29 ms·

Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

618 points by anchpop 5y ago

phkahler 5y ago
>> Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've extended the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop. We've also added various functionality to it, such as support for multi-monitor, cut/paste, audio in/out, etc... Did they push those changes upstream? This seems like it could be another way to run GUI apps in containers on Linux too.
- ubercow13 5y ago
  You can already run GUI apps in containers using pure wayland, just bind the socket into the container.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Likewise X, if you pass it the socket (although there are caveats around everything but just X11, like audio, which have to be routed out separately)
  - ziftface 5y ago
    > just bind the socket into the container I thought Wayland relied on shared memory with the compositor to work? I could be way off though
    - wahern 5y ago
      Containers run under the same kernel, so sharing memory works the same as it does for processes generally.
- password4321 5y ago
  https://github.com/microsoft/weston-mirror https://github.com/microsoft/weston-mirror I could not find any reference to it upstream or mention in the mailing lists.
- earthscienceman 5y ago
  This was my exact question, as much as I hate Microsoft and Windows (15 years of using linux now in my brief 32 years on the planet).... this could be the project that pushes Wayland to fruition finally. It could also significantly improve GUI support in general. I guess getting the right thing for the wrong reasons is better than not getting them at all? I'm not a very good pragmatist.
- linux2647 5y ago
  The README mentioned that they have their changes in a separate public GitHub repo and that they plan to upstream it
ecnahc515 5y ago
Windows + WSL2 is starting to catching up with Chrome OS + crostini. How exciting.
pygar 5y ago
This is undoubtedly cool but I'm curious to know of a use case that would warrant installing this. Could this just have been a step in creating "Windows Subsystem for Android" [0] that they decided to release as its own layer? The screenshot on the github page shows VSCode, Edge, Blender, Xcalc, Xclock and GNOME file manager which are all either available natively on windows or redundant. [0] https://www.xda-developers.com/wundows-subsystem-android-benchmarks-solid-performance/ https://www.xda-developers.com/wundows-subsystem-android-ben...
- scandinavian 5y ago
  Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL and vice versa is extremely slow, so running for example your IDE in WSL and having your code etc. stored in WSL is useful. I think that is one of the big usecases. It's already kinda supported in vscode, where it runs a vscode server in WSL and Windows just runs the frontend. It's useful for me when developing dotnet intended for Linux as I can store the code in WSL and be able to build, debug, run docker and so on directly from vscode.
  - hasperdi 5y ago
    Are you talking about WSL1 or WSL? Wsl2 is much much faster due to having a virtualized real linux kernel running
    - scandinavian 5y ago
      Accessing the WSL filesystem from WSL is indeed a lot faster on WSL2. Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL or vise versa is even slower in WSL2 compared to WSL1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-versions#comparing-features https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-version... > As you can tell from the comparison table above, the WSL 2 architecture outperforms WSL 1 in several ways, with the exception of performance across OS file systems.
    - easton 5y ago
      System performance is, IO between Windows and Linux isn’t. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
b215826 5y ago
Now someone make a Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI.
- rubyn00bie 5y ago
  Isn't that pretty much what Wine does? Having been using Linux as my daily workstation for a year now, I've been blown away how easy it is (and generally transparent) to install and use Windows applications on Linux.
  - spijdar 5y ago
    Actually, not quite. Wine is closer to what WSL1 was. The closest equivalent to "Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI" on WSL2 for Linux would just be ... running Windows in a VM, with FreeRDP doing per-app tunneling to the Linux host. I think there's even some software for automating this somewhere out there.
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      >Wine is closer to what WSL1 was Not quite. Wine just translates windows syscalls to linux ones but WSL actually reimplemented the linux api inside the NT kernel (which was designed with the ability to use multiple OS apis.)
      - spijdar 5y ago
        Well, I said "closer", not an exact analogue. They're pretty close equivalents, though, as most Windows programs don't actually call syscalls directly, but link in an OS-provided DLL and call an exported symbol from it, with the userspace to kernel bits abstracted away from most user programs. Wine (mostly) re-implements those DLLs, effectively re-implementing the Win32 API (a userspace API) in Linux's userland. (programs are allowed to call the kernel directly, though, and Wine has to handle those cases esp. for DRM/anti-cheat code in games that poke at the kernel directly, recently Linux was patched to allow userspace programs to directly handle syscalls [0][1], making Wine ... closer to a WSL1 equivalent?) [0] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/10/1323 https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/10/1323 [1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/linux/syscall_user_dispatch.h https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/linux/...
mathnode 5y ago
For those that don't know, this will only be available in Windows 11, see https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/347#issuecomment-877695975 https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/347#issuecomment-87...
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  To be fair, it's also the first prerequisite on the linked page. > WSLg is going to be generally available alongside the upcoming release of Windows. To get access to a preview of WSLg, you'll need to join the Windows Insider Program and be running a Windows 10 Insider Preview build from the beta or dev channels.
