Windows 10 Is Getting Linux Files Integration In File Explorer (theverge.com) 111
Microsoft is planning to fully integrate Linux file access into the built-in File Explorer. The Verge reports: A new Linux icon will be available in the left-hand navigation pane in File Explorer, providing access to the root file system for any distros that are installed in Windows 10. The icon that will appear in File Explorer is the famous Tux, the penguin mascot for the Linux kernel. Microsoft is testing the Linux File Explorer integration in a new build of Windows 10 that's available for testers today. Previously, Windows 10 users would have to manually navigate to a UNC path to get access to Linux files from the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). If you have WSL enabled, then the Tux will appear in File Explorer, and Microsoft is now seeking feedback on the integration before it's finalized as part of a future Windows 10 update. The software maker will ship this update to all Windows 10 users later this year.
What does it mean, "Linux file integration"? (Score:2)
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If Windows supported EXT3/4 fileystems (and others) - that would be pretty cool. It would make manual backups to USB disks easier.
I don't think text file switching between LF, CR and CRLF is that important - as decent editors & IDEs handle that already. Sublime Text and Visual Studio both do it.
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Still you are correct; it might provide an additional vector.
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I had the same thought. I have quarantined off all non-open programs (basically steam and games) in linux with a separate user. I also have a windows partition used only for those games that don't work under linux and I liked the extra security of knowing Windows can't easily access the linux partitions. I just don't like running untrusted code in the same place I do my banking.
I do not want Windows to get full access to the Linux partitions, most importantly not write permissions. It is not just viruses or
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If you keep your Linux partition encrypted, that should prevent Windows from being able to access the files. Likewise, an encrypted Windows partition should be safe from the Linux side. It's not a bad idea anyway, as most modern processors can encrypt/decrypt AES just about as fast as an SSD can be read.
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Actually, I'm glad Windows does not support ext3/4 and btrfs. It is a roadblock for malware accessing my Linux system from windows on a dual boot machine. Is there any malware that bundles Linux FS drivers?
Yeah - it's concerning. I'm also concerned when they added OpenSSH which now means their OS is packed to connect to Linux OOB, and I can almost guarantee few MS+SSH users are setting a decryption key on their private key so it's turning into a new vector.
I was astounded to find that ReactOS/0.4 has "native" btrfs support baked in.
Re:What does it mean, "Linux file integration"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it going to automatically convert between CR and CRLF text files?
Use Wordpad not Notepad. Every other editor can deal with that problem and has been able to do so for decades.
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https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]
Welcome to 2018.
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As with any change to a long-established tool, there’s a chance that this new behavior may not work for your scenarios, or you may prefer to disable this new behavior and return to Notepad’s original behavior. To do this, you can change the following registry keys in the following location to tweak how Notepad handles pasting of text, and which EOL character to use when Enter/Return is hit:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad]
I would love to meet someone who built a system relying on this behavior.
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Notepad supports by types too, has done for a couple of years now.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]
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Or just use the current version of Notepad. It supports both line endings.
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Think of this* [wikipedia.org] as the opposite of WINE*. It's now possible to run Linux binaries of Windows; this update merely makes the Linux filesystem easily accessible in Windows Explorer.
*It's obviously not, really, but it'll do.
They added a shortcut to / in File Explorer (Score:4, Interesting)
For some time now, it's been possible to run the Linux userland inside of Windows. You get a bash or other shell and you can use awk, grep, etc. It's handy if for some reason your machine runs Windows and you appreciate Linux utilities. I'm a "Linux guy" in a company that uses Microsoft, so I have a Windows laptop. Windows Subsystem for Linux lets me do some things the Looking way on a computer that's running Windows. That can be very convenient.
One little inconvenience when using both the Linux shell and the Windows GUI on the same system is that the two operating systems refer to files differently. /bin, /usr, /home, etc. You don't specify the physical hardware when you access a file on Linux. So when you open File Explorer how do you get to /bin or /var/spool? It's not necessarily at c:\var\spool. What's new is they added an icon in File Explorer pointing to what the Linux subsystem calls /, or the root directory.
