Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#111

Post by Wofiel » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 7:10 AM UTC

krylon wrote: post #108

_qbjt wrote: post #43

Maybe I'm in the minority but I prefer keeping my GNU/Linux and Windows installations separate, with each OS on its own drive. My Linux setup is secure, free of proprietary software and under my full control. When I run tcpdump, I'm met with a clean log where every packet is one I recognize. I get to use my favorite window manager (awesomewm) and I don't have to worry about forced updates. My Windows install is quite…

This is pretty OT, but I feel like it is worth pointing out: > Boot times are very short with SSDs so restarting is not a problem. Personally - this is a question of individual preference, though - I do not mind the OS boot time itself very much (to a degree). Whether the system takes ten seconds or two minutes from reset/power-on to the login screen does not make much of a difference, to me, psychologically. But onc…

You can run things like VcXsrv or Xming, then you can pretty much run anything through them, including window managers. When WSL went mainline I had all sorts of fun playing with it, building Servo and VLC and running them in a tiling wm, just because I could. (Not exactly productive time though)

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#112

Post by Wofiel » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 7:11 AM UTC

Wofiel wrote: post #111

krylon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty OT, but I feel like it is worth pointing out: > Boot times are very short with SSDs so restarting is not a problem. Personally - this is a question of individual preference, though - I do not mind the OS boot time itself very much (to a degree). Whether the system takes ten seconds or two minutes from reset/power-on to the login screen does not make much of a difference, to me, psychologically. But onc…

You can run things like VcXsrv or Xming, then you can pretty much run anything through them, including window managers. When WSL went mainline I had all sorts of fun playing with it, building Servo and VLC and running them in a tiling wm, just because I could. (Not exactly productive time though)

And I can't seem to edit my post, but your comment about it be a Cygwin replacement is spot on. It's definitely replaced the need for it almost entirely.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#113

Post by unixhero » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 7:28 AM UTC

_qbjt wrote: post #43

Maybe I'm in the minority but I prefer keeping my GNU/Linux and Windows installations separate, with each OS on its own drive. My Linux setup is secure, free of proprietary software and under my full control. When I run tcpdump, I'm met with a clean log where every packet is one I recognize. I get to use my favorite window manager (awesomewm) and I don't have to worry about forced updates. My Windows install is quite…

The point here is, it's not how we feel as a desktop user, it's more interesting to think about what new technical solutions can be created because of this.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#114

Post by insanebits » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 7:40 AM UTC

CyberShadow wrote: post #85

beefsack wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to run separate GPUs to achieve this though don't you?

Not necessarily. I managed to get it working with a single GPU, by unbinding it from the host and binding it to the VM. Unfortunately it does mean that you have to stop X11 and all programs, and going back doesn't work (the GPU freezes the machine when the proprietary NVIDIA driver loads), but it's still better than dual-booting because background services continue to run. It certainly is easier with separate GPUs, t…

You can always have multiple VM's with gpu passthrough, so it's almost like dual boot kind of setup, but you can still run other things on the host. It works pretty well for me, only downside being that you're limited to single VM running at the time.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#115

Post by dijit » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 7:41 AM UTC

_qbjt wrote: post #43

Maybe I'm in the minority but I prefer keeping my GNU/Linux and Windows installations separate, with each OS on its own drive. My Linux setup is secure, free of proprietary software and under my full control. When I run tcpdump, I'm met with a clean log where every packet is one I recognize. I get to use my favorite window manager (awesomewm) and I don't have to worry about forced updates. My Windows install is quite…

>Maybe I'm in the minority but I prefer keeping my GNU/Linux and Windows installations separate

I'm excited because everyone at my company doesn't develop on linux because "we know visual studio" and "setting up a build environment will take too much time".

With the linux subsystem for windows, we have the ability to push them to slowly start developing new systems on linux. So I'm super happy about it.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#116

Post by ZoomZoomZoom » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 7:46 AM UTC

kozikow wrote: post #6

I am currently dual booting between Arch Linux and Windows 10. Moving to something like this one day makes me conflicted. On one hand I feel like I would betray open source, on the other hand I wouldn't have to restart my machine to play games...

I suppose by open source you mean free software (because I can't see how you can betray software development methodology by switching OSes). If this is so, than do you understand how silly your alternative sounds? It feels almost like a sarcasm.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#117

Post by piaste » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 8:04 AM UTC

krylon wrote: post #108

_qbjt wrote: post #43

Maybe I'm in the minority but I prefer keeping my GNU/Linux and Windows installations separate, with each OS on its own drive. My Linux setup is secure, free of proprietary software and under my full control. When I run tcpdump, I'm met with a clean log where every packet is one I recognize. I get to use my favorite window manager (awesomewm) and I don't have to worry about forced updates. My Windows install is quite…

This is pretty OT, but I feel like it is worth pointing out: > Boot times are very short with SSDs so restarting is not a problem. Personally - this is a question of individual preference, though - I do not mind the OS boot time itself very much (to a degree). Whether the system takes ten seconds or two minutes from reset/power-on to the login screen does not make much of a difference, to me, psychologically. But onc…

Personally - this is a question of individual preference, though - I do not mind the OS boot time itself very much (to a degree). Whether the system takes ten seconds or two minutes from reset/power-on to the login screen does not make much of a difference, to me, psychologically. But once I log in, I need to open all of these programs, make sure the windows are in the right place, SSH connections to certain machines are open, etc. I admit I am kind of obsessive-compulsive about this, but this is a far greater (psychological) barrier to rebooting than the OS boot time itself.

Hibernation should solve this issue, no? It certainly does on single-OS machines. I practically only shut down my desktop when I want to tweak the hardware and/or BIOS.

It's a little more annoying for dual-OS because there is a 'hibernate' command and a 'reboot' command, but I'm not aware of a 'hibernate-then-reboot' one, so you have to manually hit the power button after hibernating instead.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#118

Post by reddytowns » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 8:30 AM UTC

_qbjt wrote: post #43

Maybe I'm in the minority but I prefer keeping my GNU/Linux and Windows installations separate, with each OS on its own drive. My Linux setup is secure, free of proprietary software and under my full control. When I run tcpdump, I'm met with a clean log where every packet is one I recognize. I get to use my favorite window manager (awesomewm) and I don't have to worry about forced updates. My Windows install is quite…

If you're not using secure boot* and an encrypted Linux partition you are not secure.

(*Or a boot loader on a separate USB drive which is never plugged in while running Windows)

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#119

Post by laurent123456 » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 9:00 AM UTC

piaste wrote: post #117

krylon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty OT, but I feel like it is worth pointing out: > Boot times are very short with SSDs so restarting is not a problem. Personally - this is a question of individual preference, though - I do not mind the OS boot time itself very much (to a degree). Whether the system takes ten seconds or two minutes from reset/power-on to the login screen does not make much of a difference, to me, psychologically. But onc…

Personally - this is a question of individual preference, though - I do not mind the OS boot time itself very much (to a degree). Whether the system takes ten seconds or two minutes from reset/power-on to the login screen does not make much of a difference, to me, psychologically. But once I log in, I need to open all of these programs, make sure the windows are in the right place, SSH connections to certain machines…

Hibernation would work but then you have to make sure that the two operating systems don't share any drive (such as a data drive), because writing on a drive mounted by an hibernated system can cause all kind of weird issues.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#120

Post by teekert » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 9:06 AM UTC

Main advantage I see above Ubuntu would be the Arch User Repo (AUR) which contains almost all software you can think of. Although that can change when Snap picks up speed. Snapd is also available under Arch though. Moreover, Arch will be much more current in general.