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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-re

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...
cryptonector 7y ago
A light-weight solution would have been nice. Something like containers. But again, the problem is that Microsoft wanted to have binary compatibility. That would mean containers w/ Linux ABI emulation, or a proper VM. Well, Linux ABI emulation has been tried by many people: - Sun (twice) - Joyent (once, based on earlier tech from Sun) - FreeBSD - Microsoft (WSL1) - probably others and... it's just too difficult. It's ETOOHARD. So they all failed.

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...

cryptonector 7y ago

A light-weight solution would have been nice. Something like containers. But again, the problem is that Microsoft wanted to have binary compatibility. That would mean containers w/ Linux ABI emulation, or a proper VM. Well, Linux ABI emulation has been tried by many people: - Sun (twice) - Joyent (once, based on earlier tech from Sun) - FreeBSD - Microsoft (WSL1) - probably others and... it's just too difficult. It's ETOOHARD. So they all failed.