8 ms·

I agree wholeheartedly. I know it was probably a fool’s errand especially in a world where Docker for Windows was doing the same thing WSL2 does but worse, but

by jchw 7y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. I know it was probably a fool’s errand especially in a world where Docker for Windows was doing the same thing WSL2 does but worse, but WSL1’s design just satisfied me in a way that Hyper-V will not. Presumably, this also means you have to have Hyper-V enabled, crippling all other VM software. Hope the integration is impressive at least, to hopefully make up for it. I admittedly don’t run Windows these days but WSL is definitely one of the highlights of modern Windows and it’s hard to not follow its progress. I also wonder how integration changes with sockets/networking, hardware access, Windows Firewall, etc. Last I checked, relations with Windows Firewall were strained by the lack of proper support for picoprocesses.

eightysixfour 7y ago
The integration is very impressive, latest builds even have access to the WSL2 file system from Windows. Starting up VS Code on a machine with WSL2 immediately gives you the option to use it as the VS Code environment, it is pretty great.
- kyriakos 7y ago
  Integration is even tighter now its not just a VM like many commented here.
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    Can you write a single feature that's available in WSL 2 but not in VirtualBox?
    - kyriakos 7y ago
      - seamless file system integration - network (you can use 127.0.0.1 to access services in WSL2 or Windows) i.e. it runs on the same home IP.
    - eightysixfour 7y ago
      I don't use virtualbox, so I'm guessing at some features: * The Linux filesystem shows up in Windows as a disk even when the underlying VM is not booted, you can see an example here: https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/04/08/~/media/ECG/redmondmag/Images/2020/04/0408red_Subsystem_b.ashx https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/04/08/~/media/ECG/redmo... * And for me the nice one is the integration with VS Code, I just select which distro I want to work in and VS Code will start it (if it isn't running), connect to it as a remote dev environment, and be able to control it as if the VM were within VS Code. It can be done manually with VirtualBox, but VirtualBox gives me no advantages in return. * The networking implementation makes both 127.0.0.1 which is occasionally useful for me.
    - garethrowlands 7y ago
      Starts in one second.
      - vbezhenar 7y ago
        That's not a feature. And in practice it's not even relevant, because you can start your VM at Windows startup and use Putty to ssh into booted system which takes a fraction of second. Also slim CentOS image boots, well, not in one second, but something like 5 seconds. Fast enough IMO.
cgb223 7y ago
> Presumably, this also means you have to have Hyper-V enabled, crippling all other VM software How does hyper-V cripple other VM software? I just had to enable it to use a prebuilt VM I need, now I’m a little worried
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Last time I checked (months ago) VirtualBox just couldn't run under Hyper-V. If you Google around you'll see lots of threads, e.g. https://superuser.com/q/1208850 https://superuser.com/q/1208850 Apparently they claim that as of February 19, 2020, they've "Restored the ability to run VMs through Hyper-V, at the expense of performance". https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-6.1 https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-6.1
  - lukevp 7y ago
    I’m using hyper-v and virtualbox together, seems to be fine performance-wise. Only reason we’re using vbox is that we already have vagrant scripts set up for it and hyper-v didn’t seem to work as well as a target for vagrant.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Restored? That's a weird line. I don't think it ever lost it since the feature was added in 6.0 (released December 18 2018), it was just annoying to activate.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      I couldn't get it work, so it was broken as I saw it... not sure who could actually get it to work then.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        You had to manually set "VBoxInternal/NEM/UseRing0Runloop" to 0. The default settings were broken, but the actual functionality was fine. Though I remember it working at some point before that, too...
lmz 7y ago
Stop blaming Hyper-V for "crippling other VM software". You ever tried to run VBox and KVM together? It's a limitation of the processor's virtualization extension.
- inyorgroove 7y ago
  Problem is once Hyper-V is installed and enabled, no other VM can even be started regardless of no Hyper-V VMs actually running. This limitation does not exist on linux afaik. I have run libvirt based VMs and VirtualBox VMs at the same time on linux just fine in the past.
  - lukevp 7y ago
    That’s not what’s happening. Hyper-v is a type-1 hypervisor. When it’s running, even your Windows instance is running within hyper-v. Windows 10 has the hypervisor platform that lets other vm developers hook into the hyper-v host architecture, that’s how you can get android emulators and virtualbox running under hyper-v. It all works fine but is a little unintuitive to set up.
    - HelloNurse 7y ago
      If both VirtualBox and VMware give up on Hyper-V coexistence, it must be a bit worse than "unintuitive".
      - garethrowlands 7y ago
        They haven't given up.
  - SXX 7y ago
    Most likely you just wasn't using VirtualBox own virtualization since it's cant work alongside with KVM. Current version of virtualbox just use KVM just like libvirt.
- IntelMiner 7y ago
  That's false The above commenter linked to a far more thorough explanation https://superuser.com/questions/1208850/why-cant-virtualbox-or-vmware-run-with-hyper-v-enabled-on-windows-10 https://superuser.com/questions/1208850/why-cant-virtualbox-...
jimmcslim 7y ago
> Presumably, this also means you have to have Hyper-V enabled, crippling all other VM software. This is being addressed, as discussed by commenter below [1] and at [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22874047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22874047 [2] https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/01/vmware-workstation-tech-preview-20h1.html https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/01/vmware-workstat...
- jchw 7y ago
  Great to hear. I suppose this means I should consider keeping my Workstation license up to date...

