4 ms·

For development, is WSL good enough to replace dual-boot?

by 20161112 10y ago

dustincoates 10y ago
I've been using it for a couple months now for web development. There are still some quirks and bugs but I haven't had to move to dual-boot. I'm on the edge of doing so (see aforementioned quirks and bugs), but I've been rather happy with it so far.
mrweasel 10y ago
For many people I think it's still the wrong way around. It's not the first solution to running Linux applications on Windows. The first I saw involved X-Win32 and a Linux server in the basement. It's just that most of these solutions get it wrong. It's not that people want Windows, and a little Unix. People want Unix/Linux, and a little Windows.
- danieldk 10y ago
  I think there is a large group of people that needs or want to develop on Linux (POSIX API, open source tools). But have difficulty getting their hardware running on Linux, need applications that are not available on Linux (Microsoft Office, Adobe suite), or simply want to run games as well without dual booting. I think this is a masterstroke by Microsoft, since it will give Windows the best of both worlds. Something that only OS X had so far. Of course, it's not for everyone. People might be morally opposed to proprietary software or want UNIX all the way down.
- CJefferson 10y ago
  I've been using this, and find it works well enough for me. I like a Linux/GNU terminal, but I prefer windows GUI to X, I find all laptops I have owned work better under windows than linux, I prefer outlook to mutt/thunderbird, and many of my games only run on windows. (Obviously, other people's opinion can be different!)
kirillkh 10y ago
Depends on your use case/tools/habits. WSL gives you the advantage of being able to access the same files with native Windows tools and from the GNU[1] command line. If you plan on using the X GUI tools, it will be much less useful to you. [1] I can't bring myself to use the term 'Linux' here, because, ironically, Linux is the primary missing part in this Ubuntu distribution. It should really be called WSG or WSU.
- swiley 10y ago
  All of my friends on windows say X is just as easy to set up as on cygwin
  - kirillkh 10y ago
    I never said X GUI apps could not be used, just that the more Windows tools you use, the more you gain more from WSL.
- danieldk 10y ago
  If you plan on using the Linux GUI tools, it will be much less useful to you. If you install an X server, such as VcXsrv and set the DISPLAY variable (typically export DISPLAY=:0 will suffice), you can just run X11 apps. For instance, here's a screenshot of a Prolog/Tk application running on WSL: https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2017-01-10-Alpino-Windows/alpino-windows.png https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2017-01-10-Alpino-Windows/alpino-w... I have installed Windows on a workstation just to try WSL out and it's quite impressive. Many regular applications just work. I could build Ubuntu packages and upload them to my PPA (I just had to use fakeroot-tcp to replace fakeroot). Of course, there are also things that don't work for obvious reasons. E.g. because they require facilities deep in the kernel (performance counters/perf) or because they require kernel modules and hardware access (running CUDA programs).
  - 20161112 10y ago
    So if I want to use my GPU for machine learning applications, I would have to run my programs under Windows rather than from inside the WSL?
sz4kerto 10y ago
For me not, because of the lack of Docker.
- dfcowell 10y ago
  I've configured the Docker client in WSL to talk to the Docker for Windows daemon. It's good enough for 90% of use cases.
  - csixty4 10y ago
    Was that hard? I hate bouncing between bash and PowerShell.
    - dfcowell 10y ago
      Literally one line in my .bashrc setting the DOCKER_HOST env var.
      - csixty4 10y ago
        Nice!
dethswatch 10y ago
why wouldn't you just use a vm rather than dual boot, these days?
bostand 10y ago
It is significantly better than cygwin, but of course it doesn't beat real Linux.
supernovae 10y ago
Yes, If you're comfy in Ubuntu land then the everything just works..
jibsen 10y ago
I don't have WSL available, but I would love some numbers for tasks like cloning a large repository with git and running cmake. These things tend to be slow on Windows due to fork, see for instance this comparison for Windows vs. Linux in a VM: https://gist.github.com/jibsen/7ebeddde3bc2bfd421b96ae53a824ad9 https://gist.github.com/jibsen/7ebeddde3bc2bfd421b96ae53a824...

