Hey your opinion is cool and all. But there are a lot of people who put a lot of hard work into this project, because we're developers too, and we think the idea of being able to run a full linux userland on top of the NT kernel is fucking cool.
This project has never been about EEE. It's not about controlling the user. It's the complete opposite. It's all about choice. I like a linux style development environment more than I like Windows style. In my free time I mostly write python applications and do webdev-y stuff, and WSL makes it really easy for me to do that.
> This project has never been about EEE. It's not about controlling the user. It's the complete opposite. It's all about choice.
well, those are the first two 'E's of the picture, if this is the case. with the latest edition of Windows 10 (S, i think?), microsoft have already prepared the stage for the third.
It depends on how you look at it. The classic EEE involved e.g. "embracing" a platform like the web by writing your own browser, and then "extending" said platform by adding nonstandard features to that browser—and encouraging their adoption—to steal mindshare of the platform away from the standard itself and toward your particular implementation, giving you control over the future of the platform. At which point you could "extinguish" the platform, or at least your rivals on it.
WSL doesn't look to be "extending" Linux; in fact, it's all about providing the exact ABI Linux itself provides, and running Linux applications and operating systems without requiring any porting. There are no e.g. WSL-only syscalls exposed to Linux applications, such that Linux applications would benefit at all of being aware of WSL or targeting it. As far as the code running under WSL is concerned, it's just POSIX.
To me, that's actually a strategy strangely opposed to classical Microsoft EEE: this move commoditizes the Windows platform. There are many developers who will now see Windows as "just another POSIX", and will experience less of the unique, Windows-only parts of the platform, making them less locked into Windows as a whole.
There's no plausible end-goal here where Windows would ever be given mindshare as "the Linux," in order to start on the "extend" phase. In fact, more likely, Windows IT people will be enabled and encouraged to switch to "standard" services like nginx instead of IIS, or Postgres instead of MSSQL—at which point they'll realize they've eliminated all Windows lock-in and they're now free to leave the ecosystem!
> being able to run a full linux userland on top of the NT kernel is fucking cool.
I could do that before with virtualbox. What kind of benefits besides slight speed increases would we see using the posix WSL?
>It's not about controlling the user. It's the complete opposite. It's all about choice.
If I create a prison for you, but then let you choose your cell, do you consider that a valid choice? That's what this is, and I know what you mean but the reality is that windows is a walled garden prison for the user.
>I like a linux style development environment more than I like Windows style.
It's more than a speed increase. There's memory usage benefits -- because it's not a VM, you don't need to dedicate a fixed amount of memory, regardless of what you're doing. The media situation on Linux is much worse -- the audio stack resembles a jenga tower, the media apis are worse, the media drivers are worse. Windows tends to have better backward compatibility for older but still useful programs.
Furthermore, most of the useful parts of nix tend to come from places other than gnu-based APIs. Languages like python, for example, are nicer under nix, but use few if any gnu-isms. Web frameworks and applications by extensions are more *nix friendly, but it's a rare example that restricts itself to Linux only. Sticking with just gnu and/or linux ends up being much more of a burden than it's worth.
come on, there's no need to be disingenuous here - having the linux userspace run atop the windows kernel is much closer to docker than virtualization.
Fair point here, but in reality it changes none of my other arguments. If anything, replacing the linux kernel with the windows kernel and then giving the user half the userspace programs is still bad in my book.
This project has never been about EEE. It's not about controlling the user. It's the complete opposite. It's all about choice. I like a linux style development environment more than I like Windows style. In my free time I mostly write python applications and do webdev-y stuff, and WSL makes it really easy for me to do that.
But then again, that's just my opinion.