While I can see this is an excellent strategy for the Windows platform, and will probably make developers on Windows more productive, I for one will never give up natively installed linux distributions for development.<p>It may be childish, but I resent Windows for every anti-privacy, anti-competitive move they make, despite how much it is within their rights and fitting with their corporate goals. Trying to put linux in windows and pretend that they've been on the side of developers who push F/OSS this whole time is a hard pill to swallow.<p>I recoil at the possibility that some developer 5 years from now might ask me "Why bother installing your own linux distribution? You can just get Windows Go 15 and run Arch/Ubuntu/SUSE from inside there. Don't forget to disable the ads and tracking that come standard".
WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) isn't virtualized, as the article states.<p><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subsystem-for-linux-overview/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...</a><p>It's aim is to run Linux binaries natively. The degree of it's usefulness, issues and filesystem interoperability was discussed before so won't get into that.
For me, the big news is being able to install the distros on your non-system drive, as well as being able to run multiple distros at the same time. Pretty cool.
Are we submitting this story every day?<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317482" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317482</a>
The installation process for the WSL still blows - and I say that as somebody who really likes this feature.<p>I tried doing it today on my laptop:<p>1.) Open up the Programs and Features control panel.<p>2.) Go to Turn Windows Features on or off<p>3.) Select the Windows Subsystem for Linux option and hit OK. Installs, prompts for reboot.<p>4.) Try to launch C:\Windows\System32\bash.exe. Console window flashes momentarily and disappears.<p>5.) Open CMD window and run bash.exe. See a message that says "In order to use this feature you must have Developer Mode enabled."<p>6.) Faff around trying to find where the developer mode switch is hidden, in the newer Settings app. Enable that. Wait five-ten minutes as it does... things. Reboot again.<p>7.) Try to run bash again, and again console window flashes in and out of existence in a millisecond. Run it again from a CMD window. Type "y" to accept license terms. More things download from the Windows Store(?). Create a linux account.<p>8.) Finally have bash working on Windows, albeit in the terrible, terrible default console shell. Go look up how to setup ConEmu...<p>This really should be streamlined a little bit, right?