25 ms·

Initial preview of GUI app support for the Windows Subsystem for Linux

668 points by velmu 5y ago

tomComb 5y ago
I wonder if the motivation for this is really to give Linux machine learning apps access to the GPU in WSL?
- xfer 5y ago
  No, the gpu compute support landed a few months ago already. This is about the Graphical program support.
- MikusR 5y ago
  https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2020/06/17/gpu-accelerated-ml-training-inside-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2020/06/17/gpu-ac...
- stuaxo 5y ago
  It is, petty sure they said as much previously.
macmac 5y ago
For now unfortunately you have to turn on "Optional diagnostic data" - aka "full spy mode" - to access this feature.
- 2Xheadpalm 5y ago
  Are you able to turn it on for the 'Windows Insider Program', do an update to latest dev build, then opt out of 'Window Inside Program' and in turn disable 'Optional Diagnostic data' ? Genuinely asking, as I would like to test it but would like to keep diagnostics phoning back to M$ home to a min. if possible.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    Friendly advice : never ever subscribe to Windows Insider dev builds. I’m stuck on it since I needed to work with WSL2 perversions. There is currently no way to roll back from dev builds since it would mean to downgrade (which Windows can’t do). Even disabling reception of new builds is not working since they are either such far away from beta that you can’t switch before your build expired (and you don’t want your build to expire since it break Windows Update some weeks later) or those builds are « branches » that will never meet compatibility with any beta/stable build. tl:dr; Being on Windows Insider dev channel is irreversible.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
I wonder whether the approach utilized in WSLg could be used as (alternatively to waypipe) a way to provide network transparency in Wayland on Linux. A use could be seamlessly running native Wayland apps on Xorg.
TimTheTinker 5y ago
Very interesting -- especially the fact that CBL-Mariner (Microsoft's internal linux distro) is used to plumb X11/Wayland apps across to a Windows-based RDP client. The complexity involved is a little unreal to behold[0]. I wonder - is Microsoft truly committed to this path of building Linux support into Windows for the long term? Have they considered building an MS Linux distro with support for Windows apps? Perhaps by embedding the actual Win32 COM server, which would function like the COM server in WINE but be multi-threaded. I'm not a Windows guy, but I'd be sorely tempted to switch from MacOS if Microsoft released a fully-supported Linux distro (with or without Win32 support). [0] https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-architecture-overview https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-architecture-overview
- john_moscow 5y ago
  WSL allows some developers targeting Linux to continue using Windows as their main OS. It also makes them more likely to choose Azure over AWS due to integration with the tools. It's a well-planned move that translates into real revenue. Free fully supported Linux distro with Windows support will only reduce the sales of Windows itself. So no, this isn't happening.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    > Free fully supported Linux distro with Windows support will only reduce the sales of Windows itself. I didn't say free, though that is one option. I'm thinking if they could build a DisplayPS compositing window manager on top of, say, an MS-supported Ubuntu derivative, make the window manager awesome, market and sell it as Windows NC for Next Century, build in hardware support for everything -- basically go all-in. Keep the next-gen window manager, core apps, and the Win32/DirectX compatibility layers proprietary, the rest open-source, and license the whole thing. Charge $200 per license or something. If they did all that, they'd make a killing. The fact that it's a Linux distro at its core would be a relatively small detail (and a killer feature for developers at the same time). Darwin is also open-source, but MacOS on top is highly proprietary and profit-producing.
    - 5y ago
thorum 5y ago
That's really cool. When I tried WSL a while back, file system access was pretty slow especially for scanning large folder trees with many files (important for programming projects). Is this still an issue or has it improved in that area?
- craigaloewen 5y ago
  We improved the file system performance overall when we introduced WSL 2 by about 3-6x in general, and 20x for specific disk heavy operations. This still does bring its own challenges (You'll need to move your files to the Linux file system, and Cross OS file perf is slower in WSL 2) but we are working on these as well! :)
  - Negitivefrags 5y ago
    From our perspective WSL2 only made file system performance worse. The caviet of moving files to the Linux file system is kind of a big one. We just want to Rsync some files from a Linux server to a windows build server without garbage performance and somehow there isn’t a way to do that still.
    - e12e 5y ago
      With native opensshd in windows, and a windows build of rsync - why would wsl be needed?
      - Negitivefrags 5y ago
        What windows build of Rsync are you referring to? I haven’t found one that doesn’t use Cygwin (slow filesystem).
        e12e 5y ago
        I thought there was a mingw build, but apparently not. :/ You see that slow file access with cygwin? Last time I had such a use case for windows, I used unision - but isn't rsync, of course. https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ Judging by this scoop.sh issue, there are no obvious not-cygwin builds/ports: https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/issues/2295 https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/issues/2295 Looks like there are libraries for rust and go - but not clients that are a drop in replacement (yet).
nwsm 5y ago
Now the question is can I run Wine on WSL...
- craigaloewen 5y ago
  Haha yes you can! We've even had some fun running QEMU things with this too.
synergy20 5y ago
Microsoft, just go all in: embrace Linux kernel and make a MS GUI on top of it, call it MSLinux or something. It will save time/money along the way I believe.
- devmor 5y ago
  Microsoft actually already has a linux distro of their own for internal use. So they're partway there.
  - jonpalmisc 5y ago
    Any more info on this available? I'd be curious to read about it.
    - neilsimp1 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Sphere As far as I know, it's the only Linux distro that requires Windows and VS in order to build it.
    - favorited 5y ago
      It's called CBL-Mariner: https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner
      - disk0 5y ago
        Coincedentally, The system distro is where all of the magic happens. The sytem distro is a containerized Linux environment where the WSLg XServer, Wayland server and Pulse Audio server are running. ... The system distro is based on the Microsoft CBL-Mariner Linux. This is a minimal Linux environment, just enough to run the various pieces of WSLg. For details on how to build and deploy a private system distro please see our build instructions. [0] [0]: https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-system-distro https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-system-distro
- voidfunc 5y ago
jonpalmisc 5y ago
I'm personally very excited for this. Also, the fact that Linux apps will show up in the Start Menu is a nice touch and will be much more enjoyable than starting GUI apps from the terminal.
thepangolino 5y ago
STEP 1: Embrace STEP 2: Extend <-- you are here STEP 3: Extenguish
- voidfunc 5y ago
  STEP 4: Yawn
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  Bill Gates quit Microsoft 20 years ago dude.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    In March 2020 he left the Microsoft board. While Bill Gates wasn't involved in daily operation, he didn't really leave Microsoft until a year ago.
  - meowster 5y ago
    That doesn't stop the threat. Ideas can outlive individual people.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  They've done a couple things you could file under extend. But running Linux GUI programs is not extending, it's catching up.
  - meowster 5y ago
    That sounds like semantics. Who needs a privacy-respecting operating system when a popular privacy-invasive operating system runs the Linux software just fine?
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      Should be a top-level comment.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
jtvjan 5y ago
So pretty much, this starts an RDP server on the WSL side, with Windows acting as the client. I liked the old solution of running a Win32 X11 server and connecting to it from WSL more.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Out of the box pulseaudio is also there.
- imhoguy 5y ago
  That reminds me the project which does exactly the same but in reverse: uses RDP Windows server and Linux acts as client, and then integrates everything like app menus, shortcuts, FS even I think. https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
modeless 5y ago
Cool, GPU support via a D3D12 backend for Mesa! OpenGL only though. I hope they plan to do a Vulkan Portability implementation on D3D12 as well. > rendered content needs to be copied to system memory before being presented to the compositor, to be brought back onto the GPU in the RDP client running on Windows (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wslg-architecture/#hardware-accelerated-opengl https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wslg-architecture...) Ouch, that's pretty bad for performance. I hope they plan to improve this as well.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Why is all this needed? I admit I didn't in depth read the article yet but something seems out of whack if we can have the Linux compositor use the native graphics hardware but then have to copy over the resulting framebuffer through some sort of Rube goldberg machine fake network RDP setup. I suppose this was just the easiest plug&play way to get interactivity working?
kitkat_new 5y ago
When will Android Apps appear in the Start menu?
siproprio 5y ago
If you thought electron apps used a lot of memory, this thing will surprise you [0]: With WSL2, apps will now use either 50% or 8GB of your available memory. Happy coding! [0]: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166