- nwatson 5y ago
  Yeah bummer. My old Windows machine won't be upgradable to Windows 11 ... interestingly I was able to install the Windows 11 preview and even get the WSL2 update with the integrated X11/GUI and it worked great. However I was notified I couldn't upgrade to official build and the only recourse was to re-install Windows 10. I'll need to revert to one of the available X11 servers but I wiped out the old configuration and it's kinda painful to automatically set $DISPLAY and also get Norton Firewall to play along.
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    I have a solution for the disk/partition type/layout incompatible with upgrading to newer Windows 11 builds (but not the TPM workaround) but I haven’t gotten around to packaging it and publishing it for download on our site.
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      Don't think I've heard about those, what all requirements changed on the storage side there?
      - ComputerGuru 5y ago
        I don’t know if it’s what the GP was referring to but partition requirements pertaining to MBR vs GPT and specific requirements for alignment, MSR properties, and order of partitions has been locked down considerably. Annoyingly they all manifest as an opaque “this PC isn’t compatible” or similar message.
AcerbicZero 5y ago
WSL seriously changed the amount of work I can do from my gaming PC, but I’m not sure if that’s actually a good thing based on my productivity over the past few months. That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  > That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user. That's the tip of the iceberg MS want everyone to see, and point the finger at. MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative since they lost the battle when they attempted to kill it during the Ballmer era. The plan now is more subtle: making sure everyone using Linux will want to do that from a Windows machine, with all the implications about security and privacy, which would be non existent since any malware (or Windows itself) that for example used Windows keyboard drivers to sniff passwords while one connects say to the bank under WSL "because it's more secure" would be 100% undetectable from that Linux. The next step will be libraries to access Windows internals and GUI from WSL, so that one can build hybrids that run only on Windows+WSL; very convenient, but unfortunately now Linux is displaced and the only way to benefit from all that software will be to run it under Windows. In the end, MS will create their own Linux distro which runs on top of Windows and will essentially kill all other non-server oriented Linux distros. Most see WSL as a good thing; I see an elaborate, and have to admit, very clever, way to take complete control of Linux in the next years.
  - NortySpock 5y ago
    So the Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI (WSLg) business plan looks like this, I assume: Step 1: get lots of devs using WSL / WSL GUI. Step 2: Get them comfortable with flexibly using WSL GUI on Linux and Windows interchangeably Step 3: roll out your poison pill: new Version X, offering great compatibility on Windows but bad integration with Linux; maybe Linux support is buggy or nonexistent, maybe the API doesn't mesh with Linux systems at all, maybe it has license conflicts and Linux has to do a rewrite to be FOSS or write a hacky FOSS shim. Whatever creates the most pain for Linux / FOSS users. Step 4: Stuck with being tied to WSLg, Developers go to the business and say "either we have to spend a lot of time fixing Linux issues or we buy Windows licenses" at which point the business happily buys Windows and Office 365 volume licenses and keeps going. Step 5: Microsoft maintains its monopoly for another 10 years. The "I want to stay independent" workaround is (I assume) writing API layers that can serve "thin GUI clients" on multiple platforms (I guess like Electron or a regular web application or something.)
shpongled 5y ago
Will I be able to use i3?
- IncRnd 5y ago
  Yes.
- judge2020 5y ago
  This will be available in Windows 11, so your processor does have to be able to upgrade to that. If you're fine with an OS reinstall there are ways to force the install.
  - darcyparker 5y ago
    I don't think he is referring to an i3 processor, but rather https://i3wm.org/ https://i3wm.org/
- reificator 5y ago
  I can't imagine you'd be able to use i3 for your windows apps from what I've read, but it should work with your Linux side.
lowtto 5y ago
WSL2 is essentially just.. Windows + Linux. I tried it and it is awesome. Cannot wait to see further progress that comes out of this. I really cannot leave Windows to be honest. The network effect is too strong. Coupled with recent Microsoft effort such as Visual Code, its looking like they are doing nothing but going towards the better direction than the old days. Who would have thought. Would you believe it if anyone said this to be the case, 10 years ago?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Dual boot? This does look slick, I was an avid WSL user until I started dual booting. Now I almost never need to boot to Windows. I get that if you often need to switch it can be a pain in the ass but at least Linux respects my privacy and freedom.
  - seanw444 5y ago
    Same situation here. Dual-booting Linux and Windows 10, and I figured I'd boot into Windows often enough for it to get obnoxious. But I only ever get on there to play a few demanding games (which I already don't play often anymore), or make music with an A+ DAW for making music that doesn't run super effectively on Wine. Linux handles everything else I do like a champ.
    - tck42 5y ago
      A friend of mine has been complaining that a DAW is the only thing keeping him stuck in Windows at this point as well. In his case, he specifically said that VST's were the problem. Was your experience the same?
      - necubi 5y ago
        Bitwig is a very good DAW with native Linux support. It's made by former Ableton devs so it definitely leans in that direction, but it works pretty well for other types of workflows too, especially with the recently released version 4. VSTs are definitely an issue; most high quality commercial plugins are still only released for mac/windows. However there are a few projects for running them in wine and it generally works pretty well. I do think we'll see more and more Linux in studios going forward, but it would help if Linux got its pro audio story together. Pipewire is a big step in the right direction but not yet mature.
avodonosov 5y ago
I already asked this in the past, and want to ask again. Is Microsoft a corporation of goodness now?
