23 ms·

Windows for Linux Nerds

615 points by geostyx 9y ago

nunez 9y ago
Also, for anyone with a Windows 10 (Anniversary Edition or above) machine that wants to try this, try the quick PowerShell script I wrote some time back that sets this up for you: https://carlosonunez.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/enable-linux-on-windows-the-fast-way/ https://carlosonunez.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/enable-linux-o... Also, note that WSL can be disabled via Group Policy, and it is possible that your sysadmins may have done so.
seiferteric 9y ago
> Imagine a Linux setup where you can launch PowerPoint without a VM Wine?
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Yes but does not work right now with office 2016 unless it changed recently.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    What's wrong with office 2002?
- secfirstmd 9y ago
  Shutup and take my money
- flukus 9y ago
  If your the sort of person that's going to use bash on windows then Latex+beamer is a much better option than powerpoint.
  - onikolas 9y ago
    Imagine: your presentations stored in plain text, in a human readable format that you can edit in your favorite editor, manipulate with a rich library of text editing tools and even version control. Powerpoint would be a silly proposition if that existed! Funsies aside, Latex+beamer has a learning curve and so it is not suitable for the everyday user and thus Powerpoint has its market. But for the average HN reader it doesn't make sense. Take 20 minutes to learn Latex basics and thank me later.
- api_or_ipa 9y ago
  Why not use a browser based presentation app like Google Slides and not deal with stupid proprietary software that won't run on anything but a windows or mac machine?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Because Google Docs suck for any kind of actual professional work, instead of playing at office.
  - lottin 9y ago
    Exactly. Using non-portable formats when there are portable alternatives is simply stupid.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Surely, because Google Docs runs on my computer without any part of that closed source behind Google virtual walls.
bactrian 9y ago
This post was interesting in a morbid way but you can count the Linux nerds that want leave the open world of Linux for Microsoft very easily. They all work at Microsoft. Microsoft is losing on mobile, desktop, servers, and IoT. Their entire ecosystem is a technological deadend. If you're a Linux Nerd, you should probably keep using Linux if you care about having a good career going forward.
- santoshalper 9y ago
  Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop. I try it every year, and every year it sucks very slightly less. It goes beyond drivers and application compatibility, Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. The Desktop/Laptop market is not nearly as important as it used to be, but within that space, Microsoft's dominance is about as strong as ever. Apple might have been able to take a dent out of it if they were committed, but they decided the obscene margins on iPhones were more important (and I can't entirely blame them). Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs. Every year that passes convinces me more of this. We are going on the 20th "Year of Linux on the Desktop". If they were going to do it, they'd have done it by now.
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    > Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop Shrug I've been using it on my main machine (a laptop) for 8+ years now. Works well for me. > Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs While I'm ever so slightly afraid you might be a little right, I'm super thankful that Canonical keeps putting out excellent new releases.
    - gsich 9y ago
      That's one of the three (?) answers you get when someone says they have a problem with Linux. I can relate to the quote and I use Linux.
  - newman8r 9y ago
    Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ I think the linux desktop user experience has improved exponentially over the last few years, you should give it another shot.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hacking_again 9y ago
Why not just use Cygwin?
- seiferteric 9y ago
  I mostly agree. I have used cygwin for years when forced to use windows and have had mostly a great experience. In the article she mentions launching windows programs from the shell as if it's a great new thing... you could always do that from cygwin.... The only thing this gets you (i think) is not having to recompile programs.
  - damieng 9y ago
    You get much more than that - you are installing native binaries direct from apt-get. No waiting for ports, patches, recompilation or people trying to get the latest version working on cygwin. It pulls binaries direct from Ubuntu as if you were on a Linux box and just runs them.
- interlocutor 9y ago
  Cygwin cannot run Linux executables. Cygwin .exe's are specifically compiled for Windows.
  - seiferteric 9y ago
    Cygwin is essentially a distribution, so like any distribution their packages are recompiled for that specific distribution and available in their repo. It's not too often you download a random binary for Linux and run it, but that case I concede.
    - saghm 9y ago
      > It's not too often you download a random binary for Linux and run it Mostly because you don't have to due to package managers. Assuming there are no unsatisfied dependencies, it's totally possible to share binaries between Linux distros.
    - 9y ago
tootie 9y ago
A lot of snarky comments here, but I've been using Ubuntu shell on Win 10 for the past few weeks and it's really fantastic. Way faster than a VM and much more compatible than cygwin or msys.
- thinkxl 9y ago
  More snarky than usual, i don't know why. "why not just" or "just use" kind of comments that you see more in reddit. Even someone recommended an Electron alternative, on HN! the #1 Electron hater community. Interesting.
  - seiferteric 9y ago
    I don't know, I think some people feel a bit threatened by this move. It could be viewed as a way to subvert the Linux and OSS community. I think people should know there are alternatives.
    - thinkxl 9y ago
      > I don't know, I think some people feel a bit threatened by this move. You are right, but as you said, is good to have alternatives. > It could be viewed as a way to subvert the Linux and OSS community. Good, is healthy to have competition.
    - 52-6F-62 9y ago
      That's a generally valid concern, but I don't think I can see that ever really happening. It's really just a compatibility space, no? There is a bit of a contrarian culture here, lately. Some skepticism is healthy, but too much is toxic. As a general optimist and hopeful, I like to try and find good where I can without being suckered by hocus or sly marketing. Moving forward and growing outward should be a good thing, shouldn't it?
      - seiferteric 9y ago
        I know what you mean, but you will never see MS contributing to Wine will you? Will we ever see office for linux? Why can't we get a proper POSIX layer for windows (like they used to offer)?
domenukk 9y ago
Install hyper terminal, it is a lot more bearable than the ugly default console emulation on Windows.
- notgood 9y ago
  Conemu is where is at (for me at least), along with clink you have a lot of niceties bash has (reverse history search, etc)
  - sp332 9y ago
    I've been using the WSL bash inside Conemu. I pretty much only use it for SSH'ing to other boxes, but I spend a lot of time in it and it's the best Windows setup I've found.
- tym0 9y ago
  I use wsltty which is mintty for the WSL. https://github.com/mintty/wsltty https://github.com/mintty/wsltty
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  I just run gnome-terminal or terminator in WSL with vcxsrv.
- dingle_thunk 9y ago
  Hyper on windows is buggy AF tbh. cmder or conemu are more popular. More options @ https://www.slant.co/topics/1552/~terminal-emulators-for-windows https://www.slant.co/topics/1552/~terminal-emulators-for-win...
dhruvb14 9y ago
For anyone wanting to automate using boxstarter and chocolatey without finding all the packages manually I created this GUI about a year back. It has a search bar to search chocolatey's repository automatically. It has search and allows you to save the GIST straight to github and then invoke installer straight from website. Uses cookies to store script on machine so you can come back to it and add/remove more. Was a quick 2-3 hour job so it may have bugs http://dhruvb14.github.io http://dhruvb14.github.io
dingle_thunk 9y ago
Author should check out this script for an even more minimal setup :) https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1 https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1
- lostmsu 9y ago
  That gist is full of insecure shit.
  - electricEmu 9y ago
    Hi! Your comment is very vague and damning considering it contains no specifics. The gist is served over https so that's secure. It's well documented so it's not really doing anything unintended so there's no problems there. It requires admin privileges, but so would similar changes in other operating systems. How specifically is the gist full of insecure shit?
    - lostmsu 9y ago
      I mean insecure configurations, like turning off automatic updates. For instance, unconditionally marking current network as private.
      - dingle_thunk 9y ago
        It turns off Automatic reboots, not Automatic updates.
galaxyLogic 9y ago
Linux on Windows 10 seems like a good thing. I plan to use it for testing a Node.js application developed on Windows
- nathas 9y ago
  You're probably going to have a bad time. Some of the lower-level network APIs are pretty buggy last time I checked.
  - jstarks 9y ago
    We've made a lot of improvements in the last few months of insider builds. If there are still blocking issues, I'd definitely be interested in hearing about them.
  - thezilch 9y ago
    What does "lower-level" and "buggy" mean? I really doubt an HTTP server is going to have any troubles. We are running game servers on WSL, where you can imagine we are using fairly to-the-metal socket work over UDP and no issues with libcurl or libopenssl for TCP sockets.
nunez 9y ago
