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WSL for Development in Windows 10 Is the New Kool-Aid. Still Not Using It?
- mehrdadn 6y agoVirtualBox performance is awful with Hyper-V, so no, still not using it...
- sdflhasjd 6y agoWell, you're a step ahead of me, I've never even got VirtualBox working with Hyper-V
- jonathanlydall 6y agoSince Windows 10 2004 and a corresponding update to VirtualBox, it's pretty easy to get it working at the same time as Hyper-V, but as the parent poster said, performance is terrible.
- sdflhasjd 6y agoDoes anyone know what causes the performance issues?
- oblio 6y agoI'm genuinely curious, what's your use case? Most stuff should be covered by WSL itself or Docker, I imagine.
- Jonnax 6y agoThere are plenty of applications distributed as virtual machine images. So your choices are usually KVM, vmware, HyperV and sometimes virtualbox images.
- sdflhasjd 6y agoThere's data recovery tools that I like to use, VirtualBox supports USB forwarding. My last particular use case was ddrescue on an SD card, Windows would eject/disconnect the card after some number of read errors. Any other case where I need to use a Linux device driver (RTL-SDR was another thing I used this for)
- mehrdadn 6y agoI'm not interested in debating my specific use cases, but there are so many obvious uses. For one, have you considered some people might e.g. need to test things on Windows VMs?
- oblio 6y agoThis entire discussion is about WSL...
- mehrdadn 6y agoAnd? Is it so weird to imagine WSL users who also need to be able to run Windows VMs?
- oblio 6y agoI guess the concern is using VirtualBox instead of HyperV? Is there a use case VirtualBox covers that HyperV doesn't? (or VMWare)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mehrdadn 6y agoVirtualBox supports USB 1-3, it has immutable disks built-in, it supports VMDK/VDI/HDD, it lets you drag-and-drop, it supports like a gazillion different controller formats, it allows host I/O caching, and like I already said it can be just plain faster... just a non-exhaustive list off the top of my head. Are you genuinely unaware of its features and strengths...?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nickflood 6y agoPort forwarding and shared folders. Hyper-V has neither, and it's a pain to migrate, and also there's a perf impact.
- znpy 6y agoWsl looks like the new embrace-extend-extinguish. And windows as a desktop is just awful... So much telemetry and nonsense... unbearable.
- smitty1e 6y agoTo say nothing of platform lock-in. What are the arguments against VirtualBox?
- jpalomaki 6y agoAt least it will likely "extinguish" the Windows support on node, Python etc. packages using native code. There will be less interest to make those builds work on native Windows as majority of developers using Windows desktop are likely to jump to WSL side.
- fit2rule 6y agoYeah, I haven't used Windows properly in decades, and a recent sojourn into its new territory has left me befuddled - how does anyone put up with all that crap? So many things getting in my way of productivity, just straight out of the box. I have a session scheduled with a Windows-guru friend of mine, to show me how to turn ALL the non-productive shit off in a base Windows 10 install, but frankly I'm terrified of the consequences. Basic OS things don't even seem to work when you don't let Microsoft track you - WTF, people?!!
- Multicomp 6y agoI switched to Fedora precisely because I see wsl2 as EEE and a small part of the soft lock-in MS wants their OS users to have. I consider it one of the pillars of Satya's Schemes, along with Tile UIs/wasted space UX everywhere, telemetry all the things, and user is ^NOT in control (we pretend he is until next update, which he definitely is not in control of).
- johnyzee 6y agoThat's not what Kool-Aid means.
- mellosouls 6y agoAgree. Poorly titled, I looked at it expecting an argument about WSL being over-hyped.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sirkarthik 6y agoUsed figuratively in the sense of https://history.nebraska.gov/publications/kool-aid https://history.nebraska.gov/publications/kool-aid. We are today living in a world where for every proverb there is an anti :P
- kesor 6y agoUsed it, but then a Windows 10 update made the computer randomly freeze every hour. So F that, went full-blown Linux as my desktop, and its way way better than it used to be. Specifically, using Lutris & Wine to get all my "windows is required" needs.
