Red Hat and Microsoft Bringing RHEL to WSL | Hacker News Reader

Red Hat and Microsoft Bringing RHEL to WSL

phoronix.com

63 pointsmikece48 comments

Oracle Linux has been there the whole time. It's free, and it tries to be bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL.

  C:\>wsl.exe -l -o
  The following is a list of valid distributions that can be installed.
  Install using 'wsl --install -d <Distro>'.

  NAME                            FRIENDLY NAME
  Ubuntu                          Ubuntu
  Debian                          Debian GNU/Linux
  kali-linux                      Kali Linux Rolling
  Ubuntu-18.04                    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
  Ubuntu-20.04                    Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
  Ubuntu-22.04                    Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
  Ubuntu-24.04                    Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  OracleLinux_7_9                 Oracle Linux 7.9
  OracleLinux_8_7                 Oracle Linux 8.7
  OracleLinux_9_1                 Oracle Linux 9.1
  openSUSE-Leap-15.6              openSUSE Leap 15.6
  SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-15-SP5    SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP5
  SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-15-SP6    SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP6
  openSUSE-Tumbleweed             openSUSE Tumbleweed

The only cost is 1 soul.

Who knows, they may turn into a motorbike rider during the night.

But then you have to use an Oracle product. I'll pass, looks like RHEL is on their way anyways.

Oracle Linux actually adds some significant features to RHEL.

Btrfs gets first tier support under the UEK.

The UEK also includes all the drivers available in stock Linux that are removed in RHEL.

And did I mention that it's free?

> Btrfs gets first tier support under the UEK.

> The UEK also includes all the drivers available in stock Linux that are removed in RHEL.

WSL2 usually runs on kernel from MS, not from one of the distros

...and wsl1 doesn't run a Linux kernel at all.

The expanded hardware and btrfs benefits of Oracle Linux are general, not specific to wsl.

It's dead on arrival considering the source. I avoid Oracle out of principle, and my memory of what a shit org they are. It could do my laundry and place winning bets for me and I'd still look for a similar product from almost anyone else.

AlmaLinux 9 is in the Microsoft Store for free as well, if looking for another RHEL clone.

there is no way in hell i would sell my soul to use Oracle....

Original announcement: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/bringing-red-hat-enterprise-l...

So if I use RHEL on WSL, do I still have to pay Red Hat/IBM for a License ? Or is Microsoft including it in WSL.

More curious the anything, me personally I would never use WSL.

you will be required to use it by your employer

I think it will be available on the Microsoft Store for install like the other Linux distributions available there. Not sure if they will charge for it but it probably will be promoted as a development server.

My guess would be it would be under he same usesge license. For example if your company is already licenced for RHEL then this is just an added avenue of execution. Instead of maybe an extra dedicated REHL workspace or machine you could in theory delegate some of that to an already established Windows Server?

Why would you run wsl on a server?

People do strange things! It’s not for me to judge!

This is more true that you would want to know, especially in Windows Server based shops...

It is officially supported as way for mixed loads, for example on IoT devices.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-edge/iot-edge-fo...

I would guess you still need a RHEL account to register the VM.

In a knock on no entity, this is an easy win for MSFT and RH. Nothing wrong with it.

If this is for your own use, Red Hat has long had free developer licenses for rhel.

https://developers.redhat.com/products/rhel/overview

That's nice, but it would be even nicer if Red Hat were contributing to Wine or Proton to get Windows applications running reliably on RHEL.

Is there much demand for that in the enterprise spaces where RHEL is used? Some applications, like ESRI, are already packaged by the vendor using Wine on RHEL.

Somehow they are adding RHEL, but not Fedora which what the majority of WSL users would want to use.

Why would they?

Fedora usership is significantly less than RHEL, and adding RHEL support to WSL helps the Windows Server use case

I would expect WSL to mostly be used in the desktop/workstation usecase... I guess there must be people using RHEL for that, but I would have thought Fedora was more common?

> I would expect WSL to mostly be used in the desktop/workstation usecase

It's heavily used for enterprise and production use cases in organizations (often legacy type orgs though ik a F250 tech company that does this as well) who don't want to use additional spend building a dedicated Linux fleet and a dedicated Windows fleet.

Before you'd have to use Cygwin and deal with some level of non-reproducibility, but with WSL you can essentially get a MS supported Cygwin.

> but I would have thought Fedora was more common

The Linux workstation usecase is extreme niche compared to the dual server usecase.

I also think there is a chunk of the audience that would like to develop on the same distro they would be deploying to. There is a fair amount of RHEL in production environments. Larger operations may be running Windows for business purposes and being able to work with WSL/RHEL on the same (or upgraded for developers) machine makes some business sense.

What majority?

I haven't touched Fedora in years.

I did recently, while on a distro-hopping journey. It was super nice experience, IMO, next best to Ubuntu for development. It looks nice, and it runs smooth, getting up and running with my stack was super simple, no issues with JB IDEs, etc... The only reason I switched to Pop_OS was basically that I am far more used to apt commands and general Ubuntu ecosystem, not to mention most of the VMs I work with are Ubuntu server, so I don't get cognitive-stall when looming around servers...

I only care about UNIX like for years.

