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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

#311

Post by damion6 »

bunderbunder wrote: post #217
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.

The thing about WINE is that it's not necessarily solid enough to rely on at work. You never know when the next software upgrade will break something that used to work. That's always true, of course. But, compared to other options, relying on WINE increases the chances of it happening by an amount that someone could be forgiven for thinking isn't acceptable.

If your at work, it's probably a Windows shop. Use windows. At home you can chance a bad update, and probably also have access to windows. Can always use a VM, wine is great in some cases, like WSL. Both don't meet every use case.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#312

Post by Gud »

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…

Can do the same with FreeBSDs Linuxulator. I run Arch Linux on FreeBSD, emulated.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#313

Post by [deleted] »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #160
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 think WSL is great but if your only goal is to run several Linux OSes, any hypervisor will do. I think Proxmox is better suited to your use-case (hosted on Linux). I love WSL because it lets me have the best of Windows and Linux.

[deleted]

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#314

Post by damion6 »

zymhan wrote: post #274
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…

The integration between Windows and the WSL VM is far deeper than a typical VM hypervisor. You cannot claim with a straight face that Virtualbox is easier to use.

Yes, yes I can. Also does most of everything. WSL has severe issues with hardware translation.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#315

Post by rfoo »

int_19h wrote: post #182
behnamoh wrote: post #8

meanwhile Apple won't even make it easy to boot Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon.

On the macOS side, https://github.com/lima-vm/lima is the closest equivalent to WSL. Parallels also has a commercial offering that does some nice GUI-level integration with both Windows and Linux VMs. My understanding is that these are both built on top of some Apple API, and Parallels actually collaborates with Apple on making it work for their use case. So it's not the first-class support that you get from Microsof…

Nah, the closest thing to WSL on macOS is OrbStack.

Exactly same experience to WSL - great out of the box experience, easy to use, and insist on using their own patched kernel.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#316

Post by microtonal »

pathartl wrote: post #285
alex_smart wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My SOs MacBook Air can only do one external monitor,

The MacBook Air M4 supports two external displays now (with the lid open):

https://support.apple.com/guide/macbook-air/use-an-external-...

My SOs MacBook Air can only do one external monitor, even though it has the same specs as her work Pro.

The MacBook Pro with the non-Pro/Max chip (i.e. MacBook Pro M3) has the same limitations as the corresponding MacBook Air (i.e. MacBook Air M3).

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#317

Post by cogman10 »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #300
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…

Is it a VM? It seems to be much faster than most VMs I've used.

Literally built on top of MS's Hyper-V.

IDK how many VMs you've used, but there has been a lot of work specifically with x86 to make VMs nearly as fast as native. If you interact with cloud services everything you do is likely on a VM.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#318

Post by juancn »

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…

Technically it's not a VM, it's a subsystem, the same way Win32, Win64, Posix, OS/2, etc. are.

It's a feature of the NT-family of kernels where you can create many environments sharing the same underlying executive and HAL.

It's a quite interesting way to build an OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#319

Post by rfoo »

candiddevmike wrote: post #6

Can I use a vanilla kernel with it yet?

I think you always can. In the past you may lose some features / have some bugs. For recent kernel versions (>= 6.6) the only patches WSL kernels have is dxgkrnl + some hacky fixes for clock sync. Others are all in upstream already. So you'll just lose WSLg / CUDA passthrough and nothing else now.

Of course, there might be some regressions. They are usually only fixed (upstream) after WSL kernel gets upgraded and it starts to repro in WSL.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#320

Post by 7bit »

1oooqooq wrote: post #261
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…

For me it's Adobe Phuckushop. But yeah, always that one thing holding one back from swapping
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