- philliphaydon 6y agoI’ve been using linux since January. But the number of issues I’ve run into compared to windows is far more. When linux works it’s way better. But when it breaks it’s harder to fix than windows. I tried out pop!_os due to people on HN liking it. At first it was great. But then I realised I can’t transfer files between drives. I thought maybe it was just my desktop computer, but the same issue happened when I put it on my laptops. So I went to kubuntu, no transfer issues, but trying to fix the weird ui issues compared to gnome make it frustrating. So I tried out Ubuntu but that randomly freezes with 5700xt errors, which I fixed by upgrading the kernel, but then realised that I can’t use 5.8 with virtual box so I had to downgrade to 5.7 but that resulted in random reboots. Day to day use when it works tho. I much prefer it.
- johnchristopher 6y ago> When linux works it’s way better. But when it breaks it’s harder to fix than windows. > I tried out pop!_os due to people on HN liking it. At first it was great. But then I realised I can’t transfer files between drives. I thought maybe it was just my desktop computer, but the same issue happened when I put it on my laptops. So I went to kubuntu, no transfer issues, but trying to fix the weird ui issues compared to gnome make it frustrating. There's something to be said about how it's easier for users to jump to another distro to fix what's most likely some permissions issues in the mounted folder. Rough dumb bugs/misconfiguration_of_the_distro like that are sad. It always seems to me that fixing things in Linux desktops and windows feel like two very different things. I might delude myself in thinking I understand what's going on in the distro but Windows registry and command line instructions in windows always seem a bit too magical to me (that's surely because I am not used to it, despite having grown up on windows).
- Jonnax 6y agoIs zsh better than bash? Like I heard OSX switched because they couldn't use new versions due to licencing. But for a linux user, what are the advantages? Also does it run bash scripts?
- garmaine 6y agoI use it, but mostly because oh-my-zsh makes it nice and pretty while being low maintenance. I don’t think it is any more or less capable than bash.
- smitty1e 6y agoThese shell variations seem like JavaScript frameworks: a new one every week.
- fit2rule 6y agoI kind of miss bash, after being forced to move to zsh, because bash is generally faster, and consumes less resources - but with oh-my-zsh, I kind of get the point, because darn it is pretty, and I continue to blow away some of the greybeards in my group when they shoulder surf and see me type 'z something' -> goes to /some/monstrous/path/to/something .. this, for some reason, always gets oohs and aahs ... Just, gotta remember, that feeling like you need to upgrade your laptop just because you changed SHELLS is rarely a good sign.
- sirkarthik 6y ago
- johnchristopher 6y ago> And Docker Desktop for Windows works well with your WSL2 too. You just can extract the best from everything. Except it's Docker Desktop for Windows. Not Docker. Yes, there are/were(?) some pretty nasty differences.
- sakex 6y agoI only use W10 to play games. Would never consider writing code in this crappy OS.
- sirkarthik 6y agoFair enough reason for you to try WSL on Windows. So you can switch between your coding and gaming in a jiffy. This is where WSL shines and as the blog post says how you can get the best of both worlds ;)
- flak48 6y agoI tried my best to use WSL but ran into a never ending list of issues 'this is a known issue with WSL' or 'known to not work with WSL, try updating to WSL2' whenever I tried to use fairly common tools. A lot of things like React Native with Expo was still extremely flaky/impossible to use. Setting up ConEmu with WSL2 is still painful and WSL/WSL2 still freezes randomly. Ultimately I just installed Linux on an external SSD and it worked like a charm. Bye bye WSL
- jpalomaki 6y agoNo experience with Conemu and WSL, but Windows Terminal [1] provides smooth experience. WSL2 has a completely new approach than WSL1, so compatibility is better. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
- stOneskull 6y agowindows terminal is good for opening powershell and wsl2 linux shell together. cmd as well. it's handy sometimes but i still find myself using powershell and cmd more than linux though.
- flak48 6y agoEven after reading a gazillion posts about setting up and using WSL/WSL2 I had no idea something like Windows Terminal existed! Someone seems to have made a Quake style dropdown too for it: https://github.com/flyingpie/windows-terminal-quake https://github.com/flyingpie/windows-terminal-quake which I absolutely need Probably wouldn't have wasted so much time trying to get ConEmu/Cmder to work with WSL if I had known.
