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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

#241

Post by Grimeton »

DaSHacka wrote: post #47
gjvc wrote: post #3

microsoft open sourcing a lot of things lately

Would really be curious to hear the reason why, from an internal perspective. I've seen a number of theories online that boil down to young tech enthusiasts in the 2000's/early-2010's getting hands-on experience with open source projects and ecosystems since they're more accessible than enterprise tech that's typically gated behind paywalls, then translating into what they use when they enter the working world (where…

- becomes open source under MS control

- three years later it's left in the hands of the powerful community that was built around it with MS help

- MS doesn't have to provide support and it's not their problem anymore

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#242

Post by dismalaf »

alex_smart wrote: post #172
pton_xd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running a Linux VM on Windows is nicer than just booting into Linux? That's quite a take. Windows is so user-hostile these days that I feel bad for those who have to deal with it. Calling it delightful must be symptomatic of some sort of Stockholm syndrome.

> symptomatic of some sort of Stockholm syndrome I have since moved to macbooks for the hardware, but until not too long ago WSL was my linux "distro" of choice because I didn't want to spend time configuring my computer to make basic things work like suspend/wake on lid down/up, battery life, hardware acceleration for video playback on the browser, display scaling on external monitor and so on.

Who deals with this? All this is fine out of the box on a modern Linux distro.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#243

Post by lxgr »

0x457 wrote: post #127
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…

> "More powerful than Linux" is silly. It's a VM. I don't think it's silly. Sure, it's a VM, but it's so nice that I barely reboot into Linux. You get the best of both worlds with WSL.

For me, the best part of running Linux as the base OS is not having to deal with Windows.

No ridiculous start menu spam; a sane, non-bloated operating system (imagine being able to update user space libraries without a reboot, due to being able to delete files that other processes still have opened!); being able to back up my data at the file level without relying on weird block-level imaging shenanigans and so much more.

How is inverting the host/guest relationship an improvement on that?

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#244

Post by nickserv »

jjcm wrote: post #151

When WSL came out I was absolutely overjoyed - finally an actual linux shell on windows! I use windows for my gaming pc, and I wanted to have a unified gaming/dev box. It felt like the solution. Over time though more and more small issues with it came up. Packages working not quite right, issues with the barriers between the two, etc. It always felt like there was a little bit more friction with the process. With Val…

Just curious, which games gave you problems?

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#245

Post by sebtron »

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 agree it is a convenient way to run multiple Linux VMs, but it comes with the drawback of having to use Windows, which is a major impediment to anything I may want to do with my computer.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#246

Post by folkrav »

the__alchemist wrote: post #234
PaulHoule wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With WSL you can use “Linux the good parts” (command line tools, efficient-enough paradigms for fork() servers) and completely avoid X Windows, the Wayland death spiral, 100 revisions of Gnome and KDE that not so much reinvent the wheel but instead show us why the wheel is not square or triangular…

Compiling and testing cross-platform software for Linux lately (Ubuntu and similar)... You can't even launch an application or script without CLI. Bad UX, IMO. For these decisions, There are always reasons , a justification, something about security. I don't buy it.

> You can't even launch an application or script without CLI.

Care to elaborate? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#247

Post by jraph »

alex_smart wrote: post #183
ThinkBeat wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I preferred WSL to running linux directly even though I had no need for any windows only software. Not having to spend time configuring my computer to make basic things work like suspend/wake on lid down/up, battery life, hardware acceleration for video playback on the browser, display scaling on external monitor and so on was reason enough.

All this usually works out of the box now, especially if you pick your hardware accordingly.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#248

Post by nhumrich »

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 is so incredible. But support for it from 3rd party dev tools is so terrible.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#249

Post by trollbridge »

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'll second this, and I'm someone who ran a certain alternative OS to Linux before Linux was viable instead of run Windows, worked as a developer of Win16 and Win32 apps early in my career which gave me a deep love-hate of the platform, couldn't stand Microsoft's monopoly tactics back in the 1990s and 2000s, and remain ever-sceptical of Microsoft's open source and Linux initiatives...

... but WSL is an excellent piece of work. It's really easy to deploy apps on. Frankly, it can be easier to a deployment there than on a Linux or macOS system, for example the reasons detailed above.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#250

Post by 1oooqooq »

0xfeba wrote: post #192
ActorNightly wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if you are working with Linux only, its better to go full linux. WSL2 is really handy when you want to run other software though. For example, I use Solidworks, so I need to run windows. Forscan for Ford vehicles also has to run under Windows. Having WSL2 means that I can just have one laptop and run any software that I want.

> Forscan for Ford vehicles also has to run under Windows. I've successfully run it with WINE. Thought, my Forscan executable was 3 years old or so and that may have changed, but I doubt it.

why bring wine into a vm discussion? just run windows in a vm too. problem solved without entering the whining about wine not being better than windows itself
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