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There are a ton of comments here that seem to be misunderstanding what this software is. This creates a WSL-like environment on a DOS host system. It does not c
by plus 6y ago
There are a ton of comments here that seem to be misunderstanding what this software is. This creates a WSL-like environment on a DOS host system. It does not create a DOS environment on a Linux host. I'm not sure where this misunderstanding even comes from; the name is perfectly analogous to WSL.
- xpressvideoz 6y agoYeah, I got that too. It was clear that the name was a parody of WSL.
- freedomben 6y agoIndeed, this confused me as a Linux user who hasn't used Windows in over a decade (and therefore is unfamiliar with the terminology). Thank you. I was reading this as a potential DOS Box alternative to run on Fedora. If the project maintainer is reading, it would be super helpful to put that at the top of your REMADME.md. I'll even send you a PR. FTR it's not your fault the terminology is confusing :-)
- kevinmgranger 6y agoIt's because the WSL name is also confusing.
- petercooper 6y agoI know what it means and what way round it is now due to repetition, but WSL struck me as a weird name and confused me at first. Usually, saying "for Linux" or "for Windows" about something means there's a thing that is for (or "to run on") Linux or Windows, not that the thing is "of" Linux or to enable the use of Linux. I appreciate there are two ways to look at the semantics, but the one they picked for WSL seems the least common one to me.
- iherbig 6y agoI would imagine it's because WSL is a terribly confusing name itself for a lot of people. There are two ways to read "Windows Subsystem for Linux": 1. This is a subsystem that runs on Windows that enables Linux binaries. 2. This is a subsystem that runs on Linux that enables Windows binaries. The confusion comes in the fact that when I write those two sentences, I naturally want to write "This is a subsystem FOR Windows..." or "This is a subsystem FOR Linux... ." I had to consciously avoid using "for" in that sentence to highlight the problem. So when someone who doesn't know what the thing does reads "Windows Subsystem for Linux" they may walk away with the false impression that the subsystem allows Windows binaries to run on Linux. Likewise, what you're seeing now is that people are seeing "DOS Subsystem for Linux" and thinking that this enables you run DOS on Linux.
- detaro 6y agoThe WSL terminology really only makes sense if you are aware that Windows has the concept of subsystems - and which is why swapping other labels makes even less sense. I.e. the run-Windows-on-Linux thing would probably not be called Linux Subsystem for Windows, because what is a "Linux Subsystem"? And of course WSL2 isn't a subsystem anymore, but is stuck with the product name. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- tobinfricke 6y agoI was under the impression that the name arose out of trademark requirements. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14093517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14093517
- freeone3000 6y agoWindows has had subsystems since the OS/2 era, and WSL1 was actually such a subsystem. Initrix was the Microsoft POSIX Subsystem.
- EvanAnderson 6y agoThere was a POSIX subsystem in Windows NT before Microsoft acquired Interix (which became Windows Services for Unix).
- shawnz 6y agoWSL1 isn't actually an NT subsystem like Interix was.
- tobinfricke 6y agoYes, but the name "Linux Subsystem for Windows" would have been much less confusing.
- dataflow 6y agoCould they have just called it the Windows Linux Subsystem?
- gravitas 6y agoGrammatically, I read the title and thought "yes! finally a way to run those Dell firmware updaters instead of using FreeDOS boot sticks" and then read the comments to find out it's backwards in nature. The phrase is "bad English" in a colloquial sense.
- rcoveson 6y agoThey're both phrased unnaturally, IMO. The suffix "for Linux" strongly implies it's software for use on Linux. It's like the "4j" and "4win" suffixes, implying software built for the Java and Windows environments, respectively. What's more, Windows or DOS as an adjective of subsystem bind more tightly than "for Linux". So if you were to start dropping parts of the name, you'd drop "for Linux" first. Except you can't, because then it's just the Windows Subsystem. LSW would have been a much more natural name. In a conversation about Windows subsystems, you could refer to it as the Linux Subsystem. If other operating systems picked up on the idea, they would have their own Linux subsystems, e.g. Linux Subsystem for macOS. If you wanted to check if your OS had anything like it, you could search "is there a Linux subsystem for FreeBSD?" Which might turn up results about the Linux ABI in FreeBSD. Speaking of which, imagine if it had been named the FreeBSD ABI for Linux. What an awful pattern! You can't even repeat the pattern unless both modifiers are proper nouns! Could you have called the VFS Subsystem the "FreeBSD Subsystem for VFS"?
