Initial Impressions of WSL 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#51

Post by scarface74 » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #43

judge2020 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

So how many users are in the set of people that care about running Linux using the WSL, don’t understand the technical underpinning, and that care?

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#52

Post by frankc » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #35

drey08 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. With WSL I can seamlessly access files from both Linux and Windows. I use the Terminal (Windows) and various Unix tools for a lot of stuff (compiling & testing on Posix, objdump, debugging). And I use Windows GUI tools for editing (Sublime), diffing (BeyondCompare), and so on. I get the best of both worlds. But WSL2 file access in `/mnt/c/` is now unbearably slow. So I just stick with WSL1. From what I've read,…

"Microsoft intends to support both WSL1 and WSL2" I'm not sure I believe them. Maintaining a whole tricky "fake" kernel/translation shim must be a lot of work.

You never know but as has been pointed out in different parts of this post, they have two different use cases in a sense. Windows developers who were using WSL1 aren't going to like the changes and i've heard a lot of complaints. However, people using primarily linux with windows as a nice shell with good hardware support and games are going to prefer WSL2. I think if they want to win over the biggest group of devs, and I feel pretty good about that since they were losing traction with them for years, they will maintain both, at least for a good while.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#53

Post by ken » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #39

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.

The Mac is 10% of Apple’s revenue. How much of that 10% do you really think are developers that would switch just because Microsoft supports Linux? Especially considering that macOS is a real certified Unix not just tacked on.

How many developers care about "certified Unix", or can even say exactly what that means? Is anyone buying Macintosh computers in order to run their certified Unix software?

Linux isn't certified, and none of developers using that seem to mind. If Microsoft got WSL "certified", would any Linux user consider it a better Linux than Linux?

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#54

Post by bzb3 » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

frankohn wrote: post #44

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…

Good news for end users like me. This was a pain point of Windows, now it's fixed.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#55

Post by close04 » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #43

judge2020 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

> as far as it concerns a user

The users who aren't concerned with making the distinction you just brushed aside don't know or care what a VM is so for them Linux is just an app running in Windows. You're making your point the same way they would.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-w...

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#56

Post by happytoexplain » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #43

judge2020 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

The parent and grandparent posts appear to have nothing to do with a casual user's point of view.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#57

Post by Tuna-Fish » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

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.

> I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels?

WSL1 was like that, but it was severely handicapped by NT filesystem performance, especially for small files or metadata operations. There are a lot of small operations that are more than 2 orders of magnitude slower on Windows than on Linux, and a lot of Linux software just expects them to be fast, so WSL1 is not a great experience for a lot of stuff.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#58

Post by michaelbuckbee » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #39

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.

The Mac is 10% of Apple’s revenue. How much of that 10% do you really think are developers that would switch just because Microsoft supports Linux? Especially considering that macOS is a real certified Unix not just tacked on.

There are tail wagging the dog incentives here.

Part (not all) of the Mac resurgence was that you needed a Mac to develop iPhone apps.

Part (not all) of the new Windows resurgence is that if you even really want to play around with ML or VR dev you need a Windows machine.

I feel like it's about the possibilities - with WSL, Windows Terminal I get what's essentially the mac experience but can suddenly do so much more.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#59

Post by matsemann » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

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?

Everyone on my team uses a Mac, except me. (I had one for three years, the hardware was nothing but problems, and didn't grow too fond of the OS either). My day-to-day development in Windows works fine, but lots of small stuff is done in a way that's not compatible with Windows. WSL solves that fine, without me having to be an edge-case, or everything having to be written so general as to work on every OS.

Of course I could just run some Linux distro, but that again would be limiting for non-work-stuff and I prefer not switching between OSs daily. And last time I tried I had big issues with HDPI scaling between screens, hibernation etc. And really, I just don't care that much about what OS I run. Windows works.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#60

Post by sequence7 » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

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?

Well I guess the main two would be:

1. You like windows

2. You want to use software or hardware that works best with windows

Personally I like windows and I want to run Lightroom and various other software that doesn't work on linux. I also want to have a full *nix OS available and windows with wsl gives me exactly that.