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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

#421

Post by seventhtiger »

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…

It's the other way around. You can do very few productive things with Windows other than software development. Almost all other professional software assume Windows.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#422

Post by boxfire »

mrpippy wrote: post #32

Note that this doesn't include lxcore.sys, the kernel side driver that powers WSL 1. (Also, I'm surprised that WSL 1 is still supported. It must be in maintenance mode though, right?)

That's the only part I care about dang. I still use WSL1 and have done a number of interesting hacks to cross the ABI and tunnel windows into "Linux" userspace and I'd like to make that easier/more direct

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#423

Post by d--b »

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 I guess now you just need to add WSL support to wine.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#424

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #203
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…

My only big gripe with WSL right now is GUI applications. wslg is not good, and the only good experience is when applications have a good remote development UX such as vscode. Another, smaller, gripe is networking. Because of how WSL is networked, I've run into edge-case issues with connecting to networked applications running in WSL from Windows.

Run a rootless X server (XWin, Xming) on Windows, network the two (SSH tunnel), you have GUI Linux apps on Windows.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#425

Post by frollogaston »

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…

People throw around the ideas of VMs or WINE like it's trivial. It's really not.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#426

Post by tacker2000 »

philshem wrote: post #199
avestura wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft can't name a project leading with a trademark (Linux ), hence why it's called WSL. Source: https://x.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19

If you want to see the thread https://xcancel.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s...

Very interesting comment there:

“ I still hope to see a true "Windows Subsystem for Linux" by Microsoft or a windows becoming a linux distribution itself and dropping the NT kernel to legacy. Windows is currently overloaded with features and does lack a package manager to only get what you need...”

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#427

Post by GuB-42 »

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

This is the kind of statement that makes you pay the karma tax. WSL is great, I use it on a day to day basis. I also use Linux on a day to day basis. And as great as WSL is, for running Linux software on supported hardware, Linux beats WSL hands down. And I mean, of course it does, do you expect a VM to beat native? In the same way that Windows software runs better on Windows. (with a few exceptions on both sides).

Compared to Linux, WSL I/O is slow, graphics is slow and a bit janky, I sometimes get crashes, memory management is suboptimal, networking has some quirks, etc... These problems are typical of VMs as it is hard for the host and guest OS to coordinate resource use. If you have an overpowered computer with plenty of RAM, and are mostly just using the command line, and don't do anything unusual with your network, then sure it may be "better" than Linux. But the truth is that it really depends on your situation.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#428

Post by frollogaston »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #389
asim wrote: post #366

Wow. In 2009, when it looked like Microsoft was the most closed company of all time, I was telling people at work, they should port windows to the linux kernel. What happened over the next 15 years, I don't think people would have believed it if you told them back then. Things have changed.. ALOT. Now granted, this isn't what I said they should do, but you know, eventually they might see the light.

Never see anything Microsoft does in the direction of open source as “they have seen the light”. It’s a trap. Claiming open source friendliness is the bait, Windows is the trap itself.

Yeah I remember when they bought Github and my coworker was telling me how they've turned a new leaf and want to support foss... nope, they wanted to train an AI on all the code there.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#429

Post by Conscat »

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'm sure that feature is important for whatever works you're doing, but that's a feature I've _never_ desired, and WSL is missing plenty of features that are important for my work.

Hardware performance counters basically do not work in WSL2, which among other issues, makes it extremely difficult to use rr. https://github.com/rr-debugger/rr/issues/2506#issuecomment-2... Some people say they got it working, but I and many other users encounter esoteric blockers.

The Dozen driver is never at feature parity with native Linux Vulkan drivers, and that's always going to be the case.

By default, WSL security mitigations cause GCC trampolines to just not work, which partly motivated the opt-in alternative implementations of trampolines last year. https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commit;h=28d8c680aaea46...

gWSL is also a terrible X11 server that makes many very basic window management configurations impossible, and while I prefer VcXsrv, it has its own different terrible issues.

I can imagine that WSL2 looks attractive if all you want to do is run command line apps in multiple isolated environments, but it is miserable for anything graphical or interactive.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#430

Post by oasisbob »

lolinder wrote: post #267
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.

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 flawl…

I'm struggling to find an option for running x86 Windows software on MacOS/Apple Silicon performantly. (LiDAR point cloud processing.)

The possibilities seem endless and kinda confusing with Windows on ARM vs Rosetta and Wine, think there's some other options which use MacOS's included virtualization frameworks.

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