For development, is WSL good enough to replace dual-boot?

I've been using it for a couple months now for web development. There are still some quirks and bugs but I haven't had to move to dual-boot. I'm on the edge of doing so (see aforementioned quirks and bugs), but I've been rather happy with it so far.

mrweasel 10y ago

For many people I think it's still the wrong way around. It's not the first solution to running Linux applications on Windows. The first I saw involved X-Win32 and a Linux server in the basement. It's just that most of these solutions get it wrong. It's not that people want Windows, and a little Unix. People want Unix/Linux, and a little Windows.

danieldk 10y ago
I think there is a large group of people that needs or want to develop on Linux (POSIX API, open source tools). But have difficulty getting their hardware running on Linux, need applications that are not available on Linux (Microsoft Office, Adobe suite), or simply want to run games as well without dual booting. I think this is a masterstroke by Microsoft, since it will give Windows the best of both worlds. Something that only OS X had so far. Of course, it's not for everyone. People might be morally opposed to proprietary software or want UNIX all the way down.
CJefferson 10y ago
I've been using this, and find it works well enough for me. I like a Linux/GNU terminal, but I prefer windows GUI to X, I find all laptops I have owned work better under windows than linux, I prefer outlook to mutt/thunderbird, and many of my games only run on windows. (Obviously, other people's opinion can be different!)

kirillkh 10y ago

Depends on your use case/tools/habits. WSL gives you the advantage of being able to access the same files with native Windows tools and from the GNU[1] command line. If you plan on using the X GUI tools, it will be much less useful to you. [1] I can't bring myself to use the term 'Linux' here, because, ironically, Linux is the primary missing part in this Ubuntu distribution. It should really be called WSG or WSU.

swiley 10y ago
All of my friends on windows say X is just as easy to set up as on cygwin
- kirillkh 10y ago
  I never said X GUI apps could not be used, just that the more Windows tools you use, the more you gain more from WSL.
danieldk 10y ago
If you plan on using the Linux GUI tools, it will be much less useful to you. If you install an X server, such as VcXsrv and set the DISPLAY variable (typically export DISPLAY=:0 will suffice), you can just run X11 apps. For instance, here's a screenshot of a Prolog/Tk application running on WSL: https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2017-01-10-Alpino-Windows/alpino-windows.png https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2017-01-10-Alpino-Windows/alpino-w... I have installed Windows on a workstation just to try WSL out and it's quite impressive. Many regular applications just work. I could build Ubuntu packages and upload them to my PPA (I just had to use fakeroot-tcp to replace fakeroot). Of course, there are also things that don't work for obvious reasons. E.g. because they require facilities deep in the kernel (performance counters/perf) or because they require kernel modules and hardware access (running CUDA programs).
- 20161112 10y ago
  So if I want to use my GPU for machine learning applications, I would have to run my programs under Windows rather than from inside the WSL?

sz4kerto 10y ago

For me not, because of the lack of Docker.

dfcowell 10y ago
I've configured the Docker client in WSL to talk to the Docker for Windows daemon. It's good enough for 90% of use cases.
- csixty4 10y ago
  Was that hard? I hate bouncing between bash and PowerShell.
  - dfcowell 10y ago
    Literally one line in my .bashrc setting the DOCKER_HOST env var.
    - csixty4 10y ago
      Nice!

dethswatch 10y ago

why wouldn't you just use a vm rather than dual boot, these days?

bostand 10y ago

It is significantly better than cygwin, but of course it doesn't beat real Linux.

supernovae 10y ago

Yes, If you're comfy in Ubuntu land then the everything just works..

jibsen 10y ago

I don't have WSL available, but I would love some numbers for tasks like cloning a large repository with git and running cmake. These things tend to be slow on Windows due to fork, see for instance this comparison for Windows vs. Linux in a VM: https://gist.github.com/jibsen/7ebeddde3bc2bfd421b96ae53a824ad9 https://gist.github.com/jibsen/7ebeddde3bc2bfd421b96ae53a824...