[HN Gopher] Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI
___________________________________________________________________
Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI
Author : anchpop
Score : 559 points
Date : 2021-09-10 19:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tonoto wrote:
| you don't have to wait until Windows 11 for this nonsense. I am
| unfortunately locked at my current mission to be on a Windows
| laptop, my first Windows experience in years. As soon as I read
| up on wsl2 I installed it and inside installed the xrdp server
| and a corresponding lightweight environment, then just rdp into
| it (but every time the wsl gets restarted, you'll have to do a
| /etc/init.d/xrdp restart). Although, I can't wait until I get to
| a sane environment again. Without Windows and all headache it
| brings me...
| ramses0 wrote:
| Is it finally the year of Linux on the desktop yet?
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| It's the year of Embrace+Extend on WSL.
| sevensor wrote:
| As a WSL user at work, this addresses exactly zero of my problems
| with running Windows. Windows Defender is still going to randomly
| spin up and bring my machine to a halt. The Windows Start Menu
| with its ads is still there. There are still 15 pieces of device
| driver desktop experience crapware running in the background. The
| RAT required by our IT department is still resident. Adding GUI
| support doesn't move the needle: the missing feature is freedom.
| miohtama wrote:
| > The RAT required by our IT department is still resident
|
| This sounds like organizational problem, not a technical
| problem. Have you considered applying a new position for
| another employer that allows to run Ubuntu/Red Hat/etc.
| environments?
| themulticaster wrote:
| What's a RAT? I've never heard of it, and I'm afraid it's an
| not a googleable word. Remote Administration Tool? Something
| like Intel vPro?
| specktr wrote:
| They're likely referring to a remote access trojan (malware)
| which likely shares many features of whatever administrative
| tool the IT team uses at that company.
| sevensor wrote:
| Is there a fundamental difference between a remote
| administration tool and a remote access trojan?
| reissbaker wrote:
| Seems like roughly the same difference between a malware
| keylogger and say, X11. They both intercept all your
| keystrokes, but you wanted the latter one to do so and
| didn't want the former.
|
| ("But I didn't want the remote admin tool on my
| computer!" It's not your computer, it's the company's
| computer. And they wanted it there.)
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| It sounds like you really just need Linux and can skip Windows.
|
| FWIW, all this WSL stuff is mostly Microsoft trying to Extend,
| Embrace and Extinguish Linux.
| sevensor wrote:
| > It sounds like you really just need Linux and can skip
| Windows.
|
| My point exactly! I've been making that case for a while and
| I think I'm gaining some traction.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I've had to work with macOS in the past, and I was simply
| honest about where my time went. If I wasted all day trying
| to make something basic work in it, I'd just say so in
| standup.
|
| Eventually, my manager proposed paying for a VMware licence
| and I could run Linux on that.
|
| I still had to suffer with multiple displays (the macOS
| host had to detect them before the VM could use them), but
| I finally stayed getting work done.
| moonchrome wrote:
| While I do get the "dirty" feel running Windows and I fully
| agree that having crapware installed by device drivers is shady
| - the start menu ads seem to be gone (along with awful tiles)
| in Windows 11. I also rarely use start menu (powertoys
| launcher, although it's been crapping out on Win 11 recently
| with focus and such).
|
| I recently built a desktop since my MBP would turn in to a jet
| engine if I try to spin up a non trivial docker compose and I
| went for windows because I wanted to game - started on Windows
| 10 and was appalled at the ammount of crap they had
| preinstalled and there with the OS. Windows 11 beta has been
| much better in this regard.
| iammisc wrote:
| This might actually be the year of the Linux desktop
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Or the year of Lindows or Winux.
| mathnode wrote:
| For those that don't know, this will only be available in Windows
| 11, see
| https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/347#issuecomment-87...
| JorgeGT wrote:
| I see that those of us with a 7th gen Intel core CPU that "need
| not to worry because W10 will be supported for years" will
| immediately start missing functionality.
| shados wrote:
| At the very least the support requirement is a soft one, not
| a hard one. A large portion of motherboards from that era had
| firmware updates to officially support Win11, and Win11 WILL
| work on an i7-7700k even though its not in the list. You
| unfortunately won't get it through Windows update and will
| have to install the hard way.
|
| And if there's problems, you'll be sorry out of luck.
|
| Pisses me off, but at least it's not a complete blocker.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| According to The Verge, they may block security updates if
| you install manually through the ISO, so that's a no go for
| me: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/28/22646035/microsoft-
| window...
| shados wrote:
| Ok, if that's true, I'm back to raging about how
| absolutely ridiculous this is. Why obsolete a computer
| that can still run almost anything on high-ish settings
| @.@ Because there's 0.01% more crash or whatever....
| blibble wrote:
| so they can get an extra $60 out of the OEM for a new
| Windows license when you buy another PC
| numpad0 wrote:
| I'm speculating it was supposed to let them drop Meltdown
| patches. Doing so easily creates "20% performance gain
| over Windows 10 on same machine". Aligns with the
| statement that they "block" "security" updates.
|
| But this is clearly coming from someone who's not
| actively in coding role and without consultation with
| developers, as some of CPUs(namely Ryzen 2k) to be
| supported don't have the required but not very well
| debugged features(MBEC for Zen 2 - Ryzen 3k and up with
| luck).
| dataflow wrote:
| I don't think 7820HQ has more resistance to Meltdown than
| 7700HQ. In fact TSX-NI might make it worse. Yet they
| allow the former but not the latter.
| zbentley wrote:
| > I'm speculating
|
| Was that a pun?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| To be honest I'm not going to miss the annual update that
| messes with all my settings and tries to force a MS account
| on me.
| asciimov wrote:
| You know, you will still get those.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I assume not, that we will just get security updates
| until it goes end of life. No more "features".
| ndiddy wrote:
| I hope you're excited for the 21H2 feature update, coming
| in the second half of 2021. The announcement mentions
| that it will get 18 months of servicing so I'm assuming
| this means we will get future feature updates as well.
|
| https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/07/15/in
| tro...
| [deleted]
| q-rews wrote:
| Support doesn't mean you get all the new features.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| To be fair, it's also the first prerequisite on the linked
| page.
|
| > WSLg is going to be generally available alongside the
| upcoming release of Windows. To get access to a preview of
| WSLg, you'll need to join the Windows Insider Program and be
| running a Windows 10 Insider Preview build from the beta or dev
| channels.
| pedro2 wrote:
| WHAT??????
|
| I always thought it would be enabled on Windows 10.
| nwatson wrote:
| Yeah bummer. My old Windows machine won't be upgradable to
| Windows 11 ... interestingly I was able to install the Windows
| 11 preview and even get the WSL2 update with the integrated
| X11/GUI and it worked great. However I was notified I couldn't
| upgrade to official build and the only recourse was to re-
| install Windows 10.
|
| I'll need to revert to one of the available X11 servers but I
| wiped out the old configuration and it's kinda painful to
| automatically set $DISPLAY and also get Norton Firewall to play
| along.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I have a solution for the disk/partition type/layout
| incompatible with upgrading to newer Windows 11 builds (but
| not the TPM workaround) but I haven't gotten around to
| packaging it and publishing it for download on our site.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Don't think I've heard about those, what all requirements
| changed on the storage side there?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I don't know if it's what the GP was referring to but
| partition requirements pertaining to MBR vs GPT and
| specific requirements for alignment, MSR properties, and
| order of partitions has been locked down considerably.
| Annoyingly they all manifest as an opaque "this PC isn't
| compatible" or similar message.
| jjcon wrote:
| I don't want to want this, but I do.
|
| Only semi-related but what I really want is for easy windows apps
| on linux that work without fail. I prefer my linux box and
| generally hate the windows ui (don't get me started on windows
| settings or audio). I've tried switching to linux full-time but I
| don't know if I can hack it. Games are 90% there and I can do
| without the few that don't work with proton, but there are just
| too many apps that only work on my windows side that I just don't
| think I can dump windows.
|
| Wine gives me inconsistent results and breaks for just about
| anything that needs registry access, not to mention its pretty
| complicated. I'm hoping to stumble on some tool I've been missing
| out on that makes everything easier because I wan't to run linux
| as my daily... I just don't know if it is practical.
| jraph wrote:
| Would a Windows VM on your Linux system help? Maybe some apps
| have robust alternatives?
| caust1c wrote:
| Have you heard of VFIO for Graphics Cards in Linux host with
| Windows Guest? Haven't tried it yet, but it's my winter project
| and I'm excited:
|
| https://passthroughpo.st/
| jjcon wrote:
| I haven't personally done much with VFIO but I have looked at
| it. From my initial look it seemed as if it would require two
| gpus, one for the host and one for the guest but it looks
| like some people have single gpu setups working
|
| https://github.com/joeknock90/Single-GPU-Passthrough
| [deleted]
| smichel17 wrote:
| Which apps? Not that it makes a difference for this
| conversation, but I'm interested in keeping up to date with
| what the "killer apps" are that keep people from switching.
| mcswell wrote:
| If you're talking about Windows apps that keep me from
| switching to Linux, I have an oddball one: it's a keyboard
| re-mapper that I wrote back in Windows 3.1 and still use. It
| does the same re-mapping in _every_ application (except for
| some reason in Microsoft Edge). It 's not a simple 1-for-1
| mapper, which I think is readily available in Linux.
|
| At the simplest level, it re-maps ^H to the left cursor
| arrow, ^N to PageDown, etc.
|
| But it gets more complicated: ^D maps to seven down cursor
| arrows (i.e. it moves the cursor down seven lines), ^U in the
| opposite direction. ^C usually (more details below) maps to
| ^Left (i.e. go to the beginning of the word), Shift-^Right
| (select to end of word), and ^C (copy selected text). (Notice
| the final ^C does not cause recursion!)
|
| ^A once goes to the beginning of the line, ^A twice goes to
| top of screen (I forget the exact keystrokes it emits, but
| this works with most apps), and ^A thrice goes to the
| beginning of the file. Analogously for ^E, but end.
|
| Finally, it has two modes. In the normal mode, all the cursor
| control keys do their normal cursor movement thing. But type
| ^Q, and the cursor keys are now in select mode: ^H outputs
| Shift-Left, i.e. selects the character to the left, etc. Drop
| out of select mode with ^C (copy selection--different from
| what I described above!), ^X (cut selection), or ^Q again (do
| nothing with the selection).
|
| I'd love to be able to reproduce this kind of behavior in
| Linux. I'm sure it's possible, but I don't know enough about
| keyboard re-mapping, or keyboard drivers, to do it.
| [deleted]
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| I haven't tried it yet, but I recently learned about this
| tool and have it on my list to test drive:
|
| https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd
| badsectoracula wrote:
| If you use Xorg you can use XInput2 and XIGrabKeycode[0] to
| grab specific key combinations and get notified (via event
| messages, they happen asynchronously) when they are
| pressed. Then you can use XTest and XTestFakeKeyEvent[1] to
| send the event you want.
|
| XInput2 and XIGrabKeycode should provide the highest
| priority grabbing under Xorg so that even applications that
| do server-wide grabs (e.g. games) will be bypassed.
|
| XTest was meant for automated UI testing but can be used
| for all sorts of automated behaviors.
|
| For the first part i wrote a simple program[2] years a go
| that uses xkill to kill the toplevel window with Ctrl+Alt+K
| (mainly for games that grab the input and hang) which can
| be used as a quick example. I haven't tried to use
| XTestFakeKeyEvent but there seems to be a lot of code out
| there which can be used as an example, e.g. this one[2]
| (see the send_key function near the top).
|
| [0] https://linux.die.net/man/3/xigrabkeycode
|
| [1] https://linux.die.net/man/3/xtestfakekeyevent
|
| [2] http://runtimeterror.com/tools/xkeyller/
|
| [3] http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/matchbox-
| history/plain/...
| smichel17 wrote:
| That sounds pretty similar to the QMK firmware that runs on
| my keyboard (an Ergodox-EZ).
|
| It's been a blast to play around with. Best part is that it
| travels with the keyboard rather than the OS, so I can plug
| into a different computer and retain the same layout
| without needing to install anything.
|
| I've been slowly resetting all my OS hotkeys/shortcuts to
| their defaults, and customizing the position of those keys
| on my keyboard instead. Current layout, for reference:
| https://configure.zsa.io/ergodox-ez/layouts/xbzAL/latest/0
| jjcon wrote:
| For me there are a couple areas that just have a tough time
| in linux: VR Development, Digital audio workstations and
| niche utilities. It is getting better but still has a ways to
| go in these areas imo.
|
| Specifically: VR Development - Unity now has a linux version
| which is great but there is no oculus runtime which means no
| oculus testing (SteamVR works but has some hiccups)
|
| Digital audio workstations - Looking primarily at FL Studio,
| yes you can wine it but for me the audio delay makes it very
| difficult to use. I'd love to find solutions around this but
| haven't thus far.
|
| Niche utilities - For game dev I've got a ton of old
| utilities for visualizing or converting old 3d object files
| to newer formats, sdks for old games that I occasionally need
| to pop into and all of them struggle or require a lot of
| setup to work properly on linux. For these I find myself
| booting over to windows, grabbing what I need and popping
| back to linux.
| Briq7 wrote:
| I just recently switch from windows to linux. Was planning to
| do some 3D printing tomorrow, but saw that Fusion360 had poor
| Wine support. So I probably need to learn a new software or
| setup a VM or something.
| flexer2 wrote:
| Fusion360 is the only thing I run a VM for. There's a repo
| out there that sets up wine and installs it but it just
| doesn't work very well at all. I'm using VMWare Player and
| set up the virtual disk to boot from the Windows drive and
| run it that way. It works really well. Other 3D printing
| stuff like PrusaSlicer works great on Linux. I'd love to
| have a native version of Fusion though. Maybe someday.
| [deleted]
| owalt wrote:
| > don't get me started on windows settings or audio
|
| I'll bite - what's wrong with the audio? Friends on mine in
| game dev often complain Linux audio is hopeless to work with.
| therein wrote:
| Keeps switching between different outputs in games and no
| matter what I do with the default communication device etc.
| it keeps happening. I lose audio in games on random intervals
| and I don't get it back until I switch my output device to
| something else and back.
|
| Used to happen only in Warzone but now I'm noticing it
| affects games with other engines as well.
|
| Granted I have a very non-standard setup but it shouldn't be
| causing any of these issues.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Does Windows think that audio devices are being connected
| or disconnected? That's the only time I've had the default
| device switch on me. Annoyingly it can end up happening if
| you have a display that presents itself as an audio
| endpoint and then that display is turned off or even just
| goes to sleep.
| therein wrote:
| Interesting perspective. I had always blamed it on
| something pertaining to my VFIO setup but I think you are
| pointing out something that might be at play here that I
| hadn't considered before.
|
| I'll disable the speakers on the monitor from the HW menu
| on the monitor and see if that helps.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| Maybe they just mean the audio UI? It's complex, and at least
| on Windows 10 it's a mix of the new UI and old UI.
