[HN Gopher] The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source
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The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source
Author : pentagrama
Score : 954 points
Date : 2025-05-19 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.windows.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.windows.com)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings
| year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| Unless they're just flat out lying, no:
|
| > This is the result of a multiyear effort to prepare for this
| pjmlp wrote:
| People lie in court under oath, so excuse my sceptism when
| key people across .NET, Typescript, Python and AI frameworks
| have been let go.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Can't help but be pessimistic about this or any news coming out
| of Build, given the circumstances.
| tgma wrote:
| How would a 3% layoff in a big company affect anything unless
| they want to specifically axe some project? It's just
| lubrication for the machine. 3% is less than nothing compared
| to the bloat in any bigco and let me tell you Microsoft's
| reputation is not the leanest of the bunch.
| jayd16 wrote:
| They're not uniform across every team and project. Certain
| projects can be hit very hard while others are not. Outside
| looking in, all we can really do is speculate.
| tgma wrote:
| Sure we can speculate that 3% is not news. Again, it's a
| one way conclusion: I concede if they want to axe a project
| deliberately, that could show up in the layoff, but
| projects won't incidentally get impacted because of a 3%.
| The causal relationship would be the opposite.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It's really hard to cut actual bloat when running layoffs,
| because the more you work the less time you have to do
| politics and save your ass, so the less productive type of
| people tend to be pretty resilient to layoffs.
| tgma wrote:
| Have you worked at any of these large companies? It's
| really easy actually (practically, not emotionally). It's
| usually very obvious and there's consensus who the bottom
| 10% are. Politics would affect promotions much more than
| layoff.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > It's usually very obvious and there's consensus who the
| bottom 10% are.
|
| Sigh, and company keep them for sentimental reasons I
| guess...
| tgma wrote:
| You're being sarcastic but it is for sentimental reasons
| (for the immediate manager and team who doesn't want to
| make the hard choices and do the work) as well as the
| empire building reasons (managers' universal dick
| measuring contest is org size [1]).
|
| [1]: the real debate is not "who's my lowest performer"
| for each manager. It is about why I should cut rather
| than my sibling manager. If you force everyone to cut one
| person they all know who it will be.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _It's usually very obvious and there's consensus who
| the bottom 10% are_
|
| But the latest layoffs were not performance based. Are
| you just confidently commenting without knowing about the
| event being discussed?
| tgma wrote:
| You believe what you want to believe. That's the lie of
| the century. Every single layoff is performance based to
| some degree. Sure you want to consolidate a couple orgs
| or shut down a project or an office and you lump that
| together with your performance based stuff.
|
| (Also I was responding to a more generic comment saying
| doing layoff is bad and makes org more political.)
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Didn't Microsoft use to have annual 10% layoffs? Just culling
| the lowest performers every year.
| int_19h wrote:
| If you mean stack ranking, the hard 20/70/10 bucketing was
| in force >15 years ago, but even then it didn't mean that
| those 10% automatically get fired.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings
| year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs.
|
| Decisions, preparations and execution to open source such
| projects in big corporations to not happen within a week, two
| or month.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| you could probably say the same about layoffs
| gjvc wrote:
| microsoft open sourcing a lot of things lately
| behnamoh wrote:
| I wonder if companies open-source stuff mainly as part of a
| bigger strategy which primarily benefits them. could it be a
| way to access to a pool of free, contributing talent?
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| I mean yeah, the money and growth these days is pulling
| people into choose their cloud/services platforms
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Why was this flagged? This isn't even a secret, a lot of
| SaaS companies will open source parts of their offerings to
| increase adoption, making the money back when larger orgs
| now want to use it, and are willing to pay for enterprise
| support plans to get the service straight from the horse's
| mouth.
|
| I think it's a fair exchange too, even as an individual I
| pay for plenty of smaller open-source SaaS services--even
| if they're more expensive than proprietary competitors--for
| the very reason that I could always selfhost it without
| interruption if SHTF and the provider goes under.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| why would companies not do things that benefit them? and if
| it's meant pessimistically, let me take you back to a much
| worse time when Microsoft didn't open source anything
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| You mean like StarOffice being open sourced as OpenOffice to
| attempt to undermine Microsoft Office revenue a couple of
| decades ago? To quote Bugs Bunny, " _Myeah, could be..._ "
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Would really be curious to hear the reason why, from an
| internal perspective.
|
| I've seen a number of theories online that boil down to young
| tech enthusiasts in the 2000's/early-2010's getting hands-on
| experience with open source projects and ecosystems since
| they're more accessible than enterprise tech that's typically
| gated behind paywalls, then translating into what they use when
| they enter the working world (where some naturally end up at
| M$).
|
| This somewhat seems to track, as longtime M$ employees from the
| Ballmer-era still often hold stigmas against open source
| projects (Dave's garage, and similar), but it seems the current
| iteration of employees hold much more favorable views.
|
| But who knows, perhaps it's all one long-winded goal from M$ of
| embracing, extending, and ultimately extinguishing.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >Would really be curious to hear the reason why,
|
| My guess...
|
| The same reason Rome didn't fall. It simply turned into the
| Church.
|
| MS isn't battling software mfgs because they have the lock on
| hardware direction and operating systems so strongly that
| they can direct without having to hold the territory
| themselves.
| Grimeton wrote:
| - becomes open source under MS control
|
| - three years later it's left in the hands of the powerful
| community that was built around it with MS help
|
| - MS doesn't have to provide support and it's not their
| problem anymore
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Can I use a vanilla kernel with it yet?
| risho wrote:
| What does the native wsl kernel not offer that you need?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| A version that tracks the underlying distro better, or even
| closer to mainline. Current WSL2 kernel is 6.6, kernel is
| 6.12 or 6.15. Debian Trixie will be 6.12.
| azatom wrote:
| sleep?
|
| strace shows that the sleep program uses clock_nanosleep,
| which is theoretically "passive." However, if the host
| suspends and then wakes up after the sleep period should have
| ended, it continues as if it were "active."
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Their kernel modifications and patches are public, and some of
| them have been upstreamed long ago. You'll need to compile your
| own to get the benefit, but I don't see why you wouldn't be
| able to use your kernel of choice.
|
| Of course, if you want the native integration WSL offers,
| you'll need to upgrade the Linux driver/daemon side to support
| whatever kernel you prefer to run if it's not supported
| already. Microsoft only supports a few specific kernels, but
| the code is out there for the Linux side so you can port the
| code to any OS, really.
|
| With some work, this could even open up possibilities like
| running *BSD as a WSL backend.
| rfoo wrote:
| I think you always can. In the past you may lose some features
| / have some bugs. For recent kernel versions (>= 6.6) the only
| patches WSL kernels have is dxgkrnl + some hacky fixes for
| clock sync. Others are all in upstream already. So you'll just
| lose WSLg / CUDA passthrough and nothing else now.
|
| Of course, there might be some regressions. They are usually
| only fixed (upstream) after WSL kernel gets upgraded and it
| starts to repro in WSL.
| elif wrote:
| Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die
| on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy
| it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously.
| It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker
| wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network
| mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight
| to use, out of the box, on a desktop or laptop, with no
| configuration required.
|
| Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux
| versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and
| another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I
| update my OS?"
| hobs wrote:
| And yet when I reboot my computer windows has shown me an
| entirely new place I can see ads - this week it was my lock
| screen.
|
| So I left - I am willing to do more work to be spied on less,
| to be used as a product less, and to fight with my computer
| about who owns it less.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah this is what pisses me off the most about windows.
| Telemetry that can't be turned off normally. Ads everywhere.
| Microsoft deciding when I must restart for updates. Microsoft
| trying to manage my behaviour telling me to try new features.
| Screw that. My computer is my own and must do what I choose.
|
| This feature thing is really one of their strategies. At work
| they send us "adoption managers" that run reports to check
| whether people use feature xyz enough and set up stupid comms
| campaigns to push them to do so.
|
| I really hate that. I decide how I use my computer. Not a
| vendor.
| malux85 wrote:
| > and to fight with my computer about who owns it less.
|
| This is a great way of saying it and expresses the uneasy
| feeling windows has given me recently. I use Linux machines
| but I have 1 windows machine in my home as a media PC; and
| for the last several years windows has made me feel like I
| don't own that computer but I'm just lucky to be along for
| the ride. Ramming ads on the task bar and start menu, forcing
| updates on me, forcing me to make a Microsoft account before
| I can login (or just having a dark UI pattern so I can't
| figure out how to avoid it, for the pedantic).
|
| With Linux I feel like the machine is a turing complete
| wonderbox of assistance and possibility, with windows it
| feels like Microsoft have forced their way into my home and
| are obnoxiously telling me they know best, while
| condescendingly telling me I'm lucky to be here at all. It's
| a very different feeling.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Yeah, "Weather and More" is such a joke. I like the idea of
| Weather on my lock screen in theory, and I sometimes miss
| Windows 8's great support for Lock Screen live data, but I
| have huge problems with almost everything else in the "and
| More" (news, no thanks, ads, definitely no thanks, tips,
| maybe not). Thankfully it is still really easy to turn off
| "Weather and More", but I wish they'd give us a "Weather and
| Nothing Else". (Same reason one of the first things I do is
| disable the "Widgets" display on the taskbar in Windows 11.
| Weather is great, everything else I don't want and/or
| actively hate.)
| trey-jones wrote:
| Well, I'd still rather just use linux, but I take your meaning.
| Theodores wrote:
| Me too. Particularly after having to do Docker things a few
| years ago, destroying my productivity due to file system
| speed.
|
| However, for those of us that went Linux many years ago, and
| like our free open source, in 2025, is it better to go back
| to the dark side, to run Windows and have things like a LAMP
| stack and terminals run with WSL?
|
| I don't play games or run Adobe products, I use Google Docs
| and I don't need lots of different Linux kernels. Hence, is
| it better to run Linux in Windows now? Genuinely asking.
| trey-jones wrote:
| As someone who occasionally does use WSL, I definitely
| think it's not better no. But I'm still biased, because I
| know a lot more about using linux than I do about using
| windows, and WSL is still windows.
| CoolCold wrote:
| for me,
|
| > is it better to run Linux in Windows now? Genuinely
| asking.
|
| definitely is. Servicing takes ~ 1 minute per month to
| click on "yeah, let's apply those updates and reboot".
| Peace of mind with no worrying on external hardware won't
| work or monitor will have issues or laptop won't sleep or
| during the call battery will discharge faster due to lack
| of hardware acceleration or noise cancellation not working
| or ...
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| wsl2 is linux
| johnisgood wrote:
| I would rather use Linux, outside of VM.
| tgma wrote:
| While I mostly agree with this sentiment, sidestepping
| the power management and sleep issues as well as better
| driver support and touchpad handling on some laptops
| makes it quite a bit better.
| preisschild wrote:
| *on bare metal
|
| not on a shitty wrapper running on an ad-platform.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| It's a... VM? Like the Linux VMs running on Linux computers in
| the cloud?
|
| Sorry but not sorry, it's not easier to run than on linux. It
| requires the Windows store to work, and to use Hyper-V (which
| breaks VMware workstation, among other things).
|
| It's in a better package, to be sure, but it's not "easier to
| run multiple OS on the same computer". It's easier to _use_
| multiple OSes (no SSH, GUI forwarding, etc), as long as all
| those OSes are Linux flavors supported by WSL.
|
| Want FreeBSD or Windows? Nope!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Does it really need the store? I thought you could just go
| "wsl install" on the console.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| You're likely right, I haven't used it in ages. Though I
| recall that at one point you had to get distributions from
| the Store, but it may have been that long ago that it was
| still being called "Bash for Windows".
| Firehawke wrote:
| As of 24H2, you can just "wsl install" from the
| commandline and it'll do all necessary setup to get you
| up and running, including installation of Hyper-V
| components if needed.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The files, including and especially the distro files, `wsl
| install` installs still originate from the Store's CDN, so
| the truly paranoid that distrust the Store (including some
| corporate environments) and just entirely block Store CDN
| access at the DNS and/or firewall level still break WSL
| installs.
| kcb wrote:
| There's a --web-download argument which helped with
| issues when I had limited access to the store.
| goosedragons wrote:
| You don't need the store.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Want FreeBSD or Windows? Nope!
|
| Well, it _is_ windows subsystem for Linux :) not windows
| subsystem for windows or FreeBSD for that matter :)
|
| Ps I wonder if you can make your own image? After all its
| really just Hyper-V with some config candy.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Haha yes, I was being cheeky :)
|
| I'm pretty sure that with the opensourcing, we'll see
| freebsd or more exotic systems popping up quite quickly.
| Heck, macOS would be fun!
| chupasaurus wrote:
| > Heck, macOS would be fun!
|
| Especially in licensing! /sarcasm
| tuetuopay wrote:
| That would make it even funnier in my book!
| Firehawke wrote:
| It's a bit more than just some candy, there's substantial
| glue on both the Linux/Windows sides to get Plan9, WSLG,
| and the other components to work.
|
| That said, the kernel they distribute is open source and
| you're not limited to just the distros they're working with
| directly. There are a number of third party (e.g. there's
| no Arch from Arch or Microsoft, but there's a completely
| compatible third party package that gives you Arch in WSL2)
| Foxboron wrote:
| >e.g. there's no Arch from Arch or Microsoft, but there's
| a completely compatible third party package that gives
| you Arch in WSL2
|
| No longer true since last month.
|
| https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-dev-
| public@li...
| Firehawke wrote:
| I'm shocked. They were adamant it wasn't going to happen
| for a long long time.
| Foxboron wrote:
| The main complaint was the market place TOS that gave
| Microsoft a free-pass on any trademarked assets. The new
| WSL2 installation way avoids all of this.
|
| Along with the glibc hacks needed by WSL1.
|
| (I was part of the discussion and also very adamant about
| this not happening)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Well, WSL is Linux. It's really just a VM of it (since WSL2,
| WSL1 was actually running on the windows kernel which was
| pretty cool).
|
| The big drawback to WSL to me is the slow filesystem access
| because NTFS sucks. And having to deal with Windows in the
| first place.
|
| Ps I wouldn't worry about your karma. It's just a number :P
| xPaw wrote:
| Slow IO is why I still use wsl1.
| ohashi wrote:
| I liked the networking in WSL1 more too
| brewmarche wrote:
| Corporate networking is why I still use WSL1 (I didn't
| spend enough time to check why it doesn't with WSL2,
| zScaler could be the culprit maybe).
|
| However it's not perfect, for example I hit this bug when
| trying to run node a few days ago https://github.com/micr
| osoft/WSL/issues/8219#issuecomment-10... and I don't
| think they're fixing bugs in WSL1 anymore
| psyclobe wrote:
| This. WSL was SO much more interesting in v1 times.
| deetz wrote:
| still use WSL1 also because VMWare runs so dreadfully slow
| with any kind of Hyper-V enabled - if so, VMWare must also
| use it, so you get a Type-2 running under a Type-1 the lag is
| untennable lag and performance.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I use it, I am required to use Windows, and it's a huge
| improvement over doing Data Science on native Windows, but
| the terrible filesystem access ruins what otherwise would be
| a seamless experience.
|
| It's fine for running small models but when you get to large
| training sets that don't fit in RAM it becomes miserable.
|
| There is a line where the convenience of training or
| developing locally gives way to a larger on demand cloud VM,
| but on WSL the line is much closer.
| JackSlateur wrote:
| Is it really a NTFS issue ?
|
| The culprit would be the plan9 bits (think of smb or nfs but
| .. wilder ? why are they using 9P again ?)
| garblegarble wrote:
| I'm guessing they use plan9 because distros already ship
| support for it, and it's super simple compared to NFS? It
| doesn't seem like CIFS/NFS would be any faster, and they
| introduce a lot more complexity.
| arghwhat wrote:
| NTFS is not the problem.
|
| The problem is Windows IO filters and whatnot, Microsoft
| Defender trying to lazily intercept every file operation, and
| if you're crossing between windows and Linux land, possibly
| 9pfs network shares.
|
| WSL2's own disk is just a VM image and fairly fast - you're
| just accessing a single file with some special optimizations.
| Usually far, far more responsive than anything done by
| windows itself. Don't do your work in your network-shared
| windows home folder.
| cma wrote:
| >The problem is Windows IO filters
|
| Not the biggest issue of them, 'find' and 'git status' on
| WSL2 in a big project is still >100 times slower on windows
| dev drive which avoids those filters than it is with WSL 1
| on dev drive.
|
| WSL 1 on regular ntfs with defender disabled is about 4x
| slower than WSL1 on dev drive, so that stuff does cause
| some of it, but WSL2 feels hopelessly slow. And wsl 2 can't
| share memory as well or take as much advantage of the
| filesystem cache (doubling it if you use the windows drive
| in both places I think, unless the network drive
| representation of it doesn't get cached on the WSL2 drive.
| arghwhat wrote:
| WSL2, in my testing, is orders of magnitude faster at
| file heavy operations than anything outside WSL, dev
| drive or not. We have an R&D department that's using WSL2
| and jumping through hurdles of forwarding hardware
| because it's night and day compared to trying under
| windows on the same machine. It provided other benefits
| too, but the sheer performance was the main selling
| point.
|
| WSL2 does not take less advantage of filesystem caches.
| Linux's block cache is perfectly capable. HyperV is a
| semi-serious hypervisor, so it should be using a direct
| I/O abstraction for writing to the disk image. Memory is
| also balloning, and can dynamically grow and shrink
| depending on memory pressure.
|
| Linux VM's is something Microsoft has poured a lot of
| money into optimizing as that's what the vast majority of
| Azure is. Cramming more out of a single machine, and
| therefore more things into a single machine, directly
| correlates with profits, so that's a heavy investment.
|
| I wonder why you're seeing different results. I have no
| experience with WSL1, and looking into a proprietary
| legacy solution with known issues and limited features
| would be a purely academic exercise that I'm not sure is
| worth it.
|
| (I personally don't use Windows, but I work with
| departments whose parent companies enforce it on their
| networks,
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Linux's block cache is perfectly capable. HyperV is a
| semi-serious hypervisor, so it should be using a direct
| I/O abstraction for writing to the disk image.
|
| Files on the WSL2 disk image work great. They're
| complaining about accessing files that aren't on the disk
| image, where everything is relayed over a 9P network
| filesystem and not a block device. That's the part that
| gets really slow in WSL2, much slower than WSL1's nearly-
| native access.
|
| > Memory is also balloning, and can dynamically grow and
| shrink depending on memory pressure.
|
| In my experience this works pretty badly.
|
| > a proprietary legacy solution with known issues and
| limited features
|
| Well at least at the launch of WSL2 they said WSL1 wasn't
| legacy, I'm not sure if that has changed.
|
| But either way you're using a highly proprietary system,
| and both WSL1 and WSL2 have significant known issues and
| limited features, neither one clearly better than the
| other.
| jmmv wrote:
| > NTFS sucks
|
| Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbKGw8MQ0i8 please.
| garblegarble wrote:
| While I can see the subtle distinction you're trying to
| draw people's attention to (NTFS is not the problem,
| filesystem operations generally on Windows are the problem)
| I have to say it seems like a distinction without a
| difference in real terms. They made a range of changes that
| seem to produce more complicated code everywhere because
| the overhead of various filesystem tasks are substantially
| higher on this OS vs every other OS.
|
| But in the end they had to get the OS vendor to bless their
| _process name_ anyway, just so the OS would stop doing
| things that tank the performance for everybody else doing
| something similar but who haven 't opened a direct line up
| with the OS vendor and got their process name on a list.
|
| This seems like a pain point for the vendor to fix, rather
| than everybody shipping software to their OS
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >The big drawback to WSL to me is the slow filesystem access
| because NTFS sucks
|
| Thats if you are going from VM/host. If you use the allocated
| space for VM, its pretty fast.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Where are you experiencing filesystem slowness? I've been
| using WSL in some advanced configurations (building Win32
| apps by cross-compiling from Linux CLANG and dropping the
| .exe into a Windows folder, copying large files from
| Linux->Windows and vice versa, automating Linux with .BAT
| files, etc.) and I haven't seen this slowness at all.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| >WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to
| run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously
|
| Is VMWare more powerful than Linux?
| jgd9dsv wrote:
| I love WSL, but you can do these things with Distrobox.
| risho wrote:
| I don't understand. Docker/podman/distrobox/lxc all allow you
| to do the exact same thing without the virtual machine
| overhead. I think the real win of WSL is that its a best of all
| worlds. You get to use Windows with access to every game ever
| made plus all of the proprietary apps everyone needs to use,
| with all of the upside of having a full and complete linux
| command line experience.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| You get all of Windows telemetry, vulnerabilities and
| backdoors, the always fun game of spot the new Advertising
| opportunity, AI "copilot" spyware I mean feature, updates
| that reset your machine at will, a terrible UAC model that
| encourages "just click OK already!", and dependence on a
| company that has gone out of their way to prove how much of
| an unstoppable behemoth they are; and best of all you get to
| pay for the privileges above.
|
| I know... every year is the year of the Linux desktop... but
| seriously the AI spyware included was enough to get me gone
| for good.
| encom wrote:
| It's hard to pick the Windows feature I hate the most, but
| floating around at the top is Defender. It can't be
| disabled, at least not easily, and it demolishes IO
| performance. And Windows update takes the computer hostage,
| and takes ages to do anything giving no feedback in the
| process, meanwhile APT can update to a new major version in
| like 5-10 minutes.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yes, you get Windows telemetry which enabled fixing bugs
| without a bug report, you get minimal ads in the start menu
| (if you're playing "spot the new advertising opportunity" I
| found it. It's in the start menu. You can stop playing
| now), AI "copilot" which isn't spyware just because you
| think it is, updates that ASK you nicely multiple times to
| update (I don't want to be ableist, if you suffer from a
| Christopher Nolan Memento-like disability where you don't
| remember the warnings, you might think it's "resetting at
| will", but I assure you, it isn't), a great UAC model
| that's a lot better than "just type your root password into
| this terminal already, and just hope the binary wasn't
| hijacked in some way to keylog you, because unlike UAC,
| there is no visual evidence that you're not getting
| hacked", and dependence on a company that SV_BubbleTime
| thinks "has gone out of their way to prove how much of an
| unstoppable behemoth they are" with no evidence or clarity
| so they must just be making FUD, and best of all the OS
| costs so little you can pay it in 8 hours of working as a
| software developer.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Stockholm's my man.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Sunk cost, my man.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Privacy aside, Windows is too slow, nagging, and
| plastered with ads.
