this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Still one of my favourite WTF moments for Windows.
Whats in the System32 folder? 64 bit dlls. Whats in SysWOW64? 32 bit dlls.
Yes I know that WOW64 stands for WindowsOnWindows64 but its still hilariously misleading.
I mean, could you trust a company that created a Linux container subsystem for Windows and named it Windows Subsystem for Linux to name things correctly?
Windows has subsystems. They're called Windows Subsystems. This one's for Linux. However you slice it, the initialism has to have WS in it.
People do not realize that Windows has, and has had, other subsystems. So the name seems dumb.
When you realize that as far back as 1993 there was:
then Subsystem for Linux does not seems as crazy.
Having “for Windows” at the end sounds natural if you only have one but putting saying “Windows subsystem for” makes more sense when you realize there are a bunch of them.
Regardless, the decision was made 30 years ago and not recently as people assume.
The obvious choice is to rename Wine to Linux Subsystem for Windows
"Linux on Windows Subsystem" or "Windows Subsystem: Linux" or "Lin4Win" anything would be better
It's not the 'Linux on' subsystem, it's the 'Linux on Windows' subsystem, so it'd have to be Linux on Windows Windows Subsystem, which would be silly. It can't have a colon in it as some command-line tools take a subsystem as an argument, and traditionally, Windows command-line tools have used colons the same way Unix has used equals, i.e. to separate an argument name from its value, and parsing that gets harder when you're expecting colons in the value, too.
Everything about windows is misleading. There are windows settings that require doing some sort of an windows inception where you open one settings to go deeper into an older version of the same settings to go deeper into an even older version of the same settings until you reach something that was designed for Windows 98 and actually works. With every newer windows version the settings become only more and more convoluted. Thank god I've switched to Linux as my daily driver.
The problem of graphical settings. Needs more work, quickly gets confusing, ages badly. A fine .cfg from 1980 is still a fine .cfg now. It's place in the FS hierarchy might have changed but that's not a concern of the .cfg.
There's really no excuse, proper project management would have replaced the UI and verified the new version included all the old functionality, organized well together with whatever new functionality they added. I think they were trying to keep old hats happy with the changes by letting them keep their old version, but it's better to just rip the band-aid off if you're gonna change it, now it's a mess for everyone.
Ah, Microsoft-specific, i think it's mostly because of their 10+ UI frameworks.
Why not both? A frontend for a cfg file for convenience and flexibility
Sure, yes. Even in games, it's a nice thing if you can set some engine options or custom resolutions not represented in the GUI.
The boring answer is that it is more work and most FOSS developers are volunteers.
ah yes. going through windows white papers and one says something is impossible but you find the other that says how to do it. fun times.
This is what brought me over the edge to switch to Linux. Been over 8 months now. Can dual boot but only booted windows once since.