Linux doesn't use drive letters like Windows does.
On my work laptop, I have C: D:, M:, and Z:. Linux doesn't do that. The filesystem starts at / (called the root) and you have directories from there.
Windows using Linux filesystems is very problematic "simply" because unlike a kindergartener, Windows doesn't know the difference between lower case and uppercase. That seems like a simple thing to address, but it turns out to not be so simple, especially since not everyone uses American English. It turns out, the characters that Americans think of as uppercase and lowercase versions of the same letter are completely different letters in other languages, and vice-versa. At a simpler level, what is Windows going to do when there are two files, README.txt and readme.txt? All of the Windows libraries and system calls think those two refer to the same file, but they are not the same file on filesystems designed for operating systems other than Windows. It gets messy.
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Case insensitivity in file systems is stupid.
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Would you care to elaborate? To me file systems and databases are 2 areas where case insensitive make sense (at least as the default setting). If I have a unique constraint or PK on a string, 99% of the time I don't want duplicate values with different cases, especially when it's user entered data. Similarly for files, I don't really see the value of having both a readme.txt and README.txt in the same folder. While I'm sure there are use cases where it make sense, it seems to me that it would mostly add con
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Wow, I just replied to the parent about Turkish, and what's the next post below mine: it's about Turkish. I concede, you beat me!
So I'll just add that there are different Unicode letters that look alike, for example Cyrillic 'A' (U+0410) and Latin 'A' (U+0041). This was a black-hat thing as well. And in principle a filename containing an accented 'a' could be written in two different ways (as the letter 'a' plus a combining diacritic, or as the letter-with-diacritic). I assume that OSs force one or the
Sameness, case varies from person to person (Score:2)
Should the filesystem and database also say that color, colour, and the other spelling are all the same, so you can't enter both color and colour? That's why - while you personally might not consider them "pretty much the same", they are not the same. They are different bytes.
There are at least three or four different codepoints that an average American would call "the lowercase letter i". But only the typical American, who doesn't speak any language other than American English. They are entirely differ
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"uu is the same as w": Not sure what you're saying here, but: There are languages that make a distinction in speaking between a long /u:/ and a short /u/. This is a true length distinction, different from the distinction between so-called "long u" in English (like in the word "cute") and "short u" (like in the word "push"). For languages whose writing system reflects this long/short distinction, a common way of writing it is 'uu' vs. 'u'. And such a language may also have a /w/ sound. So for those langu
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> "uu is the same as w": Not sure what you're saying here, but:
It's called "double u" for a reason. If you read the writings of Cotton Mather, for example (and everyone should), he switches between uu and w in the same paragraph - it was/is two ways of writing the same thing. Not because Cotton Mather was illiterate - he was prolific writer and one of the smartest guys in America. (For example he brought inoculation to America, significantly reducing smallpox). If an operating system is going to ignore t
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Going back to the question of upper/lower case correspondence, it is messy. You can blame Unicode, but really the problem is in the writing systems it has to support, and Unicode does the best it can. For example, Turkish has two kinds of the letter 'i': one with a dot over it (like in English), and one without. The upper case of the dot-less 'i' in Turkish is 'I' (like the English upper case 'I'), and the upper case of the dotted 'i' looks like the letter 'I' but with a dot above it. Which makes file n
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Windows using Linux filesystems is very problematic "simply" because unlike a kindergartener, Windows doesn't know the difference between lower case and uppercase.
It does, actually[1]. It just doesn't care. You can create a filename that differs in case only, and the shell explorer will always only choose one of them when you double-click on either, but it will display both. It makes for a good way to store your porn folders if you're using windows - standard windows tools can only ever get into the one folder.
In fact, I just did it now to be certain: see this screenshot [ibb.co]. Of course, shell explorer/cmd.exe can't create these files.
[1]NTFS knows the difference, shell e
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I've been told that Windows is case aware but not case sensitive. foo.txt and foo.tXt are the same file that is secretly still 8.3 allcaps with a label to remember the display name which can be longer and have Caps & non-caps mixed..
