On Sat, Dec 28, 2019 at 5:07 AM Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> wrote:

> Considering WSL is getting more popular and sees some solid development
> these days, what are the odds that this is going to be our sole target
> on Windows, some years since?
>

Microsoft is moving the WSL 'platform' away from translating POSIX calls
into Windows-native (W32, Win32, I forget the details), and instead
implementing a system where the Linux kernel runs in a custom VM (actually,
inside a container running inside a VM, if I understand it correctly). The
system then provides the necessary software to bridge the two systems from
the user POV. The architecture is supposedly very close to what Google (the
software part, not the Advertising company part) is doing with ChromeOS and
their Crostini project, where the user's choice of distribution runs
(kernel and all) alongside the Linux kernel that underlies ChromeOS, and
software inside each separate OS is used to bridge (for example) X11 into
the Wayland-based display engine, share files between the two, etc.
Supposedly, this was the way they found to solve the performance problems
with the impedance mismatch between Windows and Linux design issues
(especially filesystem operations).

If this works, then it'll make Windows support easier, since it will be
very close to GNU/Linux support.

Hope that helps,
~Chad