[HN Gopher] Part of Windows 11 is a revamped Windows Subsystem f...
___________________________________________________________________
Part of Windows 11 is a revamped Windows Subsystem for Linux
Author : Tomte
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-10-07 19:38 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Hamuko wrote:
| Does it finally automatically mount my network shares?
| ahupp wrote:
| It now supports mounting from fstab on startup.
| Hamuko wrote:
| That was supposedly supported in Windows 10 I believe. I
| think I got the command to work once but only once.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| file access is still painfully slow
|
| same for IO intensive operations, including compiling code
|
| just use linux or macOS
| judge2020 wrote:
| The whole setup with WSLg is pretty nice. Virt-manager works, but
| more importantly with nested AMD virtualization (which I believe
| is indeed limited to Windows 11; Windows 10 has nested Intel
| support, though) it was super easy to use macOS-Simple-KVM[0] to
| run a Mac VM, even if the FS performance isn't great and I don't
| have an extra AMD card lying around to passthrough for hardware
| acceleration.
|
| 0: https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM
| smusamashah wrote:
| WSLg requires Windows 11. I installed it only to try WSLg. The
| UI didn't scale with Windows scaling/DPI settings which was
| very annoying. Setting the display resolution reduced sharpness
| of all font. Not being a Linux user primarily and hating
| Windows 11 annoyances, regretted the upgrade and reverted back
| to Win 10.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Can't access usb hardware.
|
| I do a lot of things that use usb rs232 adapters or things that
| look like them, and I support both linux and mac effortlessly
| (and even freebsd and any other unix) and none of it is possible
| under wsl2.
|
| If all you want to do is write web services, there are native
| windows versions of all the scripting languages and web
| frameworks.
|
| If you have some reason to actually use linux, then just use it.
| It's free and well-documented. Nothing's stopping you.
|
| If MS _actually_ cared about supporting developers, then they
| would provide a 1st class form of Wine, so that windows apps
| could be run from within linux.
|
| Since they don't do that, this exposes that they don't actually
| care what would be convenient for _you_ , and so, you should
| decline to work with people who don't work with you. That's how
| you can see through bullshit.
|
| You should reject their products and sales pitches until their
| behaviour _actually_ changes, and disregard all the lip service,
| "gifts" with strings, and excuses for dark patterns. Use their
| stuff when you must, but under duress and seeking other options
| at every turn.
| beardedman wrote:
| - 2021: revamped Windows Subsystem for Linux
|
| - 2024: dual support for native Linux & Windows 13 apps
|
| - 2027: Linux & Windows 15 interop support
|
| - 2030: run legacy Windows apps on Windows L (Linux)
| anon_cow1111 wrote:
| - 2035: Windows no longer overwrites Grub bootloader
| jgilias wrote:
| One can wish. The more likely end game seems to be one where no
| one actually bothers using a real Linux installation, as you
| can do everything you'd need Linux for on your Windows machine.
| But your Windows machine has become a 'trusted computing'
| device that only boots and runs most software if it 'hasn't
| been tampered with'. Say, by actually installing Linux on it.
|
| Edit:
|
| Further reading here:
|
| https://secret.club/2021/06/28/windows11-tpms.html
| brundolf wrote:
| Right, they've ceded the server space to Linux but want to
| cement Windows' position on desktops in a Linux-server world
| (maybe regaining some ground from Macs in the process, since
| this is one of the reasons they're so popular with devs)
| II2II wrote:
| I am pretty sure that WSL was implemented to avoid the
| gradual loss of users, most of them being developers, to
| Linux. There is very little reason for existing Linux users
| to adopt Windows due to WSL.
| beardedman wrote:
| Hope not! But actually kind of agree with you here.
| peakaboo wrote:
| I guess there are few of us, but I would absolutely never use
| that subsystem rather than a real Linux system.
| prirai wrote:
| Same here, the sense of freedom is incomparable.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Did we mention that a TPM isn't going to protect you from
| UEFI malware that was planted on the device by a rogue agent
| at manufacture time?
|
| I find this to be a pretty weak strawman, and one that not
| many people would consider to be part of their threat model
| (and if they are, they'd just purchase the part from a brick-
| and-mortar store so that, if there is malware, it's non-
| targeted).
|
| Microsoft is mostly doing this for their endpoint security
| enterprise customers. The objectives aren't exactly hidden,
| either:
|
| - Don't want anyone to be able to get data off of a
| bitlocker-encrypted drive[0]
|
| - Don't allow things like O365 login credentials (including
| temporary auth tokens) to be pulled off a drive[1]
|
| - Prevent thunderbolt 3 DMA (eg. from a rogue usb on the back
| of the computer)[2]
|
| And yes, they probably also don't want people to keep hacking
| online video games, which is why Riot uses TPM attestation as
| an additional security measure to preventing people banned
| for hacking from evading bans in Valorant[3].
