New Windows Sandbox for Windows 10

I was reading about this new feature in the May 2019 update of Windows 10, great if you don’t want to fire up the VM and mess around with snapshots etc. for a bit of quick testing, i.e. for a fresh install experience, want to test your newly built install from fresh, just drag the installer onto the window and double click it. W10 Pro and Enterprise only though.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-Kernel-Internals/Windows-Sandbox/ba-p/301849

I think this is a typical Microsoft bloated approach. Sandboxing in various forms already exists on macOS including the transparent “app translocation” but this doesn’t need to instantiate a full VM to run it. The whole support for Sandboxing I believe it also exists on Linux at kernel level. Today people think to switch from VMs to Containers (Docker style), and Microsoft of course comes again with this.

I dont disagree with anything you said but I think “stab one” of their “sandboxing” they went with VMs as some apps load drivers and such that they want to make sure doesnt affect other parts of the O/S. most more modern applications dont do this so it is overkill for them.

also docker containers on windows is still lacking. linux containers on Mac or Linux works great. I am hoping that the Microsoft team is working with Docker(the company) to help make containers on windows less sucky.

Nice tip. I totally missed this …lots of good/interesting stuff coming out of Redmond these days.

I think comparing the windows vs Mac approaches isn’t really all that useful. This seems like another nice option available to developers. There are certainly times when I want to test deployment of an app without having to spin up a new VM or configure a container. With this sort of stuff a one-size fits all solution never works. VM’s have their place, containers are great in many situation but not all, and having what sounds like more of a “dyanmic VM” seems like a great option as well.