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> rather than trying to fit Linux applications in Windows, they're running in their own world and providing integrations into this world. It is effectively the

by acqq 7y ago

> rather than trying to fit Linux applications in Windows, they're running in their own world and providing integrations into this world. It is effectively their way to have an "integrated Linux virtual machine" inside of Windows. The WSL1 on Windows was relatively similar (but not enough for me) to Wine on Linux. The WSL2 is in some ways "more integrated" than the typical VM would be, but otherwise still similar to that. Not enough: my greatest disappointment up to now is that the "VM-like" behavior was present even in WSL1, if I understood correctly, the files "inside" were more special than the files inside Cygwin folders would be. Another disappointment was: it was not easy to install WSL on previous Windows 10 versions. Specifically, it was "in app store" but you weren't supposed to "click to install" -- it resulted in something weird. There were recipes what to do from the command line with hoops to take care of, so at the end... I've installed Cygwin, which I knew will work. Does anybody know, did WSL get better now? (Edit: in the last sentence: s/ it / WSL /)

rbanffy 7y ago
> I've installed Cygwin, which I knew will work. Does anybody know, did it get better better now? I really like Cygwin. With the MinTTY terminal, it was very nice. Slower than native Linux (or Windows), but enough of an environment to make me happy and productive.
shigawire 7y ago
I think you can do it all from powershell if you want or there are really only 2 GUI steps. Yesterday I: 1. Enabled the Windows Subsystem for Linux option from the control panel 2. Downloaded Ubuntu from the windows store 3. Open Ubuntu and it worked.
- acqq 7y ago
  Good. The last time I tried it was like "you just click... and then the problems just start": https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/7smf9m/help_wsl_wont_activate_on_my_freshly_installed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/7smf... Regarding the problems between the "different filesystems" it was like: https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/9dkl12/sharing_files_between_windows_and_linux_wsl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/9dkl... Which was especially bad: what's the point in having it "there" if you aren't allowed to access the files inside. Also problems with making a backup of that etc. In that aspects using a real VM (e.g. VirtualBox) the situation was much clearer. So from my perspective it was both worse than Cygwin and worse (or at least not better) than real VMs... I would really like to read if/how WSL improved. The similar experience was when I've tried to "just install ssh server". The things I've expected to "just work" didn't. Again at the end I've just used Cygwin.
FrankHB 7y ago
MSYS2 can do something better than Cygwin. I'm disappoint to "VM-like" behavior too, so I don't expect they would be totally replaced by WSL. But this is similar in the other direction. Many applications just rely on such "VM-like" behavior, even though they can be (re)built for Win32 and/or they do not need a real VM for functionality. Note WSL1 can already do something more, e.g. hosting programs as X clients working with VcXsrv. I don't think WSL2 will be necessarily better than WSL1 in many of such cases. (In particular, when I have to reserve VT-x for some other hypervisors, I have no other choice.)

by acqq 7y ago

rbanffy 7y ago

> I've installed Cygwin, which I knew will work. Does anybody know, did it get better better now? I really like Cygwin. With the MinTTY terminal, it was very nice. Slower than native Linux (or Windows), but enough of an environment to make me happy and productive.

shigawire 7y ago

I think you can do it all from powershell if you want or there are really only 2 GUI steps. Yesterday I: 1. Enabled the Windows Subsystem for Linux option from the control panel 2. Downloaded Ubuntu from the windows store 3. Open Ubuntu and it worked.

acqq 7y ago
Good. The last time I tried it was like "you just click... and then the problems just start": https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/7smf9m/help_wsl_wont_activate_on_my_freshly_installed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/7smf... Regarding the problems between the "different filesystems" it was like: https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/9dkl12/sharing_files_between_windows_and_linux_wsl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/9dkl... Which was especially bad: what's the point in having it "there" if you aren't allowed to access the files inside. Also problems with making a backup of that etc. In that aspects using a real VM (e.g. VirtualBox) the situation was much clearer. So from my perspective it was both worse than Cygwin and worse (or at least not better) than real VMs... I would really like to read if/how WSL improved. The similar experience was when I've tried to "just install ssh server". The things I've expected to "just work" didn't. Again at the end I've just used Cygwin.

FrankHB 7y ago

MSYS2 can do something better than Cygwin. I'm disappoint to "VM-like" behavior too, so I don't expect they would be totally replaced by WSL. But this is similar in the other direction. Many applications just rely on such "VM-like" behavior, even though they can be (re)built for Win32 and/or they do not need a real VM for functionality. Note WSL1 can already do something more, e.g. hosting programs as X clients working with VcXsrv. I don't think WSL2 will be necessarily better than WSL1 in many of such cases. (In particular, when I have to reserve VT-x for some other hypervisors, I have no other choice.)