
Windows Subsystem for Linux is making inroads with developers - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-conference-was-a-virtual-success/
======
turbinerneiter
It sure is nice for all the people who are stuck on Windows/prefer Windows but
need access to Linux tools.

But I'm not sure what this will do to Open Source in the long run. I don't
think WSL users will care a lot about the ideals of the Free Software people
and I'm not sure whether the Free Software people will love to maintain code
for people who don't give a fuck.

Or maybe it will expose more people to the idea and will provide a new entry
point for new talents.

At least Canonical is getting paid.

~~~
justin66
> But I'm not sure what this will do to Open Source in the long run. I don't
> think WSL users will care a lot about the ideals of the Free Software people
> and I'm not sure whether the Free Software people will love to maintain code
> for people who don't give a fuck.

People who care about the ideals of the free software people have always been
a genuine minority group. You might be using the terms interchangeably, but
it's why the term "Open Source" exists.

~~~
rbanffy
> People who care about the ideals of the free software people have always
> been a genuine minority group.

It'd be a lot different if, for instance, Oracle was able to actually kill
MySQL.

------
dleslie
WSL+X410 is an amazing combo. I have every linux desktop app I want at my
finger tips, with a functional and superior to cygwin/msys shell.

And with WSL's import feature I have trivially replicated this WSL environment
to all of my machines.

Yes, it's won me over.

~~~
gshulegaard
Lack of virtualization and container support within the WSL was a major
blocker for me, has this been resolved?

~~~
Lendal
WSL2 offers Docker support. It will be included in the next update of Windows.

Many people are using it now but I don't have time to mess with beta software.
I am exercising my patience.

~~~
m_mueller
I'm also a bit disappointed it doesn't bridge the host network like WSL1. It's
nice there that I can just run something and access it on local host - it even
works together with docker-for-windows, the docker CLI client being in WSL.

~~~
DuskStar
I believe that recent(ish) builds of Windows, webservers running in WSL can be
accessed from Windows via localhost:port, just like with WSL 1. [0] Accessing
servers running on the Windows side from WSL is a fair bit harder, but IMO
also a lot less likely.

0: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-ux-
changes...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-ux-
changes#accessing-linux-applications-from-windows)

~~~
m_mueller
Oh that's great news. Thanks!

------
taborj
I always felt this was named incorrectly. It's not a Windows Subsystem for
Linux operating systems, it's a Linux Subsystem for the Windows operating
system.

~~~
whereistimbo
It was an historical reason. WSL1 was named such because instead of using
Linux kernel, Microsoft uses Windows NT subsystem to run Linux userland (hence
Windows Subsystem for Linux). As WSL become a well known name, the next
iteration (the one with the real Linux kernel) is simply named as WSL2.

~~~
Nullabillity
It was wrong then too.

~~~
skrebbel
No it wasn't, WSL1 is a Windows subsystem. For running Linux.

I think "Windows Linux Subsystem" would've been more accurate, but it's also
more confusing.

~~~
ASalazarMX
That's why "Linux Subsystem" would have been clear and straightforward. Just
one more of Window's subsystems. Cramming "Windows" in the name is what makes
it confusing.

------
pjmlp
The way some Linux/BSD developers fled to OS X and now WSL, kind of shows the
big mistake it was for Microsoft and Apple not to be serious with their
NT/POSIX and A/UX efforts respectively.

In a parallel timeline Linux would never picked up steam if those systems had
been serious POSIX implementations.

~~~
jnwatson
Linux didn't win because of POSIX. Linux won despite POSIX. Linux won because
it was free and fast.

~~~
pjmlp
Linux won on the server because free beer and lots of money from UNIX
companies, using the community to drive down development costs.

In what concerns desktop and embedded, it hasn't won.

Ironically IoT is now getting full of BSD/MIT licensed POSIX clones, exactly
for not having to deal with anything GPL related.

