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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

#701

Post by Brian_K_White »

odie5533 wrote: post #696
Night_Thastus wrote: post #92

I've been using WSL on and off for Linux development for the last few years. When it works, it's great! When it doesn't....oh man it sucks. It has been non-stop networking and VPN problems, XServer issues, window scaling issues, hardware accelerated graphics not working, etc. this whole time. I've spent more time trying to fix WSL issues then actually developing software. It's never gotten better. It's fast. It's pow…

I use WSL as daily drive for dev. Never had any issues. Love it. I use it from VS Code.

I still can't use usb-serial devices from within wsl2.

It was possible under wsl1, but wsl1 is an entirely different thing.

"never had any issues" is a meaningless statement. I "never had any issues" with infinite things I never tried to do in the first place.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#702

Post by mdaniel »

nxobject wrote: post #184
liendolucas wrote: post #107

I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to use Linux, do the proper switch once and for all. You will never look back. I haven't in almost 15 years. Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine. Edit: more than 15 years.

I always have Windows on Parallels on a Mac, too – unfortunately VirtualBox for arm64 Mac isn't quite there yet.

I think the biggest problem with VirtualBox on arm64 is that it is only for arm64 guests, unlike the qemu-system-x86_64 which colima et al use and allow booting up "normal" guest OSes

Also, VBoxManage was created by someone who firmly subscribes to the "git UX is awesome" school of thought :-(

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#703

Post by osigurdson »

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…

It is really good but honestly would prefer something a little more like:

- Linux that works great on a laptop / does the right thing when closing the lid - Linux that doesn't have worse battery life than Windows / macOS - Seamlessly runs Windows when you need to run something (e.g. click on Excel) - Isn't necessarily free (prefer quality over low price in this situation)

Windows of course has many of these traits and WSL is a pretty good compromise, but I would prefer to boot into Linux and use Windows only when necessary (since my need for it is less common).

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#704

Post by yellowapple »

thewebguyd wrote: post #105
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…

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…

Windows LTSC already exists, but Microsoft, in all their wisdom, restricts it to enterprise licensees only, and seems to actively discourage using it as a desktop OS. The first problem is of course fixable with some KMS server shenanigans, but the second can be kinda painful when it comes to keeping drivers up-to-date, installing apps that rely on features LTSC excludes (and doesn't provide an easy way to install manually), etc.

I've often said that if Microsoft had just iterated on Windows 2000 forever I'd probably still be a full-time Windows user. If Microsoft had maintained an LTSC-like Windows variant that was installable from the normal retail installation media and with a normal retail product key (at the very least Pro, but ideally Home), that also likely would have kept me on Windows full-time instead of switching to Linux as my daily driver.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#705

Post by tyushk »

hermitShell wrote: post #327
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…

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

You may be interested in SmartNICs/DPUs. They're essentially NICs with an on-board full computer. NVIDIA makes an ARM DPU line, and you can pick up the older gen BlueField 2's on eBay for about $400.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#706

Post by WorldMaker »

cogman10 wrote: post #309
zymhan wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The integration between Windows and the WSL VM is far deeper than a typical VM hypervisor. You cannot claim with a straight face that Virtualbox is easier to use.

It's deeper but let's not overblow it. I think the two fairly deep integrations are window's ability to navigate WSL's filesystem and wslg's fairly good ability to serve up guis. The filesystem navigation is something that AFAIK can't easily be replicated. wslg, however, is something that other VMs have and can do. It's a bit of a pain, but doable. What makes WSL nice is the fact that it feels pretty close to being a…

> The filesystem navigation is something that AFAIK can't easily be replicated.

The filesystem navigation getting partially open sourced is one of the more interesting parts being open sourced per this announcement. The Plan9 file server that serves files from Windows into Linux is included in the new open source dump. (The Windows filesystem driver that runs a Plan9 client on the Windows side to get files from Linux is not in the open source expansion.)

It's still fascinating that the whole thing is Plan9-based, given the OS never really succeeded, but apparently its network file system is a really good inter-compatibility file communication layer between Linux and Windows.

> I do wish that WSL1 was taken further.

WSL1 survives and there's still a chance it will see more work eventually, as the tides shift. I think the biggest thing that blocked WSL1 from more success was lack of partners and user interest in Windows Subsystem for Android apps. That still remains a potentially good idea for Windows if it had been allowed "real" access to Google Play Services and App Store, rather than second rate copy of Amazon's copy of Google Play Services and Fire App Store. An actual Google partnership seems doomed given one of the reasons to get Windows Subsystem for Android competitive was fear of ChromeOS, but Google still loves to talk about how "Open" Android is despite the Google Play Services moat and that still sounds like something that a court with enough fortitude could challenge (even if it is probably unlikely to happen).

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#707

Post by yellowapple »

oblio wrote: post #352
chrsw wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be fantastic. But Microsoft doesn't have to do this. Their users are captives.

Some of them are. But the increasing market share of Macs and even Linux these days plus the ever increasing of OSS initiatives from Microsoft points out that Microsoft knows a lot fewer of their users are as captive as they were in the 90's, for example.

More specifically: a lot fewer developers are as captive as they were in the 90's. And while normal users vastly outnumber developers, Microsoft has figured out that those normal users ain't inclined to stick around if those developers jump ship and stop developing for Windows.

In other words, specifically those of a former Microsoft CEO (who understood the problem but not the solution):

DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS ... YES

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#708

Post by charlieok »

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 that wsl is a thing when I'm on a windows machine, but it can also serve as a reminder of the often unnecessary frictions that exist between operating systems.

When the answer to a "how do I do X on windows" question begins with "start WSL", my primary reaction is frustration because they're basically saying "there's not a good way to do that on Windows, so fire up a Linux VM".

Just to pick my most recent example, from today. I wanted to verify the signatures on some downloaded rpm files, and the rpm tools work on linux. I know, rpm files are native to a family of linux distros, so it's not surprising that the tools for retrieving and verifying their signatures don't work on windows but... it also seems reasonable to want a world where those tools can install and run on windows, straight from a PowerShell session, with no VM.

Multiply that by all the little utilities that that can't be deployed across multiple operating sytems, and it just seems like some incompatibility headaches are never really going to go away.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#710

Post by hulitu »

beanjuiceII wrote: post #38
behnamoh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if companies open-source stuff mainly as part of a bigger strategy which primarily benefits them. could it be a way to access to a pool of free, contributing talent?

why would companies not do things that benefit them? and if it's meant pessimistically, let me take you back to a much worse time when Microsoft didn't open source anything

> let me take you back to a much worse time

Microsoft is not much better now.

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