Congrats, Jess! LXSS is amazing, but I had to stop using it because mounted volumes in Docker straight up don't work within it. How don't they work? When you do a "docker run -v $PWD:/whatever <image>", "/whatever" will be blank. This occurred even when I tried to mount a directory on the FUSE mount to the Windows filesystem. I'm guessing that given her experience in hacking container runtimes, she can probably lend a big hand towards fixing it. I'm currently using Vbox + Vagrant as a substitute, and it works well, but I'd prefer to use WSL.
pbnjay 9y ago
TBH I dug out my Surface Pro when Jess started talking up WSL... Finally got Windows Insider Preview going so that I could try it out for myself. I spend most of my days in a text editor and a terminal, and macOS has been making even that painful sometimes. Linux was my desktop for ages before I switched to mac ~7 years ago, so it'll be nice to see what it can do now.
- kyriakos 9y ago
  you no longer need Windows Insider preview for WSOL - its part of the creator's update. still has a beta tag but its available without having to use a full beta OS.
  - tacticus 9y ago
    When did this change? as my home machine required me to move to insiders for WSL just on the weekend. (also the volume of spam they are sending to me now :|)
    - detaro 9y ago
      Creators update came out back in April. I think you need the Insiders Program right now to pick which Linux distro you want to install, normal way only gets you Ubuntu?
userbinator 9y ago
If you need to access files in VolFS, you can use bash.exe to copy them somewhere under /mnt/c, use Windows to do whatever on it, then use bash.exe to copy them back when you are done. IMHO this is the worst-designed(?) part of the whole WSL. Copying files back and forth is the antithesis of a "seamless Windows and Linux experience", to put it mildly. From that perspective it's no better than running an isolated VM. To add insult to injury, although I haven't personally tried it, apparently trying to access the files directly from Windows as if they were both on the same filesystem (which they are) results in all sorts of ridiculous breakage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980380 I have mounted CIFS/SMB shares from Windows machines onto Linuxes and Macs, and gone in the opposite direction with Samba; in both of these cases, there is no need for wasteful copying and managing two files; Windows and Linux can essentially use the same files simultaneously. Going in the other direction, WINE also allows Windows apps to work directly with the same files as Linux ones. One then wonders, when a networked filesystem with all its complexity can be used nearly effortlessly across different OSes running on completely different machines, and WINE is like the inverse of WSL, why couldn't Microsoft do the same with two subsystems on the same machine using the same filesystem!?
- tootie 9y ago
  I'm not sure what she is talking about because you definitely do not have to copy files across. I have a git checkout on my C: drive and interact with it via /mnt/c with no trouble. I'm editing in VS Code and running git and npm in Ubuntu shell with zero friction.
  - neves 9y ago
    Soon you will have problems. She is right.
    - ayanamist 9y ago
      What is the problems? I have been doing this for one year without issues.
shmerl 9y ago
Why would you use WSL instead of straight VM for example (assuming you are somehow banned from running Linux proper directly on your hardware)? And I'm a bit confused about the benefit of launching PowerPoint from WSL, when you have the Windows host itself sitting there.
- nxc18 9y ago
  You can use use bash to interact with windows programs. You can run native Linux binaries without the overhead of a vm. You can run native Windows binaries without the overhead of a vm.
- will_hughes 9y ago
  I'm uncertain if you're asking "Why use WSL vs VM" or "Why use WSL/Linux VM if you can run Linux directly". For the first: Unified filesystem, memory, processor resources. You don't need to have the extra overhead of running a VM. For the second: The reason to run Windows is the same as the reason to run MacOS - so you can run apps for those platforms. If you don't need to do that, then obviously there's little/no point in doing so.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Well, for running Windows applications on Linux we have Wine already. I'm not saying WSL isn't an interesting thing, but if I'd had such choice, I would have run Linux natively first, in VM as second best option, and WSL as last resort.
    - will_hughes 9y ago
      Sure, those are your personal preferences, and in your current specific needs/wants. You did ask why, though, and you've been given a few examples of why someone might choose WSL over VMs.
tkubacki 9y ago
WSL is waste of time if you work with docker - Linux desktop experience (not laptop) is just good enough these days (and future seems even brighter since Ubuntu goes back to Gnome)
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Docker works pretty great with Windows nowadays using Hyper-V. Because of that your point can be reversed: If you work with Docker there is no point in switching from Windows to Linux.
  - tkubacki 9y ago
    Windows works ok as virtual box/vmware guest as well. I spent few years as .net Dev this way and was more than happy with this solution. You need beefy machine though. Not using windows as primary OS limits risk related to viruses, malware. Also moving to new hardware is just copy vm files (windows provision for Dev used to take a lot of time)
cypher543 9y ago
I really, really wish Microsoft would open up the Pico Process APIs to third-party driver developers. Right now, WSL is the only driver allowed to install Pico Process callbacks. It would be cool to implement a Darwin layer or a Classic Xbox emulator with that tech.
- wvenable 9y ago
  The Pico Process subsystem isn't fully baked yet -- in earlier talks Microsoft mentioned that while the API itself is pretty generic but the current implementation is just hacked together to support the Linux subsystem for now.
makmanalp 9y ago
Very neat! This reminds me of lx branded zones in illumos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs&list=PLH8r-Scm3-2VmZhZ76tFPAhPOG0pvmjdA&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs&list=PLH8r-Scm3-...
- mwcampbell 9y ago
  Indeed. I wonder if Microsoft will eventually use their Linux emulation to accomplish the same thing that motivated Joyent to work on LX-branded zones, namely running Linux-based Docker containers in production on a non-Linux server OS (Windows in this case) without any VM overhead.
  - tda 9y ago
    I believe this is already the case with hyper-v, is it not?
    - makmanalp 9y ago
      I thought hyper-v would be more for the case of full-blown emulation (I'm creating a soft-CPU and hardware, a la VMWare) versus this is more like linux emulation - I have some windows software that can parse and run ELF binaries, and some layer that converts calls to the linux kernel into windows kernel stuff.
Wehrdo 9y ago
I have been super impressed with WSL after using it for close to a year now. The Creators Update fixed some issues like file watching and symbolic links which had been preventing certain programs from begin usable. I now do all my C++ and node.js development through WSL so I can still use all the Windows GUI applications (which tend to have fewer bugs and be easier to use than Linux GUI apps, in my experience). VS Code even allows you to run gdb on WSL, and interface with it on Windows, if you can get the setup right.
all_blue_chucks 9y ago
All the linux commands I need I can find in windows-native format using scoop.sh. No filesystem trickery needed.
eksemplar 9y ago
I've been a Microsoft developer for a long time, but in recent years it's become increasingly hard to justify and the Linux subsystem hasn't helped. Not because it's not an interesting feature, but because my desktop has become even more useless as anything but development than it already was with Visual Studio infecting everything. I'm sure it's a step in the right direction for a lot of people, but I bought an old 2015 MacBook and it's been a so much better experience than windows that I'm actually considering getting a ubuntu machine to see if it can work as my main machine. If this sounds odd to you, you haven't programmed on a MacBook with a Danish keyboard. Honestly Microsoft does a lot of things right these days, but it all comes with terrible user experiences. .Net core is great, but the devops required to run it in production, frankly has us considering java spring. Sorry about the rant, but the fact that you even needed to write this blog is a good illustration of what's wrong with Microsoft. Tech is supposed to run out of the box, with minimal effort required.
- jkulubya 9y ago
  To take the conversation sideways a bit, what about running .net core in production has given you trouble? We've had success with a bunch of services and my view is that most of the trouble is found pretty early on in the dev experience.
- sirmike_ 9y ago
  You know, I kindly disagree. Tech is suppose to run flawlessly/with minimal effort required out of the box for the average consumer. Power users, Devs, IT Pros and SysAdmins follow a much different path. Each one of these groups taylor's their systems to match their professional work flows. I do not know about you but I am constantly messing with things to get them just right. It doesn't take all that long but I love that I could come home to Windows and be greeted with add ons and programs which make my digital daily grind enjoyable. Case in point WinXCorners ( http://apps.codigobit.info/2015/10/winxcorners-hot-corners-for-windows-10.html http://apps.codigobit.info/2015/10/winxcorners-hot-corners-f... ) -- think Hot Corners. Love it. Throughout the years this and the Desktop spaces are Ah-Mah-Zing. They make a huge difference to me. From the Start Menu to forced Cortana-Bing-Edge is a mess. Yuck. But there are ways around it. But that's for me. That's my personal take. However looked at from my 8 year old's perspective -- those things do not matter. When he uses it -- it works for him. He was born into the iPad touch is first world. He had zero issues adapting to Windows touch/kb/mouse paradigm. It just works for him. The parental controls through MSFT accounts are outstanding, simple and get the job done. MacOS and Linux have yet to really nail multi-user accounts in the Desktop GUI realm mind you this is well outside of terminal land where multi-user accounts are never an issue. Granted MacOS has a leg up on Linux Desktop distros for multi-users. However this defect is compounded and made worse by the continuous client model. Iphones, Ipads, Apple Watches and Macs of all stripe were meant to be single user only. Sharing need not apply. Use cases matter a great deal. I am just happy I have a PAID alternative in Windows 10. Two years and they have gotten to the point where the growing pains are gone from Windows 10. WSL has matured quite a bit. WSL SSH (the lowest hanging fruit if there ever was) works orders of magnitude better than any wonky Powershell/CmdPrompt/Putty/Cygwin ever did. VI/VIM the same applies. Granted my perspective is from the SysAdmin/ITPro space. There are tradeoffs to everything. There are good tools and bad tools. Use the right tool for the right job. I personally have zero tolerance for non-cross platform Apps. I put the ability to be able to use the tool or service I pay for across different platforms first. I am not a fan of lock in. I should be able to spin up a new system and get it running to working status in 15 minutes or less. I do not get too attached to one OS or another. I prize flexibility over flashy niche and sometimes uber-sexy lock in. This model forces me to constantly stay sharp and educating myself.
