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Comment by sixothree | Hacker News Reader

It's literally a subsystem. It's integrated in many ways you would not use to describe a "VM". I don't understand the aversion nor the confusion.

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Here’s an example: if I build a Python app with PyInsyaller (which can’t cross-compile), and if I want a Windows executable, I have to build on Windows, not WSL, which defeats the whole purpose of “bash on Windows” because now at best I have to use Cygwin or Powershell or something and deal with a completely different environment.

You can run windows programs from whatever Linux shell (in WSL) you want, because the Windows filesystem is mounted and Windows executables run in the Windows environment.

OTOH, if you are doing anything complicated, it gets weird because (e.g.) file paths have to be passed as windows paths to windows programs, not using the linux mount path that you would access the path from in linux. But, you can, in principle, use a Linux shell in WSL to run Windows PyInstaller to build for Windows.

I thought since WSL2 it’s just a Hyper-V VM with some nice upfront configuration (like mounting all windows disks)?

I'm pretty sure Windows itself, as in your desktop, runs virtualized under many circumstances; and nobody seems to complain about Hyper-V then.

And to be clear, WSL2 is very much integrated into windows via the filesystem and networking. I like to think of the networking more akin to docker than anything else.

It can also cross-run programs and UIs. I can type in `code .` in my Ubuntu image, and VSCode will open in Windows at that directory. I can also run UI programs in Ubuntu and their windows pop up in the Windows desktop environment.

While the «code .» integration is great, it’s running as client-server. You can do similar development over ssh to another vm or physical machine, too.

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