Old rivalries have been forgotten andancient boundaries blurred. Jonni Bidwellexplains the Redmond-Penguin harmonyBACK IN 2015 , Microsoft decided that
it loved Linux so much it built a whole
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL),
which enabled Linux programs and
development stacks to run natively. The
official statement even had a heart emoji.
Heart or not, some were skeptical of
Microsoft’s intentions, with memories
of the “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish”
mantra and the 1995 Halloween papers
still fresh in their minds. But it seems as
though Microsoft wants to accommodate
Linux users (well, developers mostly),
rather than force a mass defection.
A successor, WSL 2 .0, was announced
in 201 9, built around a real Linux Kernel,
rather than a Wine-like translation layer.
It brought faster performance, swifter
filesystems, and increased applicationLINUX
WINDOWS
compatibility. In April 20 21, a new feature
was announced, WSLg, which enables
graphical tools to run seamlessly on
WSL. No need to shoehorn an X server on
Windows, nor to redirect PulseAudio—it
even works with Wayland. Not only can
you run Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, but
also Blender, GIMP, and Krita.
We’ll see how to set this up on
Windows, how it’s a great way to learn
Linux, and how to do some weird and
wonderful stuff with it. Finally, we’ll
look at the efforts Linux has made to
bridge the divide with its proprietary
counterpart. So, if you have ever
broken filesystems, networking,
or bootloaders, everything
should just work now with minor
configuration changes.Linux loves Windows