7 ms·

Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows Server

29 points by benaadams 9y ago

penpapersw 9y ago
> "you cannot currently use WSL to run persistent Linux services, daemons, jobs, etc. as background tasks." Still, this has me wondering if that's the ultimate goal here. Is Microsoft trying to position Windows 10 as a high quality Linux server in the long-term?
- basch 9y ago
  this is not the first time microsoft has done this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX one could even argue they are somewhere between the embrace and extend phase.
  - nerflad 9y ago
    > one could even argue they are somewhere between the embrace and extend phase. I see it more as grasping at straws to stay relevant. The Ballmer-era FUD campaign was mostly a failure (and bad PR). "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
    - oblio 9y ago
      Agreed. At this point it's like trying to "extinguish" the world's deserts or oceans :)
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      With Pichai they're steering more towards a service-oriented company. Linux clearly has a place in their vision. You can see this also in their offerings on Azure. Microsoft is a large company. In recent years, many *NIX developers joined them. Although I don't have statistics. Gone are the days where its funny or righteous to bash Microsoft on /. heck gone is /. Its also not only Microsoft; its Wintel at a whole. Desktop market lost a lot of its relative relevance. Intel is also having trouble with ARM platform [1]. That's not only desktop market. ARM's onto the server market as well. I'm not really backing the above up with sources and numbers though so take it with a grain of salt. [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/02/intel-corporation-vs-arm-holdings-plc-which-is-the.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/02/intel-corp...
      - basch 9y ago
        the service oriented One Microsoft vision was Ballmer's last major contribution before walking out the door. https://genius.com/Steve-ballmer-one-microsoft-annotated https://genius.com/Steve-ballmer-one-microsoft-annotated Nadella (Pichai is google) is executing the roadmap Ballmer laid.
        Fnoord 9y ago
        Ouch, I'm sorry I mixed them up and thanks for the reference on Ballmer's last minute change of course
  - Spivak 9y ago
    It's a risky move to embrace your competitor's platform. Once this tech matures will people prefer SSH to RDS/WinRM? Will people write software for IIS or will they use WSL to deploy their Apache/Nginx config? When enterprisey software starts shipping with a WSL requirement will admins decide to move to Linux where their software is a 1st class citizen? Why would you choose to be Windows native when its much easier to go cross platform starting with Linux?
    - 7952 9y ago
      My company is windows based. The IT department run a bunch of VM's running Linux. But it is always treated as a black box appliance. The admin expertise is still heavily based on the windows stack. I think this tech will make it easier to deploy those sort of appliances on Windows, without needing much Linux admin ability. Windows will compete at a higher level with deployment systems rather than the OS itself.
    - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
      I think the idea is that right now, MS doesn't have much of a choice. Like it or not (and I doubt MS likes it), the server world runs on UNIX/Linux, and out of the four "mainstream" OSs (Windows/Mac /GNU+Linux/Chromebooks+Linux), it's the only one without a UNIXlike back, so while MS is fine on the desktop, they'll have long term problems if developers move to Mac or Linux and the community will see alternatives to Windows. But in the end, it's not as if Windows is Open Source, and there's no guarantee that WSL will exist in it's current shape forever. This is actually the whole EEE strategy. You embrace it, as a monopoly you can push your copy over any other, then you "extend" and improve it (so there'll be code which will only work on WSL) and then ... You won.
- zx2c4 9y ago
  I came here to wonder the same. Is the key word in this sentence "cannot" or "currently"? Do they to force win32 to continue to be a viable server platform, by forever restricting reliable Linux daemons, or do they eventually want to allow Windows to be a viable Linux server?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    They want it to be a viable POSIX server. The majority of web applications use languages with runtimes that hide any Linux specific features. Given that the majority of enterprises allow only for Windows desktops, and won't pay for OS X machines, this is an appealing path to Ruby, Python, Erlang, Java, .NET Core, ... server based applications on azure cloud deployments.
    - itomato 9y ago
      I doubt they want POSIX ever again. They want 'me too' POSIX-enough Developer workloads right up to the Deploy phase, where they have are building cushy, hard-to-evade on-ramp to Azure.
      - monkmartinez 9y ago
        Your argument is confusing... Can I deploy my Django app on Azure? If the answer is yes, what exactly, is "me too" about that?
        itomato 9y ago
        Does your current code generation pipeline rely on a GNU, BSD or Microsoft Userland? How about Libraries, Compiler or Runtime? 'Me too' is in MSFT providing a "Super Runtime" in the form of WSL. If your app doesn't require Microsoft's kernel or user space functions, why should your team?
- nerflad 9y ago
  I only see value for Windows as a desktop OS, and I think the intent of WSL is improving the dev experience on Windows. If you need a high quality Linux server, why not just run Linux?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    For the same reason people use OS X to actually develop applications that will actually run on GNU/Linux.
    - wmf 9y ago
      So you're saying develop on Windows Server and deploy on Linux? Why not develop on desktop Windows?
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        No, develop on Windows and deploy on Windows Server with the new POSIX subsystem.
    - monkmartinez 9y ago
      I don't know why you are being down voted. I switched to OSX to get the sweet NIX underbelly years ago and while not everyone* uses OSX for linux deployments... many, many developers do.
  - solatic 9y ago
    Because a lot of enterprises running Linux are running some kind of "enterprise Linux" e.g. Red Hat, Ubuntu Advantage, SUSE Linux Enterprise, where purchasing an "enterprise Linux" allows for support contracts etc. If you imagine WSL for Windows Server not as competition for CentOS and Debian, but as competition for "enterprise Linux", then you can have a compelling sales case for enterprises which are already heavily invested in Microsoft, i.e. with extensive Active Directory and Office 365 deployments. Why purchase two support contracts, one from Microsoft and one from Enterpise Linux Vendor X, when you can buy just one support contract from Microsoft and still run everything you need?