- 0des 5y ago
  Embrace Extend <-- you are here Extinguish
  - lghh 5y ago
    What are they extending? What functionality does this add to Linux that is only available on Windows?
    - spystath 5y ago
      One is their DirectX extension that only works on WSL2. It allows you to access the DX API through a shim driver. You can now have a Linux application that needs access to /dev/xdg which is only available in WSL2. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/
    - deleted 5y ago
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  - deleted 5y ago
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- villasv 5y ago
  Asking if a publicly traded company this big is good or bad is pointless. A corporation is psychopathic; if it goes Patrick Bateman or Dexter Morgan depends on the environment. The current environment incentivizes expanding the developer ecosystem, hence DX investments.
- cybernautique 5y ago
  In my opinion, this is actually a question of values. My position: absolutely not, but I take it as axiomatic that Microsoft (et al.) are incapable of any actual "good." This is simply Window's attempt to build a new walled garden. If they were actually serious about advancing the state of civil computing, they'd make the NT core available as a microkernel that can be modularly placed into the Linux ecosystem. That is the _one_ thing I can think of which might raise my opinion of them (and I'm sure they lose sleep at night, knowing they haven't got my endorsement).
CraftingLinks 5y ago
I just might switch to linux instead.
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  You can always fall back on the Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI, aka WINE/DOSBox/VMW/VBX/QEMU, with varying levels of integration/fiddle/config.
  - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
    Varying levels of integration, with fiddling being required less and less (eg. Proton), and with a nuch higher level of privacy. Also, I don't want my computer to feel like a billboard for Candy Crush Saga.
    - themodelplumber 5y ago
      Sorry, your reply was missing a sub-legible customer experience improvement key. Please re-authorize at your nearest _Subway_.
- speed_spread 5y ago
  Most corporate PC users do not have that option. WSL solves that.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    This is the most plausible explanation. Since most of the newer dev frameworks use very unix like CLI, windows as a dev operating system was feeling very left out. VSCode made this painfully obvious. Most corporates would just offer you a mac instead. WSLg is pretty cool, but if you have a choice, running ubuntu or debian is better, with emulation for whatever windows legacy stuff you need to support.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
wvenable 5y ago
That seems like a very complex architecture. RDP client and server? That seems like a strange approach for a single machine solution.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Ironic statement considering how X was designed to work.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    I posted this because I've used Linux GUI apps on Windows with WSL1 and an X server. This seems much more complex than that.
- cogman10 5y ago
  It's because WSL2 abandoned the initial goals of WSL1 and just did a VM instead. I wish MS continued evolving WSL1 instead of doing the VM approach but c'est la vie.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    >I wish MS continued evolving WSL1 I do too but only from a techy POV. I think it was awesome they expanded their old posix apis into a drop in linux replacement and wish it could have continued being expanded.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      For me, it comes down to the fact that WSL1 apps were ran like native apps. That was amazing. It meant I could kill a WSL1 app from task manager. It meant that those apps were only taking the memory they used, not an entire VM's worth of memory. It meant I didn't have to manage yet another virtual machine environment on my PC. WSL2 is certainly the way to go if you want a more "true" linux experience. I just lament the fact that WSL1 came so close to being true enough.
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
reilly3000 5y ago
I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to support. Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows build or corollary app. I get how ‘you never have to leave Windows’ is a nice thing for their business, but I don’t see this being a reason I would stop dual-booting. The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games. Otherwise I really enjoy the bloat-free, ad-free, telemetry-free, snappy, tractable, and undistracted experience that is Linux desktop computing. It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support. Other way around. The Kernel getting real support for NTFS (was merged into Linus' tree a month ago [0]) there's hope to get native performance on WSL2. Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next decade. [0] https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-have-improved-ntfs-file-system-support/ https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-have-...
  - pritambaral 5y ago
    Linux and Windows use mutually exclusive permission/ACL bits, even on the same NTFS filesystem.
    - pxc 5y ago
      > even on the same NTFS filesystem can you explain a bit how this works?
      - pkaye 5y ago
        I think they use extended attributes in NTFS to provide the Linux file system permission. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/file-permissions https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/file-permission...
son_ngu 5y ago
This is exciting. I dual boot Windows and Linux, cause although I really like my setup on Linux, the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me. I wonder if I can use something like bspwm, maybe not... haha
- earthscienceman 5y ago
  Have you tried KDE plasma?
rvz 5y ago
Extend. > Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've EXTENDED the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop. It has been admitted.
- oaiey 5y ago
  RDP is a proprietary protocol of Microsoft. Extending their own protocol sounds pretty normal. And the code seems available on their weston-mirror. It just a merge away. Microsoft does enough shady things in the now, let us not try not force some EEE pattern.