blunte 9y ago
Want to _really_ impress us, Microsoft? Give us a Windows Subsystem for Linux. I chose a maxxed out Dell XPS15 laptop with Windows 10 to replace my 3 year old rMBP with the (foolish) expectation that it could replace my Mac. Apple had lost sight of what mattered to developers, and I was angry. But now, 2 months later, here I continue developing and existing on my old rMBP. Bash in Windows is incredibly slow on some actions. I didn't document all my activities, so I can't point to which thing was slow. But for a developer using Python, Elixir, Node, Nginx, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Git! SSH! and some other smaller accessories, WSL was far less performant than a Linux VM on my Mac. And it was far, far less performant than on native Mac. I very much appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. Perhaps in a generation or three they will finally leave behind most of their protectionist behaviors and embrace what works for them (for better or worse) - MS Office and the host of Windows apps that businesses depend on. Apple is no saint or savior. But thankfully, some of what they did in the years past (dare I say during the reign of Jobs) is what has made them special. #1 - latency. My Macs work 99% of the time as expected. They run for weeks or months. My high end Android phone, even after factory reset, has occasional mind-boggling hangs (after which 1000 UI events register and take effect). The same applies to Windows 10! It works fine, sometimes, for a few things. Then it goes nuts. Wipe and reinstall (remove the Dell bloatware) and it's better. But it still lags so far behind macOS. There is no utopia. There is only pain, frustration, and anger on the part of users. But please, give us developers (who practically _live_ in your environments) something.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  Why not dual boot linux and windows 10 or use a Linux VM? It takes like 10-15 seconds to reboot a machine these days. I am about to take the plunge toward a ThinkPad after many years with OSX (I haven't upgraded my 2011 17" to macOS). My plan is to try dual booting linux and/or using a Linux VM. I think the biggest hurdle will be changing my mindset. That is, looking for the OSX version of whatever it is I am looking for. Wrapping my mind around Linux... just Linux for as much as possible. I am looking forward to using just Linux as time goes on. I need to ween myself off of a few things before I can make the switch completely... I did it when I went from win to mac.
chx 9y ago
Here are my notes https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Windows-10-(coming-from-Linux) https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi... on setting up W10 after using Linux for almost a quarter century.
api_or_ipa 9y ago
Not sure how WSL is more compelling than using docker containers. I can very easily download, compile and run basically anything I want with minimal friction and way less domain knowledge than managing a VM. Also, this might just be me being snarky, but MS is absolutely losing the battle for developer tooling and that's what's prompted them to try to sway developers back to their ecosystem. If the circumstances were any different, I'm sure they'd be perfectly happy letting us suffer using cygwin and putty. Don't trust a snake.
- sz4kerto 9y ago
  > Not sure how WSL is more compelling than using docker containers. It takes much less resources and file sharing is easier. You don't need to run a VM.
jadbox 9y ago
i3 is simply amazing. I'd give up my Windows Desktop in an instant if I could use i3 to start Window apps within the manager.
- lisnake 9y ago
  Since you can start windows apps from WSL console, I bet something can be hacked to launch them from i3, though i haven't tried myself
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    i3 can only be run in a window that emulates Xorg. So, no.
jadbox 9y ago
Note that Android emulation (or most kinds of emulation aside from docker) will not work under WSL. Yes, I know I can do Android development under Windows, but I'd prefer Linux for day to day development for everything.
explodingcamera 9y ago
Weird I've been cloning git repos to an external NTFS drive mounted in /mnt and never had any issues.
dis-sys 9y ago
Microsoft never made any change to its core strategy. There is no alternative platform to run Windows applications with official Microsoft support (you can name a couple exceptions, they are exceptions, e.g. SQL Server), there is no way for average developers to read Windows/Office source code. That is the best proof. Windows for Linux Nerds? I run 5 Linux machines in my study room, Microsoft would be charging me thousands of $ for Windows Server licenses, I read source code of the software I am using on daily basis, Microsoft wouldn't let me do that. Every code of weeks, I hack the software I use and share the changes with others, Microsoft lawyers are not going to be happy if I choose to do that on Microsoft software. Windows for Linux Nerds? Microsoft is not ready for that, Microsoft never had the intention to do.
- jmsmistral 9y ago
  Hear hear!!
partycoder 9y ago
It's hard for Windows to realistically compete with Linux as a developer environment. GNU/Linux and userland software is made by developers for developers, and a lot of it is open source. If you are a developer, on Linux sky is the limit. Everything can be played with. On Windows that's not the case. Many areas are off-limits and you don't get to see how they work, and you cannot change them if you need to. Then, Microsoft can sunset a project at any time, and that's final. In the open source world an orphaned project can always be forked or picked up by someone else.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  > It's hard for Windows to realistically compete with Linux as a developer environment. That's the whole point of WSL
  - partycoder 9y ago
    The WSL is useful if you need Windows as a host system. That's not a universal need. Most of the software I use supports Linux. Then there's is Wine and finally virtualization. I haven't needed the latter in years.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Only for developers that only care about writing CLI and web servers. For those of us that care about UI/UX, IDEs with nice graphical tooling, only macOS matches Windows, specially given the developer culture for such tooling.
  - partycoder 9y ago
    That is a very pessimistic view. Many IDEs support Linux. There are tools with interface builders on Linux. GTK, Qt, Android, Mono, etc...
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Yes there are, but as I mentioned the culture also matters, and the Linux culture worships CLI and window managers like xmonad, not graphical developer tools and UI/UX.
Keloran 9y ago
how is WSL any different to WISE ? (a better explination of WISE than I could ever come up with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072143) it sounds like microsoft up to its old tricks, "look its really easy to develop for windows now you have done that, well now we have dropped that so guess your going to have to only develop for windows now"
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  WSL uses the "real" userland of the distro of your choice. If you are running Ubuntu on it, you are using the same .debs and ELF binaries inside those .debs that "real" Ubuntu is using. If for whatever reason the Windows team decided to "cut bait" and kill WSL, you can quickly spin up an Ubuntu VM or reimage to Ubuntu and continue to be productive. If there is an opportunity for a Trojan horse here, it's for Linux developers to encourage young geeks to install Ubuntu from the Windows Store and start learning Linux commands in WSL and maybe from there eventually baby step to running Linux full time. (That said, it's not like having BSD terminals available in macOS has encouraged a lot of people to move out of macOS and directly to Linux. Still seems to trend the opposite direction, if the laptops at developer conferences are any indication.)
donquichotte 9y ago
WSL is nice and I would use it more often if USB devices were transparently mapped into it. I want to use it for embedded development on my Windows machine, and without USB support this is just not possible. Edit: apparently they added it in May [1], but I have no access to the newest update. [1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/10/bashwsl-insiders-build-now-supports-usbserial-comms-and-mounting-removable-storage-network-shares/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/10/bash...
yanni79 9y ago
I remember "Lindows" from the good ol' days - I think it ended up being called Linspire, but alas it died back in 2007. It would've been great to give to my grandparents right about now.
mikeytown2 9y ago
I used to run http://www.andlinux.org/ http://www.andlinux.org/ but with no 64bit support it's dead now. This was how to run Linux on windows.
rbanffy 9y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but WSL looks more like an attempt at stopping developers from moving to Macs in order to get a polished app environment with a Unix-like OS underneath and to keep them in the Windows ecosystem.
- crowbahr 9y ago
