Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI
github.com
github.com
It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.
• I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?), and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu. They pair only as headphones with no microphone. On Windows they work "out of the box".
• I use a triple-monitor configuration with three 4K displays: the ThinkPad's internal 15" display and two 24" externals. In Ubuntu I can only get two displays to work. (BTW one external display is in landscape mode above the ThinkPad, and the other is to the left in portrait mode. I highly recommend this configuration - the portrait mode display is great for reading docs and especially PDF files.)
• I run the external displays at 200% scaling and the internal at 300% to match the differing pixel density. I didn't see any way to support this configuration in Ubuntu, much less be able to move an app window between displays and have it automatically update its scaling factor to match the display. This works "out of the box" in Windows.
So I run Windows on the hardware and Ubuntu with my dev tools like PyCharm and SmartGit in a VMware VM. (VMware works a lot better for this than VirtualBox - the display response is much snappier.)
Of course these are my own needs, and I have no quarrel with anyone who has different preferences. But I welcome anything Microsoft can do to make this an even smoother experience than it already is.
I am using it on Archlinux without any problems whatsoever.
The problem with Ubuntu is - when it releases their latest version, it is already shipping a couple years old software versions.
And for pipewire, wayland, mesa and other desktop related things you want to run the latest version at all times. This is one of the major reasons why Valve chose Archlinux as a base for their new SteamOS version for Steam Deck.
> The problem with Ubuntu is - when it releases their latest version, it is already shipping a couple years old software versions.
It maybe fits somewhat for Debian Stable (that has a freeze of 4 to 6 months), but Ubuntu bases off Debian Unstable (sid) and sid is very close to the Arch experience - I know because I use both a lot. Granted, Ubuntu adds a bit of a delay due to QA and all that release fuzz a rolling release like Arch does not has to care for, but if an upstream software release happened one or two months before an Ubuntu release it's really likely to be included in that release.
> And for pipewire, wayland, mesa and other desktop related things you want to run the latest version at all times.
> This is one of the major reasons why Valve chose Archlinux as a base for their new SteamOS version for Steam Deck.
But actually Debian and Arch Linux are really close anyway, I do packaging for both (but neither a DM nor Arch trusted user) and if the software is not awful to package in general it's quite the bliss to do for both, there are also lots of parallels, even if often slightly hidden. So I won't care much; may even try out setting up Debian Sid once I get my Steam Deck :)
FYI: here's some good background read regarding all this from a Debian developer whom also works for Collabora on the Steam Runtime: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2021/07/msg00214.html
This works if you use Wayland rather than X11. I'm using a similar configuration today.
The amount of meetings I've had where the audio from the other end sounds like the BART announcements is too high...
That being said, I know what you mean. However, I'm actually rather annoyed at the headset microphone functionality on windows, because if anything starts using the microphone, it switches modes and the audio quality goes way, way down. Fine for a zoom call maybe, but having horrible audio in a video game is not fun. I constantly have to go to control panel to turns off hands-free telephony.
I do like having wireless headphones of one sort or another, so I can walk around while staying in the conversation.
Also, over-the-ear or in-the-ear (the kind that go into your ear canal) headphones don't work for me. The only kind I'm really comfortable with are the kind that sit lightly in my outer ear, e.g. AirPods and not AirPods Pro.
But in any case, I'm eager to hear about your setup. And I'm probably not the only one who would welcome better quality audio. Thanks!
Funny, I don't see this on windows, which will leave the headphones at high quality (except for when I'm speaking, at which point I don't care that much about audio) - but on Linux I have to set the audio profile for the headset to low quality in order to enable the microphone at all - so all audio out is crap as long as I'm on a call/have the microphone enabled (even muted).
Still waiting for this to improve - but looks like it'll require new hw (new Bluetooth receiver and sender).
> I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?), and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu.
> Set ControllerMode = bredr or ControllerMode = dual by editing
> /etc/bluetooth/main.conf file
> systemctl restart bluetooth
On windows, brand new Dell laptop for work, with an insanely locked down version of windows 10, zoom often crashes, especially when sharing my screen. This in turn takes down many other applications. Generally making the whole windows experience far from optimal.