| okanat wrote:
| You can setup local and limited user accounts under
| Windows. Many applications including every development tool
| out there doesn't need any admin permissions.
|
| Spyware and adware is a government policy / regulation
| problem. Thanks to GDPR and DMA, using Windows in EU is
| significantly better experience (try setting a Windows
| desktop with an EU image). You can remove almost all of the
| apps including Edge and Copilot. There are no ads in the
| UI. Neither in Explorer nor in Start menu.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Because it's easier to set up a local dev environment in WSL
| than in any of those.
| aeroevan wrote:
| How is it easier to setup a linux dev environment in WSL
| than in https://containertoolbx.org/ or
| https://distrobox.it/ or just in Linux directly?
| frollogaston wrote:
| I meant if you're using Windows to begin with
| dboreham wrote:
| _with_ the virtual machine overhead.
| signal11 wrote:
| qemu on Linux solves a bunch of these problems as well. But
| yeah, UX-wise WSL is pretty good at solving the problem of
| "provide Windows devs a POSIX environment".
| charcircuit wrote:
| Qemu is nothing like wsl UX wise. The UX on windows is double
| click gimp and then a window for gimp opens. For qemu it
| opens a new window for the wm, has awkward input focus
| interactions, you probably have to log in to the vm, and it
| can not be easily setup to automatically open the app you
| want.
| righthand wrote:
| > WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to
| run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously.
|
| This is why you pay karma tax. This statement is so clearly
| representative of a falsity.
|
| My linux can run multiple linuxes as well without VM overhead.
| Something Windows can't do. Furthermore WINE allows me to forgo
| running any vm to run windows applications.
|
| I developed on WSL for 3 years and consistently the biggest
| issue was the lack of ability to use tooling across the shared
| OSes.
|
| Your karma depleting statements are biased, unfounded, and it
| shows as you do not really provide counter evidence. That's why
| you lose karma.
| dvtkrlbs wrote:
| Except Wine cant cover all of Windows (partly due to fault of
| Windows). I can't run UWP apps for example. Windows is not a
| good operating system but if you need it. WSL creates way
| more intuitive working environment for you. So even if you
| can run multiple Linux OSes in Linux you can't run Windows as
| easily you can do linux on Windows. So OPs statement is not
| incorrect.
| randunel wrote:
| There are virtual machines for Linux with seamless window
| integration, so upgrading to Linux is still recommended
| imo.
|
| OP's statement remains incorrect, because their assumption
| is that the WSL experience can't be reproduced in Linux.
| encom wrote:
| I've never seen a good UWP app. My biggest issue with Wine
| is that it can't run anything that needs a driver. That
| means any hardware with garbage Windows-only control
| software (hello Roboteq) needs a proper VM.
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| I agree. Back in the day (10+ years ago), I used to argue with
| people about why I ran VMs instead of just partitioning the
| disk and booting up the OS I needed.
|
| XAMPP did not work out of the box with me on Windows (skill
| issue on my part, I know), so my preferred setup was to run a
| Ubuntu Server VM (LAMP stack) and then develop whatever I had
| on a Windows IDE.
|
| I could have done that under full Linux, I just _did not want
| that._ Then Vagrant came into existence, which I 'd say was for
| my use case (but never came around to adopt it).
|
| I'm really happy with my WSL2 setup. I stopped using VMware
| Workstation when WSL2 broke it, but WSL2 is exactly what I
| needed to match my use case.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| > XAMPP did not work out of the box with me on Windows (skill
| issue on my part, I know), so my preferred setup was to run a
| Ubuntu Server VM (LAMP stack) and then develop whatever I had
| on a Windows IDE.
|
| Why wouldn't you have just spent 5 minutes to get XAMPP
| working?
| rkagerer wrote:
| _I stopped using VMware Workstation when WSL2 broke it_
|
| Is it still broken?
| petronio wrote:
| Nope, VMWare added the capability to work as a sort of
| nested hypervisor atop Hyper-V (which WSL2 and newer
| Windows security features depend on).
|
| That being said, there is a performance impact.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| My acid test for WSL2 was to install the Linux version of
| Google Chrome in it, and then play Youtube videos fullscreen
| with that. It worked. Somehow WSL1 was the more impressive hack
| but how can you argue with what works? WSL2 works fine.
|
| Also 1980s style X11 widgets on the Windows desktop in their
| own windows? Cool.
| smw wrote:
| You get much nicer window decorations if you use the wayland
| support instead of X11.
| hulitu wrote:
| > You get much nicer window decorations if you use the
| wayland support instead of X11.
|
| Wayland supports window managers ?
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I have to say too, though, once you get the hang of the way
| an EFI system boots, it's really good for dual boot. I let
| the Linux installer mount the undersized existing one as
| /boot/orig_efi and made a new, bigger EFI system partition.
| Not only was the UEFI on that particular laptop fine with it,
| scanning both EFI system partitions for bootable stuff, but
| also, grub2 installed in the new one automatically included
| the Windows boot in the old one as a boot option.
|
| Cool because nothing about how Windows boots is intercepted;
| you can just nuke the new partitions (or overwrite them with
| a new Linux installation). I still prefer a native Linux boot
| with "just in case" Windows option to WSL.
| efdee wrote:
| But not having to dual boot and just get both worlds at the
| same time definitely beats having to dual boot.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I don't think people are using WSL to avoid problems with
| dual booting. Dual-booting has become about as simple as it
| can be, thanks to UEFI, but it's still not exactly fun to
| have to close all of your open apps to switch to another OS
| to run just one app.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Step it up a notch and see if Netflix works w/ its DRM.
| ezekg wrote:
| WSL gave me the push to switch from macOS to Windows. And I
| couldn't be happier, tbh. There was a lot lacking in my
| Hackintosh/Windows dual boot setup.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I will also die on this hill - NixOS on WSL + Windows +
| komorebi[1] for tiling window management is peak productivity
| for me.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi
| randunel wrote:
| Why not a Linux distro with i3wm, instead? What could
| possibly hold you back from upgrading?
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I've yet to find anything comparable feature-wise on Linux
| - and they all come with the huge downside of having to
| roll your own cohesive settings widget ecosystem for basic
| everyday things like WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. I run
| Cosmic Epoch on my old Macbook which is better, but again,
| feature-wise, it's just not comparable for serious work.
| randunel wrote:
| Thanks for your reply, but as a Linux user for over 20
| years, all I take away from your post is that you haven't
| really tried, probably because the variety of distros
| vastly exceeds the two classic options of mac vs windows.
|
| I understand the "roll your own" argument very well. In
| my time, I've experienced quite the variety of configs
| and dotfiles, but I'm not young anymore so I've settled
| with using Regolith which is an opinionated set of tools,
| including my favourite i3wm, on top of Ubuntu, and I
| simply use defaults for the most things.
|
| Anyway, it's much easier to use Linux as a daily driver
| than it's ever been. The choice of distro is simply which
| package manager to use, and everything else just works,
| as long as it's in the package manager's inventory.
|
| I haven't compiled my own computer's kernel in 6 years
| (but I still cross compile for rpi and other IoT), and I
| haven't used my dotfiles in 3 years, just defaults.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| > Thanks for your reply, but as a Linux user for over 20
| years, all I take away from your post is that you haven't
| really tried, probably because the variety of distros
| vastly exceeds the two classic options of mac vs windows.
|
| A very big and very incorrect assumption. This reads like
| you asked the initial question without any actual
| curiosity behind it.
| randunel wrote:
| Thank you for the details!
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > having to roll your own cohesive settings widget
| ecosystem
|
| What gets you that on windows? The builtin stuff is far
| from cohesive.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I find it to be incredibly janky. Pretty much every every time
| my computer sleeps (so every morning, at least) I have to
| restart it because somehow the VM-host networking gets screwed
| up and VS code connections into the VM stop working. You also
| can't just put things in your Windows User directory because
| the filesystem driver is so slow that git commands will take
| multiple seconds, so now you have two home directories to keep
| track of. There were also some extremely arcane things I had to
| fix when setting it up involving host DNS and VPN adapter
| priority not getting propagated into the VM so networking was
| completely broken. IIRC time would also not match the host
| after a sleep and get extremely far out of sync, though I
| haven't run into that for a while since now I have to reboot
| Windows constantly anyway.
|
| I don't have a need to run multiple OSes though. All of my
| tools are Linux based, and in companies that don't let people
| run Linux, the actual tools of the trade are almost all in a
| Linux VM because it's the only reasonable way to use them, and
| everything else is cross-platform. The outer OS just creates
| needless issues so that you now need to be a power user with
| _two_ operating systems and their weird interactions.
| arcastroe wrote:
| Thats odd. I have none of these problems. Sleep doesnt
| interrupt the VM. And I regularly use the git CLI through WSL
| on projects living within windows user directories. Both work
| fine.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > somehow the VM-host networking gets screwed up
|
| > extremely arcane things I had to fix when setting it up
| involving host DNS and VPN adapter priority not getting
| propagated into the VM so networking was completely broken
|
| Are you sure you set up the VPN properly? Messing around with
| Linux configs is a good way to end up with "somehow" bugs
| like that.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I don't know how it's set up. That's kind of my point
| though. I have to now be an expert in Linux _and_ Windows
| to debug this stuff, which is a waste of my time as someone
| who 's job it is to develop (server, i.e. Linux) software.
| I had exactly zero issues when I was using Fedora. At one
| point my company made all of the Linux users move off (we
| do now have an IT-supported Linux image, but I haven't
| found the time to re-set up my laptop and don't fully trust
| that it will work without a bunch of trouble/IT back-and-
| forth because they also made Windows users start using
| passkeys), and since then I've seen way more issues with
| Windows than Linux (e.g. one day my start menu just stopped
| reacting to me clicking on programs), in addition to things
| like ads in the lock screen and popups for some XBox pass
| thing that I had to turn off, which is just insane in a
| "professional" OS. A lot of days I end up having to hold
| down the power button to reboot because it just locks up
| entirely.
|
| OSX was a bit janky with docker filesystem slowness,
| homebrew being the generally recommended package manager
| despite being awful (why do I sometimes tap a cask and
| sometimes pour a bottle? Don't tell me; I don't care. Just
| make it be "install". Also, don't take "install" as a cue
| to go update all of my other programs with incompatible
| versions without asking), annoying 1+ second animations
| that you can't turn off that make it so the only reasonable
| way to use your computer is to never maximize a window
| (with no tiling support of course), and completely broken
| external monitor support (text is completely illegible
| IIRC), but Windows takes jank to another level.
|
| By contrast, I never encounter the issues people complain
| about on Linux. Bluetooth works fine. Wifi works fine.
| nVidia GPUs and games work fine. Containers are easy to use
| because they're natively part of the OS. I prefer Linux
| exactly because I stopped enjoying "tinkering" with my
| computer like 10 years ago, and I want it to just quietly
| work without drawing attention to itself (and because
| Windows 8 and the flat themes that followed were hideous
| and I was never going to downgrade to that from Windows 7).
| jahy-notes wrote:
| Previously, I had dual boot with ubuntu and windows. Sometime
| last year I just removed ubuntu, and haven't regretted it.
|
| wsl works good enough.
| jchw wrote:
| "More powerful than Linux" is silly. It's a VM. The most useful
| thing is that it does a bunch of convenience features for you.
| I am not suggesting that it is not extremely convenient, but
| it's not somehow more powerful than just using Linux.
|
| You know what's even more convenient than a VM? Not needing a
| VM and still having the exact same functionality. And you don't
| need a bunch of janky wrapper scripts, there's more than one
| tool that gives you essentially the same thing; I have used
| both Distrobox and toolbx to quickly drop into a Ubuntu or
| Fedora shell. It's pretty handy on NixOS if I want to test
| building some software in a more typical Linux environment. As
| a bonus, you get working hardware acceleration, graphical
| applications work out of the box, there is no I/O tax for going
| over a 9p bridge because there is no 9p bridge, and there is no
| weird memory balloon issues to deal with because there is no VM
| and there is no guest kernel.
|
| I get that WSL is revolutionary for Windows users, but I'm
| sorry, the reason why there's no WSL is because on Linux we
| don't need to use VMs to use Linux. It's that simple...
| sweeter wrote:
| And if they think that this version of Linux "isn't janky"
| but regular Linux is, than idk what to say.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| With WSL you can use "Linux the good parts" (command line
| tools, efficient-enough paradigms for fork() servers) and
| completely avoid X Windows, the Wayland death spiral, 100
| revisions of Gnome and KDE that not so much reinvent the
| wheel but instead show us why the wheel is not square or
| triangular...
| xnickb wrote:
| After having used i3 and Sway, Windows is surprisingly
| bad at handling windows for an OS called Windows.
|
| It requires a bit of work to setup to your liking of
| course, but hey, at least you have an option to set it up
| to your liking
| williamscales wrote:
| Agreed. I used tiling WMs for a long while (ion3, XMonad)
| and it was such a productivity boost.
|
| Then I was forced to use a Mac for work, so I was using a
| floating WM again. On my personal machine, ion3 went away
| and I never fully got around to migrate to i3.
|
| By the time I got enough free time to really work on my
| personal setup, it had accumulated two huge monitors and
| was a different machine. I found I was pretty happy just
| scattering windows around everywhere. Especially with a
| trackball's cursor throw. This was pretty surprising to
| me at first.
|
| Anyway this is just my little personal anecdote. If I go
| back to a Linux install I'll definitely have to check out
| i3 again. Thanks for reminding me :)
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Compiling and testing cross-platform software for Linux
| lately (Ubuntu and similar)... You can't even launch an
| application or script without CLI. Bad UX, IMO. For these
| decisions, There are always _reasons_ , a justification,
| something about security. I don't buy it.
| folkrav wrote:
| > You can't even launch an application or script without
| CLI.
|
| Care to elaborate? I'm not sure I understand what you're
| saying here.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I compile my program using WSL, or Linux native. It won't
| launch; not an executable. So, into the CLI: chmod +x.
| Ok. It's a compiled binary program, so semantically I
| don't see the purpose of this. Probably another use case
| bleeding into this. (I think there's a GUI way too).
| Still can't double click it. Nothing to launch from the
| right-click menu. After doing some research, it appears
| you used to be able to do it (Ubuntu/Gnome[?]), but it
| was removed at some point. Can launch from CLI.
|
| I make a .desktop file and shell script to move it to the
| right place. Double click the shell file. It opens a text
| editor. Search the right click menu; still no way. To the
| CLI we go; chmod +x, and launch if from the CLI. Then
| after adding the Desktop icon, I can launch it.
|
| On windows, you just double click the identified-through-
| file-extension executable file. This, like most things in
| Linux, implies the UX is designed for workflows I don't
| use as a PC user. Likely servers?
| const_cast wrote:
| Yeah the typical way programs are run is by using a
| .desktop file that's installed. The reason nobody cares
| is because running random executable that have a GUI is a
| pretty rare use case for Linux desktops. We don't have
| wizards or .msi installers, we just install using the
| package manager. And then it shows up where it needs to.
|
| If you're on KDE, you can right-click the start menu and
| add the application. Also, right-click menu _should_ give
| you a run option.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| >the Wayland death spiral
|
| That sounds like Wayland getting worse, but it's actually
| been slowly improving and it's pretty good now. Only took
| a decade+ to get there.
| pelorat wrote:
| Mir was good from year one.
| const_cast wrote:
| It's all opinion of course, but IMO Windows is the most
| clumsy and unintuitive desktop experience out there.
| We're all just used to the jank upon jank that we think
| it's intuitive.
|
| KDE is much more cohesive, stable, and has significantly
| more features.
| tyingq wrote:
| I know you're saying you don't have to use it, but for
| any that didn't know, WSL2 does ship with it's own
| Wayland. And it does have some weird bugs.
| adamc wrote:
| It's handy if you have other services that are Windows-based,
| though. And, being a VM, it's fairly convenient to have
| multiple versions and to back up.
| 0x457 wrote:
| > "More powerful than Linux" is silly. It's a VM.
|
| I don't think it's silly. Sure, it's a VM, but it's so nice
| that I barely reboot into Linux. You get the best of both
| worlds with WSL.
| xnickb wrote:
| But you still get the worst of the Windows world, which is
| more than many are willing to deal with. I was using
| windows for years as my main gaming OS, but after they
| announced W11 being the only way forward. Switching to
| Linux on the desktop was like a breath of fresh air. I'll
| leave it at that.
|
| If I were to run an OS on a VM it's gonna be windows, not
| Linux
| lxgr wrote:
| For me, the best part of running Linux as the base OS is
| not having to deal with Windows.
|
| No ridiculous start menu spam; a sane, non-bloated
| operating system (imagine being able to update user space
| libraries without a reboot, due to being able to delete
| files that other processes still have opened!); being able
| to back up my data at the file level without relying on
| weird block-level imaging shenanigans and so much more.
|
| How is inverting the host/guest relationship an improvement
| on that?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I have a theory that 99.9% of preferring Windows or Linux
| comes down to "do ads in the start menu trigger my OCD".
| lxgr wrote:
| It runs much deeper than that for me.
|
| Windows at its core just does not seem like a serious
| operating system to me. Whenever there are two ways to do
| something, its developers seem to have picked the non-
| reasonable one compared to Unix - and doing that for
| decades adds up.
|
| But yes, first impressions undoubtedly matter too.
| iLemming wrote:
| I have used Windows for years, and I loved it. I never
| understood why Linux and Mac users kept bashing on it. I
| just didn't know any better.
|
| These days I'm avoiding booting into Windows unless I
| really have no choice. The ridiculousness of it is simply
| limitless. I would open a folder with a bunch of files in
| it and the Explorer shows me a progress bar for nearly a
| minute. Why? What the heck is it doing? I just want to
| see the list of files, I'm not even doing anything crazy.
| Why the heck not a single other file navigator does that
| -- not in Linux, not on Mac, darn -- even the specialized
| apps built for Windows work fine, but the built-in thing
| just doesn't. What gives? I would close the window and
| re-open the exact same folder, not even three minutes
| later and it shows the progress bar again. "WTF? Can't
| you fucker just cache it? Da fuk you doing?"
|
| Or I would install an app. And seconds after installing
| it I would try to search for it in the Start menu, and
| guess what? Windows instead opens Edge and searches the
| web for it. wat? Why the heck I can't remove that Edge BS
| once and for all? Nope, not really possible. wat?
|
| Or like why can't I ever rebind Cmd+L? I can disable it
| but can't rebind it, there's just no way. Is it trying to
| operate my computer, or 'S' in 'OS' stands for "soul"?
|
| Or for whatever reason it can't even get the time right.
| Every single time I boot into it, my clock time is wrong.
| I have to manually re-sync it. It just doesn't do it,
| even with the location enabled. Stupid ass bitch.
|
| And don't even let me rant about those pesky updates.
|
| I dunno, I just cannot not hate Windows anymore. Even
| when I need to boot in it "for just a few minutes", it
| always ends up taking more time for some absolute
| fiddlesticks made of bullcrap. Screw Windows! Especially
| the 11 one.
| skydhash wrote:
| I loved windows XP and Windows 7. They were a bit brittle
| regarding malware, but I was using a lot of pirated
| software at the times, so that may have been me. Win 8
| was bad UX wise, but 8.1 resolved a lot of the issues.
| But since then, I barely touched windows.
|
| I want a OS, not an entertainment center, meaning I want
| to launch a program, organize my files, and connect to
| other computers. Anything that hinders those is bad. I
| moved from macOS for the same reason, as they are trying
| to make those difficult too.
| iLemming wrote:
| > I want a OS, not an entertainment center
|
| Exactomundo! I'm a software developer, not a florist. I
| don't care about all those animations, transitions,
| dancing emojis, styled sliding notifications, windings
| and dingleberries. If I want to rebind a fucking key I
| should be able to. If I want to replace the entire
| desktop with a tiling manager of my choosing -- that
| should be possible. And definitely, absolutely, in no
| way, should just about any kind of app, especially a web-
| browser, be shoved in my face. "Edge is not that bad",
| they would say. And would be completely missing the whole
| point.
| dsego wrote:
| > Or for whatever reason it can't even get the time
| right. Every single time I boot into it, my clock time is
| wrong.
|
| Dual booting will do that because linux & windows treat
| the system clock differently. From what I recall one of
| them will set it directly to the local time and the other
| always sets it to UTC and then applies the offset.
| iLemming wrote:
| Yeah, well, I use ntfs in Linux. It somehow knows how to
| treat the partitions. Even though it can't fix the issues
| when they arise (which almost never happens) -- there's
| no chkdsk for Linux. So, I just don't understand why
| Windows can't automatically sync the clock (as it
| explicitly set to do it) when it boots? Why does one have
| to get creative to fix the darn clock? If I can't even
| trust the OS to manage the time correctly, what can I
| trust it with, if anything at all?
| cjm42 wrote:
| The most reliable fix is to get Windows to use UTC for
| the hardware clock, which is usually the default on
| Linux. (It's more reliable because it means the hardware
| clock doesn't need to be adjusted when DST begins or
| ends, so there's no need for the OSs to cooperate on
| that.)
|
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_time#UTC_in_Micro
| sof...