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
Amazingly this seems better integrated than Mac's XQuartz which I always find awkward and buggy. If it weren't for the forced ads and updates I would consider switching back to Windows.
sys_64738 5y ago
How long before even Linus migrates to Windows as his daily driver?
zzandd 5y ago
So how long until us poor fellows running enterprise windows see this? I currently use vcxsrv which works mostly fine, but it's hard to convince other people to adopt the multitude of hacks I have to make this work, and supporting windows in builds is painful.
tonoto 5y ago
you don't have to wait until Windows 11 for this nonsense. I am unfortunately locked at my current mission to be on a Windows laptop, my first Windows experience in years. As soon as I read up on wsl2 I installed it and inside installed the xrdp server and a corresponding lightweight environment, then just rdp into it (but every time the wsl gets restarted, you'll have to do a /etc/init.d/xrdp restart). Although, I can't wait until I get to a sane environment again. Without Windows and all headache it brings me...
iammisc 5y ago
This might actually be the year of the Linux desktop
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  Or the year of Lindows or Winux.
jjcon 5y ago
I don't want to want this, but I do. Only semi-related but what I really want is for easy windows apps on linux that work without fail. I prefer my linux box and generally hate the windows ui (don't get me started on windows settings or audio). I've tried switching to linux full-time but I don't know if I can hack it. Games are 90% there and I can do without the few that don't work with proton, but there are just too many apps that only work on my windows side that I just don't think I can dump windows. Wine gives me inconsistent results and breaks for just about anything that needs registry access, not to mention its pretty complicated. I'm hoping to stumble on some tool I've been missing out on that makes everything easier because I wan't to run linux as my daily... I just don't know if it is practical.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- jraph 5y ago
  Would a Windows VM on your Linux system help? Maybe some apps have robust alternatives?
- smichel17 5y ago
  Which apps? Not that it makes a difference for this conversation, but I'm interested in keeping up to date with what the "killer apps" are that keep people from switching.
  - Briq7 5y ago
    I just recently switch from windows to linux. Was planning to do some 3D printing tomorrow, but saw that Fusion360 had poor Wine support. So I probably need to learn a new software or setup a VM or something.
    - flexer2 5y ago
      Fusion360 is the only thing I run a VM for. There’s a repo out there that sets up wine and installs it but it just doesn’t work very well at all. I’m using VMWare Player and set up the virtual disk to boot from the Windows drive and run it that way. It works really well. Other 3D printing stuff like PrusaSlicer works great on Linux. I’d love to have a native version of Fusion though. Maybe someday.
pkulak 5y ago
Google has been doing this for years with ChromeOS and... it kinda works. It mostly works if you stick with their distro (Debian Stable - 1), but I've never been able to get their display forwarding tools to work anywhere else. Seems like Linux is complicated enough without running it in a VM and forwarding everything up to to the host OS.
thrower123 5y ago
What Linux desktop apps do people want to run on Windows? I'm struggling to think of anything I would use that isn't ported alteady, being GTK or QT or Java based.
- certifiedloud 5y ago
  As someone who is forced to use either Mac or Windows at work, I would love this for the sole purpose of using i3 again.
- zzandd 5y ago
  The use case I care about, and I imagine the use case Microsoft do as well, is developing for Linux on windows, so running an ide and not having to worry about a complicated cross compiling toolchain backing it.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I imagine if your app needs to interact with your Linux system, running it within WSL is a lot nicer.
smartmic 5y ago
This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience because you leave up your freedom and privacy at the door of the Windows login. Anyone who is serious about the future of openess, freedom and privacy rights in software and general should strive for the original. I advocate not to hand over MS the control over the Linux desktop.
- neilsimp1 5y ago
  I only had to scroll a few more lines down from your post here to find an example supporting your statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28486717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28486717
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  Large companies will always find a way to profit from the most valuable aspects of society at large.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Correction: This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience for people who feel the same as you do, that your privacy is highly-valuable and Windows takes some of it away. I don't agree with those feelings, so it is indeed the best GNU/Linux experience for me.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  I also wonder if this is the end of the "embrace" phase or the start of the "extend" one.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sam0x17 5y ago
  I completely agree with the sentiment of what you're saying. That said, that's not at all what this is. They are just making it easier to run GUI apps in WSL. This is already something you can do with VcXSrv or any windows-based X server. I've actually been using VcXSrv to run a full Ubuntu Buddgie desktop with GPU acceleration and native performance on my work machine for over a year now. If anything, this has made it easier to _get away from_ the telemetry and crap that goes along with a default windows install because windows has absolutely no idea what I'm doing within my WSL installation. So yeah, nothing to see here, if anything this is good as it makes linux more accessible to people stuck in windows-only environments. This isn't even M$ making a desktop environment. They have just written an X server into windows instead of having to install one yourself. side note: I'd also be quite happy if Windows slowly removed the windows parts and replaced them with unixy parts until the whole windows ecosystem could be considered unix-based. That would be so great for so many reasons.
rdudek 5y ago
So does that mean DirectX will be fully available under any Linux distro at some point?
alecksag 5y ago
Just waiting for some Linux-based VDIs now. Azure Virtual Desktop is all RDP-based. It also used to be called "Windows" Virtual Desktop. While it's not something I would necessarily use for myself, having the option is really empowering especially for engineers within companies.
justinc8687 5y ago
How is this better than just running vcxsrv and inside WSL setting DISPLAY=WINDOWS_HOST_IP:0? I've been doing this to run graphical linux apps for a couple years now, both on WSL1 and on a regular Hyper-V Linux VM.