- sirkarthik 6y agoIt used to be so but is so much better and stable these days. For every such issue that I have faced, I have put it as ProTips in one blog post, esp. for my own reference, as much as for others going through similar experience. Follow it all, and you too should fall in love with the workflow ;)
- sstephant 6y agoNever managed to run VirtualBox, Docker, Android emulator and Hyper-V at the same time. So I stick to MSYS2 and a Centos virtualbox machine that also runs my docker containers.
- rzzzt 6y agoIf I got it right, once Hyper-V is enabled, your existing Windows installation boots on top of/under/alongside the hypervisor (kinda-sorta like Xen's Dom0). This setup prevents other virtualization solutions from running, but allows the use of Windows Sandbox, WSL2 as well as regular Hyper-V VMs.
- ch_123 6y agoIt is now possible to run other hypervisors with Hyper-V enabled, but there is usually a performance penalty. See: https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/05/vmware-workstation-now-supports-hyper-v-mode.html https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2020/05/vmware-workstat... https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/virtualbox/6.0/relnotes/hyperv-integ.html https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/virtualbox/6.0/rel...
- nickflood 6y agoThis feature, at least in VirualBox, is useless. Machines that run hyper-v core do not boot properly, have their memory corrupted at boot, etc. I wanted to use various things that rely on Hyper-V such as the Sandbox and WSL2 (last tried it in June), but the brokenness of VirtualBox forced me to abandon those technologies.
- rzzzt 6y agoI still haven't decided which one is better, "buying in" fully on Hyper-V or sticking with a set of separate solutions, eg. MSYS2 instead of WSL2, Docker Toolbox vs. Docker for Windows, Linux VMs in VirtualBox on an as-needed basis, etc.
- BogNL 6y agoI dislike WSL(2) with a passion. Sure, it makes some Linux oriented workloads possible on a Windows workstation, but my gut feeling tells me all it will really accomplish in the long run is to facilitate a new generation of software engineers that is even more averse of linux(ish) system than the current one; At least when I look at my direct colleagues, who might have interest in developing linux-based or open source solution, will now never move to a full linux system because "I don't need it; I have WSL", and therefor will remain on Windows forever. Add to this lack of proper linux support for enterprise software (" why are your employees running linux, cant they use WSL?"). To me, WSL is a curse in an attractive wrapper paper.
- mthomassen 6y agoI dislike WSL(2) with a passion. Sure, it makes some Linux oriented workloads possible on a Windows workstation, but my gut feeling tells me all it will really accomplish in the long run is to facilitate a new generation of software engineers that is even more averse of linux(ish) system than the current one; At least when I look at my direct colleagues, who might have interest in developing linux-based or open source solutions, will now never move to a full linux system because "I don't need it; I have WSL", and therefor will remain on Windows forever. Add to this lack of proper linux support for enterprise software (" why are your employees running linux, cant they use WSL?"). To me, WSL is a curse in an attractive but thin wrapping paper.
- throwaway8941 6y agoOne might argue those colleagues would never have moved to Linux in the first place. Virtualization has been available for how many years? You either get tired of it and switch to get the real deal™ (that's what happened to me many moons ago), or you simply don't care enough (I've been hearing these "I don't need it, I have virtualbox" long before the very idea of WSL).
- mikaelsouza 6y agoI feel like most people here don't like Windows 10, but for those who like it or even don't care about their OS, WSL2 works pretty nicely for many applications. While using Linux on my desktop computer, I had issues with font rendering, low fps animations and firefox/chrome stuttering while scrolling through pages. I understand there are probably some (hidden) fixes for these issues, but after countless times trying to solve these, I just gave up. One of the main issues people complain about Windows 10 is about mandatory updates. I know every circumstance is different, but for me, it's working well and I have no issues with it. I guess if you're someone who is having issues on your current OS but needs to work using UNIX tools, you should give Win10/WSL a chance.
