Windows Terminal and Azure Data Studio both get a tickle from the Microsoft update fairy

Microsoft flung out fresh updates to its cross-platform data wrangler Azure Data Studio, the Windows Terminal and continued to tease a standalone Windows Subsystem for Linux last night. The open-source Azure Data Studio gained better sign-in options for Azure Data Services – handy because, well, the hint is in the name of the …

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder, if WSL2 is no longer directly tied to the core OS, doesn't that limit its usefulness and "raison d'etre" a bit? I thought the whole benefit was that it was tightly integrated and you could run Linux with very little overhead. If you just run Linux in a VM it doesn't sound very much more useful than just spinning up Linux in VMWare or Hyper-V which has been possible for ages.

To be honest I haven't used it that much as I generally prefer to run my Linux bare metal but I just wondered about this bit after reading that.

[cpm86]

A fair point but I read this not as WSL possibly becoming independent of Windows, but rather, just of the Windows release cycle/schedule.

Yes, WSL without Windows would just be, well Linux. Maybe it could be called something like Xenix?

[NetBlackOps]

Will there even be a BUILD event?

Coronavirus being front and center.

[Pascal Monett]

"being a Windows component that is tied to Windows versions more of a possibility"

Would that mean that MS has finally started looking into having the various functionalities of Windows be separate entities as far as updating is concerned ?

Going further, is MS finally going to start looking at its OS as a kernel that has add-ons bolted to it, and treat the various parts accordingly ?

Might we finally one day have a Windows that can live through a video driver update without needing a reboot ?

I pray that this is the case.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "being a Windows component that is tied to Windows versions more of a possibility"

That's odd. My NVidia video drivers updates haven't required a reboot for years, so maybe it's not Windows that's being the issue for you here...

[phuzz]

Re: "being a Windows component that is tied to Windows versions more of a possibility"

Video drivers are one of the few hardware drivers still pretty deep into the kernel, so it's not totally surprising they need a reboot (my AMD drivers do most of the time at least). Similarly, if you want proper support for recent Intel integrated-graphics in Linux you're going to need an up to date kernel, so it's not like any other platform has definitively solved that issue.

[Stephen 1]

Admin Terminal

Will the updated terminal support admin elevated tabs (or even the whole app)? Don't get me wrong, I like it, but until it does it cannot replace cmd and/or PowerShell.

Discussion on the matter here

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Admin Terminal

Perhaps something like "sudo cmd" or "su Administrator" could be invented. Make sure sudo gets a -i flag for that authentic Windows sysadmin feeling. To be fair, I use sudo -i rather a lot when penguin bothering 8)

_{(sudo -i runs an interactive shell as root within the current shell session)}