| lxgr wrote:
| That flag has been broken for at least several Windows
| versions, unfortunately. A shame, given that that's the
| only sane way of using the RTC in the presence of DST or
| time zone shifts...
|
| That's exactly the type of Windows-ism I'm talking about.
| Two options (use UTC or the local time), and Windows
| chose to pick the nonsensical one.
| elictronic wrote:
| I have the same issue and don't dual boot.
| sssilver wrote:
| I would say in my case it's less about OCD and more
| about, inexplicably, dignity.
| specproc wrote:
| Advertising triggers a lot more than OCD in me outside of
| my start menu. On my machine, where I spend most of my
| waking hours, it was certainly the last straw for me.
|
| But there's also the thing where Microsoft stops
| supporting older machines, creating a massive pile of
| insecure boxes and normie-generated e-waste; and the
| thing where it dials home constantly; and the thing where
| they try and force their browser on you, and the
| expensive and predatory software ecosystem, and the
| insane bloat, and the requiring a Microsoft account just
| to use my own computer. Oh yeah, and I gotta pay for this
| crap?!
|
| I went full Linux back when Windows 11 came out and will
| only use it if a job requires. Utterly disgusting
| software.
| II2II wrote:
| The reason varies by the decade. Microsoft has a tendency
| to fix one thing, then break another.
|
| That said, a distaste for advertising goes beyond OCD.
| Advertisers frequently have questionable ethics, ranging
| from intruding upon people's privacy (in the many senses
| of the word) to manipulating people. It is simply
| something that many of us would rather do without.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Seems sorta not cool toward people with OCD to use their
| condition for rhetorical effect.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > imagine being able to update user space libraries
| without a reboot
|
| That's... a very weird criticism to level at Windows,
| considering that the advice I've seen for Linux is to
| reboot if you update glibc (which is very much a user
| space library).
| lxgr wrote:
| Why? It directly results in almost every Windows update
| requiring a reboot to apply, compared to usually only an
| application restart or at most desktop logout/login on
| Linux.
|
| Having to constantly reboot my computer, or risk missing
| important security patches, was very annoying to me on
| Windows.
|
| I've never _had_ to reboot after updating glibc in years
| of using Linux, as far as I can remember.
| deepsun wrote:
| The only time I need to reboot my Linux Mint is when the
| Linux kernel is updated. I understand why.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| I responded "This is not true" to a sibling comment about
| this same topic, but about "shared libraries", which is
| the opposite problem (multiple programs could load the
| same shared library and try to interact).
|
| This is absolutely not true for Linux kernel updating.
| While you won't be using the new kernel before rebooting,
| there's 0 risk in not rebooting, because there's exactly
| 1 version of the kernel running on the machine -- it's
| loaded into memory when your computer starts.
|
| There's of course rare exceptions, like when a
| dynamically linked library you just installed depends on
| a minimum specific version of the Linux kernel you also
| just installed, but this is extremely rare in Linux land,
| as backwards compatibility of programs with older kernels
| is generally a given. "We do not break userspace"
| doubled112 wrote:
| One problem not rebooting with the kernel is drivers.
| They aren't all built in.
|
| Most distros leave the current running kernel and boot
| into the new one next time.
|
| Some, like Arch, overwrite the kernel on an update, so
| modules can't be loaded. It is a shock the first time you
| plug in a USB drive and nothing happens.
| ori_b wrote:
| You got some moderately bad advice.
|
| Running programs will continue to use the libc version
| that was on disk when they started. They won't even know
| glibc was upgraded. If something is broken before
| rebooting, it'll stay broken after.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| This is not true. Different programs on the same system
| that interoperate and use different versions of the same
| shared library can absolutely cause issues.
|
| For a trivial change to glibc, it won't cause issues. But
| there's a lot of shared libraries and lots of different
| kinds of changes in different kinds of libraries that can
| happen.
|
| I still haven't nailed if it was due to a shared library
| update, but just the other day, after running upgrades I
| was unable to su or sudo / authenticate as a user until
| after rebooting.
| lxgr wrote:
| It does happen, but it's pretty rare compared to Windows
| in my experience, where inconvenience is essentially
| guaranteed.
|
| Firefox on Linux did not really enjoy being updated while
| running, as far as I remember; Chrome was fine with it,
| but only since it does some extra work to bypass the
| problem via its "zygote process": https://chromium.google
| source.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/l...
| 0x457 wrote:
| > For me, the best part of running Linux as the base OS
| is not having to deal with Windows.
|
| This is correct, but let's not pretend that linux is
| perfect. 99% of linux _for me_ is my terminal
| environment. WSL delivers on that _for me_.
|
| I don't see any start menu spam because I rarely use it,
| when I do I type what I'm looking for before my eyes even
| move to look at that start menu.
|
| oh, I can play destiny 2 and other games without
| shenanigans. Also don't need to figure out why Slack
| wants to open links in chromium, but discord in firefox
| (I have to deal with edge asking to be a default browser,
| but IMO it's less annoying).
|
| Oh and multi-monitor with multiple DPI values works out
| of the box without looking up how to handle it in one of
| the frameworks this app uses.
| jchw wrote:
| _Similarly_ powerful would be totally fine. _More_ powerful
| really is silly. Personally I couldn 't make a lot of my
| workflows work very well with WSL2. Some of the stuff I run
| is very memory intensive and the behavior is pretty bad for
| this in WSL2. Their Wayland compositor is also pretty buggy
| and unpolished last I used it, and I was never able to get
| hardware acceleration working right even with the special
| drivers installed, but hopefully they've made some progress
| on that front.
|
| Having Windows and Linux in the same desktop the way that
| WSL2 does obviously means that it does add a lot of value,
| but what you get in the box isn't exactly the same as the
| thing running natively. Rather than a strict superset or
| strict subset, it's a bit more like a Venn diagram of
| strengths.
| palata wrote:
| > You get the best of both worlds with WSL.
|
| You obviously don't. Maybe WSL is _the best compromise_ for
| people who need both Windows and Linux.
|
| But it's ridiculous to think that WSL is better than just
| Linux for people who don't need Windows _at all_. And that
| 's kind of what the author of this thread seems to imply.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Your comment that you can do Linux things on Linux missed the
| point entirely.
|
| Where is the reverse WSL on Linux, where Windows is deeply
| embedded and you have all the Windows features in your hands?
|
| You can use Wine/Crosseover, which is cool, but even now the
| number of software products it supports is tiny. Steam has a
| lot of games.
|
| You can run a virtual machine with Windows on it. That is
| identical to what you can do on Windows with Linux.
|
| WSL2-> is a virtual machine with unique tooling around it
| that makes it easier to use and integrates well with Windows.
| randunel wrote:
| Windows supports Linux because the latter is open source,
| it's a lot easier than the reverse.
|
| Linux, on the other hand, barely supports Windows because
| the latter is closed, and not just closed, windows issues
| component updates which specifically check if they run in
| wine and stop running, being actively hostile to a
| potential Linux host.
|
| The two are not equivalent, nobody in the Linux kernel team
| is actively sabotaging WSL, whereas Microsoft is actively
| sabotaging wine.
| tyushk wrote:
| > whereas Microsoft is actively sabotaging wine
|
| Do you have a link to where I can read more about this?
| My understanding is that Microsoft saw Wine as
| inconsequential to their business, even offloading the
| Mono runtime to them [1] when they dropped support for
| it.
|
| [1] https://www.mono-project.com/
| randunel wrote:
| > Until 2020, Microsoft had not made any public
| statements about Wine. However, the Windows Update online
| service will block updates to Microsoft applications
| running in Wine. On 16 February 2005, Ivan Leo Puoti
| discovered that Microsoft had started checking the
| Windows Registry for the Wine configuration key and would
| block the Windows Update for any component.[125] As Puoti
| noted: "It's also the first time Microsoft acknowledges
| the existence of Wine."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| This. Windows needs to open source its operating system.
| End of story.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Wait long enough and it will happen, the question is just
| "how long". (Microsoft has open-sourced OS and languages
| from the 1980s) Some days it seems like Microsoft is more
| interested in Azure, Copilot and GAME PASS and Windows is
| an afterthought.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I would certainly love it if Microsoft stopped trying to
| sell Windows and just open sourced it. I think Windows is
| a much more pleasant desktop operating system than Linux,
| minus all the ads and mandatory bloat Microsoft has put
| in lately. But if Windows was open source the community
| could just take that out.
|
| I really don't see it happening any time in the next
| decade at least, though. While Windows might not be
| Microsoft's biggest focus any more it's still a huge
| income stream for them. They won't just give that up.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| I doubt it would happen, large projects that aren't open
| source from the onset and are decades old can have
| licensed or patented code, Microsoft would have to verify
| line by line that they can open source it.
| lproven wrote:
| > Where is the reverse WSL on Linux, where Windows is
| deeply embedded and you have all the Windows features in
| your hands?
|
| https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
|
| Enjoy.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| I was actually looking for something like this.
| alex_smart wrote:
| I preferred WSL to running linux directly even though I had
| no need for any windows only software. Not having to spend
| time configuring my computer to make basic things work like
| suspend/wake on lid down/up, battery life, hardware
| acceleration for video playback on the browser, display
| scaling on external monitor and so on was reason enough.
| jraph wrote:
| All this usually works out of the box now, especially if
| you pick your hardware accordingly.
| alex_smart wrote:
| That was certainly not the case ~2 years ago, the last
| time I installed linux on a laptop.
|
| It also doesn't appear to be the case even now. I
| searched for laptops available in my country that fit my
| budget and for each laptop searched "<laptop name> linux
| reddit" on google and filtered for results <1 year old.
| Each laptop's reports included some or other bug.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1hfqptw/l
| inu...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1esntt3/l
| eno...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1j3983j/h
| p_o...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1k1nsm8/a
| udi...
|
| The laptop with the best reported linux support seemed to
| be Thinkpad P14s but even there users reported tweaking
| some config to get fans to run silently and to make the
| speakers sound acceptable.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1c81rw4/thinkp
| ad_...
| jraph wrote:
| You are going to find issues for any computer for any OS
| by looking things up like this.
|
| And yeah, it's best to wait a bit for new models, as
| support is sorted out, if the manufacturer doesn't
| support Linux itself. Or pick a manufacturer that sells
| laptops with Linux preinstalled. That makes the
| comparison with a laptop with Windows preinstalled fair.
| alex_smart wrote:
| > You are going to find issues for any computer for any
| OS by looking things up like this
|
| I wasn't cherry-picking things. I literally searched for
| laptops available in my budget in my country and looked
| up what was the linux support like for those laptops as
| reported by people on reddit.
|
| > Or pick a manufacturer that sells laptops with Linux
| preinstalled
|
| I suppose you are talking about System76, Tuxedo etc.
| These manufacturers don't ship to my country. Even if I
| am able to get it shipped, how am I supposed to get
| warranty?
| jraph wrote:
| You weren't cherry picking but the search query you used
| would lead to issue reports.
|
| HP, Dell and Lenovo also sell Linux laptops on which
| Linux runs well.
|
| I sympathize with the more limited availability and
| budget restrictions, but comparisons must be fair:
| compare a preinstalled Windows and a preinstalled linux,
| or at least a linux installed on hardware whose
| manufacturer bothered to work on Linux support.
|
| When the manufacturer did their homework, Linux doesn't
| have the issues listed earlier. I've seen several laptops
| of these three brands work flawlessly on Linux and it's
| been like this for a decade.
|
| I certainly choose my laptops with Linux on mind and I
| know just picking random models would probably lead me to
| little issues here and there, and I don't want to deal
| with this. Although I have installed Linux on random
| laptops for other people and fortunately haven't run into
| issues.
| alex_smart wrote:
| As a buyer, how am I supposed to know which manufacturer
| did their homework and on which laptops?
|
| > it's been like this for a decade
|
| Again, depends on the definition of "flawlessly". Afaik,
| support for hardware accelerated videoplayback on
| browsers was broken across the board only three years
| ago.
| jraph wrote:
| > As a buyer, how am I supposed to know which
| manufacturer did their homework and on which laptops?
|
| You first option is to buy a laptop with linux
| preinstalled from one of the many manufacturers that
| provides this. This requires no particular knowledge or
| time. Admittedly, this may lead you to more expensive
| options, entry grade laptops won't be an option.
|
| Your second best bet is to read tech reviews. Admittedly
| this requires time and knowledge, but often enough people
| turn to their tech literate acquaintance for advice when
| they want to buy hardware.
|
| > Afaik, support for hardware accelerated videoplayback
| on browsers was broken across the board only three years
| ago.
|
| Yes indeed, that's something we didn't have. I agree it
| sucks. Now, all the OSes have their flaws that others
| don't have, and it's not like the videos didn't play, in
| practice it was an issue if you wanted to watch 4K videos
| for hours on battery. Playing regular videos worked, and
| you can always lower the quality if your situation
| doesn't allow the higher qualities. Often enough, you
| could also get the video and play it outside the browser.
| I know, not ideal, but also way less annoying that the
| laptop not suspending when you close the lid because of a
| glitch or something like this.
| alex_smart wrote:
| > You first option is to buy a laptop with linux
| preinstalled
|
| I have earnestly tried for >20 minutes trying to find
| such a laptop with any reputed manufacturer in my country
| (India) and come up empty-handed. Please suggest any that
| you can find. Even with Thinkpads, the only options are
| "Windows" or "No Operating System".
|
| >Your second best bet is to read tech reviews.
|
| Which tech reviews specifically point out linux support?
|
| >Playing regular videos worked, and you can always lower
| the quality if your situation doesn't allow the higher
| qualities
|
| The issue was never about whether playing the video
| worked. CPU video decoding uses much more energy and
| leads to your laptop running hot and draining battery
| life.
|
| Can we at least agree to reduce the timeframe for things
| working flawlessly to "less than two years" instead of "a
| decade"? Yes you were able to go to the toilet downstairs
| but the toilet upstairs was definitely broken.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| On Windows, I don't have to pick my hardware accordingly.
|
| I have to onboard a lot of students to work on our
| research. The software is all linux (of course), and
| mostly distribution-agnostic. Can't be too old, that's
| it.
|
| If a student comes with a random laptop, I install WSL on
| it, mostly ubuntu. apt install <curated list of packets>.
| Done. Linux laptops are OK too, I think, but so far only
| had one student with that. Mac OS used to be easy, but
| gets harder with every release, and every new OS version
| breaks something (mainly, CERN root) and people have to
| wait until it's fixed.
| jraph wrote:
| > On Windows, I don't have to pick my hardware
| accordingly.
|
| Fair enough. I think the best way to run Linux if you
| want to be sure you won't have tweak to stuff is to buy
| hardware with linux preinstalled. That your choice is
| more limited is another matter than "linux can't
| suspend".
|
| Comparing a preinstalled Windows with a linux installed
| on random laptop whose manufacturer can't be bothered to
| support is a bit unfair.
|
| Linux on a laptop where the manufacturer did their work
| runs well.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Yes, machines with Linux preinstalled normally work quite
| well. But it's still a downside of choosing Linux that
| the choice of laptops is so much smaller. Similar to the
| downside of Mac OS that you are locked in to pricey-but-
| well-built laptops, or the downside of Windows that "it
| runs Windows" doesn't mean the hardware is not bottom-of-
| the-barrel crap with a vendor who doesn't care about
| Linux compatibility. WSL allows to run a sane development
| environment even then :)
| rounce wrote:
| > You can use Wine/Crosseover, which is cool, but even now
| the number of software products it supports is tiny. Steam
| has a lot of games.
|
| This isn't really the case, and hasn't been for some years
| now, especially since Valve started investing heavily in
| Wine. The quality of Wine these days is absolutely
| stunning, to the point that some software runs better under
| Wine than it does on Win11. Then there's the breadth of
| support which has has moved the experience from there being
| a slight chance of something running on Wine, to now it
| being surprising when something doesn't.
| fsloth wrote:
| This is very much YMMV thing. There is no objectively best
| platform. There are different users and requirements.
|
| I've been a software developer for 20 years and in _my_
| opinion Windows is the best platform for professional
| software development. I only drop of to linux when need some
| of the excellent posix tools but my whole work ergonomy is
| based on Windows shortcuts and Visual Studio.
|
| I've been forced to use Mac for the past 1.5y but would
| prefer not to.
|
| Why would Windows be superior for me? Because that's where
| the users are (for the work stuff I did before this latest
| gig). I started in real time graphics and then spent over a
| decade in CAD for AEC (developing components for various
| offerings including SketchUp). The most critical thing for
| the stuff I did was the need to develop on the same platform
| as users run the software - C++ is only theoretically
| platform independent.
|
| Windows API:s are shit for sure for the most part.
|
| But still, from this pov, WSL was and will be the best Linux
| for me as well.
|
| YMMV.
| folkrav wrote:
| I fully agree with you - "YMMV" is the one true take.
| Visual Studio has never been particularly attractive to me,
| my whole workflow is filled with POSIX tools, and my code
| mostly runs on Docker and Linux servers. Windows is just
| another thing to worry about for me, be it having to deal
| with the subtle quirks of WSL not running on raw metal or
| having to deal with running UNIX-first tooling (or finding
| alternatives) on Windows. If it wasn't for our work
| provided machines being Windows by default, and at home,
| being into VR gaming and audio production (mostly
| commercial plugins), I'd completely ditch Windows in a
| heartbeat.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Yeah if you are working with Linux only, its better to go
| full linux.
|
| WSL2 is really handy when you want to run other software
| though. For example, I use Solidworks, so I need to run
| windows. Forscan for Ford vehicles also has to run under
| Windows. Having WSL2 means that I can just have one laptop
| and run any software that I want.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| > Forscan for Ford vehicles also has to run under Windows.
|
| I've successfully run it with WINE. Thought, my Forscan
| executable was 3 years old or so and that may have changed,
| but I doubt it.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| The thing about WINE is that it's not necessarily solid
| enough to rely on at work. You never know when the next
| software upgrade will break something that used to work.
|
| That's always true, of course. But, compared to other
| options, relying on WINE increases the chances of it
| happening by an amount that someone could be forgiven for
| thinking isn't acceptable.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| When I hear cases of using Wine etc as a substitute, I
| can't help but think of the "We have McDonald's at home"
| meme!
| jchw wrote:
| Wine is fantastic, but it is fantastic in the sense of
| being an amazing piece of technology. It's really lacking
| bits that would make it a great product.
|
| It's possible to see what Wine as a great product would
| look like. No offense to crossover because they do good
| work, but Valve's Steam Play shows what you can really do
| with Wine if you focus on delivering a product using
| Wine.
|
| Steam offers two main things:
|
| - It pins the version of Wine, providing a unified stable
| runtime. Apps don't just break with Wine updates, they're
| tested with specific Proton versions. You can manually
| override this and 9 times out of 10 it's totally fine.
| Often times it's better. But, if you want it to work 10
| out of 10 times, you have to do what Valve does here.
|
| - It manages the wineserver (the lifecycle of the running
| Wine instance) and wine prefix for you.
|
| The latter is an interesting bit to me. I think desktop
| environments should in fact integrate with Wine. I think
| they should show a tray icon or something when a
| Wineserver is running and offer options like killing the
| wineserver or spawning task manager. (I actually
| experimented with a standalone program to do this.[1])
| Wine processes should show up nested under a wineserver
| in system process views, with an option to go to the
| wineprefix, and there should be graphical tools to manage
| wine prefixes.
|
| To be fair, some of that has existed forever in some
| forms, but it never really felt that great. I think to
| feel good, it needs to feel like it's all a part of the
| desktop system, like Wine can really integrate into GNOME
| and KDE as a first-class thing. Really it'd be nice if
| Wine could optionally expose a D-Bus interface to make it
| so that desktop environments could nicely integrate with
| it without needing to do very nasty things, but Wine
| really likes to just be as C/POSIX/XDG as possible so I
| have no idea if something like that would have a
| snowball's chance in hell of working either on the Wine
| or desktop environment side.
|
| Still, it bums me out a bit.
|
| One pet peeve of mine regarding using Wine on Linux is
| that EXE icons didn't work out of the box on Dolphin in
| NixOS; I found that the old EXE thumb creator in kio-
| extras was a bit gnarly and involved shelling out to an
| old weird C program that wasn't all that fast and parsing
| the command line output. NixOS was missing the runtime
| dependency, but I decided it'd be better to just write a
| new EXE parser to extract the icon, and thankfully KDE
| accepted this approach, so now KDE has its own PE/NE
| parser. Thumb creators are not sandboxed on KDE yet, so
| enable it at your own risk; it should be disabled by
| default but available if you have kio-extras installed.
| (Sidenote: I don't know anything about icons in OS/2 LX
| executables, but I think it'd be cool to make those work,
| too.) The next pet peeve I had is that over network
| shares, most EXE files I had wouldn't get icons... It's
| because of the file size limit for remote thumbnails. If
| you bump the limit up really high, you'll get EXE
| thumbnails, but at the cost of downloading every single
| EXE, every single time you browse a remote folder. Yes,
| no caching, due to another bug. The next KDE frameworks
| version fixes most of this: other people sorted out
| multiple PreviewJob issues with caching on remote files,
| and I finally merged an MR that makes KIO use kio-fuse
| when available to spawn thumb creators instead of always
| copying to a temporary file. With these improvements
| combined, not just EXE thumbnails, but also video
| thumbnails work great on remote shares provided you have
| kio-fuse running. There's still no mechanism to bypass
| the file size limit even if _both_ the thumbcreator and
| kio-fuse remote can handle reading only a small portion
| of the file, but maybe some day. (This would require more
| work. Some kio slaves, like for example the mpt one,
| could support partially reading files but don 't because
| it's complicated. Others can't but there's no way for a
| kio-fuse client to know that. Meanwhile thumb creators
| may _sometimes_ be able to produce a thumbnail without
| reading most of the file and sometimes not, so it feels
| like you would need a way to bail out if it turns out you
| need to read a lot of data. Complicated...)