  "a polished app environment" If you're meaning XCode then no. XCode is never going to draw in developers... or at least no developer I've ever talked to liked XCode. I changed from iOS to Android development because I couldn't stand XCode anymore. Constant crashing, walled garden bullshit where I couldn't even get plugins running every time they updated, inexplicable code changes to my apps which were un-diagnosable from within xcode because they obfuscate away all layout files... It was nightmarish. I spent more time swearing at my computer than I did coding.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    I'm talking about iTunes, iWork, all IDEs that count with the exception of Visual Studio, Skype, the built-in apps and even Microsoft Office if you are so inclined. I've done some development in ObjC using Xcode and didn't notice the problems you mention. Must be luck. And one thing that others never replicated is the quality of the laptops. I've had Dell XPSs and Thinkpads and the MacBook Pro is still my favourite laptop.
  - makecheck 9y ago
    Xcode 3.x was nearly perfect. The Xcode UI went straight south in 4.x with this giant-window-always-the-wrong-size-for-everything design, that also sucked Interface Builder into the same app. That meant any crashy thing in IB took down your whole project, which never used to be an issue. If they back-ported LLVM to the Xcode 3.x GUI and restored IB as a separate app, I would be quite happy.
- corysama 9y ago
  I've been putting it even stronger for a while now. WSL is an attempt to get the horde of MacBook-wielding web devs to slowly migrate away from OSX. Once people notice they can get a grab-and-go Linux laptop at any BestBuy, and it's much cheaper than an equivalent MacBook, and it runs all games and other Windows apps natively... They'll start doing a lot more development on Windows boxes. Then, they might notice that Visual Studio is actually really damn nice. At that point, making their code Linux-Windows cross-platform becomes much easier and more interesting.
traitormonkey 9y ago
>Imagine a Linux setup where you can launch PowerPoint without a VM ...she gushes. Er Wine? or I think she may have heard of it DOCKER? Gaah. vomit. What problem does this solve? None! You still have Windows. fdisk that backdoored Windows garbage.
jlebrech 9y ago
how about directX for wine?
kalleth 9y ago
I've recently (~1y) moved back to Windows as a primary 'desktop' OS for development. By day I'm a rails developer. I've worked extensively on windows (back in PHP days), Linux (when I was doing HPC software) and Mac (most of my rails career...). Generally the code always runs on Linux -- and WSL isnt' there yet for background processes and the "platform" your code needs to run on; most of the stuff I need needs worker processes, elasticsearch, mysql, et al, all of which need to be running long-lived in the background which WSL isn't great at supporting -- it's "user mode" after all. It's also closer to prod environments, which is a theoretical argument against OSX. I clone and do terminal operations on either a VM or a physical ubuntu server in my house, and edit locally using gvim or visual studio code using an NFS or Samba mount. Nginx proxying using port forwarding over ssh. Long story short; it works for me, but this is a frankenstein-ish setup made familiar solely because I've used all 3 OS's day in, day out for ~20 years. When I explain it to Junior devs they look at me funny. WSL with ConEmu and openssh is close to replacing PuTTy for me, but that's it. You still can't use it to have a painless node, ruby, etc development experience on windows. Microsoft should be focusing on optimising for someone who's in a coding bootcamp, not people who've been in tech for decades already and already have the solid technology base. Right now, people grow up using windows for day to day office work in other careers and at school, and for PC gaming and browsing at home, but have to switch off it when they enter a development career because the native tooling isn't there. If Microsoft can address that shortcoming, probably through further development of WSL and (hopefully) implementing Bash as a "first order citizen" in Windows, then they're home.
nickjj 9y ago
I tried WSL a few times but for real world every day development it's just not usable at all. The file mount performance is crippling slow. A Rails app takes 30+ seconds to see changes vs nearly instant on native Linux. If anyone is interested in running Linux on Windows in a way that's suitable for full time development then check out this screencast / blog post: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/create-an-awesome-linux-development-environment-in-windows-with-vmware https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/create-an-awesome-linux-devel... I've been using this set up for many years. The pros of the above method are: - It's free - It's as fast as native Linux - It's actually Linux from end to end - You get independent floating Linux windows (graphical apps work) - You can still run your Windows apps - Works flawlessly with dual monitors - No need to dual boot - Takes about 15-20 minutes to set up your first time
- vegbrasil 9y ago
  Kinda sad to use old VMware and old Xubuntu...
  - nickjj 9y ago
    No need to be sad. Before I moved to Windows 10 I routinely had 150+ day uptimes. The old VMWare is rock solid and runs really fast. Having to use an older version of xubuntu does kind of stink, but I'm pretty sure if you really cared you could use 16.04, but just downgrade xfce to use 14.04's version. It's not something I bothered with because visually I'm happy with the way things look, using custom PPAs are easy and I use Docker for various programming language runtimes and services.
- koffiezet 9y ago
  Vagrant with virtualbox or hyperv seems like the better choice tbh.
iwintermute 9y ago
Slow file writes - working with WLS I found that integrated ms antivirus really doesn't like my python scripts for some reason. Turning off "ongoing protection" speed up things considerably.
free_everybody 9y ago
I wanted to read this but I honestly don't care about how Windows hacked away a lesser version of a linux machine into their already bloated OS. I'm just going to use linux.
megamindbrian 9y ago
What does this mean for Cygwin?
- roller 9y ago
  Cygwin still seems to be the go-to for any POSIX apps that need to interact with the actual Windows environment. For example, wslbridge[1] that connects wsltty[2] to WSL compiles the frontend component under cygwin. [1]: https://github.com/mintty/wsltty https://github.com/mintty/wsltty [2]: https://github.com/rprichard/wslbridge https://github.com/rprichard/wslbridge
geggam 9y ago
...but why do I need this ? Work gives me a Mac which I have a Linux VM inside of to get work done. Personally I have Linux / BSD laptops and BSD servers. Why do I need windows at all ?
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
At the end of the day, its still windows. There have been too many dick moves for me to trust them. As long as the terminal works in MacOS, ill use mac.
symlinkk 9y ago
I totally agree with his points about how terrible the Windows console is. Scrolling past the current line into blank space makes no sense. Having two identical settings menus (Defaults and Properties) that affect the current terminal vs every terminal makes no sense. Having no color theme support makes no sense. As far as third party terminals go, ConEmu is pretty good but crashes a lot for me. I don't see why I should even need to get a third party terminal though. Microsoft is a multi billion dollar company. Can't they hire a team of guys to improve the one thing that every single programmer and sysadmin cares about - the god damned terminal?
- nhumrich 9y ago
  > I totally agree with her points FTFY
- Seanny123 9y ago
  Seriously. This has been the one major stalling point for me as well. Setting up a Python environment and installing programs with Chocolatey were trivial, but the damn PowerShell terminal is ugly as sin.
- AlfeG 9y ago
  As a Windows developer for last year I can see very big leap in terminal usability. Nowadays you can reset it as you Wish. Hotkeys works as expected. Muse integration much much better. Try latest Insider builds. Console nowadays mush better and faster then ever in Windows
arrty88 9y ago
I love my late 2016 mbp with new keyboard & touchbar that i never use. It's a million times better than the surface pro 4, surface book, dell xps, lenovo, or any other equivalently priced winbox. Granted, I don't game at all or need high performance graphics.
iammyIP 9y ago
Stop dangling your rotten carrot! You can't impress me with these stale gimmicks. The choice of operating system is not a purely utalitarian, but also and mostly a social choice of morality and utopia. And the choice has been made already, for freedom, not corpdom. Therefore, i'll stick with even the shittiest desktop and OS imaginable, as long as it's open for me to any change i can think of. There is simply no going back from freedom to corpdom. It's one way only. You need to understand this.
mizzao 9y ago
I find that the copy/paste terminal stuff and keyboard shortcuts are much better by using an X-based terminal emulator, e.g. xfce: https://askubuntu.com/a/867696/86161 https://askubuntu.com/a/867696/86161
lurker12390879 9y ago
Drawbridge is what powers SQL server for linux and is a full windows subsystem but is locked down.
omi 9y ago
TL;DR "Here's how you pull the power cable, in case you forgot"
malkia 9y ago
Thank you for WSL! I've been using it to learn more about what it could be done with it, and at home have been trying to compile flutter (http://flutter.org http://flutter.org) on it... Currently it gets stuck in the "pub upgrade" (the dart language packaging mechanism), as it runs several tar's to unpack packages. If you just follow the simple: bash.exe...: $ mkdir p; cd p $ git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter $ cd bin $ ./flutter doctor it'll soon get up to speed, and eventually hang. Off course all this works on Windows, but I wanted to experiment with something as it encompasses several different things - language, environment, packages, jit-ing, etc. Still pretty excited about the development! Heh, one thing I've learned the hard way, I made a symlink on my /mnt/c/ as /mnt/c/something - and this was making several windows tools unhappy, had to deleted from WSL and now it's fine.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
An i3 user who is happy with WSL? I think you are in denial, my friend.

