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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

#831

Post by LikelyLiar »

udev4096 wrote: post #724

I still can't believe how people use windows as their main system with all the extremely invasive telemetry and bogus "AI" features that hogs a LOT of resources at idle

I play video games that require an anti-cheat, so there's that. But honestly, it's fairly easy to deal with that. You can use the Windows IoT LTSC version and use one of those trusted debloaters. I haven't seen any AI features or bloat in a very long time.

I am not that proficient, I tried it three times, first hurdle is trying to find a distro, making all that research about which ones have more pre-configuration and which ones would be less buggy for your hardware can be a pain.

The thing that attracted me to Linux is the file system and customization. I just wanted to daily drive it, not really for any work. But bugs are just a reality using most DEs available.

In my case once, it even was related to performance, I had to stay the whole day trying to find out why Kubuntu was slower than Windows on my laptop, ended up just being one line in some config file that forced battery-saving performance, I failed to find the post online after encountering the same issue months later after reinstalling the system.

Believe it or not, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, I just realized I use Windows more and more in my dual boot system, so I gave up on using Linux after that.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#832

Post by VBprogrammer »

rcleveng wrote: post #739
hypercube33 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL 1 was supposed to be like "Windows on NT" where it emulated the Linux kernal to the NT one. they skipped a ton of features then dumped the whole thing for a containerized virtual machine thing for version 2. Wish the NT one worked out but I get it being complicated.

I know -- I was super excited to see WSL1 and wished it worked. NT when started was the OS/2 personality and back at that time was excited to see NT as the OS to end all OSes (by running them all as a personality). But WSL2 is freaking incredible, I'm super excited to see this and just wish the rest of windows would move to a Linux kernel and support bash natively everywhere. I was never a fan of powershell, sh/dash/…

I sometimes say, tongue in cheek slightly, that the best Linux desktop is Windows.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#833

Post by FeloniousHam »

reisse wrote: post #748
rcleveng wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know -- I was super excited to see WSL1 and wished it worked. NT when started was the OS/2 personality and back at that time was excited to see NT as the OS to end all OSes (by running them all as a personality). But WSL2 is freaking incredible, I'm super excited to see this and just wish the rest of windows would move to a Linux kernel and support bash natively everywhere. I was never a fan of powershell, sh/dash/…

Why not just use Linux then? The whole point of Windows right now is having a kernel that a) does not shove GPL down the device manufacturer's throat and b) care about driver API stability so that drivers actually work without manufacturer or maintaner intervention every kernel upgrade.

The obvious answer: you can't. I work in constrained environment with an IT department that provides the hardware and (most of) the software I develop on. I agree with all the WSL cheering here, it integrates almost seamlessly.

But you're asking the wrong question. It should be "why not use MacOS?" if you need a stable UI with UNIX underneath :).

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#834

Post by dfox »

pjmlp wrote: post #755
dbdoskey wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the WSL 1 ended up working, it would have been one of the best historical coincidences in MS's history. A long forgotten feature in the NT kernel, unique to pretty much any other OS out there, used to push it's dominance in the 90's, is revived almost 30 years later, to fight for relevance with Unix based OS, once again. To quote Gorge Lucas, It's like poetry, it rhymes.

I can tell that if POSIX subsystem in Windows NT was actually a good enough UNIX experience, I would never bothered with those Slackware 2.0 install disks. And the subsystems concept was quite common in micro-computers and mainframes space, Microsoft did not come up with the idea for Windows.

The original POSIX subsystem was just there so MS could say that it exists (and pass DoD requirements).

It got actually somewhat usable with the 2k/XP version, slightly better in Vista (notably: the utilities installer had option to use bash a default shell) and IIRC with 7 MS even again mentioned existence of the thing in marketing (with some cool new name for the thing).

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#835

Post by gloosx »

skobes wrote: post #821
gloosx wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying it like there is no alternative and you can't just open and edit same excel files in Libre Office Calc, Google Sheets or Numbers without any problem whatsoever.