~~~
bubblethink
Not on the desktop, but embedded still seems to be going linux's way. Why does
the gpl license of the kernel matter ? Android gets along fine with everything
other than the kernel being differently licensed. MS launched some linux
distro for IoT stuff as well.

~~~
pjmlp
MIT/BSD OSes like mbed, NuttX, RTOS, Zephyr, or bare metal like Arduino and
ESP32, is where people are heading into, when they aren't using a commercial
RTOS with security and real time capabilities that Linux has yet to fully
support, like INTEGRITY, QNX.

------
wayneftw
I've got Manjaro XFCE on multiple workstations for almost 2 years now. Setting
up a new Manjaro workstation is far less annoying than setting up Windows 10.
I just did a comparison the other day because I needed to work on a SQL Server
project that requires the use of Visual Studio + SQL Server Development Tools
(SSDT).

On Windows 10 Pro - ssh didn't even work correctly in Git Bash after I ran
ssh-keygen. I could only git clone from a cmd prompt.

The only 2 things I kinda miss from Windows are TortoiseGit and SSDT. Luckily,
I don't really need them most of the time.

(Before Manjaro I used Windows since version 3 and I only used Linux for
server since Red Hat 4 or 5. A couple of years ago I couldn't have imagined
using a Linux desktop but now everything I do is just better on Linux.)

~~~
jsmith99
Git Bash is nothing to do with WSL.

------
simonblack
I'm a developer, too. But I find it's easier for me to just use native Linux
without all the MSFT cruft getting in the way.

Just like I reckon WINE is useless, too. And for pretty much the same reasons.

If you want to use Windows, use Windows.

If you want to use Linux, use Linux.

If you want to use both at the same time, then you might get away with using a
pure Linux guest on a Windows host, or a pure Windows guest on a Linux host,
using VMWare or VirtualBox. But these hybrids (WINE and WSL) are the worst of
both worlds.

~~~
detaro
I disagree. Both WSL and Wine are immensely useful to use some tools from the
other world in your workflow _without_ having to shuffle data between the two
or adding overhead for simple tasks. I encounter tools that only exist for one
(or are a real hassle to build for the other) often enough for this to be
useful.

I wouldn't do development that's primarily for the other platform with them
though.

------
zeveb
I can understand why people left Linux for Mac OS X: at the time, the Linux
desktop really wasn't that advanced, and most folks didn't want to deal with
what really could be a pain. I thought that it was worth it to stick with
Linux, but I could see why some folks would use a Mac. I don't really
understand why they stick with it today, but that's a post for a different
time.

But I really cannot understand why anyone would willingly use Windows. I
sometimes have to, and it is hellaciously, embarrassingly bad. There's nothing
about the experience which says good or enjoyment or quality or _anything_
positive. Things are inconsistent. There are ads on the home version. Simple
things are slow. And it's _ugly_!

If you're stuck at a company which forces you to use Windows, I guess WSL is
better than nothing. But why not just move on?

------
davefp
Back when WSL was first released I tried getting my ruby environment set up
using it, but at the time I still used a graphical text editor and getting it
talking to the Linux filesystem was too much of a bother.

Nowadays I use vim so I gave it another chance a couple of weeks ago. Together
with the new Windows Terminal app [1] it's been a great experience. I can run
my editor and my code on Linux and then visit the webapp from the browser in
the Windows environment.

Note: There's also better support for talking to the Linux filesystem from
Windows nowadays, but I've not needed it so I can't comment on how good it is.
Scott Hanselman has a good blog post on getting it set up though [2])

[1]
[https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal](https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal)

[2]
[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/RubyOnRailsOnWindowsIsNotJust...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/RubyOnRailsOnWindowsIsNotJustPossibleItsFabulousUsingWSL2AndVSCode.aspx)

~~~
battery_cowboy
Re: files

I can open explorer.exe from inside wsl2 environment to copy files back and
forth easily.

------
LVDOVICVS
It worries me that this appears to be Windows attempt to turn Linux into a
component of Windows-essentially Windows swallowing Linux. Linux shouldn’t
require Windows to operate.

~~~
yingw787
Linux doesn't require Windows to operate, but it might work better if it's
packaged in Windows.

The big question mark for me is drivers. Having great drivers to take
advantage of hardware across a multitude of different platforms is an issue of
market share and market demand. I have an NVMe drive, 16GB of the fastest RAM,
workstation-grade networking, and Dolby speakers on my laptop. I can't take
advantage of it, because I accidentally erased Windows 10 Professional for
Workstations when dual booting Ubuntu, that had all the specialized drivers.
I'm fine with Ubuntu, but I kind of wish I had Windows + WSL instead.

