Life's random bits By b1thunt3r (aka Ishan Jain)…
//build 2019

//build 2019

Ishan jain
In the beginning of May, we had //build conference. We announced a lot of Open Source projects on Day 1. We also showcased several solutions built on top of OSS.

Disclaimer: Currently I am employed by Microsoft, but my views and thoughts are still my own. The reason I joined Microsoft was, the work Microsoft have been doing for last couple of years in Open Source Space. Today I am a advocate for Open Source representing Microsoft.

Here are two announcements from //build that shocked the Open Source at large (outside Microsoft):

Windows as a Linux Desktop

Microsoft has decided to release a full Linux Kernel with Windows with the new Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).

In the current version of WSL, the Linux system calls are translated to NT system calls. Because of translation, WSL took a major performance hit. In other word, in WSL1, the Linux Kernel is emulated on top of Windows Kernel.

In WSL2, there is going to be a hidden micro VM, that will run the Linux Kernel. In other words, in WSL2, the Linux Kernel will be virtualized instead of emulated. Initial testing indicated that WSL2 can be 20x faster than WSL1, getting near native performance.

The Linux Kernel is going to be fully open source under GPL. With this release Windows will be the most popular and most used Linux Desktop.

Windows Terminal

At //build 2019 there was a very interesting announcement, especially if you have been working in other environments then Windows. If you have ever worked in either Linux or macOS, and have ever had to use Terminal, you would have noticed that the Command Prompt (cmd.exe) in Windows is a bit lacking (to put it mildly). Command Prompt is also used for WSL (Windows Subsystems for Linux), PowerShell and in some cases Git Bash.

The new Windows Terminal is going to have support for tabs, emojis, better color pallet, etc. It will also have a built in package/plugin manager, which can help extend the default functionality of Windows Terminal.

The source is released under an open source MIT license on GitHub. Source for Windows Terminal also contains the source code for conhost, a core part of Windows. Microsoft has started to Open Source parts of Windows. It would not at all surprise me if Windows was fully Open Source with in next decade.