Re:Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta
by freehunter on Friday July 28, 2017 @07:50PM
(#14878523)
It's not really an emulator. It's more like a virtual machine that runs Linux in the background and lets you use the commands. You can install Ubuntu with it and it's officially supported. If it didn't work, I'm sure Ubuntu wouldn't run.
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Re:Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta
by bitwize on Friday July 28, 2017 @07:55PM
(#14878551)
What it is is what BSDers call a "kernel personality". It's not a virtual machine; the Windows kernel just knows how to load Linux binaries and translate Linux system calls to the corresponding Windows calls.
Thanks for the clarification. I guess I'm having a hard time classifying it, since you can use an actual VM but this seems like something less than that.
Correct, it's not a virtual machine at all. It is a reimplementation of the Linux kernel's API. Most userspace Linux programs run as normal and can't tell that the system calls they do aren't handled by the Linux kernel.