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

91–100 of 1001 posts

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#91

Post by DaSHacka »

cokeandpepsi wrote: post #26
behnamoh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if companies open-source stuff mainly as part of a bigger strategy which primarily benefits them. could it be a way to access to a pool of free, contributing talent?

I mean yeah, the money and growth these days is pulling people into choose their cloud/services platforms

Why was this flagged? This isn't even a secret, a lot of SaaS companies will open source parts of their offerings to increase adoption, making the money back when larger orgs now want to use it, and are willing to pay for enterprise support plans to get the service straight from the horse's mouth.

I think it's a fair exchange too, even as an individual I pay for plenty of smaller open-source SaaS services—even if they're more expensive than proprietary competitors—for the very reason that I could always selfhost it without interruption if SHTF and the provider goes under.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#92

Post by Night_Thastus »

I've been using WSL on and off for Linux development for the last few years.

When it works, it's great! When it doesn't....oh man it sucks. It has been non-stop networking and VPN problems, XServer issues, window scaling issues, hardware accelerated graphics not working, etc. this whole time. I've spent more time trying to fix WSL issues then actually developing software. It's never gotten better.

It's fast. It's powerful. But using it as a daily driver is very painful in my experience. I avoid it as much as possible and do most of my work in MSYS2 instead. Sure, it's much slower. But at least it works consistently and has for years.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#93

Post by ksec »

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…

Now if they could only do Windows 12 by taking baby steps in yearly release of Windows 11.1, 11.2 etc.

Iterating on improvements and polishing on Screens and Design that they haven't touched in the past 30 years. Improving on ARM support etc. And STOP adding Ads on the OS.

And the Surface Laptop continues to push Hardware quality forward. From Speaker, Touchpad, Screen, Motherboard etc.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#94

Post by TiredOfLife »

trey-jones wrote: post #10
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…

Well, I'd still rather just use linux, but I take your meaning.

wsl2 is linux

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#95

Post by JackSlateur »

wkat4242 wrote: post #12
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…

Well, WSL is Linux. It's really just a VM of it (since WSL2, WSL1 was actually running on the windows kernel which was pretty cool). The big drawback to WSL to me is the slow filesystem access because NTFS sucks. And having to deal with Windows in the first place. Ps I wouldn't worry about your karma. It's just a number :P

Is it really a NTFS issue ?

The culprit would be the plan9 bits (think of smb or nfs but .. wilder ? why are they using 9P again ?)

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#97

Post by sweeter »

jchw wrote: post #56
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…

And if they think that this version of Linux "isn't janky" but regular Linux is, than idk what to say.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#98

Post by kcb »

WorldMaker wrote: post #60
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.

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.

There's a --web-download argument which helped with issues when I had limited access to the store.
Post reply on HN