|
| 0: https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/11/17/meet-
| the-....
|
| 1: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-
| pro...
|
| 2: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/security/informatio...
|
| 3: https://www.pcgamer.com/valorant-leads-the-charge-on-
| enforci...
| blibble wrote:
| > And yes, they probably also don't want people to keep
| hacking online video games, which is why Riot uses TPM
| attestation as an additional security measure to preventing
| people banned for hacking from evading bans in Valorant[3].
|
| on most of my gaming boards you buy the TPM and plug it
| into the board like you would a USB connector
|
| total cost: ~$15 (ignoring currently craziness)
|
| if I'm a wallhacker/aimbotter how would this stop me?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Usually they ban every part they can get a SN/unique ID
| for, TPM being just another signal. Modular TPMs are
| being phased out anyhow, with new AMD and Intel chips
| having it built in.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| "preventing people banned for hacking"
|
| Preventing a piece of hardware, regardless who is using it,
| and not preventing the cheater on any other hardware.
|
| It's a completely invalid idea and should not be defended
| or excused.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Reliable chain of trust combined with hardware bans is a
| pretty high entry barrier, though. You need to change
| most of your PC hardware to not be banned again, and HWID
| spoofers are also cheats that have to squeeze through the
| same filter.
|
| So no, it's not a _completely_ invalid idea. At some
| iteration, it will make the anticheats even better, and
| they already work pretty well (regardless of players '
| oversized perception of cheaters running unpunished). A
| proper chain of trust + hardware signing of mouse input +
| kernel hardening + hardware fingerprinting will make most
| cheats irrelevant (including the ML-based ones). You'd
| have to mod your hardware to be even able to run cheats;
| which is also preventable, just ask console
| manufacturers.
|
| The only downside is, this would turn your computing
| device into an appliance remotely controlled by several
| companies. And the gamers will be perfectly happy to have
| it at that, because everybody hates cheaters, and even
| talking about that is stigmatized.
| mcny wrote:
| >> So no, it's not a completely invalid idea.
|
| No. Say no to TPM. It is worse than useless. Imagine
| Netflix or your bank participating in this nonsense.
| Would you buy a used computer?
| nitrogen wrote:
| Doesn't UEFI already provide for the automated installation
| of vendor malware whenever Windows boots?
| smitty1e wrote:
| Yep. Windows will be to its Linux kernel as Aqua to Darwin.
|
| Been predicting it for years.
| earthbee wrote:
| A new round of embrace, extend, extinguish?
| serverholic wrote:
| They've come close already. Recently they tried adding
| directx compatibility extensions to linux and it created
| legal drama.
| Noughmad wrote:
| Far more in line with their EEE tradition:
|
| - 2021: Windows Subsystem for Linux that can run pretty much
| any Linux program
|
| - 2024: Custom proprietary extensions in WSL, hidden
| "incentives" to make sure some important software runs only on
| WSL
|
| - 2027: Nobody uses Linux without WSL anymore
|
| - 2030: WSL now costs $200 per year.
| bitwize wrote:
| Yeah, I read that erotic fanfic back when ESR wrote it:
| http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8764
|
| It's not going to happen. The Windows NT kernel is one of
| Microsoft's greatest assets; in fact it's better designed than
| Linux on many axes. Until recently it had better support for
| async I/O (and the developer experience of io_uring may still
| not measure up to IOCP under Windows), it was designed for
| multithreading, and it has a more advanced security model. It
| also has a more advanced driver model, which is to say it has a
| driver model at all. The fact that there's a standard ABI for
| drivers means hardware Just Works under Windows and is still
| incredibly fiddly under Linux. Microsoft essentially has
| stewardship over the entire PC platform because they play very
| nicely with OEMs and make hardware easy for Windows to support.
|
| They are not going to give that up. It'd be the OS-kernel
| equivalent of giving up Alpha for Itanium.
|
| If anything, the future of Linux is to be a guest under Windows
| NT. How many Hackernews have I heard repeat the mantra that the
| best Linux desktop environment is WSL?
| NGRhodes wrote:
| Removal of this feature from Windows 10 has secured the future of
| Linux Desktops in the University where I work, as we are years
| away from Windows 11.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| wslg will be available on Windows 10 as well. It's already in
| the insider builds .
| bradford wrote:
| I was a bit disappointed when I tried using a package in WSL and
| found that CUDA wasn't supported.
|
| It wasn't entirely clear from from the article, but I hope these
| updates fix that.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| CUDA is supported, with some limitations.
| https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/wsl-user-guide/index.html
| rbanffy wrote:
| 2022 is The Year of Linux on Windows Desktop ;-)
|
| Also, you shouldn't change the original title, which is probably
| correct.
| Tomte wrote:
| HN changes the title itself.
| fsflover wrote:
| Nevertheless you can edit it back.
