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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

#261

Post by 1oooqooq »

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…

i think everyone tried that. gpu (games etc) are the only thing holding windows relevant at this point.

i have some 2012 projects were the makefiles also build in msvc. never again.

then 2015 projects with build paths for cygwin. never again.

then some 2019 projects with build scripts making choices to work on msys2/git-bash-for-windows. never again.

now we can build on WSL with just some small changes to an env file because we run a psql container in a different way under wsl... let's see how long we endure until saying never again.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#262

Post by baq »

evanjrowley wrote: post #210
baq wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

openssh has been an optional windows component for... almost a decade now? including the server, so you can ssh into powershell as easily as into any unix-like. (last time I set it up there was some fiddling with file permissions required for key auth to work, but it does work.)

OpenSSH on Windows is great for the odd connection and SFTP session, but I still feel strongly that any serious usage should just stick with PuTTY and WinSCP. The GUI capabilities these provide are what Windows users are used to. The only benefit of built-in SSH is if you're working with some minimal image stuff, like Windows Server Core or Tiny11. IMHO.

IIRC (it's been a while) I used the server with vscode remote ssh extension.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#263

Post by phendrenad2 »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #48
MarkusWandel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My acid test for WSL2 was to install the Linux version of Google Chrome in it, and then play Youtube videos fullscreen with that. It worked. Somehow WSL1 was the more impressive hack but how can you argue with what works? WSL2 works fine. Also 1980s style X11 widgets on the Windows desktop in their own windows? Cool.

I have to say too, though, once you get the hang of the way an EFI system boots, it's really good for dual boot. I let the Linux installer mount the undersized existing one as /boot/orig_efi and made a new, bigger EFI system partition. Not only was the UEFI on that particular laptop fine with it, scanning both EFI system partitions for bootable stuff, but also, grub2 installed in the new one automatically included th…

I don't think people are using WSL to avoid problems with dual booting. Dual-booting has become about as simple as it can be, thanks to UEFI, but it's still not exactly fun to have to close all of your open apps to switch to another OS to run just one app.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#264

Post by skyyler »

russfink wrote: post #252
0xfeba wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They named it “Forscan?” They really named it that, not thinking it could sound close to something else entirely unrelated?

Surely you don't think the executives at Ford expect us to Power Stroke without FORScan?

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#265

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

Perhaps "more powerful" is also a factor of who is the computer user. For example, Linux is not as "powerful" if the computer user is someone who knows little about how to use it.

For a person who will not invest the time to learn, e.g., how to avoid or minimise dependencies, indeed something like Windows with WSL may appear "more powerful".

The point of this comment is that "power" comes from learning and know-how as much as if not more than simply from choice of operating system. That said, some choices may ultimately spell the difference between limitations or possibilities.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#266

Post by 201984 »

ActorNightly wrote: post #157
201984 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

WSL2 can forward USB devices https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/connect-usb I regularly run ADB through WSL2 using this.

That doesn't work for mass storage devices without a custom kernel, and that's just too much hassle to bother with.

https://askubuntu.com/a/1533361

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#267

Post by lolinder »

ActorNightly wrote: post #152
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…

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.

In the same spirit if "it depends", there are other options that may work for people with different Linux/Windows balance points:

* Wine is surprisingly good these days for a lot of software. If you only have an app or two that need Windows it is probably worth trying Wine to see if it meets your needs.

* Similarly, if gaming is your thing Valve has made enormous strides in getting the majority of games to work flawlessly on Linux.

* If neither of the above are good enough, dual booting is nearly painless these days, with easy setup and fast boot times across both OSes. I have grub set to boot Linux by default but give me a few seconds to pick Windows instead if I need to do one of the few things that I actually use Windows for.

Which you go for really depends on your ratio of Linux to Windows usage and whether you regularly need to mix the two.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#268

Post by nickjj »

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…

> It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop or laptop, with no configuration required.

I have been using it since the beginning of WSL 1 with a very terminal heavy set up but it has some issues.

For example WSLg's clipboard sharing is buggy compared to VcXsrv. It doesn't handle pasting into Linux apps without introducing Windows CRs. I opened an issue for this https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/1326 but it hasn't gotten a reply.

Also, systemd is still pretty sketchy. It takes over 2 minutes for systemd services to start and if you close a WSL 2 terminal for just a few minutes systemd will delay a new terminal from opening for quite some time. This basically means disabling systemd to use WSL 2 in your day to day.

Then there's this 6 year old issue with 1,000+ upvotes https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4699 around WSL not reclaiming disk space. It means you need to routinely shut everything down and compress your VM's disk or you'll run out of space.

Beyond that is does work well so I'm happy it exists.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#269

Post by adithyassekhar »

stephenr wrote: post #216
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…

... You know that you can run VMs, or full-OS containers on a Linux desktop right? Or on a macOS Desktop. Bonus: doing so on either platform doesn't also mean your host OS is running under a hypervisor, as it does with WSL2. Bigger bonus: you don't have to run fucking Windows.

Windows by default runs on a hypervisor since some Windows 11 version.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#270

Post by phendrenad2 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #54
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 directori…

> somehow the VM-host networking gets screwed up

> 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

Are you sure you set up the VPN properly? Messing around with Linux configs is a good way to end up with "somehow" bugs like that.

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