My Sager Laptop a few years ago, and now my HP Omni (personal) laptop, I regularly drive 2 screens and the laptop display. Works. Out of the box. Work windows 10 laptop, its a crap shoot at best. And I can't use the NVidia card very much in windows 10, simply because the system is so locked down. Thus I'm stuck with an expensive and useless feature. One that works flawlessly in my locked down linux box.
On different scalings for different monitors, its built in to mint.
I'm guessing you are either running a very old version of Ubuntu (literally all the complaints you made are many years out of date, having been solved long ago), or you copy-pastaed from somewhere else. My priors on this are 60% the latter 40% the former.
On my linux laptop, I run windows the way it should be run (if you really need to run it). In a kvm instance. Never touching real hardware. And whats funny about this, is that the virtualized Win10 is faster than the far more expensive windows 10 work laptop right next to it.
Go figure.
FWIW, I've been using Linux on my desktop for 23 years, and as my primary OS on my desktop/laptop for 20 of those years. So ... YMMV.
I do remember at the time, windows didn't really work with those Bluetooth headphones, and I actually started bringing my own Linux laptop to work just so I could use my headphones.
When it comes to Zoom, I'd say the problem is having to use that crap and not the fact that they barely support Linux. MS Teams also won't work on Linux, but it's hard to claim it's an issue on Linux's side. I'd suggest looking at something like Jitsi, which is also encrypted and takes security into consideration.
Ubuntu is a pretty bad example for anything though: they're usually trying to reinvent the wheel and it's very common for things not to work there and work anywhere else. I personally have mixed feeling because they both make Lonux more popular and build good tools, but also give Linux a bad rep at the same time. Maybe give Fedora a shot?
Finally, per-display scaling works fine on Wayland, but won't work on Xorg. I believe Ubuntu still uses the latter.
Jitsi is not as good as Zoom. Zoom seamlessly integrates with multiple monitors, and it provides a variety of tooling to rearrange your view of people and shared desktops. Just as an example last week I was helping two coworkers troubleshoot something, and I was able to have both of them share their desktops simultaneously. I had one on one monitor and one on the other. It was painless and instant. Maybe Jitsi supports such a thing somehow but it would have taken a minute or two to find the right buttons to press.
Also Zoom is encrypted. It has always been encrypted. Zoom lied about having E2E encryption and also weirdly had a lower-grade AES. Zoom is weird because while I 100% mistrust their motives in using weaker encryption, there are some legitimate tradeoffs between reliability and encryption - and it's actually pretty unlikely that they could implement E2E encryption without compromising video quality.
And ultimately especially with the pandemic and only being able to see people via video, even the smallest problems are potentially quite massive. I've used Jitsi a bit, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it would mean that I would have spent at least an extra hour a week during the pandemic troubleshooting video when I was trying to have a nice visit with friends or family. I'm not going to be an ideologue when I lose that kind of time.
For games, proton has come a long way. I don't find myself needing to boot out of Linux very often anymore.
I have a friend who uses Zoom a lot on her Windows laptop, and this "feature" of Zoom has messed her meetings up so many times!
Is this due to Apple having drivers for AirPods for Windows or Is Windows Bluetooth stack that good?
macOS by itself wouldn't work for me, though. I would still need to run a Linux VM because of our very fussy build system. And besides, where would my beloved TrackPoint be? :-)
I'm way more productive with email and just a couple phone calls a week as needed.
In truth, I don't spend that much time on Zoom calls, and of the few that I have, many are no video, just substitutes for a phone call with better audio quality and the ability to share screens if needed.
When you consider that Edge is available for Linux, MS could very well be using WSLg to develop it.
So it seems to me that this just makes it easier to anything you need to do on Linux, “on” Windows.
Of course making it easier for people on Windows to make software for Linux seems like a way to help Linux, which is a bit confusing to see MS do.