| Bostonian wrote:
| You can update to Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI while still
| using Windows 10, as described at
| https://github.com/microsoft/wslg . Emacs and gnuplot work fine,
| and that's all I need.
| Otter-man wrote:
| Sadly, is seems you can't get on Dev or Beta channel since June
| 24th (if you weren't enrolled before), so you won't be able to
| get the Insider build with WSLg on your existing win10. Only if
| you install it from clean ISO and update. Source:
| https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/all/how-in...
|
| I tried it now and you could only choose Release Preview
| channel which still has only build 19044.
| rbanffy wrote:
| You can also get this great feature in standalone version, for
| free, and without any Linux compatibility or Windows
| integration issues. Definitively recommend checking at
| ubuntu.com for it ;-)
| pram wrote:
| Link should have been to Arch Linux. 3/10
| oauea wrote:
| How do I use that to run windows games?
| sheepdestroyer wrote:
| With Steam and/or Proton
| https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
| weirdsquid wrote:
| You run just native Linux games, and the times they aren't
| available, you run them using the Proton compatibility
| layer (built right into Steam). There is also Lutris for
| Windows games not available on Steam.
| smusamashah wrote:
| The article says Windows 10 but on insider preview you only get
| option to upgrade to Windows 11. Updating Windows 10 alone
| isn't an option anymore. See
| https://superuser.com/questions/1676383/how-to-skip-update-t...
| p1necone wrote:
| Yep - seems like they originally did all the work to have it
| running in win 10, and then decided to take it away as a carrot
| to get people to upgrade to win 11.
|
| I'm probably going to make 10 the last version of Windows I
| install.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| They will keep trying and failing. The only reason people still
| use Windows is the exclusive software and games. Once someone
| gets proper virtual GPU working for most GPUs then I assure you
| the preferred choice will be the other way around.
| libertine wrote:
| >The only reason people still use Windows is the exclusive
| software and games.
|
| But that's quite a lot of stuff to be considered "the only
| reason".
| peteri wrote:
| To get chrome / vscode / edge to resize correctly I needed to add
| some options to turn off the gpu acceleration (I think judging by
| edge://gpu).
|
| --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland
|
| There are issues raised on github (issue #272/273) so I'm
| guessing it's mostly driver related. Other than that it seems
| fairly seemless, the apps appear in an ubuntu folder on the
| windows start menu.
| gavinray wrote:
| I feel like this is somewhat -- err, not a lie, but not quite the
| truth. There's a word for it but it's eluding me atm --
| "misadvertised"?
|
| The headline of the article is: _" WSL is finally easy to install
| --and offers automatic sound/graphics support."_
|
| All of this stuff was available before Windows 11, to
| anyone/everyone.
|
| I know, because the way I installed WSL2 on Windows 10 was the
| way mentioned in the article ("wsl --install"), and ditto for
| using the new/experimental Linux GUI stuff.
|
| This was readily available for anyone who bothered to install an
| Insiders ISO, and there are tutorials and articles about this for
| Win10 specifically:
| https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/how-to-install-wsl2-on-windows-10
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-initial-preview-
| of-gui-app-support-is-now-available-for-the-windows-subsystem-
| for-linux-2/
| prirai wrote:
| Same with me.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| What WSL really means is Linux Subsystem for Windows
| midasuni wrote:
| It is a subsystem of windows used for doing linux things.
|
| I don't get the appeal personally, but some people like
| Microsoft I guess.
| hwestiii wrote:
| Does anyone use it seriously? I guess I need better informational
| resources. I'm still wondering where the man pages are.
| veesahni wrote:
| A number of years ago WSL completely replaced virtualbox and
| cygwin for me.
|
| WSL2 + VSCode w/ WSL plugin provide a fluid and fast experience
| if the code sits inside linux.
| dboreham wrote:
| Google "install WSL2". Man pages come with Linux so they're
| where they always were.
| __jem wrote:
| Yes, I find it a far superior dev setup than a standard
| corporate Mac. Everything about Windows is inferior to macOS,
| but I spend 90% of my time in a shell, and having my familiar
| Arch setup and tools vs crumbling macOS Unix is well worth the
| trade-off of minor annoyances like terrible start menu and file
| explorer. Windows Terminal is actually pretty okay.
| iakov wrote:
| I use WSL daily on my desktop and laptop for work - full stack
| development and sysadmin/devops. Familiar CLI tools available
| right from my Windows desktop are a great thing.
|
| I'm really, really happy with WSL since I can use one powerful
| PC for work, music recording and occasional gaming.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Yeah, just like Linux but with added spyware!
