At the same time, does anyone both love WSL, but is also scared about Microsoft's strategy here?
I'm at the point where I have a main desktop computer that I use for general purpose and gaming, and WSL has been great for me to also be able to do few-compromises coding work on it (previously had an arch linux partition but was tired of having to reboot to access it).
Scared of what?
I have spent years either in Window's inferior environment for development or having to dual boot or running something like VMWare workstation. I do that because linux is inferior for gaming/entertainment. I have never "enjoyed" a single linux desktop environment, I spend the majority of my time coding or running stuff on terminal.
I'm in my 40s and tired of going back and forth between the two. WSL has been a godsend
Linux has as much to be scared about from Microsoft as Microsoft has to be scared of Linux gaming
It really isn't any more. I play a lot of games and only one so far has refused to work well on Linux, and that's one which is emulated on Windows so I can't blame Linux too much for it. And that's on a laptop with nvidia's power-saving shit thrown into the mix. As for entertainment, aside from Firefox having issues with hardware acceleration, most of which have either been fixed or are being fixed, I haven't faced any in Linux that I haven't on Windows. That said, I don't use HDR, so I can't vouch for that.
On the other hand, I've had significant performance issues with WSL, especially on disk use, and I don't really care for windows update bugging me all the time and the telemetry. I jumped on board Linux with Pop!_OS and it's been a delight. I used to be just as negative on Linux, but I have been so, so happy I've been proven wrong.
I think this hasn't been true for some time for studio games. Most (big budget) games are ported to windows from consoles, except for indie titles
But at least now it works! (Unless it doesn't because some retarded anti-cheat software which doesn't actually prevents cheating, gets me banned after a few minutes. Looking at you Apex Legends)
Somehow I just don't see the same demand for people on macs/linux and WINE. It seems like a niche interest to actively want to combine the two worlds and I am VERY interested if any significant number of people use this who are not driven by gaming needs.
I don't see how. I pretty much think anyone should do whatever they want with their computers. Windows is acceptable for some, and not for others. I can't see the point of getting mad about what software other people are running.
I have never used WSL, but if I ever do, it definitely won't be for gaming.
I wouldn't want to try to directly deliver anything from such an environment that I would ask other people to run. Even my more-trusted development laptop feels scary at times, especially when I'm operating in environments where I have to do about the same thing as above with installing a dozen dependencies from who-knows-whom. I generally use separate build UIDs for some measure of separation in these cases, but we still have Linux and X being potential emmentaler attack surfaces, and I haven't yet arranged my workflow to the point that spinning up new virtual machines is trivial, especially because then you have a lot more friction with testing GUI software, sharing existing files, etc. etc.—most of the easier solutions to which seem to be very cloud-oriented and “when your Internet connection goes down, so does everything else”, which is something I insist on pushing back against in this context, including because “someone upstream did something unexpected and now everything is instantly broken in a way I have no real leverage over” is its own massive trust hazard.
My dedicated low-sensitivity machine isn't very powerful, so the cost wasn't as much of an issue as it could have been; it was a midrange laptop several years ago which I'm still using. If your workplace environment comes with its own hardware, then that's a thing too.
It would certainly be nice to have better, though, and the desire for less redundancy of costly hardware is legitimate. My desired setup from a while ago, which I never managed thus far, is to have more powerful hardware with multiple boot configurations, but not all of them persistently present like most multi-boot machines: instead, I would physically attach and detach system and user disks, assuming that firmware-level attack persistence is rare, and then rely on power-down flushing any lower-trust code before attaching a higher-trust disk. It'd be hard to ask most people to do this, though.
First of all, because I've seen many a PC game anti-cheat software cause system-wide issues.
Second, because I don't even do those things in the same room.
Third, because for your common web developer a 2nd PC is cheap. You can get a refurbished i5/i7 machine, add a new 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for less than $500. [0] This will last you for 5 years, easy.
I'm also in my 40s and I like things simple, clear-cut and easy. Mixing Windows with Linux is none of those. Dealing with one work OS is by far easier than dealing with two of them. Also, XFCE runs circles around the Windows GUI while providing better features liked a tabbed file browser and a taskbar that natively supports all the features that I used to have to hack into Windows with 7+ taskbar tweaker.
Until one day, this part wasn’t true any more:
> Third, because for your common web developer a 2nd PC is cheap. You can get a refurbished i5/i7 machine, add a new 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for less than $500. [0] This will last you for 5 years, easy.
Unfortunately not all types of dev work can be done on a middle-of-the-road machine.
For C++ and C# windows has the best IDE for it. For C++ CLion is the next best IDE but it's nowhere near as fast or snappy as windows visual studio IDE.