- MikusR 5y ago
  With hardware acceleration and CUDA?
  - kingosticks 5y ago
    And audio?
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    I am yet unsure how it is able to use "hardware acceleration" considering it is using RDP.
- dboreham 5y ago
  It just works?
  - nickjj 5y ago
    It seamlessly works with VcXsrv too after you set your DISPLAY. I've been using it for years too, even back in 2018 while running Sublime Text within WSL 1 as a primary code editor. If you place your VcXsrv config in your Windows startup folder everything automatically works. I haven't touched my config in years. The machine boots and it's all good, complete with proper clipboard sharing so you can copy things to and from WSL.
    - reissbaker 5y ago
      I could never get VcXsrv to work with DPI scaling well. So many hacks upon hacks...
      - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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tambeb 5y ago
I haven't had any problems running all types of GUIs in WSL (1 & 2) through Xming for years now.
- naruhodo 5y ago
  I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with Cygwin back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a way, for several decades now.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with Cygwin back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a way, for several decades now. And Cygwin still runs like a champ today. At least for my use case.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    And before Cygwin was relevant, we had X-Win32 and Hummingbird.
modeless 5y ago
> Please note that for the first release of WSLg, vGPU interops with the Weston compositor through system memory. If running on a discrete GPU, this effectively means that the rendered data is copied from VRAM to system memory before being presented to the compositor within WSLg, and uploaded onto the GPU again on the Windows side. This is a pretty big limitation. Hopefully it can be addressed soon.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  It's not amazing but a quick calculation says that a full 1080 screen will generally transfer in just under half a millisecond.
  - mike_hock 5y ago
    If that's the only loss of performance, that sounds amazing compared to running anything under Wine.
    - Longhanks 5y ago
      If only wine had the full source code to anything Windows available, as does Microsoft with anything Linux
    - hparadiz 5y ago
      ??? I game on Wine all day and it's sometimes faster than Windows.
  - fermentation 5y ago
    Yeah, an extra DtoHtoD in most applications is pretty bad. Here it should be good enough to get the feature up and running, and I imagine it’s something they’re planning on optimizing.
- ripley12 5y ago
  This talk (from November last year) discusses a pretty detailed design for a zero-copy architecture. Sounds like it will be addressed soon. https://youtu.be/EkNBsBx501Q?t=1438 https://youtu.be/EkNBsBx501Q?t=1438
hansoolo 5y ago
It's so weird to see Teams on the Windows Desktop next to a Linux Desktop Window... [0] [0] https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/raw/main/docs/WSLg_IntegratedDesktop.png https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/raw/main/docs/WSLg_Integra...
ramses0 5y ago
Is it finally the year of Linux on the desktop yet?
- _emacsomancer_ 5y ago
  It's the year of Embrace+Extend on WSL.
waych 5y ago
I've been using this for the several weeks on Windows 11 insider builds and its great! For those asking comparing versus X forwarding, at least for my purposes, I've found X over a socket very limiting in that remote opengl basically stops at version 1.1. With WSLg my apps run on MESA version 4.5, meaning they actually run. I haven't even tried with the vGPU driver yet and its already a very nice improvement. Would be even nicer if PCIe device assignment wasn't locked behind Windows Server licensing however.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
This is pretty cool. I've been using VcXsrv to run an X server on the windows side so that I can pop open gui Linux tools (setting the DISPLAY variable manually to {windows host IP}:0) The two remaining glitches here are harmonizing file system support across both domains (its fine if you are in the Linux domain and reach over and get or put files into the Windows domain, but the other direction has "issues". And some sort of USB support so that devices can be handled in either domain easily[1]. Mostly I find it is an easy way to use my Linux work flow on a machine that for other reasons has to have Windows on it. Overall the impact is lower than it is if I run an actual VM. [1] Recently discovered that a windows executable running on the Linux side can "see" the USB stuff so running dfu-util works from the Linux side.
ryanmarsh 5y ago
This is cool and I’m not knocking it. Just wanted to point out the irony that back in my day there was lots of fear that MS would embrace extend and extinguish Linux. How ironic would it be if this happened inadvertently because WSL got that good.
dirkg 5y ago
I'd love to use WSL2 but the longstanding issue with slow I/O between WSL <-> NTFS host is a dealbreaker. It basically means you have to keep all your data inside ext4 in Linux and that defeats the whole point - e.g. you can't keep your code, or files you download etc in Windows. With WSL you can keep all data in NTFS, have near native speeds but you can't run a bunch of Linux cmdline tools. I don't know if they can solve it, its basically sending data across the network, But this is the last barrier to a great Linux on Windows.