- wayneftw 6y agoI like Windows 10, but I stopped using it as my main work OS because I've always had to fight with it to do what I need to. Switching to a Linux desktop was super easy for me. > I had issues with font rendering, low fps animations and firefox/chrome stuttering while scrolling through pages. I had some of these problems when I first setup my Manjaro/XFCE workstations which are 2 desktops and 1 laptop. However, they needed to be solved exactly once, by toggling some settings, and they were gone forever. Meanwhile on Windows I have problems that I've never solved, like how I'll be playing Rocket League and all of a sudden the num-lock on my keyboard will suddenly turn off and my keyboard commands won't work until I turn it back on. In the past, when I've stopped playing to look, I saw that Windows 10 was basically doing updates smack in the middle of my "active hours" while I'm playing a game. When I was using Windows 10 to do all of my work (mostly with Node.js, some Python, some Go, some C#), I couldn't use Docker and VirtualBox at the same time because Hyper-V is required by Docker and also by WSL. Aside from that, I had a plethora of smaller issues. Things like Node scripts containing ampersands only working in CMD.EXE and not PowerShell. Or, like some NPM packages just not working on Windows at all. Perhaps my biggest frustration for years was how long Yarn or NPM would take to install packages on Windows, even after I spent hours researching what settings to change in Windows to make it better. I'm so happy I switched away from Windows for work because now I have none of these problems. I'm the type of guy who likes to keep things very simple. Why mix all of the problems of Windows with all of the problems from Linux when I can more easily conquer them separately? I'm also a minimalist and XFCE does a minimalist Windows-like environment way, way better and more conveniently than Windows 10 ever could. XFCE also contains features that I like from 7+ taskbar tweaker right out of the box, like being able to middle-click taskbar items to close the window. Even doing C#/.NET Core on Linux is smoother IMO. The only thing I really miss from Windows is SSMS, but only when I'm working with SQL Server which is happening less and less these days. Azure Data Studio is catching up though and may eventually surpass SSMS. Anyway, I also have a couple of Macs and I can complain for hours in detail about all of the operating systems that I use. Here's one now: Every Linux desktop (been trying them for 15 years before I finally switched) has confused the sort order icons. They use a down pointing arrow for sorting letters from a-Z, which is wrong for a left-to-right language. That is one issue I have not been able to fix myself because it's a very old decision that is baked into lots of different Linux software.
- haunter 6y agoWrong usage of the term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid >"Drinking the Kool-Aid" is an expression used to refer to a person who believes in a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards. The phrase often carries a negative connotation. It can also be used ironically or humorously to refer to accepting an idea or changing a preference due to popularity, peer pressure, or persuasion. In recent years it has evolved further to mean extreme dedication to a cause or purpose, so extreme that one would "drink the Kool-Aid" and die for the cause.
- tgv 6y agoIt's easy to see how it got to mean "follow an idea of perceived potential high rewards", especially since the phrase itself sounds (vaguely) positive. Since people started using literally meaning figuratively, such changes no longer surprise me.
- 1_player 6y ago> "The phrase originates from events in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, in which over 900 members of the Peoples Temple movement died. The movement's leader [...] Jones proposed "revolutionary suicide" by way of ingesting a powdered drink mix lethally laced with cyanide and other drugs which had been prepared by his aides." TIL. I always thought the expression somehow referred to the drink itself, or perhaps its brand.
- 11001001011010 6y ago> a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards. IMAO the right term. If you think Linux development is cool and awesome then doing that on a Windows machine is about the worst choice I can think of. The operating system that invades your privacy so aggressively that you become the product after you have bought a license for a couple of hundreds of dollars.. With all the awesome free Linux distro's available it keeps stunning me that people are willing to pay for an OS that is being made to invade and milk your life..
- 6y ago
- tannhaeuser 6y agoI've got Windows running on the primary hd in a classic duel-boot (sic!) setup, but I'm afraid to boot into Windows and check out WSL2 now that I've heard Windows has a habit of nuking other OSes/partitions as part of its frequent (ie all the time) updates.
- qayxc 6y agoIn my now over 25 years of dual-booting multiple OSes (usually Windows, Linux, and *BSD) on multiple machines, I've never had Windows nuke other partitions during updates. Never. Ever. And I'm one of those crazy people who don't re-install Windows. My main machines have been upgraded(!!) from Windows XP all the way up to Windows 10 2004 without hick-ups and with all partitions of the other OSes intact. I would seriously like to see some hard evidence for claims like common(!) loss of data due to lost partitions. I just can't believe I've just been lucky all those years...