- siproprio 5y ago
  Also, looking forward for that new gvim 8GB memory footprint new feature!
  - gfiorav 5y ago
    Are you sure? I watched the conference and this uses the RDP framework behind the scenes, integrating with Wayland. Why would it consume much more than running natively?
    - TingPing 5y ago
      Its not the gui part, its just a full VM.
      - gfiorav 5y ago
        Oh, I use WSL2 every day and that's not true. I uses dynamic memory and shares with the host. No blocked off 8GB or RAM or anything like that.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  It's not exactly wsl is it? Linux considers free memory useless and uses it as cache. https://www.linuxatemyram.com/ https://www.linuxatemyram.com/ Weird that i didn't knew this. Couple of years ago i wasted some time to get more "free" memory on my server. Lol
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Except that the cache needs to be intelligently shared or split between operating systems, and it's not. Or at least not well, as of 20H2.
nynx 5y ago
Is this saying that WSL 2.0 supports Vulkan now? Because if it just supports opengl, that's pretty meh.
- fulafel 5y ago
  There are almost no Vulkan apps on Linux, compared to apps using other graphics APIs. And even fewer Vulkan-only apps (are there any non toy ones?).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
gfiorav 5y ago
The video [0] is great! Main takeaway: you can open apps by clicking on the icons. So you'll be able to have shortcuts without opening a terminal. That's great! Will render my local X server obsolete. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8_nvJzuaSU&t=12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8_nvJzuaSU&t=12s
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  You could already do that with that X. Simplest way is using wslusc provided in wslu.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    A little clunky, but it works well. I make a "bin" directory in my windows home directory with visual basic scripts in it to launch things from Windows shortcuts. The "xterm.vbs" script from my "bin" directory: args = "-c" & " -l " & """export DISPLAY=:0.0;xterm -fn 10x20 -bg black -fg green""" WScript.CreateObject("Shell.Application").ShellExecute "bash", args, "", "open", 0
    - gfiorav 5y ago
      I do that too... main issue is scaling. I need one for the laptops screen and another fit the monitor... different scaling (200% vs 100%)
gfiorav 5y ago
Main website for those lazy to read the article: aka.ms/wslg
devwastaken 5y ago
Windows still does not support sub virtualization on amd hardware. I.E you cannot use kvm in wsl. Why would you want to? Testing in clean environments. Microsoft also does not allow vmware to use AMD-V if you have WSL or hyperV enabled. I believe that is also an effect of sub virtualization. There's currently plenty of bugs wherein if you use vmware without amd-v things like disk encryption don't work (fedora 34, ubuntu 20.10 etc). Microsoft continually says "they're working on it" but it's been a long while and it's obvious they have other priorities here. AMD ryzen cpu's have been the superior CPU for a while now, methinks there's lots of handshakes between intel and microsoft.
- voidfunc 5y ago
  > AMD ryzen cpu's have been the superior CPU for a while now, methinks there's lots of handshakes between intel and microsoft. Or you know... customer/user demand isn't that high.
  - ctoth 5y ago
    Hi. I'm a customer who would like to ask for this. Where can I do it?
    - voidfunc 5y ago
      GitHub issue, or your Microsoft account rep.
    - aargh_aargh 5y ago
      If you have to ask you're not a big enough customer.
    - jodrellblank 5y ago
      https://windowsserver.uservoice.com/forums/295047-general-feedback/suggestions/31734808-nested-virtualization-for-amd-epyc-and-ryzen https://windowsserver.uservoice.com/forums/295047-general-fe...
  - xbar 5y ago
bogwog 5y ago
So now developers can stop writing apps for Windows. Instead, they can write for Linux and distribute on Windows using WSL. Thanks Microsoft!
- tyingq 5y ago
  s/Thanks/Embrace :)
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    s/Embrace/Extend ... except that if Microsoft did, likely very few would embrace such extensions. A successful EEE play requires a lot of pre-existing trust that has to last through the Extend phase, which is why I don't think they'll ever try that again in the foreseeable future.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      Anecdotally, I've seen apparent fanfare and demand for DirectX for WSL that Microsoft recently built so I'm skeptical of this.
- BuildTheRobots 5y ago
  I'm still convinced the long term plan is to stop people being able to boot a Linux kernel on desktop hardware (think secure boot) and when people complain the response is going to be "but you can run Linux on Windows!"
  - ROARosen 5y ago
    After all, there must be something diabolical when Microsoft is just doing something to appease devs who have for years railed against them for being dev hostile.
    - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      If you've been bitten by a tiger, it seems right to be wary when it invites you for dinner.
jpm48 5y ago
Looking forward to testing my OpenGL lecture code on this, it works under Windows and Linux natively so working on WSL will be a major bonus for me :-)
- jpm48 5y ago
  First initial test (after 3hrs to update everything!) I can't create an OpenGL Core 4.1 Context with SDL2 Oh well it's late now will investigate more in the morning.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    They only support OpenGL 3.x
jascii 5y ago
Weren't there X11 systems for windows for a long time?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tyingq 5y ago
  Yes, though out of the box functional wayland, gpu acceleration, and pulse audio is new. You're right, though, that the article is a bit awkward in not acknowledging that most people were already using VcXsrv or similar on the Windows side to run Linux gui apps.
  - chx 5y ago
    > most people were already using VcXsrv or similar the devil is in the details and the painful truth is none of that works real well. I am using JetBrains Projector instead which would be great if two super annoying bugs were fixed. Meaning that doesn't work well either -- for now. Maybe it will, maybe X+VNC will someday be great in a Windows VM -- but I have much larger confidence in Microsoft driving this to greatness.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      Oh, I agree. It's just that the article reads as if everyone is using WSL only for text based apps today. I was initially confused by that.
cyberCleve 5y ago
I learned from the video you can launch VS code from within WSL with "code ." That's really useful. I like it.
- adolfojp 5y ago
  You can also launch the Windows file explorer the same way. "explorer.exe ."
  - tester756 5y ago
    In Power-Shell >ii . :)
    - cyberCleve 5y ago
      Ah, I was confused until I ran > alias ii Now I see why this works. Good trick either way.
  - joromero 5y ago
    I recently discovered that you can do cat file | clip.exe which as expected will copy to your clipboard
IceWreck 5y ago
Who will be the first one to try to run Windows GUI apps in Wine inside WSL ?
- thrower123 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure I did this a decade ago with whatever insanity you needed to use to run Linux apps inside of Windows XP/7 - http://www.andlinux.org/ http://www.andlinux.org/ maybe?
- davidgerard 5y ago
  there's been a shitload of attempts to do Wine on Windows, I went through a pile of failed ones around 2008-2009 and succeeded in 2019: https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632942 This should make it as simple as "sudo apt install wine" though.
thecrumb 5y ago
Anyone with a Mac who can compare file system operations between Mac and WSL2? I jumped ship from Windows to Mac before WSL2 as it was just too slow to use. Unfortunately the Mac isn't much better so I'm curious if it's worth moving back with WSL2.
- runjake 5y ago
  Mac FS performance was abysmal, last I checked. WSL2 FS performance is still even worse (but still tolerable).
- OJFord 5y ago
  What do you do that fs performance is your primary/a major concern in choosing an OS (esp. among the major ones)? I don't mean to sound snarky, I'm curious. For all I know it should matter to me more!
  - andrewl-hn 5y ago
    JavaScript development tends to involve a lot of files. Between Babel, ESLint, Webpack, Post-CSS with their high number of plugins, presets, and other support modules, Typescript, testing frameworks like Jest (that comes with it's own test runner, mocking facilities, transpile-aware code coverage etc.), and general tendency for JS developers to favor composing software out of many small modules - a typical JavaScript project (browser or Node) has thousands of modules and tens of thousands of files in node_modules folder. Plus, a typical JS development process involves a filesystem-based watcher that reloads parts of an application on a fly as a developer changes code. As a result, for a very big percentage of programmers filesystem performance is crucial for their day-to-day work. There's an argument to be made that JS development ecosystem is unnecessary complex, and there are projects that try to change the status quo, but they are not ready for a prime time and aren't widespread enough yet.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Hm I certainly sympathise, just hadn't occurred to me the filesystem might be a bottleneck here. I switched from my work Mac to my desktop and bought (or rather, so I could buy) more RAM, since it was exhausted building, and would frequently crash. I now have enough to be able to give it 'enough' and cgroup limit it from hogging more and interrupting my browsing etc. but I don't think I've given it so much that, what, the speed at which it can read the 100ks of files in order to 'webpack' them is the limiting factor. Perhaps I'm just (foolishly) content living with it much slower than you are, so I don't have everything else fast enough for that to be the problem.
jhoechtl 5y ago
> That’s because with this feature we are automatically starting a companion system distro, containing a Wayland, X server, pulse audio server, and everything else needed to make Linux GUI apps communicate with Windows. You see me impressed. Especially as they are supporting Wayland. Now please make electron apps non-blurry on Wayland