- sremani 9y ago
  My guess, some of the Linux tooling will be easily ported or usable with Windows out of the box scenario is what they may be chasing. Especially many tools out there for DevOps have *nix first flavor to them.
- pweissbrod 9y ago
  That's something I look forward to. Does anyone know of a solution of reliable SFTP on windows? By SFTP I mean copy-over-ssh as opposed to FTP with TLS. So I guess I'm asking for a standard sshd running as a windows service.
  - nerflad 9y ago
    Ubuntu on WSL lets you run sshd. You can get to your Windows file system at /mnt/c/.
  - joeyaiello 9y ago
    We're doing a port of OpenSSH to Win32 right now that includes the SFTP server and client that ships as part of OpenSSH: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases Key configuration is a little tricky right now, but we've got some helper scripts (eventually to be released as a module on the PowerShell Gallery) that it a little easier: [1] https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Security-protection-of-various-files-in-Win32-OpenSSH https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Security-pr... [2] https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/OpenSSH-utility-scripts-to-fix-file-permissions https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/OpenSSH-uti...
  - mariusmg 9y ago
    Try WinSSHD, https://www.bitvise.com/winsshd https://www.bitvise.com/winsshd , i've been using it for years and been happy with it.
erentz 9y ago
I've been using WSL on Windows 10 since it's release. I'd love to know the inside story of how it came to be. A lot of companies would never try something like this. For me WSL has worked as perfect as could be expected, nothing failed to run that I need yet. The gaps are being slowly closed (e.g. executing between WSL/Windows). I no longer have to develop in a VM, nor be forced to use a Mac just because it has "unix" under the hood.
- oblio 9y ago
  NT has had support for "personalities" since its inception. This is not even the first *NIX one it has had :) Still, I agree that it's an impressive achievement.
  - xorblurb 9y ago
    Except WSL has little in common with traditional NT personalities. Traditional NT personalities were a false good idea, and have been a failure in the long term, especially to run Unix workloads -- however this jugement is easy with insight -- when it came out traditional NT personalities were quite interesting.
    - ajross 9y ago
      No idea about code commonality, but the broad architecture of WSL is basically the same as the original POSIX personality from the 90's. The "foreign" process runs in a special mode and handles a different set of system calls via a different dispatch mechanism in the kernel, but still on top of the same set of kernel functionality beneath that.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Actually they are using the picoprocess ideas taken from Drawbridge research. You are partially right, it is just that they improved a few things.
      - xorblurb 9y ago
gargarplex 9y ago
I am not even joking. In the next few years we are going to see Linux on the desktop!
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Not really because what Microsoft is doing is actually GNU/Windows. Google is busy with ChromeOS/Linux and Android/Linux. Apple keeps developing their NeXTSTEP/BSD derivative.
  - gargarplex 9y ago
    I like the precision and clarity of your thinking. Would you be interested in being paid to write freelance blog posts?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      No thanks, my hands are already full as it is.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    This is actually really interesting. Google doesn't have a kernel so they're borrowing Linux. Microsoft doesn't have a good developer userspace so they're borrowing GNU's.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Not all Windows developers agree with that, though.
    - mariusmg 9y ago
      >Microsoft doesn't have a good developer userspace What does this even mean ? They do have the best IDE on the market ( Visual Studio). What they are really lacking is a proper console emulator app, but there is still the excellent ConEmu for this (3rd party , doesn't belong to MS).
nickthemagicman 9y ago
Lol, what about just using Linux.
- prodikl 9y ago
  photoshop, muscle memory in that order
  - ajross 9y ago
    But this is an announcement about a feature addition to the Windows Server product (not Win10, which already has it), which does little to no image editing in practice and tends to be touched by zero muscle-driven input devices in production use.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nickthemagicman 9y ago
    Don't use a GUI. Problem solved.
wakkaflokka 9y ago
I'm particularly eager to see WSL allow GPU pass-through so I can use PyTorch without a VM or dual-boot on my work computer.
- IamCarbonMan 9y ago
  I don't think that's necessary. WSL runs Linux binaries directly, it should use the host GPU just like any Windows program.
  - 21 9y ago
    It doesn't work, because Linux GPU drivers don't run on the WSL (fake) Linux kernel.
- 21 9y ago
  They mention in some blog post that this is not gonna happen very soon.
tmzt 9y ago
Very cool. I wonder if picoprocesses could be extended to support something like coLinux, where the real Linux kernel runs as a timeslice alongside the Windows kernel. Also it would be good to hear more about the progress on OpenSSH and PS remoting over SSH, the github project is getting updates but it doesn't seem very productised.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
That name is horribly misleading. This is a Linux Subsystem for Windows Server. I'm guessing they wanted their brand name first, clarity be damned.
- limeblack 9y ago
  You can't put a trademark name at the front of a product name is what I have been told unless you get permission from the trademark holder. Not sure if this is true I also would love to know the reason.
  - jasonkostempski 9y ago
    I have no clue if you're right but that sounds as reasonable as anything else I know about the trademark/copyright/i.p./patent system. Edit: This actually seems like a sane restriction in the context of the trademark system. Without even looking up the rules, it's pretty obvious people will see "Linux ..." and assume it's endorsed, or at least unopposed, by the trademark holder, which can be somewhat ambiguous with free software since it can be used so freely.