|
| For example, figuring out how to configure and test surround
| sound channels means click through multiple dialogs, and it's
| not clear how exactly to get there.
|
| With Windows 10, it's even harder to access sound mixer than
| it was on previous versions, and this is what to use in 99%
| after clicking on audio icon in the taskbar.
| danudey wrote:
| Not the parent poster, but I'll chime in.
|
| I have a pretty solid Dell laptop from work, and yet, there
| is one frustration that beats out anything else: audio.
|
| I can't play music without it stuttering and skipping and
| sounding choppy and cutting out if something resource-
| intensive is happening, like Firefox loading a new page (but
| how often does THAT happen?)
|
| Same with audio notifications. When my "new mail"
| notification sounds choppy, the underlying system must be
| just absolute garbage.
| jjcon wrote:
| My main complaint on windows is more on the UI than the
| technical audio. I've got like 15 audio devices listed under
| the audio menu and windows can never figure out which one I
| intend to be playing from (and gives them terrible names) so
| I have to constantly be manually switching it around until I
| find the right one. My experience on Mac and Linux is that
| they seem to be able to switch to the right device as it
| connects then switch back appropriately when it disconnects.
| owalt wrote:
| Makes sense actually. That's been an annoyance of mine as
| well. I suppose I never realized it's better on other
| platforms.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| USB hotplug is still a mess in Windows and so using any
| external audio interface or soundcard is just a mess.
|
| The UI is complete garbage but siblings said enough about
| that dumpster fire already.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| USB hotplug works fine, and has for 20+ years now. You may
| be blaming the OS for your vendor's incompetence at driver
| maintenance.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Standby/Resume or hibernate? Let's roll a 12-sided dice
| on wakeup, "1" is for "I forget all settings about a
| random device and re-install the driver" and "2" is for
| "I gonna act like it's not even there until you plug it
| out and back in again". Using a different USB port today?
| Hope you don't mind re-configuring!
|
| This is _especially_ annoying for audio devices, because
| lots of applications - and certainly any slightly more
| advanced setup - require explicit configuration of audio
| devices and when Windows does its "it's a different
| thing every time I see it" temper tantrum this means you
| have to go back to every application and tell it again
| "Yeah, that OUT3-4 that doesn't exist any more? Use the
| OUT3-4 that does exist", because the user-visible name
| stays the same (it's the same hardware, after all), while
| the underlying ID changes for one reason or another.
|
| This has nothing to do with vendor's drivers btw., this
| is simply how hotplug works in Windows' driver model.
|
| So no, this is not "working fine".
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| This is cool and I'm not knocking it. Just wanted to point out
| the irony that _back in my day_ there was lots of fear that MS
| would embrace extend and extinguish Linux. How ironic would it be
| if this happened inadvertently because WSL got that good.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| This isn't surprising given all the incentives that led to WSL1,
| but it's still a damn wild ride to arrive here.
| alecksag wrote:
| Just waiting for some Linux-based VDIs now. Azure Virtual Desktop
| is all RDP-based. It also used to be called "Windows" Virtual
| Desktop.
|
| While it's not something I would necessarily use for myself,
| having the option is really empowering especially for engineers
| within companies.
| coding123 wrote:
| This reminds me of an old VMWare version where you could break
| out windows from the guest OS into the host. I'm surprised it
| wasn't patented by VMWare (or maybe that expired?)
|
| Either way, pretty awesome to have this.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Pretty sure VirtualBox has that still.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to
| support. Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows
| build or corollary app. I get how 'you never have to leave
| Windows' is a nice thing for their business, but I don't see this
| being a reason I would stop dual-booting. The only reason I run
| windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games.
| Otherwise I really enjoy the bloat-free, ad-free, telemetry-free,
| snappy, tractable, and undistracted experience that is Linux
| desktop computing.
|
| It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add
| native ext4 support.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| My networked workplace computer needs to be able to compile a
| Windows application plus peripherals running various other
| architectures. The Windows part happens best in Windows, while
| the other parts are remarkably painful to compile without
| Linux. And all the platforms can compile in parallel.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| As someone who uses Windows as their main driver, I will
| personally find it a useful way to test/debug our Electron
| based app on Linux. Right now I'm using a full VM.
|
| When you consider that Edge is available for Linux, MS could
| very well be using WSLg to develop it.
|
| So it seems to me that this just makes it easier to anything
| you need to do on Linux, "on" Windows.
|
| Of course making it easier for people on Windows to make
| software for Linux seems like a way to help Linux, which is a
| bit confusing to see MS do.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Also looks good to debugging puppeteer with head on docker
| container.
| pxc wrote:
| > Right now I'm using a full VM.
|
| WSL2 is also a full VM
| sverhagen wrote:
| Is that so? Isn't it more like a bridge between Linux and
| Windows kernels, so that stuff is ultimately delegated to
| Windows?
| bat_sy wrote:
| WSL 1 was. WSL2 is a VM.
| dboreham wrote:
| But a special VM.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Still a VM :)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| A bridge between kernels is how most VMs work these days.
| The kernel inside the VM has special drivers for extra-
| simple 'hardware' that the host OS provides.
|
| As opposed to WSL1 where there's a wine-esque module in
| the windows kernel, and there is no linux kernel at all.
| TheCycoONE wrote:
| WSL1 was done that way (though with a compatibility shim
| not a real linux kernel), but it had a number of
| shortcomings, primarily that I noticed in file io
| performance, but also in compatibility as they had to map
| all the syscalls themselves.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-
| version...
| LaGrange wrote:
| It is, just with some fancy integrations that makes it
| more comfortable - for example memory reclamation. But
| it's all a fancy VM in the end.
| whatever1 wrote:
| A super fast one. After one click, within 2-3 seconds I
| can have an Ubuntu terminal open with wsl. To spin up a
| vm from let's say VMware, I need at least 10times that.
| pxc wrote:
| I don't think that's magic in the hypervisor, so I doubt
| it affects overall performance of the VM very much. But
| WSL images have a special boot process instead of a full
| init system like systemd, which is probably where the
| fast startup comes from. Maybe it also has to do with how
| they configure storage for the VM. On real hardware with
| a decent SSD, Ubuntu usually gets you a graphical login
| in less than 10 seconds.
|
| Anyway it's a cool feature, and I'd love to know more
| about how it works.
| denysvitali wrote:
| And the fact that they probably use a slimmed down kernel
| with just the right amount of modules, I guess.
|
| In any case, booting Linux (the kernel) is always
| incredibly fast, and booting to a tty, without all the
| systemd units that are generally loaded, is incredibly
| fast per se.
| nine_k wrote:
| As far as I know, both the NT kernel and the WSL2 Linux
| kernel use the same hypervisor below them.
| sixothree wrote:
| Qemu manager would be good.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I was looking into this further because it's sort of impacting
| my dual-boot workflow. I have ext4 media drives on Linux that
| aren't viewable or readable from Windows, but Linux can at
| least read the NTFS drive. The third parties I've tried in the
| past for making Ext4 readable in Windows File Explorer have
| some sketchy security concerns and/or missing Win10 support.
|
| It looks like using the method described in the link below it's
| now possible to mount ext4 drives via WSL2 and even browse them
| in File Explorer:
|
| https://superuser.com/a/1630438
|
| It's not clear if they are also writable or not, I'm off to try
| it!
| AkshitGarg wrote:
| You can use WSL to mount ext4 and other filesystems supported
| in linux.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk
| reilly3000 wrote:
| So far no good. That feature was a preview release that
| required insider builds, which require enabling telemetry
| that sends, among other things, "information about websites
| you browse, apps and features you use..." Moreover, I'm not
| able to use Windows 11 which has the feature because of my
| AMD Threadripper 1950X processor.
| sharken wrote:
| I wonder if disabling telemetry works on the insider
| builds.
|
| There is a guide here:
|
| https://medium.com/geekculture/how-to-stop-
| windows-10-from-s...
|
| However waiting for 21H2 is probably a lot easier.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| If all your development is on Linux, it'a convenient to run IDE
| there as well.
| usrusr wrote:
| > Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows
| build or corollary app.
|
| And using them is an endless shuffle with fractured
| distribution and update. WSL gives you apt-get. And good luck
| when every port you use integrates with a different subset of
| the ca 5 SSH options that are in common use on Windows.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| They're supporting servers. That's the whole story. They won
| business desktops but lost enterprise in the "anything that
| requires network access", and want to continue to sell software
| to those customers. Making development less onerous supports
| that goal.
| jbhouse wrote:
| you would be surprised at what a large effect the removal of
| friction can have. I bet this will convince a decent chunk of
| people that dual booting isn't worth it
| sharken wrote:
| Exactly, don't underestimate what removal of a few annoying
| hoops to jump through can do.
|
| The other day I wanted to compare gitk on Windows with the
| same on Linux. But there was no Xserver installed, so the
| idea was dropped.
|
| The whole reason was to see if gitk also had that annoying
| enumeration at startup in Linux.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Well, ROS?
|
| I can't tell you how many people want to mess around with the
| robot operating system but don't want to dive head first into
| Linux. Hell, my very large robotics company won't even give you
| a linux machine. You're _forced_ to use Mac or Windows or build
| it yourself.
|
| But in general, I haven't dual-booted my main machine since WSL
| got good, and I'm a linxu-first kind of person with a penchant
| for windows gaming.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I bet Microsoft would rather that they used Azure Sphere OS
| or Azure RTOS for that purpose.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I suspect this is to try to push large business/corporate
| clients to drop Linux.
|
| Windows adds support for running Linux apps, then spreads some
| FUD about Linux, and convinces companies they need to ban dual-
| booting and only allow Windows internally.
|
| It certainly does _sound_ like MS.
| eitland wrote:
| Almost everything I use runs faster on Linux so even if it
| isn't Linux exclusive I'd very much prefer to run it on Linux.
|
| VS Code brilliantly lets me develop on WSL2, IntelliJ is
| getting there but with these new developments it might become
| easier to run everything on Linux.
|
| That said, IT at work not only tolerates Linux but actively
| support it so I might be back on Linux again very soon.
| alex_smart wrote:
| So even if a windows build is available, sometimes the user
| experience of linux-first software on windows can be subobtimal
| because of differences in filesystem and process model of the
| two operating systems. I much prefer using git and emacs within
| WSL than their windows builds.
|
| > The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few
| apps, mostly games
|
| Another reason to use windows is if you are on a laptop and
| care about battery life. Browsers on Linux still don't have
| hardware accelerated video playback.
| lobocinza wrote:
| > Another reason to use windows is if you are on a laptop and
| care about battery life. Browsers on Linux still don't have
| hardware accelerated video playback.
|
| That's just not true. Might be a problem with some GPUs but
| not with all. At least I got hardware accelerated video
| playback on Chromium with my AMD GPU.
| II2II wrote:
| > I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to
| support.
|
| It would be more of a case of how well certain software works,
| or how well that software works together, than one of
| supporting Linux exclusive software. There have been a variety
| of ways to run Unix software under Windows for decades. Quite
| often, there are quirks to deal with unless considerable effort
| has also been put into the Windows native version. I doubt that
| WSL will actually appeal to many existing Linux users, but it
| will probably prevent the slow flow of people from Windows to
| Linux.
|
| I agree that native ext4 support would be more useful for
| people who dual boot.
| gigel82 wrote:
| IIRC, they were primarily interested in getting GPU
| acceleration (for ML tasks) to work in WSL2.
|
| I presume getting GUI working on top of those GPU APIs was a
| trivial task (and maybe done by one of their interns or during
| a hackathon).
| mook wrote:
| It sounds like they did significant work getting the whole
| stack to work well, from Wayland to the RDP back-end to
| improvements to the RDP client on the Win32 side.
|
| Your interns must be rock stars on meth.
| kafkaIncarnate wrote:
| Most likely energy drinks + Adderall + financial
| insecurity. Adderall, Meth, same thing.
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| GPU passthrough on WSL2 is a thing since around December 2020
| -- but I'm not sure if it's in stable yet, I had to install
| an insider build for it. It works surprisingly well and I was
| able to develop my ML project using it (with the help of
| VSCode devcontainers)
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Why did you want to develop it through WSL2 instead of just
| compiling it on windows?
| reilly3000 wrote:
| That sounds like the killer app. GPU passthru can be an
| absolutely gnarly undertaking with any virtualization system.
| gobookdev wrote:
| Anyone could already do it with a few lines of code.
|
| Edit: Seems people don't believe me, here's an article how to
| do it: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-dev-
| appconsul...
| rrss wrote:
| That shows how to set up an X server in windows that WSL
| can access. How do you get GPU acceleration for ML tasks
| using X11?
| nailer wrote:
| Every single person who has ever claimed Linux runs flawlessly
| on a piece of hardware has had some flaws. I include myself
| here - I once bought a laptop with entirely OSS mainline kernel
| supported hardware and compositing didn't work on external
| displays.
|
| 99% hardware support isn't good enough. I want to make new
| software not troubleshoot other people's.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Thinkpads generally work perfectly. Also, windows hardly has
| even 99% compatibility with hardware. There is hardware that
| behaves better under linux than windows as well.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I think it's mostly a "because they can". WSL is a no-brainer
| because developers are used to Unix shells and most programming
| languages are Unix-first, Windows-maybe. But WSLg feels like a
| weird experiment with no purpose.
| hawtkey wrote:
| I think the main target is ML applications that depend on GPU
| access and being able to run a WM is just a side-benefit.
| mainedotpy wrote:
| This could very well be the case, but as someone who is just
| dipping a toe into programming, installing and using WSL2
| knowing that I can fall back on GUI when I can't figure out
| bash is a feature for me.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like
| add native ext4 support.
|
| Other way around. The Kernel getting real support for NTFS (was
| merged into Linus' tree a month ago [0]) there's hope to get
| native performance on WSL2.
|
| Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next decade.
|
| [0] https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-
| have-...
| pritambaral wrote:
| Linux and Windows use mutually exclusive permission/ACL bits,
| even on the same NTFS filesystem.
| pxc wrote:
| > even on the same NTFS filesystem
|
| can you explain a bit how this works?
| pkaye wrote:
| I think they use extended attributes in NTFS to provide
| the Linux file system permission.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/file-
| permission...
| chx wrote:
| That was WSL v1. WSL v2 is a full blown VM and the
| filesystem is native ext4 and lives in an image file.
| chungy wrote:
| If Linux would just adopt NFSv4 ACLs, there'd be nothing
| mutually exclusive about it, but instead perfectly in
| tandem.
| gitgud wrote:
| > _Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next
| decade._
|
| Big claim, most devs I've met either use Mac or Ubuntu. Can't
| remember anyone using Windows...
| sidlls wrote:
| Mac is a small slice of the software engineer market, and
| mostly in the web-app/mobile space.
| tubby12345 wrote:
| every single FAANG (and many middle tier companies too)
| distributes macbook pros to its devs.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Just because there is no viable enterprise-ish Linux
| computer that fits those environments. Sadly :(
| tubby12345 wrote:
| Definitely not true since (at least at FB) you can also
| get an auxiliary laptop (Thinkpad) with Linux (Fedora).
| Just that no one wants them.
| sidlls wrote:
| And yet that doesn't constitute even close to the
| majority of developers.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| It's pretty common among game, .net, and Java EE devs. For
| me as a Python/Node/Cloud dev it was kinda a nonstarter (it
| all theoretically works, but has all kinds of little bugs
| and caveats) until WSL was stable. Since then it's been
| perfectly viable for anything I'm working on, and I was
| able to use it exclusively for dev work for about 6 months.
| I have a Mac laptop too, but my desktop is too beefy to not
| use as my daily driver. Still, I prefer Linux for
| development work.
