When Microsoft and Canonical first announced they were bringing the Linux shell to Windows 10 in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in 2016, people couldn’t believe it. Today, on both Windows 10, you can run not only Canonical’s Ubuntu, but Debian, Kali, openSUSE, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), as well. Now, you can also run a Linux designed to work with WSL from moment one: Whitewater Foundry’s Pengwin.
The only thing I find surprising about this is that it took so long. WSL will never be popular with the hoi polloi, but sysadmins and developers love being able to run Linux on their office Windows machines.
That said, this isn’t Whitewater’s first Linux distro for WSL. Earlier, the company released versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Fedora. Neither have Red Hat’s support. But, according to Whitewater, members of the Fedora community helped on their Fedora Remix for WSL — and they have the support of Fedora leadership. The company is also a Red Hat Business and Technology Partner.
Pengwin, formerly WLinux, though, is all Whitewater’s. It’s based on Debian Linux and work by Microsoft Research.
Like other WSL Linux distros, Pengwin primarily provides a shell. That’s not to say you can’t run graphical programs on it. You can. To do this, however, you must install a Windows-based X server, such as X410.
Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/pengwin-a-linux-specifically-for-windows-subsystem-for-linux/
Submitted by: Arnfried Walbrecht
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