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Microsoft Rolling Out New Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" Features for 2024

phoronix.com

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: Microsoft Rolling Out New Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" Features for 2024

#32

They should focus more on this kind of features, instead of paddling Copilot and AI every 5 minutes, or doing crazy stuff like removing the right Ctrl key to replace it with the new Copilot key. The only advantage of the latter is that is pushes more people to Linux faster. If they just focus instead on developers ( "developers! developers! developers!" ) and gamers, instead of AI gimmicks, things would be more peach…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Rolling Out New Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" Features for 2024

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people prefer Windows + WSL over Mac. I can’t fathom why anyone would choose Windows over Mac or Linux.

I’m mostly on Mac but I do prefer WSL to the Mac terminal experience. Most things end up happening in Docker regardless, but things are just smoother in WSL. Not to mention that Windows has proper Window management and multiple display support.

I use Rectangle for window management and have 3 monitors. I’m really not sure what you mean by the multiple display support. The window management is easy to rectify with Rectangle or Spectacle.

Re: Microsoft Rolling Out New Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" Features for 2024

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Satya Nadella would dogfood the OOTB experience of Windows 11 and not whatever his IT departments set up for him, he'd probably throw his laptop out the window and fire half the Windows managers.

What's wrong with the OOTB experience? It's a million times better than it was back when I lived in the Windows OOTB experience. It seems much better than the OOTB of Ubuntu, although probably less good than MacOS.

From memory: Ads. Weather and stock market info. Removal of options and features from windows 10 (why can't I have the taskbar vertically on the side of my wide monitor?). Flaky, slow and inconsistent bluetooth and sound controls. More and more things moving from control panel to settings where they are being dumbed down, leading to a lot more googling to figure out how to change things. Windows desperately trying to save things in onedrive rather than on the local disk. Really really trying to open everything in edge instead of the default browser.

Re: Microsoft Rolling Out New Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" Features for 2024

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Satya Nadella would dogfood the OOTB experience of Windows 11 and not whatever his IT departments set up for him, he'd probably throw his laptop out the window and fire half the Windows managers.

What's wrong with the OOTB experience? It's a million times better than it was back when I lived in the Windows OOTB experience. It seems much better than the OOTB of Ubuntu, although probably less good than MacOS.

Without even getting into Recall, every time I install Windows 11 (not even a consumer edition) it takes a solid 10 minutes of clicking multiple times on hard to find options to disable the pre-AI spyware that merely monitored what you did for advertising purposes. And I know exactly where to click because I have to do it a lot.

I run a lab with public computers for students to use in their projects. It is unhelpful to train a public computer with student data, even if it were ethical (it is not). Again, not going to get into the issues with Recall on public PCs... but you can use your imagination when students check their email on a public Windows computer.

I set up dozens of computers in this lab each year from scratch, it actually hurts my mouse hand to have to click so many times in order to keep students' information private. Windows 11 has ~10x as many individual dialogs I have to click on than even Windows 10, and now I have to figure out how to disable even more unsafe stuff, or guess when they will silently re-enable something I previously disabled. The number of times OneDrive has reinstalled itself after a Windows Update is nauseating.

And that's a fancy Enterprise edition for a university that had the leverage to get the worst stuff removed, I am sure I was able to add/remove programs to remove a lot of things that are just impossible to disable on a normal install.

Re: Microsoft Rolling Out New Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" Features for 2024

#39

Microsoft Windows must be one of the world's biggest Linux distributions.

WSL provides the means to run a distribution, it doesn’t provide its own. Ubuntu is the default, but others are officially supported.

The joke is that Windows provides a refined frontend to the otherwise fervid chaos that is Linux, and thus makes Windows de facto the largest (and best?) Linux distro.

Re: Microsoft Rolling Out New Windows Subsystem for Linux "WSL" Features for 2024

#40
post #3

I was always under the impression that WSL was good on RAM - giving it back when not needed. There was never a way to tune RAM usage AFAIK.

It's only good on RAM at first. I've got to reboot my machine somewhat regularly or it gets out of control, and that's on a machine with 32GB.
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