[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Andy Burns]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> Andy Burns wrote:
> 
>> ... there is a certain technical elegance to the
>> WSL1 mechanism.
> 
> When Windows NT was first created, it was supposed to support the idea of
> “personalities” to allow different kinds of userland apps to run on top of
> the same core kernel. For example, Win32 was just one kind of
> “personality”, while the POSIX layer was implemented as another kind.
> 
> You would think the WSL1 would have been implemented as just another
> “personality”. But no. It appears the whole extensibility of the
> “personality” architecture has kind of bitrotted away in the years since
> the introduction of NT, 

They've tipped the nomenclature on its head now "windows subsystem for 
linux" rather than "posix subsystem for windows"

I've read that the posix subsystem did the absolute bare minimum to pass 
tests, without being in any way in any way useful, just so that WinNT 
could tick the "posix" box and be allowed into govt contracts.

search for "ncommander posix"

> so WSL1 was implemented in its own unique kind of
> way (don’t ask me how).
> 
> And, in spite of the fact that it was supposed to be implementing a well-
> documented API, with plenty of example source code to refer to, they still
> couldn’t get WSL1 to work right. So they had to chuck it away and bring in
> a proper Linux kernel instead.

I didn't do anything other than "play" with WSL1, but I thought 
performance was the issue.

I think I did more with MKS Toolkit and Cygwin than WSL.