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The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

blogs.windows.com

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Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#141

Post by jcranmer »

jleyank wrote: post #88
wging wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE

IANAL, but how is this license different from, say, the older BSD license - thought that was "have fun, do what you want, post a notice"? It doesn't say anything regarding ownership of changes, nor how to add copyright for such changes... Does this mean that MS is looking to own changes, or will there be a string of extra copyright notices for each (significant?) change?

The MIT license scrunches the first two clauses of the 3-clause BSD license into a single clause, and omits the third clause (the nonendorsement clause, which is already generally implied). As a practical matter, most of the basic "simple" open source licenses are functionally identical.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#143

Post by tgma »

magicalist wrote: post #109
tgma wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you worked at any of these large companies? It’s really easy actually (practically, not emotionally). It’s usually very obvious and there’s consensus who the bottom 10% are. Politics would affect promotions much more than layoff.

> It’s usually very obvious and there’s consensus who the bottom 10% are But the latest layoffs were not performance based. Are you just confidently commenting without knowing about the event being discussed?

You believe what you want to believe. That’s the lie of the century. Every single layoff is performance based to some degree. Sure you want to consolidate a couple orgs or shut down a project or an office and you lump that together with your performance based stuff.

(Also I was responding to a more generic comment saying doing layoff is bad and makes org more political.)

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#144

Post by fsloth »

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…

This is very much YMMV thing. There is no objectively best platform. There are different users and requirements.

I’ve been a software developer for 20 years and in _my_ opinion Windows is the best platform for professional software development. I only drop of to linux when need some of the excellent posix tools but my whole work ergonomy is based on Windows shortcuts and Visual Studio.

I’ve been forced to use Mac for the past 1.5y but would prefer not to.

Why would Windows be superior for me? Because that’s where the users are (for the work stuff I did before this latest gig). I started in real time graphics and then spent over a decade in CAD for AEC (developing components for various offerings including SketchUp). The most critical thing for the stuff I did was the need to develop on the same platform as users run the software - C++ is only theoretically platform independent.

Windows API:s are shit for sure for the most part.

But still, from this pov, WSL was and will be the best Linux for me as well.

YMMV.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#147

Post by mikojan »

ryanhecht wrote: post #53

Maybe someone will finally build my dream: a WSL distro that I can also dual-boot natively. I'd love to switch between bare-metal Windows with WSL and bare-metal Linux with virtualized Windows at my leisure!

When you use WSL2, Windows itself is running virtualized on Hyper-V.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#148

Post by ActorNightly »

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

>The big drawback to WSL to me is the slow filesystem access because NTFS sucks

Thats if you are going from VM/host. If you use the allocated space for VM, its pretty fast.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#149

Post by 201984 »

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…

WSL gives you no support for USB devices, which is a massive pain for embedded development when IT forces you to use Windows. Also, this might just be specific to my setup but WSL networking is very finicky with my company's VPN, and breaks completely if the VPN ever drops out requiring a full reboot.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#150

Post by randunel »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #139
jchw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Your comment that you can do Linux things on Linux missed the point entirely. Where is the reverse WSL on Linux, where Windows is deeply embedded and you have all the Windows features in your hands? You can use Wine/Crosseover, which is cool, but even now the number of software products it supports is tiny. Steam has a lot of games. You can run a virtual machine with Windows on it. That is identical to what you can d…

Windows supports Linux because the latter is open source, it's a lot easier than the reverse.

Linux, on the other hand, barely supports Windows because the latter is closed, and not just closed, windows issues component updates which specifically check if they run in wine and stop running, being actively hostile to a potential Linux host.

The two are not equivalent, nobody in the Linux kernel team is actively sabotaging WSL, whereas Microsoft is actively sabotaging wine.

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