- rowanG077 5y ago
  any electron app that is uptodate should no longer be blurry. Electron recently landed support for wayland so xwayland no longer has to be used.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    For the curious, see this comment from the electron contributor on how to enable it: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment-793105706 https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment...
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    I would consider electron support for Wayland to be alpha quality at the moment.
    - vially 5y ago
      I've been using it for a couple of months now (by patching the applications which haven't upgraded to Electron 12 yet) and it's been working great for me. Is there anything in particular that is broken and/or missing from Electron's Wayland implementation? Or are you referring to GNOME's refusal to implement server-side decorations [1][2] as a limitation of Electron? [1] - https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 [2] - https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/27522 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/27522
      - akvadrako 5y ago
        It's by their own admission, this is "very experimental" in Electron 12 and hence not enabled by default. https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment-716152639 https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment...
wing-_-nuts 5y ago
Questions: 1. Does the vGPU support mean that we get decent cuda support AND wayland? I know they mentioned a nvidia specific driver 2. Given they are supporting x/wayland, would it be possible to run i3wm or sway for window management?
- vetinari 5y ago
  1. You had it before in Linux, too; what you didn't have is OpenGL acceleration under for Xwayland clients. 2. No, CBL-Mariner uses Weston, and then RDP to tunnel it into the Windows side. Client decorations are CSD, for window management you will be stuck with Windows shell. Try PowerToys (Fancy Zones), makes it less painful.
johnvega 5y ago
On my 2nd chromebook computer but likely moving back to mostly to Windows because of WSL2. Just 1 of many benefits: build native Windows GoLang app from WSL2: (Caddy server) env GOOS=windows go build -o caddy.exe No need to setup gcc in native Windows. Not sure if this works on all GoLang apps, but at least works for a reasonably complex Caddy server
- denysvitali 5y ago
  I was under the impression that Go cross-compilation between architectures and operating systems wasn't a problem already... Am I missing something? What does this have to do with WSL 2?
  - kuschku 5y ago
    You can compile for windows, on windows, without the pain of setting up a compilation environment on windows.
    - Stevvo 5y ago
      That's awesome, although it's not as great as it might appear at first glance. I once took on a job to write a .bat script to compile a GO app any Windows machine without any Go environment installed. The script ended up about 20 lines long, and could compile the app on a fresh Windows install on any machine. It just took all day to write when I thought it would be done in 30 minutes. Working with GO on Windows can be a pain, but my takeaway from this ordeal was that it wasn't really the fault of MS or Google, but due to most Windows users actually having no idea how Windows works, even software developers who have been using the OS for 20 years.
      - ampdepolymerase 5y ago
        The NT kernel/hypervisor is a marvel of software engineering but unfortunately it is not as easy to teach in OS classes compared to Unix/Linux family systems.
- 5y ago
goatinaboat 5y ago
Superb. WSL goes from strength to strength.
Rabidgremlin 5y ago
Any ideas around what could be leveraged here with docker? I'm thinking it would be great to have all dev tooling + IDE bundled into containers for quickly switching projects/ getting devs up to and running fast.
- wmf 5y ago
  Check out Flatpak which is basically Docker for GUI apps.
  - Rabidgremlin 5y ago
    Interesting... Thanks
Railsify 5y ago
But... Can I run virtualbox along side wsl2 without the massive performance hit in virtualbox?
- 1MachineElf 5y ago
  YMMV. VirtualBox couldn't coexist with WSL2 in the beginning, and even when support was officially announced by VirtualBox and listed on Microsoft's website, it still didn't work for a lot of people. I had that problem during 2020 and gave up, but it appears that others are having success in 2021: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/798 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/798
marcodiego 5y ago
Half of me: "Cool! Now we only need to release software for linux!" Other half of me: "Hmmm... Now companies will have less incentive to support linux running natively on their hardware..."
- squarefoot 5y ago
  That's exactly what is going to happen. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm afraid we'll soon also see software advertised as running "better" under WSL than Linux.
- alexisread 5y ago
  It could be even more problematic than that. With windows drivers supporting a windows ABI, that becomes a Linux ABI under WSL. Kinda puts a wrench in the Linux no-ABI philosophy...
- wernercd 5y ago
  Embrace, extend, extinguish for the new millennium! Love many of the things MS is doing... but it's hard not to see echo's of the past and wonder if its history repeating.
- Beached 5y ago
  what about cost?
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
I can't wait to get this running to see Word 97 in Wine.
aargh_aargh 5y ago
Is this to be expected in the next regular Win10 update (outside of the insiders build)?
lsllc 5y ago
So, 2021 is finally [0] going to be the year of the Linux Desktop? /s [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3038d4/when_was_the_first_year_of_the_linux_desktop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3038d4/when_was_the_...
yread 5y ago
So, as a mostly Windows guy: What Linux GUI apps are you going to run? What has a Linux GUI but no Windows app or alternative?
- aye01 5y ago
  its mostly for people doing work in the WSL world. If you're writing code, you can throw up an IDE running directly inside WSL and run toolchains that exist inside WSL altogether. Before, you'd have to do something like use WSL remote or open the project in a Windows program and edit the Linux file, then use the Windows version runtime of whatever langauge youre using to use any of the built in IDE features for that language.
- jraph 5y ago
  > What has a Linux GUI but no Windows app or alternative? I don't know about alternatives (it seems Cubase is a proprietary one), but Rosegarden [1] is a GNU/Linux "audio and MIDI sequencer, scorewriter and musical composition and editing tool" that does not seem to have a Windows build (a maintained one anyway). It's a great app, I guess it could convince a musician to use Linux for some music-related activities. I don't know if it runs (well) in WSL (1 or 2). Rosegarden aside, I'm not sure there is a single app I use regularly that absolutely can't run on Windows (some can run on Windows (and Mac), but probably run way better on GNU/Linux, like the Kate editor, and Clementine seems to have a spotty Windows support too). [1] https://rosegardenmusic.com/ https://rosegardenmusic.com/
- gizmo385 5y ago
  My first reaction would be custom terminal applications (i.e. Terminator)
  - icebergonfire 5y ago
    Vouching for this, haven’t found an native alternative for Windows. Feels odd to run another entire OS just for a terminal application, but here we are.
- SSLy 5y ago
jfdi 5y ago
Does anyone know if native or near-native disk IO performance is coming to WSL? This has been a pretty big challenge from using it if your use case requires any decent iops. It would be magical if WSL could do physical NVMe pass through for example....
- dshacker 5y ago
  I think WSL2 has that, WSL1 used to be super slow disk wise, but I've seen near-native disk speeds on NVME drives on WSL2 (Specially useful for node_modules)
  - hansvm 5y ago
    Only when accessing WSL-owned files though right? Like, if you're wanted to work on the same repo with some Linux tools and some Windows tools you'd still have a ton of pain points?
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      You’re going to probably run into issues anyway. Linux tools expect case-sensitive file systems and explode in interesting ways when they’re not.
      - hansvm 5y ago
        Depends what you're doing and how windows-centric your files are I guess. At my last job I mixed and matched tools like that, and it generally worked great aside from the mediocre disk throughput.
- amilios 5y ago
  This is one of the things that turned me off from WSL: not sure if something has changed recently with WSL2, but for example installing Node deps would take forever on the old WSL, to the extent of ridiculousness and just not being worth using
ncphil 5y ago
Looks like some kind of group policy now prevents me from running WSL on my work machine. In the past Hyper-V bluescreened the peculiar Win 10 build my company uses, making WSL2 (and Docker Desktop, for that matter) a no-go. WSL1 still worked, but I eventually requisitioned VMware Workstation to run Linux and docker for projects that required them. For anything else I've got tried-and-true MSYS2 installed, which works well enough.
DonnyV 5y ago
...or I can use VirtualBox and spin up multiple versions and flavors of Linux and use that. Then delete when I don't need them anymore. Not sure what this is trying to solve.
- porphyra 5y ago
  having real gpu acceleration is nice
johnghanks 5y ago
so much negativity in this thread for a great feature they absolutely didn't have to implement.
davidgerard 5y ago
obviously they just wanted Wine on Windows to work properly, 'cos that's an easier way to make Encarta 97 work than adding Win16 support to Windows 10
Animats 5y ago
This should be called the Linux Subsystem for Windows. The real Windows Subsystem for Linux is WINE, which runs Windows programs on Linux. It can not only run GUI programs, it runs games reasonably well.
math0ne 5y ago
Nice that this is easier, but is this better than just using VcXsrv?
whatever_dude 5y ago
"Now available" is a bit misleading. It's only available on the latest version of Windows Insiders.
dlevine 5y ago
