this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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I totally agree it is wrong. It is historical.
When Windows NT was new, they had this idea that it would be compatible with many different application ecosystems via “sub-systems”. So there were going to be many different “Windows sub-systems” for various things.
There was the “Windows sub-system for OS/2” for example. And the “Windows sub-system for POSIX”. The names still sound backwards to me but I guess it makes sense if you think “This is a Windows sub-system, which one is it?”. And if you have 50 Windows sub-systems, saying “for Windows” at the end of all of them also seems a little weird.
So that naming convention was already in place when they added support for Linux. Hence the “Windows Subsystem for Linux”.