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Initial Impressions of WSL 2

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Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#71

Post by frankc »

akjssdk wrote: post #64
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like WSL. And Windows 10, well, it's not awful. I don't hate it anymore than I hate Mac OS's GUI. I find things especially nice with the new Windows Terminal. But the piece missing is still first class support for X (or Wayland) Linux applications. Without GUI Emacs, for example, or some way of integrating the Windows Emacs well, I find the WSL experience not as productive as booting into my actual Linux par…

You can run emacs on WSL and just pass the X output to windows using an X server like VcXsrv. This works pretty seamless for me, no noticeable lag or anything.

This works very well. Another thing I do that works well, and I don't really see it brought up anywhere, is to use nomachine to connect to localhost. It's not seamless in the sense that you have linux apps side-by-side with native windows, but it gives you a full linux desktop experience (you need to install a linux desktop and wm in wsl for this to work well). Combining this with windows virtual desktop i can flip back and forth between windows and linux instantly without any vm.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#72

Post by neogodless »

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?

Up until recently, I've primarily been a C#/.NET developer and Visual Studio (2017/2019/Community/etc), IIS, T-SQL... all largely work best on Windows.

Blizzard games (addicted to StarCraft for life, also enjoy Diablo 3). Steam games (some are supported under Linux but I know I can run all modern games with full video card driver support).

WebEx - need this for work and it seems to really lack support under Linux. Couldn't figure out how to get this working on my Ubuntu 20.04 laptop. Also use RSA and Horizon VMWare and haven't dug into how well those apps work in Linux.

I don't need WSL but I really like it. I get to dip my toes into Linux, and enjoy using bash, running MySQL under Linux, generally find the npm/yarn experience is better.

If at this point you wonder why I don't go Mac it's mostly because I could never justify the price premium to get the hardware I want. In theory Hackintosh could fit the bill but I haven't tried it, and everything "just works" under Windows so I haven't felt the need.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#73

Post by frankohn »

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?

- Games, many games are only available on Windows and drivers are best supported on Windows. - Work & business, many companies just require you to use Windows, so you have to. - Market share, if you are a developer and you want to reach as many people as possible you need to support Windows first.

In theory you can develop for Windows being on a Linux PC using a VM or cross-compiler but this isn't always practical or possible. Just have a Windows PC is more simple.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#74

Post by cmrdporcupine »

gmueckl wrote: post #61
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like WSL. And Windows 10, well, it's not awful. I don't hate it anymore than I hate Mac OS's GUI. I find things especially nice with the new Windows Terminal. But the piece missing is still first class support for X (or Wayland) Linux applications. Without GUI Emacs, for example, or some way of integrating the Windows Emacs well, I find the WSL experience not as productive as booting into my actual Linux par…

Have you tried using Emacs with an X server for Windows?

Yes... it's not as well integrated as I'd like.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#75

Post by dataflow »

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.

> I'm not sure I believe them.

I'm not sure why anyone should. They literally say "We currently have no plans to deprecate WSL 1" while simultaneously claiming "We are committed to making WSL 2 feel the same as WSL 1". There's no way their goal is to reach a steady state where they feel the same and yet both have to be maintained. Making them feel the same is literally what you do when your goal is to stop support for one of them. They probably just haven't "planned" it yet, unless they don't expect they will actually ever get them to feel the same.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#76

Post by d2161 »

drey08 wrote: post #29
tyingq wrote: post #3

No free lunch, of course. Faster file access with WSL2 (vs WSL1), if you stay in the Linux world. But if you point it at Windows files (/mnt/c, etc), it's pretty slow. WSL2 just moved the slowness from one side to the other. Accessing the Linux FS from Windows (\\wsl$\) is also slow. That said, I am a fan, and get a lot of use out of WSL1. Since I don't use the Windows interop much, WSL2 should be a performance win f…

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,…

Why not just store files in WSL home directory? It's faster than accessing from mnt/c

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#77

Post by close04 »

mehrdadn wrote: post #65
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Note that the performance didn't really have anything to do with NTFS. This is trivial to prove if you just try a different filesystem.

WSL 1 and WSL 2 can coexist and be used according to what needs one's scenarios present. I imagine MS collected enough requirements to also justify a full Linux VM. There will be some slowness somewhere, the 2 versions now let you choose on which side of the boundary to place it.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#78

Post by teleforce »

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…

Calm down bro no need to be angry over small things. Technicaly it really running Linux and Windows alongside using Hyper-V and I dare you to find a better word for the technology being implemented.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#79

Post by mehrdadn »

close04 wrote: post #77
mehrdadn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the performance didn't really have anything to do with NTFS. This is trivial to prove if you just try a different filesystem.

WSL 1 and WSL 2 can coexist and be used according to what needs one's scenarios present. I imagine MS collected enough requirements to also justify a full Linux VM. There will be some slowness somewhere, the 2 versions now let you choose on which side of the boundary to place it. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq

They could've instead worked on speeding up the I/O subsystem and sped up Windows altogether. I refuse to believe it's impossible. The more plausible reasons to me seem to be (a) they have to work independently from the I/O subsystem team(s) for whatever reason (maybe they didn't care enough to cooperate), or (b) it's too tricky to get right and prone to bugs, so they preferred not to have to deal with it and risk breaking I/O.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#80

Post by tsar9x »

cloudking wrote: post #20

Big fan of WSL, get power of Windows and the full power of Linux combined. Can easily switch between gaming and development.

One caveat is that WSL2 needs Hyper-V, and many anti-cheats won't work with it (many CS:GO anticheats, I think it will be true for many multiplayer shooters).
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