It doesn't matter what Windows is, NTFS is case-sensitive. The display name **is* the real name.
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The 8.3 thing is an extra thing for backward compatibility. It's never been the real name in NTFS. The case-aware-but-not-case-sensitive thing is true though. Windows delegates a lot of logic to the filesystem (which is one reason why file access can't be as fast on Windows as Linux and therefore a big motivation for WSL 2).
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Cygwin has worked fine for a couple of decades, edit the fstab to set if root of C:\ is c/ or /c/
Only the first step (Score:2)
Itßs only the first step before removing the Windows kernel from windows
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I can mount NTFS volumes since 20 years ago, so why not?
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Is it going to automatically convert between CR and CRLF text files?
That has nothing to do with with the OS. It's a specification thing that the OS should definitely not get in the way of. Let software handle this.
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I guess Ballmer was right... (Score:2)
This would have been so nice... (Score:2)
Many issues... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are so many issues - I wonder... To name two: case sensitive file names and different character sets.
As for why: I think some folk at MS realize that Windows is EOL. Win10 is an ad-supported mess. Maybe Win11 or Win12 will be Linux...
Re:Many issues... (Score:4, Insightful)
Background: I've been using Linux since 1994 when I was introduced to it when studying IT at university (my first distro was Yggdrasil Linux).
Just to be clear, this new explorer option is for the filesystems of Linux distros installed using WSL; not for disk partitions. So, that potentially mitigates some of the issues that you've raised. You can already access Linux files using WSL and have been able to do so for for ages now, you just have to type/navigate manually. This new way is only "new" because you don't have to manually specify paths (basically it's an icon, and nothing more, to make what you can already do faster). If the shit was going to hit the fan because of the issues you raised then it would have hit the fan already ages ago. So I guess they've thought of those things.
I've heard that Windows 10 is an ad-supported mess from others as well. But I've never seen an ad on any of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of Windows 10 desktops that I've looked at. What are these ads and where do they show up? Is it only for Home Edition (or whatever it's called) and pirated versions of Windows 10 only? I've honestly never seen a single ad originating from Windows 10.
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I've heard that Windows 10 is an ad-supported mess from others as well. But I've never seen an ad on any of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of Windows 10 desktops that I've looked at
Say you hit the start menu and type in the name of a game you have installed, so you can run it.
What you typed and how long you ran the program is the data sent to MS, which is integrated into their ad targeting, which is sold generally to websites wanting to place targeted ads.
Most people that frequent slashdot run ad blockers, so don't see the end results of this data harvesting.
Even if you don't, people don't tend to expect words they type on their keyboard are logged by the OS and sent back to MS to end
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So, candy crush being in the start menu is an ad?
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you can literally drag-resize the start menu smaller so the tiles don't appear. if you want you can pretty easily turn off all the telemetry stuff.
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Hell yes it is.
Well I mean if you voluntarily run your OS with the "send me ads option" turned on, then you can hardly call candy crush an advert. Seriously if you ever see Candy Crush in your start menu then go slap your system administrator and ask him to turn it off. If it's your own system then slap your system administrator and disabled suggested apps in start like any halfway competent person does.
Re: Many issues... (Score:1)
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Do you have some evidence that they sell that data? I know they collect it but I need evidence that they sell the information on so I can submit a GDPR complaint.
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This is all editions of 10, but if you disable the policy to do this, enterprise will honor it where home and pro ignore it.
Except this isn't even remotely the case since there's a specific option in windows. Or maybe they only do it in the USA where it's not illegal to fuck over users.
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There are so many issues - I wonder... To name two: case sensitive file names and different character sets.
The NT kernel has always supported case sensitive file names and paths, and it is set on a per-directory basis. That's how it gets set now with the UNC mount point.
I can't saymuch regarding character sets.
I stick to UTF-16 in windows and UTF-8 in Linux.
Notepad++ and gedit support both, as do the GNU tools I script with, which is about the extent I've personally had to deal with.
So on one hand that would be enough to do conversions between the two if you must.
On the other hand, it would suck quite a lot if
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There are so many issues - I wonder... To name two: case sensitive file names and different character sets.