WSL2 is also a full VM
It would be more of a case of how well certain software works, or how well that software works together, than one of supporting Linux exclusive software. There have been a variety of ways to run Unix software under Windows for decades. Quite often, there are quirks to deal with unless considerable effort has also been put into the Windows native version. I doubt that WSL will actually appeal to many existing Linux users, but it will probably prevent the slow flow of people from Windows to Linux.
I agree that native ext4 support would be more useful for people who dual boot.
> The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games
Another reason to use windows is if you are on a laptop and care about battery life. Browsers on Linux still don't have hardware accelerated video playback.
That's just not true. Might be a problem with some GPUs but not with all. At least I got hardware accelerated video playback on Chromium with my AMD GPU.
I presume getting GUI working on top of those GPU APIs was a trivial task (and maybe done by one of their interns or during a hackathon).
Your interns must be rock stars on meth.
Edit: Seems people don't believe me, here's an article how to do it: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-dev-appconsul...
Windows adds support for running Linux apps, then spreads some FUD about Linux, and convinces companies they need to ban dual-booting and only allow Windows internally.
It certainly does _sound_ like MS.
It looks like using the method described in the link below it’s now possible to mount ext4 drives via WSL2 and even browse them in File Explorer:
https://superuser.com/a/1630438
It’s not clear if they are also writable or not, I’m off to try it!
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk
There is a guide here:
https://medium.com/geekculture/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-s...
However waiting for 21H2 is probably a lot easier.
VS Code brilliantly lets me develop on WSL2, IntelliJ is getting there but with these new developments it might become easier to run everything on Linux.
That said, IT at work not only tolerates Linux but actively support it so I might be back on Linux again very soon.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk
The other day I wanted to compare gitk on Windows with the same on Linux. But there was no Xserver installed, so the idea was dropped.
The whole reason was to see if gitk also had that annoying enumeration at startup in Linux.
I can't tell you how many people want to mess around with the robot operating system but don't want to dive head first into Linux. Hell, my very large robotics company won't even give you a linux machine. You're forced to use Mac or Windows or build it yourself.
But in general, I haven't dual-booted my main machine since WSL got good, and I'm a linxu-first kind of person with a penchant for windows gaming.
WSLg had an early demonstration of ROS simulations running, in fact. So I can double down on this being a use case.
And using them is an endless shuffle with fractured distribution and update. WSL gives you apt-get. And good luck when every port you use integrates with a different subset of the ca 5 SSH options that are in common use on Windows.
I think VirtualBox has a similar feature, but in my limited experience VB doesn't perform as well as VMware.
99% hardware support isn’t good enough. I want to make new software not troubleshoot other people’s.
Other way around. The Kernel getting real support for NTFS (was merged into Linus' tree a month ago [0]) there's hope to get native performance on WSL2.
Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next decade.
[0] https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-have-...
can you explain a bit how this works?
Big claim, most devs I've met either use Mac or Ubuntu. Can't remember anyone using Windows...
https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/#Main_on-whic...
Windows: 61% Linux: 47% macOS: 44%
No, really, when all of my development happens over SSH or inside Docker anyway, it doesn't really matter which is the "outer" OS. I'm happy with Windows.
I'd be onboard with Windows as a next-gen dev environment if it was compatible with more filesystems, had a more organized file structure, featured greater CPU compatibility, and eliminated the system registry altogether.
And if there's problems, you'll be sorry out of luck.
Pisses me off, but at least it's not a complete blocker.
I'll need to revert to one of the available X11 servers but I wiped out the old configuration and it's kinda painful to automatically set $DISPLAY and also get Norton Firewall to play along.
> WSLg is going to be generally available alongside the upcoming release of Windows. To get access to a preview of WSLg, you'll need to join the Windows Insider Program and be running a Windows 10 Insider Preview build from the beta or dev channels.
I always thought it would be enabled on Windows 10.
I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2.
This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? When is WSL2 running and when is it not? etc etc
Ultimately, I would rather run Linux on my desktop as a daily driver but the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me to live (at least) 8 hours a day in. Gnome 40 looks great though, can't wait too see what the future holds.
My dream is running Linux as a daily driver where the UI is more polished than MacOS. Windows will run in a VM and will be used for API calls for playing games (I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation).