615 points by geostyx 9y ago

Also, for anyone with a Windows 10 (Anniversary Edition or above) machine that wants to try this, try the quick PowerShell script I wrote some time back that sets this up for you: https://carlosonunez.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/enable-linux-on-windows-the-fast-way/ https://carlosonunez.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/enable-linux-o... Also, note that WSL can be disabled via Group Policy, and it is possible that your sysadmins may have done so.

seiferteric 9y ago

> Imagine a Linux setup where you can launch PowerPoint without a VM Wine?

ekianjo 9y ago
Yes but does not work right now with office 2016 unless it changed recently.
- ant6n 9y ago
  What's wrong with office 2002?
secfirstmd 9y ago
Shutup and take my money
flukus 9y ago
If your the sort of person that's going to use bash on windows then Latex+beamer is a much better option than powerpoint.
- onikolas 9y ago
  Imagine: your presentations stored in plain text, in a human readable format that you can edit in your favorite editor, manipulate with a rich library of text editing tools and even version control. Powerpoint would be a silly proposition if that existed! Funsies aside, Latex+beamer has a learning curve and so it is not suitable for the everyday user and thus Powerpoint has its market. But for the average HN reader it doesn't make sense. Take 20 minutes to learn Latex basics and thank me later.
api_or_ipa 9y ago
Why not use a browser based presentation app like Google Slides and not deal with stupid proprietary software that won't run on anything but a windows or mac machine?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Because Google Docs suck for any kind of actual professional work, instead of playing at office.
- lottin 9y ago
  Exactly. Using non-portable formats when there are portable alternatives is simply stupid.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Surely, because Google Docs runs on my computer without any part of that closed source behind Google virtual walls.

bactrian 9y ago

This post was interesting in a morbid way but you can count the Linux nerds that want leave the open world of Linux for Microsoft very easily. They all work at Microsoft. Microsoft is losing on mobile, desktop, servers, and IoT. Their entire ecosystem is a technological deadend. If you're a Linux Nerd, you should probably keep using Linux if you care about having a good career going forward.

santoshalper 9y ago
Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop. I try it every year, and every year it sucks very slightly less. It goes beyond drivers and application compatibility, Linux distros are ugly and the people making them have no taste. The Desktop/Laptop market is not nearly as important as it used to be, but within that space, Microsoft's dominance is about as strong as ever. Apple might have been able to take a dent out of it if they were committed, but they decided the obscene margins on iPhones were more important (and I can't entirely blame them). Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs. Every year that passes convinces me more of this. We are going on the 20th "Year of Linux on the Desktop". If they were going to do it, they'd have done it by now.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  > Linux still sucks shit on the Desktop Shrug I've been using it on my main machine (a laptop) for 8+ years now. Works well for me. > Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs While I'm ever so slightly afraid you might be a little right, I'm super thankful that Canonical keeps putting out excellent new releases.
  - gsich 9y ago
    That's one of the three (?) answers you get when someone says they have a problem with Linux. I can relate to the quote and I use Linux.
- newman8r 9y ago
  Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ I think the linux desktop user experience has improved exponentially over the last few years, you should give it another shot.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hacking_again 9y ago

Why not just use Cygwin?

seiferteric 9y ago
I mostly agree. I have used cygwin for years when forced to use windows and have had mostly a great experience. In the article she mentions launching windows programs from the shell as if it's a great new thing... you could always do that from cygwin.... The only thing this gets you (i think) is not having to recompile programs.
- damieng 9y ago
  You get much more than that - you are installing native binaries direct from apt-get. No waiting for ports, patches, recompilation or people trying to get the latest version working on cygwin. It pulls binaries direct from Ubuntu as if you were on a Linux box and just runs them.
interlocutor 9y ago
Cygwin cannot run Linux executables. Cygwin .exe's are specifically compiled for Windows.
- seiferteric 9y ago
  Cygwin is essentially a distribution, so like any distribution their packages are recompiled for that specific distribution and available in their repo. It's not too often you download a random binary for Linux and run it, but that case I concede.
  - saghm 9y ago
    > It's not too often you download a random binary for Linux and run it Mostly because you don't have to due to package managers. Assuming there are no unsatisfied dependencies, it's totally possible to share binaries between Linux distros.
  - 9y ago

tootie 9y ago

A lot of snarky comments here, but I've been using Ubuntu shell on Win 10 for the past few weeks and it's really fantastic. Way faster than a VM and much more compatible than cygwin or msys.

thinkxl 9y ago
More snarky than usual, i don't know why. "why not just" or "just use" kind of comments that you see more in reddit. Even someone recommended an Electron alternative, on HN! the #1 Electron hater community. Interesting.
- seiferteric 9y ago
  I don't know, I think some people feel a bit threatened by this move. It could be viewed as a way to subvert the Linux and OSS community. I think people should know there are alternatives.
  - thinkxl 9y ago
    > I don't know, I think some people feel a bit threatened by this move. You are right, but as you said, is good to have alternatives. > It could be viewed as a way to subvert the Linux and OSS community. Good, is healthy to have competition.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    That's a generally valid concern, but I don't think I can see that ever really happening. It's really just a compatibility space, no? There is a bit of a contrarian culture here, lately. Some skepticism is healthy, but too much is toxic. As a general optimist and hopeful, I like to try and find good where I can without being suckered by hocus or sly marketing. Moving forward and growing outward should be a good thing, shouldn't it?
    - seiferteric 9y ago
      I know what you mean, but you will never see MS contributing to Wine will you? Will we ever see office for linux? Why can't we get a proper POSIX layer for windows (like they used to offer)?

domenukk 9y ago

Install hyper terminal, it is a lot more bearable than the ugly default console emulation on Windows.

notgood 9y ago
Conemu is where is at (for me at least), along with clink you have a lot of niceties bash has (reverse history search, etc)
- sp332 9y ago
  I've been using the WSL bash inside Conemu. I pretty much only use it for SSH'ing to other boxes, but I spend a lot of time in it and it's the best Windows setup I've found.
tym0 9y ago
I use wsltty which is mintty for the WSL. https://github.com/mintty/wsltty https://github.com/mintty/wsltty
marcoperaza 9y ago
I just run gnome-terminal or terminator in WSL with vcxsrv.
dingle_thunk 9y ago
Hyper on windows is buggy AF tbh. cmder or conemu are more popular. More options @ https://www.slant.co/topics/1552/~terminal-emulators-for-windows https://www.slant.co/topics/1552/~terminal-emulators-for-win...

dhruvb14 9y ago

For anyone wanting to automate using boxstarter and chocolatey without finding all the packages manually I created this GUI about a year back. It has a search bar to search chocolatey's repository automatically. It has search and allows you to save the GIST straight to github and then invoke installer straight from website. Uses cookies to store script on machine so you can come back to it and add/remove more. Was a quick 2-3 hour job so it may have bugs http://dhruvb14.github.io http://dhruvb14.github.io

dingle_thunk 9y ago

Author should check out this script for an even more minimal setup :) https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1 https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1

lostmsu 9y ago
That gist is full of insecure shit.
- electricEmu 9y ago
  Hi! Your comment is very vague and damning considering it contains no specifics. The gist is served over https so that's secure. It's well documented so it's not really doing anything unintended so there's no problems there. It requires admin privileges, but so would similar changes in other operating systems. How specifically is the gist full of insecure shit?
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    I mean insecure configurations, like turning off automatic updates. For instance, unconditionally marking current network as private.
    - dingle_thunk 9y ago
      It turns off Automatic reboots, not Automatic updates.

galaxyLogic 9y ago

Linux on Windows 10 seems like a good thing. I plan to use it for testing a Node.js application developed on Windows

nathas 9y ago
You're probably going to have a bad time. Some of the lower-level network APIs are pretty buggy last time I checked.
- jstarks 9y ago
  We've made a lot of improvements in the last few months of insider builds. If there are still blocking issues, I'd definitely be interested in hearing about them.
- thezilch 9y ago
  What does "lower-level" and "buggy" mean? I really doubt an HTTP server is going to have any troubles. We are running game servers on WSL, where you can imagine we are using fairly to-the-metal socket work over UDP and no issues with libcurl or libopenssl for TCP sockets.

nunez 9y ago

Congrats, Jess! LXSS is amazing, but I had to stop using it because mounted volumes in Docker straight up don't work within it. How don't they work? When you do a "docker run -v $PWD:/whatever <image>", "/whatever" will be blank. This occurred even when I tried to mount a directory on the FUSE mount to the Windows filesystem. I'm guessing that given her experience in hacking container runtimes, she can probably lend a big hand towards fixing it. I'm currently using Vbox + Vagrant as a substitute, and it works well, but I'd prefer to use WSL.