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| There are literally dozens of us!
|
| No, really, when all of my development happens over SSH or
| inside Docker anyway, it doesn't really matter which is the
| "outer" OS. I'm happy with Windows.
| [deleted]
| FpUser wrote:
| I develop Linux software on Windows using Visual Studio /
| C++. It lets me build and debug my servers on Linux
| machines remotely using nice IDE and tools. Also use CLion
| from Jet Brains the same way
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Have a look at JetBrains' developer surveys. Windows is
| consistently the most used OS.
|
| https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/#Main_on-
| whic...
|
| Windows: 61% Linux: 47% macOS: 44%
| dboreham wrote:
| <raises hand> I've consistently developed Unix (then Linux)
| server software on WindowsNT since 1996.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Linux has had read-only support for NTFS longer than WSL has
| been around. And if you think that Kernel patch is a
| testament to the greatness of Windows, you should try reading
| some of it. It's infamously incomprehensible.
|
| I'd be onboard with Windows as a next-gen dev environment if
| it was compatible with more filesystems, had a more organized
| file structure, featured greater CPU compatibility, and
| eliminated the system registry altogether.
| accurrent wrote:
| To be honest, theres alot of research related software
| (including for visualization) that works on Linux only or has
| very poor support for windows. As a roboticist one example that
| comes to mind is the whole open source robotics ecosystem with
| ROS/Gazebo which is pretty linux only. Personally I've been
| using linux as a daily driver for 10+years now so its not a
| problem for me per-se, however I'm sure there are many who
| would be interested in seeing better windows support. I've
| heard of similar issues in the domain of particle physics and a
| few other niche research areas.
| MikusR wrote:
| They made it specifically for machine learning
| d_k_f wrote:
| Whenever you want to natively operate on files within WSL
| instead of going through the network share abstraction, this is
| definitely helpful. I'm running my git GUI (Sublime Merge) on
| the Linux side and am currently piping the UI through to
| Windows using VcxServe. If I can remove another dependency
| using this - great.
| ezoe wrote:
| Terminal emulator.
| merb wrote:
| the reverse would also be pretty useful. heck if they would
| pull off office for linux even when they would charge windows
| pro and a 365 license it would probably be welcomed.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I would buy that the moment it is released. That would be the
| fabled Year of the Linux Desktop.
| ineedasername wrote:
| You can always just use Unity mode on the free VMware
| Player. VMware may allocate resources, but plays nicely
| with sharing them when not actually in use, so there's not
| much a performance hit on the host machine unless you
| really need to do something that has the CPU pegged.
|
| I think VirtualBox has a similar feature, but in my limited
| experience VB doesn't perform as well as VMware.
| lobocinza wrote:
| Would be bad for vendor lock-in.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| > It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like
| add native ext4 support.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Even though our dev environment at work is Ubuntu, I greatly
| prefer running Windows on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme, because of
| the superior hardware support for the devices I use.
| Specifically:
|
| * I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?),
| and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while
| we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other
| Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu. They pair only as
| headphones with no microphone. On Windows they work "out of the
| box".
|
| * I use a triple-monitor configuration with three 4K displays:
| the ThinkPad's internal 15" display and two 24" externals. In
| Ubuntu I can only get two displays to work. (BTW one external
| display is in landscape mode above the ThinkPad, and the other
| is to the left in portrait mode. I highly recommend this
| configuration - the portrait mode display is great for reading
| docs and especially PDF files.)
|
| * I run the external displays at 200% scaling and the internal
| at 300% to match the differing pixel density. I didn't see any
| way to support this configuration in Ubuntu, much less be able
| to move an app window between displays and have it
| automatically update its scaling factor to match the display.
| This works "out of the box" in Windows.
|
| So I run Windows on the hardware and Ubuntu with my dev tools
| like PyCharm and SmartGit in a VMware VM. (VMware works a lot
| better for this than VirtualBox - the display response is much
| snappier.)
|
| Of course these are my own needs, and I have no quarrel with
| anyone who has different preferences. But I welcome anything
| Microsoft can do to make this an even smoother experience than
| it already is.
| kafkaIncarnate wrote:
| > I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?)
|
| I'm way more productive with email and just a couple phone
| calls a week as needed.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Ha! Tell me about it. :-)
|
| In truth, I don't spend _that_ much time on Zoom calls, and
| of the few that I have, many are no video, just substitutes
| for a phone call with better audio quality and the ability
| to share screens if needed.
| Too wrote:
| Ubuntu by default pairs Bluetooth headsets as A2DP, which has
| higher quality for music but no mic-support. You have to go
| in to Ubuntu bluetooth sound settings and change the output
| device to headset mode every god damn time you turn on the
| headset. And then toggle it back to A2DP if you want to
| listen to music again. I don't know how Windows or iOS deals
| with this but there both modes seem to work seamlessly.
| Jnr wrote:
| Pipewire can switch to headset mode automatically whenever
| a microphone input is needed. And it switches it back to
| headphone mode afterwards. It works on Linux exactly like
| on a phone or macOS. Pipewire is backwards compatible with
| Pulseaudio so there is no reason to not migrate.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've not heard of pipewire. Need to check this out
| because I'd love for my truly wireless earphones to be
| able to seamlessly switch modes on Ubuntu. I use a wired
| headset for work calls I need to be on quickly because
| it's pretty flawless, but the tether is more than a
| little annoying.
|
| EDIT: It took me 5 minutes after reading the comment
| above to replace pulseaudio with pipewire on Ubuntu
| 20.04, now I have access to my earphones' high quality
| codecs too right from the Ubuntu sound control panel!
|
| I used this[0] then this[1]
|
| [0] https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/05/install-
| latest-...
|
| [1] https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/05/enable-
| pipewire... - I only followed steps 1 and 4 and audio was
| switched instantly, earphones already paired. Now I have
| AAC, SBC, SBC-XQ...
|
| EDIT2: Switching to/from my earphones and from 1 bud to 2
| buds appears flawless so far, even for the Spotify
| desktop for Linux app which usually requires a
| `pulseaudio -k` to send the audio out of the right device
| usually, even if it's correctly selected in sound
| settings.
|
| EDIT3: Don't forget to mask pulseaudio (yellow box,
| second link) or pulseaudio will load on reboot and break
| things, no amount of systemctl disable will stop it
| without masking.
|
| EDIT4: Linked site has different theme on mobile so
| yellow box in EDIT3 isn't yellow.
| fnord123 wrote:
| Does Macos doesn't deal with this? IME, MBluetooth Audio
| from Mac sounds like a fart in a pringles can unless you
| update some plist somewhere. But once you do that It JuSt
| WoRks.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we
| talk. I was never was able to get these or any other
| Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu.
|
| Is this due to Apple having drivers for AirPods for Windows
| or Is Windows Bluetooth stack that good?
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I didn't install any Apple drivers, just paired and
| connected them in the Windows settings. I also tried a
| couple of cheaper Bluetooth headsets and they worked
| equally well. None of them would connect as headsets in
| Ubuntu 20.04.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I have a short bluetooth pairing troubleshooting content
| for RPi [1] which shows the basic bluetoothctl commands,
| Give it an attempt next time.
|
| But manufacturers do test their devices with Windows
| Bluetooth stack (incl. Apple) as after all they hold the
| majority market share.
|
| [1] https://abishekmuthian.com/fixing-bluetooth-issues-
| on-raspbe...
| Jnr wrote:
| Bluetooth headsets (I have Bose) and automatic input
| switching works with pipewire, fractional scaling with
| different settings for each monitor works with Wayland.
|
| I am using it on Archlinux without any problems whatsoever.
|
| The problem with Ubuntu is - when it releases their latest
| version, it is already shipping a couple years old software
| versions.
|
| And for pipewire, wayland, mesa and other desktop related
| things you want to run the latest version at all times. This
| is one of the major reasons why Valve chose Archlinux as a
| base for their new SteamOS version for Steam Deck.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I'm using Fedora. Scaling works, but not for all apps.
| Gnome apps work just fine. But Chrome, Intellij Idea and
| some other apps do not scale when moved to other display.
| AFAIU Wayland-native apps work, but those which use Xlib do
| not re-scale properly.
| Jnr wrote:
| I saw on their bug tracker that Intellij devs will work
| on it this year.
| tlamponi wrote:
| > The problem with Ubuntu is - when it releases their
| latest version, it is already shipping a couple years old
| software versions.
|
| That is quite a dramatic take and simply not true.
|
| It maybe fits somewhat for Debian Stable (that has a freeze
| of 4 to 6 months), but Ubuntu bases off Debian Unstable
| (sid) and sid is very close to the Arch experience - I know
| because I use both _a lot_. Granted, Ubuntu adds a bit of a
| delay due to QA and all that release fuzz a rolling release
| like Arch does not has to care for, but if an upstream
| software release happened one or two months before an
| Ubuntu release it 's really likely to be included in that
| release. > And for pipewire, wayland, mesa
| and other desktop related things you want to run the latest
| version at all times.
|
| Meh, in general I agree with the sentiment, but there are
| also regressions that hurt running into, and if you have HW
| that was released over a year ago it may not matter _that_
| much. > This is one of the major reasons
| why Valve chose Archlinux as a base for their new SteamOS
| version for Steam Deck.
|
| Not directly, they could have used Debian sid for that, and
| the fact that SteamOS 2.0 is still on Debian 8 (newest is
| 11) also shows that they did not try to go for the latest
| releases until now. I'm working on a Debian derivative and
| we just backport things ourself if really required, it is a
| bit of work but not that much (we're definitively orders of
| magnitudes smaller than Valve) - especially as the Debian
| unstable/sid repo is quite up-to-date and thus we often can
| just take it from there and base on that anyway.
|
| But actually Debian and Arch Linux are really close anyway,
| I do packaging for both (but neither a DM nor Arch trusted
| user) and if the software is not awful to package in
| general it's quite the bliss to do for both, there are also
| lots of parallels, even if often slightly hidden. So I
| won't care much; may even try out setting up Debian Sid
| once I get my Steam Deck :)
|
| FYI: here's some good background read regarding all this
| from a Debian developer whom also works for Collabora on
| the Steam Runtime: https://lists.debian.org/debian-
| devel/2021/07/msg00214.html
| Jnr wrote:
| Debian used to be my main desktop distro 10 years ago,
| but I switched to Archlinux because for me personally
| Debian reqired too much work after packages got broken (I
| was on testing or unstable, don't remember anymore), and
| it happened too frequently. And also Archlinux AUR was
| very powerful with no good alternatives on Debian at that
| time.
|
| I still have some servers running Debian but I have
| migrated most to Ubuntu because of much simpler upgrade
| procedures between stable versions (basically I have
| enabled automatic upgrades with auto reboot on all of
| them).
|
| I am an enthusiast but I like to have things running
| smoothly and even with Arch being rolling release, it has
| been working smoother for me than in my time prior with
| Debian.
|
| Maybe it is because of the excellent documentation on
| Arch wiki, maybe it comes with experience. All of this is
| subjective anyway.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > * I run the external displays at 200% scaling and the
| internal at 300% to match the differing pixel density. I
| didn't see any way to support this configuration in Ubuntu,
| much less be able to move an app window between displays and
| have it automatically update its scaling factor to match the
| display. This works "out of the box" in Windows.
|
| This works if you use Wayland rather than X11. I'm using a
| similar configuration today.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| That is good to know, thanks for the tip! I will definitely
| try that whenever I use Linux on the hardware in the
| future.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| However, the X1 Extreme has an Nvidia GPU.
| Jnr wrote:
| Since June Nvidia proprietary driver supports KMS and
| Wayland. So fractional scaling with Nvidia should work
| now.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| It kind of does, but ... it also doesn't.
|
| I've been running {KDE, Gnome} on Wayland + KMS on a box
| with a GTX1080 for a few months, and
|
| - it is really laggy (sometimes the mouse cursor is
| choppy)
|
| - fractional scaling is practically unusable due to all
| kinds of important apps (e.g. Chrome) not supporting it
| and just blurring the screen instead of properly scaling
|
| Overall I can't recommend it to non-enthusiasts,
| unfortunately.
| Jnr wrote:
| No lags for me with GTX 970. And I use Firefox, it has
| Wayland support.
| reissbaker wrote:
| "It works for me on very specific, ancient hardware, and
| also don't use <software you use>" isn't a great selling
| point for people who just want their machine to work and
| aren't bought into Linux On The Desktop as a
| philosophical ideal. That's why people use WSL2! Popular
| software works, popular hardware works, you can run Linux
| programs from the command line without installing and
| managing a separate VM yourself (yes, yes, it's
| virtualized under the hood by the OS, but you don't need
| to manage the VM yourself), and now you'll be able to run
| Linux GUI apps too.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| To be honest, with the amount of video meetings I have, I
| invested in a far better audio setup than Bluetooth headset
| microphone.
|
| The amount of meetings I've had where the audio from the
| other end sounds like the BART announcements is too high...
|
| That being said, I know what you mean. However, I'm actually
| rather annoyed at the headset microphone functionality on
| windows, because if anything starts using the microphone, it
| switches modes and the audio quality goes way, way down. Fine
| for a zoom call maybe, but having horrible audio in a video
| game is not fun. I constantly have to go to control panel to
| turns off hands-free telephony.
| e12e wrote:
| > if anything starts using the microphone, it switches
| modes and the audio quality goes way, way down.
|
| Funny, I don't see this on windows, which will leave the
| headphones at high quality (except for when I'm speaking,
| at which point I don't care that much about audio) - but on
| Linux I have to set the audio profile for the headset to
| low quality _in order to enable the microphone at all_ - so
| all audio out is crap as long as I 'm on a call/have the
| microphone enabled (even muted).
|
| Still waiting for this to improve - but looks like it'll
| require new hw (new Bluetooth receiver and sender).
