The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source • Hacker News Board

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#951

Post by sureglymop » Tue, May 20, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #567

sureglymop wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows in a vm with a passed through GPU is really nice. Although still pretty niche these days it's easier than it used to be. It also works with a single GPU, e.g. on a laptop. I personally have a desktop PC with an AMD GPU and then another Nvidia GPU that I pass through to windows hosts. I have a hook that changes the display output and switches the inputs using evdev.

It's really nice if you have two seperate GPUs in your computer ?

As I mentioned, can be done with a single GPU as well, just makes it a bit more complicated to set up.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#952

Post by sureglymop » Tue, May 20, 2025, 10:44 PM UTC

Affric wrote: post #600

sureglymop wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On linux it's quite trivial. KVM is part of the kernel. Installing libvirt and virt-manager makes it really easy to create vms. I'd say even passing through a GPU is not that hard these days though maybe that depends on hardware configuration more.

“On Linux it’s quite trivial…” giving big “ or a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”[1] vibes. Convenience features in software are huge and even if a system is well designed a system…

Not even close. I mentioned a software package that literally offers a full gui for all your virtualization needs.. how is that comparable to the things mentioned in that comment?

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#953

Post by rstuart4133 » Tue, May 20, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

olav wrote: post #873

I'd rather stay in Linux and use Windows if I really must. Can we have an LSW, then?

    qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -smp cores=4 -drive file=windows.qcow2,index=0,format=qcow2,if=virtio -display gtk -usb -device qemu-xhci,id=xhci -device usb-tablet -m 8G -vga std Win10_1803_EnglishInternational_x64.iso -netdev user,id=net0,restrict=off,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 -device virtio-net,netdev=net0

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#954

Post by husamia » Tue, May 20, 2025, 11:07 PM UTC

Microsoft is always too little too late just in time to save the day!

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#955

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, May 20, 2025, 11:35 PM UTC

mmx1 wrote: post #753

TeMPOraL wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSD and Linux are in the same bucket, so that doesn't count, not any more than MacOS compatibility with Linux. Windows is the odd one out.

I don't think it is fair to brush it off under "same bucket; doesn't count." The syscalls are still different and there's quite a bit of nuance. I mean the lines you're drawing are out of superficial convenience and quite arbitrary. In fact, I'd argue macOS/Darwin/XNU are really Mach at their core (virtual memory subsystem, process management and IPC) and BSD syscalls are simply an emulated service on Mach, which is…

> Likewise NT has very little to do with Win32 API in its fundamentals but Win2k feels the same to the user as WinME, but under your framing, you'd same-bucket those.

I probably would, in this context. Well, maybe not WinME, because that was a dumpster fire. But any Windows coming down from NT line, which is what's relevant in the past 20 years, sure. Same bucket.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#956

Post by dmatech » Tue, May 20, 2025, 11:35 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #782

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.

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.

Windows actually created a new process type for this: Pico processes[1]. This allows WSL1 to perform quite a bit better than Cygwin on something like Windows XP.

1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/wsl/pico-pro...

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#957

Post by ryao » Tue, May 20, 2025, 11:47 PM UTC

naikrovek wrote: post #642

ryao wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was previously called the Windows Subsystem for Android before it pivoted. It had a spiritual predecessor called Windows Services for UNIX. I doubt the name had been chosen for the reasons you say, considering the history. That said, to address the grandparent comment’s point, it probably should be read as “Windows Subsystem for Linux (Applications)”.

WSA was a separate thing. WSA and WSL both coexisted for a time.

Wikipedia states that WSL was made based on WSA.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#958

Post by naikrovek » Tue, May 20, 2025, 11:54 PM UTC

ryao wrote: post #957

naikrovek wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSA was a separate thing. WSA and WSL both coexisted for a time.

Wikipedia states that WSL was made based on WSA.

Got a link? WSA didn’t come out until Windows 11 was released, and WSL predates Windows 11.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#959

Post by vvpan » Wed, May 21, 2025, 12:09 AM UTC

voidUpdate wrote: post #811

vvpan wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried doing 3d modeling in a Windows VM - couldn't get acceleration to pass through.

What 3D modelling were you doing that couldn't be done on linux?

I needed to use Rhino 3D specifically because it had an environmental simulation plugin.

Re: The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

#960

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, May 21, 2025, 12:59 AM UTC

braiamp wrote: post #637

makeitdouble wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying running full Linux avoids wasting time on fiddly workarounds kinda blows my mind. Full hardware support is still not a given, and Windows emulation is still need for so many cases (e.g. games, specialized software etc). Until I can choose any machine based on form factor and specs alone and just run Linux on it, WSL will the best version of Linux it can run.

> Full hardware support is still not a given What may hap be your workload? The only thing that aren't working on Linux day 1 are GPU's, and it's mostly because kernel/distro timings (we haven't had a GPU release without support for mainline kernel in years).

I am into small and portable, decently powerful, high DPI laptops (battery be damned), ideally with touch support. And this category just gets no love in the linux world.

I was holding hopes for the Framework 12" but they cheaped on the screen to target the student market, with no upgrade option at this point.