|
| I could've left most of that detail out, but I want to
| keep the giant textwall. To me this little bit of polish
| actually matters. If you browse an SMB share on Linux you
| should see icons for the EXE files just like on Windows,
| without any need to configure anything. If you don't have
| that, then right from the very first double-click the
| first experience is a bad one. That sucks.
|
| Linux has thousands of these papercuts everywhere and
| easily hundreds for Wine alone. They seem small, but when
| you try to fix them it's not actually that easy; you can
| make a quick hack, but what if we want to do things
| right, and make a robust integration? Not as easy. But if
| you don't do that work, you get where we're at today,
| where users just expect and somewhat tolerate mediocre
| user experience. I think we can do better, but it takes a
| lot more people doing some ultimately very boring
| groundwork. And the payoff is not something that feels
| amazing, it's the opposite: it's something boring, where
| the user never really has any hesitation because they
| already know it will work and never even think about the
| idea that it might not. Once you can get users into that
| mode you know you've done something right.
|
| Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Next time you have a
| minor pet peeve on Linux, please try to file a bug. The
| maintainers may not care, and maybe there won't be anyone
| to work on it, and maybe it would be hard to coordinate a
| fix across multiple projects. But honestly, I think a
| huge component of the problem is literally complacency.
| Most of us Linux users have dealt with desktop Linux
| forever and don't even register the workarounds we do
| (anymore than Windows or Mac users, albeit they probably
| have a lot less of them.) To get to a better state, we've
| gotta confront those workarounds and attack them at the
| source.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/jchv/winemon just an experiment
| though.
| trelane wrote:
| If you (or whoever is reading this) want(s) a more
| refined Wine, I highly recommend CodeWeavers. Their work
| gets folded back into open source WINE, no less.
|
| > To get to a better state, we've gotta confront those
| workarounds and attack them at the source.
|
| To my eye, the biggest problem with Linux is that so few
| are willing to pony up for its support. From hardware to
| software.
|
| Buy Linux computers and donate to the projects you use!
| jchw wrote:
| That's true, but even when money _is_ donated, it needs
| to be directed somewhere. And one big problem, IMO, is
| that polish and UX issues are not usually the highest
| priority to sort out; many would rather focus on higher
| impact. That 's all well and good and there's plenty of
| high impact work that needs to be done (we need more
| funding on accessibility, for example.) But if there's
| always bigger fires to put out, it's going to be rather
| hard to ever find time to do anything about the random
| smaller issues. I think the best thing anyone can do
| about the smaller issues is having more individual people
| reporting and working on them.
| nrclark wrote:
| In my mind, I almost feel like the opposite is true. Wine
| is getting better and better, especially with the amount
| of resources that Valve is putting into it.
|
| If you want a stable, repeatable way to wrangle a Windows
| tool: Wine is it. It's easy to deploy and repeat,
| requires no licenses, and has consistent behavior every
| time (unless you upgrade your Wine version or something).
| Great integration with Linux. No Windows Updates are
| going to come in and wreck your systems. No licensing, no
| IT issues, no active directory requirements, no forced
| reboots.
| realusername wrote:
| Same about windows upgrades nowadays really, there's a
| ton of software which just stopped working.
| amlib wrote:
| You can fix this issue by using a wine "bottle manager"
| like... Bottles. This allows you to easily manage
| multiple instances of wine installations (like having
| multiple windows installations) with better and easy to
| use tooling around it. More importantly, it also allows
| you to select across many system agnostic versions of
| wine that won't be upgraded automatically thus reducing
| the possibility of something that you rely breaking on
| you.
| trelane wrote:
| Or pony up for CodeWeavers. Their code goes into WINE,
| and they are (the?) major WINE devs. They've had bottles
| for years, if not decades now.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| why bring wine into a vm discussion? just run windows in
| a vm too. problem solved without entering the whining
| about wine not being better than windows itself
| nrclark wrote:
| I work in embedded systems. In that space, it's pretty
| common to need some vendor-provided tool that's Windows-
| only. I often need to automate that tool, maybe as part
| of a CI/CD pipeline or something.
|
| If I were to do it with a Windows VM, I'd need to:
| 1. Create the VM image and figure out how to build/deploy
| it. 2. Sort out the Windows licensing concerns.
| 3. Figure out how to launch my tool (maybe put an SSH
| server into the VM). 4. Figure out how to share the
| filesystem (maybe rsync-on-SSH? Or an SMB fileshare?).
|
| If I do it with Wine instead, all I need to do is:
| 1. Install some pinned version of Wine. 2. Install
| my tool into Wine. 3. Run it directly.
| russfink wrote:
| They named it "Forscan?" They really named it that, not
| thinking it could sound close to something else entirely
| unrelated?
| skyyler wrote:
| Surely you don't think the executives at Ford expect us
| to Power Stroke without FORScan?
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Ford's own software is called FDRS.
|
| Forscan was developed independently by some Russian
| gentlemen, probably with plenty of reference to FDRS/IDS
| internals.
| xxpor wrote:
| Volkswagen's equivalent is VAG-COM
| therein wrote:
| Did you know that Forscan works flawlessly under Wine if
| you're not using Bluetooth?
| lolinder wrote:
| In the same spirit if "it depends", there are other options
| that may work for people with different Linux/Windows
| balance points:
|
| * Wine is surprisingly good these days for a lot of
| software. If you only have an app or two that need Windows
| it is probably worth trying Wine to see if it meets your
| needs.
|
| * Similarly, if gaming is your thing Valve has made
| enormous strides in getting the majority of games to work
| flawlessly on Linux.
|
| * If neither of the above are good enough, dual booting is
| nearly painless these days, with easy setup and fast boot
| times across both OSes. I have grub set to boot Linux by
| default but give me a few seconds to pick Windows instead
| if I need to do one of the few things that I actually use
| Windows for.
|
| Which you go for really depends on your ratio of Linux to
| Windows usage and whether you regularly need to mix the
| two.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| And you also can just run a windows VM when needed for a
| few apps if that works for your use case.
| oasisbob wrote:
| I'm struggling to find an option for running x86 Windows
| software on MacOS/Apple Silicon performantly. (LiDAR
| point cloud processing.)
|
| The possibilities seem endless and kinda confusing with
| Windows on ARM vs Rosetta and Wine, think there's some
| other options which use MacOS's included virtualization
| frameworks.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That's interesting; I'd expect something techie like that
| to have good Linux programs.
| grujicd wrote:
| Have you tried to install Windows 11 ARM under UTM on
| Mac? UTM is a kind of open source Parallels. Then you'll
| run x86 software using Windows' variant of Rosetta.
| Probably slower than Rosetta but perhaps good enough.
| yndoendo wrote:
| My development is mainly Windows and I prefer Linux host
| with Windows VM guests. The experience is more stable and I
| can revert to a snapshot when Windows or Microsoft product
| update brakes something or new test configuration does. It
| also allows to backup and retain multiple QA environments
| that are rarely used, like a client's Oracle DB. It is nice
| being able to save the VM state at the end of the week and
| shut it all down so you can start the next right where you
| left off. Cannot do that when your development environment
| is the bare metal OS. Windows has known issues of waking a
| sleeping laptop.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I too think it would be definitely more stable Linux Host
| with Win VM guests, but I can see the other way around
| being more convenient to get support for commercially.
| Though with the VMWare licensing changes, I think what is
| by default easier for commercial support options may be
| changing too.
| wpm wrote:
| > Windows has known issues of waking a sleeping laptop.
|
| Doesn't Linux as well?
| edoceo wrote:
| I'm on Lenovo Yoga 6, Gentoo, 6.12 kernel, 4.20 Xfce.
| Sleeps works perfect. Same on my Asus+AMD desktop. I've
| not had sleep related issues for years. And last time I
| did, it was an out-of-tree Wifi driver causing the whole
| mess.
| nevi-me wrote:
| I'm on Ubuntu 25.04, 128GB RAM, pcie 5 SSD, NVIDIA 5080,
| 9950X3D.
|
| I discovered over the weekend that only 1 monitor works
| over HDMI, DisplayPort not working, tried different
| drivers. Suspend takes a good 5 minutes, and on resume,
| the UI is either turn or things barely display.
|
| I might buy a Windows license, especially if I can't get
| multi-screen to work.
| roomey wrote:
| Try a lower version of the Nvidia driver. The newer
| version was causing me and folk I work with a lot of
| problems.
| aerophilic wrote:
| This has been a pain point for us and our development
| process... not all versions of Nvidia drivers are the
| same... even released ones. You have to find a "good"
| version and keep to it, and then selectively upgrade...
| at least this has been the case the last 5 years, folks
| shout out if they have had different experiences.
|
| Side note: our main use case is using cuda for image
| processing.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| Make sure your device is compatible with WSL this way,
| its very fragile and prone to breaking
| tgma wrote:
| Install Pop_OS! for better OOTB NVIDIA support.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| In my experience Ubuntu has the worst issues with
| displays of any distro.
|
| To be fair I stay away from NVIDIA to, I would probably
| run a separate headless box for those GPU workloads if I
| needed to
| MoreQARespect wrote:
| Yeah, Ubuntu used to be the distro that "just worked"
| while nowadays that crown has passed to Fedora.
| selfhoster wrote:
| > In my experience Ubuntu has the worst issues with
| displays of any distro.
|
| In my experience, it has zero issues. I use nvidia binary
| build. I have since 2006 through various nvidia GPU's.
| SweetSoftPillow wrote:
| I had these issues with Windows, but with Linux Mint it
| works perfectly.
| hoppp wrote:
| I recall having a sleep issue with linux 15 years ago, I
| think its been fixed long ago, except maybe on some very
| new hardware or if you install the wrong linux on an M
| series Mac you could have issues with sleep.
| trelane wrote:
| Not of you don't buy Windows hardware and slap Linux on
| it.
|
| Unfortunately, most (almost all) hardware is Windows
| hardware. So far, System76 is the only one that I've had
| actually work.
| umvi wrote:
| System76 seems janky though if you use anything but PopOS
| nix0n wrote:
| > My development is mainly Windows and I prefer Linux
| host with Windows VM guests
|
| I've tried this in the past but I was unable to get the
| debugger to work from within a VM.
|
| Has this improved, or is there a trick, or are you just
| going without a debugger?
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| I really want to like Windows 11, and I enjoy using WSL,
| but Microsoft treats me too much like an adversary for me
| to tolerate it as a daily driver. Only a complete scumbag
| of a product manager would think pushing Candy Crush ads is
| a good idea.
|
| I've got an airgapped Toughbook that I use for the few
| Windows apps I really need to talk to strange hardware.
| zeppelin101 wrote:
| I suggest looking into Windows LTSC. It has solved most
| of the annoyances for me.
| zymhan wrote:
| The integration between Windows and the WSL VM is _far_
| deeper than a typical VM hypervisor.
|
| You cannot claim with a straight face that Virtualbox is
| easier to use.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's deeper but let's not overblow it.
|
| I think the two fairly deep integrations are window's
| ability to navigate WSL's filesystem and wslg's fairly good
| ability to serve up guis.
|
| The filesystem navigation is something that AFAIK can't
| easily be replicated. wslg, however, is something that
| other VMs have and can do. It's a bit of a pain, but
| doable.
|
| What makes WSL nice is the fact that it feels pretty close
| to being a native terminal that can launch native
| application.
|
| I do wish that WSL1 was taken further. My biggest grip with
| WSL is the fact that it is a VM and thus takes a large
| memory footprint. It'd be nice if the WSL1 approach panned
| out and we instead had a nice clean compatibility wrapper
| over winapi for linux applications.
| jchw wrote:
| > The integration between Windows and the WSL VM is _far_
| deeper than a typical VM hypervisor.
|
| Sure, but I never claimed otherwise.
|
| > You cannot claim with a straight face that Virtualbox is
| easier to use.
|
| I also didn't claim that. I wasn't comparing WSL to other
| virtualization solutions.
|
| WSL2 is cool. Linux doesn't have a tool like WSL2 that
| manages Linux virtual machines.
|
| The catch 22 is that it doesn't need one. If you want to
| drop a shell in a virtual environment Linux can do that six
| ways through Sunday with no hardware VM in sight using the
| myriad of namespacing technologies available.
|
| So while you don't have WSL2 on Linux, you don't _need_ it.
| If you just want a ubuntu2204 shell or something, and you
| want it to magically work, you don 't need a huge thing
| with tons of integration like WSL2. A standalone program
| can provide all of the functionality.
|
| I have a feeling people might actually be legitimately
| skeptical. Let me prove this out. I am on NixOS, on a
| machine that does not have distrobox. It's not even
| installed, and I don't really have to install it since it's
| just a simple standalone program. I will do:
| $ nix run nixpkgs#distrobox enter
|
| Here's what happened: $ nix run
| nixpkgs#distrobox enter Error: no such container
| my-distrobox Create it now, out of image
| registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-toolbox:latest? [Y/n]: Y
| Creating the container my-distrobox Trying to pull
| registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-toolbox:latest...
| ... 0f3de909e96d48bd294d138b1a525a6a22621f38cb775a9
| 91974313eda1a4119 Creating 'my-distrobox' using
| image registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-toolbox:latest [ OK
| ] Distrobox 'my-distrobox' successfully created.
| To enter, run: distrobox enter my-distrobox
| Starting container... [ OK ]
| Installing basic packages... [ OK ]
| Setting up devpts mounts... [ OK ]
| Setting up read-only mounts... [ OK ]
| Setting up read-write mounts... [ OK ]
| Setting up host's sockets integration... [ OK ]
| Integrating host's themes, icons, fonts... [ OK ]
| Setting up distrobox profile... [ OK ]
| Setting up sudo... [ OK ]
| Setting up user groups... [ OK ]
| Setting up user's group list... [ OK ]
| Setting up existing user... [ OK ]
| Ensuring user's access... [ OK ]
| Container Setup Complete! [john@my-distrobox]~%
| sudo yum install glxgears ... Complete!
| [john@my-distrobox]~% glxgears Running synchronized
| to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
| approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
| 302 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.261 FPS ^C
|
| No steps omitted. I can install software, including desktop
| software, including things that need hardware acceleration
| (yep, even on NixOS where everything is weird) and just run
| them. There's nothing to configure at all.
|
| That's just Fedora. WSL can run a lot of distros, including
| Ubuntu. Of course, you can do the same thing with
| Distrobox. Is it hard? Let's find out by using Ubuntu 22.04
| instead, with console output omitted: $
| distrobox create --image ubuntu:22.04 ... $
| distrobox enter ubuntu-22-04 ... $ sudo apt
| install openarena ... $ /usr/games/openarena
|
| To be completely, 100% fair: running an old version of
| Ubuntu like this does actually have one downside: it
| triggers OpenGL software rendering for me, because the
| OpenGL drivers in Ubuntu 22.04 are too old to support my
| relatively new RX 9070 XT. You'd need to install or copy in
| newer drivers to make it work. There are in fact ways to do
| that (Ubuntu has no shortage of repos just for getting more
| up-to-date drivers and they work inside Distrobox pretty
| much the same way they work in real hardware.) Amusingly,
| this problem doesn't impact NVIDIA since you can just tell
| distrobox to copy in the NVIDIA driver verbatim with the
| --nvidia flag. (One of the few major points in favor of
| proprietary drivers, I suppose.)
|
| On the other hand, even trying pretty hard (and using
| special drivers) I could never get hardware acceleration
| for OpenGL working inside of WSL2, so it could be worse.
|
| That aside, everything works. More complex applications
| (e.g. file browsers, Krita, Blender) work just fine and you
| get your normal home folder mapped in just like you'd
| expect.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| So, how you run Windows on Linux like WSL does?
| zakki wrote:
| Methods I know are using qemu/Wine/proxmox/VirtualBox.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| But he was acting as if Linux didnt need VMs ;)
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| Is it a VM? It seems to be much faster than most VMs I've
| used.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Literally built on top of MS's Hyper-V.
|
| IDK how many VMs you've used, but there has been a lot of
| work specifically with x86 to make VMs nearly as fast as
| native. If you interact with cloud services everything you
| do is likely on a VM.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The last time I deployed Linux servers on bare metal was
| about 2010.
|
| Apparently Linux VMs on other people's computers is very much
| appreciated.
| juancn wrote:
| Technically it's not a VM, it's a subsystem, the same way
| Win32, Win64, Posix, OS/2, etc. are.
|
| It's a feature of the NT-family of kernels where you can
| create many environments sharing the same underlying
| executive and HAL.
|
| It's a quite interesting way to build an OS:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT
| enragedcacti wrote:
| WSL 2 is actually virtualized despite the name
| zargon wrote:
| WSL1 was a subsystem. WSL2 is mostly a VM.
| oblio wrote:
| They had to give that up because it was too slow, I think
| for IO. Unfortunate.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's complicated. WSL1 is much faster at accessing the
| drives mounted in Windows, but much slower at accessing
| its own emulated drive.
|
| If you have control over where you put your git repo,
| WSL2 will hit max speed. If you want it shared between
| OSes, WSL2 will be slower.
| ori_b wrote:
| It used to be. They moved to a VM.
|
| Turns out that it's easier to emulate a CPU than syscalls.
| The CPU churns a lot less, too, which means that once
| things start working things tend to keep working.
| jchw wrote:
| As everyone said, WSL2 is actually virtual machines and it
| is what most people are actually using now. That said, I
| feel the need to chime in and say I actually love WSL1 and
| I love Windows NT the kernel. It bums me out all the time
| that we probably won't get major portions of the NT kernel,
| even an out-of-date version, in some open source form.
|
| I like Linux, and I use Linux as my daily desktop, but it's
| not because I think Linux or even UNIX is really that
| elegant. If I had to pick a favorite design it would be
| Windows NT for sure, even with all its warts. That said,
| the company behind Windows NT really likes to pile a lot of
| shit I hate on top of that pretty neat OS design, and now
| it's full of dubious practices. Automatic "malware
| submission" on by default, sending apps you download and
| compile yourself to Microsoft and even executing them in a
| VM. Forced updates with versions that _expire_.
| Unbelievable volumes of network traffic, exfiltrating
| untold amounts of data from your local machine to
| Microsoft. Ads and unwanted news all over the UI.
| Increasing insistence in using a Microsoft account. I could
| go on and on.
|
| From a technical standpoint I do not think the Linux OS
| design is superior. I think Linux has some amazing tools
| and APIs. dmabufs are sweet. Namespaces and cgroups are
| cool. BPF and it's various integrations are borderline
| insane. But at its core, ... It's kinda ugly. These things
| don't all compose nicely and the kernel is an enormous
| hard-to-tame beast. Windows NT has its design warts too,
| all over, like the amount of involvement the kernel has in
| the GUI for historical reasons, and the enormous syscall
| surface area, and untold amounts of legacy cruft. But all
| in all, I think the core of what they made is really cool,
| the subsystems concept is super cool, and it is an OS
| design that has stood up well to time. I also think the PE
| format is better than ELF and that it is literally better
| for the capabilities it doesn't have w.r.t. symbols. Sure
| it's ugly, in part due to the COFF lineage, but it's
| functionally very well done IMO.
|
| I feel the need to say this because I think I probably came
| off as a hater, and tbh I'm not even a hater of WSL2. It's
| not as cool as WSL1 and subsystems and pico processes, but
| it's very practical and the 9p bridge works way better than
| it has any right to.
|
| Thanks for pointing this out.
| speed_spread wrote:
| You're thinking of the POSIX personality of Windows NT of
| old. This was based on Interix and has been deprecated
| about two decades ago and is now buried so deep that it
| couldn't be revived.
|
| The new WSL1 uses kernel call translation, like Wine in
| reverse and WSL2 runs a full blown Linux kernel in a
| Hyper-V VM. To my knowledge neither of these share anything
| with the aforementioned POSIX subsystem.
| anon291 wrote:
| I mean... WINE does the same on windows, but microsoft
| refuses to release their API docs for all internal APIs.
| They release WSL by relying on Linux's open-ness, while
| refusing the same for themselves.
| codr7 wrote:
| I definitely prefer working in Linux.
|
| But having Windows tightly integrated when needed is nice.
|
| If only I could run replace the Windows shell with a Linux
| DE...
| nottorp wrote:
| > I get that WSL is revolutionary for Windows users
|
| It is... I'm working these days on bringing a legacy windows
| only application to the 21st century.
|
| We are throwing a WSL container behind it and relying on the
| huge ecosystem of server software available for Linux to add
| functionality.
|
| Yes that stuff could run directly on windows, but you'd be a
| lot more limited in what's supported. Even for some
| restricted values of supported. And you'd have to reinvent
| the wheel for a few parts.
| meta_ai_x wrote:
| Windows has many useful software that is not available on
| Linux.
|
| So, for me Windows + WSL is more productive than just using
| Linux. The UI is still better on Windows(basic utilities like
| File Explorer and Config Management is better on Windows). No
| Remoting Software beats RDP. When I remote to a Windows
| workstation through RDP, I can't tell the difference. VNC is
| always janky. Of course there is Word/Excel/Illustrator which
| is simply not available on Linux
| a2128 wrote:
| File Explorer is better on Windows? How? I tried Windows 11
| for the first time a month ago and it takes several seconds
| for file explorer to open, it's asynchronously loading like
| 3 different UI frameworks as random elements pop in with no
| consistency, there's two different rightclick menus because
| they couldn't figure out how to make the new one have all
| the functionality of the old one so they decided to just
| keep the old one behind "Show More Options", and it's
| constantly pushing OneDrive in your face. I'm offended that
| this is what they thought is good enough to ship to a
| billion users.
| qwertox wrote:
| The File Explorer on Windows 11 is the worst experience
| ever. Windows 7 was snappy as hell, but I don't know what
| they did to damage it that badly. I use XYplorer, which
| is written in Visual Basic (so a 32 bit application), but
| is so much faster the native explorer (and is full with
| features).
| amlib wrote:
| > No Remoting Software beats RDP. When I remote to a
| Windows workstation through RDP, I can't tell the
| difference. VNC is always janky
|
| Any recent distro running Gnome or KDE has built-in support
| for connecting and hosting an RDP session. This used to be
| a pain point, you don't need to use VNC anymore.
|
| It's actually worse on windows since you need to pony up
| for a pro license to get RDP hosting support...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > You know what's even more convenient than a VM? Not needing
| a VM and still having the exact same functionality
|
| I mean this is basically heresy now.
|
| most code is virtualised, or sandboxed, or in a VM, or a
| docker container, or several of the above at the same time.
| ok123456 wrote:
| My coworkers stubbornly try to use WSL instead of Linux
| directly. They constantly run into corner cases and waste
| time working around them compared to just using Linux. Some
| tooling detects that it is running on Windows, and some
| detects that it is running on Linux. In practice, it's the
| worst of both worlds.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Saying running full Linux avoids wasting time on fiddly
| workarounds kinda blows my mind.
|
| Full hardware support is still not a given, and Windows
| emulation is still need for so many cases (e.g. games,
| specialized software etc).
|
| Until I can choose any machine based on form factor and
| specs alone and just run Linux on it, WSL will the best
| version of Linux it can run.
| trelane wrote:
| > Full hardware support is still not a given,
|
| If you're not buying your hardware from a vendor you can
| call and get support with Linux from, you're going to
| have a hard time.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I heard 2025 was the year of Linux on the desktop!
| krferriter wrote:
| It's a VM plus some usability automation. Can't ignore the
| usability benefits.
| vhguru wrote:
| If Windows provided easier access to hardware, especially
| USB, from WSL it would be nice. In fact, if WSL enumerated
| devices and dealt with them as native Linux does, even
| better.
| rini17 wrote:
| You don't stress about Windows updates? Hard to believe it.
| chubot wrote:
| Yeah exactly ... I want Windows running in Linux, not the
| other way around, so I actually control the software and the
| updates!
|
| I actually just tried WINE for the FIRST time (surprisingly,
| I have been out of the Windows world for so long)
|
| https://www.winehq.org/
|
| And as long as I installed the binaries from their repo, not
| Debian 12, it worked very well
|
| Wine is an impressive project too. It's not a VM, which has
| upsides and downsides, but I was able to run GCC-TDM, Python
| 3, and git bash in it!