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Audio quality matters to me too, and of course the AirPods
| are quite a compromise. The speakers in them sound good
| enough, but I know the microphones are not great. Mind
| sharing some details of your audio setup?
|
| I do like having wireless headphones of one sort or
| another, so I can walk around while staying in the
| conversation.
|
| Also, over-the-ear or in-the-ear (the kind that go into
| your ear canal) headphones don't work for me. The only kind
| I'm really comfortable with are the kind that sit lightly
| in my outer ear, e.g. AirPods and not AirPods Pro.
|
| But in any case, I'm eager to hear about your setup. And
| I'm probably not the only one who would welcome better
| quality audio. Thanks!
| tlamponi wrote:
| > I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?),
| and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while
| we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other
| Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu.
|
| I do not want to be the cliche Linux user and recommend some
| config change and assert that would have been simple and
| helped 110%, but out of interest, did you also try something
| like > Set ControllerMode = bredr or
| ControllerMode = dual by editing >
| /etc/bluetooth/main.conf file > systemctl restart
| bluetooth
|
| (paraphrased and s/sysv/systemd/ from
| https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-pairing-apple-airpods-
| as-h... )
| zerocount wrote:
| Nice setup. I prefer one large monitor over dual displays and
| a desktop over a laptop. I just don't have any use for the
| small laptop screen and keep it closed most of the time.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| This seems mostly anecdotal, but I've been using Bluetooth
| headsets and headphones on Linux since around 2008, and most
| have worked out of the box with no issues.
|
| I do remember at the time, windows didn't really work with
| those Bluetooth headphones, and I actually started bringing
| my own Linux laptop to work just so I could use my
| headphones.
|
| When it comes to Zoom, I'd say the problem is having to use
| that crap and not the fact that they barely support Linux. MS
| Teams also won't work on Linux, but it's hard to claim it's
| an issue on Linux's side. I'd suggest looking at something
| like Jitsi, which is also encrypted and takes security into
| consideration.
|
| Ubuntu is a pretty bad example for anything though: they're
| usually trying to reinvent the wheel and it's very common for
| things not to work there and work anywhere else. I personally
| have mixed feeling because they both make Lonux more popular
| and build good tools, but also give Linux a bad rep at the
| same time. Maybe give Fedora a shot?
|
| Finally, per-display scaling works fine on Wayland, but won't
| work on Xorg. I believe Ubuntu still uses the latter.
| Fanmade wrote:
| It is not true that Ms Teams does not work on Linux. We do
| have several devs working on Linux (don't know which
| specific distros though) and it works just fine. There are
| some annoying pop ups saying "Teams is ready" anytime they
| get a message and one of them has to switch something about
| his graphics from time to time to be able share his screen
| (which has never been a problem problem for anyone else),
| but I wouldn't say that it doesn't work at all.
| e12e wrote:
| "just fine" might be a stretch, it's an awful program -
| but so are most commercial alternatives (slack is
| marginally better).
|
| But yes, it works as intended on Linux (I use the
| official snap with Wayland/Ubuntu and even screensharing
| works).
| lukeschlather wrote:
| > When it comes to Zoom, I'd say the problem is having to
| use that crap and not the fact that they barely support
| Linux. MS Teams also won't work on Linux, but it's hard to
| claim it's an issue on Linux's side. I'd suggest looking at
| something like Jitsi, which is also encrypted and takes
| security into consideration.
|
| Jitsi is not as good as Zoom. Zoom seamlessly integrates
| with multiple monitors, and it provides a variety of
| tooling to rearrange your view of people and shared
| desktops. Just as an example last week I was helping two
| coworkers troubleshoot something, and I was able to have
| _both of them_ share their desktops simultaneously. I had
| one on one monitor and one on the other. It was painless
| and instant. Maybe Jitsi supports such a thing somehow but
| it would have taken a minute or two to find the right
| buttons to press.
|
| Also Zoom is encrypted. It has always been encrypted. Zoom
| lied about having E2E encryption and also weirdly had a
| lower-grade AES. Zoom is weird because while I 100%
| mistrust their motives in using weaker encryption, there
| are some legitimate tradeoffs between reliability and
| encryption - and it's actually pretty unlikely that they
| could implement E2E encryption without compromising video
| quality.
|
| And ultimately especially with the pandemic and only being
| able to see people via video, even the smallest problems
| are potentially quite massive. I've used Jitsi a bit, and I
| don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it would mean
| that I would have spent at least an extra hour a week
| during the pandemic troubleshooting video when I was trying
| to have a nice visit with friends or family. I'm not going
| to be an ideologue when I lose that kind of time.
| godelski wrote:
| About the headphones, are you sure you've selected the right
| thing in the app? Not pulseaudio, but zoom. I had this
| problem that zoom would ignore whatever I set with pulse.
| Once I figured this out my problems went away.
|
| For games, proton has come a long way. I don't find myself
| needing to boot out of Linux very often anymore.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Thanks for asking. In fact that is one of my pet peeves
| with Zoom, that it has its own audio selection independent
| of the host OS. This is a problem on Windows as well - and
| I assume on macOS too.
|
| I have a friend who uses Zoom a lot on her Windows laptop,
| and this "feature" of Zoom has messed her meetings up so
| many times!
| chx wrote:
| WSL v2 is a VM too and better integrated. I like it very
| much.
| p2t2p wrote:
| This. It is basically a way out for people that don't want to
| run Mac.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Indeed. We take for granted this kind of robust hardware
| support on macOS and Windows.
|
| macOS by itself wouldn't work for me, though. I would still
| need to run a Linux VM because of our very fussy build
| system. And besides, where would my beloved TrackPoint be?
| :-)
| hpcjoe wrote:
| On linux mint, zoom works fine, with bluetooth headphones,
| attached speakers, bluetooth speakers, etc. Has for years
| (well, I started using it (bluetooth headsets with linux) in
| 2008 or so, and it worked then as well).
|
| On windows, brand new Dell laptop for work, with an insanely
| locked down version of windows 10, zoom often crashes,
| especially when sharing my screen. This in turn takes down
| many other applications. Generally making the whole windows
| experience far from optimal.
|
| My Sager Laptop a few years ago, and now my HP Omni
| (personal) laptop, I regularly drive 2 screens and the laptop
| display. Works. Out of the box. Work windows 10 laptop, its a
| crap shoot at best. And I can't use the NVidia card very much
| in windows 10, simply because the system is so locked down.
| Thus I'm stuck with an expensive and useless feature. One
| that works flawlessly in my locked down linux box.
|
| On different scalings for different monitors, its built in to
| mint.
|
| I'm guessing you are either running a very old version of
| Ubuntu (literally all the complaints you made are many years
| out of date, having been solved long ago), or you copy-
| pastaed from somewhere else. My priors on this are 60% the
| latter 40% the former.
|
| On my linux laptop, I run windows the way it should be run
| (if you really need to run it). In a kvm instance. Never
| touching real hardware. And whats funny about this, is that
| the virtualized Win10 is _faster_ than the far more expensive
| windows 10 work laptop right next to it.
|
| Go figure.
|
| FWIW, I've been using Linux on my desktop for 23 years, and
| as my primary OS on my desktop/laptop for 20 of those years.
| So ... YMMV.
| lancebeet wrote:
| I use WSL with VcXsrv on my work machine. For me, the biggest
| feature is that I can share clipboard between vim running in
| WSL and windows. It's also often significantly faster to get a
| program up and running in Linux than on Windows, especially if
| it has lots of dependencies.
| mcbuilder wrote:
| I have a Windows machine for my work at giant megacorp. I run
| Linux on my at home machines, but the honest to god I can't
| believe it's not Linux experience I've gotten from WSL has been
| great. I pretty much tab into my full screen Linux Window
| manager running in a X11 client window and get down to work.
| jbhouse wrote:
| DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
|
| DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
|
| DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
|
| DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
|
| DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
| modeless wrote:
| > Please note that for the first release of WSLg, vGPU interops
| with the Weston compositor through system memory. If running on a
| discrete GPU, this effectively means that the rendered data is
| copied from VRAM to system memory before being presented to the
| compositor within WSLg, and uploaded onto the GPU again on the
| Windows side.
|
| This is a pretty big limitation. Hopefully it can be addressed
| soon.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not _amazing_ but a quick calculation says that a full
| 1080 screen will generally transfer in just under half a
| millisecond.
| fermentation wrote:
| Yeah, an extra DtoHtoD in most applications is pretty bad.
| Here it should be good enough to get the feature up and
| running, and I imagine it's something they're planning on
| optimizing.
| mike_hock wrote:
| If that's the only loss of performance, that sounds amazing
| compared to running anything under Wine.
| Longhanks wrote:
| If only wine had the full source code to anything Windows
| available, as does Microsoft with anything Linux
| hparadiz wrote:
| ??? I game on Wine all day and it's sometimes faster than
| Windows.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| WSL seriously changed the amount of work I _can_ do from my
| gaming PC, but I'm not sure if that's actually a good thing based
| on my productivity over the past few months.
|
| That aside it's terrific to see MS putting something good into
| Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away
| from the end user.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > That aside it's terrific to see MS putting something good
| into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice
| away from the end user.
|
| That's the tip of the iceberg MS want everyone to see, and
| point the finger at.
|
| MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative since they
| lost the battle when they attempted to kill it during the
| Ballmer era. The plan now is more subtle: making sure everyone
| using Linux will want to do that from a Windows machine, with
| all the implications about security and privacy, which would be
| non existent since any malware (or Windows itself) that for
| example used Windows keyboard drivers to sniff passwords while
| one connects say to the bank under WSL "because it's more
| secure" would be 100% undetectable from _that_ Linux.
|
| The next step will be libraries to access Windows internals and
| GUI from WSL, so that one can build hybrids that run only on
| Windows+WSL; very convenient, but unfortunately now Linux is
| displaced and the only way to benefit from all that software
| will be to run it under Windows. In the end, MS will create
| their own Linux distro which runs on top of Windows and will
| essentially kill all other non-server oriented Linux distros.
|
| Most see WSL as a good thing; I see an elaborate, and have to
| admit, very clever, way to take complete control of Linux in
| the next years.
| NortySpock wrote:
| So the Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI (WSLg) business plan
| looks like this, I assume:
|
| Step 1: get lots of devs using WSL / WSL GUI.
|
| Step 2: Get them comfortable with flexibly using WSL GUI on
| Linux and Windows interchangeably
|
| Step 3: roll out your poison pill: new Version X, offering
| great compatibility on Windows but bad integration with
| Linux; maybe Linux support is buggy or nonexistent, maybe the
| API doesn't mesh with Linux systems at all, maybe it has
| license conflicts and Linux has to do a rewrite to be FOSS or
| write a hacky FOSS shim. Whatever creates the most pain for
| Linux / FOSS users.
|
| Step 4: Stuck with being tied to WSLg, Developers go to the
| business and say "either we have to spend a lot of time
| fixing Linux issues or we buy Windows licenses" at which
| point the business happily buys Windows and Office 365 volume
| licenses and keeps going.
|
| Step 5: Microsoft maintains its monopoly for another 10
| years.
|
| The "I want to stay independent" workaround is (I assume)
| writing API layers that can serve "thin GUI clients" on
| multiple platforms (I guess like Electron or a regular web
| application or something.)
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Whatever creates the most pain for Linux / FOSS users.
|
| Not necessarily to this level of malice.
|
| Many (most?) Linux users, especially new ones, use also
| Windows, so all it needs for MS to convince them to use
| only Windows+WSL and not say a dual boot machine or two
| machines, is something that just integrates the two
| systems, so that most users will feel more comfortable
| running everything under Windows.
|
| The killer product in my opinion would be something that
| allows accessing to Windows internals and GUI from a Linux
| program (imagine "/usr/bin/excel", a port of Excel that
| works only under Windows+WSL). Those functionalities would
| be offered by something that "pure" Linux distributions
| could not offer, including WINE, since we're talking about
| the full OS and not an API translation layer. Once users
| and developers are accustomed to it (many devs already
| develop under WSL) we'll reach the point in which the two
| worlds will fork in favor of Windows: what is developed
| under Linux will also work under Windows+WSL but not the
| other way around. That would probably be the moment MS will
| introduce their own Linux distribution (advertised as the
| only one that can take full advantage of "most recent Linux
| developments") that under the hood could either be normal
| Windows+WSL, or a different one containing a "hidden"
| Windows blob allowing developers to run native Linux,
| hybrid Linux+Windows, and possibly native Windows apps,
| either free or a lot cheaper than Windows+WSL.
|
| If this happens, most Linux users, especially desktop ones,
| would rather go back to Windows rather than for example
| stay with Ubuntu+WINE. Server, embedded and other smaller
| niches users will make an exception, but Linux is in
| serious risk of losing all other users.
| hparadiz wrote:
| The things that make me not like Windows are it's
| aggressive Windows Updates, lack of real true security,
| and the way windows regularly ignores settings. Steam
| automates configuring Wine for you and most games just
| work. But for work? There's no reason to use Windows
| anymore unless you have some proprietary software that
| runs only on Windows.
|
| Btw the whole "Access Windows internals and GUI" from
| Linux already works. You can just run Windows commands
| from bash and of course make scripts using those commands
| so essentially all windows command prompt commands are
| available to you now.
|
| But remember it's Windows. You can set all the registry
| settings you want but it will still sometimes ignore your
| settings and just do what it wants.
| matja wrote:
| That seat that Microsoft have on the Linux Foundation board
| of directors will come in useful for that.
| city41 wrote:
| I wonder how many people who rely on Linux have truly moved
| to WSL? I gave it a try and I find real Linux vastly
| superior. Hybrid Windows+WSL apps, what is the point?
| Developing Windows apps with .NET is very easy and pleasant.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I agree we should be concerned about WSL.
| But I think it's also very possible Microsoft recognizes
| developers that aren't developing with MS tech (ie anything
| but .NET these days) pretty much never use Windows and they
| are trying to patch that gap.
| dboreham wrote:
| For me it's a far superior experience than the alternative
| which is macos. Instead of battling a close but
| frustratingly different OS than my server target, I get to
| run the exact same OS. So a bunch of pain vanishes.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I'd believe their target isn't users who are already using
| Linux, but users who will be using Linux for first time
| going forward. Think all the university students who made
| Linux _the_ system to develop on will now make Linux on
| Windows as that system. Eventually, WSL will take over
| baremetal Linux because it was more convenient to get
| started, technical superiority notwithstanding.
| beefbroccoli wrote:
| I've been a Linux user since 1995 and run Windows + WSL2
| on my desktop machines. It's not too deep and pretty
| similar to why so many folks were drawn to Macs; a no
| brains just works GUI with the ability to launch a
| terminal and do real work on a UNIX-like system.
|
| I can use a single machine to do everything I need,
| without rebooting and without making sacrifices.
|
| I can watch Netflix and play games, without needing to
| write a f'n shell script to fix the screen tearing
| present in the nvidia driver - or realizing a particular
| game has quirks or doesn't work in Proton, so I just have
| to throw up my arms and say "Well, I guess we just don't
| play that game".
|
| I can pop open a terminal anytime and have access to a
| _real_ Linux system, as opposed to the faux "uncanny
| valley linux" solutions like Cygwin and Git Bash that
| seem to work until they don't. And unlike a traditional
| VM there's no management involved; I open the terminal
| when I need it and close it when i'm done, just like a
| normal application.
