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Comment by ok123456 | Hacker News Reader

My coworkers stubbornly try to use WSL instead of Linux directly. They constantly run into corner cases and waste time working around them compared to just using Linux. Some tooling detects that it is running on Windows, and some detects that it is running on Linux. In practice, it's the worst of both worlds.

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Saying running full Linux avoids wasting time on fiddly workarounds kinda blows my mind.

Full hardware support is still not a given, and Windows emulation is still need for so many cases (e.g. games, specialized software etc).

Until I can choose any machine based on form factor and specs alone and just run Linux on it, WSL will the best version of Linux it can run.

> Full hardware support is still not a given,

If you're not buying your hardware from a vendor you can call and get support with Linux from, you're going to have a hard time.

What modern hardware isn't supported by Linux? I haven't had driver problems in probably over a decade. I don't even target Linux for my builds, it just works. Same with the pile of random laptops I've installed it on. Wifi out of the box etc.

> What modern hardware isn't supported by Linux?

Fingerprint sensors and IR login cameras that are pre-installed on many laptops, and have Windows-only drivers.

As an end-user (yes, I'm an engineer too, but from the perspective of the OS and driver developers I am an end-user) I don't care who is in charge of getting the device to work on an OS—I only care that it works or not. And these devices don't, on Linux. So, they are broken.

yeah those are weird since huge chunk of the drivers are userland.

My fingerprint scanner works, but I don't use it because typing my password is faster.

> Full hardware support is still not a given

What may hap be your workload? The only thing that aren't working on Linux day 1 are GPU's, and it's mostly because kernel/distro timings (we haven't had a GPU release without support for mainline kernel in years).

Or the wireless chipset that your corporate laptop happens to have. Or Bluetooh. Or it won't suspend properly.

Or a way worse touchpad experience. No swiping geastures. No smooth scrolling. FN-buttons not working. Or any other million issues. I have never been able to install Linux on a laptop and getting things to work within a weekend. And then reverting becuase I need my computer.

Run wayland instead of xorg… Also get better laptops.

> better laptops

The absolute best built laptops on the market right now don't come with Linux support...

If you're thinking of apple… as a former apple owner and current thinkpad owner… the built quality of apple is severely overrated. Please come back with comments that are not just shilling.

Buy a System76

That was kind of my point: we're still at a stage where checking a list of supported laptops and vendors is pretty much mandatory.

This is totally laptop vendors' fault, but that doesn't change the fact of the matter.

PS: it would be fine if there was a few good options in all categories. Right now I see nothing comparable to an Asus Z13 but with first class Linux support for instance.

I am into small and portable, decently powerful, high DPI laptops (battery be damned), ideally with touch support. And this category just gets no love in the linux world.

I was holding hopes for the Framework 12" but they cheaped on the screen to target the student market, with no upgrade option at this point.

Why would your primary work device be running an OS not supported by the device vendor? That's just bizarre.

I use Linux as my primary OS, and while Proton/Steam are pretty good now I'm still rebooting into (unactivated) Windows for some games. It's fine. It's also the only thing I use Windows for.

On an unrelated note, I'm frankly confused about who wants Apple's janky OS, because I've been forced to use it for work and it is very annoying.

> Full hardware support is still not a given

I bought an iphone and then got angry it didn't run android

In the case of some "compatibility" subsystem, it's absolutely true. It's complexity that requires fiddly workarounds.

Just use Linux.

What detects it is running on windows out of interest?

I use WSL extensively, with lots of languages, and I’ve never had anything do that.

It’s running in a VM, so that would be some kind of weird VM escape?

It's easy, it's right there in uname -r.

I would love to hear about these edge cases and which tooling fails to detect they they were launched form linux.

Sounds a lot like a picnic problem but you didn’t give nearly enough details.

Yesterday, they tried to get a Python library that built a native library using Meson to work. They were working under WSL, but somehow, Meson was attempting to use the MSVC toolchain and failing.

And they were using pip/uv whatever from linux, the linux version.

One of the most common issues is calling a windows executable from within wsl… it’s a “convenience” feature that takes about 2 seconds to disable in the wsl config but causes these kinds of weird bugs

If on WSL2, they need

[interop]

appendWindowsPath=false

section in /etc/wsl.conf.

Then everything will go flawlessly.

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