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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

I think there is a Fedora install available on the Microsoft store, but it is paid for and I’m not sure the proceeds will go to the Fedora maintainers.

I don’t like WSL much. It feels like a second class environment, where the Linux filesystem is accessible via a network share.

In any case, it works. Windows Terminal is good enough, but I find Windows a hopelessly confusing OS with lots of places where it seems unfinished.

Considered all its pain points, I’d go with a VM under VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation. You’ll get a desktop-like experience if you go full screen and you still can get to the filesystem via the VM’s host drive plumbing. And nothing prevents you from running Windows Terminal and ssh’ing into the proper VM.

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These are my solutions also, I do have a working Fedora in WSL2 (using the manual method of installation), but I still keep using the VMware Workstation. At this point, although the GUI is running, I'm only using it as a "remote ssh" from my VSCode and everything works like a charm.

Certainly WSL2 integration has some benefits, but I'm not really using any of them at this point. My Windows terminal sshs to the Linux VM, my VSCode terminal opens in the Linux VM and everything feels fine. That covers my development requirements pretty well and rest of the stuff I do with native Windows tools (and I rarely need to cross-access files).

> (using the manual method of installation)

Never bothered to look for that. Can you link to it?

I have used this, it works.

https://dev.to/bowmanjd/install-fedora-on-windows-subsystem-...

Is there a way for me to run my current Fedora install as a VM in Windows? Basically I just want the simplest solution, which I guess is for me to ssh into my eventual Linux laptop. But since I don't know when I'll be getting that, I'm wondering what are the pain points of using Fedora through VMWare Workstation. I used VirtualBox when I was first trying out Ubuntu, and it felt noticeably less smooth. Note my main monitor is 1440p 165Hz, so I don't know if that affected things.

> my current Fedora install as a VM in Windows?

Not sure WSL2 will like Wayland. It seems better adapted to text-mode command-line Linux work (I'm aware it can run graphical apps). What I'd suggest is to deploy a new Fedora/CentOS WSL VM and copy your home into it.

> I used VirtualBox when I was first trying out Ubuntu

Oh yes. Unless it's a really nice machine and the hypervisor allows the VM to bypass hardware emulation when possible and use some form of virtio-like thing, it'll never be as fluid and snappy as when it's deployed on metal.

Yeah, using Linux full screen in VMware Workstation is generally pretty good, and hard to tell there's a windows layer underneath most of the time.

On work computer, I use qemu to run arch & sid qcow2 vms, with whpx acceleration you get near native performance For networking You can use open vpn tap and a bridge to access guest from host This is obviously not ideal if you don’t have 8gb ram and don’t want linux gui With a wm like dwm and firefox running qemu takes up about 1.5gb ram

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