Also keep in mind most developers use visual studio code nowadays which is a microsoft creation.
To admit, it has one of the best debuggers though. But CLion seems to have catched up in that department, and seems to have way better CMake integration than VS does. CLion still needs more work on performance (as well as support for other build systems), but it’s still the editor that I’m optimistic about.
VS2019 frequently freezes for multiple seconds. When project files change (e.g. because you check out a different branch) VS often fails to load the modified projects and I need to restart the IDE.
Then there's the fact that the refactoring tools in VS2019, despite improving significantly since older versions, are still way behind ReSharper or IntelliJ.
I also generally dislike the UI I'm VS2019. The Git integration works, but it's cumbersome to use. You can't easily have multiple run configurations. The error/warning list pops up seemingly at random.
I use Rider now. It's not perfect, but I am just much more productive in that environment.
You could have already been doing that for years[0].
wsl -u root /usr/sbin/service <daemon-name> start
wsl -u root /etc/init.d/<daemon-name> start
Note that, for my case, WSL 2 requires an additional command to map a TCP port from external adapters to the VM's "host-only" interface, e.g.,
powershell.exe -NoProfile -NoLogo -Command
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4
listenport=2022 listenaddress=0.0.0.0
connectport=2022 "connectaddress=$(
wsl -u root -e perl -e '
print qq{$1}
if qx{ip -br addr show eth0}
=~ m{ ([0-9.]+)/}')"
But they went down the navel-gazing path - everything pointing inwards to their ecosystem and picking off the useful interoperability stuff little by little until almost nothing is left.
Just because you don't like linux desktop environments, doesn't mean everyone doesn't. I've used several linux desktop environments, and I prefer all of them to Windows (my current favorite is i3/sway). Of course that is a personal preference. I know some people prefer the windows (or mac) desktop experience to linux's, and that's fine. Just don't say that my preference is invalid.
> Scared of what?
That they will try to pull off the "Extinguish" phase of their infamous "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". I am doubtful that they would be successful extinguish linux at this point, but whatever they do to attempt such a feat could very well cause some pain for desktop linux users.
Terrified. I'm expecting the next round of secure boot to come, this time without the ability to disable or add your own keys. To the people that complain they can't boot linux, I expect the response to be "but you can run linux from windows, silly!"
I thought that died and got buried a while back.
* “WinRT” - yes. That’s the new COM+WinMD platform API added in Windows 8 (and initially only available to “Windows Store apps”) and incrementally improved since then and now part of UWP but it’s existence is weird. Some parts of WinRT are available outside of UWP but it’s a confusing mess.
* “Surface RT” - Yes, the “Surface 2” and then the “Surface Pro X”. Note that the Surface RT and Surface 2 were both locked-down to only run Windows App Store programs whereas the Pro X (and all post-Win10 ARM machines) are not artificially restricted this way.
You get to avoid using WSL and get the full Linux experience without compromising gaming – with few exceptions: the more extreme anti-cheat software detects VM usage, and that applies to a very small set of AAA games.
I gave up and install the Windows to dual boot.
A motherboard claiming support for VT-d is no guarantee that it is able to do anything useful with it.
Devs I know of that use macOS do it for the "Linux without the jank" aspect - essentially as an "it just works" quasi-Linux distro. If Windows could provide the same experience, or at least a very similar one, I do believe a good number of devs 'raised' on Windows would stay. In my lifetime, I've seen more people convert from Windows->macOS due to wanting to do dev work in a "Linux-like" environment than anything else. It makes sense for MS to want to mitigate that bleed-off.
So now i'm installing Windows and Linux, comparing them and the ease of use. I don't want _any_ driver problems, frankly i just want the OS to get out of my way. Historically, Linux has given me such a terrible experience with things like "my BT doesn't work, my sound doesn't work, my monitor doesn't work" that switching away from Mac was viewed as an impossibility.
Now however, i see a way out, and i'm taking it. I've experimented with WSL2 and it's shockingly good so far. I'll likely install PopOS this weekend to see if i experience problems. If i even hint a problem in Linux, i'll likely revert back to Windows.
Mac is losing it's lunch imo. But, i get to build a workhorse of a PC for the same price i would have given Apple - so i'm happy.
Why sell to these demanding power users wanting complex stuff when you can sell to the rich consumer who just wants to dick around on Facebook and play with their iDevices all day :P
WSL gives me access to all my regular devops and developer tools + Linux shell while I don’t have to reboot for gaming and music production.
I switched about 1 year ago. Windows is now again a solid OS choice for developers and I expect lots more developers to make the switch with the recent and upcoming MacOS changes.
