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I have a few piece of junk homemade programs that use the Windows POSIX sublayer. Does Windows 8 x64 come with SUA?

Can somebody verify that it is there? All I can find is that it was "deprecated" but the news seems to be from a year or two back.

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  • 2
    Use a comment to comment, not an edit to the question.
    – ChrisF
    Oct 29, 2012 at 10:51
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    @ChrisF I want my tag and I want it now! My goal is to go down in history as the only user of Windows SUA :-)
    – Mikhail
    Oct 29, 2012 at 10:51
  • Tag created, Wiki Excerpt created - you should go fill up the tag wiki. Remember not to copy it wholesale from somewhere and such.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Oct 29, 2012 at 11:32
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    Bob is a cool dude, but may be somebody has tried running software on it and something terrible happens. I am actually install the server to try to see if my "junk" still runs on it. Give me an hour or two.
    – Mikhail
    Oct 29, 2012 at 15:25
  • @Misha but you should still be happy to know that you can still run your junk in Win 8 (atleast until the next security update where they remove it altogether, Good luck for then!). Oct 29, 2012 at 19:13

5 Answers 5

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In the Enterprise Evaluation (essentially, a trial version of Windows 8 Enterprise RTM), SUA is still available through Windows Features, though listed as deprecated:

Screenshot
Click for full size

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  • 12
    I like what you did there with the image and the proof.
    – Mikhail
    Oct 29, 2012 at 11:51
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    It isn't listed as a deprecated feature on the aforementioned link. Oct 29, 2012 at 17:29
  • 4
    Ah clearly this is either (a) photo-shopped, or (b) Windows 8 isn't ready for prime time and should be recalled en masse. Seriously, who puts out a product with buggy link-references. Microsoft can't event tell its users to RTFM properly. Oct 29, 2012 at 17:56
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    By "alternate methods" presumably they mean Cygwin or MinGW, which are both perfectly reasonable means of getting a reasoanble POSIXy interface that sits on top of Win32 as opposed to trying to use SUA, which IIRC were never really all that complete to begin with anyway.
    – fluffy
    Oct 29, 2012 at 19:18
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    @fluffy, just one problem. cygwin does not install on Win8.1. Chocolatey did not help to install it either.
    – rjt
    Jun 14, 2014 at 7:37
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Wikipedia states that it is deprecated in Windows 8 and will be removed in Windows 8.1.

WARNING: SUA is deprecated starting with this release and will be completely removed in the next release.

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  • In theory it could be removed in the first Service Pack, we don't know if there will be a typical Windows 9, evidence points to Microsoft changing their release schedule. Visual Studio and other products are already on slightly difference schedules then in the past.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 29, 2012 at 11:42
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SUA is being removed from Windows kernel. It shows as DEPRECATED which means this is probably the last version of windows which will support it.

Here is a link that suggests so. http://blogs.technet.com/b/sfu/archive/2011/10/03/installing-sua-components-on-windows-8.aspx

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+25

SUA is only available in Windows 8 with "premium" client SKUs (meaning Ultimate or Enterprise) or server SKUs (meaning Windows Server 2012). (More info in source.)

SUA is not available in your version of Windows 8 Professional.

You should look for alternatives such as Cygwin or UnxUtils.
A commercial alternative is MKS Toolkit

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  • I actually expected this reply to be incorrect, but checked on my one (so far) RTM Windows Pro install, and it is in fact correct. SUA is no longer shipped with Windows 8 Pro.
    – PJC
    Nov 7, 2012 at 12:55
  • @harrymc, cygwin does not install on Win8.1
    – rjt
    Jun 16, 2014 at 21:11
  • @rjt: I think this is solved in the latest version.
    – harrymc
    Jun 17, 2014 at 6:42
1

2016 Windows Subsystem for Linux Update

I don't think this will affect Windows 8, but it might be interesting for newer releases.

In 2016 a new official Linux-like API called "Windows Subsystem for Linux" was announced. It includes Linux system calls, ELF running, parts of the /proc filesystem, Bash, GCC, (TODO likely glibc?), apt-get and more: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/P488 so I believe that it will allow Windows to run much, if not all, of POSIX. However, it is focused on developers / deployment instead of end users. In particular, there were no plans to allow access to the Windows GUI.

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