29 points by benaadams 9y ago

> "you cannot currently use WSL to run persistent Linux services, daemons, jobs, etc. as background tasks." Still, this has me wondering if that's the ultimate goal here. Is Microsoft trying to position Windows 10 as a high quality Linux server in the long-term?

basch 9y ago
this is not the first time microsoft has done this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX one could even argue they are somewhere between the embrace and extend phase.
- nerflad 9y ago
  > one could even argue they are somewhere between the embrace and extend phase. I see it more as grasping at straws to stay relevant. The Ballmer-era FUD campaign was mostly a failure (and bad PR). "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em".
  - oblio 9y ago
    Agreed. At this point it's like trying to "extinguish" the world's deserts or oceans :)
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    With Pichai they're steering more towards a service-oriented company. Linux clearly has a place in their vision. You can see this also in their offerings on Azure. Microsoft is a large company. In recent years, many *NIX developers joined them. Although I don't have statistics. Gone are the days where its funny or righteous to bash Microsoft on /. heck gone is /. Its also not only Microsoft; its Wintel at a whole. Desktop market lost a lot of its relative relevance. Intel is also having trouble with ARM platform [1]. That's not only desktop market. ARM's onto the server market as well. I'm not really backing the above up with sources and numbers though so take it with a grain of salt. [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/02/intel-corporation-vs-arm-holdings-plc-which-is-the.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/02/intel-corp...
    - basch 9y ago
      the service oriented One Microsoft vision was Ballmer's last major contribution before walking out the door. https://genius.com/Steve-ballmer-one-microsoft-annotated https://genius.com/Steve-ballmer-one-microsoft-annotated Nadella (Pichai is google) is executing the roadmap Ballmer laid.
      - Fnoord 9y ago
        Ouch, I'm sorry I mixed them up and thanks for the reference on Ballmer's last minute change of course
- Spivak 9y ago
  It's a risky move to embrace your competitor's platform. Once this tech matures will people prefer SSH to RDS/WinRM? Will people write software for IIS or will they use WSL to deploy their Apache/Nginx config? When enterprisey software starts shipping with a WSL requirement will admins decide to move to Linux where their software is a 1st class citizen? Why would you choose to be Windows native when its much easier to go cross platform starting with Linux?
  - 7952 9y ago
    My company is windows based. The IT department run a bunch of VM's running Linux. But it is always treated as a black box appliance. The admin expertise is still heavily based on the windows stack. I think this tech will make it easier to deploy those sort of appliances on Windows, without needing much Linux admin ability. Windows will compete at a higher level with deployment systems rather than the OS itself.
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    I think the idea is that right now, MS doesn't have much of a choice. Like it or not (and I doubt MS likes it), the server world runs on UNIX/Linux, and out of the four "mainstream" OSs (Windows/Mac /GNU+Linux/Chromebooks+Linux), it's the only one without a UNIXlike back, so while MS is fine on the desktop, they'll have long term problems if developers move to Mac or Linux and the community will see alternatives to Windows. But in the end, it's not as if Windows is Open Source, and there's no guarantee that WSL will exist in it's current shape forever. This is actually the whole EEE strategy. You embrace it, as a monopoly you can push your copy over any other, then you "extend" and improve it (so there'll be code which will only work on WSL) and then ... You won.
zx2c4 9y ago
