Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Initial Impressions of WSL 2

daverupert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 233 posts

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#41

Post by mtzet »

mehrdadn wrote: post #23
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #18

> Those pain points were solved in WSL 2 by embedding a whole first-party Linux VM inside Windows Wait so now it's just a regular Linux virtual machine? I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? Kinda not as impressive now.

Yeah don't get too excited, it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage, and I'm not sure if RAM does either (interested in knowing if they've done anything related to that), which were what I found most useful about WSL1. I wish they'd instead put all their effort from this into legitimately fixing the issues in WSL1 instead.

The disk issue was probably going to be difficult to solve even with the WSL1 model if they wanted good IO performance. Using a proper Linux filesystem underneath is a decent compromise IMO.

The RAM issue is a clear setback, and makes it annoying trying to do large compile jobs on the Linux side, though it's been a while since I've tried it. In theory it could be possible to handle coorporation between the Linux and Windows RAM usage patterns since they're running a very heavily modified kernel. I'd be very interrested in knowing if anything is hapenning on that front.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#42

Post by sz4kerto »

mehrdadn wrote: post #23
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #18

> Those pain points were solved in WSL 2 by embedding a whole first-party Linux VM inside Windows Wait so now it's just a regular Linux virtual machine? I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? Kinda not as impressive now.

Yeah don't get too excited, it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage, and I'm not sure if RAM does either (interested in knowing if they've done anything related to that), which were what I found most useful about WSL1. I wish they'd instead put all their effort from this into legitimately fixing the issues in WSL1 instead.

They do adjust memory reservation dynamically if I'm correct. It's very nice overall.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#43

Post by mehrdadn »

judge2020 wrote: post #27
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #18

> Those pain points were solved in WSL 2 by embedding a whole first-party Linux VM inside Windows Wait so now it's just a regular Linux virtual machine? I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? Kinda not as impressive now.

Here's the diagram - https://i.redd.it/po98dksksjx21.png It's only running alongside Windows in the sense that it's running in Hyper-V, which Windows itself effectively does when you have Hyper-V enabled. What is special about this Linux build is that it's specifically made for running alongside Windows since it needs to integrate with the Explorer and other Windows components[0]. 0: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/co…

"Alongside" is such marketing nonsense that as a user it almost gets me angry to keep reading it at this point. If it was really running "alongside" Windows then I'd be able to switch to Linux, shut down Windows, and now work in Linux while it's still running. And back. That's what it means to a user when you say they run "alongside" each other. But it's obviously not that. Not even on the same planet as that. It's just a damn VM running inside Windows as far as it concerns a user. Nobody cares if it's running in ring 0 or -1 or NaN, or under a hypervisor or over a supervisor, or whatever terms get thrown around. If it's still going to quack to the user like every other duck, it's a duck.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#44

Post by frankohn »

As a long time free software and linux supporter I am a little bit afraid of this.

It seems like a very smart move from Microsoft. They get rid of the abysmal performance of windows's file system and spawning new processes by using... linux! Provide also an excellent terminal so that developers have the best experience with command line tools, all this without leaving the convenience of Windows!

Not surprising since they dominate the desktop market since forever being smart at strategy.

The only weak point of WSL 2 to my point of view is that you say goodbye to development of native Windows application because you are effectively on Linux. It means you either setup cross-compilation which can be annoying either you go with Visual Studio, the old MS way.

For the moment I will stay with MSYS2 plus Mingw64, they are both excellent and provide a good experience to develop native applications on Windows. At home I will keep using Ubuntu, of course.

For the introduction of WSL 2, I think many of the people using Mac OS X may switch to Windows. They never fully embraced the free-software philosophy and chose Mac OS X because of the high-quality hardware and software and the good terminal experience with unix-like environment. They will easily switch to Windows now.

The small group of people using Linux will probably stay on Linux because of dislike for Microsoft practices and the fondness for free software.

Bad news for free software, good news for Microsoft shareholders!

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#45

Post by gmueckl »

mtzet wrote: post #41
mehrdadn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah don't get too excited, it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage, and I'm not sure if RAM does either (interested in knowing if they've done anything related to that), which were what I found most useful about WSL1. I wish they'd instead put all their effort from this into legitimately fixing the issues in WSL1 instead.

The disk issue was probably going to be difficult to solve even with the WSL1 model if they wanted good IO performance. Using a proper Linux filesystem underneath is a decent compromise IMO. The RAM issue is a clear setback, and makes it annoying trying to do large compile jobs on the Linux side, though it's been a while since I've tried it. In theory it could be possible to handle coorporation between the Linux and…

Isn't Linux already capable of handing unused memory back to an underlying hypervisor? I vaguely remember that MS contributed code to support that kind of interaction with HyperV. Am I wrong?

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#46

Post by tsar9x »

k__ wrote: post #4
unicornfinder wrote: post #2

I must say WSL2 has genuinely been huge for me, to the point where I've finally been able to ditch macOS for a desktop with a Ryzen CPU. Honestly it's mindblowing how far Windows has come - if I were Apple I'd genuinely be scared of losing a large proportion of power-users as Windows becomes an increasingly viable platform for development.

How does it compare to real Linux distributions? Does it have a package manager? Is it like Debian? What are the limitations?

Systemd is not working.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#47

Post by jtdev »

dijit wrote: post #40
jtdev wrote: post #31

What are some use cases that would cause a person to choose Windows as their primary OS, but require WSL? At what point do you just move to a *nix OS and virtualize Windows on the rare occasion that it’s truly needed?

Developing linux software on windows is actually pretty painful. Actually, running any linux software in general such as middleman or Jekyll is pretty painful on Windows- I recently had a horrible time trying to get git-crypt working for a colleague of mine who was using Windows.. There's a lot of value in being able to just run "linux" (with bash, grep, sed, awk, gcc, python) while being able to access your normal f…

Why not just move to Linux?

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#48

Post by jtdev »

andybak wrote: post #38
jtdev wrote: post #31

What are some use cases that would cause a person to choose Windows as their primary OS, but require WSL? At what point do you just move to a *nix OS and virtualize Windows on the rare occasion that it’s truly needed?

I need Windows for Unity dev and VR.

It seems that gaming/graphics/VR is one of the last vestiges of Windows outside of the enterprise and consumers who don't really care what OS they run.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#49

Post by patentatt »

mehrdadn wrote: post #23
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #18

> Those pain points were solved in WSL 2 by embedding a whole first-party Linux VM inside Windows Wait so now it's just a regular Linux virtual machine? I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? Kinda not as impressive now.

Yeah don't get too excited, it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage, and I'm not sure if RAM does either (interested in knowing if they've done anything related to that), which were what I found most useful about WSL1. I wish they'd instead put all their effort from this into legitimately fixing the issues in WSL1 instead.

I think hyper-v does dynamically scale ram usage of vms, so it’s at least plausible that wsl2 does as well

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#50

Post by mehrdadn »

moomin wrote: post #34
k__ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, okay. That doesn't sound impressive anymore.

No, but the good news is you can literally run Arch, Debian and Fedora on the same machine with shared files.

You could already do that with WSL1.

Source: I have Arch and Ubuntu on WSL1.

Those didn't change. Other things did.

Post reply on HN