pbnjay 9y ago

TBH I dug out my Surface Pro when Jess started talking up WSL... Finally got Windows Insider Preview going so that I could try it out for myself. I spend most of my days in a text editor and a terminal, and macOS has been making even that painful sometimes. Linux was my desktop for ages before I switched to mac ~7 years ago, so it'll be nice to see what it can do now.

kyriakos 9y ago
you no longer need Windows Insider preview for WSOL - its part of the creator's update. still has a beta tag but its available without having to use a full beta OS.
- tacticus 9y ago
  When did this change? as my home machine required me to move to insiders for WSL just on the weekend. (also the volume of spam they are sending to me now :|)
  - detaro 9y ago
    Creators update came out back in April. I think you need the Insiders Program right now to pick which Linux distro you want to install, normal way only gets you Ubuntu?

userbinator 9y ago

If you need to access files in VolFS, you can use bash.exe to copy them somewhere under /mnt/c, use Windows to do whatever on it, then use bash.exe to copy them back when you are done. IMHO this is the worst-designed(?) part of the whole WSL. Copying files back and forth is the antithesis of a "seamless Windows and Linux experience", to put it mildly. From that perspective it's no better than running an isolated VM. To add insult to injury, although I haven't personally tried it, apparently trying to access the files directly from Windows as if they were both on the same filesystem (which they are) results in all sorts of ridiculous breakage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980380 I have mounted CIFS/SMB shares from Windows machines onto Linuxes and Macs, and gone in the opposite direction with Samba; in both of these cases, there is no need for wasteful copying and managing two files; Windows and Linux can essentially use the same files simultaneously. Going in the other direction, WINE also allows Windows apps to work directly with the same files as Linux ones. One then wonders, when a networked filesystem with all its complexity can be used nearly effortlessly across different OSes running on completely different machines, and WINE is like the inverse of WSL, why couldn't Microsoft do the same with two subsystems on the same machine using the same filesystem!?

tootie 9y ago
I'm not sure what she is talking about because you definitely do not have to copy files across. I have a git checkout on my C: drive and interact with it via /mnt/c with no trouble. I'm editing in VS Code and running git and npm in Ubuntu shell with zero friction.
- neves 9y ago
  Soon you will have problems. She is right.
  - ayanamist 9y ago
    What is the problems? I have been doing this for one year without issues.

shmerl 9y ago

Why would you use WSL instead of straight VM for example (assuming you are somehow banned from running Linux proper directly on your hardware)? And I'm a bit confused about the benefit of launching PowerPoint from WSL, when you have the Windows host itself sitting there.

nxc18 9y ago
You can use use bash to interact with windows programs. You can run native Linux binaries without the overhead of a vm. You can run native Windows binaries without the overhead of a vm.
will_hughes 9y ago
I'm uncertain if you're asking "Why use WSL vs VM" or "Why use WSL/Linux VM if you can run Linux directly". For the first: Unified filesystem, memory, processor resources. You don't need to have the extra overhead of running a VM. For the second: The reason to run Windows is the same as the reason to run MacOS - so you can run apps for those platforms. If you don't need to do that, then obviously there's little/no point in doing so.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Well, for running Windows applications on Linux we have Wine already. I'm not saying WSL isn't an interesting thing, but if I'd had such choice, I would have run Linux natively first, in VM as second best option, and WSL as last resort.
  - will_hughes 9y ago
    Sure, those are your personal preferences, and in your current specific needs/wants. You did ask why, though, and you've been given a few examples of why someone might choose WSL over VMs.

tkubacki 9y ago

WSL is waste of time if you work with docker - Linux desktop experience (not laptop) is just good enough these days (and future seems even brighter since Ubuntu goes back to Gnome)

romanovcode 9y ago
Docker works pretty great with Windows nowadays using Hyper-V. Because of that your point can be reversed: If you work with Docker there is no point in switching from Windows to Linux.
- tkubacki 9y ago
  Windows works ok as virtual box/vmware guest as well. I spent few years as .net Dev this way and was more than happy with this solution. You need beefy machine though. Not using windows as primary OS limits risk related to viruses, malware. Also moving to new hardware is just copy vm files (windows provision for Dev used to take a lot of time)

cypher543 9y ago

I really, really wish Microsoft would open up the Pico Process APIs to third-party driver developers. Right now, WSL is the only driver allowed to install Pico Process callbacks. It would be cool to implement a Darwin layer or a Classic Xbox emulator with that tech.

wvenable 9y ago
The Pico Process subsystem isn't fully baked yet -- in earlier talks Microsoft mentioned that while the API itself is pretty generic but the current implementation is just hacked together to support the Linux subsystem for now.

makmanalp 9y ago

Very neat! This reminds me of lx branded zones in illumos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs&list=PLH8r-Scm3-2VmZhZ76tFPAhPOG0pvmjdA&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs&list=PLH8r-Scm3-...

mwcampbell 9y ago
Indeed. I wonder if Microsoft will eventually use their Linux emulation to accomplish the same thing that motivated Joyent to work on LX-branded zones, namely running Linux-based Docker containers in production on a non-Linux server OS (Windows in this case) without any VM overhead.
- tda 9y ago
  I believe this is already the case with hyper-v, is it not?
  - makmanalp 9y ago
    I thought hyper-v would be more for the case of full-blown emulation (I'm creating a soft-CPU and hardware, a la VMWare) versus this is more like linux emulation - I have some windows software that can parse and run ELF binaries, and some layer that converts calls to the linux kernel into windows kernel stuff.

Wehrdo 9y ago

I have been super impressed with WSL after using it for close to a year now. The Creators Update fixed some issues like file watching and symbolic links which had been preventing certain programs from begin usable. I now do all my C++ and node.js development through WSL so I can still use all the Windows GUI applications (which tend to have fewer bugs and be easier to use than Linux GUI apps, in my experience). VS Code even allows you to run gdb on WSL, and interface with it on Windows, if you can get the setup right.

all_blue_chucks 9y ago

All the linux commands I need I can find in windows-native format using scoop.sh. No filesystem trickery needed.

eksemplar 9y ago

I've been a Microsoft developer for a long time, but in recent years it's become increasingly hard to justify and the Linux subsystem hasn't helped. Not because it's not an interesting feature, but because my desktop has become even more useless as anything but development than it already was with Visual Studio infecting everything. I'm sure it's a step in the right direction for a lot of people, but I bought an old 2015 MacBook and it's been a so much better experience than windows that I'm actually considering getting a ubuntu machine to see if it can work as my main machine. If this sounds odd to you, you haven't programmed on a MacBook with a Danish keyboard. Honestly Microsoft does a lot of things right these days, but it all comes with terrible user experiences. .Net core is great, but the devops required to run it in production, frankly has us considering java spring. Sorry about the rant, but the fact that you even needed to write this blog is a good illustration of what's wrong with Microsoft. Tech is supposed to run out of the box, with minimal effort required.

jkulubya 9y ago
To take the conversation sideways a bit, what about running .net core in production has given you trouble? We've had success with a bunch of services and my view is that most of the trouble is found pretty early on in the dev experience.
sirmike_ 9y ago
You know, I kindly disagree. Tech is suppose to run flawlessly/with minimal effort required out of the box for the average consumer. Power users, Devs, IT Pros and SysAdmins follow a much different path. Each one of these groups taylor's their systems to match their professional work flows. I do not know about you but I am constantly messing with things to get them just right. It doesn't take all that long but I love that I could come home to Windows and be greeted with add ons and programs which make my digital daily grind enjoyable. Case in point WinXCorners ( http://apps.codigobit.info/2015/10/winxcorners-hot-corners-for-windows-10.html http://apps.codigobit.info/2015/10/winxcorners-hot-corners-f... ) -- think Hot Corners. Love it. Throughout the years this and the Desktop spaces are Ah-Mah-Zing. They make a huge difference to me. From the Start Menu to forced Cortana-Bing-Edge is a mess. Yuck. But there are ways around it. But that's for me. That's my personal take. However looked at from my 8 year old's perspective -- those things do not matter. When he uses it -- it works for him. He was born into the iPad touch is first world. He had zero issues adapting to Windows touch/kb/mouse paradigm. It just works for him. The parental controls through MSFT accounts are outstanding, simple and get the job done. MacOS and Linux have yet to really nail multi-user accounts in the Desktop GUI realm mind you this is well outside of terminal land where multi-user accounts are never an issue. Granted MacOS has a leg up on Linux Desktop distros for multi-users. However this defect is compounded and made worse by the continuous client model. Iphones, Ipads, Apple Watches and Macs of all stripe were meant to be single user only. Sharing need not apply. Use cases matter a great deal. I am just happy I have a PAID alternative in Windows 10. Two years and they have gotten to the point where the growing pains are gone from Windows 10. WSL has matured quite a bit. WSL SSH (the lowest hanging fruit if there ever was) works orders of magnitude better than any wonky Powershell/CmdPrompt/Putty/Cygwin ever did. VI/VIM the same applies. Granted my perspective is from the SysAdmin/ITPro space. There are tradeoffs to everything. There are good tools and bad tools. Use the right tool for the right job. I personally have zero tolerance for non-cross platform Apps. I put the ability to be able to use the tool or service I pay for across different platforms first. I am not a fan of lock in. I should be able to spin up a new system and get it running to working status in 15 minutes or less. I do not get too attached to one OS or another. I prize flexibility over flashy niche and sometimes uber-sexy lock in. This model forces me to constantly stay sharp and educating myself.