I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis, Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manager) is my daily driver. Everytime I switch to windows or Mac os, it always feels like a downgrade for me because I can't replicate the tiling experience. The one thing I love about mac, is the trackpad experience, I wish windows and Linux could get to that level.
2. Update Nvidia drivers and everything breaks
3. 99% of laptops have at least one device with missing or broken drivers. 802.11ac is very old in 2021, but the most popular ac chips still need an out-of-tree driver which will break when you update your kernel. Have fun copying kernel patches from random forums
4. Even the smallest of changes (ex: set display scaling to something that's not a multiple of 100%) require dicking around with config files. Windows 10's neutered control panel is still leagues ahead of Ubuntu's settings app. (Why are the default settings so bad? High DPI 4K monitors have been out for a decade now. Maybe they've fixed this since I've last checked. Or maybe all the devs use 10 year old Thinkpads)
5. Every config file is its own special snowflake with its own syntax, keywords, and escape characters
6. Every distro is its own special snowflake so it takes forever to help someone unfuck their computer if you're not familiar with their distro. Releasing software on Linux is painful for a related reason: The kennel has a stable ABI, but distros don't. You have to ship half the distro with every app if you want it to work out of the box. Using Docker for GUI apps is insane, but sometimes that's that you gotta do.
7. The desktop Linux community seems to only care about performance on old crappy hardware.
8. Audio input and output latency is really high out of the box. That's one of many things that require tweaking just to get acceptable performance.
I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.
I have considered switching back to windows.
I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.
Hasn't this been solved for some time now? Or am I misunderstanding what you want? I remember seeing a few articles about using this for gaming on Windows VMs on Linux hosts. I haven't jumped in though so maybe it's not what I think it is.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_with_libvirt_qe...
I think it's also definitely in use for compute stuff on VMs in professional environments.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualizati...
Edit: Ah, maybe sharing a GPU between a host and VMs isn't possible at the moment. Only pass-through and maybe sharing between the VMs?
Sharing a used GPU, in the same way we can share a CPU with no performance loss via Intel Hyper v, is not possible.
Mostly it's just that I never go a full day without performing some kind of maintenance on my Linux desktop environment to try to get it looking right, and it never looks right.
I also run multiple monitors, so that aspect tends to throw in some extra jank.
At this point, running Gnome completely unmodified has been the most success I have had - but even Gnome 40 has some questionable design decisions.
Windows is a poor example of polish but I feel there's a lot we can learn from by looking at MacOS's desktop environment. Having used each for significant amounts of time (years) and currently living on Windows, MacOS really takes the prize for the "nicest place to live but worst landlord".
Did they push those changes upstream? This seems like it could be another way to run GUI apps in containers on Linux too.
I could not find any reference to it upstream or mention in the mailing lists.
I thought Wayland relied on shared memory with the compositor to work? I could be way off though
I guess getting the right thing for the wrong reasons is better than not getting them at all? I'm not a very good pragmatist.
The screenshot on the github page shows VSCode, Edge, Blender, Xcalc, Xclock and GNOME file manager which are all either available natively on windows or redundant.
[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/wundows-subsystem-android-ben...
It's useful for me when developing dotnet intended for Linux as I can store the code in WSL and be able to build, debug, run docker and so on directly from vscode.
Personally I haven't run into slowness other than Windows sucking at copying lots of small files, which is NT's fault for allowing FS filter drivers and their ridiculous locking scheme.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-version...
> As you can tell from the comparison table above, the WSL 2 architecture outperforms WSL 1 in several ways, with the exception of performance across OS file systems.
WSL2 Linux apps now get proper performance now but if your IDE is on the Windows side, access time to project files on native Linux partition is terrible.
Pretty sure the point of the WSL and WSLg projects are to lure developers who would otherwise use macOS. After all, your local environment is likely even closer to production using WSL than it is on the BSD-derived macOS userland and Darwin kernel. Actually, early on in its life macOS (poorly) supported X11 apps using XQuartz as a similar lure.
https://mspoweruser.com/windows-subsystem-for-linux-started-...
