14 ms·

@OhSoHumble: We totally hear you. We'd love to ship WSL builds uncoupled from the rest of the OS, but at the moment, we're developing WSL at a breakneck pace al

@OhSoHumble: We totally hear you. We'd love to ship WSL builds uncoupled from the rest of the OS, but at the moment, we're developing WSL at a breakneck pace alongside several other critical kernel feature changes which all have to ship in lock-step. A good example of this is the work we've been doing with the networking team to add additional network socket mode support to the NT kernel's networking stack so that we can create the correct socket semantics that Linux apps expect. We're also working with the NTFS team, process & scheduling team, management infrastructure, etc.

OhSoHumble 10y ago
That's good to know. Maybe I'll try to use Windows as a development platform when it has another major release. I'm really impressed that WSL exists at all. I didn't think Microsoft had it in them to allow such a project to flourish. At the end of the day, however, I really hate writing code on Windows. I don't write much Java or C#, instead sticking to Elixir, Ruby, Python, Node, and Golang. Every time I try to use Windows I just get super frustrated. I remember showing up to a Code for San Francisco meeting with a Windows laptop and being the only person there without a Mac. I mean, go check out node-gyp's 500 comment 'windows users arent happy' issue to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. WSL makes an impact on a lot of the issues that frustrate me. Knowing I have a tool chain that can actually compile C extensions matters. I'll never, ever bet my career on Windows but I might one day use it as hobbyist development platform. While I have you here, will the Windows console ever 'get better?' Rendering console text on Windows is... pretty awful, I'm not going to lie. Going from Linux to Windows is fairly painful; when I `cat` a large file in Windows it then takes seven years for all the text to render. Day to day usage just feels sluggish and awkward in comparison to a Linux terminal. Even if WSL was a flawless piece of engineering, the 'terminal experience' on Windows could do with some TLC. Are there any internal plans to make improvements?
- zadjii 10y ago
  As far as the console "getting better" - it's getting better with every release. This last release we focused on enabling full 256color/24 bit color support, and enabling VT mouse mode, to better support terminal applications. Not only that, but we've also been working constantly on performance enhancements under the hood. IIRC, before AU, we would try to repaint the frame every character, now they're aggregated to 60 FPS. It's getting better, not terribly quickly, but we're getting there :)
Archenoth 10y ago
> A good example of this is the work we've been doing with the networking team to add additional network socket mode support to the NT kernel's networking stack so that we can create the correct socket semantics that Linux apps expect. Ooh! That's nice. I was slightly disappointed I couldn't SSH tunnel or do too much with network tools when I gave it a try not long ago. I am definitely looking forward to that.

OhSoHumble 10y ago

That's good to know. Maybe I'll try to use Windows as a development platform when it has another major release. I'm really impressed that WSL exists at all. I didn't think Microsoft had it in them to allow such a project to flourish. At the end of the day, however, I really hate writing code on Windows. I don't write much Java or C#, instead sticking to Elixir, Ruby, Python, Node, and Golang. Every time I try to use Windows I just get super frustrated. I remember showing up to a Code for San Francisco meeting with a Windows laptop and being the only person there without a Mac. I mean, go check out node-gyp's 500 comment 'windows users arent happy' issue to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. WSL makes an impact on a lot of the issues that frustrate me. Knowing I have a tool chain that can actually compile C extensions matters. I'll never, ever bet my career on Windows but I might one day use it as hobbyist development platform. While I have you here, will the Windows console ever 'get better?' Rendering console text on Windows is... pretty awful, I'm not going to lie. Going from Linux to Windows is fairly painful; when I `cat` a large file in Windows it then takes seven years for all the text to render. Day to day usage just feels sluggish and awkward in comparison to a Linux terminal. Even if WSL was a flawless piece of engineering, the 'terminal experience' on Windows could do with some TLC. Are there any internal plans to make improvements?

zadjii 10y ago
As far as the console "getting better" - it's getting better with every release. This last release we focused on enabling full 256color/24 bit color support, and enabling VT mouse mode, to better support terminal applications. Not only that, but we've also been working constantly on performance enhancements under the hood. IIRC, before AU, we would try to repaint the frame every character, now they're aggregated to 60 FPS. It's getting better, not terribly quickly, but we're getting there :)

Archenoth 10y ago

> A good example of this is the work we've been doing with the networking team to add additional network socket mode support to the NT kernel's networking stack so that we can create the correct socket semantics that Linux apps expect. Ooh! That's nice. I was slightly disappointed I couldn't SSH tunnel or do too much with network tools when I gave it a try not long ago. I am definitely looking forward to that.