Stop quoting Steve Ballmer
Not "Developers Developers Developers", that one is great. The cancer one.
Box of Cables
Random technology, old and new, tossed in the box by Hayden Barnes.
Latest posts
Don't ask Microsoft to do it all
A five-million-line enterprise app asked Microsoft for a longer .NET support window. The Java world answered that question a decade ago.
Azure Linux "Desktop": A Build 2026 mashup of wslc, WinUI Reactor, and Azure Linux 4.0
A nifty Windows app that boots a full Linux desktop in a window, wiring together the wslc container API, WinUI Reactor, Azure Linux 4.0, .NET 10, with a pinch of nostalgia.
Build a Custom WSL 2 Kernel in 2026
Building a custom WSL 2 kernel in 2026 with the WSL system distro (Azure Linux) as a clean, root, throwaway build environment. KVM now ships enabled, so this covers the reasons that still matter, plus the new modules VHDX deployment step.
I'm running for the .NET Foundation Board
I am on the ballot for the 2026 .NET Foundation Board election. Why I am running, what the Foundation is recruiting for this cycle, and what I would bring: partnerships across the Microsoft and open source line, nonprofit governance, and a long record in the .NET and WSL communities.
Azure Linux 4.0 is Microsoft’s first general-purpose Linux
Microsoft’s in-house Linux, the distribution that grew out of CBL-Mariner, just hit public preview as a general-purpose cloud OS you can run on any Azure VM and coming soon to WSL.
wslc: A native Linux container runtime for Windows
wslc brings native OCI-compatible Linux containers to WSL: a Docker-compatible CLI, GPU passthrough via CDI, a full C/WinRT/C# SDK, and a plugin API that lets Windows applications mount folders, spawn processes, and react to container lifecycle events as native Windows handles.
WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
From DrvFs in WSL 1 to Plan 9 to virtiofs, cross-OS file access in WSL 2 has improved with each generation. A new change gives each virtio device its own dedicated DMA pool, removing the last major contention point on the virtiofs path.
Getting Started Creating a Linux Desktop App in Visual Studio using Avalonia and WSL
Build cross-platform GUI apps for WIndows and Linux using C# and .NET using Avalonia in Visual Studio.
Windows Dev Drive Benchmarks
Putting Windows Dev Drive through it's paces on the Windows Dev Kit 2023.
The GitHub Copilot Lawsuit Threatens Open Source and Human Progress
The vague complaints of the Copilot plaintiffs are nothing compared to the damage to free software and human progress if they won.
Microsoft's CBL-Delridge is 404, long live CBL-Mariner
Microsoft is increasingly standardizing on its in-house CBL-Mariner Linux distribution. Is this Microsoft Linux?
Building custom WSL distro images with Podman
Use Podman on Windows to build custom WSL distro images.
Running a massively scalable CUDA-accelerated AI/ML lab on WSL 2 with Determined
Getting a scalable AI/ML model training environment set up and running on WSL 2, with Docker Desktop and CUDA GPU compute.
Creating A Lightweight Windows Container Dev Environment without Docker Desktop
Working with Windows Containers without Docker Desktop from PowerShell.