It’s just wsl -—set-version <distro> 2.
Just switching this setup verbatim to WSL2 will most likely lead to performance problems on file I/O from WSL to the windows disk (due to the architectural changes from WSL1 to 2). File I/O within WSL became faster, but crossing the boundary is more expensive making tools like git unusable when the code lives on the windows side. I could move the code to the WSL side but then every IntelliJ I/O operation needs to cross the "slow" boundary. Unless I also switch IntelliJ to WSL so it will probably take some experimentation before I arrive at a proper WSL2 setup that satisfies my needs.
I still find windows usage painful and sluggish compared to ubuntu and left in the dust by xubuntu so I'd rather have the reverse with a windows vm.
30% longer compile times than on Linux on the same hardware.
Using git takes time compared to being instantaneous.
Running "hello world" written in .Net takes 3-5 seconds compared to <<1 second on Linux on the same hardware.
> If your GUI is sluggish it's because you're letting stuff like letting crappy antivirus and malware detection run in the background or you have an underpowered machine for what windows needs.
As I mentioned above, Linux is amazingly much faster on the same hardware! And brand new 2018/2019 hardware at that when I measured last time.
That said antivirus is a real problem. Part of the problem is that mandatory Windows OS often signals sysadmins that doesn't care, so you often get tragically bad antivirus, possibly misconfigured at that.
1 - throughout all these years Linux developers have been giving money to Apple instead of supporting Linux OEMs. Using a BSD flavour to target Linux
2 - Apparently many like the extend done by Google with Android and ChromeOS
Here's the source (literally). https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel
And how exactly are Microsoft going to force you - particularly you, personally - to stop running your own Linux kernel?
This is the same kind of ridiculous fear as any other -ism, as if lots of black people around will turn you black, or lots of gay people around will turn you gay, or lots of Muslims around will turn you Muslim.
Apparently the large majority is fine with POSIX CLI, tiling window managers and some Electron apps thrown in.
A less charitable read of your position is that Microsoft will tempt other people away and they will no longer give you cost-free updates. Of course you don't mean that.
Personally I tried WSL2 out and it was pretty good. The problem was I was still running Windows and I absolutely can’t use to UI to save my life. I loathe it. I’m a huge fan of tiling window managers and Regolith’s my current DE of choice. And lucky for me my games run in proton, I work on backend systems such that I don’t have any dependencies in on anything that runs on Windows (Google docs for office work). So I would not be WSL’s target audience.
Wait, wasn't that 1999? 2000? 2001? ... Everyone stopped caring when mobile platforms became dominant.
I don't see any of MSFT's actions threatening this on a really big picture level. It's always been and always will be up to 'the community' to build and make Linux and free software what it is.
Linux, especially Linux Desktop, is wonderfully flourishing right now, and I don't think it's because 'MS hasn't offered a more compelling alternative to Linux' in the cloud. More largely, it's because we've built what we've wanted. Maybe I'm naive about what we've been ungratefully depending on. If so, I'd settle for a mildly cautious and watchful neutral ground. All I can say is, please contribute to Linux and FOSS if you can. I do.
I agree, but it has to be said that this has also happened because desktop features across the board have stagnated.
There has been little evolution of desktop features in the last 15 years on Windows and Mac; MS and Apple are focused on other things, namely services integration to increase revenue and convergence with mobile OSes to reduce costs. This has allowed the Linux desktop to catch on and solidify, by not having to constantly chase feature-matching. Same for hardware support: new devices and ports for the desktop and laptop market have been few and far between; if anything things are getting simpler (USB-C for everyone, no cd, no modem, etc).
I have no doubt that both Apple and MS could destroy the attractiveness of Linux desktops very quickly if they focused a bit more resources on evolving their desktops.
I don't think. Is there any example that you thought as evolution (maybe on Linux) ?
> Same for hardware support: new devices and ports for the desktop and laptop market have been few and far between;
What about Surface?
Of all the issues I've had with emacs about 80% of them could be traced to running emacs on windows. Not through any fault on windows side mind (except possibly the insane decision to use a different path syntax).
Unless you want to claim the Unix developers deliberately chose the slash as a path separator to be incompatible with TOPS-10. That could be.
[0] http://www.os2museum.com/wp/why-does-windows-really-use-back...
Not inconceivable. After all Windows is called w32 in Emacs not win32 as is common everywhere else because RMS couldn’t bear to think “win” in association with MS!