I have been a Mac user for many years, and typically used Macs for development and a Windows PC for gaming. I recently setup WSL2 on my new Ryzen desktop, and it has been great for web development. Works pretty seamlessly, and not being able to run GUI apps was one of my few complaints (mostly because I wanted to run a graphical git difftool). Glad to see they have addressed this.
- wvenable 5y ago
  With WSL1 way back, I ran GUI apps using a Win32 X server. I had some Linux GUI tools that I needed to be able to run and it was pretty seamless.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
    I was somewhat surprised that WSL1 could run the valgrind memory checks at least well enough to match results of basic tests on a real Linux machine.
  - litoorachure 5y ago
    I actually still use WSL1 and vcxsrv to do that when I use Windows. It is seamless, even the icons that show up in the Windows taskbar are correct. If this new WSL2 experience works just as well, I might finally switch :)
- ohmyzee 5y ago
  I've always found it to be 99% there. But that 1% prevents you from doing any serious work. Things like mongo become a nightmare when using WSL. Its been entirely frustrating for me. I would have much rather they focused on getting popular libraries to work rather than focus on the flashy GUI features
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    Isn't it easier to simply run Linux anyway? Either in a VM or barebone?
  - 5y ago
tester756 5y ago
It's impressive as hell
dekhn 5y ago
As a user of Interix on Windows NT (porting an entire X windows application including Motif and OpenGL) around 2000, I'm glad to see they finally managed to improve on it. For real, though, I will give MSFT tons of credit for this. They really did an impressive job all-around.
- matlads 5y ago
  I am glad someone has mentioned Interix. MSFT has been trying to get this right for 25 years
evolve2k 5y ago
The moment you notice that the guy posting it is literally wearing an suit and tie. This is no Linux from the inside collaboration, speaks volumes as to the culture around the project. Since when are developer outreach teams wearing traditional suit and ties?
- thiht 5y ago
  I wouldn't read too much in this. When I posted on the technical blog of the company I work for, I chose my resume picture as an avatar, on which I happen to wear a suit. It doesn't mean I'm overly corporate or the suit & tie type, I just think I look good in a suit and like using this picture to present myself professionally.
g42gregory 5y ago
I am beginning seriously to consider moving to windows from Mac, even with the M1 chip. In the end, I must have a Linux runtime and WSL support seem to be getting better and better.
nickysielicki 5y ago
I tried it. Window resizes and moves are very laggy, but I mean, it's pretty great other than that. https://i.imgur.com/EBdMKz7.png https://i.imgur.com/EBdMKz7.png Kind of hard to justify buying anything else for a dev laptop at this point. edit: I feel obligated to mention the code in that screenshot is not something I wrote. https://www.mathblog.dk/project-euler-141investigating-progressive-numbers-n-which-are-also-square/ https://www.mathblog.dk/project-euler-141investigating-progr...
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  WSL2 crashes consistently n my own microsoft laptop in current windows, and I've tried diagnosing an improper configuration: how does one work around that?
  - coder543 5y ago
    This doesn't seem like a genuine question. You provide no details, and WSL2 works great for everyone I personally know. You could probably get help there: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues But, obviously, you would have to actually be willing to provide meaningful details and not just... what you posted here.
    - jjtheblunt 5y ago
      Thanks for the link, and the only thing i've been doing is debian in WSL2 on arm (Surface Pro X), which works great, as does fedora....the strangeness is that the subsystem seems to freeze perhaps after a sleep / wake cycle, but not at a predictable time delay. Anyway, since that's a showstopper, it's unusable, and i'm going to check out that link. thanks again.
      - discordance 5y ago
        As if Windows on ARM wasn't experimental enough... Linux (GUI apps) on Windows on ARM is quite the edge case. Best of luck though!
chrismsimpson 5y ago
A Trojan horse? Honestly, is this enough to finally call time on the Linux desktop? I'm considering trying Windows as my next Linux distro.
voceboy521 5y ago
windows 10 is now another linux distro option
cdolan 5y ago
Can’t wait to run “native” Linux GUI on Windows10 (ARM, of course), on my bare M1X iMac!
_def 5y ago
I really like WSL. Some weeks ago I switched to Ubuntu again because developing is still a nightmare on Windows. But what really impressed me was how much faster it is.
- lyjackal 5y ago
  What was faster? Native Ubuntu that's my experience. I couldn't tolerate speed issues on WSL
  - exciteabletom 5y ago
    If your issues were disk speed related, you should know that accessing files in NTFS using WSL2 is very slow. You'll have to move your files to the Linux FS first.
kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
Can they just finish their thought and just make it 100% Linux? We don't need windows.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I don't want poo poo too much over this, because I like the fact that MS at least seems to be trying, but is it a common need at all? Who is the target audience here. I am not a developer so it is possible I am missing a use case. I am on popos now and when I need windows, I VM into one. Obviously it works the other way works as well.
O_H_E 5y ago
Oh great, now Microsoft is going to have a polished wayland implementation before us. Dibs on the year of WSL Desktop!!
jeena 5y ago
This will make my life probably very difficult. My worry is that this will give the IT departments ammunition to push devs from Linux to Windows to be able to control their devices better. They will be able to say that the work on the Linux software now can be done on Windows so there is no need for exceptions for the developers from company policies. I know, I should really get out of the automotive industry and those big companies anyway because they're so abusive, but right now, because of my private life, I'm kind of stuck at least for a year or even more. Just hoping that I can get out before this becomes reality :D
drummer 5y ago
This is all very cool Microsoft, but what I really want is Visual Studio and C++ running on Linux with full debugger support like on Windows.
jopsen 5y ago
Year of the Linux desktop! Microsoft has finally embraced the Linux desktop, maybe next they extend it?
salzig 5y ago
Maybe it's just me, but after testing Steam on Linux, which promised a good coverage [1][2], i'm more and more feeling like replacing the only left Windows device with linux. The only thing that would make sense for me, is that microsoft should port their UI to linux and handle their backwards compability with wine. I mean, what is the benefit of keeping their own kernel, when obviously they understand that another kernel and userspace is more and more important, and even used by them selfs. 1: Protondb: https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ 2: ProtonDB Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25333219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25333219
- irrational 5y ago
  Except, not all games on Steam work on Linux. I’m primarily a Mac user, but I have a windows partition on my laptop so that I can play steam games that are Windows only. It would be fantastic if there was no such thing as Windows only games anymore.
  - salzig 5y ago
    I so far stumbled upon only a single game that doesn't work on linux for me, and it's not because the game is not working, but because the anti-cheat tool has problems and the game doesn't let me join multiplayer sessions.
    - ahD5zae7 5y ago
      Well I'd be inclined to agree with the parent as even per the link to ProtonDB included by the GP about 40% (as of this moment) out of top 10 most popular games are not working under Linux (status: borked). I love linux and use it 90% of the time every day but I also have an old and derelict windows partition just so I can launch a game or two from time to time. Maybe the day will come when all games work flawlessly on Linux and I certainly hope it will. But evidence suggests that we have still some way to go...
- larodi 5y ago
  Microsoft porting ‘their UI’ to whatever sounds like a massive misunderstanding of what Microsoft’s UI is and how it works...
Beached 5y ago
I'm super disappointed with wsl's move to hyper v. I tried out wsl2 3 months ago, overall system performance took a hit, not just slower WSL experience, but slower windows experience too. In addition, I had to choose, wsl2 and no other vms through vmware or virtualbox,. or WSL with vmware and virtualbox. they claim they work together nicely, but they don't. vmware and virtualbox crash, freeze, and crawl to a halt constantly when hyperv is enabled. so back to wsl1 for me. I love WSL, I think it's the future, just please don't build that future on top of hyperv!!! :'(
- caspar 5y ago
  > In addition, I had to choose, wsl2 and no other vms through vmware or virtualbox,. or WSL with vmware and virtualbox. they claim they work together nicely, but they don't. vmware and virtualbox crash, freeze, and crawl to a halt constantly when hyperv is enabled. Personally I simply swapped to using HyperV for other VMs when I needed them. Turns out I didn't need them that much anyway once WSL2 got good enough. As for performance - I game on Windows still with WSL2 turned on. As long as you limit WSL2's memory usage a bit as described in another thread, I haven't noticed any performance slowdown in Windows. (On the other hand, I have noticed that IO on the linux-side is so much faster in WSL2 than WSL1, which was the main reason I swapped as soon as I could.)
blodkorv 5y ago
Soon linux will be very much illrelevant on workstations. Very nice
greyhair 5y ago
As an AT&T Unix/Solaris/HPUX/NetBSD/Linux embedded developer for the last 35+ years, I find this quite useful. While I still have two machines (Windows 10 + Ubuntu 18.04) I can see this progress leading to a point where I have one machine doing both. I just need them to get qemu-arm working correctly on X86 to support ARM target development. Hopefully they'll get qemu-risc-v working, because I can see RISC-V in my future.
adultSwim 5y ago
Is this J++ again?

