The Linux kernel hidden inside Windows 10

Fun tidbit is it seems the original reason behind this was Android support in WinPhone10 but when that was axed they migrated it to Ubuntu on desktop.<p>If true that&#x27;s a pretty nifty pivot.

Microsoft has actually been doing Unix related stuff from way back - a fact that might not be known to some.<p>Xenix, then SFU (Services For Unix - for interop - on Win NT or 2K), plus they had (part of?) a POSIX subsystem around then or earlier- I used it a bit for C utility dev work on WinNT), etc.

Honest question: What&#x27;s the deal with this stuff? I&#x27;m not interested in the reasoning that it&#x27;s done just because they can do it. I mean... Why not just ... <i>use Linux</i>? I suspect it&#x27;s a comfort zone thing, and most people really don&#x27;t want to move out of their comfort zone (and especially programmers have a hard time admitting this). I understand people developing for the platform, but I don&#x27;t understand people developing for Linux on Windows. I hear some people talk about Visual Studio being a great IDE, but I know <i>tons</i> of people that don&#x27;t use VS. They use ST3 on Windows to develop for Linux, and they&#x27;re happy about this stuff, and I just don&#x27;t understand why people wouldn&#x27;t just migrate to Linux in the first place.

Open PDF on iPhone: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;raw.githubusercontent.com&#x2F;ionescu007&#x2F;lxss&#x2F;master&#x2F;The%20Linux%20kernel%20hidden%20inside%20windows%2010.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;raw.githubusercontent.com&#x2F;ionescu007&#x2F;lxss&#x2F;master&#x2F;The...</a>

I&#x27;d love to see a video of the demo session for this; really curious how ProcMon and AV tools will deal with ELF binaries in this release.

I can&#x27;t help but think this is all towards an end which is Docker containers running on Azure&#x27;s core infrastructure. Having the tooling show up earlier in Windows 10 as it&#x27;s being flushed out is just a really nice bonus.<p>I&#x27;ve been mostly using bash in windows (installed with git tooling) for a couple years now.

So far, this has been fantastic. Our team has been seriously considering converting from Windows to Linux for embedded development. (we run Linux VM when needed) Up and running and cross compiling for ARM without issue. Really surprised how it has just worked so far. This came at a great time for us.

Obligatory: Maybe we finally have the year of Linux on the Desktop?

Direct link to the slides for the impatient&gt;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rawgit.com&#x2F;ionescu007&#x2F;lxss&#x2F;master&#x2F;The%20Linux%20kernel%20hidden%20inside%20windows%2010.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rawgit.com&#x2F;ionescu007&#x2F;lxss&#x2F;master&#x2F;The%20Linux%20kern...</a>

Link shortcut: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;raw.githubusercontent.com&#x2F;ionescu007&#x2F;lxss&#x2F;master&#x2F;The%20Linux%20kernel%20hidden%20inside%20windows%2010.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;raw.githubusercontent.com&#x2F;ionescu007&#x2F;lxss&#x2F;master&#x2F;The...</a>

Anyone know if it&#x27;s possible to somehow port the linux subsystem to windows 7 and 8?

I am kinda hesitant to download and open a PDF file coming out of Black Hat 2016.<p>EDIT: See child comment, GitHub preview is fantastic! Slides have a ton of great info.

is there any more information on this custom init they are having?

How do we get linex

Excellent preso. Thank you.

I must complain the slides are chalk full of text with very few visuals. It becomes a paper reading instead of a talk at this point.

I wonder how much further humankind would have progressed by now if &quot;because it can be done&quot; were not such a big motivation for intelligent people.<p>Edit: Since everybody took this post seriously, I will, too: We would be closer to some local maxima, but would have no chance to progress beyond them.