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Microsoft introduced a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with Windows 10. Initially it allowed you to run command line Linux utilities in Windows, but over time Microsoft added support for applications with a graphical user interface. But WSL still only officially supports Windows 10 and Windows 11. What if you want to run Linux apps on an older version of Windows?
Enter the Windows 9x subsystem for Linux (WSL9x), an unofficial tool for running Linux apps on Windows 95, an operating system that’s more than three decades old.
In a nutshell, WSL9x shoehorns a modern Linux kernel inside the Windows 9x kernel. Windows boots first, but the developer says “once Linux starts both kernels are running side-by-side.”
There’s also a wsl.com client application, which is “a small 16 bit DOS program that allows you to use the MS-DOS prompt window as a command line interface for interacting with Linux.
In case it’s not abundantly clear, while the Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux has a similar name to the Windows Subsystem for Linux, this is a very different tool. It was created by an independent developer to work with old hardware and software – Microsoft stopped officially supporting Windows 95 many years ago. But it’s a pretty impressive feat of combining modern Linux with classic Windows software.
The developer also notes that, since there’s no hardware-accelerated virtualization involved, you can even use WSL9x on old-school computers with Intel 486 processors… although you’ll probably be stuck using a slightly older kernel if you want to do that indefinitely. Linux developers plan to drop support for 486 hardware starting with the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel. For now, WSL9x uses Linux 6.19.
via Hacker News
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