668 points by velmu 5y ago

tomComb 5y ago

I wonder if the motivation for this is really to give Linux machine learning apps access to the GPU in WSL?

xfer 5y ago
No, the gpu compute support landed a few months ago already. This is about the Graphical program support.
MikusR 5y ago
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2020/06/17/gpu-accelerated-ml-training-inside-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2020/06/17/gpu-ac...
stuaxo 5y ago
It is, petty sure they said as much previously.

macmac 5y ago

For now unfortunately you have to turn on "Optional diagnostic data" - aka "full spy mode" - to access this feature.

2Xheadpalm 5y ago
Are you able to turn it on for the 'Windows Insider Program', do an update to latest dev build, then opt out of 'Window Inside Program' and in turn disable 'Optional Diagnostic data' ? Genuinely asking, as I would like to test it but would like to keep diagnostics phoning back to M$ home to a min. if possible.
- pjerem 5y ago
  Friendly advice : never ever subscribe to Windows Insider dev builds. I’m stuck on it since I needed to work with WSL2 perversions. There is currently no way to roll back from dev builds since it would mean to downgrade (which Windows can’t do). Even disabling reception of new builds is not working since they are either such far away from beta that you can’t switch before your build expired (and you don’t want your build to expire since it break Windows Update some weeks later) or those builds are « branches » that will never meet compatibility with any beta/stable build. tl:dr; Being on Windows Insider dev channel is irreversible.

forgotpwd16 5y ago

I wonder whether the approach utilized in WSLg could be used as (alternatively to waypipe) a way to provide network transparency in Wayland on Linux. A use could be seamlessly running native Wayland apps on Xorg.

TimTheTinker 5y ago

Very interesting -- especially the fact that CBL-Mariner (Microsoft's internal linux distro) is used to plumb X11/Wayland apps across to a Windows-based RDP client. The complexity involved is a little unreal to behold[0]. I wonder - is Microsoft truly committed to this path of building Linux support into Windows for the long term? Have they considered building an MS Linux distro with support for Windows apps? Perhaps by embedding the actual Win32 COM server, which would function like the COM server in WINE but be multi-threaded. I'm not a Windows guy, but I'd be sorely tempted to switch from MacOS if Microsoft released a fully-supported Linux distro (with or without Win32 support). [0] https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-architecture-overview https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-architecture-overview

john_moscow 5y ago
WSL allows some developers targeting Linux to continue using Windows as their main OS. It also makes them more likely to choose Azure over AWS due to integration with the tools. It's a well-planned move that translates into real revenue. Free fully supported Linux distro with Windows support will only reduce the sales of Windows itself. So no, this isn't happening.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  > Free fully supported Linux distro with Windows support will only reduce the sales of Windows itself. I didn't say free, though that is one option. I'm thinking if they could build a DisplayPS compositing window manager on top of, say, an MS-supported Ubuntu derivative, make the window manager awesome, market and sell it as Windows NC for Next Century, build in hardware support for everything -- basically go all-in. Keep the next-gen window manager, core apps, and the Win32/DirectX compatibility layers proprietary, the rest open-source, and license the whole thing. Charge $200 per license or something. If they did all that, they'd make a killing. The fact that it's a Linux distro at its core would be a relatively small detail (and a killer feature for developers at the same time). Darwin is also open-source, but MacOS on top is highly proprietary and profit-producing.
  - 5y ago

thorum 5y ago

That's really cool. When I tried WSL a while back, file system access was pretty slow especially for scanning large folder trees with many files (important for programming projects). Is this still an issue or has it improved in that area?

craigaloewen 5y ago
We improved the file system performance overall when we introduced WSL 2 by about 3-6x in general, and 20x for specific disk heavy operations. This still does bring its own challenges (You'll need to move your files to the Linux file system, and Cross OS file perf is slower in WSL 2) but we are working on these as well! :)
- Negitivefrags 5y ago
  From our perspective WSL2 only made file system performance worse. The caviet of moving files to the Linux file system is kind of a big one. We just want to Rsync some files from a Linux server to a windows build server without garbage performance and somehow there isn’t a way to do that still.
  - e12e 5y ago
    With native opensshd in windows, and a windows build of rsync - why would wsl be needed?
    - Negitivefrags 5y ago
      What windows build of Rsync are you referring to? I haven’t found one that doesn’t use Cygwin (slow filesystem).
      - e12e 5y ago
        I thought there was a mingw build, but apparently not. :/ You see that slow file access with cygwin? Last time I had such a use case for windows, I used unision - but isn't rsync, of course. https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ Judging by this scoop.sh issue, there are no obvious not-cygwin builds/ports: https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/issues/2295 https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/issues/2295 Looks like there are libraries for rust and go - but not clients that are a drop in replacement (yet).

nwsm 5y ago

Now the question is can I run Wine on WSL...

craigaloewen 5y ago
Haha yes you can! We've even had some fun running QEMU things with this too.

synergy20 5y ago

Microsoft, just go all in: embrace Linux kernel and make a MS GUI on top of it, call it MSLinux or something. It will save time/money along the way I believe.

devmor 5y ago
Microsoft actually already has a linux distro of their own for internal use. So they're partway there.
- jonpalmisc 5y ago
  Any more info on this available? I'd be curious to read about it.
  - neilsimp1 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Sphere As far as I know, it's the only Linux distro that requires Windows and VS in order to build it.
  - favorited 5y ago
    It's called CBL-Mariner: https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner
    - disk0 5y ago
      Coincedentally, The system distro is where all of the magic happens. The sytem distro is a containerized Linux environment where the WSLg XServer, Wayland server and Pulse Audio server are running. ... The system distro is based on the Microsoft CBL-Mariner Linux. This is a minimal Linux environment, just enough to run the various pieces of WSLg. For details on how to build and deploy a private system distro please see our build instructions. [0] [0]: https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-system-distro https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-system-distro
voidfunc 5y ago

jonpalmisc 5y ago

I'm personally very excited for this. Also, the fact that Linux apps will show up in the Start Menu is a nice touch and will be much more enjoyable than starting GUI apps from the terminal.

thepangolino 5y ago

STEP 1: Embrace STEP 2: Extend <-- you are here STEP 3: Extenguish

voidfunc 5y ago
STEP 4: Yawn
Gibbon1 5y ago
Bill Gates quit Microsoft 20 years ago dude.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  In March 2020 he left the Microsoft board. While Bill Gates wasn't involved in daily operation, he didn't really leave Microsoft until a year ago.
- meowster 5y ago
  That doesn't stop the threat. Ideas can outlive individual people.
Dylan16807 5y ago
They've done a couple things you could file under extend. But running Linux GUI programs is not extending, it's catching up.
- meowster 5y ago
  That sounds like semantics. Who needs a privacy-respecting operating system when a popular privacy-invasive operating system runs the Linux software just fine?
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Should be a top-level comment.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago

jtvjan 5y ago

So pretty much, this starts an RDP server on the WSL side, with Windows acting as the client. I liked the old solution of running a Win32 X11 server and connecting to it from WSL more.

tyingq 5y ago
Out of the box pulseaudio is also there.
imhoguy 5y ago
That reminds me the project which does exactly the same but in reverse: uses RDP Windows server and Linux acts as client, and then integrates everything like app menus, shortcuts, FS even I think. https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps

modeless 5y ago

Cool, GPU support via a D3D12 backend for Mesa! OpenGL only though. I hope they plan to do a Vulkan Portability implementation on D3D12 as well. > rendered content needs to be copied to system memory before being presented to the compositor, to be brought back onto the GPU in the RDP client running on Windows (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wslg-architecture/#hardware-accelerated-opengl https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wslg-architecture...) Ouch, that's pretty bad for performance. I hope they plan to improve this as well.

stefan_ 5y ago
Why is all this needed? I admit I didn't in depth read the article yet but something seems out of whack if we can have the Linux compositor use the native graphics hardware but then have to copy over the resulting framebuffer through some sort of Rube goldberg machine fake network RDP setup. I suppose this was just the easiest plug&play way to get interactivity working?

kitkat_new 5y ago

When will Android Apps appear in the Start menu?

siproprio 5y ago

If you thought electron apps used a lot of memory, this thing will surprise you [0]: With WSL2, apps will now use either 50% or 8GB of your available memory. Happy coding! [0]: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166

siproprio 5y ago
Also, looking forward for that new gvim 8GB memory footprint new feature!
- gfiorav 5y ago
  Are you sure? I watched the conference and this uses the RDP framework behind the scenes, integrating with Wayland. Why would it consume much more than running natively?
  - TingPing 5y ago
    Its not the gui part, its just a full VM.
    - gfiorav 5y ago
      Oh, I use WSL2 every day and that's not true. I uses dynamic memory and shares with the host. No blocked off 8GB or RAM or anything like that.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
It's not exactly wsl is it? Linux considers free memory useless and uses it as cache. https://www.linuxatemyram.com/ https://www.linuxatemyram.com/ Weird that i didn't knew this. Couple of years ago i wasted some time to get more "free" memory on my server. Lol
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Except that the cache needs to be intelligently shared or split between operating systems, and it's not. Or at least not well, as of 20H2.

