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Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

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Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#12
post #8

I really hope apple implements something similar, would much prefer to have a well integrated linux vm than the not-quite-linux of macos

Docker is on macOS using the native hypervisor framework, what would be the point?

and it has some serious file system performance issues that make docker for mac a non-starter for some projects:

https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/77

https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/osxfs/#performance-is...

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#13
VMWare [0] will also support the Hypervisor Platform Api [1] allowing it to run besides WSL2 which uses Hyper-V. VirtualBox is still struggling and runs slow if at all with WSL2 and Hyper-V [2]

This of course has implications on how you setup Docker on a Windows machine, each way having pros and cons.

[0] https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/01/vmware-workstat...

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/api/hypervis...

[2] https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=473538

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#14
Question -- from what I understand, WSL2 is closer to Linux running in a VM, whereas WSL1 was like a Windows kernel level version of Cygwin. Is that mostly correct?

Regarding that, remember a number of years ago, prior to VMs there was a patch set for the Linux kernel porting it to user space -- so you could run Linux as a user process, which ended up functioning similar to running it in a VM. Would WSL2 be closer to this model, or is it really running Linux under a stripped down Hyper V?

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#15
post #10

Is there a shell+terminal+font combo that folks really like for WSL? I've tried the new terminal beta with zsh and--for reasons I can't quite articulate right now--it feels "off" and I invariably proceed to boot up virtualbox for my debian, i3, kitty, fira code setup to get work done. Maybe it's the break in filesystems and $HOME? Edit: learning that WSL2 does away with the syscall-translating tech and mandates Hyper…

I use Cmdr (with solarized theme and Consolas font) with Zsh and Oh My Zsh (with agnoster theme), but it is really a matter of taste.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#16

I really hope apple implements something similar, would much prefer to have a well integrated linux vm than the not-quite-linux of macos

I find that most of the linux-like versions of user-space tools can be installed via homebrew. What functionality would you been hoping for from a linux vm? would this VM be able to have any GPL v3 licensed tools?

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#18
post #9

I really hope apple implements something similar, would much prefer to have a well integrated linux vm than the not-quite-linux of macos

This is an interesting take considering Linux is Unix-like and macOS is technically a BSD derivative. I don’t think macOS will ever have a Linux syscall translation layer/subsystem (WSL1) nor a lightweight VM with special integration (WSL2) but you can do sort of similar things in third party software, I think. Docker for Mac is using the native VM framework and includes a filesystem integration called osxfs, but des…

Exactly. It really doesn't need a syscall translation layer anyway given its Unix + BSD and POSIX foundations. Although this open-source project [0] does exist for macOS but it looks like its inactive.

[0] https://github.com/linux-noah/noah

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#19
post #14

Question -- from what I understand, WSL2 is closer to Linux running in a VM, whereas WSL1 was like a Windows kernel level version of Cygwin. Is that mostly correct? Regarding that, remember a number of years ago, prior to VMs there was a patch set for the Linux kernel porting it to user space -- so you could run Linux as a user process, which ended up functioning similar to running it in a VM. Would WSL2 be closer to…

WSL 1 was closer to flinux than cygwin.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#20
post #14

Question -- from what I understand, WSL2 is closer to Linux running in a VM, whereas WSL1 was like a Windows kernel level version of Cygwin. Is that mostly correct? Regarding that, remember a number of years ago, prior to VMs there was a patch set for the Linux kernel porting it to user space -- so you could run Linux as a user process, which ended up functioning similar to running it in a VM. Would WSL2 be closer to…

Literally running Linux under regular hyper-v, with some clever FS tricks.
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