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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

This is kind of weird since much of the tech is shared with WSL. It also makes me question the future of WSL, though that would be insane to deprecate given it has worked miracles for rehabilitating Microsoft‘s image and Windows’ usability.

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At this point, Linux is so integral to Microsoft's strategy that if anything, it's more likely that Microsoft would abandon the Windows kernel and rebuild the Windows UI on top of Linux.

(To be clear, that's not going to happen, but it's also no longer at the "hell would freeze over" level of absurdity for Nadella's Microsoft.)

They're even already producing their own Linux distribution, CBL-Mariner, https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux

WSL is what makes Windows viable in ML/AI at all. They've made a correct (in hindsight it was genius, actually) decision to expose GPUs in WSL using Windows drivers and a shim in a vm. It works surprisingly well.

I was under the impression ML/AI development works fine under Windows, as that’s where a lot of (data) scientists already are.

WSL is an important developer tool, with a lot of (paying corporate) users. WSA was a limited toy.

WSA is apparently also a godsend for android app developers on windows.

Eh, you can still use the SDK emulator, which is an x86_64 VM, and it has OK performance on reasonable hardware.

The argument I read from upset developers was that the WSA was so much better than other methods.

WSL is used heavily inside MS. It’s not going anywhere.

Much of the tech was shared with WSL1 (the one that emulates Linux syscalls). But these days WSL2 (the one that runs Linux in a VM) gets all the love.

You're thinking of Project Astoria. WSA is a separate and much more recent project that uses a virtual machine like WSL2 does.

That’s why I’m surprised. It’s literally just maintaining a virtual machine image and some emulation, very little upkeep from Windows core. But it does seem like there was an Amazon component to this story.

WSL1, which no one should use right now, may and should be deprecated. However, WSL2 should not go away since it has completely transformed the dev experience for the better.

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