I'll say it too! There's no serious alternative to Excel for those who rely on its advanced features. You can't just edit Excel files in Libre Office Calc, Google Sheets, or Numbers without any problem whatsoever.

Can you give me an example of such advanced features? I really don't understand what outstanding feature did they pack in this "Excel" which has no alternative?

If the only problem is migrating from XLSX to some other format I'm sure this is trivial and some tooling must be available.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#836

Post by fifteen1506 »

ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: post #803
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…

AMD has SRIOV on the roadmap for consumer gpus which hopefully makes things easier in the future for gpu accelerated VMs https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-GIM-Open-Source Windows can run GPU accelerated Windows VMs with paravirtualization. But I have no use case for two Windows machines sharing a GPU.

There is also native context for VirtIO, but for now Windows support is still not planned.

Also note some brave soul implemented 3D support on KVM for Windows. Still in the works and WinUI apps crash for some reason.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#837

Post by clows »

gloosx wrote: post #810
0xEF wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses would. The problem with that is you have decision makers in said businesses who don't know any better, so Microsoft-all-the-things gets pushed down the line. Offices are all trapped on Windows 10/11 and using Teams/Outlook with Exchange/Entra/Azure chugging along in all its misconfigured glory. Heck, half the MSPs I work side-by-side with seem to only offer support on Windows machines. It gets worse. When…

I left some room for myself with "a good reason" :) When company is forcing you to use something out of inertia, then it's probably not for a good reason. Actually regarding the "global scale" – I'm not really sure it's true, I think MS has influence mostly in US. Many EU and Asian companies I worked with were using OSX/Linux.

I'm in the EU and (nearly) every company runs windows (on desktop). Especially in larger organizations (there's plenty of windows servers still).

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#838

Post by bayindirh »

FeloniousHam wrote: post #833
reisse wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just use Linux then? The whole point of Windows right now is having a kernel that a) does not shove GPL down the device manufacturer's throat and b) care about driver API stability so that drivers actually work without manufacturer or maintaner intervention every kernel upgrade.

The obvious answer: you can't. I work in constrained environment with an IT department that provides the hardware and (most of) the software I develop on. I agree with all the WSL cheering here, it integrates almost seamlessly. But you're asking the wrong question. It should be "why not use MacOS?" if you need a stable UI with UNIX underneath :).

That's another sound option, but as a person who doesn't like Homebrew and stuffing /usr/local with tons of things, a lightweight Linux VM becomes mandatory after some point on macOS, too.

Other than that, macOS plus some tools (Fileduck, Forklift, Tower, Kaleidoscope to name a few), you can be 99% there.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#839

Post by herbst »

gloosx wrote: post #835
skobes wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll say it too! There's no serious alternative to Excel for those who rely on its advanced features. You can't just edit Excel files in Libre Office Calc, Google Sheets, or Numbers without any problem whatsoever.

Can you give me an example of such advanced features? I really don't understand what outstanding feature did they pack in this "Excel" which has no alternative? If the only problem is migrating from XLSX to some other format I'm sure this is trivial and some tooling must be available.

The problem is not the "advanced features" within Excel but how they are used. If an excel sheet is basically just a front for a visual basic Programm it doesn't easily open anywhere.

As Google's JavaScript API also doesn't work in open office and whatever else they all have in extra layers.

However i am not sure when and why I encountered such a software last time, but my dad is a Visual Basic guy and has done a lot of these weird sheets for internal business stuff.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#840

Post by Ylpertnodi »

k8sToGo wrote: post #826
paintbox wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What's with this useless response?

I'm not the person you're responding to, but i see their 'ok' reply as being valid. I, too, use windows for audio recording: i rather suspect anyone that does, knows about what's available, both for mac, and linux. And, have chosen [reasons, amongst many, being: cost, availability, trust, familiarity...etc, etc] 'not those paths'. For now.
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