As for why: I think some folk at MS realize that Windows is EOL. Win10 is an ad-supported mess. Maybe Win11 or Win12 will be Linux...
I addressed the one point about filenames [slashdot.org]. As to the others, one can only hope...
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Here’s another one - “hidden” files, meaning those whose names begin with a period. It’s been a while since I tried it, but Windows used to complain loudly about files with names like .htaccess ...
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Windows can cope with case insensitive filesystems just fine. Case insensitivity was a hold over from the DOS days but Windows NT has supported filesystems without it since the start, e.g. you can have NFS drives mounted or an EXT filesystem driver loaded.
When opening a file the Windows APIs look for an exact case match, then a case insensitive match. The old command prompt had some issues with name completion but PowerShell fixed all that.
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I think some folk at MS realize that Windows is EOL. Win10 is an ad-supported mess.
Non sequitur. Why would the ad-supported mess mean Windows is EOL at MS? They are the ones who are making it so.
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No, those aren't problems. NTFS already supports case-sensitivity these days, and NTFS uses Unicode so character set isn't an issue. Granted, NTFS I think uses UTF-16 and Linux UTF-8, but that's an encoding problem.
Windows Explorer though is case-insensitive but preservin
I can see it coming... (Score:5, Funny)
In a couple of years after MS has ported the GUI to Vulcan they're going to fire most of their OS staff and put the rest on to making WINE as perfect as it can be, then switch out the Windows kernel for Linux.
Then probably fire the rest of their OS staff.
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Why not, their users don't care what is under the hood!
Great, now my Linux partitions aren't safe (Score:2)
next few steps (Score:2)
MS is getting there, step by step, before you know it Windows will be nothing more then a graphical shell/DE for Linux.
It is clear few responding use WSL daily (Score:3)
Literally, the only thing this feature is doing is creating an extra icon in the file explorer for easy access. It is already possible to create a quick access link to your Linux files in WSL. I use it daily. The biggest issue **I** have and many others as well is that the IP address of the VM that is created changes on a reboot, and there is no normalized way to set it. Hopefully they will resolve this as well.
Good Idea (Score:2)
I find it very handy to be able to work in both Linux-like and Windows environments without having to use a Virtual Machine. The biggest pain has been the separation of filesystems. UNC path is ok but this will make things considerably more practical..
I have always felt a bit strange about Microsoft calling these distributions of Linux running on WSL but their are really more so distributions of GNU. There isn't a real Linux kernel in there. Now I understand Microsoft is building their own replica entir
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The WSL (v1) emulates the Linux kernel, so the terminology MS is using isn't completely wrong, other than being completely backwards from how normal people would have named it. The Linux subsystem for Windows would be more logical than what it's called by MS.
The WSL2 is based on HyperV and will boot a real Linux kernel in a VM. So it really will be Linux.
Slashdot. Slashdot never changes. (Score:3, Insightful)
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*rolls eyes*
If some of the people who say one also say the other, those people are being hypocritical, but a website is not hypocritical because person A and person B saying different things is not a contradiction.
Seriously, this "X: also X" meme is stupid.
What exactly does that do? (Score:2)
I'm sorry, I don't use WSL too much (mostly because, well, if I need something done in Linux, I just use a Linux box to do it, why bother with half-assed solutions?), but the article is rather low on details of what this does. Can I run ELF binaries? Can I access ext3/4 partitions? Does Windows now understand the Linux permission system? What does "Linux Files integration in explorer" mean in this context?
Security (Score:1)
Shitty headline (Score:2)
It sounded for just a second like windows was going to get actual support for ext and possibly other open file systems.
Reading further it sounds like they are just going to let you mount virtual disks although since either requires adding logic which can read/write the filesystem it will be pretty lame if they don't also add general support for mounting at least ext filesystems... on any media, not just in their co-linux bubbles.
WSL2 is trash (Score:1)
I've been training our dev team to be using WSL for LAMP stack development. They use nginx and php 7.4 running on localhost.