by jchw 7y ago

eightysixfour 7y ago

The integration is very impressive, latest builds even have access to the WSL2 file system from Windows. Starting up VS Code on a machine with WSL2 immediately gives you the option to use it as the VS Code environment, it is pretty great.

kyriakos 7y ago
Integration is even tighter now its not just a VM like many commented here.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  Can you write a single feature that's available in WSL 2 but not in VirtualBox?
  - kyriakos 7y ago
    - seamless file system integration - network (you can use 127.0.0.1 to access services in WSL2 or Windows) i.e. it runs on the same home IP.
  - eightysixfour 7y ago
    I don't use virtualbox, so I'm guessing at some features: * The Linux filesystem shows up in Windows as a disk even when the underlying VM is not booted, you can see an example here: https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/04/08/~/media/ECG/redmondmag/Images/2020/04/0408red_Subsystem_b.ashx https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/04/08/~/media/ECG/redmo... * And for me the nice one is the integration with VS Code, I just select which distro I want to work in and VS Code will start it (if it isn't running), connect to it as a remote dev environment, and be able to control it as if the VM were within VS Code. It can be done manually with VirtualBox, but VirtualBox gives me no advantages in return. * The networking implementation makes both 127.0.0.1 which is occasionally useful for me.
  - garethrowlands 7y ago
    Starts in one second.
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      That's not a feature. And in practice it's not even relevant, because you can start your VM at Windows startup and use Putty to ssh into booted system which takes a fraction of second. Also slim CentOS image boots, well, not in one second, but something like 5 seconds. Fast enough IMO.

cgb223 7y ago

> Presumably, this also means you have to have Hyper-V enabled, crippling all other VM software How does hyper-V cripple other VM software? I just had to enable it to use a prebuilt VM I need, now I’m a little worried

mehrdadn 7y ago
Last time I checked (months ago) VirtualBox just couldn't run under Hyper-V. If you Google around you'll see lots of threads, e.g. https://superuser.com/q/1208850 https://superuser.com/q/1208850 Apparently they claim that as of February 19, 2020, they've "Restored the ability to run VMs through Hyper-V, at the expense of performance". https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-6.1 https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-6.1
- lukevp 7y ago
  I’m using hyper-v and virtualbox together, seems to be fine performance-wise. Only reason we’re using vbox is that we already have vagrant scripts set up for it and hyper-v didn’t seem to work as well as a target for vagrant.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Restored? That's a weird line. I don't think it ever lost it since the feature was added in 6.0 (released December 18 2018), it was just annoying to activate.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    I couldn't get it work, so it was broken as I saw it... not sure who could actually get it to work then.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      You had to manually set "VBoxInternal/NEM/UseRing0Runloop" to 0. The default settings were broken, but the actual functionality was fine. Though I remember it working at some point before that, too...

lmz 7y ago

Stop blaming Hyper-V for "crippling other VM software". You ever tried to run VBox and KVM together? It's a limitation of the processor's virtualization extension.

inyorgroove 7y ago
Problem is once Hyper-V is installed and enabled, no other VM can even be started regardless of no Hyper-V VMs actually running. This limitation does not exist on linux afaik. I have run libvirt based VMs and VirtualBox VMs at the same time on linux just fine in the past.
- lukevp 7y ago
  That’s not what’s happening. Hyper-v is a type-1 hypervisor. When it’s running, even your Windows instance is running within hyper-v. Windows 10 has the hypervisor platform that lets other vm developers hook into the hyper-v host architecture, that’s how you can get android emulators and virtualbox running under hyper-v. It all works fine but is a little unintuitive to set up.
  - HelloNurse 7y ago
    If both VirtualBox and VMware give up on Hyper-V coexistence, it must be a bit worse than "unintuitive".
    - garethrowlands 7y ago
      They haven't given up.
- SXX 7y ago
  Most likely you just wasn't using VirtualBox own virtualization since it's cant work alongside with KVM. Current version of virtualbox just use KVM just like libvirt.
IntelMiner 7y ago
That's false The above commenter linked to a far more thorough explanation https://superuser.com/questions/1208850/why-cant-virtualbox-or-vmware-run-with-hyper-v-enabled-on-windows-10 https://superuser.com/questions/1208850/why-cant-virtualbox-...

jimmcslim 7y ago

> Presumably, this also means you have to have Hyper-V enabled, crippling all other VM software. This is being addressed, as discussed by commenter below [1] and at [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22874047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22874047 [2] https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/01/vmware-workstation-tech-preview-20h1.html https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/01/vmware-workstat...

jchw 7y ago
Great to hear. I suppose this means I should consider keeping my Workstation license up to date...