Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 1001 posts

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#51

Post by bsnnkv »

elif wrote: post #7

Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop…

I will also die on this hill - NixOS on WSL + Windows + komorebi[1] for tiling window management is peak productivity for me.

[1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#52

Post by Firehawke »

wkat4242 wrote: post #16
tuetuopay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a... VM? Like the Linux VMs running on Linux computers in the cloud? Sorry but not sorry, it's not easier to run than on linux. It requires the Windows store to work, and to use Hyper-V (which breaks VMware workstation, among other things). It's in a better package, to be sure, but it's not "easier to run multiple OS on the same computer". It's easier to use multiple OSes (no SSH, GUI forwarding, etc), as long a…

> Want FreeBSD or Windows? Nope! Well, it is windows subsystem for Linux :) not windows subsystem for windows or FreeBSD for that matter :) Ps I wonder if you can make your own image? After all its really just Hyper-V with some config candy.

It's a bit more than just some candy, there's substantial glue on both the Linux/Windows sides to get Plan9, WSLG, and the other components to work.

That said, the kernel they distribute is open source and you're not limited to just the distros they're working with directly. There are a number of third party (e.g. there's no Arch from Arch or Microsoft, but there's a completely compatible third party package that gives you Arch in WSL2)

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#54

Post by ndriscoll »

elif wrote: post #7

Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop…

I find it to be incredibly janky. Pretty much every every time my computer sleeps (so every morning, at least) I have to restart it because somehow the VM-host networking gets screwed up and VS code connections into the VM stop working. You also can't just put things in your Windows User directory because the filesystem driver is so slow that git commands will take multiple seconds, so now you have two home directories to keep track of. There were also some extremely arcane things I had to fix when setting it up involving host DNS and VPN adapter priority not getting propagated into the VM so networking was completely broken. IIRC time would also not match the host after a sleep and get extremely far out of sync, though I haven't run into that for a while since now I have to reboot Windows constantly anyway.

I don't have a need to run multiple OSes though. All of my tools are Linux based, and in companies that don't let people run Linux, the actual tools of the trade are almost all in a Linux VM because it's the only reasonable way to use them, and everything else is cross-platform. The outer OS just creates needless issues so that you now need to be a power user with two operating systems and their weird interactions.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#55

Post by jahy-notes »

elif wrote: post #7

Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop…

Previously, I had dual boot with ubuntu and windows. Sometime last year I just removed ubuntu, and haven't regretted it.

wsl works good enough.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#56

Post by jchw »

elif wrote: post #7

Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop…

"More powerful than Linux" is silly. It's a VM. The most useful thing is that it does a bunch of convenience features for you. I am not suggesting that it is not extremely convenient, but it's not somehow more powerful than just using Linux.

You know what's even more convenient than a VM? Not needing a VM and still having the exact same functionality. And you don't need a bunch of janky wrapper scripts, there's more than one tool that gives you essentially the same thing; I have used both Distrobox and toolbx to quickly drop into a Ubuntu or Fedora shell. It's pretty handy on NixOS if I want to test building some software in a more typical Linux environment. As a bonus, you get working hardware acceleration, graphical applications work out of the box, there is no I/O tax for going over a 9p bridge because there is no 9p bridge, and there is no weird memory balloon issues to deal with because there is no VM and there is no guest kernel.

I get that WSL is revolutionary for Windows users, but I'm sorry, the reason why there's no WSL is because on Linux we don't need to use VMs to use Linux. It's that simple...

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#57

Post by Firehawke »

tuetuopay wrote: post #49
wkat4242 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really need the store? I thought you could just go "wsl install" on the console.

You're likely right, I haven't used it in ages. Though I recall that at one point you had to get distributions from the Store, but it may have been that long ago that it was still being called "Bash for Windows".

As of 24H2, you can just "wsl install" from the commandline and it'll do all necessary setup to get you up and running, including installation of Hyper-V components if needed.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#58

Post by Matl »

OT but the name irks me; Windows subsystem for Linux makes it sound like some sort of official Wine layer. It's a Linux subsystem for Windows if anything.

It makes it sound like Microsoft is giving some capability to Linux whereas it's the other way around.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#59

Post by [deleted] »

elif wrote: post #7

Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop…

[deleted]

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#60

Post by WorldMaker »

wkat4242 wrote: post #13
tuetuopay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a... VM? Like the Linux VMs running on Linux computers in the cloud? Sorry but not sorry, it's not easier to run than on linux. It requires the Windows store to work, and to use Hyper-V (which breaks VMware workstation, among other things). It's in a better package, to be sure, but it's not "easier to run multiple OS on the same computer". It's easier to use multiple OSes (no SSH, GUI forwarding, etc), as long a…

Does it really need the store? I thought you could just go "wsl install" on the console.

The files, including and especially the distro files, `wsl install` installs still originate from the Store's CDN, so the truly paranoid that distrust the Store (including some corporate environments) and just entirely block Store CDN access at the DNS and/or firewall level still break WSL installs.
Post reply on HN