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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

#661

Post by tgma »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #582
tgma wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t? Just install UTM for a full VM one-click install (easier than wsl /install and two reboots) or any number of docker thingies that people build for the Mac.

This is very far from smooth, it has network issues, runs muuch slower than native etc. etc. Would be just better to have linux but doesn’t seem realistic how everything works so flawlessly in macos, touchpad, sound etc.

I don't know why your experience was poor. At least under Apple Virtualization for ARM64 Linux, the performance has been great. Perhaps as the other commenter suspects you might be running x86 Linux under software emulation?

In any case, I've run bare metal Asahi on M1 (and M1 Pro) and they work amazingly well too. Installation was quite straightforward too.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#662

Post by op00to »

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 run Windows in a VM where I need windows. It’s so much easier to fix a broken Linux installation than a broken Windows installation.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#663

Post by op00to »

kristianp wrote: post #575
yndoendo wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My development is mainly Windows and I prefer Linux host with Windows VM guests. The experience is more stable and I can revert to a snapshot when Windows or Microsoft product update brakes something or new test configuration does. It also allows to backup and retain multiple QA environments that are rarely used, like a client's Oracle DB. It is nice being able to save the VM state at the end of the week and shut it…

Can you share more details of how you make that work well? What hypervisor, what backup/replication, for instance? I can only imagine that being a world of irritation.

I use libvirt/kvm/qemu. It works fine to do all the things mentioned like snapshots.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#664

Post by rizalp »

dataflow wrote: post #658
rizalp wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Virtualbox and VMWare Workstation is Type-2 hypervisor, they run on top of the host OS (Windows), and not directly on hardware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor

That doesn't in any way explain why VirtualBox couldn't be made to run on top of Hyper-V. You might as well tell me Linux apps can't be made to run on Windows because Windows isn't Linux.

> Anybody know what the deal is with neither Oracle nor Microsoft trying to make it possible for VirtualBox and WSL2 to coexist without severe performance impact? What the heck is the issue that neither side knows how to solve? Or is there a deliberate business decision not to solve it?

Oh I thought your parrent post was asking general overview on why Virtualbox will have severe performance impact if WSL2 is activated. I posted the reason due to multiple abstraction conflicting with each other and there you go.

> Why VirtualBox couldn't be made to run on top of Hyper-V. You might as well tell me Linux apps can't be made to run on Windows because Windows isn't Linux

AFAIK it's already possible but still experimental on Virtualbox, also it's hard issue to solve, and have tiny ROI I suppose. And why would they spent time fixing this slowness that only impact some small userbase like you?

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#665

Post by duskwuff »

notpushkin wrote: post #621
anon291 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then they discontinue WSL1 and just do a VM instead because... reasons. I really don’t understand how MSFT works on the inside.

A big one of those reasons was Docker. Docker was still fairly niche when WSL was released in 2016, but demand for it grew rapidly, and I don't think there was any realistic way they could have made it work on the NT kernel.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#666

Post by zamadatix »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #538
zamadatix wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately many of the more popular multiplayer games with anti-cheat tend to consider "made working on Linux" a bug rather than a feature. E.g. Easy Anti-Cheat and Unreal Engine both support Linux natively but Epic still doesn't want to allow it for their own game, Fortnite. https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1490565925648715781

Really hope valve’s server side anti-cheat will be a success and more competitive games will move over to that.

I'm not familiar with what new changes Valve has been working on in the anti-cheat space but historically most major anti-cheat systems, such as Easy Anti-Cheat, already have long included a server-side anti-cheat component. The catch rate (and overall accuracy) with both is just always going to be higher than only going with one approach.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#667

Post by xylophile »

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…

Just FYI, you may also enjoy systemd-machine. It's essentially the same thing as toolbx but it handles the system bus much more sanely, and you can see everything running inside the guest from the host's systemctl.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#668

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

bongodongobob wrote: post #636
makeitdouble wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying running full Linux avoids wasting time on fiddly workarounds kinda blows my mind. Full hardware support is still not a given, and Windows emulation is still need for so many cases (e.g. games, specialized software etc). Until I can choose any machine based on form factor and specs alone and just run Linux on it, WSL will the best version of Linux it can run.

What modern hardware isn't supported by Linux? I haven't had driver problems in probably over a decade. I don't even target Linux for my builds, it just works. Same with the pile of random laptops I've installed it on. Wifi out of the box etc.

> What modern hardware isn't supported by Linux?

Fingerprint sensors and IR login cameras that are pre-installed on many laptops, and have Windows-only drivers.

As an end-user (yes, I'm an engineer too, but from the perspective of the OS and driver developers I am an end-user) I don't care who is in charge of getting the device to work on an OS—I only care that it works or not. And these devices don't, on Linux. So, they are broken.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#669

Post by Ericson2314 »

bsnnkv wrote: post #51
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 will also die on this hill - NixOS on WSL + Windows + komorebi[1] for tiling window management is peak productivity for me. [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi

I just run NixOS, but that feels like a respectable answer.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#670

Post by rnd0 »

>Lxcore.sys, the kernel side driver that powers WSL 1

This isn't open source, and considering that this is probably what ties into/sets up WSL as a windows subsystem that's a bit of a bummer.

The rest is just a Virtual Machine for the most part, isn't it?

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