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| What do you mean by that?
| rini17 wrote:
| As a reply to: You don't have to stress "do I update my
| OS?"
| CoolCold wrote:
| I'm also not sure on your question, over the last 5
| years, average interruption time is ~ 5 minutes to apply
| update, which happens roughly once a 3 weeks or so. Once
| or twice per year, release updates happen and that takes
| may be 30 minutes of interruption (not totally sure here
| as I usually grab my coffee and cigarrets and go reading
| news on balcony, which may easily take ~1h for me).
|
| So for me, updates practically doesn't affect my workflow
| at all.
| Flamentono2 wrote:
| I think you might want to give more context.
|
| I use linux. I don't need WSL at all. Not at work nor at home.
|
| So you praise WSL because you use Windows as your main system?
| Than yes its great. It definitly makes the Windows experience a
| lot better.
|
| OpenSSH for Windows was also a game changer. Honestly, i have
| no clue why Microsoft needed so long for that.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| putty is longer necessary? That would be a wild upgrade in
| usability for the work laptop, shall go try it
| baq wrote:
| openssh has been an optional windows component for...
| almost a decade now? including the server, so you can ssh
| into powershell as easily as into any unix-like. (last time
| I set it up there was some fiddling with file permissions
| required for key auth to work, but it does work.)
| evanjrowley wrote:
| OpenSSH on Windows is great for the odd connection and
| SFTP session, but I still feel strongly that any serious
| usage should just stick with PuTTY and WinSCP. The GUI
| capabilities these provide are what Windows users are
| used to. The only benefit of built-in SSH is if you're
| working with some minimal image stuff, like Windows
| Server Core or Tiny11. IMHO.
| baq wrote:
| IIRC (it's been a while) I used the server with vscode
| remote ssh extension.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| imo the interesting part in opensssh into Windows.
| raggi wrote:
| Openssh should have been a game changer but they made a
| classic openssh porting bug (not reading all bytes from the
| channel on close) and have now been sat on the fix in
| "prerelease" for years. I prodded the VP over the group about
| the issue and they repeatedly made excuses about how the team
| is too small and getting updates over to the windows team is
| too hard. That was multiple windows releases ago. Over on
| GitHub if you look up git receive pack errors being frequent
| clone problems for windows users you'll find constant reports
| ever since the git distribution stopped using its own ssh. I
| know a bunch of good people at Microsoft, but this leadership
| is incapable of operating in a user centric manner and
| shouldn't be trusted with embedded OSS forks.
| alex_smart wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/963/
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| On the other hand sometimes the GUI on WSL decides to break
| and you have to restart the whole thing.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I'm a simple man, if I open the shell and `ssh foo@bar.com`
| doesn't work, I don't use that computer. Idk if Windows has
| fixed that yet or why it's so hard for them. Also couldn't
| even find the shell on a Chromebook.
| brooke2k wrote:
| I think it depends a lot on what you're trying to do. I found
| that anything GPU-related was a nightmare of drivers and
| configuration which was a show-stopper for me. Now I just run
| arch/kde and that all works fine out of the box
| lpcvoid wrote:
| That may all very well be, but uuh, you're then forced to use
| Windows
| gofreddygo wrote:
| I want to know what limitations and tradeoffs am I embracing
| when using WSL vs booting linux off a usb stick.
| ksec wrote:
| Now if they could only do Windows 12 by taking baby steps in
| yearly release of Windows 11.1, 11.2 etc.
|
| Iterating on improvements and polishing on Screens and Design
| that they haven't touched in the past 30 years. Improving on
| ARM support etc. And STOP adding Ads on the OS.
|
| And the Surface Laptop continues to push Hardware quality
| forward. From Speaker, Touchpad, Screen, Motherboard etc.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| You can accomplish the same with Distrobox on Linux, but
| there's definitely something to be said about having the best
| of both worlds by running Windows + WSL.
|
| I honestly think Microsoft could win back some mind share from
| Apple if they:
|
| * Put out a version of windows without all the crap. Call it
| Dev edition or something and turn off or down the telemetry,
| preinstalled stuff, ads, and Copilot. * Put some effort into
| silicon to get us hardware with no compromises like the
| Macbooks
|
| I'm on Mac now, and I jump back and forth between Mac laptop
| and a Linux desktop. I actually prefer Windows + WSL, but
| ideologically I can't use it. It has potential - PowerToys is
| fantastic, WSL is great, I actually like PowerShell as a
| scripting language and the entire new PC set up can now be done
| with PowerShell + Winget DSC. But, I just can't tolerate the
| user hostile behavior from Microsoft, nor the stop the world
| updates that take entirely too long. They should probably do
| what macOS and Silverblue, etc. do and move to an
| immutable/read-only base and deploy image based updates instead
| of whatever janky patching they do now.
|
| Plus, I can't get a laptop that's on par with my M4 Pro. The
| Surface Laptop 7 (the arm one) comes close, but still not good
| enough.
| nightski wrote:
| I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but with Windows 11
| Pro and group policy I was able to disable all of the
| annoying stuff, and because it is group policy it has
| persisted through several years of updates. It is annoying
| you have to do this, and it does take some time to get set up
| right. But it's a solution.
|
| That said I'd pay for a dev edition as you described it, that
| would be fantastic.
| airstrike wrote:
| There is no flavor of Windows 11 that is acceptable. Even
| the UI itself is a disaster. A cornucopia of libraries and
| paradigms from React Native to legacy APIs as if an
| interdimensional wave function of bad ideas had collapsed
| into an OS, but with ads.
| eahm wrote:
| You can make your own clean version, legally, with this
| file. https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator.
|
| I get customers and most people don't know about it but
| it's kind of ridiculous that techy people in a tech forum
| don't know how to do it.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| This seems pretty useful, thanks! I had certainly never
| heard of it.
| danieldk wrote:
| _it 's kind of ridiculous that techy people in a tech
| forum don't know how to do it._
|
| Why? HN has traditionally always largely been a macOS and
| Linux crowd. Why do we have to care about fixing an OS
| that is broken out of the box (that most of us don't use
| anyway)?
| oblio wrote:
| Because someone cannot make informed comments about the
| "other" party unless they have a reasonably deep
| knowledge of it, too.
|
| Far too many Linux users, especially, make fun of Windows
| and if you dig a bit you see that most of their
| complaints are things that are solved with 5 minutes of
| googling. Some complaints are philosophical, and those I
| agree with, but even in that case, I'd be curious how
| consistent they are with their philosophy when for
| example Linux desktop environments due weird things.
|
| Summarizing a bit: Linux users with years or decades of
| experience of tinkering as sysadmins with Linux
| frequently make junior-level user complaints about
| Windows usage, frequently based on outdated information
| about it.
|
| I say this who has been using both Linux and Windows for
| a few decades now and has a fairly decent level of
| sysadmin skills on both.
| chrsw wrote:
| I didn't know about this. My knowledge of Windows is very
| limited. I use it every day for work, but it's managed by
| our IT and Security departments. It's locked down. You
| cannot use external drives. You can't install
| applications yourself and you can't run un-approved
| applications. So, I learned over the years to never touch
| anything that already hasn't been approved, even
| settings. If you want to apply for something to be
| approved, you can submit a written justification co-
| signed by your manager. My manager has never rejected
| anything I requested, but it's a huge hassle. Most of us
| just don't bother, even developers.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > without all the crap
|
| as far as MS are concerned, that crap _is_ their business.
|
| Or, possibly, that crap is the multitude of little software
| empires build by the management layer now in control..
| baq wrote:
| > I can't get a laptop that's on par with my M4 Pro.
|
| This is the only reason I have not requested a windows laptop
| from my company. WSL is better for docker development in
| basically every way than a mac can be (disclaimer: haven't
| tried orbstack yet, heard good things, but my base assumption
| is it can't be better than WSL2) _except_ it is literally
| impossible to get hardware as good as the M3 or M4 for any
| other OS than macOS.
| lodovic wrote:
| I replaced my m1 with a snapdragon laptop running Win11 and
| upgraded that to pro. For what I do with it, it runs great
| with very long battery times, for less than Apple quoted to
| repair the m1. I don't use the copilot features and haven't
| seen any ads so far, except maybe for office during setup.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| There's a dedicated settings page for quickly setting popular
| dev settings such as showing extensions and full paths.
| Getting rid of the rest just involves tweaking a few other
| settings like don't show tips or welcome screen. I also hide
| the weather and news widget because it's tabloid rubbish but
| many people seem to love it.
| alex_smart wrote:
| I don't think Microsoft losing the mind share has anything to
| do with software. Macbooks are winning the laptop war because
| of superior hardware.
| pathartl wrote:
| Superior hardware with terrible software. Also they
| straight up artificially limit their hardware so they don't
| cannibalize their sales, which is slightly understandable,
| but they do it in the dumbest ways. My SOs MacBook Air can
| only do one external monitor, even though it has the same
| specs as her work Pro. Oh and good luck actually getting
| that external display to work, I swear only like 50% of
| USB-C docks work on the platform.
| danieldk wrote:
| _My SOs MacBook Air can only do one external monitor,_
|
| The MacBook Air M4 supports two external displays now
| (with the lid open):
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/macbook-air/use-an-
| external-...
|
| _My SOs MacBook Air can only do one external monitor,
| even though it has the same specs as her work Pro._
|
| The MacBook Pro with the non-Pro/Max chip (i.e. MacBook
| Pro M3) has the same limitations as the corresponding
| MacBook Air (i.e. MacBook Air M3).
| gapan wrote:
| > Superior hardware with terrible software.
|
| Funny how that was the other way around just a few years
| ago. Macs had inferior hardware, but they were supposed
| to have better software. At least that's what the Mac
| users claimed.
| resource_waste wrote:
| >Macbooks are winning the laptop war because of superior
| hardware.
|
| No. This is just you repeating marketing.
|
| No Nvidia chip = B tier at best.
|
| I have a $700 Asus with a 3060 that is better. Go ahead and
| scale up to a $2000 computer with an Nvidia chip and its so
| obviously better, there is nothing to debate.
|
| No one cares about performance per watt, its like someone
| ran a 5k race, came in 3rd and said "Well at least I burned
| fewer calories than the winner!"
| jopicornell wrote:
| Well, I'll have to hardly disagree. You want a laptop
| that its battery life is not 1 hour at best. That wasn't
| a thing in Windows/Linux laptops until M1 started using
| arm64. 6 Hours of intense work? Good luck with that.
|
| Not only that, but being able to run very intensive work
| (Pro Audio, Development...) seamlessly is an absolute
| pleasure.
|
| Its screen is one of the best screens out there.
|
| The trackpad (and some keyboards) are an absolute
| pleasure.
|
| The robustness of the laptop is amazing.
|
| I don't care about the marketing of Apple, I don't buy
| anything new they launch, and I condemn all of their
| obscure pricing techniques for the tech they sell. But my
| M1 is rocking like the first day, after four years of
| daily use. That's something my Windows laptops have never
| delivered to me.
|
| Apple has done a lot of things wrong, and I will not buy
| another Apple laptop in the future, but I don't want
| Nvidia on a Laptop, I want it to be portable, powerful
| and durable.
|
| That is changing now, and it's amazing. I want my laptop
| to be mine, and to be able to install any OS I like. New
| laptops with arm64 and Intel Lake cpus are promissing,
| but we're not there yet, at least not that I have
| experienced.
|
| Each to their own for sure, and for you, the nvidia
| requisite is important. For me it's not about brands, but
| usability for my work and hobbies.
| const_cast wrote:
| > No Nvidia chip = B tier at best.
|
| Nvidia chip = 45 minutes of battery life
| mattl wrote:
| Why would I need an Nvidia chip in my laptop?
| zczc wrote:
| > a version of windows without all the crap
|
| LTSC is a version like that
| chrsw wrote:
| > "Microsoft doesn't make any release from the Long-Term
| Servicing Channel available for regular consumers. The
| company only makes it available to volume licensing
| customers, typically large organizations and enterprises.
| This means that individual users cannot purchase or
| download Windows 11 LTSC from Microsoft's website."
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/software-
| apps/windows-11/what...
| chrsw wrote:
| This would be fantastic. But Microsoft doesn't have to do
| this. Their users are captives.
| oblio wrote:
| Some of them are.
|
| But the increasing market share of Macs and even Linux
| these days plus the ever increasing of OSS initiatives from
| Microsoft points out that Microsoft knows a lot fewer of
| their users are as captive as they were in the 90's, for
| example.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| (Used 15ys OSX, now Win11)
|
| The biggest difference between OSX and Windows is, Apple adds
| (some say steal) functionality from competition, and open
| source. They make it neat. On windows to have something
| working, you need a WezTerm, Everything for search, Windhawk
| for a vertical taskbar on the right, Powertoys for an app
| starter, Folder Size for disc management etc. If you spend a
| lot of time, Win11 can be ok to work with.
|
| If Powerpoint and Affinity would work on Linux, I'd use Linux
| though.
| pathartl wrote:
| Maybe just for your specific preferences. Terminal is
| plenty fine. Vertical taskbar on the right is straight up
| user preference. PowerToys for an app starter? Like Alfred?
| The start search does a decent enough job of that. Folder
| Size is nice, but enumerating all files is very taxing.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| >Windhawk for a vertical taskbar on the right
|
| Huh? Windows supports vertical taskbar.
| bialpio wrote:
| Last time I checked, Windows 11 lost this capability and
| 3p solutions like Windhawk are needed. I'd be very happy
| if they brought this back though, feel free to share a
| link to some info about how to do it natively.
| p_ing wrote:
| Oh running Ice to wrangle the menu bar app icons or
| Rectangle to _properly_ manage windows ( 'cause Apple
| screwed that one up) must be unnecessary.
|
| Each OS is going to have extension applications to improve
| on the OOTB experience. This is an invalid argument to
| choosing one over the other.
| CoolCold wrote:
| > nor the stop the world updates that take entirely too long
|
| Interesting enough, that beyond release upgrades, happening
| may be once a year, all or may be 99% of updates took ~5
| minutes of interruption of me, including needed reboot. I
| really wonder how others manage to have "entirely too long"
| updates.
| nosioptar wrote:
| 5 minutes is too long. My Debian systems never demand that
| I update them. When I update them, it never even takes two
| minutes.
| dTal wrote:
| To the tech savvy, there is essentially only one advantage to
| running Windows, and that is the ability to run Windows-only
| software. In all technical respects - control, performance,
| flexibility - it is inferior to the alternatives. Don't
| confuse vendor lockin with technology.
|
| I find it dismaying that people on Hacker News willingly
| submit to incredibly user-hostile behavior from Microsoft and
| call it "the best of both worlds". Presumably a nontrivial
| proportion here are building the next generation of software
| products - and if we don't even respect ourselves, how likely
| is it that we will respect our users?
| pton_xd wrote:
| Running a Linux VM on Windows is nicer than just booting into
| Linux? That's quite a take. Windows is so user-hostile these
| days that I feel bad for those who have to deal with it.
| Calling it delightful must be symptomatic of some sort of
| Stockholm syndrome.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Maybe it is both-sidesism but the motd you get by default on
| Ubuntu these days is as bad as any OS. ("Ubuntu Advantage"
| sounds about as good as
| https://prospect.org/health/2024-01-12-great-medicare-
| advant...)
|
| At least the nags in Windows look like modern web-based UI
| (so far that 'use Electron' seems to be the post-Win 8 answer
| to 'how to make Windows apps') in contrast to MacOS which
| drove my wife crazy with nag dialogs that look like a 1999
| refresh of what modal dialogs looked like on the classic Mac
| in 1984.
| alex_smart wrote:
| > symptomatic of some sort of Stockholm syndrome
|
| I have since moved to macbooks for the hardware, but until
| not too long ago WSL was my linux "distro" of choice because
| I didn't want to spend time configuring my computer to make
| basic things work like suspend/wake on lid down/up, battery
| life, hardware acceleration for video playback on the
| browser, display scaling on external monitor and so on.
| encom wrote:
| You need new reasons to hate Linux, because all those
| issues were solved a while ago.
| alex_smart wrote:
| I don't need new reasons to hate Linux. Like I said, I
| have moved to macbooks as my personal computing device
| because of the better hardware.
|
| > solved a while ago
|
| Can not be the case because I was facing these issues
| less than a couple of years ago.
|
| I was responding to the "Stockholm syndrome" comment
| specifically because there are a number of hardware and
| software problems (e.g.
| https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-
| thumbna...) with using linux as a desktop operating
| system that linux users have to find their way around, so
| I found the comment rather full of irony.
|
| PS: I already know that the file-picker issue has been
| fixed. That does not take away from the fact that it was
| in fact broken for decades. It is only meant as an
| example.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Can not be the case because I was facing these issues
| less than a couple of years ago
|
| Just like with Mac and Windows, you choose the supported
| hardware, and everything is flawless.
| frollogaston wrote:
| If there's some set of fully Linux-capable laptops out
| there, it's a small subset of the Windows-capable ones.
|
| And it's not clear what the Linux ones are. Like, our
| dept ordered officially Linux-supported Thinkpads for
| whoever wanted them, and turns out they still have
| unsolved Bluetooth audio problems. Those people use wired
| headphones now.
| alex_smart wrote:
| And what is supported hardware here? What even is
| "support"?
| frollogaston wrote:
| As far as I can tell, Chromebooks are the only truly
| supported GNU/Linux laptops.
| fsflover wrote:
| I'm writing this from Purism Librem 14, which works
| flawlessly, including suspend. There's also System76,
| Framework and more. See also:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964519.
| frollogaston wrote:
| There's no way, especially if you include Bluetooth in
| that list.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| There is a reason why 1) people whose main environment is
| Linux feel (correctly) that these problems have been
| solved a long time ago, and 2) people whose main
| environment is _not_ Linux but who try Linux occasionally
| feel (correctly) that these problems still occasionally
| crop up.
|
| People whose main environment is Linux intentionally buy
| hardware that works flawlessly with Linux.
|
| People who try Linux occasionally do it on whatever
| hardware they have, which still _almost always_ works
| with Linux, but there are occasional issues with sketchy
| Windows-only hardware or insufficiently tested firmware
| or flaky wifi cards, and that is enough for there to be
| valid anecdotes in any given comments section with
| several people saying they tried it and it isn 't
| perfect. Because "perfect" is a very high bar.
| okanat wrote:
| > people whose main environment is Linux feel (correctly)
| that these problems have been solved a long time ago
|
| There is also the quiet part to this. People who
| religiously use Linux and think that it is the best OS
| that can ever be, don't realize how many little
| optimizations go into a consumer OS. They use outdated
| hardware. They use the lower end models of the
| peripherals (people still recommend 96 DPI screens just
| for this). They use limited capabilities of that
| hardware. They don't rely on deeply interactive user
| interfaces.
| kgeist wrote:
| >People whose main environment is Linux intentionally buy
| hardware that works flawlessly with Linux.
|
| Hm, recently I bought a random "gamer PC" for the beefier
| GPU (mainly to experiment with local LLMs), installed
| Linux on it, and everything just worked out of the box. I
| remember having tons of problems back in 2009 when I
| first tried Ubuntu, though. I have dual boot, just today
| I ran a few benchmarks with Qwen3. On Windows, token
| generation is 15% slower. Whenever I have to boot into
| Windows (mainly to let the kid play Roblox), everything
| feels about 30% slower and clunkier.
