Re: WSL keeps getting better, and it's because Microsoft is finally?? admitting where developers want to be

Robert Heller <[email protected]> writes:
> At Sun, 5 Jul 2026 15:12:44 +0200 "Carlos E. R." wrote:
>> On 2026-07-05 14:41, Robert Heller wrote:
>>> Wondering if Microsoft is looking to do what Apple did with MacOSX
>>> -- move from their own propriatory kernel to an open source kernel
>>> (and base O/S infrastructure) with a propriatory GUI layer on
>>> top...

Personally I doubt it. I don’t think they perceive any likely benefit
from open-sourcing the Windows kernel, and inserting some other kernel
under the Windows ABI seems like a great deal of work for dubious
benefit.

>>> The only "weirdness" (to me) about the WSL is why? Is microsoft
>>> trying to entice Linux user (partitularly developers) away from
>>> Linux? The WSL is not going to appeal to the "typical" MS-Windows
>>> user (or if the "typical" MS-Windows user starts using the WSL,
>>> they might decide to just install Linux and move on. Developers
>>> already on Linux are not going to install MS-Windows just to use
>>> WSL. And no, doing that just to build MS-Windows versions of Linux
>>> programs is not really a reason -- there exist tools to cross-build
>>> on Linux targeting MS-Windows.
>> 
>> Can they build applications that run on the WSL transparently?

Yes. Linux applications run transparently on the Windows desktop.

>> Just click an icon on the desktop or a menu entry, and it fires away?

You can make that work, yes.

>> Those same applications could also run on Linux proper.

WSL _is_ “Linux proper”, running in a VM.

> It depends on the program load infrastructure.  Eg is WSL on
> MS-Windows like WINE on Linux?  (Does WSL provide a system call
> wrapper library?)

No, it’s not like WINE.

(The first version was somewhat ‘like WINE’, albeit emulating the target
platform at a different layer. But that has been abandoned now; today
WSL is Linux in a VM, with very good host integration.)

> Does the build tools under WSL produce Linux ELF binaries or native
> MS-Windows binaries (which is what the mingwin toolchain running under
> linux produces).  It would of course be true that the WSL application
> *source code* would also build on a Linux machine and then run under
> Linux,

It’s just Linux, executables are built using exactly the same versions
of exactly the same tools you use on Ubuntu, Debian, etc.

-- 
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