A few days ago, Eric S. Raymond (ESR), developer and writer, suggested that we're nearing the last phase of the desktop wars[1]. The winner? Windows… running on Linux[2].
He's on to something. I've long thought that Microsoft was considering migrating the Windows interface to running on the Linux kernel[3]. Why?
Raymond argues that "WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)[4] allows unmodified Linux binaries to run under Windows 10. No emulation, no shim layer, they just load and go." Indeed, you can run standard Linux programs now on WSL2 without any trouble.
That's because Linux is well on its way to becoming a first-class citizen on the Windows desktop. Multiple Linux distros, starting with Ubuntu[5], Red Hat Fedora[6], and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED)[7], now run smoothly on WSL2. That's because Microsoft has replaced its WSL1 translation layer, which converted Linux kernel calls into Windows calls, with WSL2. With WSL2 Microsoft's own Linux kernel[8] is running on a thin version of the Hyper-V hypervisor.
That's not all. With the recent Windows 10 Insider Preview build 20211[9], you can now access Linux file systems, such as ext4, from Windows[10] File Manager and PowerShell. On top of that, Microsoft developers are making it easy to run Linux graphical applications on Windows[11].
Besides Microsoft working its hardest to marry the Windows desktop with Linux, Raymond pointed out others are working to make it easier to run Windows applications on Linux. In particular, he points to Valve[12]'s Proton[13], a Wine-based[14] compatibility layer developed for running Windows Steam games on Linux. "The thing about games