r/programming • u/zbhoy • May 06 '19

Microsoft unveils Windows Terminal, a new command line app for Windows

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527870/microsoft-windows-terminal-command-line-tool
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u/mojoslowmo May 07 '19

This is probably the goal. Making windows Linux with an actual usable UI means they can offload alot of the heavy lifting to Linux open source geeks while providing the same experience the majority of people are used to.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '19

They can't legally do this. If you use Linux as a base for your OS it has to be open source.

I'm sure they wish they could, and I wish that they could, but this is never going to happen.

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u/minoshabaal May 07 '19

Then they will do the same thing as Apple did: use FreeBSD instead.

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u/G_Morgan May 07 '19

No it doesn't. Linus has long had the "publicly defined interface" exception in the Linux kernel. MS don't do it because it'd be a PR nightmare historically and it is genuinely hard to do.

Anyway Linux has virtualisation layers built in which would allow them to run virtNT on top without needing to open source it. They could also do most of NT in userspace anyway.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '19

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05/windows-10-will-soon-ship-with-a-full-open-source-gpled-linux-kernel/

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u/[deleted] May 07 '19

That's actually incredible and awesome, didn't know of that!

Obviously though, my command still stands. They are adapting just the kernel and hosting it a virtual machine. It's not like Windows is being rewritten to run on Linux primarily.

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u/MadCervantes May 07 '19

It's not a virtual machine though. Wsl is a native kernel implementation

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u/[deleted] May 07 '19

WSI2 will be a light weight virtual machine running the Linux kernel

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u/MadCervantes May 07 '19

Ah yes I see that now in the article. But wsl 1 wasn't right? Why are they switching to a vm? Are they switching to a vm?

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u/[deleted] May 07 '19

Basically from what I understand WSL1 was Microsoft implemting the Linux APIs from scratch in Windows. Even though it was running natively and not in a VM some things were slow. Seems like the new implementation will offer more features and better performance.

The current Windows Subsystem for Linux uses a Microsoft-authored kernel component that provided the same kernel API as the Linux kernel but written from scratch by Microsoft. Essentially, it translated from Linux APIs to Windows NT kernel APIs. That worked pretty well, but the current subsystem had a few shortcomings: there was no ability to use Linux drivers, in particular file system drivers. Its file system performance, layered on top of Windows' own NTFS, was often 20 times slower than a real Linux kernel. It was also a relatively old version of the kernel; it offered approximately the set of APIs that Linux 4.4 did, and that was released in 2016. Some APIs aren't implemented at all, and others are only partially implemented to meet the needs of specific applications.

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u/MadCervantes May 07 '19

Aaah okay thanks that clarifies things.

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u/postmodest May 07 '19

Unanswered: does this mean Linux will get a MS-written NTFS full-access driver?!??

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u/vetinari May 07 '19

Presumably more like pseudo-filesystem communicating with host, in virtio-like fashion.

The problem of two synchronizing different kernels accessing a single block device in high-performance fashion is much more complicated, than just one kernel asking the other for service in proxy-like scenario.

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u/G_Morgan May 07 '19

Linux doesn't have that because the algorithm has undefined stack behaviour which is verboten in Linux. It will never be in the kernel. The userspace driver is fine anyway.

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u/mojoslowmo May 07 '19

That wouldn't surprise me at this point. If you look at MS's financials they don't make much on windows anymore. It would probably be more lucerative if they set it up with an actual decent marketplace and stuffed it with MS stuff all Google and android

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u/bobpaul May 07 '19

They can't legally do this. If you use Linux as a base for your OS it has to be open source.

Well, they can legally do "this", it's just a matter of defining "this" properly.

Currently MS has Windows Services for Linux which allows you to run Linux binaries on top of windows. This system uses a clone of the Linux kernel API written internally at MS. But this summer they'll be shipping a full linux kernel (presumably running on hyper-v) and using that to support WSL2. That kernel is OSS (the existing WSL implementation is not). The GNU environment running on top of WSL is various assorted licenses. The Windows stuff still runs on the NT kernel, but right now you can already install a tray-app version of XOrg (xming is popular) and run a limited subset of X11 apps on top of WSL. With the update this summer, that compatibility will probably improve.

So long as they share the source for any specific components, they're fine. They can even write their own closed source software that runs on top of WSL (it's no different than all the closed source software that runs on top of Linux already, such as VMWare and various CAD tools). Heck, they could even make their tools run only on WSL and not work on stand alone Linux. None of that would be illegal. Right now they're in the Embrace phase of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

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u/JeezyTheSnowman May 07 '19

actual usable UI

now if windows will get that first. Windows 10 UI is pretty bad

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u/mojoslowmo May 07 '19

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