nynx 5y ago

Is this saying that WSL 2.0 supports Vulkan now? Because if it just supports opengl, that's pretty meh.

fulafel 5y ago
There are almost no Vulkan apps on Linux, compared to apps using other graphics APIs. And even fewer Vulkan-only apps (are there any non toy ones?).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

gfiorav 5y ago

The video [0] is great! Main takeaway: you can open apps by clicking on the icons. So you'll be able to have shortcuts without opening a terminal. That's great! Will render my local X server obsolete. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8_nvJzuaSU&t=12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8_nvJzuaSU&t=12s

forgotpwd16 5y ago
You could already do that with that X. Simplest way is using wslusc provided in wslu.
- tyingq 5y ago
  A little clunky, but it works well. I make a "bin" directory in my windows home directory with visual basic scripts in it to launch things from Windows shortcuts. The "xterm.vbs" script from my "bin" directory: args = "-c" & " -l " & """export DISPLAY=:0.0;xterm -fn 10x20 -bg black -fg green""" WScript.CreateObject("Shell.Application").ShellExecute "bash", args, "", "open", 0
  - gfiorav 5y ago
    I do that too... main issue is scaling. I need one for the laptops screen and another fit the monitor... different scaling (200% vs 100%)

gfiorav 5y ago

Main website for those lazy to read the article: aka.ms/wslg

devwastaken 5y ago

Windows still does not support sub virtualization on amd hardware. I.E you cannot use kvm in wsl. Why would you want to? Testing in clean environments. Microsoft also does not allow vmware to use AMD-V if you have WSL or hyperV enabled. I believe that is also an effect of sub virtualization. There's currently plenty of bugs wherein if you use vmware without amd-v things like disk encryption don't work (fedora 34, ubuntu 20.10 etc). Microsoft continually says "they're working on it" but it's been a long while and it's obvious they have other priorities here. AMD ryzen cpu's have been the superior CPU for a while now, methinks there's lots of handshakes between intel and microsoft.

voidfunc 5y ago
> AMD ryzen cpu's have been the superior CPU for a while now, methinks there's lots of handshakes between intel and microsoft. Or you know... customer/user demand isn't that high.
- ctoth 5y ago
  Hi. I'm a customer who would like to ask for this. Where can I do it?
  - voidfunc 5y ago
    GitHub issue, or your Microsoft account rep.
  - aargh_aargh 5y ago
    If you have to ask you're not a big enough customer.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    https://windowsserver.uservoice.com/forums/295047-general-feedback/suggestions/31734808-nested-virtualization-for-amd-epyc-and-ryzen https://windowsserver.uservoice.com/forums/295047-general-fe...
- xbar 5y ago

bogwog 5y ago

So now developers can stop writing apps for Windows. Instead, they can write for Linux and distribute on Windows using WSL. Thanks Microsoft!

tyingq 5y ago
s/Thanks/Embrace :)
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  s/Embrace/Extend ... except that if Microsoft did, likely very few would embrace such extensions. A successful EEE play requires a lot of pre-existing trust that has to last through the Extend phase, which is why I don't think they'll ever try that again in the foreseeable future.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I've seen apparent fanfare and demand for DirectX for WSL that Microsoft recently built so I'm skeptical of this.
BuildTheRobots 5y ago
I'm still convinced the long term plan is to stop people being able to boot a Linux kernel on desktop hardware (think secure boot) and when people complain the response is going to be "but you can run Linux on Windows!"
- ROARosen 5y ago
  After all, there must be something diabolical when Microsoft is just doing something to appease devs who have for years railed against them for being dev hostile.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    If you've been bitten by a tiger, it seems right to be wary when it invites you for dinner.

jpm48 5y ago

Looking forward to testing my OpenGL lecture code on this, it works under Windows and Linux natively so working on WSL will be a major bonus for me :-)

jpm48 5y ago
First initial test (after 3hrs to update everything!) I can't create an OpenGL Core 4.1 Context with SDL2 Oh well it's late now will investigate more in the morning.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  They only support OpenGL 3.x

jascii 5y ago

Weren't there X11 systems for windows for a long time?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tyingq 5y ago
Yes, though out of the box functional wayland, gpu acceleration, and pulse audio is new. You're right, though, that the article is a bit awkward in not acknowledging that most people were already using VcXsrv or similar on the Windows side to run Linux gui apps.
- chx 5y ago
  > most people were already using VcXsrv or similar the devil is in the details and the painful truth is none of that works real well. I am using JetBrains Projector instead which would be great if two super annoying bugs were fixed. Meaning that doesn't work well either -- for now. Maybe it will, maybe X+VNC will someday be great in a Windows VM -- but I have much larger confidence in Microsoft driving this to greatness.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Oh, I agree. It's just that the article reads as if everyone is using WSL only for text based apps today. I was initially confused by that.

cyberCleve 5y ago

I learned from the video you can launch VS code from within WSL with "code ." That's really useful. I like it.

adolfojp 5y ago
You can also launch the Windows file explorer the same way. "explorer.exe ."
- tester756 5y ago
  In Power-Shell >ii . :)
  - cyberCleve 5y ago
    Ah, I was confused until I ran > alias ii Now I see why this works. Good trick either way.
- joromero 5y ago
  I recently discovered that you can do cat file | clip.exe which as expected will copy to your clipboard

IceWreck 5y ago

Who will be the first one to try to run Windows GUI apps in Wine inside WSL ?

thrower123 5y ago
I'm pretty sure I did this a decade ago with whatever insanity you needed to use to run Linux apps inside of Windows XP/7 - http://www.andlinux.org/ http://www.andlinux.org/ maybe?
davidgerard 5y ago
there's been a shitload of attempts to do Wine on Windows, I went through a pile of failed ones around 2008-2009 and succeeded in 2019: https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632942 This should make it as simple as "sudo apt install wine" though.

thecrumb 5y ago

Anyone with a Mac who can compare file system operations between Mac and WSL2? I jumped ship from Windows to Mac before WSL2 as it was just too slow to use. Unfortunately the Mac isn't much better so I'm curious if it's worth moving back with WSL2.

runjake 5y ago
Mac FS performance was abysmal, last I checked. WSL2 FS performance is still even worse (but still tolerable).
OJFord 5y ago
What do you do that fs performance is your primary/a major concern in choosing an OS (esp. among the major ones)? I don't mean to sound snarky, I'm curious. For all I know it should matter to me more!
- andrewl-hn 5y ago
  JavaScript development tends to involve a lot of files. Between Babel, ESLint, Webpack, Post-CSS with their high number of plugins, presets, and other support modules, Typescript, testing frameworks like Jest (that comes with it's own test runner, mocking facilities, transpile-aware code coverage etc.), and general tendency for JS developers to favor composing software out of many small modules - a typical JavaScript project (browser or Node) has thousands of modules and tens of thousands of files in node_modules folder. Plus, a typical JS development process involves a filesystem-based watcher that reloads parts of an application on a fly as a developer changes code. As a result, for a very big percentage of programmers filesystem performance is crucial for their day-to-day work. There's an argument to be made that JS development ecosystem is unnecessary complex, and there are projects that try to change the status quo, but they are not ready for a prime time and aren't widespread enough yet.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Hm I certainly sympathise, just hadn't occurred to me the filesystem might be a bottleneck here. I switched from my work Mac to my desktop and bought (or rather, so I could buy) more RAM, since it was exhausted building, and would frequently crash. I now have enough to be able to give it 'enough' and cgroup limit it from hogging more and interrupting my browsing etc. but I don't think I've given it so much that, what, the speed at which it can read the 100ks of files in order to 'webpack' them is the limiting factor. Perhaps I'm just (foolishly) content living with it much slower than you are, so I don't have everything else fast enough for that to be the problem.

