5 ms·

WSL1 hasn't gone away for those who prefer it. But we're talking about an extra gigabyte. It's still cheaper than a full VM.

1996 6y ago
It's even cheaper to only use what you need with msys2! bash inside mintty gives me all I need, with minimal overhead. Eventually, I'd like to see bash inside Windows Terminal made easily available - complete that with busybox, and you cover 90% of the Linux usecases without having to download anything (a bit like how starting Terminal.app offers most of what you need on MacOS) Add an option to install packages using msys2/pacman for the power users, and I believe most people would not waste time (or disk space, or ram) playing with WSL1 or WSL2 just to run the one thing they may need.
- shawnz 6y ago
  What makes you think the overhead between Cygwin/msys2 and WSL 1 would really be so great? They are both just translation layers after all.
  - 1996 6y ago
    WSL1 tries to do too much. WSL2 tries to do even more. msys2 mostly cares about running your textmode software. For example, someone talked about processes. Here's all that I see in msys2: # ps xwau PID PPID PGID WINPID TTY UID STIME COMMAND 480 479 480 18796 pty1 197611 14:13:13 /usr/bin/bash 479 1 479 16872 ? 197611 14:13:12 /usr/bin/mintty 1118 480 1118 16496 pty1 197611 17:00:32 /usr/bin/ps Most of the time, I don't need to access Windows processes - and if I do, data can be exchanged through a file.
    - shawnz 6y ago
      WSL1 also doesn't show windows proceses in 'ps', only the WSL processes. For example: shawnz@ShawnsPC:/mnt/c/Users/shawn$ ps xwau USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1 0.0 0.0 8936 184 ? Ssl Nov17 0:00 /init root 6 0.0 0.0 8936 96 tty1 Ss Nov17 0:00 /init shawnz 7 0.0 0.0 18588 2708 tty1 S Nov17 0:00 -bash shawnz 252 0.0 0.0 18880 1984 tty1 R 18:04 0:00 ps xwau
      - 1996 6y ago
        But in your example, I can already see you have a init system and multiple users - neither of which will be needed in most cases.
        shawnz 6y ago
        The "init" process is just a stub used by WSL, it is not a "real" init system. And Cygwin also allows the creation of multiple users within the Cygwin environment, doesn't it? It's just a matter of populating /etc/passwd. If you want to use WSL1 with a single user then you could just set the default user to root.
- utxaa 6y ago
  main draw for wsl2 for my team was IO performance. how is git on huge projects under msys2?
shawnz 6y ago
It's clear that they are not enthusiastic about delivering new features to WSL1. Consider how WSL2 now exclusively features CUDA support, Wayland support, loop mounts, Docker, etc.
- Macha 6y ago
  Docker support is precisely the sort of feature that would have required significantly more work to support in WSL1 than WSL2.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Yes, admittedly loop mounts and Docker were an easy add for WSL 2 and would have been significantly more complicated for WSL 1.
  - peteri 6y ago
    Docker works fine with WSL1, I don't think I can use WSL2 at work as we're waiting on the next LTS version of Windows.
    - shawnz 6y ago
      Docker can't be hosted on WSL1. You can use the Docker client on WSL1 to communicate with a Docker host running on WSL2 or Hyper-V, though (which is how Docker Desktop works)
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Docker can also make use of Windows containers, and that is probably easier when everything is running on top of Hyper-V, as type 1 hypervisor.
ASalazarMX 6y ago
At work we develop on Windows virtual machines, and WSL1 won't run on a VM. Fortunately WSL2 does, so at least I can enjoy Linux tooling I sorely missed.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Interesting, I would expect the opposite problem since WSL1 doesn't use virtualisation in any way. Do you have more details about the error you experienced?
  - ASalazarMX 6y ago
    Unfortunately I tried WSL1, didn't work, and left it at that for months. When WSL2 was out, it just worked and I had forgotten by then what kind of error WSL1 gave me. I can only recall it was a dialog box, not a crash, and that it had to do about virtualization.
sedatk 6y ago
I think WSL1 is there for transitional purposes and will be thrown away eventually. It was already incomplete, it didn't support forwarding any ICMP packets other than ping, so traceroute didn't work for example. I don't expect it to stay as an option for long.

