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Comment by darthrupert | Hacker News Reader

My best choice was going back to Linux. Everything is simple and fast. It's difficult to say if this improves my efficiency, but I feel a lot better.

Do yourself a favor. Go for the real thing, don't accept poor substitutes.

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I used Linux since 2000. While I made countless tries to make it usable as a desktop, I had been forced to recognize long time ago that for me it isn't a good enough experience.

It alway needed lots of time to configure things to make it half decent, the configuration would broke from time to time. Some software which I want to use either runs poorly using Wine, either can't be run at all.

I am much more comfortable using Windows as a desktop and WSL has eliminated the need to dual boot or use a Linux VM.

Isn't WSL v2 another flavour of Linux VM?

Sure it is. But it is better integrated with Windows Desktop. I don't have to start and manage the VM. It's seamless.

A lot has changed even in the past few years. The small bits of windows software which I was bound to is now covered by things like lutris

I also used system for a number of activities that are unavailable in Linux and rely on WSL to give me a reasonable facsimile to a nix box.

I loved the new WSL2 upgrades but rolled back because I simply couldn't do the rest of my work as quickly in Windows 11. Forcing the grouping of apps on the Taskbar was major productivity hit for me, as was the simplified context menu in Explorer.

I've been using xfce for about 10 years, and recently I've stopped customising it. I don't care about the theme, backgrounds etc. All I do is configured a single panel on the top of the screen and install plank. I have a few keyboard shortcuts for window tiling, and that's it. I haven't used Windows in a long time, so I'll be honest and say "I don't know what I'm missing", but I'm willing to bet that it ain't much, especially in return for what I get out of Linux. Maybe I should give it a go?

Also, for more privacy. Microsoft doesn't have to constantly see what you are doing. They got GitHub and O365 with OneDrive integrated in all the big companies, way too much power already..

I've tried. I've been on fedora for years but things just break. The sound breaks, the video breaks, with the latest release VScode and Teams broke. Also I've two graphics cards and one has been unusable for 6 months.

If you don’t like Fedora, perhaps try a different distro. Fedora’s commitment to free and open software has the downside of making proprietary hardware less reliable. From my own experience I would recommend Ubuntu or Manjaro. Those break rarely, if ever.

It is hard to characterize linux distros in broad terms because they all take such different approaches — two could be as similar as Windows 10 vs 8, or as different as Windows vs Mac!

Teams breaking sounds like a feature

The real thing still has lots of issues, specially on laptops.

Using Linux distributions since 1995.

And I really don't get WSL, other than Windows trying to cater to the macOS crowd.

I have been using VMWare since 2010, when I need Linux on the laptop and have never felt I need something else.

For me the only thing I would get from WSL is not having to fight with IT for VMWare licenses.

I agree. I use seperate computers for each operating system I use; which is currently Windows 10 and FreeBSD. I don't use MacOS much any more and Linux seemed to be edging closer towards Windows, so FreeBSD brought me back into a more traditional Unix world with TWM and command lines. I enjoy it.

FreeBSD is nice but I really miss some GNU stuff

If you miss Docker then suggesting You the Jails here would not help but if you miss typical GNU commands then you can install them like that:

    # pkg install coreutils

Now you have all GNU utulities with 'g' prefix:

    % pkg info -l coreutils | grep bin
        /usr/local/bin/g[
        /usr/local/bin/gb2sum
        /usr/local/bin/gbase32
        /usr/local/bin/gbase64
        /usr/local/bin/gbasename
        /usr/local/bin/gbasenc
        /usr/local/bin/gcat
        /usr/local/bin/gchcon
        /usr/local/bin/gchgrp
        /usr/local/bin/gchmod
        /usr/local/bin/gchown
        /usr/local/bin/gchroot
        /usr/local/bin/gcksum
        /usr/local/bin/gcomm
        /usr/local/bin/gcp
        /usr/local/bin/gcsplit
        /usr/local/bin/gcut
        /usr/local/bin/gdate
        /usr/local/bin/gdd
        /usr/local/bin/gdf
        /usr/local/bin/gdir
        /usr/local/bin/gdircolors
        /usr/local/bin/gdirname
        /usr/local/bin/gdu
        /usr/local/bin/gecho
        /usr/local/bin/genv
        /usr/local/bin/gexpand
        /usr/local/bin/gexpr
        /usr/local/bin/gfactor
        /usr/local/bin/gfalse
        /usr/local/bin/gfmt
        /usr/local/bin/gfold
        /usr/local/bin/ggroups
        /usr/local/bin/ghead
        /usr/local/bin/ghostid
        /usr/local/bin/gid
        /usr/local/bin/ginstall
        /usr/local/bin/gjoin
        /usr/local/bin/gkill
        /usr/local/bin/glink
        /usr/local/bin/gln
        /usr/local/bin/glogname
        /usr/local/bin/gls
        /usr/local/bin/gmd5sum
        /usr/local/bin/gmkdir
        /usr/local/bin/gmkfifo
        /usr/local/bin/gmknod
        /usr/local/bin/gmktemp
        /usr/local/bin/gmv
        /usr/local/bin/gnice
        /usr/local/bin/gnl
        /usr/local/bin/gnohup
        /usr/local/bin/gnproc
        /usr/local/bin/gnumfmt
        /usr/local/bin/gnustat
        /usr/local/bin/god
        /usr/local/bin/gpaste
        /usr/local/bin/gpathchk
        /usr/local/bin/gpinky
        /usr/local/bin/gpr
        /usr/local/bin/gprintenv
        /usr/local/bin/gprintf
        /usr/local/bin/gptx
        /usr/local/bin/gpwd
        /usr/local/bin/greadlink
        /usr/local/bin/grealpath
        /usr/local/bin/grm
        /usr/local/bin/grmdir
        /usr/local/bin/gruncon
        /usr/local/bin/gseq
        /usr/local/bin/gsha1sum
        /usr/local/bin/gsha224sum
        /usr/local/bin/gsha256sum
        /usr/local/bin/gsha384sum
        /usr/local/bin/gsha512sum
        /usr/local/bin/gshred
        /usr/local/bin/gshuf
        /usr/local/bin/gsleep
        /usr/local/bin/gsort
        /usr/local/bin/gsplit
        /usr/local/bin/gstdbuf
        /usr/local/bin/gstty
        /usr/local/bin/gsum
        /usr/local/bin/gsync
        /usr/local/bin/gtac
        /usr/local/bin/gtail
        /usr/local/bin/gtee
        /usr/local/bin/gtest
        /usr/local/bin/gtimeout
        /usr/local/bin/gtouch
        /usr/local/bin/gtr
        /usr/local/bin/gtrue
        /usr/local/bin/gtruncate
        /usr/local/bin/gtsort
        /usr/local/bin/gtty
        /usr/local/bin/guname
        /usr/local/bin/gunexpand
        /usr/local/bin/guniq
        /usr/local/bin/gunlink
        /usr/local/bin/guptime
        /usr/local/bin/gusers
        /usr/local/bin/gvdir
        /usr/local/bin/gwc
        /usr/local/bin/gwho
        /usr/local/bin/gwhoami
        /usr/local/bin/gyes

I miss awk -d '\n'

I am waiting for two things; Better DE UX and graphics card sharing for VMs in consumer cards before I move full time to Linux.

Gnome 41 looks compelling and by the time consumer cards can be shared with VMs (for gaming, VR and that sort of thing), it might be as good as MacOS's desktop environment.

I can't wait to ditch Windows full time. It's such a confused mess of an OS.

Running it in a VM and then connecting to that VM via VNC and going full screen was a revelation to me. Even over wifi it wasn’t that far off. Completely recommend.

Running it in a remote VM somewhere on the cloud you mean?

Dirtier than that. I have an addiction to Intel Nucs, and put Esxi or Proxmox on them. You can get 10gbe connections with a little effort and then it’s brilliant, but wifi is surprisingly usable.

Why did you leave it in the first place?

One employer had an Apple-only policy which initially forced me into that world, and then I decided to test the Apple ecosystem out. For several years.

It was ok, the level of integration and hardware quality being even excellent, but overall Linux is a better set of compromises for me.

What is not “real Linux” about WSL?

Come on.

Any argument to develop?

* You can't run your distro of choice unless you build it yourself

* Lots of programs don't work properly (citation needed, can't remember specifics)

* You can only run command line programs, although I understand this could be different in Windows 11

My last job mandated windows laptops so I used WSL for a couple of months before I got too frustrated and just ran a virtualbox VM.

In the article it says clearly that you can run the distro of your choice using WSL.

Can it run Linux From Scratch (LFS)? It seems like it could.

