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Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

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Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#291

Post by HelloNurse »

lukevp wrote: post #137
inyorgroove wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is once Hyper-V is installed and enabled, no other VM can even be started regardless of no Hyper-V VMs actually running. This limitation does not exist on linux afaik. I have run libvirt based VMs and VirtualBox VMs at the same time on linux just fine in the past.

That’s not what’s happening. Hyper-v is a type-1 hypervisor. When it’s running, even your Windows instance is running within hyper-v. Windows 10 has the hypervisor platform that lets other vm developers hook into the hyper-v host architecture, that’s how you can get android emulators and virtualbox running under hyper-v. It all works fine but is a little unintuitive to set up.

If both VirtualBox and VMware give up on Hyper-V coexistence, it must be a bit worse than "unintuitive".

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#292

Post by kesor »

For those of you who will be running Docker Desktop on WSL2 - which allows to "transparently" use the "docker" command on your other Linux that runs in WSL2. And allows to use your WSL2 "other Linux" filesystem to share volumes with Docker containers! ..

Anyway, you need to know that when this stupid Docker and/or WSL2 VM is taking up all your Windows 10 memory - not all is lost.

Using these two commands, you can force WSL2 to give back the memory it is holding prisoner!

    echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
    echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory
Especially if the one doing the mess is the "VM" of Docker.

Now that Docker Desktop is using WSL2 instead of its own VM, you can't see the bastard in Hyper-V console at all... apparently the whole WSL2 VM is not seen in Hyper-V console, even though it IS a damn VM. But it does appear in Task Manager as "Vmmem" and taking up gigabytes of your memory.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#293

Post by hectorchu »

bad_user wrote: post #252

I have a MacBook Pro that I wanted to turn into a Windows laptop. Unfortunately if you install Windows from scratch, without going through Bootcamp to install it side by side with MacOS, Hyper-V support is disabled. This means that I cannot use WSL2. Or Windows, since without a working Linux environment it's useless to me and I don't want to invest in WSL v1. Might as well go for Ubuntu 20.04.

I found a way to run Windows from scratch and have Hyper-V enabled. Just install rEFInd boot manager and use 'enable_and_lock_vmx true' in the config.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#294

Post by vbezhenar »

rfoo wrote: post #271
oxalorg wrote: post #269

I've been a happy user of WSL2 since 2 months, and I absolutely love it. After switching to it, I completely stopped using Mac Mini and Linux. It has made my life so easier. All the Linux stuff + development work gets done inside Windows Terminal + WSL2 + NeoVim, and I still get to keep Windows for Gaming, Designing, Office work, other random programs etc.

I've been a happy user of running a Linux VM (without X) besides Windows since 6 years ago (first VirtualBox, then Hyper-V after switching to Win10) :p Congrats to WSL2 team, they introduced this pattern to a much wider audience.

Yep, using VirtualBox and it works fine for me. I don't use Hyper-V because it's buggy with my build for some reason (Nvidia driver crashes, BSODs). I don't really get this WSL 2 hype.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#295

Post by _ph_ »

A great step. but I feel I have to repeat my "ceterum censeo" of saying that wsl would really benefit, if Microsoft would add a native Wayland support so that the Windows Deskop would appear as a Wayland server for the Linux VM. This would allow any Wayland-compatible Linux application to run seamlessly on the Windows desktop and fully utilizing the native graphics drivers.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#296

Post by sandGorgon »

WSL2 is a fantastic product. The ability to debug python code on ubuntu and alt-tab to Steam is unparalleled.

However there is a fundamental issue - Microsoft is treating this as a toy project. The number 1 problem is that the file system inside an Ubuntu shell/wsl2-container is sitting inside a hidden file system.

It is is not exposed to the rest of windows and neither to backup tools like Dropbox, etc. So you have a huge chance of losing important documents inside a WSL2 container. Now, you can "Cd /c/Documents" and do your work - but this filesystem is unimaginably slow. Not sure if it is because of file mounts, etc. The performance is incredibly bad.

If there are WSL2 devs here - please make the working container filesystem as a first class directory inside the rest of windows. I'll live with performance issues for a while...but this is a blocker.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#297

Post by macca321 »

rkagerer wrote: post #61

Am I the only one who thinks this was named backwards? Like, it should been: Linux Subsystem for Windows , or maybe Windows' Subsystem for Linux

https://twitter.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610

>Because we cannot name something leading with a trademark owned by someone else. > >Think of it as Windows' Subsystem for Linux. >#ApostrophiesMatter

Just be glad we didn't call it Subsystem For Running POSIX/GNU/Linux Binaries on Windows (SFRPGLBW)

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#298

Post by ccmcarey »

sandGorgon wrote: post #296

WSL2 is a fantastic product. The ability to debug python code on ubuntu and alt-tab to Steam is unparalleled. However there is a fundamental issue - Microsoft is treating this as a toy project. The number 1 problem is that the file system inside an Ubuntu shell/wsl2-container is sitting inside a hidden file system. It is is not exposed to the rest of windows and neither to backup tools like Dropbox, etc. So you have…

I think this is not correct.

You can go to \\wsl$\ and it shows each wsl install as a network drive.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability

#299

Post by ccmcarey »

skrebbel wrote: post #234
veesahni wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe WSL2 was designed to keep your files inside on ext4 instead of outside on NTFS.

But what's the point of that? If I wanted my files to be on Linux I'd use Linux. I'm on Windows exactly because of things like this: the ability to use proper UI tools like Explorer to manage my files. How do I do that with WSL2?

Go to \\wsl$\ and it mounts the WSL instances as network drives.
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