a run for its money.
Pretty hard to write s.t. that runs on MacOS, Windows and Linux, unless you program it in Java or Python. I've used a few Java applications (jEdit is my favorite), and Python is my favorite programming language. But for the most part big applications aren't written in Java, afaict.
Copy-pasting from your link:
> the sharing of data, users, groups, security, applications, and other networking functions
Windows STILL isn't designed for sharing applications. Windows NT didn't share users, groups, and security 20 years ago. Active directory came out with Windows 2000.
So of the five things mentioned in the Wikipedia definition, Windows did ONE, and that very poorly. So I'll be glad to use the definition you found and call it 20% network OS. Last time I checked, which admittedly was a few years ago, file locking and some other basic functions still don't work reliably on NTFS, but we'll pretend it was solid and give NT a score of 20% on being a network OS.
But for the most part big applications aren't written in Java, afaict.
From my experience, anything written in java becomes a big application, gobbling up at least a quarter of your system's memory and pegging the CPU whenever it does garbage collection, unless you jump through hoops to limit resource usage when starting it.
"They're not locked in, they just need to spend tens of thousands of dollars (at least) to switch!"
Of course it is. That doesn't mean that it's not a real problem.
I had to install the Linux subsystem in order to run a python script that converted mercurial repos to got repos. Couldnâ(TM)t be bothered to get python working on windows because itâ(TM)s not something I use in my work normally. However thereâ(TM)s a nice script in python that does all the work of moving your mercurial repos to git and converting the history which was fairly easy to get working under Linux. Not having a native Linux system at work, the subsystem proved very useful for my task and is lighter weight than running a full vm just for that task.
“WLinux Enterprise is the first product to support the industry-standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Windows Subsystem for Linux” and in the process helping Microsoft sabotage the GNU/Linux ecosystem.
Did you know that even windows 3.1 could serve as network equipment... If you bought the right stack? Sure, Microsoft eventually gave away a TCP stack for windows, but for a long time you HAD to buy one. Trumpet dominated because of the low price, but it was hardly the only option. Besides the stack from chameleon, there was also TGV. TGV was a Unix shop ("Two Guys and a VAX") which went into the Windows market with a great stack, by far the fastest on Windows.
To me, the point of Linux was to get a unixlike worth using. Before my first tech job, I was running xenix on my 286. When I got a 386 I didn't even consider NT - I went straight to Unix. I did consider freebsd, but Linux had a much friendlier community which was far more willing to help.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Or you could just run RedHat on the server....
Just sayin.
I had Trumpet. I used it to connect to network devices and servers. For my purposes at least, that doesn't mean it *is* networking equipment. I wouldn't it as the platform to host my customers web sites.
You put floats on a Cessna. It's still a plane, not a ship.
Here's one of many articles written at the time about Microsoft announcing they were buying multi-user and network access software from Citrix, in order to add these features to NT 5.0
https://books.google.com/books...
> I don't know where you are getting this from, but Windows NT 3.1 was launched with multi-user support
"Multi-user" doesn't mean "you can log in before you have access to all the files on the whole system". That's a password-protected system, it's not a multi-user system. A multi-user system is one that multiple people can use at the same time and they don't have access to each other's stuff, and can't screw up the other person's stuff.
Here's one of many articles written at the time about Microsoft announcing they were buying multi-user and network access software from Citrix, in order to add these features to NT 5.0
https://books.google.com/books...
Or just run those applications in a VM if they don't run on Wine until they can migrate to something else. But even then that's only for some users in some businesses that actually have developed critical Windows-specific applications.
Is this really the case for the overwhelming majority of employees at the overwhelming majority of organizations? Because Windows still has 90%+ of the desktop market, are there really that many people using Windows-specific applications for which there are no alternative? ... maybe there are or maybe the alternatives are simply not of viable quality.
NT4 already had terminal services edition in 98.
The fact that MS bought additional functionality from Citrix rather than building it all over again themselves in house to enhance NT5 is hardly the revelation you seem to think it is.
Pretty much, yeah.
It's not that there's no alternative, it's that they cut themselves off from the alternatives. You're looking at thousands of corporations (or more) that developed their solutions with no thought of portability, developing whole application systems that will only run on Microsoft platforms. Windows was what they had, so Windows is what they developed for. And now they're trapped.
Even if that is the case there is always going to be a cost to switching and there is also a cost saving in switching but the more important thing is do they get significant value out of switching and the answer to that seems to be an overwhelming "no".
It's not that they are trapped and can't switch, it's that there's no platform worth switching to. They'd just be doing the same thing they're doing now but with the application running on Linux rather than Windows (so they click on an icon that looks slightly different to open their applications) and nobody really cares about that nor does it provide any significant advantage.
That’s simultaneous desktop users (or terminal services). Multi-user networking was there from the start.