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Anyone using docker desktop on Windows has been using WSL.
| WSL2. I use debian as my WSL2 distribution, it's OK as a
| development environment enhancer in that it removes the need to
| learn Powershell to do anything productive with a CLI.
|
| It's not as good as running Debian directly. WSL2 was the
| motivation I used to switch to debian full time on my main
| development machine, so I'm not sure Microsoft can safely
| assume that having WSL2 means people won't dual boot or simply
| move on.
| neves wrote:
| Yes. Best dev env that I used. Linux tools and Windows Gui.
| Problem os that eats too much memory.
| tehbeard wrote:
| WSL for me:
|
| - Great scripting environment for a number of "used
| weekly/monthly" tools (stuff to test backups, automate some
| processes) Maybe this is more an indication of my lack of
| PowerShell knowledge to do the same.
|
| - Good way for me to test most Linux binaries our scripts /
| code might use (wkhtml2pdf seemed to experience this, might
| have been because any windows bins we found were out of
| date/mislabelled.)
|
| - Ansible "Controller/Host" , My god, my favourite usecase for
| WSL. It just works. Still have to deal with Ansibles bytespam
| errors, but you don't need a whole VM to just to update some
| servers.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I use WSL all the time, have for years. It's excellent. I much
| prefer it to my last setup which was trying to MacOS act like a
| modern Unix.
|
| Not sure what you mean by "man pages". The full Linux man
| system is there, of course. WSL itself has very few commands of
| its own. There's wsl.exe but you almost never use it. It has no
| man page per se but it does have a good --help string as well
| as online docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/wsl/basic-commands
| rvz wrote:
| So this article is telling me that the best Linux distribution
| for the desktop is Windows?
|
| Makes sense.
| dboreham wrote:
| For desktop/laptop use, yes.
| oscribinn wrote:
| If you don't mind being coupled to an arcane filesystem,
| networking shitting the bed when you connect to VPN, settings
| you can't change, software you don't want but shouldn't remove,
| functionality that is simple to configure in KDE split across
| god knows how many UI/UX schemes and usually requiring third
| party applications, worse performance than native, and best of
| all having your open computing environment running virtualized
| on top of a closed system requiring you to migrate product
| keys/activation/whatever for a simple reinstall - yeah, WSL is
| the best Linux distro for you, bud.
| samsaga2 wrote:
| What's the performance? WSL2 was really slow for hard disk
| access.
| dboreham wrote:
| It's not slow for native Linux filesystem, only if you access
| the host NTFS. Avoid doing that. Git clone inside WSL2.
| veesahni wrote:
| Both WSL1 and WSL2 are slow for cross-platform disk access...
| but WSL2 is fast for within-the-vm disk access (unlike WSL1).
|
| Means if code resides in the linux vm and you can somehow edit
| it directly (eg: VSCode + WSL2 plugin), it's fast.
| judge2020 wrote:
| WSL2 on Windows 11 uses the same file translation layer between
| the host FS and the VM FS as it did on 10, so pretty slow. The
| big improvement with WSLg is that now you can run desktop linux
| apps (such as your IDE) within the WSL file world, which should
| give you near-native FS performance as long as you're not
| accessing /mnt (and if you want to browse those files on
| Windows, you can always open \\\wsl$ in file explorer).
| Kon5ole wrote:
| I just found out you can actually run slackware under wsl:
|
| https://github.com/Mohsens22/WSLackware
| filereaper wrote:
| I had to get a coworker set up under WSL because of a goofup with
| IT and instead of shipping a Mac this coworker ended up with a
| Windows machine and all of our tooling was Unix based.
|
| I had had them setup with WSL as a way of moving forward, here's
| a few things I noticed:
|
| - different home directories, the different distros are accessed
| as network shares. It can get confusing where "Home" is unless
| you explicitly stumble a few times and verify always where files
| are.
|
| - Issues with CR/LF. You need to be careful using native windows
| tooling and having saved files in Windows line endings vs Unix.
| For non-savvy users the content looks correct but on Unix the
| tooling will fail in weird ways.
|
| - Visual Studio Code integration was actually excellent, my
| coworker ended up using VS Code to do Filesystem operations more
| so than using Windows Explorer.
|
| - The new Windows Terminal is fantastic, hopefully its bundled
| with Win 11.
|
| I'm really grateful for the technical capabilities that WSL
| brings out. I hope the dev teams are focused on fixing the subtle
| UX issues that trip up users.
| fartcannon wrote:
| You needed a unix, so you tried WSL? You would have been much
| better served by Linux.
| tehbeard wrote:
| > a goofup with IT and instead of shipping a Mac this
| coworker ended up with a Windows machine
|
| That kinda implies this isn't a small shop, so "breaking" a
| windows machine IT provisioned to put Linux onto it might be
| out of the question, both in terms of requisition, access to
| the UEFI, or even network configuration.
|
| Or said coworker is more familiar with Mac/Windows than
| <Insert Linux Distro and particular window manager here>, so
| this is best of a bad situation.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-09 23:00 UTC)