| Daegalus wrote:
| I don't think that's it. it targets frustrated Linux devs
| that are tired of Gnome/KDE/X/Wayland wars, and things
| breaking if you don't do things just right. I spent 2
| years on pure Linux and I switched back to Windows + WSL2
| and I'm pretty happy. use it for work and personal use.
| It gives me the apps and use ability of OSX, the Linux
| console and none of the headache. maybe I'm just out of
| the honeymoon phase but I'm tired of constantly tinkering
| with Linux to get it to work. to install the right tool,
| outdated stuff in package managers, etc.
| jcastro wrote:
| > MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative
|
| Linux desktops as they currently stand aren't even close to a
| threat to Windows, this is Microsoft using the Linux
| userspace to get developer mindshare back from OSX.
| pell wrote:
| That and most corporate Windows users simply can't switch
| to the OS of their choice due to rigid IT department rules.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I personally think windows' user interface is way more
| buggy/slow than the new gnome. The latter has a properly
| smooth overview window (with gestures), while windows'
| flickers on a much better laptop..
| ImaCake wrote:
| Windows terminal + wsl is good, but I think the native
| terminal in MacOS is still much better to use. In the Win
| 11 beta the ease of use is pretty similar, but the unix
| terminal is just better integrated into MacOS. Probably my
| favourite terminal command is `open` which on MacOS lets me
| open any file in the associated application. I haven't
| found the same for WSL yet.
| rashil2000 wrote:
| `<filename>` from Windows, or `explorer.exe <filename>`
| from WSL. As simple as that.
| trashtester wrote:
| I wonder if WSLg will work on my passed-through 3090 from my
| linux host to my Windows VM, or of this requires barebone
| Windows.
| dirkg wrote:
| I'd love to use WSL2 but the longstanding issue with slow I/O
| between WSL <-> NTFS host is a dealbreaker. It basically means
| you have to keep all your data inside ext4 in Linux and that
| defeats the whole point - e.g. you can't keep your code, or files
| you download etc in Windows.
|
| With WSL you can keep all data in NTFS, have near native speeds
| but you can't run a bunch of Linux cmdline tools.
|
| I don't know if they can solve it, its basically sending data
| across the network, But this is the last barrier to a great Linux
| on Windows.
| dboreham wrote:
| I thought I'd have that problem but I just keep all my dev
| files in WSL2 now and I stopped using Intellij. VSCode has very
| fast WSL2 filesystem remoting.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| Try IntelliJ Projector. It's awesome.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Does it really defeat the point? I see WSL2 as a Linux VM with
| less hoops to jump through. Sharing data with the host system
| isn't useful, since I don't have programs on Windows that need
| to communicate with programs in Linux, and I store everything
| in github/gdrive anyway.
| waych wrote:
| Ah yes, 9p2000. The network filesystem where caching is non-
| existent and left as an after-thought.
| the8472 wrote:
| Maybe go the other direction. Add an ext4 disk to the VM and
| then access it through \\\WSL$\
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| - Embrace
|
| - Extend <- You are here
|
| - Extinguish
| whydid wrote:
| I was worried about this happening in the early 2000s, but not
| anymore.
|
| Have you seen how terrible Windows and Windows Server is?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Has it ever been good at any point in time?
|
| No, yet people use it and develop for it.
| shpongled wrote:
| Will I be able to use i3?
| judge2020 wrote:
| This will be available in Windows 11, so your processor does
| have to be able to upgrade to that. If you're fine with an OS
| reinstall there are ways to force the install.
| darcyparker wrote:
| I don't think he is referring to an i3 processor, but rather
| https://i3wm.org/
| reificator wrote:
| I can't imagine you'd be able to use i3 for your windows apps
| from what I've read, but it should work with your Linux side.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Yes.
| voidfunc wrote:
| I used WSLg for several months and just recently switched back to
| x410. WSLg is badly broken with non-trivial apps like IntelliJ
| IDEA.
| elif wrote:
| I made the switch from full-linux to WSL about a year ago. I
| never used windows outside of gaming but I got tired of putting
| up with minor hardware/driver frustrations on my particular
| laptop (surface).
|
| I'm happy to report I have encountered zero issues. In fact, I
| don't think I've even used it for anything outside of emacs/cli.
|
| I am kinda surprised by this link since I've been using the x
| version of emacs this whole time.
| pkulak wrote:
| Google has been doing this for years with ChromeOS and... it
| kinda works. It mostly works if you stick with their distro
| (Debian Stable - 1), but I've never been able to get their
| display forwarding tools to work anywhere else.
|
| Seems like Linux is complicated enough without running it in a VM
| and forwarding everything up to to the host OS.
| [deleted]
| pygar wrote:
| This is undoubtedly cool but I'm curious to know of a use case
| that would warrant installing this. Could this just have been a
| step in creating "Windows Subsystem for Android" [0] that they
| decided to release as its own layer?
|
| The screenshot on the github page shows VSCode, Edge, Blender,
| Xcalc, Xclock and GNOME file manager which are all either
| available natively on windows or redundant.
|
| [0] https://www.xda-developers.com/wundows-subsystem-android-
| ben...
| pjmlp wrote:
| WSL was the rebirth out of Project Astoria failure.
|
| https://mspoweruser.com/windows-subsystem-for-linux-started-...
| Stevvo wrote:
| I can think of one niche use case; Houdini is a Linux/Unix
| native 3D graphics software which I would prefer to work with
| in a Linux environment, but on Windows to be alongside all the
| other applications in my workflow. I imagine there is software
| in other fields with similar situations.
|
| Note there is nothing wrong with the Windows version of
| Houdini, it's just Linux is more suitable for it.
| floxy wrote:
| Hardware drivers for new machines? As in, Windows supports all
| the hardware in your machine, but Linux doesn't (yet).
| reissbaker wrote:
| WSLg doesn't seem to have much overlap with Windows Subsystem
| for Android (although WSL itself does). Android doesn't use
| Wayland, or generally any of the GUI stack that desktop Linux
| does.
|
| Pretty sure the point of the WSL and WSLg projects are to lure
| developers who would otherwise use macOS. After all, your local
| environment is likely even closer to production using WSL than
| it is on the BSD-derived macOS userland and Darwin kernel.
| Actually, early on in its life macOS (poorly) supported X11
| apps using XQuartz as a similar lure.
| scandinavian wrote:
| Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL and vice versa is
| extremely slow, so running for example your IDE in WSL and
| having your code etc. stored in WSL is useful. I think that is
| one of the big usecases. It's already kinda supported in
| vscode, where it runs a vscode server in WSL and Windows just
| runs the frontend.
|
| It's useful for me when developing dotnet intended for Linux as
| I can store the code in WSL and be able to build, debug, run
| docker and so on directly from vscode.
| hasperdi wrote:
| Are you talking about WSL1 or WSL? Wsl2 is much much faster
| due to having a virtualized real linux kernel running
| scandinavian wrote:
| Accessing the WSL filesystem from WSL is indeed a lot
| faster on WSL2. Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL
| or vise versa is even slower in WSL2 compared to WSL1.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-
| version...
|
| > As you can tell from the comparison table above, the WSL
| 2 architecture outperforms WSL 1 in several ways, with the
| exception of performance across OS file systems.
| easton wrote:
| System performance is, IO between Windows and Linux isn't.
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
| speed_spread wrote:
| WSL2 disk access from the Windows side is very slow. It's
| the reciprocal problem of WSL1.
|
| WSL2 Linux apps now get proper performance now but if your
| IDE is on the Windows side, access time to project files on
| native Linux partition is terrible.
| LaGrange wrote:
| ...actually e.g. VS Code has a really great split
| backend, so you can actually have the frontend "properly"
| on Windows anyway, and yet still use WSL2.
|
| My own case was something different: annoyingly
| configured automated browser tests with Cypress. Just
| running them inside WSL and letting that start a browser
| on the distro itself was the most comfortable way to
| debug these.
| r-w wrote:
| But I mean come on, they're Microsoft. If they really wanted
| filesystem access to be efficient across systems, we'd have
| it by now. Although convenient, I doubt that's on their list
| of primary motivations for doing this.
| scandinavian wrote:
| >But I mean come on, they're Microsoft. If they really
| wanted filesystem access to be efficient across systems,
| we'd have it by now.
|
| Here's one of the developers saying it is hard back in the
| WSL days.
|
| https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-39
| 1...
|
| The reason makes sense to me, but I'm not an expert. Maybe
| you could expand on why you think they could do it but
| chose not to?
| MikusR wrote:
| Seeing how every file system (NTFS) imrovement since
| windows 7 (like new compression methods) is done in
| layers running on top of ntfs. I think that Microsoft has
| either lost the source to ntfs driver or institutional
| knowledge of how it works.
| jdub wrote:
| The real answer is that they're building filters on top
| of NTFS because that's precisely how it was designed to
| work.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Why is it so slow? I use VMware player and swapping files is
| fine. WSL2 seems like it's just using a lightweight VM over
| HyperV... is Hyper V really that much worse than VMware (and
| VBox) in this?
| son_ngu wrote:
| This is exciting. I dual boot Windows and Linux, cause although I
| really like my setup on Linux, the desktop experience is not
| quite there yet for me.
|
| I wonder if I can use something like bspwm, maybe not... haha
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Have you tried KDE plasma?
| lowtto wrote:
| WSL2 is essentially just.. Windows + Linux. I tried it and it is
| awesome. Cannot wait to see further progress that comes out of
| this. I really cannot leave Windows to be honest. The network
| effect is too strong. Coupled with recent Microsoft effort such
| as Visual Code, its looking like they are doing nothing but going
| towards the better direction than the old days. Who would have
| thought. Would you believe it if anyone said this to be the case,
| 10 years ago?
| josteink wrote:
| > Coupled with recent Microsoft effort such as Visual Code
|
| Which is officially supported on Linux.
|
| There might be reasons to run Windows, but this is not one :)
| wizwit999 wrote:
| I think hes referring to how you can run the VSCode GUI in
| Windows but develop on WSL because they built an integration.
| It's pretty neat. And most people are using Windows for other
| reasons (drivers, gaming ,etc), this just makes development
| not a pain anymore.
| peakaboo wrote:
| It's about the culture. Windows doesn't respect your privacy
| and you are treated like a child, because most people who run
| Windows wants Microsoft to make all decisions for them, just
| like a parent.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > I really cannot leave Windows to be honest. The network
| effect is too strong.
|
| I suspect whatever's keeping you on Windows isn't really the
| network effect. It's usually: comfort level/personal
| preference, or a set of software that vendor(s) can't/won't
| port to another non-Windows platform.
|
| The fact that so many applications have been rewritten as
| browser-accessible services has liberated me. I haven't owned a
| system with a Microsoft OS since ~2004 or so.
| SCdF wrote:
| > or a set of software that vendor(s) can't/won't port to
| another non-Windows platform.
|
| Is that not the network effect? I.e. everyone uses Windows so
| developers target their software for Windows, so everyone
| uses Windows?
| rocqua wrote:
| Don't forget corporate policy. I would do all of my work on
| linux except I am barely allowed.
|
| Tools like teams and outlook are also just not as good on
| Linux, and really important for work.
| filomeno wrote:
| > Would you believe it if anyone said this to be the case, 10
| years ago?
|
| To be honest, Microsoft astroturfers have long existed, for
| much more than 10 years.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| "awesome"
| fgonzag wrote:
| I was also amazed with WSL, it genuinely made me think I didn't
| have to leave Windows anymore. It is honestly one of the best
| products Microsoft has launched recently. The development tools
| division of Microsoft is on fire and should be commended.
|
| The Windows division is another story though. With all the
| Windows 11 news I decided to give desktop Linux a spin for the
| nth time in 20 years. Installed Manjaro and I'm extremely
| impressed. Even though I have Nvidia graphics everything is
| buttery smooth, all my productivity tools are there, setting up
| my VPN was far easier than Windows, and even more amazingly
| most of my games work well thanks to the recent push by Valve
| and the steam deck.
|
| I will probably stick with it this time, so maybe for me 2021
| finally is the year of the Linux desktop.
| [deleted]
| MichaelRust wrote:
| > its looking like they are doing nothing but going towards the
| better direction than the old days
|
| https://rentry.co/areweweloveopensauceyet
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Dual boot? This does look slick, I was an avid WSL user until I
| started dual booting. Now I almost never need to boot to
| Windows.
|
| I get that if you often need to switch it can be a pain in the
| ass but at least Linux respects my privacy and freedom.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Same situation here. Dual-booting Linux and Windows 10, and I
| figured I'd boot into Windows often enough for it to get
| obnoxious. But I only ever get on there to play a few
| demanding games (which I already don't play often anymore),
| or make music with an A+ DAW for making music that doesn't
| run super effectively on Wine. Linux handles everything else
| I do like a champ.
| tck42 wrote:
| A friend of mine has been complaining that a DAW is the
| only thing keeping him stuck in Windows at this point as
| well. In his case, he specifically said that VST's were the
| problem. Was your experience the same?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yep, for me it's the DAW and VSTs that keep me needing
| Windows for now. You can try to make them work with Wine
| or whatever, but it's not worth the hassle.
| necubi wrote:
| Bitwig is a very good DAW with native Linux support. It's
| made by former Ableton devs so it definitely leans in
| that direction, but it works pretty well for other types
| of workflows too, especially with the recently released
| version 4.
|
| VSTs are definitely an issue; most high quality
| commercial plugins are still only released for
| mac/windows. However there are a few projects for running
| them in wine and it generally works pretty well.
|
| I do think we'll see more and more Linux in studios going
| forward, but it would help if Linux got its pro audio
| story together. Pipewire is a big step in the right
| direction but not yet mature.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| As the author of EasyBCD, I can tell you that interest in
| dual-booting has collapsed to near zero over the past decade.
| Silhouette wrote:
| How much of that effect do you think is due to recent
| Windows versions not playing nicely so you still get some
| hassle anyway and/or to improving options to run Windows
| virtually on a Linux host with close to native performance
| and compatibility?
| MikusR wrote:
| What do you mean by "not playing nicely". With UEFI boot
| you can dual boot all day. There is no need to modify
| MBR. So nothing gets overwritten on updates.
| Silhouette wrote:
| I didn't say dual booting was itself the source of the
| danger (though it is true that in days gone by that _was_
| also a source of problems).
|
| The issue I had in mind was the unrestricted hardware
| access that Windows has if it is running natively. This
| is an operating system that has literally pushed updates
| that inadvertently deleted user data, among other severe
| problems, and that will deploy its updates automatically
| to many users. Dual booting won't ensure the integrity of
| your system against that kind of threat. Running Windows
| in a virtual environment means it can't damage the rest
| of your system even if it deploys a seriously broken
| update without warning. And that kind of virtualisation
| is getting more practical all the time even if for now it
| remains the preserve of serious Linux hackers.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Anecdata, but I used to dual boot, until Windows mucked up
| the Linux boot more than once. Didn't play nice. So I run
| Windows in a VM now, it's not getting near the boot sector
| again.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Yep. I have a strict "Dual boot on dual drives" policy
| now because Windows thinks its too precious.