I came here to wonder the same. Is the key word in this sentence "cannot" or "currently"? Do they to force win32 to continue to be a viable server platform, by forever restricting reliable Linux daemons, or do they eventually want to allow Windows to be a viable Linux server?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  They want it to be a viable POSIX server. The majority of web applications use languages with runtimes that hide any Linux specific features. Given that the majority of enterprises allow only for Windows desktops, and won't pay for OS X machines, this is an appealing path to Ruby, Python, Erlang, Java, .NET Core, ... server based applications on azure cloud deployments.
  - itomato 9y ago
    I doubt they want POSIX ever again. They want 'me too' POSIX-enough Developer workloads right up to the Deploy phase, where they have are building cushy, hard-to-evade on-ramp to Azure.
    - monkmartinez 9y ago
      Your argument is confusing... Can I deploy my Django app on Azure? If the answer is yes, what exactly, is "me too" about that?
      - itomato 9y ago
        Does your current code generation pipeline rely on a GNU, BSD or Microsoft Userland? How about Libraries, Compiler or Runtime? 'Me too' is in MSFT providing a "Super Runtime" in the form of WSL. If your app doesn't require Microsoft's kernel or user space functions, why should your team?
nerflad 9y ago
I only see value for Windows as a desktop OS, and I think the intent of WSL is improving the dev experience on Windows. If you need a high quality Linux server, why not just run Linux?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  For the same reason people use OS X to actually develop applications that will actually run on GNU/Linux.
  - wmf 9y ago
    So you're saying develop on Windows Server and deploy on Linux? Why not develop on desktop Windows?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      No, develop on Windows and deploy on Windows Server with the new POSIX subsystem.
  - monkmartinez 9y ago
    I don't know why you are being down voted. I switched to OSX to get the sweet NIX underbelly years ago and while not everyone* uses OSX for linux deployments... many, many developers do.
- solatic 9y ago
  Because a lot of enterprises running Linux are running some kind of "enterprise Linux" e.g. Red Hat, Ubuntu Advantage, SUSE Linux Enterprise, where purchasing an "enterprise Linux" allows for support contracts etc. If you imagine WSL for Windows Server not as competition for CentOS and Debian, but as competition for "enterprise Linux", then you can have a compelling sales case for enterprises which are already heavily invested in Microsoft, i.e. with extensive Active Directory and Office 365 deployments. Why purchase two support contracts, one from Microsoft and one from Enterpise Linux Vendor X, when you can buy just one support contract from Microsoft and still run everything you need?
sremani 9y ago
My guess, some of the Linux tooling will be easily ported or usable with Windows out of the box scenario is what they may be chasing. Especially many tools out there for DevOps have *nix first flavor to them.
pweissbrod 9y ago
That's something I look forward to. Does anyone know of a solution of reliable SFTP on windows? By SFTP I mean copy-over-ssh as opposed to FTP with TLS. So I guess I'm asking for a standard sshd running as a windows service.
- nerflad 9y ago
  Ubuntu on WSL lets you run sshd. You can get to your Windows file system at /mnt/c/.
- joeyaiello 9y ago
  We're doing a port of OpenSSH to Win32 right now that includes the SFTP server and client that ships as part of OpenSSH: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases Key configuration is a little tricky right now, but we've got some helper scripts (eventually to be released as a module on the PowerShell Gallery) that it a little easier: [1] https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Security-protection-of-various-files-in-Win32-OpenSSH https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Security-pr... [2] https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/OpenSSH-utility-scripts-to-fix-file-permissions https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/OpenSSH-uti...
- mariusmg 9y ago
  Try WinSSHD, https://www.bitvise.com/winsshd https://www.bitvise.com/winsshd , i've been using it for years and been happy with it.