Yes sure it can, create a usable (chrootable) Linux From Scratch rootfs tarball and import it using wsl --import, and everything should be fine. Though don't forget to remove the kernels because WSL don't load them, instead WSL uses a custom kernel shipped with the Windows system.

And building a custom one is easy. I have Gentoo running in WSL with no fuss.

The distro of your choice from the small pool that you are given to choose from.

It's not a completely unrestricted choice.

That pool includes Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Fedora and a few others if I remember correctly, although it may have expanded since.

I'm not sure how straightforward rolling your own is.

You have no idea what you are talking about. You can install any kind of distribution by copying over their rootfs. For example, I am running Void Linux on WSL2.

The pool in question is open - anybody (not just Microsoft) can package and publish a distro there.

And for one-off use, there's wsl --import: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/use-custom-dist...

>You can only run command line programs, although I understand this could be different in Windows 11

WSLg solves this, apparently

https://github.com/microsoft/wslg

Can't you run an xorg server under Windows and let the WSL apps connect to that?

Yeah, you can, but it's pretty janky.

Not if you use an X server that's specifically designed for it: https://x410.dev/

I'll have to check that out, thanks!

What makes real Linux by your criteria? Linux the kernel is easy driverless installs of hardware, windows isn’t driverless.

mounting network drives is a pain

It is "real linux". Or I should say "real desktop Linux". Most people who don't like it for some reason are trying to use it like a server.

Yeah I just use VMWare on Windows and call it a day

the windows part.

WSL runs a standard Linux side by side with windows. There are no “Windows part” overlapping with it. A way to think about it is that you have two system that share devices and file systems.

the windows part is the windows that is running as the host os.

happy to run windows in a vm though, that way you can stop it when it starts doing weird windows things.

I think you cannot run X-Window applications out of the box

Any virtualization solution has the complexity of the sum of the environments being run simultaneously, the virtualization solution, and the surface where all 3 interact. Furthermore the guest solution inherently deals with the system at a higher level wherein you are stuck with how the host handles lower level aspects.

Such a system is simultaneously worse and more complicated as a necessary price for running both native windows applications and linux ones. In most cases you would be better off just running Windows or running actual Linux.

For example my Linux system has a ZFS root filesystem which provides a lot of interesting features including the ability to boot a prior version of my install at startup, along with 37 other useful things. Running a linux VM with that feature wouldn't magically port this functionality to the rest of the system.

My Linux system is vastly less likely to fall victim to a cryptolocker or other malware situation but running a vm under my Windows desktop wouldn't deliver this benefit.

My Linux system handles virtual desktops per monitor making it easy to swap one monitor at a time to a different workspace or all together if I please. Again neither running an app via a compatibility layer nor a fullscreen VM would provide this functionality.

WSL is Linux light without most of the interesting features and able to be withdrawn any given year by Microsoft. Worse it could be extended in ways that depend on windows features in a classic Microsoft move.

One of the most frustrating thing is that WSL is not a booted Linux. Systemd and other things don't work out of the box even in WSL2. In WSL1 it is almost impossible to make Systemd work, and in WSL2 a wrapper is needed to create a SUID 1 (if I am not wrong) environment to emulate a booted environment. Other than this, the kernel used by WSL2 is a custom, Microsoft-tailored LTS version which may cause some problems if some program rely on very new syscalls.

tmpfs is mapped to filesystem, so if you need to have tmpfs mount in docker, the performance will be a lot slower

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64401190/can-i-use-docke...

People are voting me down but it’s mostly from misinformation. WSL runs standard Linux distributions, it’s the real deal, not an imitation or anything that could be considered bad. If you face issues with it it’s mostly because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the setup (for example the person trying to run systemd…), not because it isn’t a „real Linux“.

it runs a modified kernel in a VM and it makes some basic things like mounting suck and IO slooow

That's exactly what I mean by misinformed. WSL 2 isn't using a simple virtual machine the way it is generally understood. It is instead using a lightweight VM using Hyper-V, there is no booting time. IO in itself isn't slow if you move files to the Linux FS. What is slow is the communication between Windows <—> Linux filesystems.

Edit: regarding the custom kernel, you can create your own if you want, nothing is blocking you from doing so https://kumekay.com/compiling-custom-kernel-for-wsl2/.

Microsoft's kernel is also available on github: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel.

I know and I was referring to the windows <--> wsl IO

It's nice to be able to run Linux in windows but it's like driving a Ferrari inside a Honda. You do it because its nicer than context switching when you have to drive the Honda, not because it's like driving an actual Ferrari

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