When WSL2 first came out, some losers on /g/ were cheering that it would "make Linux obsolete". Four years later, I think it's safe to say they were kinda missing the point.
I used WSL extensively at a couple of previous jobs. Sometimes IT only gives you the choice of Windows or Mac. I'm quite happy to have a Linux machine at my current job, but WSL has gotten the job done for me when I lacked that option.
My company mandates Windows laptops but I mostly work with Linux VMs hosted on our servers. WSL2 and Visual Studio Code (with Remote SSH and WSL2 plug-ins) are the best things that happened to Windows in years. Without these tools I would simply be unable to work.
I don't understand the pointless hate over wsl. Sure, it doesn't replace Linux. It also doesn't have to... Just having access to basic nix functionality from a windows desktop is still a useful feature. It makes stuff like putty mostly obsolete. It let's windows users unpack tarbells without 7zip. It let's developers play video games while "compiling". It's just an all-around convenient tool to have.
Maybe Microsoft wanted it to replace the Linux desktop, but since when has anyone really cared about what Microsoft wanted :P
Yeah, I don't get it either.
While technically different (VM vs compatibility layer), WSL and Wine fill the same role. I have yet to see lots of people bashing Wine for being incomplete and imperfect.
I spend like 80% of my work day in WSL. Using a Linux image that 100% matches the production environment, docker and k8s integration, and using VScode easily with WSL.
The big thing that makes is work is all I need is a command line.
Same, I have completely integrate WSL into my workflow. I use devcontainers with VScode and docker in WSL directly skipping docker in windows. It's great
Yeah, I can't emphasize enough how it can't replace Linux. And it doesn't even always work that well for stuff that you'd expect to be able to work there.
I use Windows for my mostly-for-gaming desktop and because I'm very lazy with dual booting, I usually just use WSL if I wanna do some small thing. Or even some not so small thing. I tried to get stable diffusion working using it. I strongly dislike using the windows command line (I do all my professional dev on Linux and it's what I'm most comfortable with), so I tried to use the Linux instructions with WSL. Did not go well. Wasted more time than I should have trying to make it work before I just gave up on that idea.
Not the first time I hit some weird WSL incompatibility either. I really should know better.
My personal computer is Windows mainly because of gaming and game dev, but WSL means I don't have to dual boot to tinker on a web project or something. In a way, it killed the Linux desktop for me, but I still use Linux as much as ever. With Docker as well.
it killed the Linux desktop for me
As it was designed to do
Transcript:
[Miracle of the word wide web meme template]
"Thanks to the miracle of windows subsystem for linux..."
"...I can use the Linux terminal from the comfort of windows"
[Computer monitor showing windows update screen]
"Marvelous"
I work at Oracle and leverage WSL for for some things. It works.. but I wish I could just use Linux. WSL is full of gotchas and weird bugs. Performance is not good either.
WSL2 is essentially a VM, and doesn't seem to have any weird bugs or gotcha's anymore (at least for command line programs). I don't use it for work, but playing around with it as a hobby, it seems fairly solid.
I use WSL2. It has bugs. DNS stops working when you connect to a VPN, which I have to do every day for all of my work. To fix that you can either modify the resolv conf (which gets wiped out on every startup) and then chattr it to prevent it from being deleted (this still didn't quite work for me). Or you can install wsl-vpnkit and pipe all of your network traffic through another container.
I have been working in docker and rancher desktop, both of which have integrations with WSL but with other caviats and bugs. I basically have a bunch of very highly specific steps written up for other employees for "how to get this working with WSL" because it is so buggy.
I use WSL2 a lot and it does have weird "uniquenesses".
the worst thing about windows is that you can't natively change the window manager or desktop environment. that is so backwards. they even removed the ability to move the taskbar wherever you want. this is so weird.
They removed the classic theme and I'm still pissed because you can't quite get it back.
I think most actual Linux users saw this as expanded access to the Linux environment, and easier ways for Windows users to dip their toes in. That was the feel i got from the general community at the time.