jhoechtl 5y ago

> That’s because with this feature we are automatically starting a companion system distro, containing a Wayland, X server, pulse audio server, and everything else needed to make Linux GUI apps communicate with Windows. You see me impressed. Especially as they are supporting Wayland. Now please make electron apps non-blurry on Wayland

rowanG077 5y ago
any electron app that is uptodate should no longer be blurry. Electron recently landed support for wayland so xwayland no longer has to be used.
- zxzax 5y ago
  For the curious, see this comment from the electron contributor on how to enable it: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment-793105706 https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment...
- akvadrako 5y ago
  I would consider electron support for Wayland to be alpha quality at the moment.
  - vially 5y ago
    I've been using it for a couple of months now (by patching the applications which haven't upgraded to Electron 12 yet) and it's been working great for me. Is there anything in particular that is broken and/or missing from Electron's Wayland implementation? Or are you referring to GNOME's refusal to implement server-side decorations [1][2] as a limitation of Electron? [1] - https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 [2] - https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/27522 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/27522
    - akvadrako 5y ago
      It's by their own admission, this is "very experimental" in Electron 12 and hence not enabled by default. https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment-716152639 https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/26022#issuecomment...

wing-_-nuts 5y ago

Questions: 1. Does the vGPU support mean that we get decent cuda support AND wayland? I know they mentioned a nvidia specific driver 2. Given they are supporting x/wayland, would it be possible to run i3wm or sway for window management?

vetinari 5y ago
1. You had it before in Linux, too; what you didn't have is OpenGL acceleration under for Xwayland clients. 2. No, CBL-Mariner uses Weston, and then RDP to tunnel it into the Windows side. Client decorations are CSD, for window management you will be stuck with Windows shell. Try PowerToys (Fancy Zones), makes it less painful.

johnvega 5y ago

On my 2nd chromebook computer but likely moving back to mostly to Windows because of WSL2. Just 1 of many benefits: build native Windows GoLang app from WSL2: (Caddy server) env GOOS=windows go build -o caddy.exe No need to setup gcc in native Windows. Not sure if this works on all GoLang apps, but at least works for a reasonably complex Caddy server

denysvitali 5y ago
I was under the impression that Go cross-compilation between architectures and operating systems wasn't a problem already... Am I missing something? What does this have to do with WSL 2?
- kuschku 5y ago
  You can compile for windows, on windows, without the pain of setting up a compilation environment on windows.
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    That's awesome, although it's not as great as it might appear at first glance. I once took on a job to write a .bat script to compile a GO app any Windows machine without any Go environment installed. The script ended up about 20 lines long, and could compile the app on a fresh Windows install on any machine. It just took all day to write when I thought it would be done in 30 minutes. Working with GO on Windows can be a pain, but my takeaway from this ordeal was that it wasn't really the fault of MS or Google, but due to most Windows users actually having no idea how Windows works, even software developers who have been using the OS for 20 years.
    - ampdepolymerase 5y ago
      The NT kernel/hypervisor is a marvel of software engineering but unfortunately it is not as easy to teach in OS classes compared to Unix/Linux family systems.
5y ago

goatinaboat 5y ago

Superb. WSL goes from strength to strength.

Rabidgremlin 5y ago

Any ideas around what could be leveraged here with docker? I'm thinking it would be great to have all dev tooling + IDE bundled into containers for quickly switching projects/ getting devs up to and running fast.

wmf 5y ago
Check out Flatpak which is basically Docker for GUI apps.
- Rabidgremlin 5y ago
  Interesting... Thanks

Railsify 5y ago

But... Can I run virtualbox along side wsl2 without the massive performance hit in virtualbox?

1MachineElf 5y ago
YMMV. VirtualBox couldn't coexist with WSL2 in the beginning, and even when support was officially announced by VirtualBox and listed on Microsoft's website, it still didn't work for a lot of people. I had that problem during 2020 and gave up, but it appears that others are having success in 2021: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/798 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/issues/798

marcodiego 5y ago

Half of me: "Cool! Now we only need to release software for linux!" Other half of me: "Hmmm... Now companies will have less incentive to support linux running natively on their hardware..."

squarefoot 5y ago
That's exactly what is going to happen. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm afraid we'll soon also see software advertised as running "better" under WSL than Linux.
alexisread 5y ago
It could be even more problematic than that. With windows drivers supporting a windows ABI, that becomes a Linux ABI under WSL. Kinda puts a wrench in the Linux no-ABI philosophy...
wernercd 5y ago
Embrace, extend, extinguish for the new millennium! Love many of the things MS is doing... but it's hard not to see echo's of the past and wonder if its history repeating.
Beached 5y ago
what about cost?

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago

I can't wait to get this running to see Word 97 in Wine.

aargh_aargh 5y ago

Is this to be expected in the next regular Win10 update (outside of the insiders build)?

lsllc 5y ago

So, 2021 is finally [0] going to be the year of the Linux Desktop? /s [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3038d4/when_was_the_first_year_of_the_linux_desktop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3038d4/when_was_the_...

yread 5y ago

So, as a mostly Windows guy: What Linux GUI apps are you going to run? What has a Linux GUI but no Windows app or alternative?

aye01 5y ago
its mostly for people doing work in the WSL world. If you're writing code, you can throw up an IDE running directly inside WSL and run toolchains that exist inside WSL altogether. Before, you'd have to do something like use WSL remote or open the project in a Windows program and edit the Linux file, then use the Windows version runtime of whatever langauge youre using to use any of the built in IDE features for that language.
jraph 5y ago
> What has a Linux GUI but no Windows app or alternative? I don't know about alternatives (it seems Cubase is a proprietary one), but Rosegarden [1] is a GNU/Linux "audio and MIDI sequencer, scorewriter and musical composition and editing tool" that does not seem to have a Windows build (a maintained one anyway). It's a great app, I guess it could convince a musician to use Linux for some music-related activities. I don't know if it runs (well) in WSL (1 or 2). Rosegarden aside, I'm not sure there is a single app I use regularly that absolutely can't run on Windows (some can run on Windows (and Mac), but probably run way better on GNU/Linux, like the Kate editor, and Clementine seems to have a spotty Windows support too). [1] https://rosegardenmusic.com/ https://rosegardenmusic.com/
gizmo385 5y ago
My first reaction would be custom terminal applications (i.e. Terminator)
- icebergonfire 5y ago
  Vouching for this, haven’t found an native alternative for Windows. Feels odd to run another entire OS just for a terminal application, but here we are.
SSLy 5y ago

jfdi 5y ago

Does anyone know if native or near-native disk IO performance is coming to WSL? This has been a pretty big challenge from using it if your use case requires any decent iops. It would be magical if WSL could do physical NVMe pass through for example....

dshacker 5y ago
I think WSL2 has that, WSL1 used to be super slow disk wise, but I've seen near-native disk speeds on NVME drives on WSL2 (Specially useful for node_modules)
- hansvm 5y ago
  Only when accessing WSL-owned files though right? Like, if you're wanted to work on the same repo with some Linux tools and some Windows tools you'd still have a ton of pain points?
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    You’re going to probably run into issues anyway. Linux tools expect case-sensitive file systems and explode in interesting ways when they’re not.
    - hansvm 5y ago
      Depends what you're doing and how windows-centric your files are I guess. At my last job I mixed and matched tools like that, and it generally worked great aside from the mediocre disk throughput.
amilios 5y ago
This is one of the things that turned me off from WSL: not sure if something has changed recently with WSL2, but for example installing Node deps would take forever on the old WSL, to the extent of ridiculousness and just not being worth using

ncphil 5y ago

Looks like some kind of group policy now prevents me from running WSL on my work machine. In the past Hyper-V bluescreened the peculiar Win 10 build my company uses, making WSL2 (and Docker Desktop, for that matter) a no-go. WSL1 still worked, but I eventually requisitioned VMware Workstation to run Linux and docker for projects that required them. For anything else I've got tried-and-true MSYS2 installed, which works well enough.

