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Why is it called Linux, though? There's no Linux there at all IIRC, in the sense that it's not using the Linux kernel.
by 0xbear 9y ago
Why is it called Linux, though? There's no Linux there at all IIRC, in the sense that it's not using the Linux kernel.
- karlshea 9y agoIf you're going to be pedantic shouldn't it be "GNU/Linux"?
- jameshart 9y agoI guess technically MS need to start referring to Windows 10 as GNU/Linux/Windows now.
- ric2b 9y agoMore like GNU/Linux/Microsoft/NT. Windows is more of a distro name such as Ubuntu.
- IncRnd 9y agoThe other way around. Being pedantic, it would be GNU without Linux. How is any of that helpful to people?
- edsouza 9y agoThe WSL converts the Linux system calls to Windows calls with additional wrappers to implement the system calls correctly.
- sbuttgereit 9y agoYou've made a fair observation, but being strictly correct in the naming, in this case, is probably not helpful for Microsoft or users. "Windows Subsystem for Linux" sets an appropriate expectation with me (the user) that I will get an experience not dissimilar from installing a real Linux distribution of one sort or another. For Microsoft, it's simply the easiest way to market that idea in the product. No matter how much someone like a Richard Stallman would like me to differentiate between Linux (the Kernel) and the large proportion of GNU utilities that are the common tools of a complete system, in practice I simply think of the whole lot as "Linux" and probably always will... regardless of how fair, important (or not), the distinction actually is. I expect there are many more who think like that than not.
- icedchai 9y agoBecause it runs Linux binaries and not FreeBSD binaries instead. "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck..."
- JdeBP 9y agoIt's not. It is called the Windows Subsystem for Linux. As I pointed out at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11417059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11417059 and elsewhere, this name is in line with similar names that go back a quarter of a century, and they are all in one way or another named after the part that the Windows NT kernel substitutes for.