HACKER Q&A
📣 amichail

Will Windows 11 stop open source app support for Windows?


Windows 11 can run Linux GUI apps, so why support Windows directly in open source apps?


  👤 weare138 Accepted Answer ✓
I doubt it anytime soon. WSL w/ GUI support is still new and just adds an extra later of complexity. Deploying to Windows is already a PITA and open-source projects already targeting Windows would have to change their build processes. Until WSL apps can be seamlessly integrated and managed like a standard Windows app I doubt open-source project are going to switch away from Windows desktop apps.

👤 jqpabc123
In some cases it may. It depends on the app but mostly it depends on the app developer and how they perceive their target market.

A big attraction with Windows has always been consistency and backward compatibility. Apps developed under Win95 still run with little or no changes.

A big issue with Linux has always been the lack of same.

I don't think Win11 and the subsystem for Linux really changes that.


👤 neximo64
The simplest reason, a bit of a weird answer but you can glean from it all the reasons why:

Typical user wants to use Excel, Chrome & Word which all dont use the linux subsystem.