Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#331

Post by NavinF » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

RamRodification wrote: post #315

apatheticonion wrote: post #305

I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to drop WSL and manage my own VM manually. I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2. This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? Whe…

> I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation Hasn't this been solved for some time now? Or am I misunderstanding what you want? I remember seeing a few articles about using this for gaming on Windows VMs on Linux hosts. I haven't jumped in though so maybe it's not what I think it is. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_with_libvirt_qe... I think it's also definitely in use for c…

Nope, Nvidia will never let you pass PCIe virtual functions to VMs. They'd rather charge 7x the price for data center GPUs with that capability.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#332

Post by Stratoscope » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

kafkaIncarnate wrote: post #312

Stratoscope wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though our dev environment at work is Ubuntu, I greatly prefer running Windows on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme, because of the superior hardware support for the devices I use. Specifically: • I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?), and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu. They pair only…

> I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?) I'm way more productive with email and just a couple phone calls a week as needed.

Ha! Tell me about it. :-)

In truth, I don't spend that much time on Zoom calls, and of the few that I have, many are no video, just substitutes for a phone call with better audio quality and the ability to share screens if needed.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#333

Post by funcDropShadow » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

apatheticonion wrote: post #316

RamRodification wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation Hasn't this been solved for some time now? Or am I misunderstanding what you want? I remember seeing a few articles about using this for gaming on Windows VMs on Linux hosts. I haven't jumped in though so maybe it's not what I think it is. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_with_libvirt_qe... I think it's also definitely in use for c…

I could be wrong but I think you can only pass through an entire GPU as long as it's unused on the host. Sharing a used GPU, in the same way we can share a CPU with no performance loss via Intel Hyper v, is not possible.

Sharing a CPU with no performance loss isn't possible either. The amount of CPU loss varies dramatically by the exact virtualisation stack used and by the application running on top of it, but it is very clearly observable.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#334

Post by NavinF » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

raman162 wrote: post #323

apatheticonion wrote: post #305

I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to drop WSL and manage my own VM manually. I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2. This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? Whe…

What's missing from the Linux Desktop experience for you? I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis, Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manager) is my daily driver. Everytime I switch to windows or Mac os, it always feels like a downgrade for me because I can't replicate the tiling experience. The one thing I love about mac, is the trackpad experience, I wish windows and Linux could get to that level…

1. Update glibc and everything breaks

2. Update Nvidia drivers and everything breaks

3. 99% of laptops have at least one device with missing or broken drivers. 802.11ac is very old in 2021, but the most popular ac chips still need an out-of-tree driver which will break when you update your kernel. Have fun copying kernel patches from random forums

4. Even the smallest of changes (ex: set display scaling to something that's not a multiple of 100%) require dicking around with config files. Windows 10's neutered control panel is still leagues ahead of Ubuntu's settings app. (Why are the default settings so bad? High DPI 4K monitors have been out for a decade now. Maybe they've fixed this since I've last checked. Or maybe all the devs use 10 year old Thinkpads)

5. Every config file is its own special snowflake with its own syntax, keywords, and escape characters

6. Every distro is its own special snowflake so it takes forever to help someone unfuck their computer if you're not familiar with their distro. Releasing software on Linux is painful for a related reason: The kennel has a stable ABI, but distros don't. You have to ship half the distro with every app if you want it to work out of the box. Using Docker for GUI apps is insane, but sometimes that's that you gotta do.

7. The desktop Linux community seems to only care about performance on old crappy hardware.

8. Audio input and output latency is really high out of the box. That's one of many things that require tweaking just to get acceptable performance.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#335

Post by usrusr » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:26 AM UTC

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…

> Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows build or corollary app.

And using them is an endless shuffle with fractured distribution and update. WSL gives you apt-get. And good luck when every port you use integrates with a different subset of the ca 5 SSH options that are in common use on Windows.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#336

Post by nanna » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:27 AM UTC

raman162 wrote: post #323

apatheticonion wrote: post #305

I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to drop WSL and manage my own VM manually. I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2. This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? Whe…

What's missing from the Linux Desktop experience for you? I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis, Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manager) is my daily driver. Everytime I switch to windows or Mac os, it always feels like a downgrade for me because I can't replicate the tiling experience. The one thing I love about mac, is the trackpad experience, I wish windows and Linux could get to that level…

Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friends and familys aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.)

I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#337

Post by nanna » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:28 AM UTC

raman162 wrote: post #323

apatheticonion wrote: post #305

I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to drop WSL and manage my own VM manually. I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2. This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? Whe…

What's missing from the Linux Desktop experience for you? I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis, Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manager) is my daily driver. Everytime I switch to windows or Mac os, it always feels like a downgrade for me because I can't replicate the tiling experience. The one thing I love about mac, is the trackpad experience, I wish windows and Linux could get to that level…

Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friend's and family's aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.)

I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#338

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:35 AM UTC

pharmakom wrote: post #320

Microsoft has so much ego that rather than simply making a Linux distro they insist we run Linux on Windows.

How would a Microsoft Linux distro be different from, say, Ubuntu? Would it bundle WINE, perhaps with Microsoft insider knowledge of how their APIs work? How would they make money on Windows if everyone could just use that?

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#339

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:40 AM UTC

dirkg wrote: post #174

I'd love to use WSL2 but the longstanding issue with slow I/O between WSL NTFS host is a dealbreaker. It basically means you have to keep all your data inside ext4 in Linux and that defeats the whole point - e.g. you can't keep your code, or files you download etc in Windows. With WSL you can keep all data in NTFS, have near native speeds but you can't run a bunch of Linux cmdline tools. I don't know if they can solv…

Does it really defeat the point? I see WSL2 as a Linux VM with less hoops to jump through. Sharing data with the host system isn't useful, since I don't have programs on Windows that need to communicate with programs in Linux, and I store everything in github/gdrive anyway.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

#340

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:40 AM UTC

coding123 wrote: post #230

This reminds me of an old VMWare version where you could break out windows from the guest OS into the host. I'm surprised it wasn't patented by VMWare (or maybe that expired?) Either way, pretty awesome to have this.

Pretty sure VirtualBox has that still.