171–180 of 532 posts
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I dont think its a VM like Docker no. WSL processes show up under the task manager. This is more like Wine but Line... In a sense. But a little trickier.
Do Docker people really think it’s a VM? Or has the meaning of “VM” shifted this past year?
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NT supports interfaces for supporting a fork model efficiently, it's just not well documented. In fact, you can write an efficient, Windows-native POSIX environment entirely from user space using existing APIs: https://midipix.org/ The only thing that NT really lacks is a Unix-style TTY subsystem. The interplay in Unix between TTYs, process control, and signals is complex and deep, and none of it lends itself toward…
> They may not have managed 100% Linux compatibility, but they could've simply relabeled it Windix or something My take on it was that they were never able to implement all the syscalls (WSL just couldn’t reliably run some production server software), and filesystem calls were horribly slow (try npm install on a reasonably large JS project if you have any doubt). You may be right — but I’d still like to dream that on…
Also, don't forget that Windows and NTFS has never been known for performance. Expecting file access to be as fast as ext4 from a Linux kernel was just the wrong set of expectations. If you want Linux performance you need to use Linux, of course, accessing it's own block device directly; and people demanding that are going to get it with WSL2. The cost is that integration will be worse, both in terms of ease of use as well as performance. AFAIU WSL2 is using 9P now and in the future probably virtio-fs (https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/) or something similar.
People keep saying how lightweight the WSL2 VM is. Well, that's how all modern VM architectures are now. If you launch a vanilla Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD kernel inside Linux KVM, FreeBSD bhyve, or OpenBSD VMM there's very little hardware emulation, if any[1]; they all have virtio drivers for block storage, network, balloon paging (equivalent of malloc/free), serial console, etc; for both host and guest modes.
[1] I don't think OpenBSD VMM supports any hardware emulation.
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Windows has less hardware support than Linux. Most single board computers can run mainline Linux, whereas just a handful support Windows IoT. AMD, ARM (CPUs & Mali GPUs), Intel, VIA, Qualcomm (Adreno) all have support in kernel 5, whereas Microsoft is still stuck subsetting a small group of ARM GPUs and branding Windows 10's OpenGL ES support as DirectX 11. This is a repeat of the troubles Microsoft had with supporti…
There are things that don't work well though, classic example are laptops that dynamically switch between discrete and integrated graphics. You'll probably run everything on the dedicated GPU which hurts battery life. Still, my old desktop scanner that the manufacturer stopped publishing drives for during the Windows Vista era? Yeah Linux runs it like a boss. No looking up drivers or config parameters on the internet…
YMMV, but as far as I know that's more or less a solved problem by default (for X anyway) with DRI3.
This particular complaint echoes folks (I was one) who booted Ubuntu desktop a decade ago and couldn't get wifi to work, and proceeded to complain about shoddy driver support (to present day, clearly), using only that single outdated* example as an argument. Of course this is compounded by a ~months to ~years delay in most desktops getting those improvements thanks to the glacial pace at which the mainstream desktop distros update their repos.
Was there a point when Optimus/Bumblebee/Prime was a shitshow? Yes. Is that still reality? No.
What this ignores is that Linux driver support is generally fantastic, works out of the box in a way that desktop architects at MS dream about and is infinitely more current in practice since you go to one place to update all your software, including driver software, something MS hasn't been able to get right in a decade of trying.
Regardless, mobile battery life's still worse on Linux. And as much as some things are super convenient compared to the Windows/Apple world, the truism a friend told me as I wrestled with Ubuntu ten years ago remains true today: Linux is for folks that enjoy configuring Linux.
* I have to use a combo of DKMS and an AUR package to get WiFi on my one year old IdeaPad, so outdated may be the wrong word there. Better to say that realtek and broadcom chips have gotten hit hard by Intel's move into consumer networking.
Worth pointing out that 'year of the Linux desktop' probably predates that.
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Well, technically yes, but…talk about moving the goalposts! Almost like swapping the goalposts.
Yep, except in this case is just one goalpost and everyone wins. Now we can enjoy using software as MS Office and userland from Linux distros in the same machine seamlessly.
The next step is fully locked down hardware that requires a signed OS. Linux will not run on it, but MS will pretend to support you by allowing linux apps to run on their kernel. Then, once no hardware will allow you to run linux natively they will depreciate it and get people to migrate to better supported APIs of their own.
People are just walking right into this as if none of Microsofts history ever happened.
The only OK scenario is that MS becomes a larger version of Redhat and migrates users the other direction. Is that happening? No. It's all about bringing your toys to their house.
However, the one problem I have with switching to Windows, even with a flawless WSL (2), or full Linux/BSD/whatever OS under the hood, the whole Apple ecosystem integration, seamless syncing between all my devices and accounts will be hard to let go unless something from MSFT / Windows and company can provide that same convenience. From what I have researched, it's close, but still not there.
It's too convenient. I know people will say they have problems with it (iCloud/macOS/iOS syncing/integration), but my experience and all my fellow constituents and family haven't. So, I have not witnessed nor experienced these issues people bring up in threads on HackerNews, Reddit, etc that I have seen (yet can't seem to find exact examples of at the moment with links).
I really admire this work. I hope MSFT continues down the path they have been. I've always had a soft spot for them. I'm rooting for them.
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Linux desktop means little when people log into Google, Facebook et al.
Exactly. Linux won on technical merits, but we failed to educate people about the really important part about freedom.
I admire what Microsoft have done with WSL and now WSL2, it's really pretty cool. Satya has done an excellent job revitalizing Microsoft from the Ballmer days. However, WTF. Why has the "Microsoft" directory got a leading capital. I mean every.other.directory.in.linux.is.lower.case!!!!!! Look around folks! Every other vendor in that tree has their name lowercase, please respect the local customs!
On a serious note, you should make a github issue.
Well that is pretty nice. WSL gets that much more exactly like Linux. What I really appreciate about WSL is that you get the accessibility of a bunch of OSS projects and a machine which has legit drivers for all of its component bits. What this means to me is that searching for a "linux laptop" won't be a chore, if it runs the latest Windows it will run Linux. And I can do development on the Linux side while communic…
There are a few annoyances with WSL2. For me the most important are: 1. You can't connect to a port listening on WSL localhost like in WSL1, you have to figure out the WSL IP address and use that. 2. From WSL you can't connect to a Windows TCP port on localhost, you must figure out the Windows IP (cat /etc/resolv.conf) and use that. 3. The WSL remote interpreter on PyCharm is not working anymore. The suggested workar…
Does this let users do more? Does this give users more options? This is a good, practical feature. I'm excited to, hopefully soon, fully ditch Linux on desktop for something that actually works.
Conceptually it amounts to having England and France whose people speak their own languages and now there is an European Union language translator program that allows them to talk to each other in their own language. No?