- reaperducer 6y agoThey're both phrased unnaturally, IMO. This is why we teach sentence diagramming in elementary school. Maybe the person who came up with "WSL" wasn't a native English-speaker?
- WorldMaker 6y agoSomething that should come up early in sentence diagramming but often isn't explained well enough is that sentence diagrams aren't context free, often can be ambiguous, and depend on the context of the speaker to determine referents. Sentence diagrams in the real world are rarely as easy as elementary school examples. In this case, the context known to the speaker but often missed when trying to "sentence diagram" WSL involves the part "Windows Subsystem". That referent, to which the original author was quite familiar, is invoked in WSL as a single noun in part of the larger noun phrase, and while you could continue to sentence diagram break "Windows Subsystem" into constituent parts here, it is important to remember it as a single connected "atom" to which "for Linux" modifies in the overall noun phrase of "(Windows Subsystem) for Linux". Given that context/referent, the sentence diagram here is unambiguous to the original team/"speaker". It's the audience with much less familiarity with the referent/context in question that has ambiguity problems in trying to "sentence diagram" the noun phrase.
- shmerl 6y agoWhy not compare it with Wine instead? Besides, latest WSL is not like that anymore, it's a hypervisor running a VM now.
- gabereiser 6y agoI've been fielding these questions all day. Saying the same thing. It's for "DOS" so you can run _bash_. Ok? People got all excited for Prince of Persia... smh. +1
- em-bee 6y agoi think the confusion comes from the phrase "for those who prefer a DOS environment". maybe it could be phrased as "for those who want linux but need to run DOS as their main OS"
- ogre_codes 6y agoNext up is Microsoft's browser: Windows Subsystem for HTML
- Aperocky 6y agoHave you heard of the HTML5 supercomputer? https://twitter.com/Html5Nikola https://twitter.com/Html5Nikola
- ogre_codes 6y agoMaybe he should be in charge of naming at Microsoft, can't do worse
- Thorrez 6y agoIf it's an HTML5-based device that runs Windows[1] then it's "HTML5 Subsystem for Windows" going by Microsoft's phrase structure. [1] https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98 https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98
- shmerl 6y agoIt says "DOS subsystem for Linux". The way I'm reading it: 1. It's for Linux (so Linux is the host). 2. It creates some subsystem that runs DOS (either emulated, virtualized or translated like Wine is doing for Windows on Linux). That can allow running DOS games on Linux for example, instead of using DOSbox for it.
- antihero 6y agoWould prefer me some LSD to be honest.
- tus88 6y agoWuts WSL?
- jlgaddis 6y agoThe poor naming convention goes back ~20 years or so to (at least) "Windows Services for UNIX" (SFU) [0]. The naming was not intuitive then and it still isn't today. The "problem" is that these products are not what you automatically assume they are! To illustrate: SFU provided NFS and NIS servers, a cron daemon, a telnet server, and various CLI "utilities" (i.e., standard "services" provided by "UNIX") running on Windows -- not Windows services that run on UNIX! Once you know that, the "Windows Services for UNIX" name kinda makes sense and helps to understand what the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" and, now, the "DOS Subsystem for Linux" actually are. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
- mattnewton 6y agoIt’s because the WSL is confusing and doesn’t follow english naming conventions. “X subsystem for y” reads left to right as X is an adjective describing the subsystem, and for seems to indicate y is the platform that X subsystem is for. Instead it’s seemingly meant to be parsed inside-out with “subsystem for Linux” as one noun indicating a subsystem that runs Linux apps, and DOS as an adjective describing that noun. Maybe wsl did it to keep the windows brand first? Are there many other “windows subsystems for Y” out there and this is a Microsoft-universe term? I don’t know but it’s very strange.
- m463 6y agoMaybe it's wishful thinking that the embracing and extending can be recursively embraced. :)
- dboreham 6y agoThe misunderstanding comes from choosing a name for it that stongly implies it is not the thing that it is.
- jjgreen 6y ago"WSL" is Windows Subsystem for Linux is obviously from the old Services for Unix used to bait-and-switch people to NT, and the grammar in the latter is irrelevant, the meaning of "SFU" is clear.