Note there is nothing wrong with the Windows version of Houdini, it's just Linux is more suitable for it.
For those asking comparing versus X forwarding, at least for my purposes, I've found X over a socket very limiting in that remote opengl basically stops at version 1.1. With WSLg my apps run on MESA version 4.5, meaning they actually run. I haven't even tried with the vGPU driver yet and its already a very nice improvement.
Would be even nicer if PCIe device assignment wasn't locked behind Windows Server licensing however.
This is a pretty big limitation. Hopefully it can be addressed soon.
That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user.
That's the tip of the iceberg MS want everyone to see, and point the finger at.
MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative since they lost the battle when they attempted to kill it during the Ballmer era. The plan now is more subtle: making sure everyone using Linux will want to do that from a Windows machine, with all the implications about security and privacy, which would be non existent since any malware (or Windows itself) that for example used Windows keyboard drivers to sniff passwords while one connects say to the bank under WSL "because it's more secure" would be 100% undetectable from that Linux.
The next step will be libraries to access Windows internals and GUI from WSL, so that one can build hybrids that run only on Windows+WSL; very convenient, but unfortunately now Linux is displaced and the only way to benefit from all that software will be to run it under Windows. In the end, MS will create their own Linux distro which runs on top of Windows and will essentially kill all other non-server oriented Linux distros.
Most see WSL as a good thing; I see an elaborate, and have to admit, very clever, way to take complete control of Linux in the next years.
Step 1: get lots of devs using WSL / WSL GUI.
Step 2: Get them comfortable with flexibly using WSL GUI on Linux and Windows interchangeably
Step 3: roll out your poison pill: new Version X, offering great compatibility on Windows but bad integration with Linux; maybe Linux support is buggy or nonexistent, maybe the API doesn't mesh with Linux systems at all, maybe it has license conflicts and Linux has to do a rewrite to be FOSS or write a hacky FOSS shim. Whatever creates the most pain for Linux / FOSS users.
Step 4: Stuck with being tied to WSLg, Developers go to the business and say "either we have to spend a lot of time fixing Linux issues or we buy Windows licenses" at which point the business happily buys Windows and Office 365 volume licenses and keeps going.
Step 5: Microsoft maintains its monopoly for another 10 years.
The "I want to stay independent" workaround is (I assume) writing API layers that can serve "thin GUI clients" on multiple platforms (I guess like Electron or a regular web application or something.)
Not necessarily to this level of malice.
Many (most?) Linux users, especially new ones, use also Windows, so all it needs for MS to convince them to use only Windows+WSL and not say a dual boot machine or two machines, is something that just integrates the two systems, so that most users will feel more comfortable running everything under Windows.
The killer product in my opinion would be something that allows accessing to Windows internals and GUI from a Linux program (imagine "/usr/bin/excel", a port of Excel that works only under Windows+WSL). Those functionalities would be offered by something that "pure" Linux distributions could not offer, including WINE, since we're talking about the full OS and not an API translation layer. Once users and developers are accustomed to it (many devs already develop under WSL) we'll reach the point in which the two worlds will fork in favor of Windows: what is developed under Linux will also work under Windows+WSL but not the other way around. That would probably be the moment MS will introduce their own Linux distribution (advertised as the only one that can take full advantage of "most recent Linux developments") that under the hood could either be normal Windows+WSL, or a different one containing a "hidden" Windows blob allowing developers to run native Linux, hybrid Linux+Windows, and possibly native Windows apps, either free or a lot cheaper than Windows+WSL.
If this happens, most Linux users, especially desktop ones, would rather go back to Windows rather than for example stay with Ubuntu+WINE. Server, embedded and other smaller niches users will make an exception, but Linux is in serious risk of losing all other users.
Linux desktops as they currently stand aren't even close to a threat to Windows, this is Microsoft using the Linux userspace to get developer mindshare back from OSX.
Don't get me wrong, I agree we should be concerned about WSL. But I think it's also very possible Microsoft recognizes developers that aren't developing with MS tech (ie anything but .NET these days) pretty much never use Windows and they are trying to patch that gap.
VSCode made this painfully obvious.
