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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

#521

Post by aeroevan »

CoolCold wrote: post #468
pton_xd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running a Linux VM on Windows is nicer than just booting into Linux? That's quite a take. Windows is so user-hostile these days that I feel bad for those who have to deal with it. Calling it delightful must be symptomatic of some sort of Stockholm syndrome.

> Running a Linux VM on Windows is nicer than just booting into Linux Indeed, it does. Having stable system and not dealing with Linux on Desktop, clear tradoffs (like "just add another 16gb RAM stick in laptop/desktop and you are golden") is great for peace of mind. The average uptimes on my laptops (note for plural) is ~3 weeks, until next Windows Update to be applied. I don't have nostalgia on the days of using Li…

I'm confused, in what world does running Linux require more RAM than Windows?

The suspend/hibernate on laptops isn't that great, but tbh I never had great results on windows either (macos is decent though).

And uptimes for desktop systems are similarly just limited by whenever there's a kernel update.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#522

Post by aeroevan »

frollogaston wrote: post #202
coconut08 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Docker/podman/distrobox/lxc all allow you to do the exact same thing without the virtual machine overhead. I think the real win of WSL is that its a best of all worlds. You get to use Windows with access to every game ever made plus all of the proprietary apps everyone needs to use, with all of the upside of having a full and complete linux command line experience.

Because it's easier to set up a local dev environment in WSL than in any of those.

How is it easier to setup a linux dev environment in WSL than in https://containertoolbx.org/ or https://distrobox.it/ or just in Linux directly?

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#523

Post by nickjj »

CoolCold wrote: post #511
nickjj wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop or laptop, with no configuration required. I have been using it since the beginning of WSL 1 with a very terminal heavy set up but it has some issues. For example WSLg's clipboard sharing is buggy compared to VcXsrv. It doesn't handle pasting into Linux apps without introducing Windows CRs. I opened an issue for this https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/iss…

never had problems of systemd/2 minutes delays not sure what would be the correct test here, but: root@LP-T16:~# uname -rn LP-T16 5.15.167.4-microsoft-standard-WSL2 root@LP-T16:~# time systemctl restart ssh real 0m0.039s user 0m0.008s sys 0m0.001s

The delay is related to starting WSL 2, not starting a systemd service btw.

Maybe it's specific to Windows 10 Pro, who knows. I'm using the latest WSL 2 from the MS app store.

I just know when I installed Docker directly into WSL 2, when I launched a terminal I could not run `docker info` and connect to the Docker daemon for 2 minutes. The culprit was the Docker service was not available. I was able to reproduce this on Arch and Ubuntu distros.

Separate to that systemd also delayed a terminal from opening for ~15 seconds (unrelated to Docker).

After ~10 minutes of the terminal being closed, both issues happened. They went away as soon as I disabled systemd.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#524

Post by gapan »

pathartl wrote: post #285
alex_smart wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Superior hardware with terrible software. Also they straight up artificially limit their hardware so they don't cannibalize their sales, which is slightly understandable, but they do it in the dumbest ways. My SOs MacBook Air can only do one external monitor, even though it has the same specs as her work Pro. Oh and good luck actually getting that external display to work, I swear only like 50% of USB-C docks work on…

> Superior hardware with terrible software.

Funny how that was the other way around just a few years ago. Macs had inferior hardware, but they were supposed to have better software. At least that's what the Mac users claimed.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#525

Post by bigfatkitten »

ActorNightly wrote: post #152
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…

Yeah if you are working with Linux only, its better to go full linux. WSL2 is really handy when you want to run other software though. For example, I use Solidworks, so I need to run windows. Forscan for Ford vehicles also has to run under Windows. Having WSL2 means that I can just have one laptop and run any software that I want.

I really want to like Windows 11, and I enjoy using WSL, but Microsoft treats me too much like an adversary for me to tolerate it as a daily driver. Only a complete scumbag of a product manager would think pushing Candy Crush ads is a good idea.

I’ve got an airgapped Toughbook that I use for the few Windows apps I really need to talk to strange hardware.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#526

Post by RajT88 »

jchw wrote: post #56
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…

"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…

I heard 2025 was the year of Linux on the desktop!

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#527

Post by incoming1211 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #427
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…

> WSL is more powerful than Linux This is the kind of statement that makes you pay the karma tax. WSL is great, I use it on a day to day basis. I also use Linux on a day to day basis. And as great as WSL is, for running Linux software on supported hardware, Linux beats WSL hands down. And I mean, of course it does, do you expect a VM to beat native? In the same way that Windows software runs better on Windows. (with…

[flagged]

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#529

Post by sureglymop »

frollogaston wrote: post #425
MrPowerGamerBR wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People throw around the ideas of VMs or WINE like it's trivial. It's really not.

On linux it's quite trivial. KVM is part of the kernel. Installing libvirt and virt-manager makes it really easy to create vms.

I'd say even passing through a GPU is not that hard these days though maybe that depends on hardware configuration more.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#530

Post by nickjj »

Scarbutt wrote: post #497
nickjj wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop or laptop, with no configuration required. I have been using it since the beginning of WSL 1 with a very terminal heavy set up but it has some issues. For example WSLg's clipboard sharing is buggy compared to VcXsrv. It doesn't handle pasting into Linux apps without introducing Windows CRs. I opened an issue for this https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/iss…

Also, systemd is still pretty sketchy. It takes over 2 minutes for systemd services to start and if you close a WSL 2 terminal for just a few minutes systemd will delay a new terminal from opening for quite some time. This basically means disabling systemd to use WSL 2 in your day to day. That doesn't sound good. I was planning to set up a Windows/WSL2 box, but this gives me second thoughts. Where can I read more abo…

It's still ok even without systemd. Technically systemd is disabled by default, you have to turn it on with systemd=true in /etc/wsl.conf.

I can't find a definitive source with an open ticket but if you Google around for "WSL 2 systemd delay startup" you'll find assorted folks talking it about with a number of different reasons.

I just went by my end results of there is a delay with systemd enabled and no delay with it disabled.

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