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New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

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Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#121

Post by Mahn »

topranks wrote: post #119
komali2 wrote: post #35

Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep blue. Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely conf…

You can use Conemu, ConsoleZ or a number of other console applications for Windows with it. As a network engineer it's almost useless to me, ping, traceroute, mtr etc don't work. Neither does ssh tunneling. No ssh server. Still using Cygwin for those reasons.

> ping, traceroute, mtr etc don't work. Neither does ssh tunneling. No ssh server.

These things work, as long as you are not under a firewall. The problem is that currently it doesn't expose anything to whitelist if you do use a firewall, but hopefully they'll sort this out eventually.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#122

Post by Arcsech »

grennis wrote: post #70
smacktoward wrote: post #5

Microsoft is so frustrating. On the one hand, they really seem earnest about wanting to make Windows 10 appealing to people like me who fled Windows for Unix-alike systems long ago. And steps like this show that they're not just addressing that at a shallow level, but are willing to dig deep to make it happen, which is sincerely encouraging. But then on the other hand, they insist on loading Windows 10 up with privac…

And OSX keeps nagging me in various ways to use iCloud.. is that an "ad" also?

iCloud is at least also an Apple product. The last time I installed Win10 (fresh, legal install media direct from Microsoft), on the first boot there was an ad for Candy Crush in the start menu. That's just unacceptable.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#123

Post by oridecon »

vetinari wrote: post #120
shmed wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get the Enterprise Edition and you'll get full control on what data is leaving your machine.

Unfortunately, not true anymore.

In my opinion it was never truly off even when the label pointed to that. Explorer, Photos, Cortana and everything else is constantly making networks calls for "reasons". For me "Off" means it will only call home to check for updates and for opt-in features that requires a connection.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#124

Post by int_19h »

komali2 wrote: post #35

Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep blue. Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely conf…

You can install xrdp and some lightweight DE like Xfce, and then just RDP into your Linux desktop. Here's Xfce (and its terminal) running inside an RDP session on Win10:

http://i.imgur.com/Z5mRLIs.png

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#125

Post by Mahn »

shmerl wrote: post #110

Is there some clear benefit of using it instead of normal VM or running Linux directly?

Interoperability is one: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/interop

I also appreciate the fact that it "boots" instantly (i.e. you don't have to turn it on or off like VM) and that it works out of the box with every up-to-date W10 computer (great if you need to get something done on a computer that is not your own).

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#126

Post by corysama »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #114

The primary reason I even looked at a Mac, way back in the MacOS 10.2 days, was because there is a Unix underneath the pretty interface. I bought my first Mac and never looked back. Stuff like this is making me look at Windows machines again.

I'm betting this is the real end-goal of WSL. MacBooks were once expensive, but high-quality, grab-and-go unixy development machines. Now, they're mostly just expensive.

When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine. It'll probably be easier and more reliable than installing Ubuntu directly! At that point, web and server devs will migrate en mass from Mac to Windows.

Then they will discover Clang for Windows and that dev tools for Windows in general are actually pretty nice. And, since they are already running their server code on WSL, it becomes much easier and more interesting to get it running in Windows directly. Bang! Huge uptick in open-source server development on Windows.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#127

Post by happypants23 »

komali2 wrote: post #35

Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep blue. Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely conf…

ConEmu with Bash/WSL has not worked out for me. I came across way too many incompatibilities, and weird behaviour. Some of these are documented in (1). That said, ConEMU was never really designed to support UNIX/VT100 terminal environments from the start. Its more of a cmd.exe replacement.

Instead, I've got a pretty good setup using Xming (2), a native win32 X server implementation.

In Bash/WSL, I set the DISPLAY variable appropriately and launch my terminal emulator of choice, as well as Emacs.

This setup has worked out to be very fast and stable for me.

1. http://conemu.github.io/en/CygwinMsys.html 2. http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#128

Post by int_19h »

tejinderss wrote: post #116
electrotype wrote: post #68

The problem with WSL is that it's young so some integrations are still not perfect. For example, the integration with VSCode : https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25033 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/24967 But both teams, WSL and VSCode, are very, very responsive. I'm pretty sure in a couple of months everything will be fine.

Same reason why I am not making the switch. Whenever I have good integration of wsl python interpreter running in vscode, I will be a happy person

Not VSCode, but...

https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/pull/2500

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

komali2 wrote: post #35

Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep blue. Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely conf…

You can run a Windows X server, then run whatever X-based programs (including terminals) you want on the Linux side and forward the display to the Windows X Server.

Re: New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store

#130

Post by electricEmu »

cryptarch wrote: post #59
electricEmu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize staying on the bleeding edge kernels was such a performance boost, that it's worth shying away from an entire ecosystem. It sounds a bit elitist. Alternatively, when I use Windows now I'll get both PowerShell and a full Unix environment. For my development work so far, none of those arbitrary drawbacks have stopped WSFL from being a champ. On the plus side, I don't constantly have to edit configurati…

The wifi story has been stable for years now, at least on Debian 8. When you have Intel wifi you'll have to enable the non-free repo, and that's about the extent of it.

It's way better than hand-coding NDISWrapper but that isn't trivial unless you're already familiar with Linux.

I had a friend ask me about installing a distro the other day. I told him to buy a Linode/DO box or use WSFL instead of finagling with hardware. My Dell XPS 13 is sold _as_ a Linux machine, and there aren't drivers for everything.

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