|
| It only played to their disadvantage, for machines with
| single storage device now doesn't boot Windows at all or
| only from VM.
| thrower123 wrote:
| What Linux desktop apps do people want to run on Windows?
|
| I'm struggling to think of anything I would use that isn't ported
| alteady, being GTK or QT or Java based.
| certifiedloud wrote:
| As someone who is forced to use either Mac or Windows at work,
| I would love this for the sole purpose of using i3 again.
| zzandd wrote:
| The use case I care about, and I imagine the use case Microsoft
| do as well, is developing for Linux on windows, so running an
| ide and not having to worry about a complicated cross compiling
| toolchain backing it.
| rocqua wrote:
| I imagine if your app needs to interact with your Linux system,
| running it within WSL is a lot nicer.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Microsoft has so much ego that rather than simply making a Linux
| distro they insist we run Linux on Windows.
| Xevi wrote:
| > simply making a Linux distro
|
| It would take decades to migrate Windows users to a Linux
| distro.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| How would a Microsoft Linux distro be different from, say,
| Ubuntu? Would it bundle WINE, perhaps with Microsoft insider
| knowledge of how their APIs work? How would they make money on
| Windows if everyone could just use that?
| rvense wrote:
| They probably know they can't stop developers from deploying to
| Linux. They're trying to the Windows desktop relevant.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They don't need to try while fighting 1% GNU/Linux desktop.
|
| The whole point of WSL is to bring into Windows, those devs
| that buy Apple hardware instead of supporting Linux OEMs, and
| couldn't care less as long as they have their POSIX like
| experience.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They don't insist, this is for the folks that should be
| supporting Linux OEMs but rather pay Apple.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Got this running on my Surface Book the other day. Totally
| useless, but very cool!
| waych wrote:
| I've been using this for the several weeks on Windows 11 insider
| builds and its great!
|
| For those asking comparing versus X forwarding, at least for my
| purposes, I've found X over a socket very limiting in that remote
| opengl basically stops at version 1.1. With WSLg my apps run on
| MESA version 4.5, meaning they actually run. I haven't even tried
| with the vGPU driver yet and its already a very nice improvement.
|
| Would be even nicer if PCIe device assignment wasn't locked
| behind Windows Server licensing however.
| p0d wrote:
| I've been using linux for 20 years and my one frustration is
| missing Powerpoint. I recently joined the world of education and
| they are Powerpoint mad. Hats off to LibreOffice but Powerpoints
| look like they have been dragged through a hedge backwards. Is
| anyone solving this problem on linux locally or maybe wsl is the
| way for me to go?
| smartmic wrote:
| This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience because you leave
| up your freedom and privacy at the door of the Windows login.
|
| Anyone who is serious about the future of openess, freedom and
| privacy rights in software and general should strive for the
| original. I advocate not to hand over MS the control over the
| Linux desktop.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Correction: This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience for
| people who feel the same as you do, that your privacy is
| highly-valuable and Windows takes some of it away.
|
| I don't agree with those feelings, so it is indeed the best
| GNU/Linux experience for me.
| azalemeth wrote:
| I also wonder if this is the end of the "embrace" phase or the
| start of the "extend" one.
| neilsimp1 wrote:
| I only had to scroll a few more lines down from your post here
| to find an example supporting your statement:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28486717
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Large companies will always find a way to profit from the most
| valuable aspects of society at large.
| [deleted]
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I completely agree with the sentiment of what you're saying.
| That said, that's not at all what this is. They are just making
| it easier to run GUI apps in WSL. This is already something you
| can do with VcXSrv or any windows-based X server. I've actually
| been using VcXSrv to run a full Ubuntu Buddgie desktop with GPU
| acceleration and native performance on my work machine for over
| a year now. If anything, this has made it easier to _get away
| from_ the telemetry and crap that goes along with a default
| windows install because windows has absolutely no idea what I'm
| doing within my WSL installation.
|
| So yeah, nothing to see here, if anything this is good as it
| makes linux more accessible to people stuck in windows-only
| environments. This isn't even M$ making a desktop environment.
| They have just written an X server into windows instead of
| having to install one yourself.
|
| side note: I'd also be quite happy if Windows slowly removed
| the windows parts and replaced them with unixy parts until the
| whole windows ecosystem could be considered unix-based. That
| would be so great for so many reasons.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the
| heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've extended the existing RDP backend
| of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than
| monitor/desktop. We've also added various functionality to it,
| such as support for multi-monitor, cut/paste, audio in/out,
| etc...
|
| Did they push those changes upstream? This seems like it could be
| another way to run GUI apps in containers on Linux too.
| password4321 wrote:
| https://github.com/microsoft/weston-mirror
|
| I could not find any reference to it upstream or mention in the
| mailing lists.
| linux2647 wrote:
| The README mentioned that they have their changes in a separate
| public GitHub repo and that they plan to upstream it
| ubercow13 wrote:
| You can already run GUI apps in containers using pure wayland,
| just bind the socket into the container.
| ziftface wrote:
| > just bind the socket into the container
|
| I thought Wayland relied on shared memory with the compositor
| to work? I could be way off though
| wahern wrote:
| Containers run under the same kernel, so sharing memory
| works the same as it does for processes generally.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Likewise X, if you pass it the socket (although there are
| caveats around everything _but_ just X11, like audio, which
| have to be routed out separately)
| earthscienceman wrote:
| This was my exact question, as much as I hate Microsoft and
| Windows (15 years of using linux now in my brief 32 years on
| the planet).... this could be the project that pushes Wayland
| to fruition finally. It could also significantly improve GUI
| support in general.
|
| I guess getting the right thing for the wrong reasons is better
| than not getting them at all? I'm not a very good pragmatist.
| mmgutz wrote:
| Can you run whole desktop environments like XFCE, Gnome; or run a
| Window Manager like i3?
|
| I'm a long time VMware user and never really used Unity (name?)
| view which allows running Linux apps seamlessly on Windows or
| Mac. WSLg seems to be the same feature.
| midwestemo wrote:
| I don't know about WSLg specifically but last time I heard if
| you runs a x server with an application like VcXsrv, install
| XFCE and configure it to use the x server. You can pretty much
| run XFCE or any other desktop environment in WSL. I don't know
| about the performance however.
| avodonosov wrote:
| I already asked this in the past, and want to ask again. Is
| Microsoft a corporation of goodness now?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Please define what is good.
| burkaman wrote:
| Microsoft is a group of 180,000 people, it's too big to be
| classified like that. A small subset of them are making this
| cool thing, and you can debate whether or not their intentions
| are good, but that's about as far as you can go in making a
| broad moral judgement.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Hmm probably closer to true neutral.
| 0des wrote:
| Embrace
|
| Extend <-- you are here
|
| Extinguish
| [deleted]
| lghh wrote:
| What are they extending? What functionality does this add to
| Linux that is only available on Windows?
| [deleted]
| spystath wrote:
| One is their DirectX extension that only works on WSL2. It
| allows you to access the DX API through a shim driver. You
| can now have a Linux application that needs access to
| /dev/xdg which is only available in WSL2.
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/
| villasv wrote:
| Asking if a publicly traded company this big is good or bad is
| pointless. A corporation is psychopathic; if it goes Patrick
| Bateman or Dexter Morgan depends on the environment.
|
| The current environment incentivizes expanding the developer
| ecosystem, hence DX investments.
| cybernautique wrote:
| In my opinion, this is actually a question of values. My
| position: absolutely not, but I take it as axiomatic that
| Microsoft (et al.) are incapable of any actual "good."
|
| This is simply Window's attempt to build a new walled garden.
| If they were actually serious about advancing the state of
| civil computing, they'd make the NT core available as a
| microkernel that can be modularly placed into the Linux
| ecosystem. That is the _one_ thing I can think of which might
| raise my opinion of them (and I'm sure they lose sleep at
| night, knowing they haven't got my endorsement).
| avodonosov wrote:
| Why this should be exactly microkernel?
| cybernautique wrote:
| Perhaps it needn't be; I, with my negligible OS dev
| experience, just like microkernel architectures better. It
| seems more sensible to have microkernels managed by a
| microkernel loader. This might be an opinion I come to
| recant in time. The core of my position is that Microsoft
| needs to stop doing Microsoft things if they want to be
| taken seriously as a good faith actor, but I'm not holding
| my breath.
|
| Until they make moves to break down the walls of their
| garden, they're just another barrier.
| avodonosov wrote:
| Providing POSIX and Linux-specific APIs does actually
| place them into Linux ecosystem.
|
| Programs bult for Linux suddenly can be run for Windows
| users. That's a boost in adoption potential for Linux
| programs (large part of the ecosystem). And adoption is
| very impotant for further development and success of
| software.
|
| On the other hand, for Linux users this makes Windows
| more attractive - why not choose Windows for your next
| laptop, if all your Linux software runs there. That
| undermines Linux userbase.
|
| But overall, I feel WSL is good for Linux.
| ziml77 wrote:
| WSL is winning people over who had left Windows simply
| because the dev experience outside of the VS IDE is sub-
| par. We'll see what this means for Linux.
|
| It could mean that people start realizing that there's
| gaps between Windows and Linux that need to be closed to
| make Linux more attractive to users. Alternatively it
| could mean that people don't acknowledge those gaps and
| instead gripe about EEE.
|
| I know which outcome I'd put my money on.
| cybernautique wrote:
| Yeah, that's what gets me: it's obviously engineered to
| drive traffic one way without giving anything back to the
| community. I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in APIs to
| interact with a black box. Until Microsoft makes Windows
| user-controllable, I will never treat it with respect.
|
| I do see your point, however, and I hadn't thought it of
| that way; do you see anywhere the community might pick up
| on this for some benefit?
| avodonosov wrote:
| Many ways. For example, it is more compelling to choose
| Linux as the target platform for new programs, because
| that way the program works both on Winoows an Linux.
| Therefore, more software for Linux world.
| p_j_w wrote:
| I'm of a similar opinion. If they want to prove that they
| heart Linux, that's what they're going to have to do. Or, at
| the very least, document everything (including DX) so that
| the Wine devs can do their thing even if MS don't care to
| help. Until then, "MS <3 Linux" is nothing more than PR speak
| in my mind.
| cybernautique wrote:
| Absolutely agreed. Microsoft is not a pleasure to develop
| with, which is (in my opinion) a losing position with time.
| They see what Linux makes a pleasure, so they pursue the
| trappings of the community while damning the spirit of
| cooperation. Cynically, I see their moves as nothing more
| than an attempt to capture social capital.
|
| Hopefully, nobody is having the wool pulled over their
| eyes. Don't get me wrong: their incorporation of a TTY-like
| interface into CMD, and the Linuxification of Powershell,
| demonstrate the craftsmanship that Microsoft pride
| themselves on. It's good tech, but tainted. I will never
| trust Microsoft after the RDP fiasco.
| screye wrote:
| Balmer was their wake up call. A lot of destructive policies
| that ensure short term benefits destroy long term
| sustainability.
|
| They are good, just as any public can be good company. IE. Just
| a little bit more sensible about cooperation instead of
| demolition.
| monocasa wrote:
| Microsoft has just shifted to being what IBM was in that late
| 90s for all intents and purposes. IBM didn't care what you ran
| on their platforms, even at the OS level. They just wanted that
| sweet sweet support contract and computer leasing money. "You
| want to run Linux on our mainframes? Hell yeah, sign here." Now
| with Azure, Microsoft gets money of the same shape, and
| correspondingly makes some of the same strategic choices.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This is pretty cool. I've been using VcXsrv to run an X server on
| the windows side so that I can pop open gui Linux tools (setting
| the DISPLAY variable manually to {windows host IP}:0)
|
| The two remaining glitches here are harmonizing file system
| support across both domains (its fine if you are in the Linux
| domain and reach over and get or put files into the Windows
| domain, but the other direction has "issues". And some sort of
| USB support so that devices can be handled in either domain
| easily[1].
|
| Mostly I find it is an easy way to use my Linux work flow on a
| machine that for other reasons has to have Windows on it. Overall
| the impact is lower than it is if I run an actual VM.
|
| [1] Recently discovered that a windows executable running on the
| Linux side can "see" the USB stuff so running dfu-util works from
| the Linux side.
| justinc8687 wrote:
| How is this better than just running vcxsrv and inside WSL
| setting DISPLAY=WINDOWS_HOST_IP:0? I've been doing this to run
| graphical linux apps for a couple years now, both on WSL1 and on
| a regular Hyper-V Linux VM.
| dboreham wrote:
| It just works?
| nickjj wrote:
| It seamlessly works with VcXsrv too after you set your
| DISPLAY. I've been using it for years too, even back in 2018
| while running Sublime Text within WSL 1 as a primary code
| editor.
|
| If you place your VcXsrv config in your Windows startup
| folder everything automatically works. I haven't touched my
| config in years. The machine boots and it's all good,
| complete with proper clipboard sharing so you can copy things
| to and from WSL.
| reissbaker wrote:
| I could never get VcXsrv to work with DPI scaling well. So
| many hacks upon hacks...
| nickjj wrote:
| That's fair enough. I have a 2560x1440 display but I run
| it at 1:1 native scaling, everything updates quickly with
| no flickering or tearing. I've found in general using
| display scaling anywhere is always a questionable
| experience since not every app is developed to take
| advantage of it.
| MikusR wrote:
| With hardware acceleration and CUDA?
| kingosticks wrote:
| And audio?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I am yet unsure how it is able to use "hardware acceleration"
| considering it is using RDP.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| DPI scaling (especially per-monitor DPI) is much much better,
| it it actually handled better than native Linux
| rdudek wrote:
| So does that mean DirectX will be fully available under any Linux
| distro at some point?
| vermaden wrote:
| If the host system is Linux then this can be called Windows
| Subsystem for Linux (the same thing that WINE does).
|
| If the host system is Windows then its Linux Subsystem for
| Windows.
|
| Please do not fuck with logic.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Windows (subsystem for Linux) i.e. a subsystem of Windows that
| is for Linux. I think.
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| Windows + WSL2 is starting to catching up with Chrome OS +
| crostini. How exciting.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Can this run tiling window managers?