blunte 9y ago

Want to _really_ impress us, Microsoft? Give us a Windows Subsystem for Linux. I chose a maxxed out Dell XPS15 laptop with Windows 10 to replace my 3 year old rMBP with the (foolish) expectation that it could replace my Mac. Apple had lost sight of what mattered to developers, and I was angry. But now, 2 months later, here I continue developing and existing on my old rMBP. Bash in Windows is incredibly slow on some actions. I didn't document all my activities, so I can't point to which thing was slow. But for a developer using Python, Elixir, Node, Nginx, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Git! SSH! and some other smaller accessories, WSL was far less performant than a Linux VM on my Mac. And it was far, far less performant than on native Mac. I very much appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. Perhaps in a generation or three they will finally leave behind most of their protectionist behaviors and embrace what works for them (for better or worse) - MS Office and the host of Windows apps that businesses depend on. Apple is no saint or savior. But thankfully, some of what they did in the years past (dare I say during the reign of Jobs) is what has made them special. #1 - latency. My Macs work 99% of the time as expected. They run for weeks or months. My high end Android phone, even after factory reset, has occasional mind-boggling hangs (after which 1000 UI events register and take effect). The same applies to Windows 10! It works fine, sometimes, for a few things. Then it goes nuts. Wipe and reinstall (remove the Dell bloatware) and it's better. But it still lags so far behind macOS. There is no utopia. There is only pain, frustration, and anger on the part of users. But please, give us developers (who practically _live_ in your environments) something.

monkmartinez 9y ago
Why not dual boot linux and windows 10 or use a Linux VM? It takes like 10-15 seconds to reboot a machine these days. I am about to take the plunge toward a ThinkPad after many years with OSX (I haven't upgraded my 2011 17" to macOS). My plan is to try dual booting linux and/or using a Linux VM. I think the biggest hurdle will be changing my mindset. That is, looking for the OSX version of whatever it is I am looking for. Wrapping my mind around Linux... just Linux for as much as possible. I am looking forward to using just Linux as time goes on. I need to ween myself off of a few things before I can make the switch completely... I did it when I went from win to mac.

chx 9y ago

Here are my notes https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Windows-10-(coming-from-Linux) https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi... on setting up W10 after using Linux for almost a quarter century.

api_or_ipa 9y ago

Not sure how WSL is more compelling than using docker containers. I can very easily download, compile and run basically anything I want with minimal friction and way less domain knowledge than managing a VM. Also, this might just be me being snarky, but MS is absolutely losing the battle for developer tooling and that's what's prompted them to try to sway developers back to their ecosystem. If the circumstances were any different, I'm sure they'd be perfectly happy letting us suffer using cygwin and putty. Don't trust a snake.

sz4kerto 9y ago
> Not sure how WSL is more compelling than using docker containers. It takes much less resources and file sharing is easier. You don't need to run a VM.

jadbox 9y ago

i3 is simply amazing. I'd give up my Windows Desktop in an instant if I could use i3 to start Window apps within the manager.

lisnake 9y ago
Since you can start windows apps from WSL console, I bet something can be hacked to launch them from i3, though i haven't tried myself
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  i3 can only be run in a window that emulates Xorg. So, no.

jadbox 9y ago

Note that Android emulation (or most kinds of emulation aside from docker) will not work under WSL. Yes, I know I can do Android development under Windows, but I'd prefer Linux for day to day development for everything.

explodingcamera 9y ago

Weird I've been cloning git repos to an external NTFS drive mounted in /mnt and never had any issues.

dis-sys 9y ago

Microsoft never made any change to its core strategy. There is no alternative platform to run Windows applications with official Microsoft support (you can name a couple exceptions, they are exceptions, e.g. SQL Server), there is no way for average developers to read Windows/Office source code. That is the best proof. Windows for Linux Nerds? I run 5 Linux machines in my study room, Microsoft would be charging me thousands of $ for Windows Server licenses, I read source code of the software I am using on daily basis, Microsoft wouldn't let me do that. Every code of weeks, I hack the software I use and share the changes with others, Microsoft lawyers are not going to be happy if I choose to do that on Microsoft software. Windows for Linux Nerds? Microsoft is not ready for that, Microsoft never had the intention to do.

jmsmistral 9y ago
Hear hear!!

partycoder 9y ago

It's hard for Windows to realistically compete with Linux as a developer environment. GNU/Linux and userland software is made by developers for developers, and a lot of it is open source. If you are a developer, on Linux sky is the limit. Everything can be played with. On Windows that's not the case. Many areas are off-limits and you don't get to see how they work, and you cannot change them if you need to. Then, Microsoft can sunset a project at any time, and that's final. In the open source world an orphaned project can always be forked or picked up by someone else.

romanovcode 9y ago
> It's hard for Windows to realistically compete with Linux as a developer environment. That's the whole point of WSL
- partycoder 9y ago
  The WSL is useful if you need Windows as a host system. That's not a universal need. Most of the software I use supports Linux. Then there's is Wine and finally virtualization. I haven't needed the latter in years.
pjmlp 9y ago
Only for developers that only care about writing CLI and web servers. For those of us that care about UI/UX, IDEs with nice graphical tooling, only macOS matches Windows, specially given the developer culture for such tooling.
- partycoder 9y ago
  That is a very pessimistic view. Many IDEs support Linux. There are tools with interface builders on Linux. GTK, Qt, Android, Mono, etc...
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Yes there are, but as I mentioned the culture also matters, and the Linux culture worships CLI and window managers like xmonad, not graphical developer tools and UI/UX.

Keloran 9y ago

how is WSL any different to WISE ? (a better explination of WISE than I could ever come up with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072143) it sounds like microsoft up to its old tricks, "look its really easy to develop for windows now you have done that, well now we have dropped that so guess your going to have to only develop for windows now"

WorldMaker 9y ago
WSL uses the "real" userland of the distro of your choice. If you are running Ubuntu on it, you are using the same .debs and ELF binaries inside those .debs that "real" Ubuntu is using. If for whatever reason the Windows team decided to "cut bait" and kill WSL, you can quickly spin up an Ubuntu VM or reimage to Ubuntu and continue to be productive. If there is an opportunity for a Trojan horse here, it's for Linux developers to encourage young geeks to install Ubuntu from the Windows Store and start learning Linux commands in WSL and maybe from there eventually baby step to running Linux full time. (That said, it's not like having BSD terminals available in macOS has encouraged a lot of people to move out of macOS and directly to Linux. Still seems to trend the opposite direction, if the laptops at developer conferences are any indication.)

donquichotte 9y ago

WSL is nice and I would use it more often if USB devices were transparently mapped into it. I want to use it for embedded development on my Windows machine, and without USB support this is just not possible. Edit: apparently they added it in May [1], but I have no access to the newest update. [1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/10/bashwsl-insiders-build-now-supports-usbserial-comms-and-mounting-removable-storage-network-shares/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/10/bash...

yanni79 9y ago

I remember "Lindows" from the good ol' days - I think it ended up being called Linspire, but alas it died back in 2007. It would've been great to give to my grandparents right about now.

mikeytown2 9y ago

I used to run http://www.andlinux.org/ http://www.andlinux.org/ but with no 64bit support it's dead now. This was how to run Linux on windows.

rbanffy 9y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but WSL looks more like an attempt at stopping developers from moving to Macs in order to get a polished app environment with a Unix-like OS underneath and to keep them in the Windows ecosystem.

