The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

Post by dvtkrlbs » Tue, May 20, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

randunel wrote: post #173

dvtkrlbs wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Wine cant cover all of Windows (partly due to fault of Windows). I can't run UWP apps for example. Windows is not a good operating system but if you need it. WSL creates way more intuitive working environment for you. So even if you can run multiple Linux OSes in Linux you can't run Windows as easily you can do linux on Windows. So OPs statement is not incorrect.

There are virtual machines for Linux with seamless window integration, so upgrading to Linux is still recommended imo. OP's statement remains incorrect, because their assumption is that the WSL experience can't be reproduced in Linux.

Post by spixy » Tue, May 20, 2025, 7:42 PM UTC

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

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 20, 2025, 8:04 PM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #930

pjc50 wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The essential problem was that critical Windows APIs like CreateProcess and the NTFS file system were far too slow to be used in UNIX-like ways. If you tried to run git or build things in WSL1 - a key use case - it was way slower than doing so on native or VM Linux.

Win32 APIs like CreateProcess suck because they have to spend so much time setting up the stuff that allows Win32's application model to mimic that of 16-bit Windows, which was coopreratively multitasked. The NT kernel is much faster at creating processes when it doesn't need to worry about that stuff. As for NTFS: it's not NTFS specifically, it's the way the I/O system is designed in the NT kernel. Imagine any call…

Post by seventhtiger » Tue, May 20, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

okanat wrote: post #471

seventhtiger wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the other way around. You can do very few productive things with Windows other than software development. Almost all other professional software assume Windows.

> You can do very few productive things with Windows other than software development. I guess you meant Linux here

Post by whizzter » Tue, May 20, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

xeonmc wrote: post #879

whizzter wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance was one problem, but imho the biggest was that MMAP semantics were inherited from the NT side and made a lot of applications crash (mmap's created could only be as large as the file's current size as in Windows, while Linux/BSD semantics allows for a mmap larger than the file that's usable without constant remapping as the file grows). They didn't prioritize it until fixing at a late stage, barely before…

> (mmap's created could only be as large as the file's current size as in Windows, while Linux/BSD semantics allows for a mmap larger than the file that's usable without constant remapping as the file grows). I thought you could do it using ntdll functions, no? https://www.jeremyong.com/winapi/io/2024/11/03/windows-memor...