I installed the official Windows binaries for GNU Emacs pretty recently, copied my elisp directory over, and for the most part things worked out of the box, but with a few inconvenient exceptions: taskbar pinning didn't seem to work properly due to the awkward emacs/runemacs distinction, and some things related to directory layout and navigation were painful due to assumptions of a Unix-style home directory clashing with Windows's user-directory layout. No WSL involved.
Cygwin[0] is a lot more mature and has a huge set of supported applications.
Cygwin is no longer needed when you have real Linux.
I'd say that depends on your use case.
For many folks, WSL is an excellent idea. I've played around with it and it doesn't give me anything over what I already have using Cygwin.
Also, Cygwin+userland is much lighter weight than an integrated VM like WSL2.
A lot of the question is what you want/need. I need a decent shell with a fairly complete unix userland. X is nice to have as well. That such functionality seamlessly integrates with Windows is great.
But I don't need a dev environment (although Cygwin provides that as well) for unix on my Windows box.
I'm sure there are other use cases/software that requires a full blown Linux kernel/environment, but they don't apply to me. I just use VMs (on separate hardware) for that.
And unless you actually need a full-blown kernel, rather than a specific set of tools, cygwin provides a lightweight, mature and well supported alternative.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that Cygwin is unix. Rather, I say that for a significant set of use cases, Cygwin can be a superior solution.
It all depends on your requirements.
I also find that, for me, cygwin is a better solution for what I want: A bash shell and a decent set of unix-like command-line tools, that (critically) uses the same filesystem as Windows programs do.
I've honestly been kind of perplexed by all the excitement around WSL. A lot of people seem to say they want it for "development", by which I guess they mean web development. And I could see WSL being a nice alternative to running a full Linux VM for web development. But I don't do web development (mostly). I just want a unix-like shell and tools on my Windows box. And I don't want to have to think about whether the files I'm creating and working on live in Linux-land or Windows-land.
Also the filesystem access is shared. That's why WSL is a separate thing, otherwise you could always just run a VM yourself. WSL lets you easily browse files, operate on the same files, and even call processes and pipe results across both sides.
As an aside: I normally use "bricked" to mean "entirely unusable as a computing device"
or is it just trying to make a decent machine people want to use?
It could be emergent behavior. One faction in microsoft does this, then later another faction might take advantage of the situation.
In any case, one of linux's best characteristics is to be "checks and balances" against common software.
They're doing exactly the opposite. Just wait for the day some new killer Linux apps encourages, or even requires, WSL rather than native Linux to run properly, or to run at all.
Imagine a window-manager/desktop-environment using the same exact windows primitives and behaviour but integrated into the WSL Linux OS. That thing would be the killer app a lot of Linux users would dream of, it would for obvious reasons run only under WSL, and would take away a huge number of non-hardcore Linux users. "Why learn a new user interface when you can keep the same you're used to, and more importantly write Linux software that will make full use of it?".
I desperately want to be proved wrong, but I'm really pessimistic about WSL: it is to Linux exactly what WINE is to Windows, and will kill Linux pretty much everywhere except servers and embedded systems, just as WINE has killed Windows on many desktops where the real thing wasn't necessary.
Why that would exist? If you wanted an app that could only run in Windows, you could write it for Windows. Nothing has changed here.
The only reason to use WSL is because you want to use Linux software or you have a Linux server environment and you want to use Windows as your Workstation environment for development.
> just as WINE has killed Windows on many desktops where the real thing wasn't necessary.
Except, of course, this is running an actual Linux kernel. So really it's just putting Linux in Windows and running them side-by-side. If anything, it makes moving to Linux easier if somehow this becomes even more popular.
The thing is, your attitude is stuck in the 90's and Microsoft's isn't. They used to write software for many different platforms and they're starting to do that again. Microsoft definitely cares less now if you run their software on Android, iOS, Windows, or even Linux. They're going to make money off of you either way.
I think it's more of a market position change rather than an attitude change.
Microsoft had significantly more market share in the 90's and used that market share to get their way no matter what. Desktop computing was the dominant way most people used computers and Microsoft was king.
The rise of cloud computing and mobile caused Microsoft's dominant position to slip. They lost the cloud to Linux. They lost mobile to Apple and Android. They still have majority on desktop computing, but that too is under assault from Chromebooks in education and non-Windows tablets for "consumption-heavy" and casual computing.
>> They used to write software for many different platforms and they're starting to do that again. Microsoft definitely cares less now if you run their software on Android, iOS, Windows, or even Linux.
They have to. If they don't embrace other platforms they would dwindle. If Microsoft software was only available for Windows, many consumers would rarely use their products. Office 365 exists so Microsoft Office can live on as a web application and there-by be available for practically all devices.
>> They're going to make money off of you either way.
