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Yes, technically it is, but it's the integration that makes it interesting. Plus theres the simple reality that Microsoft's got native APIs in Windows that ena
by pgtruesdell 6y ago
Yes, technically it is, but it's the integration that makes it interesting.
Plus theres the simple reality that Microsoft's got native APIs in Windows that enable running a linux vm with a KDE window alongside the standard windows environment. Microsoft has really come a long way and that's what's really amazing and kind of disorienting.
- qbasic_forever 6y agoYou've been able to run Linux in Hyper-V for a decade now though, it's not really anything new beyond the client-side integration.
- beefbroccoli 6y agoWSL2 uses it's own init system - only one kernel (plus a tiny initrd) is virtualized by hyper-v; each subsequent linux instance (distribution) is containerized. There's additional facilities that handle resource allocation dynamically vs the user specifying a static amount during VM creation. These (and more) result in the end-user interacting with WSL2 the same way they would any normal application. To think of it as simply a VM isn't quite correct.
- qbasic_forever 6y agoSure but I could just run Ubuntu and containerd in a VM and it's the same thing. Or just run k8s instead...
- beefbroccoli 6y agoNot quite. WSL2 dynamically uses resources as needed (`vmmem`), whereas a traditional VM requires allocating a fixed amount of RAM and CPU from the host machine.
- indigodaddy 6y agoSo I fired up Ubuntu first for my current WSL2... then I installed a Kali distribution.. are you saying that the Kali instance is really just a container inside the Ubuntu WSL2?
- beefbroccoli 6y agoNo. A minimal initrd + kernel is virtualized. Both Ubuntu and Kali are containers.
- indigodaddy 6y agoAh gotcha. Neat stuff.