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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft should re-start the Android emulation project (the project that eventually became the Subsystem for Linux in Win10) and make Windows 10 the ultimate OS that can run anything.

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Except that the ultimate OS is open source, completely under my control, and not riddled with spyware and other malware.

They should fix Console or the PowerShell app first to be on par with Linux/Mac terminal applications.

powershell is a great wrapper around bash in WSL

Not if you want mouse support for Vim or descent font support.

You mean like this? https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/06/27/wind...

I think he means more than just fixing the ANSI characters.

Actually, I don't think that was the article I was looking for. Anyway, Microsoft has completely overhauled the console subsystem in exactly the way everyone wants.

I think the main note on the article sequence was the ending article (PTY support) but the ANSI support is nice too :).

The only thing I've found close to what I'm looking for is WSLtty. You can't even get proper mouse support in Windows Console or Nerd Fonts:

https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts

> Note: These both work fine with WSLtty

While we're talking about Windows console / terminal apps, is there anything like Cathode [1] but for Windows? I don't really like using the console, so when I have to it's nice to have something delightful, with the CRT scanlines, static, burn-in and jitter emulation. The retro sounds are nice too, like the sound of the hard drive spinning up.

[1] http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

If WLS, then: https://gist.github.com/h3r/2d5dcb2f64cf34b6f7fdad85c57c1a45

Perfect! I didn't think of trying to run Linux software via WLS! Cool Retro Term is exactly what I'm after, thank you.

The ultimate OS needs to be open source 100% and under my control. Windows 10 will never be the ultimate OS unless very drastic things happen.

> the project that eventually became the Subsystem for Linux in Win10

Do you have a source about that? The Android emulation on Windows 10 Mobile was actually Hyper-V based. IF you just started your phone, the emulated Android was not ready (started) yet, and if you attempted to start an app you got that message.

> WSL is a continuation of the kernel ABI part of Project Astoria. Astoria also had lots of user mode code that made Android apps feel native.

https://twitter.com/benhillis/status/857094460961943552

I believe the Hyper-V based Android emulation is separate from Project Astoria and came later.

If you want to run Android or Linux, why don't you just run Android and Linux?

Your company wants to manage their personnel using active directory, you want access to the office suite, you want to be able to play modern video games?

The ability to run foreign software is a goal even Google embraces with their support for Android apps and 'Linux' within their Chrome OS sandboxes.

(If you're asking why Windows in the first place, well that is another discussion entirely.)

Instead of one machine running everything, you want me to run 3 different machines? It's technically possible to do better than that. One OS that run anything we want would be amazing.

This looked to be MacOS for a while, but then came the iPhone...

That is true, though I still think that macOS still is the closest to that and that is one of the reasons I keep using the Mac. Mac+VMWare is a pretty flexible setup. I wonder, if anyone has a project going to implement a wayland server for Metal2? On the other side, the WSL looks very promising, so Windows is becoming more and more interesting, if one is a Unix guy.

I‘ve switched from Mac to WSL. You‘re using a lot of integration with GUI layer and a lot of polish, especially keybinding, tabbing and nice fonts. But it‘s useable and being able to use Linux package managers instead of homebrew is a big plus. Also, Thinkpads are so much nicer than current MBP - best of breed keyboard, all the I/O you need, nice case, 1TB SSD, 24GB Ram, 2300 USD pricepoint, everything else good enough.

I think WSL would quickly become a killer if MS added a Wayland server integrated in the native Windows UI.

this is obviously the next step I think.

In the meantime, there are already solutions to running X in WSL that are almost single-click:

https://token2shell.com/x410/

https://whitewaterfoundry.com/WLinux/

Running everything half-assed? You didn’t learn from the java “write one run everywhere” bullshit tornado sandwich did you?

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