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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

#281

Post by evertheylen »

I would really, really love to go back to using Linux natively but sadly the hardware on this laptop is not supported well enough. So I eventually gave up and installed Windows while using WSL2 extensively.

Performance is on par with running Linux natively. I compiled my own kernel with ext4 encryption support, and it works quite well. I use it for 90% of my files. Combined with the new Windows Terminal and VSCode support for WSL, there is little friction left. (Also, to address some comments, you can view Windows files from Linux and Linux files from Windows, with some reduced performance.)

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#282

Post by bitwize »

robocat wrote: post #56
bitwize wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL (1) was what the BSD people call a "kernel personality", which allows one kernel to emulate another at the syscall and ABI level.

So WSL1 on Windows is similar to Wine on Linux?

No, because Wine doesn't emulate NT system calls. It is a Win32 API compatibility layer.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#283

Post by thekyle »

rossy wrote: post #100
bayesian_horse wrote: post #28

We need a Linux subsystem for Windows... Though Wine is quite good.

While similar in concept, Wine is better than WSL1 in a lot of ways due to supporting sound, graphics, and GPU acceleration. I've always been suspicious of WSL because it follows a narrative that benefits Microsoft - that Linux is primarily a command-line/server environment, and the graphical and audio applications for Linux are not worthwhile. It doesn't have to be like this. WSL1 was based on an Android environment…

Yeah, I was trying to set up Selenium (testing framework) with WSL 2. Its workable but you need to write more code to hack around WSL limitations on graphical apps. Using Selenium is a much better experience on macOS and desktop Linux.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#284

Post by cgravill »

simplicio wrote: post #78
aspaceman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Feels like a “windows has to be first” type of thing.

There was a MS employee on twitter the other day (sorry, I forgot who) saying it was because there were legal issues with naming something with a title that has someone else's trademark as the first word.

Link here to the comment https://twitter.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#285

Post by saagarjha »

saurik wrote: post #260
sieabahlpark wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose if you want to use a windows program to edit those files? For example I use intellij on Windows but want to compile and test on the Linux machine. If it takes 30 seconds longer than wsl 1, why would I bother changing? What is the actual point of wsl if not for the cross compatible filesystems

WSL never really got the cross compatible filesystems working though: I eventually found myself giving up on it and just using cygwin. I honestly don't understand why WSL gets so much attention when cygwin is just so much more compatible with everything and includes essentially every package I have ever wanted?

Cygwin isn’t backed by Microsoft.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#287

Post by pjmlp »

toyg wrote: post #268
pjmlp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web development on Windows has been like surfing for those of us doing Java and .NET web development, since like ever. 2006 was for me the turning point where Linux was only used via VMs or some remote box. WSL2 is just fine, I don't need to mess with VMWare any longer. And if I am not doing Linux deployments, I can do plain Windows development, like I have done since Windows 3.0. For the Linux desktop experience I h…

> Web development on Windows has been like surfing for those of us doing Java and .NET web development, since like ever. This similitude baffles me. Do you mean "had to wear protective equipment, had to drive constantly between locations, we were knocked over every few seconds, and we risked drowning several times"...?

It means riding the top wave while enjoying the Sun, hearing the cool background music coming from the loudspeakers on the beach, and feeling like a champion.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#288

Post by tasubotadas »

chmln wrote: post #197

In genuine amazement at a lot of the comments here - why not just dual boot Linux instead of using it in a VM? Productivity on a Linux machine can be so far ahead of Windows, especially if you've got a terminal-based workflow an maybe a tiling WM

I used to use Linux as my main OS for ~5years and I would dual boot for maybe 1-2y of that time.

In the end, I just found that I am more productive with Windows. On Linux, I really hated driver compatibility issues (happens quite often on laptops), core programs are not so stable (KDE window manager) and skype sucked on Linux.

Also, I could not game on Linux so that sucked even more. On Windows I have steam with 0 worries about registry and dll hacking with WINE.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#290

Post by skrebbel »

chx wrote: post #96
juped wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL was very cool from a pure tech standpoint, but I've never been clear what the actual use case for it was. WSL2 seems to be more along the lines of coLinux, which I felt the same way about when it was new.

Well, if you want to use multimedia and do web development on the same machine, what are you going to do? Linux support is somewhere between nonexistent and utterly broken for the first one and the same can be said for the second on Windows. So your choices are, 1. run Linux primary, put Windows in a VM 2. run Windows primary and put Linux in a VM 3. Give up and just run a separate Linux server.

I don't understand this sentiment. I have VS Code and a fantastic file manager (Explorer). What more do you need for web development?

Most decent languages work great cross platform. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be missing.

To be frank, the only think that bothers me about web dev on Windows is that the Elixir repl doesn't support "up" for editing the previous command.

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