I have to work with Win11 for work and just noticed the lil Tux man in Microsofts Explorer. Likely to connect to WSL.
Apparently now Microsoft wants people to keep using Windows in a really interesting way. By simply integrating it within their own OS!
This way, people don’t have to make the super hard and complicated switch to linux, but they get to be lazy, use the preinstalled container and say “See, I use Linux too!”.
While this is generally a good thing for people wanting to do things with the OS, it is also a clear sign that they want to make it feel “unneccessary” to switch to Linux, because you already have it!
WSL alone was already a smart move, but this goes one step further. This is a clever push on their side, increasing the barrier to switch even more, since now there is less of a reason to. They are making it too comfortable too stay within Microsofts walls.
On a different note: Should the general GNU/Linux community do the same? Should we integrate easier access to running Winblows apps on GNU/Linux?
Currently I still find it too much of a hastle to correctly run Winblows applications, almost always relying on Lutris, Steams proton or Bottles to do the work for me.
I think it would be a game changer to have a double click of an EXE file result in immediate automatic wine configuration for easy and direct use of the software, even if it takes a big to setup.
I might just be some fedora using pleb, but I think having quick and easy access to wine would make many people feel much more comfortable with the switch.
Having a similar system to how Winblows does it, with one container for all your .exe programs would likely be a good start (instead of creating a new C drive and whatever for every program, which seems to be what Lutris and Bottles does).
EDIT: Uploaded correct image
I’d argue that a lot of the other “additions” and “improvements” make any improvement in comfort irrelevant, as they are unbearable.
On a sidenote, you can set up a generic bottle in Bottles, and then set things up so that double clicking any miscellaneous .exe files just runs them in that bottle.
There is winapps that does the bottle thing for you in a background vm.
https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
So… Is that kinda like a linux subsystem for windows?
woah WOAH HEY THERE this seems SUPER useful!!!
I will totally check this out!
I don’t know what you mean in your first argument. What exactly do you mean by “a lot of the other additions and improvements”? And what about them becomes unbearable?
I will have a look at the Bottles thing you brought up. Thank you for sharing that!
I’m sarcastically referring to microsofts telemetry, UI changes, and anything else they try to sell that a lot of people simply don’t want or like.