DonnyV 5y ago

...or I can use VirtualBox and spin up multiple versions and flavors of Linux and use that. Then delete when I don't need them anymore. Not sure what this is trying to solve.

porphyra 5y ago
having real gpu acceleration is nice

johnghanks 5y ago

so much negativity in this thread for a great feature they absolutely didn't have to implement.

davidgerard 5y ago

obviously they just wanted Wine on Windows to work properly, 'cos that's an easier way to make Encarta 97 work than adding Win16 support to Windows 10

Animats 5y ago

This should be called the Linux Subsystem for Windows. The real Windows Subsystem for Linux is WINE, which runs Windows programs on Linux. It can not only run GUI programs, it runs games reasonably well.

math0ne 5y ago

Nice that this is easier, but is this better than just using VcXsrv?

whatever_dude 5y ago

"Now available" is a bit misleading. It's only available on the latest version of Windows Insiders.

dlevine 5y ago

I have been a Mac user for many years, and typically used Macs for development and a Windows PC for gaming. I recently setup WSL2 on my new Ryzen desktop, and it has been great for web development. Works pretty seamlessly, and not being able to run GUI apps was one of my few complaints (mostly because I wanted to run a graphical git difftool). Glad to see they have addressed this.

wvenable 5y ago
With WSL1 way back, I ran GUI apps using a Win32 X server. I had some Linux GUI tools that I needed to be able to run and it was pretty seamless.
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
  I was somewhat surprised that WSL1 could run the valgrind memory checks at least well enough to match results of basic tests on a real Linux machine.
- litoorachure 5y ago
  I actually still use WSL1 and vcxsrv to do that when I use Windows. It is seamless, even the icons that show up in the Windows taskbar are correct. If this new WSL2 experience works just as well, I might finally switch :)
ohmyzee 5y ago
I've always found it to be 99% there. But that 1% prevents you from doing any serious work. Things like mongo become a nightmare when using WSL. Its been entirely frustrating for me. I would have much rather they focused on getting popular libraries to work rather than focus on the flashy GUI features
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  Isn't it easier to simply run Linux anyway? Either in a VM or barebone?
- 5y ago

tester756 5y ago

It's impressive as hell

dekhn 5y ago

As a user of Interix on Windows NT (porting an entire X windows application including Motif and OpenGL) around 2000, I'm glad to see they finally managed to improve on it. For real, though, I will give MSFT tons of credit for this. They really did an impressive job all-around.

matlads 5y ago
I am glad someone has mentioned Interix. MSFT has been trying to get this right for 25 years

evolve2k 5y ago

The moment you notice that the guy posting it is literally wearing an suit and tie. This is no Linux from the inside collaboration, speaks volumes as to the culture around the project. Since when are developer outreach teams wearing traditional suit and ties?

thiht 5y ago
I wouldn't read too much in this. When I posted on the technical blog of the company I work for, I chose my resume picture as an avatar, on which I happen to wear a suit. It doesn't mean I'm overly corporate or the suit & tie type, I just think I look good in a suit and like using this picture to present myself professionally.

g42gregory 5y ago

I am beginning seriously to consider moving to windows from Mac, even with the M1 chip. In the end, I must have a Linux runtime and WSL support seem to be getting better and better.

nickysielicki 5y ago

I tried it. Window resizes and moves are very laggy, but I mean, it's pretty great other than that. https://i.imgur.com/EBdMKz7.png https://i.imgur.com/EBdMKz7.png Kind of hard to justify buying anything else for a dev laptop at this point. edit: I feel obligated to mention the code in that screenshot is not something I wrote. https://www.mathblog.dk/project-euler-141investigating-progressive-numbers-n-which-are-also-square/ https://www.mathblog.dk/project-euler-141investigating-progr...

jjtheblunt 5y ago
WSL2 crashes consistently n my own microsoft laptop in current windows, and I've tried diagnosing an improper configuration: how does one work around that?
- coder543 5y ago
  This doesn't seem like a genuine question. You provide no details, and WSL2 works great for everyone I personally know. You could probably get help there: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues But, obviously, you would have to actually be willing to provide meaningful details and not just... what you posted here.
  - jjtheblunt 5y ago
    Thanks for the link, and the only thing i've been doing is debian in WSL2 on arm (Surface Pro X), which works great, as does fedora....the strangeness is that the subsystem seems to freeze perhaps after a sleep / wake cycle, but not at a predictable time delay. Anyway, since that's a showstopper, it's unusable, and i'm going to check out that link. thanks again.
    - discordance 5y ago
      As if Windows on ARM wasn't experimental enough... Linux (GUI apps) on Windows on ARM is quite the edge case. Best of luck though!

chrismsimpson 5y ago

A Trojan horse? Honestly, is this enough to finally call time on the Linux desktop? I'm considering trying Windows as my next Linux distro.

voceboy521 5y ago

windows 10 is now another linux distro option

cdolan 5y ago

Can’t wait to run “native” Linux GUI on Windows10 (ARM, of course), on my bare M1X iMac!

_def 5y ago

I really like WSL. Some weeks ago I switched to Ubuntu again because developing is still a nightmare on Windows. But what really impressed me was how much faster it is.

lyjackal 5y ago
What was faster? Native Ubuntu that's my experience. I couldn't tolerate speed issues on WSL
- exciteabletom 5y ago
  If your issues were disk speed related, you should know that accessing files in NTFS using WSL2 is very slow. You'll have to move your files to the Linux FS first.

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago

Can they just finish their thought and just make it 100% Linux? We don't need windows.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I don't want poo poo too much over this, because I like the fact that MS at least seems to be trying, but is it a common need at all? Who is the target audience here. I am not a developer so it is possible I am missing a use case. I am on popos now and when I need windows, I VM into one. Obviously it works the other way works as well.

O_H_E 5y ago

Oh great, now Microsoft is going to have a polished wayland implementation before us. Dibs on the year of WSL Desktop!!

jeena 5y ago

This will make my life probably very difficult. My worry is that this will give the IT departments ammunition to push devs from Linux to Windows to be able to control their devices better. They will be able to say that the work on the Linux software now can be done on Windows so there is no need for exceptions for the developers from company policies. I know, I should really get out of the automotive industry and those big companies anyway because they're so abusive, but right now, because of my private life, I'm kind of stuck at least for a year or even more. Just hoping that I can get out before this becomes reality :D

drummer 5y ago

This is all very cool Microsoft, but what I really want is Visual Studio and C++ running on Linux with full debugger support like on Windows.

jopsen 5y ago

Year of the Linux desktop! Microsoft has finally embraced the Linux desktop, maybe next they extend it?

salzig 5y ago

Maybe it's just me, but after testing Steam on Linux, which promised a good coverage [1][2], i'm more and more feeling like replacing the only left Windows device with linux. The only thing that would make sense for me, is that microsoft should port their UI to linux and handle their backwards compability with wine. I mean, what is the benefit of keeping their own kernel, when obviously they understand that another kernel and userspace is more and more important, and even used by them selfs. 1: Protondb: https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ 2: ProtonDB Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25333219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25333219

irrational 5y ago
Except, not all games on Steam work on Linux. I’m primarily a Mac user, but I have a windows partition on my laptop so that I can play steam games that are Windows only. It would be fantastic if there was no such thing as Windows only games anymore.
- salzig 5y ago
  I so far stumbled upon only a single game that doesn't work on linux for me, and it's not because the game is not working, but because the anti-cheat tool has problems and the game doesn't let me join multiplayer sessions.
  - ahD5zae7 5y ago
    Well I'd be inclined to agree with the parent as even per the link to ProtonDB included by the GP about 40% (as of this moment) out of top 10 most popular games are not working under Linux (status: borked). I love linux and use it 90% of the time every day but I also have an old and derelict windows partition just so I can launch a game or two from time to time. Maybe the day will come when all games work flawlessly on Linux and I certainly hope it will. But evidence suggests that we have still some way to go...
larodi 5y ago
Microsoft porting ‘their UI’ to whatever sounds like a massive misunderstanding of what Microsoft’s UI is and how it works...

Beached 5y ago

I'm super disappointed with wsl's move to hyper v. I tried out wsl2 3 months ago, overall system performance took a hit, not just slower WSL experience, but slower windows experience too. In addition, I had to choose, wsl2 and no other vms through vmware or virtualbox,. or WSL with vmware and virtualbox. they claim they work together nicely, but they don't. vmware and virtualbox crash, freeze, and crawl to a halt constantly when hyperv is enabled. so back to wsl1 for me. I love WSL, I think it's the future, just please don't build that future on top of hyperv!!! :'(

caspar 5y ago
> In addition, I had to choose, wsl2 and no other vms through vmware or virtualbox,. or WSL with vmware and virtualbox. they claim they work together nicely, but they don't. vmware and virtualbox crash, freeze, and crawl to a halt constantly when hyperv is enabled. Personally I simply swapped to using HyperV for other VMs when I needed them. Turns out I didn't need them that much anyway once WSL2 got good enough. As for performance - I game on Windows still with WSL2 turned on. As long as you limit WSL2's memory usage a bit as described in another thread, I haven't noticed any performance slowdown in Windows. (On the other hand, I have noticed that IO on the linux-side is so much faster in WSL2 than WSL1, which was the main reason I swapped as soon as I could.)

blodkorv 5y ago

Soon linux will be very much illrelevant on workstations. Very nice

greyhair 5y ago

As an AT&T Unix/Solaris/HPUX/NetBSD/Linux embedded developer for the last 35+ years, I find this quite useful. While I still have two machines (Windows 10 + Ubuntu 18.04) I can see this progress leading to a point where I have one machine doing both. I just need them to get qemu-arm working correctly on X86 to support ARM target development. Hopefully they'll get qemu-risc-v working, because I can see RISC-V in my future.

adultSwim 5y ago

Is this J++ again?