- Volundr 6y agoYou can add my experience to this. I don't have a computer that's been upgraded nearly that far, but I've dual booted windows+linux in a wide array of configurations and never had data loss. I've accidentally wiped grub when installing (not upgrading) windows, and I've had windows refuse to update unless it's on the first disk in the bios, but I've never had it randomly nuke a partition.
- baq 6y agoWSL2 is amazing. Pro tip: NFS works. VS Code has a native wsl remote which is great. Just don’t use nfs in fstab, it’ll lock up the startup.
- draw_down 6y agoGreat to hear that buggy OS updates do not happen on Windows.
- ramon 6y agoActually there’s 2 issues I see. 1) Win10 only with SSD, if not forget WSL2. 2) WSL2 had its bugs I was unable to use it then I had to do a cleanup in the Windows cached folders of older connections never again I had issues. It’s something they’re evolving and fixing I like it and is stable but Microsoft need to make sure to advertise this as in beta product with the VS Code plugin.
- lightveil 6y agoWhat did you have to do to fix your connection issues? I've been getting weird WSL2 problems with the network for the longest time, maybe what you did might help me too.
- ramon 6y agoI just wrote a little article here to save your day: https://dev.to/ramonck/vscode-with-wsl2-solve-the-not-connecting-bug-403p https://dev.to/ramonck/vscode-with-wsl2-solve-the-not-connec...
- fit2rule 6y agoNo. It has been far more hassle than its worth. After trying for 6 months to make WSL a part of my development environment, I've given up, wiped Windows, and put a proper Linux distro back on the machine. The whole WSL thing is a distraction and no sane developer should fall for it. Just run Linux in a VM if you need it - glomming Linux all over Windows is embrace/extend/extinguish levels of stupidity. We should be over that by now.
- gpvos 6y agoNo, I'm still not using it because my Thinkpad (X1 Extreme 2nd) still doesn't offer the Windows 10 2004 update for installation, so I don't have WSL2, only WSL1. Does anyone here know what's up with that?
- discordance 6y agoI received the update to 2004 in the last week. Maybe check again?
- ray_z 6y agoyou don't need the 2004 update, if you have 1903 or newer, you can install it. [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl-2-support-is-coming-to-windows-10-versions-1903-and-1909 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl-2-support-is-...]
- gpvos 6y agoAh yes, just found that too. (It's only two weeks old; apparently I missed this piece of news.) That page is particularly unhelpful though, since I'm not getting that update in Windows Update either. I am now downloading it from https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4566116 https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB456... , a link I found in the comments at the bottom. Update: yup, got WSL2 working.
- endori97 6y agoFinally get ssh/scp without hassle. Recommend using it in hyper (hyper.is) so you get tabs.
- mastazi 6y agoI develop on a MacBook and on a Windows 10 desktop. (And, in the past, I've used Linux as my daily driver for more than a year, so I've tried all three of them). I have to say that WSL 2 + Windows Terminal + Powershell 7 are a pretty impressive combo, I'm really enjoying it. I've noticed performance improvements in WSL 2 compared to WSL 1 and I like having a full Linux distro under the hood, you can do things like installing that same package you use in production thanks to Aptitude, as opposed to relying on Homebrew. On Windows Terminal I can have Powershell 7 and WSL tabs side by side, and I'm able to use tools that I like the starship.rs prompt.
- unicornfinder 6y agoYup and in fact I'm genuinely finding that it's giving me less grief than developing on a Mac did.
- sippndipp 6y agoI wonder I've done almost the same writeup (a little more detailed if you want to do machine learning) - and no one cared: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24197884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24197884 This one here is frontpage HN :-) Feel free to look at my post as well: https://9elements.com/blog/developing-a-week-on-windows-with-wsl2/ https://9elements.com/blog/developing-a-week-on-windows-with...
- rudiv 6y agoSome people are better at SEO and spreading their blog posts on social media. One of the reasons I avoid social media.
- Havoc 6y agoWSL2 + vscode remote do not play nice in my experience. That pretty much killed the idea for me
- sirkarthik 6y agoI have been working for a month this way and it has been smooth so far.
- Havoc 6y agoYeah it seemed to be working for the most part but got some arb file lock issues while doing docker stuff. Admittedly didn't try hard to resolve it beyond google confirming it's a known issue