|
| At work, we use Linux too - Dell laptops. The main
| irritating problem has been that on Linux, Dell's Dock
| Stations are often buggy with dual monitors (when
| switching, the screen will just freeze). The rest works
| flawlessly for me. It wasn't that long ago when my
| Windows (before I migrated to Linux) had BSODs every
| other day...
| dismalaf wrote:
| Who deals with this? All this is fine out of the box on a
| modern Linux distro.
| alex_smart wrote:
| That was certainly not the case ~2 years ago, the last
| time I installed linux on a laptop.
|
| It also doesn't appear to be the case even now. I
| searched for laptops available in my country that fit my
| budget and for each laptop searched "<laptop name> linux
| reddit" on google and filtered for results <1 year old.
| Each laptop's reports included some or other bug.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1hfqptw/l
| inu...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1esntt3/l
| eno...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1j3983j/h
| p_o...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1k1nsm8/a
| udi...
|
| The laptop with the best reported linux support seemed to
| be Thinkpad P14s but even there users reported tweaking
| some config to get fans to run silently and to make the
| speakers sound acceptable.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1c81rw4/thinkp
| ad_...
| dismalaf wrote:
| > linux
|
| Which Linux? Each distro is essentially a different
| operating system.
| alex_smart wrote:
| I thought you said everything should work seamlessly on
| any modern distro.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Not all distros that exist in the current year are
| "modern". Mint for example, still ships with X11 and old
| forks of Gnome. Lots of people are running Arch with
| weird components that don't work well for whatever
| reason. And so on...
|
| Modern means systemd, pipewire, Wayland, Gnome, an up to
| date kernel, etc... So the current Ubuntu and Fedora
| releases.
|
| I've had 100% working laptops for 15 years now. Because I
| always run the newest Ubuntu.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Afaict, all the reporters used the newest available
| Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch.
| dismalaf wrote:
| I read all the links, most of the problems weren't bugs
| (Fan runs loud? Fans run under Windows as well... Only
| modern suspend? Literally created for Windows...). From
| all those links the only thing that was a bug was an
| issue with a kernel regression and 4/5 distros he listed
| weren't one I listed.
|
| Maybe I was too positive on Fedora (I was going by it's
| reputation, I use Ubuntu for work). Ubuntu is solid.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Issues reported:
|
| Link 1: screen only updating every 2 seconds, visual
| glitches. Link 2: brightness reset to full on screen
| unlock, fans turning on when charging. Link 3: bluetooth
| troubles, speakers cant be muted if headphone jack is on
| mute. Link 4: audio quality and low volume, wifi not
| coming back after sleeping. Link 5: fans being too loud,
| poor sound quality.
|
| Either your Stockholm syndrome is affecting your reading
| comprehension or you just take bugs like these as part of
| the normal "working perfectly" linux experience.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Other than an up to date kernel, your list of what
| "modern" means is entirely wrong. The rest of the entries
| are polarizing freedesktop-isms. There's nothing out of
| date about, e.g., KDE Plasma.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I run Ubuntu and suspend is pretty much a nightmare to
| the point I just gave up pretending it exists. These are
| Dell computers sold with supposed Ubuntu support. Close
| the lid and put it in a backpack is inevitably an
| invitation for a hot laptop or empty battery when you
| pull it out a few hours later (for the record: Windows
| isn't any better at this in my experience so WSL never
| solved that problem either).
|
| Previous laptops (all ThinkPads) used to be able to get
| everything all to work (debian) but it did take effort
| and finding the correct resources. Unfortunately all the
| old documentation about this stuff is pre-systemd and UFI
| and it's not exactly straightforward anymore.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Google "Dell suspend issues". It's just their computers,
| it doesn't work any better on Windows. My wife has had 2
| Dell laptops now, neither suspended properly ever (and
| she only runs Windows). According to the internet, this
| is a Dell problem. One of her laptops also had the Wifi
| card break within 4 hours of use, brand new. But she
| likes the "design" and is stubborn.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Aren't these issues almost always kernel-related?
| okanat wrote:
| Nothing works out of the box with Linux. They may "seem"
| to work out of the box but you realize how many little
| tweaks go into making a laptop/consumer device work fully
| when you work as an embedded dev. It is quite difficult
| to get to the same power consumption levels and same
| exact hardware / software driver capabilities under
| Linux. There are simply no APIs for many things. So the
| entire driver has to live in userspace using some ioctls
| to write random stuff to memory or it cannot exist. There
| are also algorithms that the hardware manufacturer wants
| to keep closed.
|
| Note that NVIDIA drivers didn't get better since they are
| more open source now. They are not. GPUs are now entire
| independent computers with their own little operating
| system. Some significant parts of the driver now runs
| under that computer.
|
| Yes the manufacturers may allocate some people to deal
| with it and the corrosiveness of the kernel community.
| But why? Intel and AMD uses that as a marketing and sales
| stragtegy. If the hardware manufacturer is the best one
| there is, where is the profit for supporting Linux? Even
| Thinkpads don't have 100% support of all the little
| sensors and PMICs.
|
| HiDPI issue hasn't been solved yet completely. Bluetooth
| is still quite unreliable. MIPI support should be the
| best due to the number of devices, until you realize
| everybody did their own shitty external driver and there
| are no common good drivers for MIPI cameras so your
| webcam doesn't work. USB stack is still dodgy. Microsoft
| in 90s had a cart of random hardware populating the USB
| tree completely and they just fucked with the NT kernel
| plugging and unplugging until it didn't break anymore for
| love's sake. Who did that level of testing with Linux?
| frollogaston wrote:
| If for some reason I could never use a MacBook again, it
| wouldn't be easy to decide between Windows or Linux as the
| host OS on a laptop. Do I want something that's intentionally
| user-hostile or something that's unintentionally broken a
| lot?
|
| I'd at least _try_ Linux cause I abhor Microsoft, but idk if
| it 'd work out.
| CoolCold wrote:
| > Running a Linux VM on Windows is nicer than just booting
| into Linux
|
| Indeed, it does. Having stable system and not dealing with
| Linux on Desktop, clear tradoffs (like "just add another 16gb
| RAM stick in laptop/desktop and you are golden") is great for
| peace of mind.
|
| The average uptimes on my laptops (note for plural) is ~3
| weeks, until next Windows Update to be applied. I don't have
| nostalgia on the days of using Linux on desktop (~2003
| student times, ~2008 giving it one more try, ~2015 as
| required by dayjob)
|
| Of course it adds up that I can tell people around me (who
| are not tech guys often, but smart enough to know basic
| concepts and be able to run bash scripts provided to them) -
| "yep, machine with 32GB+ of RAM will work fine, choose any
| you like" - and it works.
| aeroevan wrote:
| I'm confused, in what world does running Linux require more
| RAM than Windows?
|
| The suspend/hibernate on laptops isn't that great, but tbh
| I never had great results on windows either (macos is
| decent though).
|
| And uptimes for desktop systems are similarly just limited
| by whenever there's a kernel update.
| connicpu wrote:
| I think it really depends on what you do and whether the Linux
| side of it has hard dependencies on system packages.
| Personally, at work I much prefer working directly on my Linux
| workstation, and at home have even switched to using Linux for
| my gaming desktop. I really don't like the direction Windows
| has been trending for the past few years, and with the specter
| of a forced Windows 11 upgrade on the horizon I decided it's
| time to go all in. My system runs better and I can still play
| all my games. The jankiest thing I do is I have a mingw
| toolchain so I can compile some game mods into Windows DLLs to
| be loaded by Wine, but even that ended up being pretty
| seamless. Just install the toolchain and the project just
| compiled.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Gnome (a linux desktop environment) ships a "Boxes" app [0]
| that is very impressive. You can, with a few clicks, install
| one of a huge number of Linux distros in an auto-provisioned
| VM, enable hardware passthrough for USB devices and host 3D
| acceleration, and manage files with drag-and-drop from the host
| system. I also use it for Windows and MacOS VMs (don't tell
| Apple), but you need to provide your own images.
|
| [0]: https://apps.gnome.org/Boxes/
| phkahler wrote:
| Most people have little use for running multiple OSes, and that
| drops a lot when you just abandon Windows entirely.
| asveikau wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember that before docker there was chroot.
| It's fairly easy to put lots of different user mode portions of
| Linux distros into directories and chroot into them from the
| same kernel. It seems a bit like what you're asking for.
|
| There's also _debootstrap_ which is useful for this technique,
| not sure if it also works on Ubuntu.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| debootstrap absolutely works in Ubuntu
| 725686 wrote:
| I used to love WSL when I had a Windows machine because I used
| lots of docker containers, but now that I am in a Mac with
| Apple Silicon, there is no going back.
| TZubiri wrote:
| The power of linux with the professionalism of paid MSFT
| engineers
| running101 wrote:
| I heart WSL. Years ago I was going to switch to MAC OS to have
| a more unix like experience/workflow. Then WSL came out and I
| stayed because Linux is the environment I spend most of my time
| in.
| 201984 wrote:
| WSL gives you no support for USB devices, which is a massive
| pain for embedded development when IT forces you to use
| Windows. Also, this might just be specific to my setup but WSL
| networking is very finicky with my company's VPN, and breaks
| completely if the VPN ever drops out requiring a full reboot.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| WSL2 can forward USB devices
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/connect-usb
|
| I regularly run ADB through WSL2 using this.
| 201984 wrote:
| That doesn't work for mass storage devices without a custom
| kernel, and that's just too much hassle to bother with.
|
| https://askubuntu.com/a/1533361
| cess11 wrote:
| Last time I used it they kept hogging some common keyboard
| shortcuts for whatever Windows stuff even though the VM-window
| was focused. Did they stop that?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I think WSL is great but if your only goal is to run several
| Linux OSes, any hypervisor will do. I think Proxmox is better
| suited to your use-case (hosted on Linux).
|
| I love WSL because it lets me have the best of Windows and
| Linux.
| jollyllama wrote:
| As of a couple of years ago the integration was not that great
| and I switched to just using a full-fledged VM instead. For
| example, trying to use binaries in WSL from within Visual
| Studio or vice versa was not great.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| It doesn't work on any of my 3 Windows machines, all completely
| different hardware. Jank factor 100% for me. I wish I was
| seeing what you're seeing.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| ELI5 does it allow me to run windows programs in Linux?
| frollogaston wrote:
| no
| rao-v wrote:
| I'm with you - after years of messing with dualboot Linux,
| including (foolishly) running multiday Gentoo builds, WSL +
| Windows now gives me _everything_ I want from Linux with zero
| friction.
|
| In fact, I'm a little annoyed that I can't get a comparably
| smooth experience on my MacBook without spinning up a full QEMU
| VM. I know it's a bit hypocritical since, like most people, I
| run WSL2 (which is container/VM-based), not WSL1 (the original
| magic syscall translation vision).
|
| Does anyone know why there's no lightweight solution on macOS -
| something like LXC plus a filesystem gadget - that would let me
| run stuff like "apt-get install chromium"?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| > WSL1 (the original magic syscall translation vision).
|
| Actually, the OG "magic syscall translation" is Cygwin[0],
| which dates back to 1995[1].
|
| [0] https://cygwin.com
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin
|
| Edit: Fixed prose.
| RKFADU_UOFCCLEL wrote:
| For me it was slow, full of compatibility issues, and glitchy.
| Some simple packages wouldn't even install in the official
| Ubuntu WSL distro. To be honest I don't know what the use case
| for this is, other than to run some one-off Linux thing once in
| a while without having to use another box.
| Firehawke wrote:
| How long ago did you try that?
|
| I use WSL2 to handle Linux (and Windows cross-) compilation
| regularly, along with running a number of native tools that
| are specific to Linux.
|
| I've never had any issues with that, even to the point that
| I've been able to run MAME natively from Linux and have it
| show up like any other windowed app.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| My only big gripe with WSL right now is GUI applications. wslg
| is not good, and the only good experience is when applications
| have a good remote development UX such as vscode.
|
| Another, smaller, gripe is networking. Because of how WSL is
| networked, I've run into edge-case issues with connecting to
| networked applications running in WSL from Windows.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Run a rootless X server (XWin, Xming) on Windows, network the
| two (SSH tunnel), you have GUI Linux apps on Windows.
| okanat wrote:
| You need to make sure that they use Wayland. Running X11 apps
| is significantly slower in wslg. Native Wayland apps run much
| faster.
| sigwinch wrote:
| Lack of all packet types disqualified it for me. Is there any
| hope for nmap, etc?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Using WSL on Win11. I would prefer Linux but I never got used
| to Open Office/Gimp/... and need to use PowerPoint / Affinity.
| But WSL mostly works, and added some tools and config to make
| it useful with WezTerm
|
| https://www.amazingcto.com/upgrading-wsl-with-zsh-and-comman...
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| I totally agree and will join you on the hill. I used Linux
| exclusively at my job for two years straight and now do the
| same job but from Windows 11 with WSL 2 on the same physical
| ThinkPad T41 laptop. Windows gets the basics right more than
| Linux did (sleep states, display, printing). And as the OP
| notes; it makes it easy to run multiple distributions and never
| fear that something I install or reconfigure within the WSL2
| terminal will screw up my host. Having a different OS improves
| isolation in this regard, not at a technical level but for me
| making mistakes and entering commands in the wrong place, since
| Windows does not accept Linux commands. JetBrains and VSCode
| both have great support for WSL2.
| daveguy wrote:
| WSL is massively slower than Linux. Not just the 10% or so for
| VM, but probably 50-90% slower for disk access. It takes many
| times longer to start tmux. It has update bugs that crash open
| terminals and that's not even part of the regular windows
| forced-update fiasco. In short, it's garbage. It's one of the
| primary reasons I moved back to Linux for my daily driver.
| t_mann wrote:
| Windows 10 with WSL(2) is/was peak Windows for me. You could
| build stuff and edit MS Office documents in the same place.
| Sadly, it wasn't meant to last. I have no intention of giving
| W11 a try, not yet decided what I'll be using come this fall.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Is it not the case that wsl2 is a vm; it requires hyperV
| enablement; and that turns your main windows OS into
| effectively a type of privileged vm, since hyperV is a type 1
| bare metal hypervisor?
|
| This is not often discussed, so it took me a lot of digging a
| couple of years ago, but I'm still surprised this is never
| discussed as a consequence / side effect / downside of wsl2.
| There are performance impacts to turning on hyper V, which may
| or may not be relevant to user (e.g. If this is also their
| gaming machine etc:)
| stephenr wrote:
| ... You know that you can run VMs, or full-OS containers on a
| Linux desktop right?
|
| Or on a macOS Desktop. Bonus: doing so on either platform
| doesn't also mean your _host_ OS is running under a hypervisor,
| as it does with WSL2.
|
| Bigger bonus: you don't have to run fucking Windows.
| adithyassekhar wrote:
| Windows by default runs on a hypervisor since some Windows 11
| version.
| p_ing wrote:
| > Bonus: doing so on either platform doesn't also mean your
| host OS is running under a hypervisor
|
| Why do you think, technologically, this is some form of
| "bonus"?
| ryao wrote:
| > Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux
| versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and
| another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I
| update my OS?"
|
| You can run multiple Linux distributions in chroots or
| containers, such as docker containers. I have showed people how
| to build packages for Ubuntu 22.04 on Ubuntu 20.04 for example.
| dismalaf wrote:
| This is what tools like toolbx or distrobox solve. You can
| have easy to use containers with libs from any distro with a
| few commands, using podman or docker as the backend.
| burnte wrote:
| I'll second you, WSL makes Windows a first class experience
| because now I can seamlessly have Linux and Windows apps in one
| laptop. Yes, I could run VMWare Workstation or HyperV, etc, but
| this is just better integrated.
| sneak wrote:
| It's a delight to use if you don't mind your computer
| conducting 24/7 surveillance on you for a multinational
| corporation.
| jraph wrote:
| > Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux
| versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and
| another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I
| update my OS?"
|
| For this part, I just create systemd-nspawn containers.
|
| Last time I wanted to test something in a very old version of
| WebKit, creating a Debian Jessie container takes a few minutes.
| Things run at native speed.
| sebtron wrote:
| I agree it is a convenient way to run multiple Linux VMs, but
| it comes with the drawback of having to use Windows, which is a
| major impediment to anything I may want to do with my computer.
| nhumrich wrote:
| WSL is so incredible. But support for it from 3rd party dev
| tools is so terrible.
| trollbridge wrote:
| I'll second this, and I'm someone who ran a certain alternative
| OS to Linux before Linux was viable instead of run Windows,
| worked as a developer of Win16 and Win32 apps early in my
| career which gave me a deep love-hate of the platform, couldn't
| stand Microsoft's monopoly tactics back in the 1990s and 2000s,
| and remain ever-sceptical of Microsoft's open source and Linux
| initiatives...
|
| ... but WSL is an excellent piece of work. It's really easy to
| deploy apps on. Frankly, it can be easier to a deployment there
| than on a Linux or macOS system, for example the reasons
| detailed above.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Forced to work on Windows for ++nth job, I was looking forward
| to WSL. Indeed, while it worked, it was magic. Sadly, I have
| had no end of bizarre bugs. The latest one almost crashed my
| whole desktop - as far as I can piece together, something
| crashed, leading to a core dump the size of my desktops entire
| memory - half the machine's RAM. This in turn put WSL in a
| weird state - it would neither run, not be uninstallable.
| Googling found bug reports with similar experiences, no
| responses from Microsoft and magic incantation that maybe
| worked for some people - but not for me.
|
| It might be due to my corpo's particular setup etc. but for me
| 95% of the value of WSL would be the ability to run it on
| "corporate" Windows boxes. Alas.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Perhaps "more powerful" is also a factor of who is the computer
| user. For example, Linux is not as "powerful" if the computer
| user is someone who knows little about how to use it.
|
| For a person who will not invest the time to learn, e.g., how
| to avoid or minimise dependencies, indeed something like
| Windows with WSL may appear "more powerful".
|
| The point of this comment is that "power" comes from learning
| and know-how as much as if not more than simply from choice of
| operating system. That said, some choices may ultimately spell
| the difference between limitations or possibilities.
| nickjj wrote:
| > It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop
| or laptop, with no configuration required.
|
| I have been using it since the beginning of WSL 1 with a very
| terminal heavy set up but it has some issues.
|
| For example WSLg's clipboard sharing is buggy compared to
| VcXsrv. It doesn't handle pasting into Linux apps without
| introducing Windows CRs. I opened an issue for this
| https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/1326 but it hasn't
| gotten a reply.
|
| Also, systemd is still pretty sketchy. It takes over 2 minutes
| for systemd services to start and if you close a WSL 2 terminal
| for just a few minutes systemd will delay a new terminal from
| opening for quite some time. This basically means disabling
| systemd to use WSL 2 in your day to day.
|
| Then there's this 6 year old issue with 1,000+ upvotes
| https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4699 around WSL not
| reclaiming disk space. It means you need to routinely shut
| everything down and compress your VM's disk or you'll run out
| of space.
|
| Beyond that is does work well so I'm happy it exists.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| _Also, systemd is still pretty sketchy. It takes over 2
| minutes for systemd services to start and if you close a WSL
| 2 terminal for just a few minutes systemd will delay a new
| terminal from opening for quite some time. This basically
| means disabling systemd to use WSL 2 in your day to day._
|
| That doesn't sound good. I was planning to set up a
| Windows/WSL2 box, but this gives me second thoughts. Where
| can I read more about this?
| nickjj wrote:
| It's still ok even without systemd. Technically systemd is
| disabled by default, you have to turn it on with
| systemd=true in /etc/wsl.conf.
|
| I can't find a definitive source with an open ticket but if
| you Google around for "WSL 2 systemd delay startup" you'll
| find assorted folks talking it about with a number of
| different reasons.
|
| I just went by my end results of there is a delay with
| systemd enabled and no delay with it disabled.
| CoolCold wrote:
| never had problems of systemd/2 minutes delays
|
| not sure what would be the correct test here, but:
|
| root@LP-T16:~# uname -rn
|
| LP-T16 5.15.167.4-microsoft-standard-WSL2
|
| root@LP-T16:~# time systemctl restart ssh
|
| real 0m0.039s
|
| user 0m0.008s
|
| sys 0m0.001s
| nickjj wrote:
| The delay is related to starting WSL 2, not starting a
| systemd service btw.
|
| Maybe it's specific to Windows 10 Pro, who knows. I'm using
| the latest WSL 2 from the MS app store.
|
| I just know when I installed Docker directly into WSL 2,
| when I launched a terminal I could not run `docker info`
| and connect to the Docker daemon for 2 minutes. The culprit
| was the Docker service was not available. I was able to
| reproduce this on Arch and Ubuntu distros.
|
| Separate to that systemd also delayed a terminal from
| opening for ~15 seconds (unrelated to Docker).
|
| After ~10 minutes of the terminal being closed, both issues
| happened. They went away as soon as I disabled systemd.
| runjake wrote:
| _> WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to
| run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously._
|
| I'd venture to say this depends on which OS you're more
| comfortable with. I'm more comfortable with Linux, so I'd say
| it's easier/better/less janky to use Linux as a host OS.
|
| _> Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and
| another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don 't have to stress "do
| I update my OS?"_
|
| Once you're a developer who's been burned by this enough times,
| you do this with containers or dedicated dev VMs. You do not
| develop on your host OS and stay sane.
| have-a-break wrote:
| The development experience is relatively cumbersome compared to
| using a native Linux distribution and containerizing
| application dependencies where needed.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Look I get it. I'm forced to use Windows at work and I thank
| the lord WSL is a thing. But I would switch to Linux base in a
| heartbeat if I could. WSL is jank as fuck compared to just
| using Linux.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I use WSL, but I'm actively looking for a way to move away from
| it. The only thing holding me back are languages like Ruby or
| Python, which are designed to work in a Unix-like environment.
| I briefly considered forking Ruby and stripping out all of the
| Unix-isms but in the end I gave up and just installed Linux
| (WSL).