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| Extend.
|
| > Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the
| heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've EXTENDED the existing RDP backend
| of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than
| monitor/desktop.
|
| It has been admitted.
| oaiey wrote:
| RDP is a proprietary protocol of Microsoft. Extending their own
| protocol sounds pretty normal.
|
| And the code seems available on their weston-mirror. It just a
| merge away.
|
| Microsoft does enough shady things in the now, let us not try
| not force some EEE pattern.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Anyone else worrying about Windows swallowing up Linux?
|
| I hope their intentions are altruistic.
| spijdar wrote:
| For better or for worse, I'm not sure the aggregate direction
| Microsoft takes as a company is either altruistic or malicious,
| I'm pretty sure it's ultimately profit driven.
|
| I expect there are MS engineers who see this as altruistic and
| executives that see this as a way to keep developers from
| moving off Windows and ultimately as customers. In the end, I'm
| not sure what this will mean for "desktop Linux". I've already
| had one colleague dump "bare metal Linux" in favor of Win10 +
| WSL2.
| dboreham wrote:
| I use it for two things:
|
| 1. Running Linux build tools that expect to pop up a browser for
| SSO auth (e.g. with ECS). These tools do the right thing if you
| install chrome in WSL. Otherwise you need to copy the URL into a
| windows browser which is slightly inconvenient and for me
| sometimes inscrutably doesn't work.
|
| 2. Running UI dev tools that don't work properly cross-OS from
| Windows. E.g jconsole Java networking seems to be mostly broken
| between the host OS and processes listening in WSL so this is a
| workaround. Run the GUI client in Linux. JVM process discovery
| also works which is nice.
| Daegalus wrote:
| there are tools that solve this. I think it's even called WSL
| Tools. adds a few things to launch browsers on windows side
| with urls on Linux side and other things.
|
| not sure about java, haven't touched that in over a decade
| mickotron wrote:
| Just do it already, MS. Replace Windows/NT kernel with Linux, and
| make Windows another Linux distro. Seems like you're kinda
| heading that way.
| fb03 wrote:
| I have been getting by with VcXsrv just fine, for simple apps
| like IDEs and stuff (vs code, pycharm community).
|
| The advantage of wslg would be running hardware accel'd apps?
| tambeb wrote:
| I haven't had any problems running all types of GUIs in WSL (1 &
| 2) through Xming for years now.
| naruhodo wrote:
| I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with Cygwin
| back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a way, for
| several decades now.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with
| Cygwin back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a
| way, for several decades now.
|
| And Cygwin _still_ runs like a champ today. At least for my
| use case.
| pjmlp wrote:
| And before Cygwin was relevant, we had X-Win32 and
| Hummingbird.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I will be the curmudgeon here I guess.
|
| Microsoft has been following this strategy for a while. Announce
| something useful. I click in and look forward to start using it.
| How do I download it and get started?
|
| Oh I need to install a beta version of Windows on my computer to
| use this feature. I dont want to do that.
|
| Then weekly or biweekly new stories pop up and I hope it has had
| a proper release, but no, insider only.
|
| I would prefer if MS announced, "tool under development to be
| released 03/25" and then "ready for production today". Synched so
| that you can get the correct version of windows to use the new
| tool/feature/framework.
|
| It says it will ship with the next version of Windows, so it will
| ship in Windows 11 then?
|
| I wish there was a meta tag on Hacker News that identified if a
| program, platform, airplane, city building, etc is vaporware,
| under real development or production ready / move in ready / book
| a flight ready etc etc.
| hacker_homie wrote:
| Then who would test it?
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Amazingly this seems better integrated than Mac's XQuartz which I
| always find awkward and buggy. If it weren't for the forced ads
| and updates I would consider switching back to Windows.
| jgilias wrote:
| I love it how in the screenshot in the description you can see
| that the shortcuts on the desktop are mostly games. Now you know
| why the hypothetical user is sticking around using Windows as
| their daily driver in the first place :)
| apatheticonion wrote:
| I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to
| drop WSL and manage my own VM manually.
|
| I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to
| make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just
| like WSL2.
|
| This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not
| to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who
| owns what binary and how does it execute? When is WSL2 running
| and when is it not? etc etc
|
| Ultimately, I would rather run Linux on my desktop as a daily
| driver but the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me
| to live (at least) 8 hours a day in. Gnome 40 looks great though,
| can't wait too see what the future holds.
|
| My dream is running Linux as a daily driver where the UI is more
| polished than MacOS. Windows will run in a VM and will be used
| for API calls for playing games (I wonder if we will ever see
| some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation).
| cprecioso wrote:
| About your last point, this was posted a couple weeks ago on
| here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870399
| dgan wrote:
| I don't understand claims "desktop experience is not there
| yet". What do you even need so specific? Care to explain? I
| tend to think it's more of people's problem at that point than
| linux desktop experience problem
| apatheticonion wrote:
| It's not _functionally_ problematic, just aesthetically.
|
| Mostly it's just that I never go a full day without
| performing some kind of maintenance on my Linux desktop
| environment to try to get it looking right, and it never
| looks right.
|
| I also run multiple monitors, so that aspect tends to throw
| in some extra jank.
|
| At this point, running Gnome completely unmodified has been
| the most success I have had - but even Gnome 40 has some
| questionable design decisions.
|
| Windows is a poor example of polish but I feel there's a lot
| we can learn from by looking at MacOS's desktop environment.
| Having used each for significant amounts of time (years) and
| currently living on Windows, MacOS really takes the prize for
| the "nicest place to live but worst landlord".
| ncmncm wrote:
| I go _years_ without "performing some kind of maintenance
| on my Linux desktop environment". I can't even imagine what
| you would even be trying to fool with, and it not working.
| RamRodification wrote:
| _> I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for
| virtualisation_
|
| Hasn't this been solved for some time now? Or am I
| misunderstanding what you want? I remember seeing a few
| articles about using this for gaming on Windows VMs on Linux
| hosts. I haven't jumped in though so maybe it's not what I
| think it is.
|
| https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_with_libvirt_qe...
|
| I think it's also definitely in use for compute stuff on VMs in
| professional environments.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualizati...
|
| Edit: Ah, maybe sharing a GPU _between a host and VMs_ isn 't
| possible at the moment. Only pass-through and maybe sharing
| between the VMs?
| apatheticonion wrote:
| I could be wrong but I think you can only pass through an
| entire GPU as long as it's unused on the host.
|
| Sharing a used GPU, in the same way we can share a CPU with
| no performance loss via Intel Hyper v, is not possible.
| RamRodification wrote:
| Yeah, just edited my post with that point. I think you're
| right.
| joveian wrote:
| Intel GPUs can be shared, it is called GVT-g (expensive AMD
| and nVidia have similar abilities). It isn't trivial to set
| up at this point but it sounds like it works.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Sharing a CPU with no performance loss isn't possible
| either. The amount of CPU loss varies dramatically by the
| exact virtualisation stack used and by the application
| running on top of it, but it is very clearly observable.
| apatheticonion wrote:
| Are you sure? I am not sure if Geekbench is a valid
| benchmark but I have an AMD 5900x.
|
| Running it in Windows (host) I have a lower score than I
| get in VMWare running Ubuntu (guest).
| NavinF wrote:
| Nope, Nvidia will never let you pass PCIe virtual functions
| to VMs. They'd rather charge 7x the price for data center
| GPUs with that capability.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Again: don't buy Nvidia. This is one of the many reasons
| why you should consider avoiding this brand (for GPUs). I
| even gave them the benefit of the doubt with their Nvidia
| Shield (bought two Pro 2020's) only to have them shove me
| up ads through my throat via a software update.
| NavinF wrote:
| Again: You don't have a choice.
|
| Which AMD GPUs support VFs? Which ones support ROCm? The
| older AMD consumer GPUs did, but the newer ones don't.
| They prefer to charge extra for the data center GPUs just
| like Nvidia.
| my123 wrote:
| That's not NV related sadly, but applies for all Android
| TV devices. It's beyond their control...
|
| And for PCIe VFs for virtualized GPUs, AMD does _not_
| provide it either outside of their datacenter line.
|
| Note that if you just passthrough the whole GPU, that
| works out of the box on NVIDIA cards.
|
| (btw, for some NV cards, there is:
| https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock to crack that
| protection)
| raman162 wrote:
| What's missing from the Linux Desktop experience for you?
|
| I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis,
| Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manager) is my daily driver.
| Everytime I switch to windows or Mac os, it always feels like a
| downgrade for me because I can't replicate the tiling
| experience. The one thing I love about mac, is the trackpad
| experience, I wish windows and Linux could get to that level.
| NavinF wrote:
| 1. Update glibc and everything breaks
|
| 2. Update Nvidia drivers and everything breaks
|
| 3. 99% of laptops have at least one device with missing or
| broken drivers. 802.11ac is very old in 2021, but the most
| popular ac chips still need an out-of-tree driver which will
| break when you update your kernel. Have fun copying kernel
| patches from random forums
|
| 4. Even the smallest of changes (ex: set display scaling to
| something that's not a multiple of 100%) require dicking
| around with config files. Windows 10's neutered control panel
| is still leagues ahead of Ubuntu's settings app. (Why are the
| default settings so bad? High DPI 4K monitors have been out
| for a decade now. Maybe they've fixed this since I've last
| checked. Or maybe all the devs use 10 year old Thinkpads)
|
| 5. Every config file is its own special snowflake with its
| own syntax, keywords, and escape characters
|
| 6. Every distro is its own special snowflake so it takes
| forever to help someone unfuck their computer if you're not
| familiar with their distro. Releasing software on Linux is
| painful for a related reason: The kennel has a stable ABI,
| but distros don't. You have to ship half the distro with
| every app if you want it to work out of the box. Using Docker
| for GUI apps is insane, but sometimes that's that you gotta
| do.
|
| 7. The desktop Linux community seems to only care about
| performance on old crappy hardware.
|
| 8. Audio input and output latency is really high out of the
| box. That's one of many things that require tweaking just to
| get acceptable performance.
| bytearray64 wrote:
| At least for your glibc / nvidia concern, I feel like if
| you stick to the binary packages, at least on Ubuntu, it's
| hard to break. Recently I've been trying to do all the
| gaming I can on Linux with Proton, and at least for single-
| player games, it tends to work pretty well. (MP is still a
| big issue due to the current state of anti-cheat)
|
| Audio latency is one struggle I agree is still pretty bad.
| I had a pretty good time getting SteamVR running on Linux
| with Beat Saber running via proton, but tuning the audio
| latency was a big pain.
| lobocinza wrote:
| 1. My experience with Windows 10 is that there's a
| considerable chance that it will break after an update and
| refuse to boot requiring me to reinstall it. With Linux
| even when using bleeding edge Arch things rarely break and
| when they do I can see WHY and then FIX it.
|
| 2. Not a problem with AMD at least.
|
| 3. Mileage may vary
|
| 4. Ubuntu is a joke. Try Manjaro.
|
| 5. Learning curve is steep but you install Gnome or KDE and
| have a proper desktop environment that don't get in your
| way or show ads without touching a single configuration
| file.
|
| 6. Mileage may vary but most distros are Debian, Arch or
| Fedora based and environments are not that fragmented as
| you make it sound. Also there is Flatpak and others as an
| alternative for building and distributing desktop
| applications.
|
| 7. I'm playing games with decent performance on a GPU that
| was released on last month. Also it's only crappy if
| doesn't get the job done and is good that the community
| cares for long term support better than this trend of
| disposable software and planned obsolescence.
|
| 8. Never had this problem.
| pkphilip wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience at all - except for the
| graphics card issue where there is really some work to be
| done before the specific driver for the card works.
|
| For everything else Linux is actually a lot easier to work
| with than Windows - where you may need to download specific
| drivers for it to work.
|
| As for your comment about config files - the same is the
| case with Windows where instead of config files, you may
| need to tweak registry keys.
|
| If you don't mind the default settings, it is about the
| same experience on Linux and Windows. When you start
| tweaking things, then your mileage will vary.
| Dayshine wrote:
| > As for your comment about config files - the same is
| the case with Windows where instead of config files, you
| may need to tweak registry keys.
|
| This is a pretty bad comparison. Here's a list of things
| I had to use config files (or terribly documented
| randomly downloaded CLI apps) for in Ubuntu but have a
| simple GUI (or just work) in Windows:
|
| - Mounting a network drive
|
| - Adjusting my touchpad behaviour (whether to supress on
| keyboard entry)
|
| - Restarting my network adapter
|
| - Wipe my SSH credentials
|
| The last time I touched Windows registry was to disable
| automatic USB device connection, but that's only because
| I don't have group policy on this machine.
| NavinF wrote:
| I've never had to deal with anything as brittle as
| xorg.conf on Windows.
| piperswe wrote:
| Sorry for being a bit of a Nix shill, but NixOS aims to
| solve 1, 2, 5, and the latter part of 6.
| Fnoord wrote:
| 1) This should not occur. You do not update glibc on a
| stable desktop environment. If you use rolling release
| distributions, yes shit will hit the fan (even though
| proponents/fans of such will deny such 'ever happening to
| their X years of Arch or w/e usage).
|
| 2) Don't use Nvidia; use AMD or Intel with FOSS drivers. I
| know this sucks if you don't have the option (its a package
| deal, or you already bought it).
|
| (I've only bothered to address the first two. Doesn't mean
| you're correct on the other 6.)
| NavinF wrote:
| 1. Yeah it "should not" happen yet I've experienced it on
| a relatively sane distro. Btw "Update glibc and
| everything breaks" is a quote from Linus Torvalds. He's a
| newcomer on this scene, but he makes some good points:
| https://youtu.be/5PmHRSeA2c8?t=588
|
| 2. No thanks. I'll stick with my RTX 3090 for my personal
| desktop and 2x2080Ti for each of my servers. We both wish
| there was another vendor that supported tensorflow with
| reasonable performance, but you know that's not the world
| we live in.
|
| 3-8: Well you better address them then
| Fnoord wrote:
| Yeah, "Update glibc and everything breaks" is a quote by
| Linus Torvalds on Debconf 2014. But why? Do you know? I
| do. Because this very thing happened on Debian _Testing_.
| Not Debian Stable, _Testing_. That 's akin to a rolling
| release like Arch. Debian GNU/Linux is a sane Linux
| distribution, as long as you run Stable. If you run
| Testing or Unstable shit is going to break, just like
| Arch or Nix or .. (at least Nix got good rollback support
| to mitigate it)
|
| I'm happily using a Vega56 and can achieve decent
| performance on 1080p and 1440p on Linux. Raytracing is a
| gimmick to me, tear-free gaming not (but I got FreeSync
| working). I don't work with Tensorflow or Hashcat or
| such, I'm talking about Linux desktop gaming here.
| There's no need to use Nvidia there unless you need
| exotic stuff like raytracing. The AMD Radeon Navi series
| (5000 and 6000) deliver excellent performance.
| lobocinza wrote:
| If you are going to cite a joke, cite this: Windows, you
| do anything and the screen go blue. Problems exist and
| they need be addressed but Linux did not stop at time and
| the scenario is not the same as it was at 7 years ago.
| e12e wrote:
| 1 why/how would you break glibc? This sounds like you're
| "holding it wrong"? You don't go willy-nilly changing
| system dlls on windows, do you?
