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posted by martyb on Wednesday May 20 2020, @01:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the year-of-linux-on-the-desktop dept.

Microsoft is bringing Linux GUI apps to Windows 10:

Linux on Windows 10 gets a big boost and GPU acceleration

Microsoft is promising to dramatically improve its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with GUI app support and GPU hardware acceleration. The software giant is adding a full Linux kernel to Windows 10 with WSL version 2 later this month, and it’s now planning to support Linux GUI apps that will run alongside regular Windows apps.

This will be enabled without Windows users having to use X11 forwarding, and it’s mainly designed for developers to run Linux integrated development environments (IDE) alongside regular Windows apps.

While it has been possible to run Linux GUI apps within Windows previously using a third-party X server, poor graphics performance has always been an issue. Microsoft is promising to solve this, too. Windows 10 will soon get added support for GPU hardware acceleration with Linux tools. This is primarily focused on development scenarios involving parallels computation or training machine learning and artificial intelligence models.

So is it the year of Linux on the Desktop?


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday May 20 2020, @04:20AM (7 children)

    Using Cygwin/X, I currently have two *nix apps running natively on my Windows desktop. There are many more, but I'm only using two right this minute.

    I've been doing that for decades, in fact.

    In fact, there are (currently) 9,423 *nix apps that can run locally on your Windows box with Cygwin [cygwin.com]. What's more Cygwin has a fully functional development environment which will allow you to port whatever you want to run natively (if not already supported) on Windows.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday May 20 2020, @04:16PM (6 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @04:16PM (#996953)

    Thanks. I've known of Cygwin/X for years, but thought it was just a big X-server project. Didn't know it was a Linux kernel / libs emulator too. And it looks like it was abandoned years ago? But maybe it's just fully mature?

    But why run Linux apps on Windows?

    • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:12PM (5 children)

      Thanks. I've known of Cygwin/X for years, but thought it was just a big X-server project. Didn't know it was a Linux kernel / libs emulator too. And it looks like it was abandoned years ago? But maybe it's just fully mature?

      Cygwin is not a linux kernel/libs emulator. Rather, Cygwin [wikipedia.org]:

      Cygwin (/ˈsɪɡwɪn/ SIG-win)[2] is a POSIX-compatible environment that runs natively on Microsoft Windows. Its goal is to allow programs of Unix-like systems to be recompiled and run natively on Windows with minimal source code modifications by providing them with the same underlying POSIX API they would expect in those systems.

      Abandoned? Where did you get that idea? The latest *stable* version of the cygwin1.dll was released this past February.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:36PM (4 children)

        by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:36PM (#996990)

        I was looking at "Cygwin/X". This answers both of your questions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin/X [wikipedia.org]

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:08PM (3 children)

          Your link didn't answer either of those questions.

          Cygwin/X is *not* an emulator [wikipedia.org]:

          Cygwin/X is an implementation of the X Window System that runs under Microsoft Windows. It is part of the Cygwin project, and is installed using Cygwin's standard setup system. Cygwin/X is free software, licensed under the X11 License.

          What's more, Cygwin/X [github.com] (despite what the link above claims) is *not* an X Server. Rather, it's a set of patches for XOrg [wikipedia.org], allowing XOrg to run with Cygwin.

          XOrg is most certainly under active development (latest release: 29 March 2020), and since the API is stable, there's little reason (aside from security issues) to modify those patches.

          In fact, aside from core cygwin1.dll development, all other "cygwin" development is based around patching *nix packages to support running via Cygwin and once that support is available, there's little reason to update it unless there are security issues and/or API changes to the core cygwin1.dll.

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
          • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:32PM

            by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:32PM (#997039)

            Thank you!!

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:39PM (1 child)

            by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:39PM (#997044)

            BTW, what I meant to communicate, in my overly-brief way, is that the link answers your questions about what _I_ understood. Context, right?

            I observe a big factor in Internet forum miscommunications is that most people perceive comments as being made from some kind of omniscient attitude. I keep in mind that we're all just people, most doing our best- in spite of the ego we all have.

            • (Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:28PM

              BTW, what I meant to communicate, in my overly-brief way, is that the link answers your questions about what _I_ understood. Context, right?

              I observe a big factor in Internet forum miscommunications is that most people perceive comments as being made from some kind of omniscient attitude. I keep in mind that we're all just people, most doing our best- in spite of the ego we all have.

              Absolutely. Context is almost always important. My reply wasn't a dig at you, nor was it through any sense of omniscience on my part. You brought up some interesting points, in fact. While discussion doesn't *require* agreement (that would make discussion really boring IMHO), focusing on the discussion itself rather than the participants (hopefully with the understanding, as you correctly point out, that "we're all just people, most doing our best- in spite of the ego we all have.") is generally much more productive and interesting.

              I was actually a little surprised that the Wikipedia article so badly misstated what Cygwin/X might be. Which is why I made sure to check both https://x.cygwin.com [cygwin.com] and github [github.com] to make sure I was, in fact, correct.

              It's unfortunate, and if I hadn't been an active (and enthusiastic) user of Cygwin for at least two decades (I believe I was already using it in 1998, but memory is a tricky thing sometimes), and known how Cygwin works, I'd likely have left it with the Wikipedia article.

              An interesting tidbit: For most apps that have been modified to support Cygwin that don't have other dependencies, binaries require *only* a local copy of cygwin1.dll to function normally on a Windows system -- no installation or configuration (aside from configurations required by the particular app) required.

              --
              No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr