Comment by munchbunny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by munchbunny | Hacker News Reader

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WSL2 is basically the same as WSL1 for the comparison you're making, though the upcoming GUI stuff will mean that you don't have to fiddle with the X server, it'll "just work".

The main difference I encounter between WSL1 and WSL2 is that accessing files across the OS divide happens through a networked filesystem instead of a natively shared filesystem, so it's not as seamless/performant, but the upside is much better filesystem performance when it's Linux doing Linux things. Which I'm happy about when it comes to containers. (I run both WSL1 and WSL2 on different computers.)

Docker for Windows also now has WSL integration so that you can launch Linux containers directly into WSL. I don't think it's configured by default just because you have to choose to install WSL, but once you've flipped the requisite switches it's seamless.

> The main difference I encounter between WSL1 and WSL2 is that accessing files across the OS divide happens through a networked filesystem instead of a natively shared filesystem

This has been my biggest gripe with WSL and linux virtualization on windows. WSL1 wouldn't work with some weirdly mapped network drives we had and with WSL2 (and linux in general) I don't find the drivers (or samba or some other component) stable enough when you're doing large writes to NTFS drives, I've had the same issues with vmware too.

This is one of the big reasons I'm still on cygwin, it's worked for years (maybe decades), it interoperates with windows better and all the little bugs have been worked out. Ultimately it's then GNU tools I'm after, the kernel isn't particularly interesting for my use cases.

> Ultimately it's then GNU tools I'm after, the kernel isn't particularly interesting for my use cases.

That’s an interesting take, and it makes sense that some people need properly hybrid setups. I personally used Cygwin mostly to have access to a Linux dev environment inside Windows, not so much to apply GNU tools to Windows development. As a result I’m pretty happy with WSL just for the sake of having a Linux dev environment within easy reach, and I typically don’t feel a need to do much with the shared file system.

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