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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

#431

Post by resource_waste »

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.

>Macbooks are winning the laptop war because of superior hardware.

No. This is just you repeating marketing.

No Nvidia chip = B tier at best.

I have a $700 Asus with a 3060 that is better. Go ahead and scale up to a $2000 computer with an Nvidia chip and its so obviously better, there is nothing to debate.

No one cares about performance per watt, its like someone ran a 5k race, came in 3rd and said "Well at least I burned fewer calories than the winner!"

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#432

Post by tuetuopay »

chupasaurus wrote: post #75
tuetuopay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha yes, I was being cheeky :) I'm pretty sure that with the opensourcing, we'll see freebsd or more exotic systems popping up quite quickly. Heck, macOS would be fun!

> Heck, macOS would be fun! Especially in licensing! /sarcasm

That would make it even funnier in my book!

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#433

Post by ec109685 »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #36
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 acid test for WSL2 was to install the Linux version of Google Chrome in it, and then play Youtube videos fullscreen with that. It worked. Somehow WSL1 was the more impressive hack but how can you argue with what works? WSL2 works fine. Also 1980s style X11 widgets on the Windows desktop in their own windows? Cool.

Step it up a notch and see if Netflix works w/ its DRM.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#434

Post by frollogaston »

lenerdenator wrote: post #96
behnamoh wrote: post #8

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

Apple's opinion is probably that if you want to run a *NIX-like OS on their hardware, you should use MacOS. Which is... not necessarily wrong.

Eh, I have a Mac but end up SSHing into some Linux machine pretty often. There are too many differences between the two unless I'm using something like Python or JS. Docker helps too, but that's Linux.

Also, it's really annoying that macOS switched to zsh. It's not a drop-in for bash. Yeah you can change it back to bash, but then any Mac-specific help/docs assume zsh because defaults matter. Pretty fundamental thing to have issues with.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#435

Post by zargon »

Aurornis wrote: post #295
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.

> I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. Every Windows thread on HN is a reminder of the stark divide between people who need to use Windows for productivity apps and those who don’t. The apps I need a Windows machine for are not the kind that virtualize nicely. Anything GPU related means Windows has to become the base OS for me. If you’re running an occasional light tool you…

I prefer to just have two (or three) GPUs than have Windows as the base OS.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#436

Post by frollogaston »

tgma wrote: post #30
behnamoh wrote: post #8

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

Apple has gone out of their way to build first party virtualization APIs in their OS to boot a Linux VM directly by specifying kernel and initrd on disk. That would be a direct point of comparison to WSL, not Asahi. What are you talking about? [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzl... P.S. They also specifically built Rosetta for Linux to compile x64 Linux binaries into aarch64 to run insid…

I don't know about any of that, just that as a user, I cannot run Linux on my Mac easily.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#437

Post by tgma »

frollogaston wrote: post #436
tgma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has gone out of their way to build first party virtualization APIs in their OS to boot a Linux VM directly by specifying kernel and initrd on disk. That would be a direct point of comparison to WSL, not Asahi. What are you talking about? [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzl... P.S. They also specifically built Rosetta for Linux to compile x64 Linux binaries into aarch64 to run insid…

I don't know about any of that, just that as a user, I cannot run Linux on my Mac easily.

You can’t? Just install UTM for a full VM one-click install (easier than wsl /install and two reboots) or any number of docker thingies that people build for the Mac.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#439

Post by speed_spread »

juancn wrote: post #318
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…

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

You're thinking of the POSIX personality of Windows NT of old. This was based on Interix and has been deprecated about two decades ago and is now buried so deep that it couldn't be revived.

The new WSL1 uses kernel call translation, like Wine in reverse and WSL2 runs a full blown Linux kernel in a Hyper-V VM. To my knowledge neither of these share anything with the aforementioned POSIX subsystem.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#440

Post by frollogaston »

tgma wrote: post #437
frollogaston wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about any of that, just that as a user, I cannot run Linux on my Mac easily.

You can’t? Just install UTM for a full VM one-click install (easier than wsl /install and two reboots) or any number of docker thingies that people build for the Mac.

Hm, never heard of that one but I'll try it.
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