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

281–290 of 1001 posts

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#281

Post by phendrenad2 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #87
coconut08 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Docker/podman/distrobox/lxc all allow you to do the exact same thing without the virtual machine overhead. I think the real win of WSL is that its a best of all worlds. You get to use Windows with access to every game ever made plus all of the proprietary apps everyone needs to use, with all of the upside of having a full and complete linux command line experience.

You get all of Windows telemetry, vulnerabilities and backdoors, the always fun game of spot the new Advertising opportunity, AI “copilot” spyware I mean feature, updates that reset your machine at will, a terrible UAC model that encourages “just click OK already!”, and dependence on a company that has gone out of their way to prove how much of an unstoppable behemoth they are; and best of all you get to pay for the…

Yes, you get Windows telemetry which enabled fixing bugs without a bug report, you get minimal ads in the start menu (if you're playing "spot the new advertising opportunity" I found it. It's in the start menu. You can stop playing now), AI "copilot" which isn't spyware just because you think it is, updates that ASK you nicely multiple times to update (I don't want to be ableist, if you suffer from a Christopher Nolan Memento-like disability where you don't remember the warnings, you might think it's "resetting at will", but I assure you, it isn't), a great UAC model that's a lot better than "just type your root password into this terminal already, and just hope the binary wasn't hijacked in some way to keylog you, because unlike UAC, there is no visual evidence that you're not getting hacked", and dependence on a company that SV_BubbleTime thinks "has gone out of their way to prove how much of an unstoppable behemoth they are" with no evidence or clarity so they must just be making FUD, and best of all the OS costs so little you can pay it in 8 hours of working as a software developer.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#282

Post by runjake »

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 more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously.

I'd venture to say this depends on which OS you're more comfortable with. I'm more comfortable with Linux, so I'd say it's easier/better/less janky to use Linux as a host OS.

> Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I update my OS?"

Once you're a developer who's been burned by this enough times, you do this with containers or dedicated dev VMs. You do not develop on your host OS and stay sane.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#283

Post by have-a-break »

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…

The development experience is relatively cumbersome compared to using a native Linux distribution and containerizing application dependencies where needed.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#284

Post by yoyohello13 »

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…

Look I get it. I’m forced to use Windows at work and I thank the lord WSL is a thing. But I would switch to Linux base in a heartbeat if I could. WSL is jank as fuck compared to just using Linux.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#285

Post by pathartl »

alex_smart wrote: post #180
thewebguyd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can accomplish the same with Distrobox on Linux, but there's definitely something to be said about having the best of both worlds by running Windows + WSL. I honestly think Microsoft could win back some mind share from Apple if they: * Put out a version of windows without all the crap. Call it Dev edition or something and turn off or down the telemetry, preinstalled stuff, ads, and Copilot. * Put some effort into…

I don't think Microsoft losing the mind share has anything to do with software. Macbooks are winning the laptop war because of superior hardware.

Superior hardware with terrible software. Also they straight up artificially limit their hardware so they don't cannibalize their sales, which is slightly understandable, but they do it in the dumbest ways. My SOs MacBook Air can only do one external monitor, even though it has the same specs as her work Pro. Oh and good luck actually getting that external display to work, I swear only like 50% of USB-C docks work on the platform.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#286

Post by teaearlgraycold »

MrPowerGamerBR wrote: post #220
liendolucas wrote: post #107

I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to use Linux, do the proper switch once and for all. You will never look back. I haven't in almost 15 years. Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine. Edit: more than 15 years.

Except that if you require anything that is GPU-related (like gaming, Adobe suite apps, etc) you'll need to have a secondary GPU to passthrough it to the VM, which is not something that everyone has. So, if you don't have a secondary GPU, you'll need to live without graphics acceleration in the VM... so for a lot of people the "oh you just need to use a VM!" solution is not feasible, because most of the software that…

Quite a lot of people have both integrated Intel graphics and a discrete AMD/NVidia card.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#287

Post by CamperBob2 »

eahm wrote: post #200
nightski wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but with Windows 11 Pro and group policy I was able to disable all of the annoying stuff, and because it is group policy it has persisted through several years of updates. It is annoying you have to do this, and it does take some time to get set up right. But it's a solution. That said I'd pay for a dev edition as you described it, that would be fantastic.

You can make your own clean version, legally, with this file. https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator . I get customers and most people don't know about it but it's kind of ridiculous that techy people in a tech forum don't know how to do it.

This seems pretty useful, thanks! I had certainly never heard of it.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#288

Post by williamscales »

xnickb wrote: post #228
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…

After having used i3 and Sway, Windows is surprisingly bad at handling windows for an OS called Windows. It requires a bit of work to setup to your liking of course, but hey, at least you have an option to set it up to your liking

Agreed. I used tiling WMs for a long while (ion3, XMonad) and it was such a productivity boost.

Then I was forced to use a Mac for work, so I was using a floating WM again. On my personal machine, ion3 went away and I never fully got around to migrate to i3.

By the time I got enough free time to really work on my personal setup, it had accumulated two huge monitors and was a different machine. I found I was pretty happy just scattering windows around everywhere. Especially with a trackball's cursor throw. This was pretty surprising to me at first.

Anyway this is just my little personal anecdote. If I go back to a Linux install I'll definitely have to check out i3 again. Thanks for reminding me :)

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#289

Post by phendrenad2 »

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 use WSL, but I'm actively looking for a way to move away from it. The only thing holding me back are languages like Ruby or Python, which are designed to work in a Unix-like environment. I briefly considered forking Ruby and stripping out all of the Unix-isms but in the end I gave up and just installed Linux (WSL).

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#290

Post by jjcm »

nickserv wrote: post #244
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?

Overwatch is the big one - lots of random issues with it. But basically any game with Denuvo DRM is extremely high risk, resulting in either a ban or the game not running at all.
Post reply on HN