erentz 9y ago

I've been using WSL on Windows 10 since it's release. I'd love to know the inside story of how it came to be. A lot of companies would never try something like this. For me WSL has worked as perfect as could be expected, nothing failed to run that I need yet. The gaps are being slowly closed (e.g. executing between WSL/Windows). I no longer have to develop in a VM, nor be forced to use a Mac just because it has "unix" under the hood.

oblio 9y ago
NT has had support for "personalities" since its inception. This is not even the first *NIX one it has had :) Still, I agree that it's an impressive achievement.
- xorblurb 9y ago
  Except WSL has little in common with traditional NT personalities. Traditional NT personalities were a false good idea, and have been a failure in the long term, especially to run Unix workloads -- however this jugement is easy with insight -- when it came out traditional NT personalities were quite interesting.
  - ajross 9y ago
    No idea about code commonality, but the broad architecture of WSL is basically the same as the original POSIX personality from the 90's. The "foreign" process runs in a special mode and handles a different set of system calls via a different dispatch mechanism in the kernel, but still on top of the same set of kernel functionality beneath that.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Actually they are using the picoprocess ideas taken from Drawbridge research. You are partially right, it is just that they improved a few things.
    - xorblurb 9y ago

gargarplex 9y ago

I am not even joking. In the next few years we are going to see Linux on the desktop!

pjmlp 9y ago
Not really because what Microsoft is doing is actually GNU/Windows. Google is busy with ChromeOS/Linux and Android/Linux. Apple keeps developing their NeXTSTEP/BSD derivative.
- gargarplex 9y ago
  I like the precision and clarity of your thinking. Would you be interested in being paid to write freelance blog posts?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    No thanks, my hands are already full as it is.
- Spivak 9y ago
  This is actually really interesting. Google doesn't have a kernel so they're borrowing Linux. Microsoft doesn't have a good developer userspace so they're borrowing GNU's.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Not all Windows developers agree with that, though.
  - mariusmg 9y ago
    >Microsoft doesn't have a good developer userspace What does this even mean ? They do have the best IDE on the market ( Visual Studio). What they are really lacking is a proper console emulator app, but there is still the excellent ConEmu for this (3rd party , doesn't belong to MS).

nickthemagicman 9y ago

Lol, what about just using Linux.

prodikl 9y ago
photoshop, muscle memory in that order
- ajross 9y ago
  But this is an announcement about a feature addition to the Windows Server product (not Win10, which already has it), which does little to no image editing in practice and tends to be touched by zero muscle-driven input devices in production use.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  Don't use a GUI. Problem solved.

wakkaflokka 9y ago

I'm particularly eager to see WSL allow GPU pass-through so I can use PyTorch without a VM or dual-boot on my work computer.

IamCarbonMan 9y ago
I don't think that's necessary. WSL runs Linux binaries directly, it should use the host GPU just like any Windows program.
- 21 9y ago
  It doesn't work, because Linux GPU drivers don't run on the WSL (fake) Linux kernel.
21 9y ago
They mention in some blog post that this is not gonna happen very soon.

tmzt 9y ago

Very cool. I wonder if picoprocesses could be extended to support something like coLinux, where the real Linux kernel runs as a timeslice alongside the Windows kernel. Also it would be good to hear more about the progress on OpenSSH and PS remoting over SSH, the github project is getting updates but it doesn't seem very productised.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

That name is horribly misleading. This is a Linux Subsystem for Windows Server. I'm guessing they wanted their brand name first, clarity be damned.

limeblack 9y ago
You can't put a trademark name at the front of a product name is what I have been told unless you get permission from the trademark holder. Not sure if this is true I also would love to know the reason.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  I have no clue if you're right but that sounds as reasonable as anything else I know about the trademark/copyright/i.p./patent system. Edit: This actually seems like a sane restriction in the context of the trademark system. Without even looking up the rules, it's pretty obvious people will see "Linux ..." and assume it's endorsed, or at least unopposed, by the trademark holder, which can be somewhat ambiguous with free software since it can be used so freely.