> What does it say about the practical usefulness of this Windows facility that MS has, it seems, never maintained one of these 'personalities' long-term?
I am no defender of MICROS~1 but I think this is a misrepresentation.
1. Win32 is an NT personality and it is still actively maintained after 31 years.
2. Win16 ran on NTVDM which arguably is tantamount to a personality, and that is still present and works in Windows 10 32-bit today.
3. Downvotes or not, I stand by my point: the original POSIX personality became Windows Services for Unix, which went through 4 releases: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5.
But WSU was effectively a proprietary x86-32 Unix. Those are all dead and gone now, Xinuos notwithstanding, and having such a tool is no use in C21.
So, it was axed 20Y ago. 12Y later it was replaced by WSL.
WSL 1 was replaced by WSL2, and I mourn its lost potential. I feel WSL1 should have become a proper NT personality, which would have resulted in some improvements to Windows' capabilities.
My question was genuine, not just rhetorical. I appreciate the additional context here, especially that Win32 is implemented as a long-lived NT personality. It's indeed a bummer that Microsoft didn't see it as expedient to maintain the others or continue to grow WSL1.
Windows Services for Unix was also longer-lived than I'd realized. Was that just before its time or did it have some other problem?
I am no defender of MICROS~1 but I think this is a misrepresentation.
1. Win32 is an NT personality and it is still actively maintained after 31 years.
2. Win16 ran on NTVDM which arguably is tantamount to a personality, and that is still present and works in Windows 10 32-bit today.
3. Downvotes or not, I stand by my point: the original POSIX personality became Windows Services for Unix, which went through 4 releases: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
V2 was effectively replaced by Interix.
But WSU was effectively a proprietary x86-32 Unix. Those are all dead and gone now, Xinuos notwithstanding, and having such a tool is no use in C21.
So, it was axed 20Y ago. 12Y later it was replaced by WSL.
WSL 1 was replaced by WSL2, and I mourn its lost potential. I feel WSL1 should have become a proper NT personality, which would have resulted in some improvements to Windows' capabilities.