| fluidcruft wrote:
| docker is pretty easy to use on linux (even rootless docker
| isn't particularly painful) and KVM using QEMU is also pretty
| easy for running Windows things. I used WSL quite a bit but
| ultimately have switched back to running Ubuntu as my main.
|
| Here's the main difference between making Windows vs Linux the
| main OS from my POV: Windows is a lot of work and only the
| corporate editions can be converted into not-a-hot-mess-of-
| distractions (supposedly). Out of the box Linux doesn't have
| all of the bullshit that you have to spend time ripping out of
| Windows. You can easily re-install Linux to get the "powerwash"
| effect. But if you powerwash Windows you have to go back and
| undo all the default bullshit again.
|
| Having said that Windows+WSL is a very nice lifeline if you're
| stuck in Windows-land. It's a much better combo than MacOS.
| Gud wrote:
| Can do the same with FreeBSDs Linuxulator. I run Arch Linux on
| FreeBSD, emulated.
| moshegramovsky wrote:
| I'm a daily driver. It completely changed the way I work. Am I
| curious if something will compile? Open a terminal and type
| make. The files are all already there. You can even run
| graphics apps. It's wonderful.
| jm4 wrote:
| WSL is great if you're on Windows, but I wouldn't say it's more
| powerful than Linux. Distrobox on Linux covers your "multiple
| OS" use case quite well.
| rlpb wrote:
| > Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and another
| is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I update
| my OS?"
|
| Have you tried lxd? It's far less janky than Docker (IMHO) to
| achieve what you describe. Docker is uniquely unsuited to your
| use case.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| You're right, it is incredibly nice. Just the other day I got a
| Windows-only developer to install and use the POSIX/*NIX
| toolkit we use for development/deployment. In 30 minutes he was
| editing and deploying left and right with our normal open
| source stack. No messing around with Cygwin or MSYS or
| anything, it all just worked in Ubuntu on WSL. It's fantastic.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| I agree with your opinion on WSL. I psy a similar "tax" when I
| defend ChromeOS, and I will not stop it, like you won't.
|
| The Linux on Desktop is finally approaching, in more than one
| "shape", none of which is the shape some people
| expected/wanted.
| d--b wrote:
| Well I guess now you just need to add WSL support to wine.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > WSL is more powerful than Linux
|
| This is the kind of statement that makes you pay the karma tax.
| WSL is great, I use it on a day to day basis. I also use Linux
| on a day to day basis. And as great as WSL is, for running
| Linux software on supported hardware, Linux beats WSL hands
| down. And I mean, of course it does, do you expect a VM to beat
| native? In the same way that Windows software runs better on
| Windows. (with a few exceptions on both sides).
|
| Compared to Linux, WSL I/O is slow, graphics is slow and a bit
| janky, I sometimes get crashes, memory management is
| suboptimal, networking has some quirks, etc... These problems
| are typical of VMs as it is hard for the host and guest OS to
| coordinate resource use. If you have an overpowered computer
| with plenty of RAM, and are mostly just using the command line,
| and don't do anything unusual with your network, then sure it
| may be "better" than Linux. But the truth is that it really
| depends on your situation.
| incoming1211 wrote:
| > WSL I/O is slow
|
| I don't believe you use WSL at all.
| Conscat wrote:
| I'm sure that feature is important for whatever works you're
| doing, but that's a feature I've _never_ desired, and WSL is
| missing plenty of features that are important for my work.
|
| Hardware performance counters basically do not work in WSL2,
| which among other issues, makes it extremely difficult to use
| rr. https://github.com/rr-
| debugger/rr/issues/2506#issuecomment-2... Some people say they
| got it working, but I and many other users encounter esoteric
| blockers.
|
| The Dozen driver is never at feature parity with native Linux
| Vulkan drivers, and that's always going to be the case.
|
| By default, WSL security mitigations cause GCC trampolines to
| just not work, which partly motivated the opt-in alternative
| implementations of trampolines last year.
| https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commit;h=28d8c680aaea46...
|
| gWSL is also a terrible X11 server that makes many very basic
| window management configurations impossible, and while I prefer
| VcXsrv, it has its own different terrible issues.
|
| I can imagine that WSL2 looks attractive if all you want to do
| is run command line apps in multiple isolated environments, but
| it is miserable for anything graphical or interactive.
| CoolCold wrote:
| > I can imagine that WSL2 looks attractive if all you want to
| do is run command line apps in multiple isolated
| environments, but it is miserable for anything graphical or
| interactive.
|
| Indeed, that's my case - using CLI mostly for
| ssh/curls/ansible/vim over ansible and Puppet, so on.
|
| For GUI part, Windows is chosen and shines for me.
| LeFantome wrote:
| If you want to "run multiple versions of Linux at once" and
| don't like plain Docker, maybe check-out Podman Desktop.
| echelon wrote:
| > Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax
|
| Hmm...
|
| > WSL is more powerful than Linux
|
| Oh.
| palata wrote:
| > WSL is more powerful than Linux ...
|
| Are you a Windows user who is happy to have a good way to run
| Linux on Windows, or are you a Linux user trying to convince
| other Linux user that instead of using Linux, they should use
| Linux in a VM running on Windows?
|
| I am a longtime Linux user, and I can't see a reason in the
| universe why I would want to access my Linux through a VM on
| Windows. That seems absolutely insane.
| steeeeeve wrote:
| I won't downvote you, but I will die on the other hill - the
| one over there that has a guy sitting down with his arms folded
| sporting an angry face every time someone something positive
| about WSL. There's at least three of us on that hill. And we're
| not going anywhere.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| I tried it and found it to be such an abomination. I can't
| understand why any self respecting software developer would use
| Windows with a bastard linux like WSL instead of just using
| actual Linux. Feels like a massive skill issue.
| harha_ wrote:
| You can run multiple linux distros on linux just fine via
| KVM/QEMU, there is nothing special WSL offers except that it is
| a must if you're doomed to use windows.
| dark-star wrote:
| For WSL 1, I kinda agree. It was basically the Posix Subsystem
| re-implemented and improved. Technically amazing, and running
| parallel to Windows without virtualization. Too bad it had so
| many performance issues.
|
| But WSL2 is just a VM, no more, no less. You can do the same
| with VMware Workstation or similar tools, where you even get a
| nice accelerated virtual GPU.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This would be a great point if WSL didn't require running
| Windows
| selfhoster wrote:
| > WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to
| run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously.
|
| I do that with KVM too, and each has their own kernel, not one
| shared kernel made and controlled by one vendor.
| protocolture wrote:
| I still have issues with the networking but I agree. Its a
| fantastic system and it shits me only that it could be a bit
| better.
| behnamoh wrote:
| meanwhile Apple won't even make it easy to boot Asahi Linux on
| Apple Silicon.
| tgma wrote:
| Apple has gone out of their way to build first party
| virtualization APIs in their OS to boot a Linux VM directly by
| specifying kernel and initrd on disk. That would be a direct
| point of comparison to WSL, not Asahi. What are you talking
| about?
|
| [1]:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzl...
|
| P.S. They also specifically built Rosetta for Linux to compile
| x64 Linux binaries into aarch64 to run inside Linux VMs on
| their machines.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I don't know about any of that, just that as a user, I cannot
| run Linux on my Mac easily.
| tgma wrote:
| You can't? Just install UTM for a full VM one-click install
| (easier than wsl /install and two reboots) or any number of
| docker thingies that people build for the Mac.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Hm, never heard of that one but I'll try it.
| tgma wrote:
| https://mac.getutm.app/
| bigyabai wrote:
| Let's be honest, nobody earnestly expected them to care about
| running native Linux in the first place. You knew what you got
| into when you bought the Mac.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Apple might not be releasing documentation on their
| peripherals, but they went out of their way in making it
| possible in the first place.
|
| Apple could just have gone and do a straight port of the iOS
| boot procedure to their ARM Mac lineup... and we'd have been
| thoroughly screwed, given how long ago the latest untethered
| bootrom exploit was.
|
| Or they could have pulled a Qualcomm, Samsung et al and just
| randomly change implementation details between each revision to
| make life for alt-os implementers hell (which is why so many
| Android BSP dumps are the way they are, with _zero_ hope of
| ever getting anything upstream). Instead, to the best of my
| knowledge the UART on the M series SoCs dates back right to the
| very first iPod.
|
| The fact that the Asahi Linux people were able to create a GPU
| driver that surpasses Apple's own in conformance tests [1],
| _despite not having any kind of documentation at all_ is
| telling enough - and not just of the pure genius of everyone
| involved.
|
| [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/08/22/linux-for-
| apple-s...
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Macs are almost universally seen as developer computers. If
| you are going to be developer friendly, then you need to do
| things that are developer friendly. Asahi project is 80%
| reverse engineering stuff.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Buying Apple hardware with the intent on running anything but
| what Apple wants you to run is setting yourself up for a
| battle, including trying to use non-Apple hardware with the
| hardware you purchased. It's why I'm not spending any personal
| money on Apple hardware.
|
| Could've been worse. At least they're not locking you out of
| your device like on iPhones and iPads. They don't stop you from
| running Asahi, they just aren't interested in helping anyone
| run Asahi.
|
| Microsoft, on the other hand, sells laptops that actively
| prevent you from running Linux on them. Things get a little
| blurry once you hit the tablet form factor (Surface devices run
| on amd64, but are they really that different from an iPad?)
| where both companies suck equally, though Microsoft also sells
| tablets that will run Linux once someone bothers to write
| drivers for them.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Obligatory: "Challenge accepted!"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOi_iPNC50
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Apple's opinion is probably that if you want to run a *NIX-like
| OS on their hardware, you should use MacOS.
|
| Which is... not necessarily wrong.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Eh, I have a Mac but end up SSHing into some Linux machine
| pretty often. There are too many differences between the two
| unless I'm using something like Python or JS. Docker helps
| too, but that's Linux.
|
| Also, it's really annoying that macOS switched to zsh. It's
| not a drop-in for bash. Yeah you can change it back to bash,
| but then any Mac-specific help/docs assume zsh because
| defaults matter. Pretty fundamental thing to have issues
| with.
| trollied wrote:
| What? Apple made changes to actually help them.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578
| int_19h wrote:
| On the macOS side, https://github.com/lima-vm/lima is the
| closest equivalent to WSL.
|
| Parallels also has a commercial offering that does some nice
| GUI-level integration with both Windows and Linux VMs.
|
| My understanding is that these are both built on top of some
| Apple API, and Parallels actually collaborates with Apple on
| making it work for their use case. So it's not the first-class
| support that you get from Microsoft with WSL, but it's still
| pretty good.
| rfoo wrote:
| Nah, the closest thing to WSL on macOS is OrbStack.
|
| Exactly same experience to WSL - great out of the box
| experience, easy to use, and insist on using their own
| patched kernel.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| It's easier to dual boot Asahi than Windows. Secure boot and
| disk partitioning are two examples of roadblocks that are
| streamlined in the Asahi installation, but quite difficult on
| Windows
| singularity2001 wrote:
| couldn't they have saved millions of dollars if they open sourced
| it earlier?
| pasc1878 wrote:
| No. To get something substantial to work you need to have some
| (if not most) development work done by people who are being
| paid.
|
| In this case who except Microsoft would have paid for
| development here.
| jleyank wrote:
| Check the license and its details. This might be great, or it
| might be MS looking to get free help. Especially with dev
| layoffs.
| wging wrote:
| MIT: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE
| jleyank wrote:
| IANAL, but how is this license different from, say, the older
| BSD license - thought that was "have fun, do what you want,
| post a notice"? It doesn't say anything regarding ownership
| of changes, nor how to add copyright for such changes... Does
| this mean that MS is looking to own changes, or will there be
| a string of extra copyright notices for each (significant?)
| change?
| jcranmer wrote:
| The MIT license scrunches the first two clauses of the
| 3-clause BSD license into a single clause, and omits the
| third clause (the nonendorsement clause, which is already
| generally implied). As a practical matter, most of the
| basic "simple" open source licenses are functionally
| identical.
| jleyank wrote:
| But who owns the copyright to changes, and how is it
| recorded? I just am suspicious as to what or how large
| companies who sell/rent software deal with open-source,
| free stuff...
| wging wrote:
| You can answer those questions for yourself, it's all in
| the repo.
| jcranmer wrote:
| That's not covered by the license; that's covered by the
| CLA (Contributor License Agreement), and in the absence
| of one (I don't know if there is one or not for this
| repository), the author retains copyright to their code
| as usual.
| mrpippy wrote:
| Note that this doesn't include lxcore.sys, the kernel side driver
| that powers WSL 1.
|
| (Also, I'm surprised that WSL 1 is still supported. It must be in
| maintenance mode though, right?)
| charcircuit wrote:
| No, both are still fully supported despite what the numbering
| may suggest.
| boxfire wrote:
| That's the only part I care about dang. I still use WSL1 and
| have done a number of interesting hacks to cross the ABI and
| tunnel windows into "Linux" userspace and I'd like to make that
| easier/more direct
| ryanhecht wrote:
| Maybe someone will finally build my dream: a WSL distro that I
| can also dual-boot natively. I'd love to switch between bare-
| metal Windows with WSL and bare-metal Linux with virtualized
| Windows at my leisure!
| maccard wrote:
| Parallels on Mac did this in reverse a decade ago. You could
| dual boot windows and MacOS, or you could boot into your
| windows OS while running MacOS and access both file systems
| properly.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| Ok but MacOS is the worst of the 3 worlds. It can't run Linux
| or Windows apps
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Not true, 86box while slow on new apple ARM silicon can
| boot windows XP, and QEMU on Intel silicon will allow you
| to boot all thee OS at once.
|
| MacOS has a lot of issues (mostly by Apple recent policy
| changes), but posix systems are more alike than different.
| =3
|
| https://github.com/Moonif/MacBox
|
| https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases/tag/v4.2.1
| mikojan wrote:
| When you use WSL2, Windows itself is running virtualized on
| Hyper-V.
| micw wrote:
| At least with VirtualBox and VMWare it is possible (not
| actually WSL but still).
| Matl wrote:
| OT but the name irks me; Windows subsystem for Linux makes it
| sound like some sort of official Wine layer. It's a Linux
| subsystem for Windows if anything.
|
| It makes it sound like Microsoft is giving some capability to
| Linux whereas it's the other way around.
| rsynnott wrote:
| There's history here; there was an old thing called Windows
| Subsystem for Unix. Again, not what you'd expect from the name.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It's a "Windows subsystem" for running Linux, but yeah the
| naming is pretty confusing.
| avestura wrote:
| Microsoft can't name a project leading with a trademark (Linux
| <something>), hence why it's called WSL.
|
| Source:
| https://x.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19
| philshem wrote:
| If you want to see the thread
|
| https://xcancel.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s.
| ..
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Very interesting comment there:
|
| " I still hope to see a true "Windows Subsystem for Linux"
| by Microsoft or a windows becoming a linux distribution
| itself and dropping the NT kernel to legacy. Windows is
| currently overloaded with features and does lack a package
| manager to only get what you need..."
| okanat wrote:
| NT is a better consumer kernel that Linux. It can survive
| many driver crashes that Linux cannot. Why should
| Microsoft drop a better kernel for a worse one?
| ashirviskas wrote:
| Can you expand on this? I've used Windows 10 for 2-3
| years when it came out and I remember BSODs being hell.
|
| Now I only experienced something close to that when I set
| up multiseat on single PC with AMD and Nvidia GPUs and
| one of them decided to fall asleep. Or when I undervolt
| GPU too much.
| okanat wrote:
| Of course that depends on the component and the access
| level. RAM chip broken? Tough luck. A deep kernel driver
| accessing random memory like CrowdStrike; you'll still
| crash. One needs an almost microkernel-like separation
| for preventing such issues.
|
| However, there are certain APIs like WDDM timeout
| detection and recovery: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows-hardware/drivers/d... . It is like a watchdog
| that'll restart the driver without BSOD'ing. You'll get a
| crash dump out of it too.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| GNU/Linux Subsystem for Windows
| whoopdedo wrote:
| IBM marketed "OS/2 for Windows" which made it sound like a
| compatibility layer to make Windows behave like OS/2. In
| truth it was the OS/2 operating system with drivers and
| conversion tools that made it easier for people who were used
| to Windows.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Untrue. OS/2 for windows leveraged the user's existing copy
| of windows for os/2's compatibility function instead of
| relying on a bundled copy of windows, like the "full" Os/2
| version.
|
| Os/2 basically ran a copy of windows (either the existing
| one or bundled one) to then execute windows programs side
| by side with os/2 (and DOS) software.
| ryao wrote:
| It was previously called the Windows Subsystem for Android
| before it pivoted. It had a spiritual predecessor called
| Windows Services for UNIX. I doubt the name had been chosen
| for the reasons you say, considering the history.
|
| That said, to address the grandparent comment's point, it
| probably should be read as "Windows Subsystem for Linux
| (Applications)".
| avestura wrote:
| >for the reasons you say
|
| That's not what I say, that's what the former PM Lead of
| WSL said. To be fair, Windows Services for UNIX was just
| Unix services for Windows. Probably the same logic applied
| there back then: they couldn't name it with a leading
| trademark (Unix), so they went with what was available.
| einpoklum wrote:
| They should not presume to trademark something called a
| "Linux subsystem for Windows".
| zamadatix wrote:
| Windows' Subsystem for Linux :p.
| abhisek wrote:
| Not sure about the impact of WSL because personally did not use
| it but I do know couple of friends who stopped spinning up Kali
| VM because of WSL.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I've been using WSL on and off for Linux development for the last
| few years.
|
| When it works, it's great! When it doesn't....oh man it sucks. It
| has been non-stop networking and VPN problems, XServer issues,
| window scaling issues, hardware accelerated graphics not working,
| etc. this whole time. I've spent more time trying to fix WSL
| issues then actually developing software. It's never gotten
| better.
|
| It's fast. It's powerful. But using it as a daily driver is very
| painful in my experience. I avoid it as much as possible and do
| most of my work in MSYS2 instead. Sure, it's much slower. But at
| least it _works_ consistently and has for years.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I think I'm still on a beta version because I'm afraid to
| update it and breaking all the stuff I have working.
| burnte wrote:
| The beta version actually updates more often than the release
| group. I use the beta so I get the updates sooner. It's been
| rock stable for me for YEARS.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Killer.
|
| Now do NT.
| p_ing wrote:
| Too much 3rd party code in Windows to make that feasible.
| hugo1789 wrote:
| Nice but where is the code? Is it just very, very incomplete or a
| joke?
| liendolucas wrote:
| I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual
| machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to
| use Linux, do the proper switch once and for all. You will never
| look back. I haven't in almost 15 years.
|
| Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I
| would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine.
|
| Edit: _more_ than 15 years.
| Animats wrote:
| That's sort of what Wine does. That's how I run the occasional
| Windows program on Linux.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The big difference is hardware access.
|
| I used to do VFIO with hardware passthrough so I could have
| linux but still run windows software like CAD that takes
| advantage of the gfx card. That was a pain to set up and use.
|
| The other way, its very simple. WSL2 can run ML tasks with just
| a tiny bit of overhead in moving the data to the card.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| That works pretty well except for gaming. A lot of games detect
| if they are running in a VM and refuse to let you play, as an
| anti-cheat measure.
| ghotli wrote:
| Counterpoint: things like the Valve Index for VR simply don't
| behave well in this environment no matter how much I've worked
| on getting it there.
|
| I'm not a novice either, $dayjob has me working on the lowest
| levels of Linux on a daily basis. I did linux from scratch on a
| Pentium 2 when I was 12. All that to say yes I happen to agree
| but edge cases are out there. The blanket statement doesn't
| apply for all use cases
| int_19h wrote:
| If you're in a corporate environment, you often don't have a
| choice wrt Windows as your primary desktop OS.
| kobalsky wrote:
| Running Windows from a ZFS partition with its own dedicated
| GPU, viewed through looking-glass on the Linux host at
| 1440p@120Hz, has been super useful.
|
| I set it up originally for gaming, but nowaways I install a lot
| of disposable software there.
|
| I use Linux guests VMs too (a la Qubes), but sadly there's no
| guest support for looking-glass on Linux. Native rendering
| speeds on VMs are something hard to let go.
| arcastroe wrote:
| I've considered it, but there are two Windows features I need
| that sound like they'd require some time investment to set up
| correctly on linux.
|
| 1. I use UWF on windows (Education Edition). All disk writes to
| C:/ are ephemeral. On every single reboot, all changes are
| discarded and my pc is back to the exact same state as when I
| first set it up. I do keep a separate partition for documents
| that need persistence.
|
| 2. Miracast for screen mirroring.
| nxobject wrote:
| I always have Windows on Parallels on a Mac, too -
| unfortunately VirtualBox for arm64 Mac isn't quite there yet.
| stephenr wrote:
| It is slowly improving (albeit with some egregious bugs, like
| losing EFI data on export) but TBH even their x86 product
| pales in comparison to Parallels or VMWare Fusion, in terms
| of machine performance.
| RKFADU_UOFCCLEL wrote:
| That's how I do it. I don't see the draw for Windows as the
| main OS, especially with Windows 10+ being dumbed down beyond
| belief and having seconds of lag to do anything at all. Seems
| even from this thread that people just want the convenience of
| a gaming rig in the same box as their work (which is a security
| issue because games are full of remote code execution
| vulnerabilities).
| password4321 wrote:
| Related: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-
| windows-... (edit: not https://developer.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/downloads/virt...)
|
| > _We currently package our virtual machines for four different
| virtualization software options: Hyper-V (Gen2), Parallels,
| VirtualBox, and VMware. These virtual machines contain an
| evaluation version of Windows that expires on the date posted.
| If the evaluation period expires, the desktop background will
| turn black, you will see a persistent desktop notification
| indicating that the system is not genuine, and the PC will shut
| down every hour._
|
| Edit: Oops, dead link -- the dev tools evaluation VM hasn't
| been released for 6+ months. But they do offer Windows
| evaluations ISO's after registration.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| Except that if you require anything that is GPU-related (like
| gaming, Adobe suite apps, etc) you'll need to have a secondary
| GPU to passthrough it to the VM, which is not something that
| everyone has.
|
| So, if you don't have a secondary GPU, you'll need to live
| without graphics acceleration in the VM... so for a lot of
| people the "oh you just need to use a VM!" solution is not
| feasible, because most of the software that people want to use
| that does not run under WINE do require graphics acceleration.
|
| I tried running Photoshop under a VM, but the performance of
| the QEMU QXL driver is bad, and VirGL does not support Windows
| guests yet.
|
| VMWare and VirtualBox do have better graphics drivers that do
| support Windows. I tried using VMWare and the performance was
| "ok", but still not near the performance of Photoshop on "bare
| metal".
