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> I used WSL1 when it launched and it was _incredible_. Bash actually on Windows. My workflow changed because of the level of integration I had with Windows. I
by flukus 5y ago
> I used WSL1 when it launched and it was _incredible_. Bash actually on Windows. My workflow changed because of the level of integration I had with Windows. I could run browser automation tools against my Windows browsers, from Linux. I could run Windows programs from bash.
Cygwin has been able to do this for 2 decades, actual bash plus other unix tools compiled to actual windows exe's. You can even run some gui tools if you run an xserver on windows.
Even WSL1 wasn't as good, there were too many issues like tail not working properly on windows files, issues with network shares, interop, etc. I pretty quickly reverted to cygwin.
- bostonsre 5y agoWSL 1 was an ok attempt but yea, it had a lot of rough edges. From my experience WSL 2 is a bunch better and I definitely like it better than when I used cygwin (but that was 10 or so years ago). Cygwin is an ok shell, but being able to yum install stuff and run linux programs on wsl 2 has been awesome.
- jcelerier 5y agoBut msys2 does exactly the same without a VM
- NavinF 5y agoUgh. Cygwin was such a pain back when it was the only option. It was yet another ABI and had all the breakage that implies. Even today, so many open source projects are full of ifdefs for cygwin. I much prefer WSL1 and I've only run into a couple of issues over the last year (can't set Windows time from Linux and ssh-agent doesn't work out of the box) which is a significant improvement over cygwin or even a proper linux distro (which would occasionally boot to a black screen after updating anything related to X)
- flukus 5y agoThe same or similar patches exist for WSL. One of the examples I gave was tail not working on windows files, cygwin has had a patch for years so it just works, ubuntu had to add the same or a similar patch to work in wsl.