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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

#541

Post by hermitShell »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #403
hermitShell wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why there aren’t full fledged computers in a GPU sized package. Just run windows on your GPU, Linux on your main cpu. There’s some challenges to overcome but I think it would be nice to be able to extend your arm PC with an x86 expansion, or extend your x86 PC with an ARM extension. Ditto for graphics, or other hardware accelerators

There are computers that size, but I guess you mean with a male PCIe plug on them? If the card is running its own OS, what's the benefit of combining them that way? A high speed networking link will get you similar results and is flexible and cheap. If the card isn't running its own OS, it's much easier to put all the CPU cores in the same socket. And the demand for both x86 and Arm cores at the same time is not very…

Yes, with pci-e fingers on the ‘motherboard’ of the daughter computer. Like a pci-e carrier for the RPI compute.

Good point about high speed networking. I guess that’s a lot more straightforward.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#543

Post by vhguru »

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…

If Windows provided easier access to hardware, especially USB, from WSL it would be nice. In fact, if WSL enumerated devices and dealt with them as native Linux does, even better.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#544

Post by MrPowerGamerBR »

leni536 wrote: post #502
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…

Anything GPU related isn't great in WSL either.

True, but I don't have the need to run applications that require GPU under WSL, while I do need to run applications that require the GPU under my current host OS. (and those applications do not run under Linux)

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#545

Post by frollogaston »

aeroevan wrote: post #522
frollogaston wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I meant if you're using Windows to begin with

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#546

Post by nosioptar »

CoolCold wrote: post #484
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…

> nor the stop the world updates that take entirely too long Interesting enough, that beyond release upgrades, happening may be once a year, all or may be 99% of updates took ~5 minutes of interruption of me, including needed reboot. I really wonder how others manage to have "entirely too long" updates.

5 minutes is too long. My Debian systems never demand that I update them. When I update them, it never even takes two minutes.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#547

Post by frollogaston »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #281
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get all of Windows telemetry, vulnerabilities and backdoors, the always fun game of spot the new Advertising opportunity, AI “copilot” spyware I mean feature, updates that reset your machine at will, a terrible UAC model that encourages “just click OK already!”, and dependence on a company that has gone out of their way to prove how much of an unstoppable behemoth they are; and best of all you get to pay for the…

Yes, you get Windows telemetry which enabled fixing bugs without a bug report, you get minimal ads in the start menu (if you're playing "spot the new advertising opportunity" I found it. It's in the start menu. You can stop playing now), AI "copilot" which isn't spyware just because you think it is, updates that ASK you nicely multiple times to update (I don't want to be ableist, if you suffer from a Christopher Nola…

I don't even care about privacy. Windows is too slow, nagging, and plastered with ads.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#548

Post by anon291 »

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

I mean... WINE does the same on windows, but microsoft refuses to release their API docs for all internal APIs. They release WSL by relying on Linux's open-ness, while refusing the same for themselves.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#549

Post by tester756 »

pjmlp wrote: post #2

Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs.

>Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs.

Decisions, preparations and execution to open source such projects in big corporations to not happen within a week, two or month.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#550

Post by kgeist »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #385
encom wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need new reasons to hate Linux, because all those issues were solved a while ago.

There is a reason why 1) people whose main environment is Linux feel (correctly) that these problems have been solved a long time ago, and 2) people whose main environment is not Linux but who try Linux occasionally feel (correctly) that these problems still occasionally crop up. People whose main environment is Linux intentionally buy hardware that works flawlessly with Linux. People who try Linux occasionally do it…

>People whose main environment is Linux intentionally buy hardware that works flawlessly with Linux.

Hm, recently I bought a random "gamer PC" for the beefier GPU (mainly to experiment with local LLMs), installed Linux on it, and everything just worked out of the box. I remember having tons of problems back in 2009 when I first tried Ubuntu, though. I have dual boot, just today I ran a few benchmarks with Qwen3. On Windows, token generation is 15% slower. Whenever I have to boot into Windows (mainly to let the kid play Roblox), everything feels about 30% slower and clunkier.

At work, we use Linux too - Dell laptops. The main irritating problem has been that on Linux, Dell's Dock Stations are often buggy with dual monitors (when switching, the screen will just freeze). The rest works flawlessly for me. It wasn't that long ago when my Windows (before I migrated to Linux) had BSODs every other day...

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