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Comment by pkilgore | Hacker News Reader

Is WSL still opt-in? Something to be aware of for power users, but most Windows users are never going to know about or figure out how to turn on WSL (at least as of the last time I tried it).

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The install process for WSL is still fairly complex for mainline Windows builds. However, in the preview channel, it's mostly just "wsl.exe --install". And that wsl.exe ships with the preview builds. I can see this being a bigger target once that feature is pushed down to the mainline windows builds. It does still require admin rights.

See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

Most Windows users are also never going to know how to get Microsoft Office on their Computer when it doesn't come preinstalled. Usually people have other people who do things like this for them

> Most...users are also never going to know how to get...on their Computer when it doesn't come preinstalled.

What?

Isn't that the biggest selling point of MacOS on HN/Reddit?

This comment made me sad, a little. 15 years ago practically everyone would know how to do this: download the installer from Microsoft and run it.

In all fairness, things were a lot easier back then. Installers all had the same UI and you knew where to find them afterwards. Now the UI is different for all of them and you have no idea where the program went when it finished installing.

It was possible to download an installer from Microsoft 15 years ago (except MSDN)? For most people getting Office meant trip to the store and getting a box with physical CD.

It was:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060430185620/http://g.msn.com/...

A link to download an Office Trial, which at the time was just the full version of office which worked without a key for a trial period.

I seem to recall there was an online store for Office to purchase a key.

Though, I suspect you're right, most people probably bought a box back then. These days, I'd expect the average consumer to use the preloaded Office stubs on new PCs.

This seems like a symptom of forgetting 2006 was 15 years ago. I did the math this time but if someone off hand mentions 20 years ago I still think of the 90s.

Ha, you're right, I might have overshot my time period a little. I was thinking Windows 7 era, plus some late Vista/XP. Wikipedia tells me Windows 7 was released in 2009, so my statement would probably hold better if I'd said "around 10 years ago". But on the whole I think it's close enough :)

Really? I think they will just Google "buy Microsoft office" and follow the instructions on the first link that pops up. Or buy it from the Windows store app.

I don't know anyone who has locally installed office software anymore. It's all GSuite or Office 365.

What a condescending comment

True. Very condescending.

The fact remains, no matter the tone.

Most, not all Windows users CBA with "computers" and call _us_ to install software.

There's a reason shops charge a fortune for basic maintenance. People don't have the time/inclination to learn it.

This is my own opinion, based on my own experience. YMMV.

It’s also terrible, thankless work, if you don’t charge an arm and a leg people think it’s worthless work.

Yes, and I believe enabling it requires administrative rights so the risk to a lot of organizations with locked down Windows installs is minimal unless they’ve enabled WSL intentionally

I got WSL setup in my computer without the admin rights.

Sure you didn't just get it without UAC?

If you actually don't have admin rights, was this WSL1?

I honestly don't remember how I did it. But I have WSL2 with ubuntu. I know ubuntu I downloaded from the windows app store.

That's interesting. The mainline builds seem to require running dism.exe with admin rights, and the preview builds require running "wsl.exe --install" with admin rights. Curious how you got around that.

Pretty much all government contractors use windows for bureaucratic and spying purposes. Good luck convincing your security-minded boss to let you have a linux playground when it increases attack surface area.

It's not something a consumer will do by accident, and IIRC the last time I set up Enterprise on my work machines I also had to activate itanually.

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