|
| 2 yeah, nvidia does not support linux/Foss. It sucks. Buy
| amd, or use windows.
|
| 3 I've not really seen this lately. Ubuntu/canonical does a
| pretty good and pragmatic job of enabling non-free drivers
| - but sure, not all vendors care. See 2.
|
| 4 not with eg Ubuntu 20.04 lts Wayland. I'm rather
| positively impressed with the settings app. I'm not all
| that _happy_ personally with all the dbus /changes that
| enable this pretty gui - I tend to prefer simple config
| files. But at any rate - I don't think your point 4 has
| been true for a while.
|
| 5 yes and no? Honestly I think the only config files I'm
| editing is nvim and vs code. My terminal for example has a
| perfectly usable gui preferences coupled with a perfectly
| readable and version controllable config file.
|
| Well and the occasional bash rc tweak.
|
| 6 maybe?
|
| 7 I think it's more that hw vendors don't care about Linux,
| so it takes a lot of time for drivers etc to materialize.
|
| 8 Hopefully pipewire will kill pulse audio, and this will
| cease to be the case.
| NavinF wrote:
| 1. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
|
| 2. Yeah I'll just trade in my RTX 3090 for something that
| has half the performance and doesn't support tensorflow
| e12e wrote:
| 1 when was this? On Ubuntu lts or Debian stable?
|
| 2 if a vendor makes good hw, but poor drivers for your os
| - that really is on the vendor, not the os?
|
| Still, I agree it's frustrating that nvidia is unwilling
| to commit to Foss/linux.
| simooooo wrote:
| 2 it shouldn't, and doesn't matter to the end user. If it
| sucks, it sucks.
| NavinF wrote:
| 1. Ubuntu 18 LTS
|
| 2. Meh, I never said it was on the OS. I'm just listing
| some reasons why it's impossible to use Linux on my
| personal desktop. Believe me, I've tried.
| e12e wrote:
| > Ubuntu 18 LTS
|
| You updated system glibc and system packages broke? Or
| third party packages?
| nanna wrote:
| Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops
| me from installing Windows on all of my friends and familys
| aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100%
| replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which
| for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for
| non-techie associates it is.)
|
| I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS
| to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so
| much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.
| nanna wrote:
| Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops
| me from installing Windows on all of my friend's and family's
| aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100%
| replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which
| for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for
| non-techie associates it is.)
|
| I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS
| to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so
| much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.
| mickotron wrote:
| I really do not want MS office anywhere near my Linux
| machine.
|
| I wish that Microsoft's products fully supported open
| document formats and standards.
| mekster wrote:
| > I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on
| MS to port Office to Linux
|
| Why is this hard to understand? Who uses Linux on desktop?
| Check some browser stat.
|
| Run a remote Windows in a cloud and throw Office in there.
| thefr0g wrote:
| > LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the
| formatting of a docx generated by Word
|
| I mean even different versions of Word can't do that
| reliably...
| Fnoord wrote:
| CrossOver has been working for nearly 20 years on Linux,
| and Microsoft Word has always been one of their priorities.
| pedro2 wrote:
| How much of a tinkerer are you? Try this:
| https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
| hughrr wrote:
| For me, reliability. Literally I have to futz with it so
| often. I moved from a Mac recently to a T495 thinkpad with
| Radeon in it which is supposedly fully supported by Ubuntu.
| Turns out that depends on what day of the week it is.
| Constant GPU problems.
|
| I have considered switching back to windows.
| andai wrote:
| There was recently some kind of fundraiser to hire a
| developer fulltime to make the trackpad support on Linux
| closer to macOS.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Last time I checked there was literally one person
| maintaining trackpad support on Linux; no wonder it needed
| work!
| morrbo wrote:
| It's funny you mention tiling because honestly one of the
| biggest things preventing me from moving to linux full time
| is the lack of any decent window manager like
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/powertoys/fancyzone... where I can arbitrarily
| draw/resize zones and drag and drop/snap windows on to them.
| Every window manager I've used in Linux, and gnome extension,
| all try and force you to have non resizable areas, areas of
| equal proportions, don't support snapping etc. And needed
| serious foo for moving a window about. If anyone has any
| suggestions I'd love to hear it
| Fnoord wrote:
| Powertoys is amazing, it allows you to run your Windows
| machine more like Linux/Mac.
|
| Awake is like Amphetamine on macOS.
|
| FancyZones is like a tiling window manager.
|
| Keyboard Manager allows you to easily rebind a key such as
| Caps Lock.
|
| Power Rename allows you to rename based on regexp.
|
| Powertoys Run is basically a light version of Alfred.
|
| File Explorer addons allows you to for example preview
| Markdown (.md) files.
|
| Color Picker saves me the hassle of making a screenshot and
| then uploading it to a website to figure out the hex value
| (or having to open up a bloated image editor). Useful for
| (even simple) image editing, web design, etc.
|
| I'm sure I missed some utilities but these are the features
| I use.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| If your only experience with GNOME is Ubuntu, give Fedora a
| try. The parts are 95% identical but (in my opinion) the user
| experience is a lot more coherent, because it's all designed
| together and nothing's bolted on.
| CraftingLinks wrote:
| I just might switch to linux instead.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Most corporate PC users do not have that option. WSL solves
| that.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| This is the most plausible explanation. Since most of the
| newer dev frameworks use very unix like CLI, windows as a dev
| operating system was feeling very left out.
|
| VSCode made this painfully obvious.
|
| Most corporates would just offer you a mac instead. WSLg is
| pretty cool, but if you have a choice, running ubuntu or
| debian is better, with emulation for whatever windows legacy
| stuff you need to support.
| pjmlp wrote:
| What dev frameworks?
|
| The ones I use, work perfectly fine in Visual Studio and
| Eclipse, and Powershell does the rest.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| You can always fall back on the Linux Subsystem for Windows
| GUI, aka WINE/DOSBox/VMW/VBX/QEMU, with varying levels of
| integration/fiddle/config.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Varying levels of integration, with fiddling being required
| less and less (eg. Proton), and with a nuch higher level of
| privacy. Also, I don't want my computer to feel like a
| billboard for Candy Crush Saga.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Sorry, your reply was missing a sub-legible customer
| experience improvement key. Please re-authorize at your
| nearest _Subway_.
| wvenable wrote:
| That seems like a very complex architecture. RDP client and
| server? That seems like a strange approach for a single machine
| solution.
| folmar wrote:
| RDP is ready, tested and quite complete. Much better than
| designing a new protocol.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Ironic statement considering how X was designed to work.
| wvenable wrote:
| I posted this because I've used Linux GUI apps on Windows
| with WSL1 and an X server. This seems much more complex than
| that.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's because WSL2 abandoned the initial goals of WSL1 and just
| did a VM instead.
|
| I wish MS continued evolving WSL1 instead of doing the VM
| approach but c'est la vie.
| edgyquant wrote:
| >I wish MS continued evolving WSL1
|
| I do too but only from a techy POV. I think it was awesome
| they expanded their old posix apis into a drop in linux
| replacement and wish it could have continued being expanded.
| cogman10 wrote:
| For me, it comes down to the fact that WSL1 apps were ran
| like native apps. That was amazing. It meant I could kill a
| WSL1 app from task manager. It meant that those apps were
| only taking the memory they used, not an entire VM's worth
| of memory. It meant I didn't have to manage yet another
| virtual machine environment on my PC.
|
| WSL2 is certainly the way to go if you want a more "true"
| linux experience. I just lament the fact that WSL1 came so
| close to being true enough.
| ripdog wrote:
| From what I recall, an MS engineer explained why they gave up
| on WSL1 as being intractable issues with the way Windows and
| Linux interact with the filesystem, leading to major,
| unfixable performance issues.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| The amount of effort that went into WSL1 including the number
| of bug-for-bug changes involved was tremendous. It blew my
| mind when WSL2 was announced because the hyper visor approach
| was already possible (and in use) before WSL1 was announced
| but MS made an explicit decision to do the extra work to make
| their own Linux subsystem for Windows the harder/better
| way... then gave up.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah, the greatest features of WSL1 was the fact that it
| wasn't a VM. All apps were running natively and managed by
| the windows kernel.
|
| I now have to deal with the fact that every so often the
| WSL 2 VM will simply consume too much memory, which really
| stinks.
|
| WSL1 felt SO close to being perfect.
| nereye wrote:
| You can switch back and forth as required, from
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq#what-w...:
|
| What will happen to WSL 1? Will it be abandoned? We
| currently have no plans to deprecate WSL 1. You can run
| WSL 1 and WSL 2 distros side by side, and can upgrade and
| downgrade any distro at any time.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I get all that, but it's hard to imagine with the current
| naming scheme that you'll be doing much beyond the bare
| minimum support for WSL1. I have a hard time believing
| that new WSL1 features will land.
|
| There's a giant chasm between "not deprecated" and
| "actively supporting".
|
| For example, I'm guessing that running a docker container
| with WSL1 is something that will never happen.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Yea, but WSL1 has basically seen no new features or
| meaningful fixes since WSL2 was introduced.
| wvenable wrote:
| They were amazingly successful -- more successful than
| should have been thought possible -- but they couldn't
| overcome the semantic file system differences.
| orf wrote:
| Is this documented anywhere? I'd be interested in reading
| more
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Neither the Windows IO API or even the low-level NTFS
| APIs map cleanly to POSIX semantics. It means you can't
| just forward calls from the subsystem to the IO stack,
| you need to actively marshal them to and fro. This, in
| addition to certain operations just being plain more
| expensive on Windows/NTFS (opening files, creating
| processes) due to different programming
| paradigms/approaches just give a very high impedance
| mismatch that makes performant IO highly unlikely by
| nature for anything trying to run on top the existing
| system rather than virtualized.
| CallMeJim wrote:
| In Windows 11 + WSL2 + Google Drive Sync, you can _cd_ into
| Google Drive at _/ mnt/g_ and use it like a normal directory.
|
| I'm not sure when this became the case; it wasn't possible 6
| months ago with Windows 10 + WSL2 + Google Drive File Stream.
| hansoolo wrote:
| It's so weird to see Teams on the Windows Desktop next to a Linux
| Desktop Window... [0]
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/raw/main/docs/WSLg_Integra...
| b215826 wrote:
| Now someone make a Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Isn't that pretty much what Wine does? Having been using Linux
| as my daily workstation for a year now, I've been blown away
| how easy it is (and generally transparent) to install and use
| Windows applications on Linux.
| spijdar wrote:
| Actually, not quite. Wine is closer to what WSL1 was. The
| closest equivalent to "Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI" on
| WSL2 for Linux would just be ... running Windows in a VM,
| with FreeRDP doing per-app tunneling to the Linux host.
|
| I think there's even some software for automating this
| somewhere out there.
| edgyquant wrote:
| >Wine is closer to what WSL1 was
|
| Not quite. Wine just translates windows syscalls to linux
| ones but WSL actually reimplemented the linux api inside
| the NT kernel (which was designed with the ability to use
| multiple OS apis.)
| emilsedgh wrote:
| As far as I understand Wine does way, way more than that.
| Wine actually re-implements all Windows API's. Not
| syscalls, but higher level libraries like DirectX and
| whatnot.
| spijdar wrote:
| Well, I said "closer", not an exact analogue. They're
| pretty close equivalents, though, as most Windows
| programs don't actually call syscalls directly, but link
| in an OS-provided DLL and call an exported symbol from
| it, with the userspace to kernel bits abstracted away
| from most user programs. Wine (mostly) re-implements
| those DLLs, effectively re-implementing the Win32 API (a
| userspace API) in Linux's userland.
|
| (programs are allowed to call the kernel directly,
| though, and Wine has to handle those cases esp. for
| DRM/anti-cheat code in games that poke at the kernel
| directly, recently Linux was patched to allow userspace
| programs to directly handle syscalls [0][1], making Wine
| ... closer to a WSL1 equivalent?)
|
| [0] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/10/1323
|
| [1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include
| /linux/...
| zamadatix wrote:
| Neither reimplemented the other syscalls directly in the
| kernel. In WSL1 the NT kernel kicked Linux syscalls to an
| lxcore.sys driver to convert them into equivalent NT
| calls and objects. In WINE most things don't make direct
| syscalls (they make userspace Win32 calls and WINE
| reimplements that and many other Windows APIs in a way
| that calls Linux syscalls directly) but for those that do
| (e.g. game DRM) the Linux kernel added a
| SECCOMP_MODE_MMAP mode to seccomp() to trap unknown
| syscalls to a handler (in this case WINE) to do the same
| thing.
| teddyfrozevelt wrote:
| I guess it would be this: https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
| b215826 wrote:
| Thanks, this sounds like an interesting project. Will look
| into it.
| vzaliva wrote:
| One could run Linux and use Wine to run _some_ Windows apps. On
| the other hand one can run Windows and use WSL to run _some_
| Linux apps. Depending on the individual 's needs which apps are
| important to have access to the decision could go either way.
| This is why Microsoft is investing in projects like this - to tip
| the scales and lure more users to run Windows as primary OS.
|
| P.S. And then there is Google which wants you not to care about
| OS as long as it could launch Chrome browser, and to use web apps
| instead of native.
| ineedasername wrote:
| or just download Virtual Box or the free VMware Player. If
| you're on Linux, running Windows in "Unity" mode is already
| about as seamless as WSL2 w/ GUI appears to be.
| IronWolve wrote:
| This. Been using seamless mode on virtualbox for a
| decade(s)?, have a full terminal on windows, and now i can
| run vscode in my linux vm while in a windows desktop. I just
| use mate and with hide buttons on the panel enabled.
|
| WSL1 with Windows Terminal works good for now quick youtube-
| dl's, WSL2 needs hyper-v, so kinda deal breaker for me as a
| virtualbox user.
| tdeck wrote:
| It's almost like they're trying to embrace the Linux ecosystem
| and extend it for windows users...
| jbhouse wrote:
| extinguish coming soon
| chx wrote:
| With WSL v2 , you can run Windows and _all_ Linux apps.
|
| WSL v1 had limitations but WSL v2 is a VM -- a more integrated
| VM than usual but still.
| the8472 wrote:
| > With WSL v2 , you can run Windows and all Linux apps.
|
| Can it run perf yet? I.e. are they passing through hardware
| performance counters from the host?
| mikaeluman wrote:
| For me WSL has completely replaced dual booting setups.
|
| There are still some quirks with integration such as certificates
| and more.
|
| I really can't wait for the GPU experience to be fully supported
| and also be able to use pytorch from within containers.
|
| Microsoft is so far doing everything right with WSL IMO.
| pjmlp wrote:
| For me that happened already 10 years ago with VMWare.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| How long before even Linus migrates to Windows as his daily
| driver?
| zzandd wrote:
| So how long until us poor fellows running enterprise windows see
| this?
|
| I currently use vcxsrv which works mostly fine, but it's hard to
| convince other people to adopt the multitude of hacks I have to
| make this work, and supporting windows in builds is painful.
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