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Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

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Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#71

Post by ASalazarMX »

selectodude wrote: post #55
sedatk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment but, some scenarios have become orders of magnitude more complicated on WSL2 like connecting to a daemon on Windows or vice versa. I understand clear cut security boundaries and separate network interfaces, but it's extremely hard to get them running smoothly now. Everything was on localhost on WSL1. Memory usage has also gone bonkers with the VM approach, causing unnecessary overhead for c…

WSL1 hasn't gone away for those who prefer it. But we're talking about an extra gigabyte. It's still cheaper than a full VM.

At work we develop on Windows virtual machines, and WSL1 won't run on a VM. Fortunately WSL2 does, so at least I can enjoy Linux tooling I sorely missed.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#72

Post by mdip »

> Can you imagine how cool it would be to manipulate Windows services from the WSL session?

This was a little confusing, in some ways, because it came right after "being able to list out processes to kill". A Windows Service is a lot like a `systemd` service.

In the scenario he envisions where you could see windows processes within WSL[0], it'd be possible to write a script that could invoke the windows-equivalent command to stop/start services and print `systemd`[1]/Windows services side-by-side, but you couldn't make Windows services "work" with `systemd` tools. Somewhat obvious, probably, but it caused me to raise an eyebrow for a second so I thought I'd mention it.

[0] Was it this way in WSL1? I don't remember, it's been too long.

[1] Last time I used WSL2, I ran openSuSE Leap; not sure what the default ships with.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#73

Post by ASalazarMX »

neurostimulant wrote: post #58
whoisburbansky wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize if I'm missing something here, but if casual users don't care about performance, what's the overhead here?

IIRC WSL 2 use 50% of your memory in Windows, or 8GB (whichever is smaller) by default.

Is that an upper bound? My Ubuntu 20.04 console sessions on WSL2 consume a couple tens of Mb.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#74

Post by Gibbon1 »

rbanffy wrote: post #38
nix0n wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm Cygwin works with 10. Its default package manager includes most of the standard POSIX tools. I've used it a lot for on-Windows/for-Windows development, but always as a complement to native Windows tools.

This is great news. It offers a lot of what the author wants (except the speed of WSL2). I would expect it to be less-complete than WSL1 (it looks like Linux, until you look it from up close) but faster, because it doesn't try as hard to be a Linux.

I've used MinGW's MSYS which gives you a posix development environment. Was the simplest way to get support for autotools on windows. Useful if you need to cross compile a library on windows.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#75

Post by 1996 »

tjoff wrote: post #56

WSL 1 (haven't tried 2 if they have some sort of magic for this, guess not) can actually run windows applications. So you can run "ipconfig.exe | cowsay" for instance. I'm not in front of a windows machine now but you could do stuff like list windows processes with a windows command, filter it with linux command and take the result to kill a process. All in a short line. And honestly, more integrated than that I'm no…

The same is possible in msys2, and actually very useful.

For example, to find my IP, from my bash prompt on windows 10:

/c/Windows/System32/ipconfig.exe | grep "^\s\s\sIPv" | sed -e 's/.*: //g'

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#76

Post by bitwize »

ProofByAccident wrote: post #43

I'm extremely ignorant about OS design, but based on this it sounds like WSL1 could be fairly described as basically Linux for the Windows kernel, whereas WSL2 is more like a really fancy VM. Is that the gist of it?

WSL1 is like the "kernel personalities" in other operating systems like the BSDs. WSL2 is more like Linux for Windows, because it is the actual Linux kernel in a VM, hypervised by Windows.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#77

Post by 1996 »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #74
rbanffy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great news. It offers a lot of what the author wants (except the speed of WSL2). I would expect it to be less-complete than WSL1 (it looks like Linux, until you look it from up close) but faster, because it doesn't try as hard to be a Linux.

I've used MinGW's MSYS which gives you a posix development environment. Was the simplest way to get support for autotools on windows. Useful if you need to cross compile a library on windows.

Check out msys2, a please to use with pacman

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#78

Post by j0057 »

ralph87 wrote: post #9

Contra opinion: the VM option reduced the service interface between Windows and Linux to a single kernel implementation and a few drivers, rather than every possible userspace program ever written. It's an amazing and obvious trade off. My inner architecture astronaut appreciates all the ideas in this post, but I've been trying to kill that guy for over a decade now. The bottom line is WSLv1 design SUCKED precisely b…

NTFS performance leaves much to be desired on Windows too, it really hurts for workloads dealing with lots of small files, such as programming.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#79

Post by Macha »

shawnz wrote: post #68
selectodude wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL1 hasn't gone away for those who prefer it. But we're talking about an extra gigabyte. It's still cheaper than a full VM.

It's clear that they are not enthusiastic about delivering new features to WSL1. Consider how WSL2 now exclusively features CUDA support, Wayland support, loop mounts, Docker, etc.

Docker support is precisely the sort of feature that would have required significantly more work to support in WSL1 than WSL2.

Re: Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential

#80

Post by shawnz »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #71
selectodude wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL1 hasn't gone away for those who prefer it. But we're talking about an extra gigabyte. It's still cheaper than a full VM.

At work we develop on Windows virtual machines, and WSL1 won't run on a VM. Fortunately WSL2 does, so at least I can enjoy Linux tooling I sorely missed.

Interesting, I would expect the opposite problem since WSL1 doesn't use virtualisation in any way. Do you have more details about the error you experienced?
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