Can i install linux via subsystem on unsupported windows(pre creators)

I have windows 10 enterprise LTSB and i wanted to install a linux distro via windows new lunix subsystem. but its only available fpr creators update and above which i am not even remotely thinking of going to, i got as far as force installing the "windows subsystem for linux" to my apps and features menu and i have also download the appx file from the store but i cant manually install it ether as its blocking me even if i manually install from powershell or the native app installer. i even tried extracting the package files and clicking the exe inside gives me this

"The Windows Subsystem for Linux optional component is not enabled. Please enable it and try again.See Install the Linux Subsystem on Windows 10 | Microsoft Docs for details."

which i do have enabled

is this possible to do? i have heard times where people modify a file to a lower build number to make it install

slicendice said:

Hi

Short answer:
NO!

Longer Answer:
Subsystem for Linux require Windows kernel support, which your Windows version does not have. If you want to use WSL, you have to upgrade your OS. By the way, WSL works really well on Windows FCU. SCU, which gets released soon, has a ton of new features and improvements. I have yet to test this.

Ok if it's a definite impossibility because of a hard limitation I won't pursue it any longer. I'll just continue with my virtual machines and partitions

Hi there

OK Linux has excellent cmd / scripting stuff - but my own view of this is that if you really want to run Linux why not start with running Linux as a Virtual Machine - then you don't hose up your Windows system and you can really learn a lot of things. Also you can try out all sorts of different distributions ("distros" as the Linux community calls them) or even "Live" versions which are small trial ones that run easily from a USB drive / stick and don't make any changes to HDD's etc after your session ends.

I'm not really sure where Ms is going with this Linux command stuff in Windows - seems a bit of a "half Baked" idea to me. Nobody has yet convinced me of the value of this stuff in Windows.

Windows cmd / scripting is of course very primitive even now although the powershell improves it a lot.

I still maintain that for any sort of server operation Windows is not the vehicle to use -- and of course the server editions are hideously expensive for non corporate users. Just run a Linux distro and set up a VPN with a Windows desktop (openvpn is free) if you want to share a Linux and Windows desktop seamlessly.

Nothing wrong with Windows being used in the right environment - but this whole idea seems the wrong tool for the job.

@Berton regarding your sig.

I remember when Steve Jobs died there was a piece going around on the internet -- he was being met at the gates of heaven by St. Peter who was checking the admissions for that day. Steve jobs looked at St. Peter who was fumbling around with a lot of stone tablets -- Steve Jobs said -- Hi Guy can I help you update your tablets.

Cheers
jimbo

slicendice said:

You are not a software developer, are you?

A lot of development stuff can be done using WSL. And I'm not talking about scripting but rather real compilation and building. In many cases WSL is way faster than any native Linux install and definitely faster and more lightweight than any VM.

Only BIG issue with WSL is the insanely sluggish, incompatible and slow file system support which MS has to address. Other than that, WSL is a powerful tool.

@slicendice

Hi there
I'm an Oil / Gas Engineer - nothing to do with Software but obviously use computers and play around with things from time to time.

I still maintain that for the typical Windows user this type of feature only adds to the complexity of the product -- If you are developing stuff for Windows then surely Ms should have some sort of very good and fast development platform.

I understand also about having things like "Meta code" etc -- We use at work a lot of SAP systems which developers can add bespoke bits to it with SAP's development language "ABAP" - it doesn't matter on what platform the SAP DB system runs on - the ABAP source coding for the developer is essentially the same so applications can be ported easily (in theory !!!! but I've seen people really hose this up though) between systems and platforms.

I also can't understand why WSL should be way faster than Native Linux -- unless your Linux installation is absolutely loaded with every possible application and 3 zillion different GUI's --Linux can be incredibly fast and lightweight. As for VM's I'll agree there is overhead but these can be reduced almost completely using things like Esxi for the host OS.

Concerning windows half baked file systems I agree -- even now in Windows there's no decent software RAID that works anything like Linux's MDADM which allows you to build all sorts of RAID arrays where you don't have to have identical HDD sizes etc -- Windows storage spaces is still a joke compared to RAID 0 running with mdadm !!!! and XFS or even EXT4.

Cheers
jimbo

I've been using "Linux" on Windows in the form of Cygwin.

Cygwin is an emulator that runs under Windows. It's not an OS, and it's not a VM. It's just a dll that captures all Linux system calls and implements them as Windows equivalents.

It works REALLY well and it's free.

It has an impressive history. Red Hat bought it in the early 2000s and maintained it for around ten years before selling it (or giving it away?). It's now managed independently of Red Hat.

The installation includes all of the standard Linux utilities, and all of the add-on languages, like Perl, PHP, Python and more.

It has compilers for C and C++ (and others that I don't use).

It runs with NO overhead because there's nothing running. It's looks like Linux because of that dll translation layer, but there's no software or OS to "run".

Very nice.

Windows has had a POSIX subsystem ever since the first release of NT, but it's been (deliberately?) crippled. Only recently has MS offered their Linux-on-Windows implementation (some call it Bash-on-Windows) that purports to be real and usable. I presume that's the piece that the OP is referring to.

I tried it last year. It it works (somewhat) ... but it's still incomplete. I'm hoping it improves in the future.

Until then, though, I'm sticking with Cygwin.