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Comment by dualogy | Hacker News Reader

Newb question, does this "Winbash" run Linux/posix/unixy binaries that wouldn't otherwise run or does it assume the actual Windows dists/builds for (Elixir / Go / PostgreSQL / MySQL / GHC / etcpp)?

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* Yes, these are native, ELF binaries. Yes, you can compile it on your linux server, cp it across to windows, and run it.

* No, it is not an emulation. The win10 kernel + compatibility layer just happens to be able to also run ELF binaries. Yes, these show up as standard processes, and can be interacted with using normal windows tools (eg taskmgr).

I see, thanks, this curiously "mildy" (or perhaps, increasingly/incrementally) incentivizes most of these linux/posix/unix-"native" FOSS projects to no longer provide separate "Windows builds": simplifies code-bases, deployment, documentation, support, everything. But if they still continue to do, they have just another "support/bug dimension" to deal with in addition to "OS" --- the old "Windows build" plus also now "X-ish build under Winbash".

In another twist to this, this dynamic then might 'incentivize' users of those packages to upgrade to 10 when they wouldn't have otherwise (or switch to Linux for good ;)

Windows also needs to simulate the Linux kernel ABI -- not just "run ELF binaries". It's like "kernel personalities" in BSD.

Erm ... that's exactly what WSL does. Not quite sure how we'd be able to run ELF64 Linux binaries without building a comprehensive Linux ABI compatible layer.

You might be interested in some of these videos and posts: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/learn-about-bas...

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