Parallels on Mac did this in reverse a decade ago. You could dual boot windows and MacOS, or you could boot into your windows OS while running MacOS and access both file systems properly.
Ok but MacOS is the worst of the 3 worlds. It can't run Linux or Windows apps
Not true, 86box while slow on new apple ARM silicon can boot windows XP, and QEMU on Intel silicon will allow you to boot all thee OS at once.
MacOS has a lot of issues (mostly by Apple recent policy changes), but posix systems are more alike than different. =3
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…
Well, I'd still rather just use linux, but I take your meaning.
Me too. Particularly after having to do Docker things a few years ago, destroying my productivity due to file system speed. However, for those of us that went Linux many years ago, and like our free open source, in 2025, is it better to go back to the dark side, to run Windows and have things like a LAMP stack and terminals run with WSL? I don't play games or run Adobe products, I use Google Docs and I don't need lot…
for me,
> is it better to run Linux in Windows now? Genuinely asking.
definitely is. Servicing takes ~ 1 minute per month to click on "yeah, let's apply those updates and reboot". Peace of mind with no worrying on external hardware won't work or monitor will have issues or laptop won't sleep or during the call battery will discharge faster due to lack of hardware acceleration or noise cancellation not working or ...
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…
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…
To the tech savvy, there is essentially only one advantage to running Windows, and that is the ability to run Windows-only software. In all technical respects - control, performance, flexibility - it is inferior to the alternatives. Don't confuse vendor lockin with technology.
I find it dismaying that people on Hacker News willingly submit to incredibly user-hostile behavior from Microsoft and call it "the best of both worlds". Presumably a nontrivial proportion here are building the next generation of software products - and if we don't even respect ourselves, how likely is it that we will respect our users?
> 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…
> who need to use Windows for productivity apps and those who don’t. LibreOffice has gotten quite good over the years, including decent(ish) MSO file format interoperability, and Thunderbird seems to support Exchange Server. So, I suppose things like MS Project or MS Visio many not have decent counterparts (maybe, I don't really know), but otherwise, it seems like you don't need-need to use Windows for productivity a…
I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but with Windows 11 Pro and group policy I was able to disable all of the annoying stuff, and because it is group policy it has persisted through several years of updates. It is annoying you have to do this, and it does take some time to get set up right. But it's a solution. That said I'd pay for a dev edition as you described it, that would be fantastic.
You can make your own clean version, legally, with this file. https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator . I get customers and most people don't know about it but it's kind of ridiculous that techy people in a tech forum don't know how to do it.
I didn't know about this. My knowledge of Windows is very limited. I use it every day for work, but it's managed by our IT and Security departments. It's locked down. You cannot use external drives. You can't install applications yourself and you can't run un-approved applications. So, I learned over the years to never touch anything that already hasn't been approved, even settings. If you want to apply for something to be approved, you can submit a written justification co-signed by your manager. My manager has never rejected anything I requested, but it's a huge hassle. Most of us just don't bother, even developers.
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.
Yep, see VS Code etc.
This whole thread is basically frogs praising the cozy warming water in the pot.
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…
You can run multiple linux distros on linux just fine via KVM/QEMU, there is nothing special WSL offers except that it is a must if you're doomed to use windows.
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 always infuriates me when people say Windows is all about games. Techies are so detached from reality they forget that people have creative hobbies and have to use industrial grade software. Doing creative hobbies on Linux is an act of sadomasochism. And on top of that, Linux and MacOS cannot run software from 3 years ago while Windows can run software from 35 years ago. And on top of that, Linux is completely unu…
A fair comment, but the argument I'd make against that is a lot of those creative tools are moving to the web. I personally work for Figma, and have seen that first hand. UI/UX design was entirely OSX/Windows centric for the last 40 years, and now it's platform agnostic. Even video editors are just at the nacent stage of looking at the web as an editor surface.
Totally hear you though for things like CNC milling software that's meant to stay static for the lifetime of the mill - that's not going anywhere.
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…
"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…
> You know what's even more convenient than a VM? Not needing a VM and still having the exact same functionality
I mean this is basically heresy now.
most code is virtualised, or sandboxed, or in a VM, or a docker container, or several of the above at the same time.