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WSL Manager

github.com

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Re: WSL Manager

#51

Post by pjmlp »

lukax wrote: post #3

Looks nice but still a bit sad that Flutter is used instead of something native given that they don't need the app to be cross-platform. Well, even Microsoft uses React Native for a lot of Windows-only apps.

The React Native reason is called C++/WinRT, the teams that internally rioted against C++/CX and came up with C++/WinRT (now in maintenance, go figure), never cared one single second about the Visual Studio experience (using C++/CX was similar to the Delphi/VB like experience from C++ Builder), that everyone else was losing.

Thus React Native is the only alternative left those teams had to have some kind of nice GUI design experience alongside C++/WinRT, when using WinAppSDK, think Qt with QML/C++.

Agree on the Flutter comment.

Re: WSL Manager

#52

Post by pjmlp »

ai-psychopath wrote: post #22
Defenestresque wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I'm not alone in missing native apps. I get that it's easier to code a note-taking Electron app, but every time I look at a Linux terminal app written in JavaScript it makes me want to cry. I know I'm beating a dead HN horse here, but how the hell is it possible that megabytes of embedded JavaScript in websites, to the point that LinkedIn uses about half the RAM I had for my first computer loading 32 MB of J…

> The customers clearly don't want this bloat, citation needed. the customers clearly want it, for example most programmers chose VS Code over a native app

I did not chose VSCode, I only touch it, because there are SDKs whose programmers decided only to support VSCode as Electron fans.

Thus I begrudgingly use VSCode when forced to do so, otherwise I use the IDEs of each OS vendor.

Re: WSL Manager

#53

Post by pjmlp »

krapht wrote: post #47
306bobby wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was a vs code native alternative that was parity, that might not be a case. That's apples and oranges

Sublime Text? Sure, doesn't have the long tail of extensions, but surely most people don't need those. The biggest issue with ST being the fact that it costs money...

And we don't want to pay for tools, while expecting to be paid ourselves, rigth?

Re: WSL Manager

#54

Post by pjmlp »

skhameneh wrote: post #13

This is great and all... Except I’ve long given up on WSL. I really tried to make WSL work for many things, only to find the entire experience (reliability, performance, and beyond) was simply better in every way without Windows. No matter what you do, there will always be some weird platform detection or line termination that pops up somewhere. And if it isn’t that, it’s degraded performance or kernel-level incompat…

I already given up on dual booting around 2010.

The only difference bettween 2010 and 2026, it that nowaday instead of having a mix of Virtual Box/VMWare Workstation depending on my work system, I have WSL 2.

However my Windows develoepr experience goes back to Windows 3.1, thus I mix and match my needs, between Windows and Linux sides.

WSL 2.0, and Virtualisation Framework are really the Year of Linux Desktop. /s

Re: WSL Manager

#55

Post by ghosty141 »

osigurdson wrote: post #12
wongarsu wrote: post #2

The ability to run docker containers as wsl instances looks nifty. A bit more overhead since they now run as a VM instead of a container, but you get the ability to start a shell with Windows terminal or access files with Explorer (and thus every program running in Windows)

Perhaps I misunderstand your comment but when you run docker / podman in Windows, you are using WSL / HyperV.

Just FYI you can also run a windows docker natively in windows without using WSL or any linux component. But that's more of a niche usecase.

Re: WSL Manager

#56

Post by Quarrel »

tonymet wrote: post #34

this is great and I have a feature request: A "refresh VM" feature that exports your home dir + packages into a new VM instance. I've tried Optimize-VHD but renewing the VM this way frees up disk and speeds up the VM as well. None of the WSL settings for sparse disk / disk shrinking seem to work well. Here's what I usually do $ tar -czf /mnt/c/Temp/home-backup.tgz $HOME $ apt list --installed > /mnt/c/Temp/packages.t…

You operate a little cleaner than I do- there are invariably things that end up in /usr/local/bin..

Still, thanks for the process you use.

My wsl is pretty long lived now, through quite a few ubuntu upgrades and installations of stuff that I probably no longer need.

Re: WSL Manager

#57

Post by Jenk »

super256 wrote: post #48
Jenk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time you run `wsl --install ` you are creating a new VM. Every time you run `wsl --unregister ` your are removing a VM. It is these two operations at the heart of OP's app.

No, this is wrong. WSL2 distributions share the same Linux kernel. They only get their own root filesystem with a Linux userland (/bin, /usr, /lib etc), and some WSL config meta data. This is then stored as a virtual disk image (which is probably where your belief comes from). But the kernel runs in a single utility VM. The distros share that kernel instance and they are separated via namespaces only. This makes runn…

I stand corrected. It makes sense that it is a chroot/rootfs rather than fully independent VMs.

re: side-by-side running, I always get socket and/port port problems when doing that. Without having looked into it at all I figure it is NAT collisions.

Re: WSL Manager

#58

Post by xd1936 »

306bobby wrote: post #45
ai-psychopath wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The customers clearly don't want this bloat, citation needed. the customers clearly want it, for example most programmers chose VS Code over a native app

If there was a vs code native alternative that was parity, that might not be a case. That's apples and oranges

Zed?

Re: WSL Manager

#59

Post by andix »

ghosty141 wrote: post #55
osigurdson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I misunderstand your comment but when you run docker / podman in Windows, you are using WSL / HyperV.

Just FYI you can also run a windows docker natively in windows without using WSL or any linux component. But that's more of a niche usecase.

I haven't heard anyone talk about Windows containers in years, and that was actually a good thing. Let's just pretend they never existed.

Re: WSL Manager

#60

Post by guenthert »

tonymet wrote: post #34

this is great and I have a feature request: A "refresh VM" feature that exports your home dir + packages into a new VM instance. I've tried Optimize-VHD but renewing the VM this way frees up disk and speeds up the VM as well. None of the WSL settings for sparse disk / disk shrinking seem to work well. Here's what I usually do $ tar -czf /mnt/c/Temp/home-backup.tgz $HOME $ apt list --installed > /mnt/c/Temp/packages.t…

"delete the VM, create a new one, reverse the process.

   $ tar -cxf /mnt/c/Temp/home-backup.tgz -C $HOME"
That's not going to bring much joy.
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