~~~
jorams
Whenever drivers come up I wonder what people are doing that somehow doesn't
just work automatically. Everything I ever plugged into Linux in the past few
years has instantly worked perfectly, the only exception being GPUs.

Meanwhile Windows starts looking for drivers for a few minutes, and may or may
not find them.

~~~
Naac
Agreed. From the list of hardware OP listed I see 0 reasons why it won't work
natively in Ubuntu. Even better than windows because you won't need any
special drivers to download!

------
johnchristopher
I don't know, I fought Bluetooth and headset mic configurations all the
afternoon and got it working (God, I have two mic, why is there 12 mic outputs
to choose from ?!) but I still don't want to get back on Windows (it wants too
much ram and its file Explorer is too slow compared to dolphin).

And then, how do I use bindfs with WSL ? Where are the WSL files and the
docker volumes inside it ?

~~~
ABeeSea
I’ve used windows my entire life/career. I recently moved jobs to an all Mac
startup and I can’t believe how much better Bluetooth and VPN is. I keep
messing up keyboard shortcuts and I don’t quite understand how “windows” work
on a Mac. But the Bluetooth situation alone (I could never get my QC35s to
work as a headset when needed and just headphones as needed) means I won’t use
windows for a productive work environment for awhile. (Still have a gaming
desktop that will always run windows for fun and VMs for dev)

~~~
rewgs
> I don’t quite understand how “windows” work on a Mac.

The app and having a window open of that app are decoupled, simple as that.
Open up, say, Safari, press Cmd+W to close the window, and Safari will still
be open. Press Cmd+N and you'll open a new window. Press Cmd+Q to quit it,
regardless of how many windows (including zero) are open.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
For things that do not interface directly with hardware it's great. I use WSL
daily for development.

The best part of any Linux distro is the terminal, I've ditched my Linux
laptop for a Windows laptop with WSL and haven't looked back.

I've been pretty tired of linux desktop environments being flaky, lack of
gaming, Nvidia driver issues, etc. Windows + WSL has been a godsend

------
mlazos
all I can say is the combination of visual studio + cmake + windows terminal +
WSL has been life changing for me. I can have a terminal open with a WSL tab
and a powershell core tab, and build both Linux and windows builds from the
same repo. No more remoting into a Linux box or having to setup a VM (wsl will
turn into one soon). You can even debug your Linux build in visual studio
using wsl. Same with haskell builds, I literally have the same stack yaml and
I can run tests for both OSes from the same code.

------
time0ut
I switched to Windows with WSL for all personal work about a year ago. I had
been using Lubuntu (Lfce) for years, but wanted to give it a shot. There are
some rough edges (file system permissions can be weird if you're sharing files
between the host and Linux), but it has been great and I've gotten comfortable
with it. One thing to be aware of is many devs will want at least Windows 10
Pro edition ad you can't use Home as a docker host. I didn't feel bad paying
$100 for the upgrade though.

~~~
yingw787
No hypervisor support for Windows Home is pretty insane. Ran into this problem
with a friend's laptop during a hackathon a year or two ago. Wonder if ripping
that out makes QA faster.

~~~
time0ut
I'm sure a big piece is Microsoft thinking "most users don't need this so we
can get away with charging the few who do". I have trouble feeling outrage
because it is only $100 to upgrade. I've paid almost that much for a text
editor.

~~~
yingw787
I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. So many students and future programmers
use Windows Home (I did as a kid), and Microsoft would throw away the
opportunity for them to play around and lock them in. Now I can't imagine
using Windows Home to program.