WSL is nice if you want to build things/run software for Linux, otherwise.. just use Linux. Also it's a nice way to run Docker without paying for it.
love combining linux with the worst parts of windows
They were really trying to pander to developers back then... What shows it best is their ad for windows terminal that I swear has more production value than most of Nike's advertisements. You know you're desperate when you go this hard on advertising a bloody terminal
This is incredible. How much money did they spend on a terminal ad?
It's a VM. With this tech, Linux will only be more powerful
I don't understand how Linux could make Linux obsolete
Or were they talking about the original WSL, where it was an implementation instead of a specialized VM
Weird how tribal people are. Let people enjoy things for God's sake. I use all combinations of macOS, Windows, Fedora, Ubuntu (server + on WSL), Pop_OS!, and what not. Different horses for different courses, and I like each one of these in their ways they excel at.
it's fun to fling shit at the other side on the internet, regardless of what you truly think. has been for 30 years. how is that difficult to understand?
Be the change you want to see. Stop the division!
People who get out, see the world, meet people from other places tend to be far less tribal. Early career, I could have easily been a paid Microsoft Evangelist (is that still a real job title?). Eventually I was forced to begrudgingly learn a whole bunch of other things, then I became obsessed with OSS, shunning my former tribe every chance I got. At some point I just stopped caring about everything. Language, tabs vs spaces, design patterns, IDE, frameworks, I just don't care any more. I still have my go-tos if I'm starting fresh but, if the direction of the wind changes, it doesn't bother me a bit.
I shit on windows because I have had terrible experiences with windows. I dual boot a hackintosh with win10 and win10 is more unstable despite using it less. I use linux on my laptop and headless stuff and the only problems I have are ones that I create.
Enjoying Windows is like thanking your home invader.
Personally, I think WSL is a great start point to introduce users in Windows to take the first step to Linux. Me myself and several people from what I know starts from WSL and end up using Linux full-time
To put it like /g/, WSL is redpilling the normies on free software.
So true :'-) I used WSL on my company computer. Somehow I managed to snake through corporate restrictions on administration settings and WSL had practicaly full access to system. I even managed to make xserver and GUI apps working :-)
These days you don't even need to do that, thanks to the wslg project microshaft has developed it has Wayland and pulseaudio inbuilt.
My favorite windows feature. Being broken.
If anything, WSL2 made me realize that I didn't need Windows. now, I'm a Linux user for almost 2 years.
It was the only way Microsoft could envision serious cloud devs taking windows seriously at all- not that it worked, but going to AWS re:invent and seeing 7000 MacBooks for every 1 rando win/pc must have been writing on the wall. I’m a Mac user, but everything I build in the cloud is Linux- for me, osx is close enough with gnu tools to be a good compromise between a userland I like and compatibility I need. Trying to use a windows box to do anything without WSL is like pulling god damned teeth.
Crashing in whole new ways
I feel WSL just gives enterprises an excuse not to let developers have pure Linux machines. After putting up with horrible and buggy WSL for years, managed to have my organisation bless running proper Linux on our machines. Bye Windows, hardly ever knew you.
90% of ICT techs would have to be fired if corporate switched to Linux. Any ops tech that knows Linux is in the bunkers babying the data center's servers, not caring for old laptops and abused browser machines.
I'm not saying Linux is superior to Windows, that would be a opinion. But for anyone outside of gamers (Steam Deck...) or business folks, it IS the better option. The issue is Dell isn't going to ship Ubuntu by default, for example. It's all subsidiaries, all the way down. FOSS just cannot throw their weight around like M$.
That's funny, I did the opposite - I got used to developing on osx, then Linux, but that was always on my work computer - my desktop has always been Windows (I'm still using the same license and chassis from the computer I bought in high school a decade and a half ago).
Then I burnt out hard, and started picking up contracts here and there, but didn't have the money to pick up a second computer powerful enough for gaming or work. So I ran virtualbox and avoided cmd like the plague for a while... It was driving me nuts, so I made plans to run Linux with Windows in a hypervisor - I was looking at pci passthrough so I could give it direct access to the graphics card.
