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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: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:16AM
I do think it's part of the EEE strategy, really. Linux on the desktop is extremely rare with casual household computer users but extremely common with software engineers. Microsoft is now trying to offer a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too option to software engineers, a way to access all of the Windows-compatible software you want (including games) and the Linux development software and development environment you like too.
The reason this is bad is that some portion of the software engineers doing their day job from Linux also contribute to the Linux ecosystem. If they're working in WSL that becomes less attractive, because instead of saying, "I want to do XYZ but I can't right now because it's only on Windows and I'm running $FAVORITELINUXDISTRO. I'll help build an equivalent that works on Linux." they can say, "I want to do XYZ, and it only works on Windows. I'm on Windows, I'll use it."
This isn't as unethical as Microsoft's J++ attempt to hijack Java or the intentional web standards incompatibility in most versions of Internet Explorer, but it's still a way to chip away at the Linux desktop ecosystem.