At work we usually use a mix of Ubuntu, Red-Hat or the distribution of the cloud vendor.

In a different timeline I would be using Solaris, or NeXTSTEP (which I can get my fix with macOS).

Shouldn't be too tough (lol) to make your own; I did with a Fedora container image and some WSLg bits from COPR

When IBM acquired Red Hat, it was supposed to super-charge Red Hat, IBM was going to let them grow. They had an opportunity to really make desktop linux a thing.

Now, they're conceding defeat.

This is no more a sign of defeat than Debian or Ubuntu supporting WSL, which they both do. (Including Ubuntu's paid offering Ubuntu Pro.)

I'm sorry, but ever thinking that IBM acquisition of RH was going to help Linux desktop sounds incredibly naive take. Its not a defeat if they weren't even in the race.

Why would IBM care about linux on the desktop? And why would anyone else care if that linux desktop had to be redhat?

"IBM’s Red Hat Acquisition Will Pay For Itself By Early Next Year"

https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/10/24/ibms-red-hat-acquisi...

Conceding defeat?

The use case for this is: corporation has RHEL servers but Windows workstations. Developer wants RHEL on their workstation to develop tools for said server.

Support for server infrastructure is where RH and IBM make all their money anyway, why do they care if an individual dev is running RHEL proper or under WSL on workstations?

> The use case for this is: corporation has RHEL servers but Windows workstations.

This is entirely the point I'm making. RH could have used IBM's backing to make desktop linux a 1st class experience. Instead, they're doing none of that, and conceding the desktop market to Windows and Mac.

> RH could have used IBM's backing to make desktop linux a 1st class experience

Desktop Linux IS a first class experience and has been for awhile now. Fedora is amazing. Fedora Silverblue is even better. RHEL Workstations are great. Linux on the desktop beats Windows, hands down. Even the laptop experience with Linux is flawless these days, I've got an MSI laptop and absolutely everything works, flawlessly, all the time with Fedora Silverblue, even Nvidia graphics, fingerprint reader, Wacom pen and touch screen, etc...

But here is why corporations use Windows: they get locked into Excel/Outlook and MS offers corporate contracts that solve email, communication, cloud storage, productivity, etc... Plus the millions of office drones have a tough time adapting to anything that they don't recognise (my folks are boomer office workers, I still remember how much they complained when MS Office changed to the "ribbon" interface).

The only way to beat Windows on the desktop is for Linux vendors to offer an all-in-one OS and productivity solution that a 50 year old accountant or secretary can use. Because that's Windows' bread and butter. But is it worthwhile for IBM/Red Hat to make desktop apps and a W365 competitor? Or for them to sell clusters, mainframes and AI infrastructure/services?

The fact is, Linux is more important and more used than ever before despite MS' dirty tactics. Even on the desktop. And WSL is like a gateway drug to Linux. It's still a big win. Even if it's not what Linux users imagined winning would look like 20 years ago...

Linux and FOSS is losing the battle to proprietary hardware. How many consumer devices can easily run linux, and still be functional? Phones, tablets, ARM pcs, they are all non-functional or require numerous binary blobs.

You'll look back in 20 years and remember this as the final few years we used linux on personal devices.

Open hardware is a somewhat different topic than FOSS. Yes, lots of hardware is closed and proprietary blogs are unfortunately still needed.

But that doesn't mean Linux or OSS is going away anytime soon. There's more Linux systems in the world than every other OS that's ever existed combined. For a large portion of the world a Linux (Android) device is the only computing device they've ever used. Even in developed countries, desktops are less and less relevant and mobile devices are #1, and outside a few select countries, that means Linux (Android).

And Linux is gaining steam if anything thanks to AI, since most of the infrastructure related to producing LLMs runs only on Linux. No one's running Windows server on a 300k node cluster.

And to address your point directly, installing Linux on non-Linux hardware is still better than it's ever been. More hardware is compatible than ever before (I've been running Linux since the early 2000's) and while running non-Android Linux on phones isn't great, even that is better than it used to be.

But yeah, we probably won't ever reach the "whole stack is open top to bottom" future that people like RMS dreamt about...

> we probably won't ever reach the "whole stack is open top to bottom" future that people like RMS dreamt about

We will because that is the only sustainable mode of operation in the long term. Every proprietary stack goes through ups and downs, and is eventually displaced. You must be open to persevere.

It's just a matter of time.

So what, Linux doesn't have to be the end game.

For me it was always one way to have UNIX at home, that is all.

In fact, Solaris, Irix and NeXTSTEP have always been my favourite UNIX clones.

As long I can plug into some flavour of POSIX, I am good, as do most folks in big corps.

Why should they?

IBM doesn't care about desktop PC since OS/2, and Red-Hat famously abandoned Linux Desktop asserting it doesn't make any money.

They sponsor GNOME to the extent an enterprise workstation needs a GUI of some sort, and that is about it.

[dupe] Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42183791

They should do Fedora too. I'm forced to use Windows at work with my Fedora in WSL hackjob. It would be nice if it was officially supported.

That's nice. What about Slackware?

Why would Red Hat partner with Microsoft to bring Slackware to WSL?

That should be Slackware's decision, no?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com