But then wsl came out and it just didn't seem as important. Even as Linux gaming has grown, I just haven't felt the need to switch... It's sometimes finicky and setting everything up on a new computer is a pain, but the only time I considered switching one of my machines over is setting up LLMs - that was a real pain to coax into working, and it'd run better on Linux
Meanwhile, the huge improvements that Proton has gone through since 2018 have made Windows damn near obsolete for myself and many other Linux users. I really only keep it around on my gaming machine for VR titles and if I want to use Discord screen sharing (since they still haven't fixed the lack of audio on Linux) at this point, and my main laptop has been Windows-free for years now.
since they still haven’t fixed the lack of audio on Linux
Huh, never heard of this. Do you mean that it's impossible to stream desktop audio through discord? As a workaround, you can try switching to Pipewire and patching your audio output's monitor into Discord through helvum. Or write a script that does that automatically.
Yeah, when you stream your desktop from Linux over Discord, your desktop's audio doesn't come through. It's been a known issue for years but it's a very low priority fix for Discord's developers.
Does the method you're describing play well with speaking at the same time, or do you have to decide whether you want speech or audio?
Linux is Linux.
WSL is Bill Gates' wet fart of an OS running Linux.
Definitely not the same thing.
Is it not? It's basically a Linux container running on Windows, isn't it?
Ah, yes, the feature to update the operating system that is by default enabled but is able to be disabled completely.
If a *nix user can't figure out how to disable automatic updates, it's on them.
I mean, it's never an issue for a power user, which arguably most Linux advocates are. But the disable option available for the average user is known to be overridden by MS. And the way that is not susceptible to MS remote meddling requires a Pro license, technical knowledge, installation of advanced system administration tools. All things that most people either don't have, or are not allowed (restricted permissions in corporate equipment, etc.), or rightfully don't care to invest time into doing. So this is still a common occurrence.
Yeah this always baffled me; I love Linux and use it as a core for all my projects (containerized and VM), but disabling updates on windows takes about two minutes to open run > gpedit.msc > set auto updates to false
Are people really able to configure full Linux boxes to their liking but struggle to tick one box?
Combines the power of a really half-arsed Linux distro with the pure speed of the Windows file system.
I mean, it's slightly better than nothing, but installing a real Linux distro on Windows through eg. VirtualBox absolutely fucks it into the bin. I don't see who WSL is for. People in really locked-down corporate environments?
I don't see who WSL is for. People in really locked-down corporate environments?
That's me pretty much. Locked down low spec Windows 10 laptop that would probably suffocate under the weight of a full VM anyway, so I'm happy to have access to a proper Linux shell with a nice-ish terminal that's a lot less clunky than "git bash", MingW etc.
I use it for ad hoc scripting and things like interacting with webservices (curl), massaging text files with tools like jq, sed, awk and to use Azure and AWS cli tools to interact with cloud infrastructure.
I use it a lot - I use my main rig for gaming and general stuff, but also need to be able to program things; rather than dealing with dual booting and the headaches it brings (including limited hardware support), I use docker with WSL2.
I am able to launch VS Code or PhpStorm on my local, have it remote into WSL and run things how they’re meant to be ran on a Linux box, without dealing with installing windows specific variants.
This makes working with things like Laravel/Composer a lot easier and with everything built on docker, deploying to prod is as simple as a docker image push to my registry of choice.
I also enjoy the benefits of not having a bunch of dependencies sitting around - drop the container and you’re system is as clean as it was before
I don’t see who WSL is for.
My guess is that this time they really wanted to pull the developer demographic over into the M$ sphere of influence. MSYS, MingW, and Git Shell already fill the same niche as WSL, so it wasn't destined to succeed. Thing is, they probably didn't expect it to succeed either. Microsoft's strategy has always been to throw a hundred dicks at the wall and hope that one of them sticks (think Zune, Windows Phone, etc). This time, Azure kind of stuck. WSL didn't. When you're as big as Microsoft, the occasional win more than covers the cost of a hundred losses.
Given that Docker/Podman heavily rely on WSL to work on windows, I would argue that it definitely has succeeded