Photo by Jack Hunter on Unsplash

Windows Subsystem for Linux and Android in Windows 11

Good Host

Article from ADMIN 72/2022

By Christian Knermann

The Windows subsystem for Linux runs graphical applications on Windows 11 out of the box, and Windows Subsystem for Android, out in preview at press time, shows that Windows can be a platform for Android apps. We look at the state of the art and help you get started.

High-ranking Microsoft employees publicly making disparaging remarks about Linux is ancient history. Redmond has changed its course 180 degrees and impressively demonstrated that its commitment to the development of open source software is not mere lip service. For example, GitHub, the platform for collaborative version management for countless free projects, was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. However, Microsoft does not just operate the platform, it also actively contributes to many projects as one of the world's largest open source providers.

Additionally, Microsoft has developed its own Linux distribution named CBL-Mariner – where CBL stands for Common Base Linux – which you will find on GitHub, of course [1]. However, CBL-Mariner is by no means designed to compete with established Linux distributions for general-purpose use. Microsoft mainly uses its in-house distribution itself, following an approach that is most comparable to Fedora CoreOS. CBL-Mariner, as a minimalist distribution, is primarily geared toward running containers. It forms the basis for the Azure Kubernetes Services and other services in the Azure cloud. However, CBL-Mariner is not only relevant for Microsoft's cloud activities, it now also handles tasks under the hood of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Graphical Linux Apps

The second version of WSL sees Microsoft place the subsystem on completely new underpinnings. The basis is the Windows Virtual Computer Platform feature, which also provides the foundation for Hyper-V. Unlike Hyper-V, however, WSL does not rely on full virtualization, but on containers. In concrete terms, this means that not every Linux distribution installed in WSL will run on a fully virtualized machine, but all distributions share a common kernel. The advantage is that WSL gets by with significantly fewer resources than

...

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).