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ape4

I still have a hard time with bash-backwards name: "Windows Subsystem for Linux". Its a Linux subsystem for Windows.

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Yes, but names starting with a trademark are a no-no. See [0] (bitcrazed works on WSL) and [1]. Also IANAL.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13697918

[1]: https://www.andreas-jung.com/contents/dont-use-docker-in-git...

In that case Windows Linux Subsystem seems like a good compromise.

It's never going to happen.

Shouldn't that be Windows' Linux Subsystem?

How about "Windex"? Oh wait ...

I thought that both "Windows" and "Linux" were trademarks?

Presumably Microsoft is allowed to use Windows wherever they please ;)

Since they are saying it is 'for Linux' rather than it is Linux, I suppose they are probably ok, although the system doesn't contain or even work with any parts of Linux itself in any way.

And sometimes even parts of a trademark can be risky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linspire

Unclear what you think that proves. Microsoft paid $20m to buy their trademark and they changed their name.

Yes, it went well for Linspire, still it attracted a lawsuit, and the reason they didn'tlose wasn't because Lindows is different from Windows but because "windows" was a generic term already used as such by Microsoft itself.

I wonder what would have happened if the MS product was called say WinOS and the other one LinOS, where none of the terms are common words so that similarity would be the only matter.

It's a subsystem of Windows (hence Windows Subsystem). And, among all Windows Subsystems, it's the one for Linux, hence Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Yes that still doesn't work.

But that (a subsystem "for Linux") would only be referring to the small compatibility layer for syscalls and stuff, rather than the whole Bash environment which "WSL" typically means.

Windows Subsystem's Not Unix.

... which might fit well with IBM's not quite Unix thing AIX, which acquired the nickname "Ain't unIX".

Yeah it's the 'for' in there that makes it wrong. It's not 'for' Linux, it's for Windows. I know what it is and I _still_ think of it backwards every time I read it.

it's the subsystem for running Linux. It's not actually Linux, and after enabling the subsystem you still have to actually get the Ubutntu image. That image is the Linux part.

We all understand how it works. Repeating that is unconstructive.

It is a bad name that is bad English. It was bad when it was "Windows Services for UNIX" too as an aside.

Note that this subsystem never actually was "Windows Services for UNIX". That was another subsystem, another personality on top of the Windows NT kernel.

Per context, "it" was the name of the thing. "It" (the name) was a bad name then and is a bad name now.

'for' is heavily overloaded as an English preposition. You are expecting a connotation of "for [the benefit of] Linux" versus the connotation of "for [the purpose of] Linux". Another example in English might be the relative meanings of 'for' in "this gift is for you" versus "this gift is for good behavior".

Other languages use multiple words or different cases for some of these situations. English leaves it ambiguous.

The fact that there are so many of us discussing it implies that it is a failure of a name. After all, what are words for if not communicating? We can debate semantics all day, but in the end, it's obvious that many people find the phrasing to be confusing.

This explains one interpretation but it doesn't excuse the ambiguity.

I have only ever seen "<foo> Subsystem" used to mean a subsystem that does foo, not a subsystem for foo.

MS is horrible at naming things, WOW64 anyone?

Or the needless confusion when everything needed to have .NET tacked onto the name.

Or after they bought Skype, and rebranded the unrelated Lync as Skype for Business. Not to mention that Lync is a homophone of LINQ, which was coming out around when Office Communication Server became Lync...

Or lately, when you had Visual Studio 2015, and what is now Visual Studio 2017 being called Visual Studio '15 while it was pre-release.

Naming things is hard.

I guess it is Visual Studio 15 (as in version 15), and that still holds.

Yep, while in pre-release they always just use the version number and that only happened to be similar to the actual product name in VS 2010, I think.

        ↑↑↑ 
    Bikeshedding
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It's still the Windows kernel. No Linux kernel here. Just Linux userspace. The name may not sound good, but it's technically accurate. :)

Maybe it should be Windows subsystem for GNU

Or 'GNU/NT' if we heed the purists who insist on saying 'GNU/Linux'. Not sure how to pronounce that...

I'm for GNI\NT

twitch

Maybe "Windows's Subsystem for Linux"?

Windows is plural so it should be Windows' Subsystem for Linux.

I'd argue that it's singular in the same sense that Williams[1] is singular, despite have origins which imply it describes a plural concept. Plus, "Windows's" sounds funny.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_(surname)

Better than "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows".

GNU/NT

Isn't that Cygwin?

Cygwin is also GNU/NT.

If you like, it's the same as the ways of running GNU on the FreeBSD kernel; there's Debian/kFreeBSD, which is Debian compiled against the FreeBSD ABI, and there's the Linux compat layer that can run Linux ELF binaries unmodified. Both of those are legitimately GNU/FreeBSD systems (or subsystems).

Try: "Window's Subsystem for Linux" instead of "Windows Subsystem for Linux" and see if that helps. It's still grammatically shit.

Now who can come up with the justification for an abbreviation of "whine"?

Yes, my first reaction to the title was "Oh, I can run some kind of Windows component on my Ubuntu machine now?".

"Windows Subsystem for Linux", though a confusing name, is still better than "Linux On Windows", because the later would lead to LOW, which is unfortunately very true, in terms of performance, they just don't want you to ever think in that way.

Edit: seriously, I'm just kidding

Have you compared benchmarks of any of your programs on native Windows and WSL? I've actually seen better performance on WSL in many cases.

Instead we have BOW

Sadly, having a "Windows Subsystem for Linux" is only what they should have done.

Yes! It sounds as if they're talking about Wine...

Which is why I have a GNU/Windows sticker on my laptop.

Then why not Windows's Linux Subsystem?

They could use Windows Linux Subsystem.

Yes. I saw this title and thought "oh, wow, they've now made a Windows Subsystem for Linux!"... Nope, it's the Linux subsystem for Windows.

Whatever name is better than "Bash for Windows", the worst possible name and the least tech-savvy way of describing what is going on. A real embarrassment.

They justify their choice saying they had a survey where the most popular option was Bash for Windows. Well, surveys also led to a boat called Boaty McBoatface...

> Boaty McBoatface

A glorious name and a perfect example that surveys are a good idea. So - what's your point?

"<anything at all> for Windows" would at least accurately express what operating system it runs on. "<foo> for Linux" on a program that is not for Linux is just awful.

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