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Initial Impressions of WSL 2

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Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#141

Post by ACS_Solver »

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…

I'm a Linux user, and to me WSL2 sounds like it actually makes Windows pleasant to use. Now, I haven't used Windows 10 at all. The last time I used Windows was Win7 on a work project in 2016, and it was a typical experience for me - lots of annoyance due to lacking tools. MSYS is really lacking, I used Cygwin to do most of my work in a Linux-like environment with good versions of Linux tools, but it's annoying nonetheless. Occasional problems with Windows interop, occasional annoyance due to Cygwin packages not quite acting like the real ones, and so on.

Seems like with WSL2, one could run Windows but do all the work using native Linux tools while enjoying quality integration with Windows. It's not a setup I would actually prefer over Linux but it should make any work where Windows is required much more pleasant.

On a personal level it's interesting that Windows is getting WSL right around the time when I stoppped booting my Windows install for games. Proton has been amazing, changed Linux gaming completely almost overnight. It's still not the same experience as on Windows, but between Proton and even the occasional native Linux port of a big-budget game - no longer an extreme rarity - I've been able to play games on Linux like never before.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#142

Post by lostmsu »

Naomarik wrote: post #25
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.

I've also switched from Mac to a Ryzen desktop. So far the experience has been extremely good and performance is amazing. Been working with clojure and react native on WSL2 several months now. I didn't want it to be this way though. Apple has been continuously pushing out laptops that are not what I want. My Mac is also notifying me nonstop about 2FA authentication and iCloud storage, and I can't seem to turn those o…

Why do you guys even use WSL? React does not work on Windows proper? If a few command line tools is all you need - there is MSYS and Git Bash. Genuinely curious: I use it mostly for testing, as some of the software we make supports Linux.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#143

Post by nickjj »

Jekyll is the only thing I don't run in Docker and it's nice to see he went from 8s to half a second.

Full builds for my site (almost 300 posts) takes like 20 full seconds, but incremental builds when actively writing to see changes takes about 3 seconds.

So if that 3 seconds ends up being half a second or less that would be a pretty big quality of life improvement.

For Docker related projects (Flask, Rails, Phoenix, Webpack, whatever), WSL 1 is quite speedy already since the mount is happening in the Linux VM running Docker Desktop, not the WSL mount. I wonder if this will end up being any faster with a WSL 2 back-end for Docker Desktop. I'll have to wait until WSL 2 hits Windows stable to try it out.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#144

Post by pashky »

tsar9x wrote: post #89
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…

My view is that WSL2 will help developers who are stuck on Windows (many enterprises force Windows on users). I don't think Linux will be affected as much. Moreover, Linux is better than ever: - you can buy laptop with Linux from two companies: Dell and System76, soon from Lenovo - performance can't be beat (especially for development, with native docker and kvm for virtualization) - amazing package managers, with fw…

In reality enterprise users on have zero chances seeing WSL2 on their PCs in foreseeable future. Last two banks I worked for ran windows builds 1703 and 1803 respectively, more progressive of the two announced plans to update to 1903 not too long ago (yes, two first digits is year).

Oh, and WSL1 was banned, of course, on the grounds of being "too expensive and uncertain to support". You could have a Linux VM though, with approved distro, same as what prod machines run.

So really WSL is still confined to a small domain of switchers tired of MBP keyboards, Linux is safe for now :)

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#145

Post by vel0city »

GGfpc wrote: post #85
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What makes windows better than osx for VR?

Well, one of the biggest platforms for VR gaming has dropped support for Mac OS.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/1/21244468/steam-mac-support...

Coupled with a history of GPU driver support usually being best on Windows and having good GPU support is usually pretty important for VR, its pretty clear why Windows is probably the best platform for VR development at the moment.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#146

Post by tyingq »

drewg123 wrote: post #135
tyingq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but translating syscalls across two Unix like systems is likely much easier. Big parts of it even just straight mapping one number to another.

This is somewhat true, but not entirely. You have to remember that FreeBSD and Linux share no common ancestors, and FreeBSD defines its ABI at the libc level, whereas Linux defines it at the syscall level. There are also subtle differences in how various internal kernel mechanisms work (such as flag definitions for calls). See linux_common_open() for an example of an "easy" straight mapping. https://github.com/freebs…

That's a great rundown. I didn't mean to oversimplify the effort. Just to say that mapping Linux to Windows is likely much harder.

The lseek() call in your link is closer to what I meant by simple.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#147

Post by bitwize »

> When you compile the whole gotdanged planet on every file save, you do a lot of disk writes and stat calls on tens of thousands of files.

What kind of bizarre twisted hellscape do we live in where we just accept this as normal -- for a web page.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#148

Post by steveklabnik »

lostmsu wrote: post #142
Naomarik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also switched from Mac to a Ryzen desktop. So far the experience has been extremely good and performance is amazing. Been working with clojure and react native on WSL2 several months now. I didn't want it to be this way though. Apple has been continuously pushing out laptops that are not what I want. My Mac is also notifying me nonstop about 2FA authentication and iCloud storage, and I can't seem to turn those o…

Why do you guys even use WSL? React does not work on Windows proper? If a few command line tools is all you need - there is MSYS and Git Bash. Genuinely curious: I use it mostly for testing, as some of the software we make supports Linux.

I switched to Windows full time a few years back. I started with WSL1, but ran into some serious bugs (that have since been fixed) and made the full jump fairly quickly.

I think a lot of folks take this path because it's just easier. The fact that I know I can do most of the stuff the same way I always have makes it an easier decision to make. I think there's also, for some people, an ideological component, that is, they're still using UNIX, it just happens to be in a Windows host, and that's easier to accept than come to terms with Windows just being a decent OS on its own merits. (I am not saying anyone in particular in this thread is that kind of person, of course.)

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#149

Post by bootlooped »

rvz wrote: post #12

That's great news, thinking about replacing my Ubuntu Linux install for Windows and having WSL2 if these changes and performance improvements are accurate. Windows Terminal looks pretty cool too, reminds me of Terminal.app on macOS with blurred backgrounds and theming too. Very cool blog post!

The Windows Terminal app is very snazzy. I have only run into one problem with it, relating to using tmux.

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/176

This is not a showstopper for me though, and I have been using it as my primary terminal application for many months.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#150

Post by lyricaljoke »

lostmsu wrote: post #142
Naomarik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also switched from Mac to a Ryzen desktop. So far the experience has been extremely good and performance is amazing. Been working with clojure and react native on WSL2 several months now. I didn't want it to be this way though. Apple has been continuously pushing out laptops that are not what I want. My Mac is also notifying me nonstop about 2FA authentication and iCloud storage, and I can't seem to turn those o…

Why do you guys even use WSL? React does not work on Windows proper? If a few command line tools is all you need - there is MSYS and Git Bash. Genuinely curious: I use it mostly for testing, as some of the software we make supports Linux.

I develop multi-platform C and C++ code (intermingled with some python for testing and automation), and my experience has been that while MSYS + Git Bash works, I run into 'rough edges' on that side much more frequently than on the WSL side.
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