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Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com

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Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#61

Post by OhSoHumble »

chrisan wrote: post #46
OhSoHumble wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had it break on me a while ago because there was no inode support and that's needed for hot-reloading of code when developing with web frameworks. I'd rather just use Linux and not be surprised by anything.

Wasn't that the first beta release of insider? I thought they fixed inode support https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/10/07/wsl-...

They did.

My point was that I just don't want to encounter bugs. When I run Linux, I get Linux. I already have it installed and I know how it works. I don't want to take the chance of a bug breaking my development workflow.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#62

Post by dannysu »

nikanj wrote: post #19

Can someone point to a decent X server for windows?

I've been using VcXsrv.

I tried both Xming (donated and got the most recent versions) and VcXsrv. I found VcXsrv to be faster and dynamically picks up my screen resolution. Xming doesn't do that out of the box.

However, I find that both are terrible when my network is a bit unstable such as when I'm in transit. That's the major pain point I have.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#64

Post by moomin »

tyrw wrote: post #9
therein wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not an emulator and the experience is pretty great for anything involving Linux as a workstation. Even though they say "NO current plans to support X/GUI apps, desktops, servers, etc. at this time", this is achievable by installing VcXsrv.

Perhaps emulator was a poor descriptor in this case -- I haven't used it. But it is running a subset of functionality non-natively, correct?

Well, the kernel API is implemented using the (rather undocumented) internal API. But so is the published Windows API. What it's literally not is Linux. However, you might want to call it GNU/Windows if you enjoyed watching people have seizures.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#65

Post by math0ne »

shpongled wrote: post #18
semaphoreP wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works great for me. Like others have mentioned, it's not an emulator, so I don't feel sandboxed using it. The main downside is one of the caveats they mention: "Linux files are NOT accessible from Windows." Hopefully they can fix this in the future.

%AppData%\local\lxss\rootfs Have fun

FYI, this does not work.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#66

Post by [deleted] »

geofft wrote: post #51
justabystander wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your app is a database server, probably yes. They explicitly don't support that. From the article: > Linux distro's [sic] running atop WSL are for interactive user scenarios, NOT for running production workloads on Apache/nginx/MySQL/MongoDB/etc. And the last time I checked, it's not suitable for services. The moment I closed the bash terminal, all the processes I had running through WSL terminated - including n…

Ah, thanks. I've only played around with interactively but that makes sense. It really seems like the primary use case is supporting Docker/OCI containers for local dev, so you can keep using a Windows desktop instead of switching to a Linux one.

[deleted]

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#67

Post by gtirloni »

43224gg252 wrote: post #44
vvanders wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're going to force your users to install WSL up front(which is a pretty poor first contact) I think you might be better served by keeping it around.

Why? The Linux sub-system is the best part of Windows. He's doing them a favor.

It seems to still be a feature hidden under Developer Mode thus not appropriate as a dependency for end users.

Maybe OP is talking about tools installed on his/her own system only?

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#68

Post by dannysu »

tyrw wrote: post #2

In my experience, emulators are never quite the same as the real deal. Has anyone used this, and if so how was it?

It's still way too slow for me using tmux.

File system performance seems bad. Have tried multiple times to use it. First when it was first announced, and then again when Creators Update came out.

But... it's just not good enough yet. Hopefully the Fall Creators Update improve things.

For now, running a Linux VM is still way faster.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux is out of beta

#69

Post by xenadu02 »

wvenable wrote: post #36
tyrw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps emulator was a poor descriptor in this case -- I haven't used it. But it is running a subset of functionality non-natively, correct?

It's a pretty interesting design -- Microsoft created a new class of processes called pico processes; these are native processes run without the normal Win32 overhead and are managed by a special pico process driver. For WSL, the driver implements the Linux kernel API and process loading. Linux API calls are mapped to existing Windows APIs or implemented directly in the driver. Everything else in the WSL is the regul…

This is possible because Dave Cutler and the rest of his VMS team built Windows NT to support multiple personalities. From day one the Win32 subsystem was just one of several. That idea got sidelined when Windows became so popular but the core has always been there.

It's kinda funny: the Windows NT kernel (and Executive, the actual native API) are a single-root object hierarchy where everything gets mounted - much like unix - only even moreso. Mutexes, Registry Keys, etc are all objects mounted in the root filesystem.

I guess everything old is new again. Microsoft used to have a server product called Services for Unix that replaced the built-in POSIX 1.0 subsystem with a legit Unix environment but it was always a neglected product that only existed to get people to port server apps to Windows. This time they're doing the integration on end-user desktops and have spent more time getting Win API integration working smoothly.

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