alt Hacker NewsNever understood this about Windows Subsystem for Linux naming, nor its predecessor Windows Services for Unix. Surely Linux is the subsystem running on Windows? Should we now reinterpret Windows for Workgroups as a means of astrally projecting your organization inside Windows 3.11?! The dative only works ONE way, Microsoft!
I guess they really just didn't want a product name to start with the name of a competitor's product. I bet Copilot can fix this...
Replies
> Surely Linux is the subsystem running on Windows?
Only in version 2. WSL1 didn't run a Linux kernel, just provided binary compatibility to run Linux userspace programs.
The thing they “didn’t want to [do]” was infringe on the Linux trademark.
> I guess they really just didn't want a product name to start with the name of a competitor's product.
Probably, but I doubt linux wants it either. People might think it's some official linux product.
A "Windows subsystem" is a specific interface between user-mode applications and the Windows kernel. It's a technical notion that exists in Windows. So there are different Windows subsystems for different types of applications. The naming convention is "Windows subsystem for <application type>". It makes more sense when you read it as "Windows subsystem for [running] Linux [applications]".
WSL2 deviates from the native concept of what a Windows subsystem is; it is named that way because it is the successor of the original WSL.