WSL2 destroys any chance of us continuing to use Windows.
https://github.com/microsoft/W... [github.com]
Just take a look here. The IO performance in WSL2 is even worse than WSL1. Basically unusable. A simple git clone moves like a turtle.
In WSL1 you could access windows drives via /mnt/[drive letter] and it worked at almost native speeds but in WSL2 the same functionality is basically broken. All th
MS subscription required for Linux subsystem (Score:2)
Unfortunately you can only use Linux in Win10 by getting it from the Windows Store, which means subscribing to a MS account, something that I have no interest in.
Fortunately, I can easily run a VM, dual boot, run it on a headless RPi, or many other options. Typical MS BS -- no offer comes without strings attached.
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> If you have WSL enabled, then the Tux will appear in File Explorer
RTFS
Re:Can I disable this???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Eventually, you're likely to be working with Docker containers on Amazon ECS if you're a software engineer, and WSL is very nice for this. Often a shell, though, isn't the most straightforward think to work with across the two operating systems. Looking forward to this, personally.
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I don't give the slightest shit about Linux distros, and the last thing I need is more shit taking up my attention.
Sure you can disable it. Mind you you have to be dumb enough to enable it in the first place despite clearly having neither the interest nor use case for it, and somehow having enabled it without having the slightest clue what you're doing.
Maybe iOS is about as complicated of an OS you should be touching. Computers are complicated and not for everyone.
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Time for you to leave the decade previous to last - things have changed, you have not. Time for you to stop being antiquated.
Slashdotters like you have promised the "extinguish" from Microsoft for 20 years - we are still waiting for it. Meanwhile, the world got better and left you behind.
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And yet, MS continues to attempt to take over Linux. Yes, the world hasn't changed for 20 years.
Antiquated?? Time for you to stop deluding yoursel (Score:1)
MS did this shit, and was sued for it, only a few years back. How fast do you think corporate culture changes? Just look at other old firms ... It takes many many decades or even centuries!
Let's be real: The *only* thing that changed, is them not being the top dog with a full monopoly anymore. But even so, they mostly haven't gotten that memo yet. Which is why we still see these allures flare up left and right, doing what they still can.
It will take a loong time, until MS transforms into not mostly evil. If
Re: Embrace, Extend... (Score:2)
I don't see any specific harm in this story, but Microsoft hasn't done anything for Linux or the open source community or the FLOSS community out of kindness, it's all just to benefit themselves. Which is understandable and okay for a corporation, it's just as okay for others to be on thei
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Eggs, stir, mix, bake
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Re:Embrace, Extend... (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft hasn't extinguished squat since the last time /. took down a website.
The founders of the Kin phone, and Nokia may beg to differ.
Somebody should send them that memo then. (Score:1)
Because they keep acting like the EEE monopolist from their "glory" days anyway.
Which was, what OP actually criticized, before you put up that straw man.
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Yes, but not for a lack of trying. More out of a lack of relevance. MS isn't the monopolist it used to be.
Well, it took IBM a few decades to realize that they ain't anymore, let's see how long it will take MS.
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Is t it wonderful how Microsoft is embracing Linux now? What could go wrong?
Literally nothing. Please, do tell us how being able to read files from Linux (something which we've been able to do for 20 years now using 3rd party software) will lead to Linux being extinguished.
At best the only thing they are extinguishing are a couple of filesystem tools which were clunky at best. A nothing of value was lost.
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For once you didn't display any ignorance, mainly because your post has no content at all. Thanks for fucking up the environment through wasting CO2 emitting energy by posting your drivel. You're the worst.
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What could go wrong?
Yet another forced reboot of my PC for something I neither need nor want?
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You ought to check your facts before you post, otherwise you look stupid. You have to opt in to using WSL (by installing it from the Microsoft Store), no need to opt out. If you don't want WSL, you don't install it.
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Enough things don't work right in WSL that frankly I view it as a toy. I run eclipse on my windows box, but my development and production servers are Linux. I use SMB to map Linux paths to Windows silly CP/M era drive lettering, and it works just fine. Since production software I write is actually going to run on Linux boxes, WSL doesn't really serve a purpose at all.