- waych 5y ago
  Ah yes, 9p2000. The network filesystem where caching is non-existent and left as an after-thought.
- dboreham 5y ago
  I thought I'd have that problem but I just keep all my dev files in WSL2 now and I stopped using Intellij. VSCode has very fast WSL2 filesystem remoting.
  - sz4kerto 5y ago
    Try IntelliJ Projector. It's awesome.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Does it really defeat the point? I see WSL2 as a Linux VM with less hoops to jump through. Sharing data with the host system isn't useful, since I don't have programs on Windows that need to communicate with programs in Linux, and I store everything in github/gdrive anyway.
- the8472 5y ago
  Maybe go the other direction. Add an ext4 disk to the VM and then access it through \\WSL$\
vzaliva 5y ago
One could run Linux and use Wine to run some Windows apps. On the other hand one can run Windows and use WSL to run some Linux apps. Depending on the individual's needs which apps are important to have access to the decision could go either way. This is why Microsoft is investing in projects like this - to tip the scales and lure more users to run Windows as primary OS. P.S. And then there is Google which wants you not to care about OS as long as it could launch Chrome browser, and to use web apps instead of native.
- tdeck 5y ago
  It's almost like they're trying to embrace the Linux ecosystem and extend it for windows users...
  - jbhouse 5y ago
    extinguish coming soon
- ineedasername 5y ago
  or just download Virtual Box or the free VMware Player. If you're on Linux, running Windows in "Unity" mode is already about as seamless as WSL2 w/ GUI appears to be.
  - IronWolve 5y ago
    This. Been using seamless mode on virtualbox for a decade(s)?, have a full terminal on windows, and now i can run vscode in my linux vm while in a windows desktop. I just use mate and with hide buttons on the panel enabled. WSL1 with Windows Terminal works good for now quick youtube-dl's, WSL2 needs hyper-v, so kinda deal breaker for me as a virtualbox user.
- chx 5y ago
  With WSL v2 , you can run Windows and all Linux apps. WSL v1 had limitations but WSL v2 is a VM -- a more integrated VM than usual but still.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
This isn’t surprising given all the incentives that led to WSL1, but it’s still a damn wild ride to arrive here.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dboreham 5y ago
I use it for two things: 1. Running Linux build tools that expect to pop up a browser for SSO auth (e.g. with ECS). These tools do the right thing if you install chrome in WSL. Otherwise you need to copy the URL into a windows browser which is slightly inconvenient and for me sometimes inscrutably doesn't work. 2. Running UI dev tools that don't work properly cross-OS from Windows. E.g jconsole Java networking seems to be mostly broken between the host OS and processes listening in WSL so this is a workaround. Run the GUI client in Linux. JVM process discovery also works which is nice.
- Daegalus 5y ago
  there are tools that solve this. I think it's even called WSL Tools. adds a few things to launch browsers on windows side with urls on Linux side and other things. not sure about java, haven't touched that in over a decade
coding123 5y ago
This reminds me of an old VMWare version where you could break out windows from the guest OS into the host. I'm surprised it wasn't patented by VMWare (or maybe that expired?) Either way, pretty awesome to have this.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Pretty sure VirtualBox has that still.
voidfunc 5y ago
I used WSLg for several months and just recently switched back to x410. WSLg is badly broken with non-trivial apps like IntelliJ IDEA.
mmgutz 5y ago
Can you run whole desktop environments like XFCE, Gnome; or run a Window Manager like i3? I'm a long time VMware user and never really used Unity (name?) view which allows running Linux apps seamlessly on Windows or Mac. WSLg seems to be the same feature.
- midwestemo 5y ago
  I don't know about WSLg specifically but last time I heard if you runs a x server with an application like VcXsrv, install XFCE and configure it to use the x server. You can pretty much run XFCE or any other desktop environment in WSL. I don't know about the performance however.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Anyone else worrying about Windows swallowing up Linux? I hope their intentions are altruistic.
- spijdar 5y ago
  For better or for worse, I'm not sure the aggregate direction Microsoft takes as a company is either altruistic or malicious, I'm pretty sure it's ultimately profit driven. I expect there are MS engineers who see this as altruistic and executives that see this as a way to keep developers from moving off Windows and ultimately as customers. In the end, I'm not sure what this will mean for "desktop Linux". I've already had one colleague dump "bare metal Linux" in favor of Win10 + WSL2.
fb03 5y ago
I have been getting by with VcXsrv just fine, for simple apps like IDEs and stuff (vs code, pycharm community). The advantage of wslg would be running hardware accel'd apps?
gigatexal 5y ago
Can this run tiling window managers?
jbhouse 5y ago
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Got this running on my Surface Book the other day. Totally useless, but very cool!
vermaden 5y ago
If the host system is Linux then this can be called Windows Subsystem for Linux (the same thing that WINE does). If the host system is Windows then its Linux Subsystem for Windows. Please do not fuck with logic.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  Windows (subsystem for Linux) i.e. a subsystem of Windows that is for Linux. I think.
apatheticonion 5y ago
I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to drop WSL and manage my own VM manually. I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2. This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? When is WSL2 running and when is it not? etc etc Ultimately, I would rather run Linux on my desktop as a daily driver but the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me to live (at least) 8 hours a day in. Gnome 40 looks great though, can't wait too see what the future holds. My dream is running Linux as a daily driver where the UI is more polished than MacOS. Windows will run in a VM and will be used for API calls for playing games (I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation).