Exactly. They have adapted quite well and have demonstrated remarkable resilience and versatility. However I believe that they were compelled to change due to a loss of dominance rather than a change of attitude.
I think the market position changed long before their attitude did. Microsoft's protective attitude towards Windows ultimately cost them mobile.
> The rise of cloud computing and mobile caused Microsoft's dominant position to slip. They lost the cloud to Linux. They lost mobile to Apple and Android.
They didn't lose the cloud to Linux -- that makes no sense. Cloud competitors are Google and Amazon. Microsoft's cloud market share is growing more than 50% every year. While it still much less than Amazon, Microsoft is in a solid position. Linux accounts for more than half the servers on Azure and I'm sure Microsoft is perfectly ok with that.
> They have to. If they don't embrace other platforms they would dwindle. If Microsoft software was only available for Windows, many consumers would rarely use their products.
A second ago, you were arguing that Microsoft is going to make Linux obsolete and you now seem to be arguing the opposite.
> However I believe that they were compelled to change due to a loss of dominance rather than a change of attitude.
I'm not sure how that is relevant or how either one of us could know the minds of the top executives at Microsoft. But either way, it means that Windows is definitely not Microsoft's primary focus as it was throughout the 90's and 2000's. WSL is part of that strategy and not some obsolete EEE scenario.
What I meant by "they lost the cloud to Linux" is that most server computers running in the cloud are not running Windows, they are running Linux.
>> Linux accounts for more than half the servers on Azure and I'm sure Microsoft is perfectly ok with that.
Azure is doing great as a cloud service, but the fact that more than half of the servers are not running Windows only underscores the change in strategy due to the loss of market share and dominance.
Microsoft executives in the 90's would not have been okay it. In their view, all computers must run Windows and any other operating systems were competitors.
>> A second ago, you were arguing that Microsoft is going to make Linux obsolete and you now seem to be arguing the opposite.
I am not sure how you got this from my comments. I was only speculating the Microsoft's attitude change was out of necessity rather than benevolence.
>> I'm not sure how that is relevant or how either one of us could know the minds of the top executives at Microsoft.
They were pretty vocal about their views on Windows and Linux at the time. Take these Steve Ballmer quotes for example:
"When we tell the story about what's happening today with browsers ten years from now, I want the thing that replaces Windows to be Windows."
"Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
"I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod"
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."
"Let's face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. That's why they've got 75,000 applications — they're all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone."
"Whatever device you use... Windows will be there. … Windows will be everywhere on every device without compromise."
"We are in the Windows era — we were, we are, and we always will be."
I’m scared of adding all the unknown problems of Windows to all the problems of Linux and then having to depend on that on a daily basis.
So, I won’t use it. It’s too easy to buy a used computer, slap a new SSD and RAM in it and run Manjaro Linux. I recommend an HP Elite 800 from Amazon for $200-$300. Then if you need Windows it’s just one KVM/RDP click away.
It's really that simple.
For work, I put Windows out to pasture on a different workstation - I hardly ever need it at all (I keep it around for for testing and debugging Windows-specific issues and when I want to use SSMS instead of Azure Data Studio or Visual Studio instead of VS Code which is pretty much never), but when I do it's there. For games, I've always had separate dedicated Windows machines.
I run Windows on multiple systems and I'm absolutely aware of it's stability but also it's problems. One of my biggest issues with it is that it ignores my active-hours and starts updating right in the middle of me working or playing. It's happened time and again on pretty much all of my Windows machines.
Another huge Windows problem is that I don't have any control over many things. For instance - they keep re-pinning shit to the taskbar after an update. Or, they change my settings after an update. Or, they constantly nag me with popups or ads disguised as notifications or start menu icons.
> If you buy bottom barrel you will get what you paid for unless you're extremely lucky...
OK, not sure how that's relevant. I recommended buying a very solid, albeit refurbished desktop unit from a major manufacturer that I happen to have been running three instances of for years now without problem.
> ...same goes for linux.
What does that even mean? My years using Linux as a desktop have been filled with far less drama than the years I ran Windows as my workstation.
There are people commenting on this post who actually do this thing, and are telling you that your irrational fears are unfounded. Experience beating “thinking” every day.
My experience tells me absolutely 100% that separating them is better.
I’ve been using computers since the 80’s. How long have you been using them?
Well I am Welsh and in the 80s I was using the pride of Wales, the mighty Dragon 32. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_32/64
Anyway nowadays my daily driver is Win10 with WSL. It really is as good as other posters have said.
I'm American and I've been running Windows since the 80s and Linux since the 90s, which are the OSes we're talking about.