1996 6y ago

It's even cheaper to only use what you need with msys2! bash inside mintty gives me all I need, with minimal overhead. Eventually, I'd like to see bash inside Windows Terminal made easily available - complete that with busybox, and you cover 90% of the Linux usecases without having to download anything (a bit like how starting Terminal.app offers most of what you need on MacOS) Add an option to install packages using msys2/pacman for the power users, and I believe most people would not waste time (or disk space, or ram) playing with WSL1 or WSL2 just to run the one thing they may need.

shawnz 6y ago
What makes you think the overhead between Cygwin/msys2 and WSL 1 would really be so great? They are both just translation layers after all.
- 1996 6y ago
  WSL1 tries to do too much. WSL2 tries to do even more. msys2 mostly cares about running your textmode software. For example, someone talked about processes. Here's all that I see in msys2: # ps xwau PID PPID PGID WINPID TTY UID STIME COMMAND 480 479 480 18796 pty1 197611 14:13:13 /usr/bin/bash 479 1 479 16872 ? 197611 14:13:12 /usr/bin/mintty 1118 480 1118 16496 pty1 197611 17:00:32 /usr/bin/ps Most of the time, I don't need to access Windows processes - and if I do, data can be exchanged through a file.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    WSL1 also doesn't show windows proceses in 'ps', only the WSL processes. For example: shawnz@ShawnsPC:/mnt/c/Users/shawn$ ps xwau USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1 0.0 0.0 8936 184 ? Ssl Nov17 0:00 /init root 6 0.0 0.0 8936 96 tty1 Ss Nov17 0:00 /init shawnz 7 0.0 0.0 18588 2708 tty1 S Nov17 0:00 -bash shawnz 252 0.0 0.0 18880 1984 tty1 R 18:04 0:00 ps xwau
    - 1996 6y ago
      But in your example, I can already see you have a init system and multiple users - neither of which will be needed in most cases.
      - shawnz 6y ago
        The "init" process is just a stub used by WSL, it is not a "real" init system. And Cygwin also allows the creation of multiple users within the Cygwin environment, doesn't it? It's just a matter of populating /etc/passwd. If you want to use WSL1 with a single user then you could just set the default user to root.
utxaa 6y ago
main draw for wsl2 for my team was IO performance. how is git on huge projects under msys2?

shawnz 6y ago

It's clear that they are not enthusiastic about delivering new features to WSL1. Consider how WSL2 now exclusively features CUDA support, Wayland support, loop mounts, Docker, etc.

Macha 6y ago
Docker support is precisely the sort of feature that would have required significantly more work to support in WSL1 than WSL2.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Yes, admittedly loop mounts and Docker were an easy add for WSL 2 and would have been significantly more complicated for WSL 1.
- peteri 6y ago
  Docker works fine with WSL1, I don't think I can use WSL2 at work as we're waiting on the next LTS version of Windows.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Docker can't be hosted on WSL1. You can use the Docker client on WSL1 to communicate with a Docker host running on WSL2 or Hyper-V, though (which is how Docker Desktop works)
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Docker can also make use of Windows containers, and that is probably easier when everything is running on top of Hyper-V, as type 1 hypervisor.

ASalazarMX 6y ago

At work we develop on Windows virtual machines, and WSL1 won't run on a VM. Fortunately WSL2 does, so at least I can enjoy Linux tooling I sorely missed.

shawnz 6y ago
Interesting, I would expect the opposite problem since WSL1 doesn't use virtualisation in any way. Do you have more details about the error you experienced?
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  Unfortunately I tried WSL1, didn't work, and left it at that for months. When WSL2 was out, it just worked and I had forgotten by then what kind of error WSL1 gave me. I can only recall it was a dialog box, not a crash, and that it had to do about virtualization.

sedatk 6y ago

I think WSL1 is there for transitional purposes and will be thrown away eventually. It was already incomplete, it didn't support forwarding any ICMP packets other than ping, so traceroute didn't work for example. I don't expect it to stay as an option for long.