- cprecioso 5y ago
  About your last point, this was posted a couple weeks ago on here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870399
- dgan 5y ago
  I don't understand claims "desktop experience is not there yet". What do you even need so specific? Care to explain? I tend to think it's more of people's problem at that point than linux desktop experience problem
  - apatheticonion 5y ago
    It's not _functionally_ problematic, just aesthetically. Mostly it's just that I never go a full day without performing some kind of maintenance on my Linux desktop environment to try to get it looking right, and it never looks right. I also run multiple monitors, so that aspect tends to throw in some extra jank. At this point, running Gnome completely unmodified has been the most success I have had - but even Gnome 40 has some questionable design decisions. Windows is a poor example of polish but I feel there's a lot we can learn from by looking at MacOS's desktop environment. Having used each for significant amounts of time (years) and currently living on Windows, MacOS really takes the prize for the "nicest place to live but worst landlord".
pharmakom 5y ago
Microsoft has so much ego that rather than simply making a Linux distro they insist we run Linux on Windows.
- rvense 5y ago
  They probably know they can't stop developers from deploying to Linux. They're trying to the Windows desktop relevant.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    They don't need to try while fighting 1% GNU/Linux desktop. The whole point of WSL is to bring into Windows, those devs that buy Apple hardware instead of supporting Linux OEMs, and couldn't care less as long as they have their POSIX like experience.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  How would a Microsoft Linux distro be different from, say, Ubuntu? Would it bundle WINE, perhaps with Microsoft insider knowledge of how their APIs work? How would they make money on Windows if everyone could just use that?
- Xevi 5y ago
  > simply making a Linux distro It would take decades to migrate Windows users to a Linux distro.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They don't insist, this is for the folks that should be supporting Linux OEMs but rather pay Apple.
p0d 5y ago
I've been using linux for 20 years and my one frustration is missing Powerpoint. I recently joined the world of education and they are Powerpoint mad. Hats off to LibreOffice but Powerpoints look like they have been dragged through a hedge backwards. Is anyone solving this problem on linux locally or maybe wsl is the way for me to go?
ThinkBeat 5y ago
I will be the curmudgeon here I guess. Microsoft has been following this strategy for a while. Announce something useful. I click in and look forward to start using it. How do I download it and get started? Oh I need to install a beta version of Windows on my computer to use this feature. I dont want to do that. Then weekly or biweekly new stories pop up and I hope it has had a proper release, but no, insider only. I would prefer if MS announced, "tool under development to be released 03/25" and then "ready for production today". Synched so that you can get the correct version of windows to use the new tool/feature/framework. It says it will ship with the next version of Windows, so it will ship in Windows 11 then? I wish there was a meta tag on Hacker News that identified if a program, platform, airplane, city building, etc is vaporware, under real development or production ready / move in ready / book a flight ready etc etc.
- hacker_homie 5y ago
  Then who would test it?
trashtester 5y ago
I wonder if WSLg will work on my passed-through 3090 from my linux host to my Windows VM, or of this requires barebone Windows.
jgilias 5y ago
I love it how in the screenshot in the description you can see that the shortcuts on the desktop are mostly games. Now you know why the hypothetical user is sticking around using Windows as their daily driver in the first place :)
mikaeluman 5y ago
For me WSL has completely replaced dual booting setups. There are still some quirks with integration such as certificates and more. I really can’t wait for the GPU experience to be fully supported and also be able to use pytorch from within containers. Microsoft is so far doing everything right with WSL IMO.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  For me that happened already 10 years ago with VMWare.
  - mycall 5y ago
    You need a Quatro GPU to do that, right?
29athrowaway 5y ago
- Embrace - Extend <- You are here - Extinguish
- whydid 5y ago
  I was worried about this happening in the early 2000s, but not anymore. Have you seen how terrible Windows and Windows Server is?
  - 29athrowaway 5y ago
    Has it ever been good at any point in time? No, yet people use it and develop for it.
elif 5y ago
I made the switch from full-linux to WSL about a year ago. I never used windows outside of gaming but I got tired of putting up with minor hardware/driver frustrations on my particular laptop (surface). I'm happy to report I have encountered zero issues. In fact, I don't think I've even used it for anything outside of emacs/cli. I am kinda surprised by this link since I've been using the x version of emacs this whole time.
sevensor 5y ago
As a WSL user at work, this addresses exactly zero of my problems with running Windows. Windows Defender is still going to randomly spin up and bring my machine to a halt. The Windows Start Menu with its ads is still there. There are still 15 pieces of device driver desktop experience crapware running in the background. The RAT required by our IT department is still resident. Adding GUI support doesn't move the needle: the missing feature is freedom.