Most corporates would just offer you a mac instead. WSLg is pretty cool, but if you have a choice, running ubuntu or debian is better, with emulation for whatever windows legacy stuff you need to support.
This sounds like organizational problem, not a technical problem. Have you considered applying a new position for another employer that allows to run Ubuntu/Red Hat/etc. environments?
I recently built a desktop since my MBP would turn in to a jet engine if I try to spin up a non trivial docker compose and I went for windows because I wanted to game - started on Windows 10 and was appalled at the ammount of crap they had preinstalled and there with the OS. Windows 11 beta has been much better in this regard.
FWIW, all this WSL stuff is mostly Microsoft trying to Extend, Embrace and Extinguish Linux.
My point exactly! I've been making that case for a while and I think I'm gaining some traction.
There are still some quirks with integration such as certificates and more.
I really can’t wait for the GPU experience to be fully supported and also be able to use pytorch from within containers.
Microsoft is so far doing everything right with WSL IMO.
P.S. And then there is Google which wants you not to care about OS as long as it could launch Chrome browser, and to use web apps instead of native.
WSL v1 had limitations but WSL v2 is a VM -- a more integrated VM than usual but still.
Can it run perf yet? I.e. are they passing through hardware performance counters from the host?
WSL1 with Windows Terminal works good for now quick youtube-dl's, WSL2 needs hyper-v, so kinda deal breaker for me as a virtualbox user.
Seems like Linux is complicated enough without running it in a VM and forwarding everything up to to the host OS.
And Cygwin still runs like a champ today. At least for my use case.
Microsoft has been following this strategy for a while. Announce something useful. I click in and look forward to start using it. How do I download it and get started?
Oh I need to install a beta version of Windows on my computer to use this feature. I dont want to do that.
Then weekly or biweekly new stories pop up and I hope it has had a proper release, but no, insider only.
I would prefer if MS announced, "tool under development to be released 03/25" and then "ready for production today". Synched so that you can get the correct version of windows to use the new tool/feature/framework.
It says it will ship with the next version of Windows, so it will ship in Windows 11 then?
I wish there was a meta tag on Hacker News that identified if a program, platform, airplane, city building, etc is vaporware, under real development or production ready / move in ready / book a flight ready etc etc.
I'm happy to report I have encountered zero issues. In fact, I don't think I've even used it for anything outside of emacs/cli.
I am kinda surprised by this link since I've been using the x version of emacs this whole time.
I hope their intentions are altruistic.
I expect there are MS engineers who see this as altruistic and executives that see this as a way to keep developers from moving off Windows and ultimately as customers. In the end, I'm not sure what this will mean for "desktop Linux". I've already had one colleague dump "bare metal Linux" in favor of Win10 + WSL2.
I wish MS continued evolving WSL1 instead of doing the VM approach but c'est la vie.
The two remaining glitches here are harmonizing file system support across both domains (its fine if you are in the Linux domain and reach over and get or put files into the Windows domain, but the other direction has "issues". And some sort of USB support so that devices can be handled in either domain easily[1].
Mostly I find it is an easy way to use my Linux work flow on a machine that for other reasons has to have Windows on it. Overall the impact is lower than it is if I run an actual VM.
[1] Recently discovered that a windows executable running on the Linux side can "see" the USB stuff so running dfu-util works from the Linux side.
It would take decades to migrate Windows users to a Linux distro.
1. Running Linux build tools that expect to pop up a browser for SSO auth (e.g. with ECS). These tools do the right thing if you install chrome in WSL. Otherwise you need to copy the URL into a windows browser which is slightly inconvenient and for me sometimes inscrutably doesn't work.
2. Running UI dev tools that don't work properly cross-OS from Windows. E.g jconsole Java networking seems to be mostly broken between the host OS and processes listening in WSL so this is a workaround. Run the GUI client in Linux. JVM process discovery also works which is nice.
not sure about java, haven't touched that in over a decade
With WSL you can keep all data in NTFS, have near native speeds but you can't run a bunch of Linux cmdline tools.
I don't know if they can solve it, its basically sending data across the network, But this is the last barrier to a great Linux on Windows.
