It really all started with the initial design of NT and then there was just a lull in the 2000s. Early NT had a Win32 subsystem, an OS/2 subsystem, and a POSIX subsystem (well and a security subsystem but that's there for different reasons). When they started WSL (now WSL 1) it used this original subsystem architecture from the 90s just now targeting modern Linux.
Then they found it didn't work as well as people wanted in terms of filesystem performance, low level networking, and PCIe device access so they switched to the more modern integrated hardware virtual machine model which is what WSL2 and WSA use.
Originally Microsoft wanted WSA like functionality (then called Astoria) for Windows 10 mobile but then they found the bridge toolkits to be the easier/better approach and cancelled it until bringing it back for desktop all these years later.
Bear in mind that that strategy backfired horribly for OS/2 - it was "a better windows than windows", but the result was that no-one bothered writing native apps for OS/2 when they could use the Windows API and get an app that ran on both.
If Microsoft keeps this in mind they will make sure to never make it too easy to install and run a Linux program, but still easy enough so that developers choose Windows for their own development machine.
Although I agree with the idea that VSCode is a Trojan horse, Atom had some severe fundamental issues (running everything in the UI thread) and would have come to an end no matter what.
The same that stops anyone building an alternative to the npm registry plus the extensions made by MS which won't be in that marketplace.
Like this
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31760684
it seems like this might be a goal, but i have been using WSL for ages for development and i can't imagine anyone would target user applications at WSL.
with my sample size of 1, if they added any extended functionality to WSL or WSA i wouldn't use it, i use that environment because it mimics the production environment I target, We wont be using WSL in production that would be Linux.
I don't see the use case for running Android on windows except for development and maybe a limited selection of apps. You wouldn't run WSA as a way to get the "locked down" benefits of Andoird on a desktop. Desktops also generally have far more limited sensors and other hardware features. I get Android on a phone because of the form factor, access to NFC, a flashlight, accelerometer sensors and so on Desktop can't have these.
Windows gets by business because of WSL, otherwise i would run Ubuntu or something, but windows is just less hassle for everything that isn't in the CLI (YRMV)
history is present, certainly, but that's all I see. History.
got anything recent? no one ever cites anything recent. meanwhile, Google and Meta are doing nefarious stuff today and no one cares... behavior only mattered in the 1990s, I guess?
one might say that the logic here is twisty turny, but in truth people just don't like Microsoft, and they won't admit that they have a very strong bias against Microsoft. I would not even comment on this of people just admitted their bias. but all I see are references to things which are approaching 30 years old.
it's apparently supremely bad when MS does something in the 1990s but things that go on today are fine. Unless it's Microsoft...
Everyone has their eyes focused on Microsoft waiting for something that may never come, but absolutely sure it will come, while they are ignoring everything around them.
> No personal attacks, please.
wasn't a personal attack. people aren't stupid, to me, actions are stupid, and things people say are stupid. I was attacking the opinion as stated, not the person. "stupid is as stupid does."
The long-term goal seems to be to enable different factions to run the operating system of their choice... as a subsystem of Windows.