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Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

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Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#151

Post by NortySpock »

squarefoot wrote: post #120
AcerbicZero wrote: post #8

WSL seriously changed the amount of work I can do from my gaming PC, but I’m not sure if that’s actually a good thing based on my productivity over the past few months. That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user.

> That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user. That's the tip of the iceberg MS want everyone to see, and point the finger at. MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative since they lost the battle when they attempted to kill it during the Ballmer era. The plan now is more subtle: making sure everyone using L…

So the Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI (WSLg) business plan looks like this, I assume:

Step 1: get lots of devs using WSL / WSL GUI.

Step 2: Get them comfortable with flexibly using WSL GUI on Linux and Windows interchangeably

Step 3: roll out your poison pill: new Version X, offering great compatibility on Windows but bad integration with Linux; maybe Linux support is buggy or nonexistent, maybe the API doesn't mesh with Linux systems at all, maybe it has license conflicts and Linux has to do a rewrite to be FOSS or write a hacky FOSS shim. Whatever creates the most pain for Linux / FOSS users.

Step 4: Stuck with being tied to WSLg, Developers go to the business and say "either we have to spend a lot of time fixing Linux issues or we buy Windows licenses" at which point the business happily buys Windows and Office 365 volume licenses and keeps going.

Step 5: Microsoft maintains its monopoly for another 10 years.

The "I want to stay independent" workaround is (I assume) writing API layers that can serve "thin GUI clients" on multiple platforms (I guess like Electron or a regular web application or something.)

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#152

Post by mainedotpy »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #106
reilly3000 wrote: post #31

I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to support. Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows build or corollary app. I get how ‘you never have to leave Windows’ is a nice thing for their business, but I don’t see this being a reason I would stop dual-booting. The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games. Otherwise I really enjoy the bloat-free, ad-fre…

I think it's mostly a "because they can". WSL is a no-brainer because developers are used to Unix shells and most programming languages are Unix-first, Windows-maybe. But WSLg feels like a weird experiment with no purpose.

This could very well be the case, but as someone who is just dipping a toe into programming, installing and using WSL2 knowing that I can fall back on GUI when I can't figure out bash is a feature for me.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#153

Post by nereye »

cogman10 wrote: post #85
ComputerGuru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of effort that went into WSL1 including the number of bug-for-bug changes involved was tremendous. It blew my mind when WSL2 was announced because the hyper visor approach was already possible (and in use) before WSL1 was announced but MS made an explicit decision to do the extra work to make their own Linux subsystem for Windows the harder/better way… then gave up.

Yeah, the greatest features of WSL1 was the fact that it wasn't a VM. All apps were running natively and managed by the windows kernel. I now have to deal with the fact that every so often the WSL 2 VM will simply consume too much memory, which really stinks. WSL1 felt SO close to being perfect.

You can switch back and forth as required, from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq#what-w...:

What will happen to WSL 1? Will it be abandoned? We currently have no plans to deprecate WSL 1. You can run WSL 1 and WSL 2 distros side by side, and can upgrade and downgrade any distro at any time.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#154

Post by spystath »

lghh wrote: post #87
0des wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embrace Extend Extinguish

What are they extending? What functionality does this add to Linux that is only available on Windows?

One is their DirectX extension that only works on WSL2. It allows you to access the DX API through a shim driver. You can now have a Linux application that needs access to /dev/xdg which is only available in WSL2.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#155

Post by cybernautique »

avodonosov wrote: post #130
cybernautique wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, this is actually a question of values. My position: absolutely not, but I take it as axiomatic that Microsoft (et al.) are incapable of any actual "good." This is simply Window's attempt to build a new walled garden. If they were actually serious about advancing the state of civil computing, they'd make the NT core available as a microkernel that can be modularly placed into the Linux ecosystem. That i…

Why this should be exactly microkernel?

Perhaps it needn't be; I, with my negligible OS dev experience, just like microkernel architectures better. It seems more sensible to have microkernels managed by a microkernel loader. This might be an opinion I come to recant in time. The core of my position is that Microsoft needs to stop doing Microsoft things if they want to be taken seriously as a good faith actor, but I'm not holding my breath.

Until they make moves to break down the walls of their garden, they're just another barrier.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#156

Post by floxy »

pygar wrote: post #100

This is undoubtedly cool but I'm curious to know of a use case that would warrant installing this. Could this just have been a step in creating "Windows Subsystem for Android" [0] that they decided to release as its own layer? The screenshot on the github page shows VSCode, Edge, Blender, Xcalc, Xclock and GNOME file manager which are all either available natively on windows or redundant. [0] https://www.xda-develope…

Hardware drivers for new machines? As in, Windows supports all the hardware in your machine, but Linux doesn't (yet).

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#157

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

themodelplumber wrote: post #58
CraftingLinks wrote: post #21

I just might switch to linux instead.

You can always fall back on the Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI, aka WINE/DOSBox/VMW/VBX/QEMU, with varying levels of integration/fiddle/config.

Varying levels of integration, with fiddling being required less and less (eg. Proton), and with a nuch higher level of privacy. Also, I don't want my computer to feel like a billboard for Candy Crush Saga.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#158

Post by ziftface »

ubercow13 wrote: post #4
phkahler wrote: post #2

>> Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've extended the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop. We've also added various functionality to it, such as support for multi-monitor, cut/paste, audio in/out, etc... Did they push those changes upstream? This seems like it could be another way to run GUI apps in co…

You can already run GUI apps in containers using pure wayland, just bind the socket into the container.

> just bind the socket into the container

I thought Wayland relied on shared memory with the compositor to work? I could be way off though

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#159

Post by waych »

I've been using this for the several weeks on Windows 11 insider builds and its great!

For those asking comparing versus X forwarding, at least for my purposes, I've found X over a socket very limiting in that remote opengl basically stops at version 1.1. With WSLg my apps run on MESA version 4.5, meaning they actually run. I haven't even tried with the vGPU driver yet and its already a very nice improvement.

Would be even nicer if PCIe device assignment wasn't locked behind Windows Server licensing however.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#160

Post by II2II »

reilly3000 wrote: post #31

I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to support. Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows build or corollary app. I get how ‘you never have to leave Windows’ is a nice thing for their business, but I don’t see this being a reason I would stop dual-booting. The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games. Otherwise I really enjoy the bloat-free, ad-fre…

> I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to support.

It would be more of a case of how well certain software works, or how well that software works together, than one of supporting Linux exclusive software. There have been a variety of ways to run Unix software under Windows for decades. Quite often, there are quirks to deal with unless considerable effort has also been put into the Windows native version. I doubt that WSL will actually appeal to many existing Linux users, but it will probably prevent the slow flow of people from Windows to Linux.

I agree that native ext4 support would be more useful for people who dual boot.

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