A bit off topic, but this sort of transparency is why I don't mind paying $6 / mo for a vpn when mullvad's competitors are much cheaper. Their wireguard support is great, and their speeds are much faster than what I got through openVpn on pia.
Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
81–90 of 194 posts
Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
WSL is actually really good. To me, it gives you the best of both worlds. Linux for dev stuff, Windows for GUI and games. And its actual Linux, so I am dev'ing a little closer to prod than those on Macs. But that's less of a factor now everything is in Docker and we are all using the same containers. I also feel I have a superior Docker (runs on WSL2) experience to them, better interface and much better battery life.…
That's really over-selling it. WSL is okay. It's better than the previous monstrosities, but that's not saying much. You can't run VS Code in WSL, it literally has code to prevent you from doing that, even if you have a functioning X Server (which is a jolly pain to set up).
The Windows version can be fully integrated with WSL. Windows handles the GUI, Linux handles the CLI and all that. [1]
I have not found any need that it does not meet this way, but as I mentioned in another comment, I have a very narrow focus. So would not be surprised if I was missing something.
[1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscod...
Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#83I have noticed similar simply because the Cisco AnyConnect client doesn't work with WSL2 and is a known issue [0]. But that seemed to be blocking traffic instead of just allowing all traffic over non-VPN. However, openconnect does work fine as does the UWP-based AnyConnect client. I wonder how those latter two are successful tunneling traffic (or if it's only if they are started before the wsl2 vm is). 0 - https://gi…
I think that’s a bit different than this, though it’s possibly related. As you said, the situation there is traffic is blocked.
WSL and WSL2 are fundamentally different in how they work. In fact, the poor I/O performance (caused in part by Windows Defender) in WSL is part of what led to the Hyper-V based approach to begin with.
My guess is that something might need to change either in the way VPNs use the firewall rules in Windows when passing on to WSL2 or in WSL2 to make for more granular control over how that stuff is passed on - to address the Mullvad. Because as it stands now, the way Mullvad performs under WSL2 seems to be by design (by WSL2 design, if not Mullvad’s design).
Obviously, many users who enable a VPN in Windows will want that connection to persist when they use WSL2 — but I can also think of plenty of scenarios where that might not be the case, which I imagine makes coming up with a solution more difficult.
I will say, the WSL2 team is incredibly responsive to feedback. You can file issues on GitHub and the team is very active on Twitter. If this is something that can be fixed on the WSL2 side, I feel confident the team will work to do it.
Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#84Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#85Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#86We have tested a few other VPN clients from competitors and found that all of them leak in the same way. The way Microsoft has implemented virtual networking for Linux guests makes it very difficult to properly secure them.
Sometimes that's a feature. At least with VirtualBox I have made the experience that NAT virtual networking leads to significant slowdown on a linux guest compared to bridging one of the host's ethernet adapters. I suspect that's due to windows' firewall software or similar things happening in the host system. It also means one less hop to debug when it comes to network issues. I think the question is whether you con…
Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#87Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? In my opinion Linux desktop environments are terrible compared to Windows. How's the display scaling these days? Is it still a better experience to run a 4k monitor at a lower resolution? What's the Nvidia driver situation? Still janky because their drivers are doing their own thing?
Because in my opinion Windows is terrible :) For many reasons. Linux users don't use Nvidia if they are interested in the modern desktop use case. That's a well known factor. If someone migrates to Linux using Nvidia, chances are high they'll change it to AMD on the next GPU upgrade.
Which rules out anyone who wants to game or do CUDA stuff.
Everyone is welcome to their own opinions and preferences, but if you ask me, if the response to a request to use the most powerful/performant graphics cards is to switch to AMD (and AMD has some good cards but Nvidia’s are better and OpenCL can’t compete with CUDA when it comes to any machine learning work), well, that’s part of why Linux’s modern desktop adoption is still so small.
If the only option is to use an AMD GPU, you might as well just get a Mac and use actual UNIX.
And honestly, to each their own! But you asked why anyone would use WSL2 and you’ve got a good answer: they want to be able to take advantage of their chosen hardware and access the various Linux tools.
Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There's no way the banking and finance industry doesn't compete emissions wise with bitcoin not on a per transaction basis, which is the only relevant measure because the banking system supports a lot more people than bitcoin does. A single bitcoin transaction uses 610.20 kWh right now, which is comparable to the energy consumption of an average US household over 20 days.[1] Also for a comparison of scope, Tenpay, T…
Yea, after reading more I got a sense of the scale. Still, I think that's the proper comparison—human processes are the analogue to keeping a blockchain online and mining.
All the energy in bitcoin is not wasted on keeping and organizing that tiny ledger (barely 300 GB of data!), it's wasted on brute forcing hashes, with the energy required ramping up exponentially with interest in bitcoin.
As ingenious as bitcoin is, that is a fatal flaw. Using bitcoin is like rolling coal, only worse for the environment.
Re: Linux under WSL2 can be leaking
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason to move off of Windows would be running graphical Linux apps. But that'll change soon.
If you are playing games on Linux, WSL doesn't help anything for sure, it only adds overhead.