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Has no one seen this yet? Don't cross the streams!
Earlier today, we wrote that Microsoft was going to add some big new features to the Windows Subsystem for Linux, including native support for Docker containers. It turns out that that ain't the half of it.
Not even half.
All is changing with Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. Instead of emulating the Linux kernel APIs on the NT kernel, WSL 2 is going to run a full Linux kernel in a lightweight virtual machine. This kernel will be trimmed down and tailored to this particular use case, with stripped-down hardware support (since it will defer to the host Windows OS for that) and faster booting.
The Linux kernel is GPLed open source; the GPL license requires that any modifications made to the code must be published and made available under the GPL license. Microsoft will duly comply with this, publishing the patches and modifications it makes to the kernel. WSL 2 will also use a similar split as the current WSL does: the kernel component will be shipped with Windows while "personalities" as provided by the various Linux distributions can be installed from the Microsoft Store.
To quote Han Solo, "I've got a bad feeling about this."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 07 2019, @03:11PM (2 children)
It's briefly mentioned in the summary, but having spoken to the Docker people specifically on this question, this is 100% about supporting docker containers.
Microsoft wins because since they don't release their kernel, you can't run windows docker images on linux, but you can run linux dockers on windows. Congrats, they're now the "no lose" platform for cloud deployments. My company is gonna stick with RHEL for our real OS layer, but I can see this being enough to sway some corporate shops.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday May 08 2019, @02:46AM (1 child)
Why would you deploy your Linux containers on Windows machines, which require expensive licenses, when you can deploy those same containers on free Linux machines?
For example if you're running Windows rather than Linux on AWS, you have to pay extra for licenses.
It sounds like lose-lose to me, but maybe Microsoft has a secret plan.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 08 2019, @04:09AM
If you're stuck in corporate hell, you've already got a ton of expensive licenses for your cloud stack. AWS provisioning, docker enterprise, some bullshit corporate database.
I mentioned my company had RHEL, they chose that because they could pay money for it and feel safer.