$100 seems pricey for a text editor, my friend. Is it IntelliJ or PyCharm? Why
not VSCode + Sourcegraph?

~~~
time0ut
It was Sublime Text 2 and 3. VSCode didn't exist yet.

You do make a good point re: Windows 10 Pro. I hadn't thought of it from that
perspective.

------
thrownaway954
How has cron support been coming along? I have also been wanting to play with
connecting a WSL Rails app to IIS :)

~~~
dleslie
The trick to cron is to have WSL always "running".

In my case, I use X410+WSL and have a xfce panel always active on my desktop,
and that is sufficient to keep WSL alive and so have a working cron.

~~~
thrownaway954
so cron is working now in it? I will definitely try it out again. also... why
do you mean by "running"? it's basically a vm so as long as i have a command
prompt open, it should be running, correct? it would be cool if there was a
way of keep it up and running like a regular vm.

~~~
dleslie
When you close the shell it sort of sleeps; there seems to be some hooks to
allow it to wake on request, for ssh, but for the most part the system sleeps
and won't wake until a shell is opened.

I get around this by having an X app always running, and its behaviour is
sufficient to prevent WSL from sleeping.

Some folks I know just leave the shell open, but having an xfce panel is
desirable to me.

~~~
pkulak
If you used systemd instead of cron it would at least run as soon as it came
back, if it was out when it should have run. That's usually sufficient for
backups and such.

~~~
dleslie
But then I'd have to run systemd. WSL's Ubuntu by default does not have
systemd.

    
    
        #> systemctl 
        System has not been booted with systemd as init system (PID 1). Can't operate.

------
nimrody
How is the file system performance in WSL? I'm stuck on WSL1 (IT managed OS
upgrades) and file access performance is much slower than native windows.

So sometimes I give up on my favorite command line tools and switch to "CMD".

~~~
sebazzz
WSL2 should be OK, as long as you're on the WSL managed filesystem image. On
NTFS you will still have issues.

------
solarkraft
WSL helps with the pain of having to use Windows, but it's still Windows for
good (the trackpad drivers) and bad (pretty much everything else).

------
WarDores
Has VPN support gotten better in the last 8 months-ish? I keep dual booting
mostly because managing the configuration turned into a nightmare.

------
BasicObject
It hasn't won me over yet. I use it for some pretty basic things too.

------
fmakunbound
Does small file IO still suck or is it better now with the 2.0 version?

------
russdpale
Not surprising, linux is a terrible user experience.

------
Lendal
The Fedora remix for WSL is on sale for $6 right now. If you're interested in
WSL, this is an upgrade from the free Ubuntu distro. I hope they continue on
with it for WSL2. I much prefer Fedora to Ubuntu.

------
jojo2000
It's a joke. Windows ? Never again.

~~~
jdmg94
I remember when I bought my XPS13 a year ago, to work while I traveled, I
found that even with WSL, it was painful to get my toolchain working on
windows (mostly unix based tools) I ended up putting ubuntu (and currently
popOS) and never looking back.

~~~
a_imho
Had the same experience, I was forced to use Windows for a while, it was all
so cumbersome. Tooling does not work, permission errors, wsl <-> host system
copy errors, line ending errors, docker errors, character escaping errors,
especially quotes and double quotes, PATH errors. The list goes on and on and
on.

Also, if there are are no hard requirements for Windows such as most webdev
why would anyone use WSL instead of the real thing? Especially if the
deployment platform is Linux, makes no sense for me.

------
rezeroed
I tried WSL - the moment you leave that little window you're back in the world
of the registry, etc. No thanks.

------
baalimago
Once WSL2 gets released for real, with the improved docker volume handling,
I'll try out WSL for work and skip linux all-together.

Great stuff!

~~~
hesdeadjim
The filesystem performance on a Windows FS mount is absolutely unusable in
WSL2. They are aware of it, but it does not seem to be a priority right now.
Looks like I'm going to be stuck on WSL1 for quite some time unfortunately.

~~~
baalimago
I suppose it depends on what you use it for. I've only tried some simple stuff
like having webserver dokcker image and using a volume for the html while
developing on the experimental wsl2 integration for docker, and that has
worked splendidly.

Doing it that way, no files are ever mounted 'from windows', it's all
contained within wsl.