I suspect whatever's keeping you on Windows isn't really the network effect. It's usually: comfort level/personal preference, or a set of software that vendor(s) can't/won't port to another non-Windows platform.
The fact that so many applications have been rewritten as browser-accessible services has liberated me. I haven't owned a system with a Microsoft OS since ~2004 or so.
The Windows division is another story though. With all the Windows 11 news I decided to give desktop Linux a spin for the nth time in 20 years. Installed Manjaro and I'm extremely impressed. Even though I have Nvidia graphics everything is buttery smooth, all my productivity tools are there, setting up my VPN was far easier than Windows, and even more amazingly most of my games work well thanks to the recent push by Valve and the steam deck.
I will probably stick with it this time, so maybe for me 2021 finally is the year of the Linux desktop.
I get that if you often need to switch it can be a pain in the ass but at least Linux respects my privacy and freedom.
To be honest, Microsoft astroturfers have long existed, for much more than 10 years.
Which is officially supported on Linux.
There might be reasons to run Windows, but this is not one :)
[0] https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/raw/main/docs/WSLg_Integra...
While it's not something I would necessarily use for myself, having the option is really empowering especially for engineers within companies.
I'm not sure when this became the case; it wasn't possible 6 months ago with Windows 10 + WSL2 + Google Drive File Stream.
I currently use vcxsrv which works mostly fine, but it's hard to convince other people to adopt the multitude of hacks I have to make this work, and supporting windows in builds is painful.
I'm a long time VMware user and never really used Unity (name?) view which allows running Linux apps seamlessly on Windows or Mac. WSLg seems to be the same feature.
Either way, pretty awesome to have this.
I wonder if I can use something like bspwm, maybe not... haha
The advantage of wslg would be running hardware accel'd apps?
I'm struggling to think of anything I would use that isn't ported alteady, being GTK or QT or Java based.
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
- Extend <- You are here
- Extinguish
Have you seen how terrible Windows and Windows Server is?
Anyone who is serious about the future of openess, freedom and privacy rights in software and general should strive for the original. I advocate not to hand over MS the control over the Linux desktop.
So yeah, nothing to see here, if anything this is good as it makes linux more accessible to people stuck in windows-only environments. This isn't even M$ making a desktop environment. They have just written an X server into windows instead of having to install one yourself.
side note: I'd also be quite happy if Windows slowly removed the windows parts and replaced them with unixy parts until the whole windows ecosystem could be considered unix-based. That would be so great for so many reasons.
I don't agree with those feelings, so it is indeed the best GNU/Linux experience for me.
Only semi-related but what I really want is for easy windows apps on linux that work without fail. I prefer my linux box and generally hate the windows ui (don't get me started on windows settings or audio). I've tried switching to linux full-time but I don't know if I can hack it. Games are 90% there and I can do without the few that don't work with proton, but there are just too many apps that only work on my windows side that I just don't think I can dump windows.
Wine gives me inconsistent results and breaks for just about anything that needs registry access, not to mention its pretty complicated. I'm hoping to stumble on some tool I've been missing out on that makes everything easier because I wan't to run linux as my daily... I just don't know if it is practical.
I'll bite - what's wrong with the audio? Friends on mine in game dev often complain Linux audio is hopeless to work with.
If the host system is Windows then its Linux Subsystem for Windows.
Please do not fuck with logic.
> Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've EXTENDED the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop.
It has been admitted.
And the code seems available on their weston-mirror. It just a merge away.
Microsoft does enough shady things in the now, let us not try not force some EEE pattern.
The current environment incentivizes expanding the developer ecosystem, hence DX investments.
This is simply Window's attempt to build a new walled garden. If they were actually serious about advancing the state of civil computing, they'd make the NT core available as a microkernel that can be modularly placed into the Linux ecosystem. That is the _one_ thing I can think of which might raise my opinion of them (and I'm sure they lose sleep at night, knowing they haven't got my endorsement).
They are good, just as any public can be good company. IE. Just a little bit more sensible about cooperation instead of demolition.
Extend <-- you are here
Extinguish