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Quite a lot of people have both integrated Intel graphics and
| a discrete AMD/NVidia card.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| Sadly I'm not one of those people because I have a desktop
| with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which does not have an
| integrated graphics card.
|
| However now that AMD is including integrated GPUs on every
| AM5 consumer CPU (if I'm not mistaken?), maybe VMs with
| passthrough will be more common, without requiring people
| to spend a lot of money buying a secondary GPU.
| hermitShell wrote:
| I don't know why there aren't full fledged computers in a GPU
| sized package. Just run windows on your GPU, Linux on your
| main cpu. There's some challenges to overcome but I think it
| would be nice to be able to extend your arm PC with an x86
| expansion, or extend your x86 PC with an ARM extension. Ditto
| for graphics, or other hardware accelerators
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There are computers that size, but I guess you mean with a
| male PCIe plug on them?
|
| If the card is running its own OS, what's the benefit of
| combining them that way? A high speed networking link will
| get you similar results and is flexible and cheap.
|
| If the card isn't running its own OS, it's much easier to
| put all the CPU cores in the same socket. And the demand
| for both x86 and Arm cores at the same time is not very
| high.
| hermitShell wrote:
| Yes, with pci-e fingers on the 'motherboard' of the
| daughter computer. Like a pci-e carrier for the RPI
| compute.
|
| Good point about high speed networking. I guess that's a
| lot more straightforward.
| frollogaston wrote:
| People throw around the ideas of VMs or WINE like it's
| trivial. It's really not.
| sureglymop wrote:
| On linux it's quite trivial. KVM is part of the kernel.
| Installing libvirt and virt-manager makes it really easy to
| create vms.
|
| I'd say even passing through a GPU is not that hard these
| days though maybe that depends on hardware configuration
| more.
| vvpan wrote:
| Tried doing 3d modeling in a Windows VM - couldn't get
| acceleration to pass through.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| There is ongoing work on supporting paravirtualized GPUs with
| Windows drivers. This is not hardware-based GPU
| virtualization, and it supports Vulkan in the host and guest
| not just OpenGL; the host-based side is already supported
| within QEMU.
| leni536 wrote:
| Anything GPU related isn't great in WSL either.
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| True, but I don't have the need to run applications that
| require GPU under WSL, while I do need to run applications
| that require the GPU under my current host OS.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I'm hoping that IOMMU capability will be included in consumer
| graphics cards soon, which would help with this iirc there
| are rumors of upcoming Intel and AMD cards including it
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual
| machine from Linux.
|
| Every Windows thread on HN is a reminder of the stark divide
| between people who need to use Windows for productivity apps
| and those who don't.
|
| The apps I need a Windows machine for are not the kind that
| virtualize nicely. Anything GPU related means Windows has to
| become the base OS for me.
|
| If you're running an occasional light tool you can get away
| with Windows in a VM, but it's a no-go for things like CAD or
| games.
| zargon wrote:
| I prefer to just have two (or three) GPUs than have Windows
| as the base OS.
| luyu_wu wrote:
| If you can GPU passthrough (it's quite simple to set up),
| this is not a large issue. You're right that Linux is sorely
| lacking in native creative software though!
| einpoklum wrote:
| > who need to use Windows for productivity apps and those who
| don't.
|
| LibreOffice has gotten quite good over the years, including
| decent(ish) MSO file format interoperability, and Thunderbird
| seems to support Exchange Server.
|
| So, I suppose things like MS Project or MS Visio many not
| have decent counterparts (maybe, I don't really know), but
| otherwise, it seems like you don't need-need to use Windows
| for productivity apps.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Last I looked, Thunderbird used Exchange Web Services to
| connect to Office365 which Microsoft is getting rid of: htt
| ps://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/retirement..
| . (I point out Office365 since vast majority of "Exchange"
| users are on 365)
|
| It also only support email and not calendaring/contacts.
|
| That being said, Office365 Web Client is pretty good at
| this point and someone who doesn't live in Office all day
| can probably get along fine with it.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Windows in a vm with a passed through GPU is really nice.
| Although still pretty niche these days it's easier than it
| used to be. It also works with a single GPU, e.g. on a
| laptop.
|
| I personally have a desktop PC with an AMD GPU and then
| another Nvidia GPU that I pass through to windows hosts. I
| have a hook that changes the display output and switches the
| inputs using evdev.
| rfoo wrote:
| Okay. Then you had a Mac. Then you need to run Linux in a VM
| anyway because similar to Windows, macOS is also a dumpster
| fire. Then why bother? You are going to have a Linux VM anyway.
| I usually just sync my VM disk between all my laptops &
| desktops, no matter what host OS it runs.
| KZerda wrote:
| I used Linux as my daily driver for years, before finally
| switching back to Windows, and then to the Mac. I got tired of
| things like wine breaking on apps, I got tired of the half-
| assed replacements for software available on Windows, like GIMP
| compared to Photoshop. I got tired of the ugly desktop that
| inevitably occurs once you start needing to mix QT and GTK
| based apps. Linux is not a panacea.
| mosfets wrote:
| WSL is the main reason I switched from Mac/Linux to Windows two
| years ago. Excited to see this move!
| misano wrote:
| so they gotch you
| blindstitch wrote:
| I would love if the bug(s) with working on the windows filesystem
| from within wsl could now be fixed.
| https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/discussions/9412#discussion...
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| Microsoft too.
| Animats wrote:
| Does this mean Microsoft is abandoning it as end of life? It's
| hard to tell intent here.
| crawsome wrote:
| M$ contributing to open source is great, but I switch to Linux
| because I don't trust Windows, the OS. Not because of
| accessibility.
| jjcm wrote:
| When WSL came out I was absolutely overjoyed - finally an actual
| linux shell on windows! I use windows for my gaming pc, and I
| wanted to have a unified gaming/dev box. It felt like the
| solution.
|
| Over time though more and more small issues with it came up.
| Packages working not quite right, issues with the barriers
| between the two, etc. It always felt like there was a little bit
| more friction with the process.
|
| With Valve really pushing Proton and the state of linux gaming,
| I've recently swapped over to Ubuntu and Nixos. The friction
| point moved to the gaming side, but things mostly just work.
|
| Things on linux are rapidly getting better, and having things
| just work on the development side has been a breath of fresh air.
| I now feel that it's a better experience than windows w/ WSL,
| despite some AAA titles not working on linux.
| nickserv wrote:
| Just curious, which games gave you problems?
| jjcm wrote:
| Overwatch is the big one - lots of random issues with it. But
| basically any game with Denuvo DRM is extremely high risk,
| resulting in either a ban or the game not running at all.
| zamalek wrote:
| Denuvo counts each proton version as a unique activation,
| might help you avoid this issue going forward
| foresto wrote:
| Can you remember any particular problems in Overwatch? I've
| been down that road, so there's a chance I might have some
| info that you would find useful.
|
| One problem that was unsolved last time I checked: Saving
| highlight videos. It used to work if you told Overwatch to
| use webm format instead of mp4, but Blizzard broke that
| somewhere along the line, possibly in the transition to
| Overwatch 2. (I worked around this with OBS Studio and its
| replay buffer feature.)
| zamadatix wrote:
| Unfortunately many of the more popular multiplayer games with
| anti-cheat tend to consider "made working on Linux" a bug
| rather than a feature. E.g. Easy Anti-Cheat and Unreal Engine
| both support Linux natively but Epic still doesn't want to
| allow it for their own game, Fortnite.
| https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1490565925648715781
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Really hope valve's server side anti-cheat will be a
| success and more competitive games will move over to that.
| delduca wrote:
| For me, Red Dead Redemption 1 via Proton does not work on
| Pop_OS + NVIDIA.
| npteljes wrote:
| For the curious, the protondb front page gives a pretty good
| overview of the state of Linux gaming:
|
| https://www.protondb.com/
|
| Scrolling to Medals, 50% of all 25.000+ games tracked by the
| site are playable, either working perfectly or mostly
| (Platinum or Gold ratings). Another 20% can be alright under
| specific circumstances, and with compromises (Silver rating).
| frollogaston wrote:
| AoE2:DE has a gold rating, but multiplayer doesn't work at
| all, and it's not even due to anticheat.
| npteljes wrote:
| Yeah there's a lot of random issues with the different
| games. In case user experience is the main goal, I always
| recommend going with the main supported ways, which in
| this case would be Windows 11. I personally try things
| first on my Linux, but I always keep a backup Windows
| just in case.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Escape from Tarkov and GTA V (online).
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| i think everyone tried that. gpu (games etc) are the only thing
| holding windows relevant at this point.
|
| i have some 2012 projects were the makefiles also build in
| msvc. never again.
|
| then 2015 projects with build paths for cygwin. never again.
|
| then some 2019 projects with build scripts making choices to
| work on msys2/git-bash-for-windows. never again.
|
| now we can build on WSL with just some small changes to an env
| file because we run a psql container in a different way under
| wsl... let's see how long we endure until saying never again.
| kmacdough wrote:
| For consumers. A load of professional software still exists
| only for Windows, particularly as you do more niche.
| 7bit wrote:
| For me it's Adobe Phuckushop. But yeah, always that one thing
| holding one back from swapping
| mulmen wrote:
| > gpu (games etc) are the only thing holding windows relevant
| at this point.
|
| I actually switched to Linux full-time when Starfield
| wouldn't run on Windows but worked in Proton. We are now in a
| world where Valve provides a more sable Windows API than
| Microsoft. The only limitation now is anti-cheat but that's a
| political problem, not a technical one.
| sertraline wrote:
| It always infuriates me when people say Windows is all about
| games. Techies are so detached from reality they forget that
| people have creative hobbies and have to use industrial grade
| software. Doing creative hobbies on Linux is an act of
| sadomasochism. And on top of that, Linux and MacOS cannot run
| software from 3 years ago while Windows can run software from
| 35 years ago. And on top of that, Linux is completely
| unusable to Japanese/Chinese speakers due to how hard it is
| to input the moon runes, and on top of that Wayland breaks
| the least painful setup that you could have earlier. And on
| top of that, Wayland people shown a middle finger to all the
| people who need accessibility features.
|
| No, Windows is not about games, Windows is about being an
| objectively the most stable pile of garbage there is.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Yeah, I really like my Mac, but third-party software isn't
| its strong suit. It's hilarious how often Apple will
| wholesale break like half the software in existence.
| jjcm wrote:
| A fair comment, but the argument I'd make against that is a
| lot of those creative tools are moving to the web. I
| personally work for Figma, and have seen that first hand.
| UI/UX design was entirely OSX/Windows centric for the last
| 40 years, and now it's platform agnostic. Even video
| editors are just at the nacent stage of looking at the web
| as an editor surface.
|
| Totally hear you though for things like CNC milling
| software that's meant to stay static for the lifetime of
| the mill - that's not going anywhere.
| seventhtiger wrote:
| It's the other way around. You can do very few productive
| things with Windows other than software development. Almost
| all other professional software assume Windows.
| okanat wrote:
| > You can do very few productive things with Windows other
| than software development.
|
| I guess you meant Linux here
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| I had the same experience. Even installing linux is easier for
| me now. And with new spyware features of windows, there is
| really no incentive to use it
| throwaway148773 wrote:
| Except if you're on Nvidia...
| jjcm wrote:
| Am currently on nvidia and have no issues with their
| proprietary drivers. While they aren't following the linux
| ethos, the software runs just fine.
| open-paren wrote:
| What distros are y'all using on WSL?
| megous wrote:
| Microsoft is cancer.
| xyst wrote:
| Internal WSL maintainers must have been hit particularly hard by
| the quarterly layoffs.
| sneak wrote:
| Microsoft doesn't like open source software. This is cosplay.
|
| Microsoft releases the important parts of VS Code under
| proprietary licenses. Microsoft doesn't release the source code
| for Windows or Office or the github.com web app under free
| software licenses.
|
| Don't get it twisted. This is marketing, nothing more.
| shutterstock wrote:
| WSL caused me to just install Ubuntu right over my Windows
| installation. That is how useful it was for me.
| abshkbh wrote:
| Amazing, I briefly worked on WSL v1 in 2015! 10 years and going
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I still don't understand the naming. It's a Windows subsystem
| that runs in Linux? But it's a way to run a Linux environment on
| Windows?
| dbacar wrote:
| I have to use Windows as my main box after nearly 6 years of
| MacOS (and before that Mint) and WSL2 helps me keep my sanity.
| bni wrote:
| Every time I read this product name I think that the words come
| in the wrong order.
| Zambyte wrote:
| (Windows subsystem) for (Linux)
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| A Windows Subsystem for running Linux
| coldblues wrote:
| Copying files between Windows and WSL is EXTREMELY slow. I really
| wanted to give Windows a chance but the slowness completely
| destroyed that chance, along with the lack of hardware
| acceleration for GUI applications.
| jwnin wrote:
| See if the trick in this article helps out:
| https://pomeroy.me/2023/12/how-i-fixed-wsl-2-filesystem-perf...
| attah_ wrote:
| Still named backwards.
| stopthe wrote:
| A lot of people here are saying nice things about having dev
| environment on WSL. Honest question: how do you deal with with
| those minor but insufferable Windows' quirks like 0d0a line
| endings, selective Unicode support, byte-order-marks and so on.
|
| While right now I enjoy the privilege to develop on Linux, things
| may change.
| dataflow wrote:
| Anybody know what the deal is with neither Oracle nor Microsoft
| trying to make it possible for VirtualBox and WSL2 to coexist
| without severe performance impact? What the heck is the issue
| that neither side knows how to solve? Or is there a deliberate
| business decision not to solve it?
| badmonster wrote:
| big news
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The title is misleading and ambiguous as to whether this applies
| to WSL1 or WSL2.
| nottorp wrote:
| That page has no mention of the actual license though.
| Totoradio wrote:
| MIT License:
| https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE
| nottorp wrote:
| Are they ashamed, if they didn't mention it in the
| announcement?
| asim wrote:
| Wow. In 2009, when it looked like Microsoft was the most closed
| company of all time, I was telling people at work, they should
| port windows to the linux kernel. What happened over the next 15
| years, I don't think people would have believed it if you told
| them back then. Things have changed.. ALOT. Now granted, this
| isn't what I said they should do, but you know, eventually they
| might see the light.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Never see anything Microsoft does in the direction of open
| source as "they have seen the light". It's a trap. Claiming
| open source friendliness is the bait, Windows is the trap
| itself.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Yeah I remember when they bought Github and my coworker was
| telling me how they've turned a new leaf and want to support
| foss... nope, they wanted to train an AI on all the code
| there.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Yep, see VS Code etc.
|
| This whole thread is basically frogs praising the cozy
| warming water in the pot.
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| Why isn't it "Linux Subsystem for Windows" as it is a Linux
| subsystem running on a Windows os?
| CivBase wrote:
| It's hard to argue it's even a subsystem anymore. More like
| "Integrated Linux VM for Windows".
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| I think it's because WSL refers to the Windows subsystem that
| allows you to run Linux, not to the Linux system itself. You
| still have to download and install Linux on top of it, or at
| least you did the last time I used it a few years ago.
| transpostmeta wrote:
| I always assumed it was because it was a Subsystem for Linux
| that allowed it to be run as a guest on a Windows host. But
| your version works too.
|
| Microsoft ist really terrible at naming things, that's for
| sure.
| bubblethink wrote:
| There may also be some trademark law precedent that forces this
| naming convention. Even on the google play store, if you have
| 3rd party apps for something, it's always "App for X", the name
| cannot be "X app".
| FateOfNations wrote:
| A "Windows Subsystem" is a concept that dates back to the
| original Windows NT line of operating systems. Historically,
| there've been a number of supported "Windows Subsystems",
| essentially APIs for the kernel. In Windows NT 3.1, there were
| multiple subsystems: Win32, POSIX, and OS/2, plus a separate
| one specifically for security.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
|
| While WSL2 isn't implemented as an architectural sub-system (it
| uses a VM instead), WSL1 was far closer to the original
| architecture, providing a Linux compatible API for the Windows
| kernel.
| jve wrote:
| Sec guy (who was mainly a linux guy) was never happy to let
| people use WSL in corp due to security bugs.
|
| Can anyone chime in - is this still a concern? Was it ever a
| concern?
| Hilift wrote:
| WSL is an easy compliance trick when you want to run your own
| Postfix/Dovecot installation.
| jwnin wrote:
| Depends. How do you feel about an OS running on your network
| that's not subject to your standard OS hardening, mandatory
| agent stack?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| QEMU has win64 builds, and the guest OS can access
| SAMBA/NFS/SSHFS host shares. Getting guest OS hypervisor to
| work is soft locked on Home licensed windows, so options are
| often limited to Win guests on linux hosts.
|
| In general, the utilities on posix systems heavily rely on a
| standardized permission and path structure fundamentally
| different than windows registry paradigms.
|
| Even something as simple as curl... while incredibly useful on
| windows, also opens a scripting ecosystem that side-channels
| Microsoft signing protections etc.
|
| Linux VM disk image files can be very small (some are just a
| few MB), simply copied to a physical drive/host later given
| there is no DRM/Key locks, and avoids mixing utf8 with windows
| codepage.
|
| Mixing ecosystems creates a Polyglot, and that is going to have
| problems for sure... given neither ecosystems wants the cost of
| supporting the other.
|
| Best method, use cross platform application ports supported on
| every platform. In my opinion, Windows should only be used for
| games and industry specific commercial software support. For
| robust system privacy there are better options now, that aren't
| booby-trapped for new users. =3
| wiseowise wrote:
| And written in C#!
|
| Right?
|
| Right?...
| qwertox wrote:
| I despise Windows 11 so much, but have to use it. I have a 24/7
| box with Ubuntu running a couple of Linux and Windows VMs and
| that's the way I like it. I don't touch the Ubuntu host except
| for when I need to reconfigure it.
|
| All development is done on Windows laptop via SSH to those VMs.
| When I tried using Ubuntu via WSL, something didn't feel right.
| There were some oddities, probably with the filesystem
| integration, which bothered me enough to stop doing this.
|
| Nevertheless, I think it's really great what they now did.
|
| Now all what's missing is that they do it the other way around,
| that they create a 100% windows compatible Wine alternative.
| anticensor wrote:
| WSL1 is the good one, WSL2 just runs Linux simultaneously
| alongside Windows.
| mdtrooper wrote:
| Is it a good news for Wine or ReactOS (Can they learn something
| to improve their projects)?
| einpoklum wrote:
| Probably not. WSL2 is a kind of a VM, so it should be bypassing
| the Windows API.
| okanat wrote:
| No. WSL2 is a Linux VM. It doesn't expose Windows API internals
| or implementation details. It uses normal, already well-
| documented public ones. Wine and ReactOS can already use the
| publicly available documentation and they are still behind on
| many such APIs' implementation. Windows is a big OS. It takes
| serious man power to implement many things.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| Not only open source, but extremely well documented.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| what if this really is a long haul embrace, extend, extinguish.
| Guess time will tell
| Dwedit wrote:
| WSL1 was hobbled by needing to calculate Unix Permission numbers
| and hardlink counts for every file. On Windows, you need to
| create a handle to the file to get those things. That's a file
| open on every file whenever you list a directory.
| varbhat wrote:
| Cool! Now make Microsoft Office Open Source! I understand you
| won't,so atleast release the Linux versions of them!
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| I remember way, way back when Internet Explorer first came out,
| there was talk of a Unix/Linux version coming soon.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm not be sarcastic or funny when I ask this. Why isn't this
| called the Linux subsystem for Windows? It seems like a Linux
| subsystem running on Windows. If it were the other way around,
| (ie, a Windows Subsystem for Linux) I'd think that Linux would be
| the primary OS, and something like WINE would the subsystem.
| dazhbog wrote:
| Management or marketing needs "Windows" to be the first word
| when people write articles about it..
| burnte wrote:
| Trademark law. They'd have to license the TM to have a product
| name that leads with another entity's trademark.
| palata wrote:
| Not a Windows user, but I think WSL is great. I see a lot of
| Windows user criticising Linux for... essentially not looking
| like Windows. "Linux Desktop will never reach mass adoption
| unless it [something that boils down to 'looks more like
| Windows']".
|
| The thing is: I consider myself a real Linux user, and I don't
| want it to look like Windows. And I hate it when Windows people
| try to push Linux there, just because they want a free-with-no-
| ads version of Windows.
|
| In that sense, if WSL can keep Windows users on Windows such that
| they don't come and bother me on Linux, I'm happy :-).
| tryauuum wrote:
| Not a Windows user, but I hate WSL. Looks like microsoft
| realizing they will lose a generation of developers to linux so
| they implemented linux inside their OS. Now people won't see
| the joys of recompiling kernel :)
| froh wrote:
| great news :-)
|
| now how about mainlining the kernel patches?
|
| so we get a chance of a more current and Linux distro provided
| wsl kernel :-)?
| https://github.com/issues/created?issue=microsoft%7CWSL%7C11...
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