crowbahr 9y ago
"a polished app environment" If you're meaning XCode then no. XCode is never going to draw in developers... or at least no developer I've ever talked to liked XCode. I changed from iOS to Android development because I couldn't stand XCode anymore. Constant crashing, walled garden bullshit where I couldn't even get plugins running every time they updated, inexplicable code changes to my apps which were un-diagnosable from within xcode because they obfuscate away all layout files... It was nightmarish. I spent more time swearing at my computer than I did coding.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  I'm talking about iTunes, iWork, all IDEs that count with the exception of Visual Studio, Skype, the built-in apps and even Microsoft Office if you are so inclined. I've done some development in ObjC using Xcode and didn't notice the problems you mention. Must be luck. And one thing that others never replicated is the quality of the laptops. I've had Dell XPSs and Thinkpads and the MacBook Pro is still my favourite laptop.
- makecheck 9y ago
  Xcode 3.x was nearly perfect. The Xcode UI went straight south in 4.x with this giant-window-always-the-wrong-size-for-everything design, that also sucked Interface Builder into the same app. That meant any crashy thing in IB took down your whole project, which never used to be an issue. If they back-ported LLVM to the Xcode 3.x GUI and restored IB as a separate app, I would be quite happy.
corysama 9y ago
I've been putting it even stronger for a while now. WSL is an attempt to get the horde of MacBook-wielding web devs to slowly migrate away from OSX. Once people notice they can get a grab-and-go Linux laptop at any BestBuy, and it's much cheaper than an equivalent MacBook, and it runs all games and other Windows apps natively... They'll start doing a lot more development on Windows boxes. Then, they might notice that Visual Studio is actually really damn nice. At that point, making their code Linux-Windows cross-platform becomes much easier and more interesting.

traitormonkey 9y ago

>Imagine a Linux setup where you can launch PowerPoint without a VM ...she gushes. Er Wine? or I think she may have heard of it DOCKER? Gaah. vomit. What problem does this solve? None! You still have Windows. fdisk that backdoored Windows garbage.

jlebrech 9y ago

how about directX for wine?

kalleth 9y ago

I've recently (~1y) moved back to Windows as a primary 'desktop' OS for development. By day I'm a rails developer. I've worked extensively on windows (back in PHP days), Linux (when I was doing HPC software) and Mac (most of my rails career...). Generally the code always runs on Linux -- and WSL isnt' there yet for background processes and the "platform" your code needs to run on; most of the stuff I need needs worker processes, elasticsearch, mysql, et al, all of which need to be running long-lived in the background which WSL isn't great at supporting -- it's "user mode" after all. It's also closer to prod environments, which is a theoretical argument against OSX. I clone and do terminal operations on either a VM or a physical ubuntu server in my house, and edit locally using gvim or visual studio code using an NFS or Samba mount. Nginx proxying using port forwarding over ssh. Long story short; it works for me, but this is a frankenstein-ish setup made familiar solely because I've used all 3 OS's day in, day out for ~20 years. When I explain it to Junior devs they look at me funny. WSL with ConEmu and openssh is close to replacing PuTTy for me, but that's it. You still can't use it to have a painless node, ruby, etc development experience on windows. Microsoft should be focusing on optimising for someone who's in a coding bootcamp, not people who've been in tech for decades already and already have the solid technology base. Right now, people grow up using windows for day to day office work in other careers and at school, and for PC gaming and browsing at home, but have to switch off it when they enter a development career because the native tooling isn't there. If Microsoft can address that shortcoming, probably through further development of WSL and (hopefully) implementing Bash as a "first order citizen" in Windows, then they're home.

nickjj 9y ago

I tried WSL a few times but for real world every day development it's just not usable at all. The file mount performance is crippling slow. A Rails app takes 30+ seconds to see changes vs nearly instant on native Linux. If anyone is interested in running Linux on Windows in a way that's suitable for full time development then check out this screencast / blog post: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/create-an-awesome-linux-development-environment-in-windows-with-vmware https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/create-an-awesome-linux-devel... I've been using this set up for many years. The pros of the above method are: - It's free - It's as fast as native Linux - It's actually Linux from end to end - You get independent floating Linux windows (graphical apps work) - You can still run your Windows apps - Works flawlessly with dual monitors - No need to dual boot - Takes about 15-20 minutes to set up your first time

vegbrasil 9y ago
Kinda sad to use old VMware and old Xubuntu...
- nickjj 9y ago
  No need to be sad. Before I moved to Windows 10 I routinely had 150+ day uptimes. The old VMWare is rock solid and runs really fast. Having to use an older version of xubuntu does kind of stink, but I'm pretty sure if you really cared you could use 16.04, but just downgrade xfce to use 14.04's version. It's not something I bothered with because visually I'm happy with the way things look, using custom PPAs are easy and I use Docker for various programming language runtimes and services.
koffiezet 9y ago
Vagrant with virtualbox or hyperv seems like the better choice tbh.

iwintermute 9y ago

Slow file writes - working with WLS I found that integrated ms antivirus really doesn't like my python scripts for some reason. Turning off "ongoing protection" speed up things considerably.

free_everybody 9y ago

I wanted to read this but I honestly don't care about how Windows hacked away a lesser version of a linux machine into their already bloated OS. I'm just going to use linux.

megamindbrian 9y ago

What does this mean for Cygwin?

roller 9y ago
Cygwin still seems to be the go-to for any POSIX apps that need to interact with the actual Windows environment. For example, wslbridge[1] that connects wsltty[2] to WSL compiles the frontend component under cygwin. [1]: https://github.com/mintty/wsltty https://github.com/mintty/wsltty [2]: https://github.com/rprichard/wslbridge https://github.com/rprichard/wslbridge

geggam 9y ago

...but why do I need this ? Work gives me a Mac which I have a Linux VM inside of to get work done. Personally I have Linux / BSD laptops and BSD servers. Why do I need windows at all ?

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

At the end of the day, its still windows. There have been too many dick moves for me to trust them. As long as the terminal works in MacOS, ill use mac.

symlinkk 9y ago

I totally agree with his points about how terrible the Windows console is. Scrolling past the current line into blank space makes no sense. Having two identical settings menus (Defaults and Properties) that affect the current terminal vs every terminal makes no sense. Having no color theme support makes no sense. As far as third party terminals go, ConEmu is pretty good but crashes a lot for me. I don't see why I should even need to get a third party terminal though. Microsoft is a multi billion dollar company. Can't they hire a team of guys to improve the one thing that every single programmer and sysadmin cares about - the god damned terminal?

nhumrich 9y ago
> I totally agree with her points FTFY
Seanny123 9y ago
Seriously. This has been the one major stalling point for me as well. Setting up a Python environment and installing programs with Chocolatey were trivial, but the damn PowerShell terminal is ugly as sin.
AlfeG 9y ago
As a Windows developer for last year I can see very big leap in terminal usability. Nowadays you can reset it as you Wish. Hotkeys works as expected. Muse integration much much better. Try latest Insider builds. Console nowadays mush better and faster then ever in Windows

arrty88 9y ago

I love my late 2016 mbp with new keyboard & touchbar that i never use. It's a million times better than the surface pro 4, surface book, dell xps, lenovo, or any other equivalently priced winbox. Granted, I don't game at all or need high performance graphics.

iammyIP 9y ago

Stop dangling your rotten carrot! You can't impress me with these stale gimmicks. The choice of operating system is not a purely utalitarian, but also and mostly a social choice of morality and utopia. And the choice has been made already, for freedom, not corpdom. Therefore, i'll stick with even the shittiest desktop and OS imaginable, as long as it's open for me to any change i can think of. There is simply no going back from freedom to corpdom. It's one way only. You need to understand this.

mizzao 9y ago

I find that the copy/paste terminal stuff and keyboard shortcuts are much better by using an X-based terminal emulator, e.g. xfce: https://askubuntu.com/a/867696/86161 https://askubuntu.com/a/867696/86161

lurker12390879 9y ago

Drawbridge is what powers SQL server for linux and is a full windows subsystem but is locked down.

omi 9y ago

TL;DR "Here's how you pull the power cable, in case you forgot"

malkia 9y ago

Thank you for WSL! I've been using it to learn more about what it could be done with it, and at home have been trying to compile flutter (http://flutter.org http://flutter.org) on it... Currently it gets stuck in the "pub upgrade" (the dart language packaging mechanism), as it runs several tar's to unpack packages. If you just follow the simple: bash.exe...: $ mkdir p; cd p $ git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter $ cd bin $ ./flutter doctor it'll soon get up to speed, and eventually hang. Off course all this works on Windows, but I wanted to experiment with something as it encompasses several different things - language, environment, packages, jit-ing, etc. Still pretty excited about the development! Heh, one thing I've learned the hard way, I made a symlink on my /mnt/c/ as /mnt/c/something - and this was making several windows tools unhappy, had to deleted from WSL and now it's fine.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

An i3 user who is happy with WSL? I think you are in denial, my friend.