4 ms·

Eh, many OSes have been down this road, but the problem is that you end up having to emulate the Linux ABO, but the Linux ABI is large and fast-evolving and und

Eh, many OSes have been down this road, but the problem is that you end up having to emulate the Linux ABO, but the Linux ABI is large and fast-evolving and underdocumented, and you'll need to be compatible with it, and that's ETOOHARD. Even Microsoft has given up on emulating the Linux ABI.

quotemstr 7y ago
> Even Microsoft has given up on emulating the Linux ABI. Then what's this Linux subsystem that Windows ships? > Linux ABI is large and fast-evolving and underdocumented You don't have to keep up with the latest ABI. You don't need to match tip-of-tree. You only need to match some version of Linux that programs still target, and that version can be pretty old, since enterprise customers scream bloody murder when you force them up upgrade kernels to run new programs.
- aleph- 7y ago
  A VM
- snuxoll 7y ago
  WSL2 operates in a Hyper-V environment, there's too many issues with trying to do syscall emulation that WSL1 attempted - while both will remain supported for a while the writing is already on the wall.
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    Ugh. I hadn't heard that. WSL2 being a VM is a huge disappointment. There's the technically-cowardly Microsoft from the Ballmer era. Just when I thought Microsoft had rediscovered how to do technically interesting things, they wave the white flag and run away. Using a VM for WSL means that it'll never be possible to write a program that's simultaneously a good win32 GUI citizen and a Unix API user. WSL1 (AFAIK) didn't allow this use case, but there was a path to get there. There's no path from a VM to a native USER32 process. The bright side is that at least Cygwin won't die. Cygwin allows for precisely this use case.
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      Technically interesting isn't the same as the best technical choice
      - quotemstr 7y ago
        As far as I'm concerned, using a VM is a poor choice technical choice: a VM closes off lots of potential integration opportunities and creates all the system-resource-use coordination problems that all non-container system partitioning approaches have. The point of WSL isn't to just run some Linux code on Windows. You've been able to do that for literally decades. The point is to create a tightly integrated environment that gives you Linux and Windows views onto the same workspace and that makes Linuxy and Windows processes peers. Using a VM here feels like a "safe" and "sustainable" uninspired corporate choice that gives Windows a checkbox feature without expanding the bounds of what's possible. You can tell me all day that switching from innovation to crank-turning is right for the business, but I personally want nothing to do with crank-turners.
        pstuart 7y ago
        Could you give a specific example of what kind of integration you're looking for (that can only be addressed by WSL0/1)? I'm not a Windows developer but I have a Windows laptop that I'd like to be able to run linux on and WSL2 scratches that itch, so your complaint doesn't register for me.
        shawnz 7y ago
        It was cool how WSL1 allowed named pipes to be shared between Windows and Linux apps, giving the possibility to have a shared SSH agent, efficient X11 support, etc. Does WSL2 support that? I'm not sure but I don't think so.
        spc476 7y ago
        for NaNoGenMo [1] 2015, I wanted to run Racter [2] against Eliza, but 1) I run Linux and 2) I had an MS-DOS executable for Racter. I thought I would use DosBox to run Racter and pipe input/output to Eliza running under Linux natively, but DosBox didn't allow that. I ended up having to write enough of an MS-DOS emulator [3] to run Racter under Linux so I could pipe input/output. It barely functioned. [1] National Novel Generation Month [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter [3] https://github.com/spc476/NaNoGenMo-2015/blob/master/C/msdos.c https://github.com/spc476/NaNoGenMo-2015/blob/master/C/msdos...
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Then what's this Linux subsystem that Windows ships? It's now a full Linux kernel running in a hypervisor.

quotemstr 7y ago

> Even Microsoft has given up on emulating the Linux ABI. Then what's this Linux subsystem that Windows ships? > Linux ABI is large and fast-evolving and underdocumented You don't have to keep up with the latest ABI. You don't need to match tip-of-tree. You only need to match some version of Linux that programs still target, and that version can be pretty old, since enterprise customers scream bloody murder when you force them up upgrade kernels to run new programs.

aleph- 7y ago
A VM
snuxoll 7y ago
WSL2 operates in a Hyper-V environment, there's too many issues with trying to do syscall emulation that WSL1 attempted - while both will remain supported for a while the writing is already on the wall.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  Ugh. I hadn't heard that. WSL2 being a VM is a huge disappointment. There's the technically-cowardly Microsoft from the Ballmer era. Just when I thought Microsoft had rediscovered how to do technically interesting things, they wave the white flag and run away. Using a VM for WSL means that it'll never be possible to write a program that's simultaneously a good win32 GUI citizen and a Unix API user. WSL1 (AFAIK) didn't allow this use case, but there was a path to get there. There's no path from a VM to a native USER32 process. The bright side is that at least Cygwin won't die. Cygwin allows for precisely this use case.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    Technically interesting isn't the same as the best technical choice
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      As far as I'm concerned, using a VM is a poor choice technical choice: a VM closes off lots of potential integration opportunities and creates all the system-resource-use coordination problems that all non-container system partitioning approaches have. The point of WSL isn't to just run some Linux code on Windows. You've been able to do that for literally decades. The point is to create a tightly integrated environment that gives you Linux and Windows views onto the same workspace and that makes Linuxy and Windows processes peers. Using a VM here feels like a "safe" and "sustainable" uninspired corporate choice that gives Windows a checkbox feature without expanding the bounds of what's possible. You can tell me all day that switching from innovation to crank-turning is right for the business, but I personally want nothing to do with crank-turners.
      - pstuart 7y ago
        Could you give a specific example of what kind of integration you're looking for (that can only be addressed by WSL0/1)? I'm not a Windows developer but I have a Windows laptop that I'd like to be able to run linux on and WSL2 scratches that itch, so your complaint doesn't register for me.
        shawnz 7y ago
        It was cool how WSL1 allowed named pipes to be shared between Windows and Linux apps, giving the possibility to have a shared SSH agent, efficient X11 support, etc. Does WSL2 support that? I'm not sure but I don't think so.
        spc476 7y ago
        for NaNoGenMo [1] 2015, I wanted to run Racter [2] against Eliza, but 1) I run Linux and 2) I had an MS-DOS executable for Racter. I thought I would use DosBox to run Racter and pipe input/output to Eliza running under Linux natively, but DosBox didn't allow that. I ended up having to write enough of an MS-DOS emulator [3] to run Racter under Linux so I could pipe input/output. It barely functioned. [1] National Novel Generation Month [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter [3] https://github.com/spc476/NaNoGenMo-2015/blob/master/C/msdos.c https://github.com/spc476/NaNoGenMo-2015/blob/master/C/msdos...
saagarjha 7y ago
> Then what's this Linux subsystem that Windows ships? It's now a full Linux kernel running in a hypervisor.