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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

#611

Post by CoolCold »

aeroevan wrote: post #521
CoolCold wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I meant overhead you need to spend in RAM to run WSL2

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#612

Post by Thaxll »

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 sucks and I much prefer having a true VM in Hyper-v. WSL is full of weird behaviour and gotchas. Docker?? no pid 1, weird kernel etc ...

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#614

Post by LtWorf »

alex_smart wrote: post #153
Flamentono2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might want to give more context. I use linux. I don't need WSL at all. Not at work nor at home. So you praise WSL because you use Windows as your main system? Than yes its great. It definitly makes the Windows experience a lot better. OpenSSH for Windows was also a game changer. Honestly, i have no clue why Microsoft needed so long for that.

https://xkcd.com/963/

Aged like fine milk

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#615

Post by CoolCold »

Loocid wrote: post #592
CoolCold wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is the opposite of what I've heard. Most often you hear of people installing Linux on old machines due to it performing better than Windows on low resources.

I'm talking about more regular situation when you deal with new hardware- why on earth I'd go with outdated and limiting me T480 when T16gen4 is around the corner. Or ARM based laptops.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#616

Post by callc »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #608
jjcm wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am currently on nvidia and have no issues with their proprietary drivers. While they aren't following the linux ethos, the software runs just fine.

Have they fixed the drivers on wayland yet?

I’ve been running on Wayland with nvidia drivers for around a year. No issues for development work. Haven’t tried gaming.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#617

Post by LtWorf »

dismalaf wrote: post #242
alex_smart wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> symptomatic of some sort of Stockholm syndrome I have since moved to macbooks for the hardware, but until not too long ago WSL was my linux "distro" of choice because I didn't want to spend time configuring my computer to make basic things work like suspend/wake on lid down/up, battery life, hardware acceleration for video playback on the browser, display scaling on external monitor and so on.

Who deals with this? All this is fine out of the box on a modern Linux distro.

Apple users's whole identity is based on thinking linux users do this daily.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#618

Post by CoolCold »

nosioptar wrote: post #546
CoolCold wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That can't be helped. I go for a smoke and when come back system is already upgraded.

I've not being using Debian setups lately, but on Ubuntu, alert on need-to-reboot packages after daily unattended upgrades run is happening almost every month. I'm kinda sure that Debian is on similar schedule here.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#619

Post by perrygeo »

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…

I like WSL for this single reason too - it gives me space to run isolated experiments without touching my primary OS. So if that's what windows users get out of it, cool.

You can do the same thing with many other technologies on most other operating systems. I've used, in chronological order: FreeBSD jails, VMs, Cloud-hosted VMs, Docker, K8s, and Nix flakes. WSL is probably somewhere in around K8s.

My point is, we've had the ability to run "subsystems" for decades, by different names, on every OS. WSL is cool but quite late to the game, far from being "more powerful than linux".

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#620

Post by applied_heat »

qwertox wrote: post #406

I despise Windows 11 so much, but have to use it. I have a 24/7 box with Ubuntu running a couple of Linux and Windows VMs and that's the way I like it. I don't touch the Ubuntu host except for when I need to reconfigure it. All development is done on Windows laptop via SSH to those VMs. When I tried using Ubuntu via WSL, something didn't feel right. There were some oddities, probably with the filesystem integration,…

What hypervisor are you using for the windows vms?
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