- miohtama 5y ago
  > The RAT required by our IT department is still resident This sounds like organizational problem, not a technical problem. Have you considered applying a new position for another employer that allows to run Ubuntu/Red Hat/etc. environments?
- themulticaster 5y ago
  What's a RAT? I've never heard of it, and I'm afraid it's an not a googleable word. Remote Administration Tool? Something like Intel vPro?
  - specktr 5y ago
    They’re likely referring to a remote access trojan (malware) which likely shares many features of whatever administrative tool the IT team uses at that company.
    - sevensor 5y ago
      Is there a fundamental difference between a remote administration tool and a remote access trojan?
      - reissbaker 5y ago
        Seems like roughly the same difference between a malware keylogger and say, X11. They both intercept all your keystrokes, but you wanted the latter one to do so and didn't want the former. ("But I didn't want the remote admin tool on my computer!" It's not your computer, it's the company's computer. And they wanted it there.)
CallMeJim 5y ago
In Windows 11 + WSL2 + Google Drive Sync, you can cd into Google Drive at /mnt/g and use it like a normal directory. I'm not sure when this became the case; it wasn't possible 6 months ago with Windows 10 + WSL2 + Google Drive File Stream.
mickotron 5y ago
Just do it already, MS. Replace Windows/NT kernel with Linux, and make Windows another Linux distro. Seems like you're kinda heading that way.
AnnoyedComment 5y ago
Fantastic. I predict this thread will be filled with reasonable, capable, intelligent technologists explaining that Linux doesn't have wide-ranging hardware support, with replies by Linux experts who tell them they're wrong.
juangburgos 5y ago
I have given WSL2 a chance recently and it sucks, the vmmem process eats all my memory. It is not a recent bug, it has been known since 2019 and hasn't been fixed. Beware: Don't loose your time with this (like I did) until you see the issue below fixed. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166

618 points by anchpop 5y ago

>> Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've extended the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop. We've also added various functionality to it, such as support for multi-monitor, cut/paste, audio in/out, etc... Did they push those changes upstream? This seems like it could be another way to run GUI apps in containers on Linux too.

ubercow13 5y ago
You can already run GUI apps in containers using pure wayland, just bind the socket into the container.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Likewise X, if you pass it the socket (although there are caveats around everything but just X11, like audio, which have to be routed out separately)
- ziftface 5y ago
  > just bind the socket into the container I thought Wayland relied on shared memory with the compositor to work? I could be way off though
  - wahern 5y ago
    Containers run under the same kernel, so sharing memory works the same as it does for processes generally.
password4321 5y ago
https://github.com/microsoft/weston-mirror https://github.com/microsoft/weston-mirror I could not find any reference to it upstream or mention in the mailing lists.
earthscienceman 5y ago
This was my exact question, as much as I hate Microsoft and Windows (15 years of using linux now in my brief 32 years on the planet).... this could be the project that pushes Wayland to fruition finally. It could also significantly improve GUI support in general. I guess getting the right thing for the wrong reasons is better than not getting them at all? I'm not a very good pragmatist.
linux2647 5y ago
The README mentioned that they have their changes in a separate public GitHub repo and that they plan to upstream it

ecnahc515 5y ago

Windows + WSL2 is starting to catching up with Chrome OS + crostini. How exciting.

pygar 5y ago

This is undoubtedly cool but I'm curious to know of a use case that would warrant installing this. Could this just have been a step in creating "Windows Subsystem for Android" [0] that they decided to release as its own layer? The screenshot on the github page shows VSCode, Edge, Blender, Xcalc, Xclock and GNOME file manager which are all either available natively on windows or redundant. [0] https://www.xda-developers.com/wundows-subsystem-android-benchmarks-solid-performance/ https://www.xda-developers.com/wundows-subsystem-android-ben...

scandinavian 5y ago
Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL and vice versa is extremely slow, so running for example your IDE in WSL and having your code etc. stored in WSL is useful. I think that is one of the big usecases. It's already kinda supported in vscode, where it runs a vscode server in WSL and Windows just runs the frontend. It's useful for me when developing dotnet intended for Linux as I can store the code in WSL and be able to build, debug, run docker and so on directly from vscode.
- hasperdi 5y ago
  Are you talking about WSL1 or WSL? Wsl2 is much much faster due to having a virtualized real linux kernel running
  - scandinavian 5y ago
    Accessing the WSL filesystem from WSL is indeed a lot faster on WSL2. Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL or vise versa is even slower in WSL2 compared to WSL1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-versions#comparing-features https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-version... > As you can tell from the comparison table above, the WSL 2 architecture outperforms WSL 1 in several ways, with the exception of performance across OS file systems.
  - easton 5y ago
    System performance is, IO between Windows and Linux isn’t. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197

b215826 5y ago

Now someone make a Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI.

rubyn00bie 5y ago
Isn't that pretty much what Wine does? Having been using Linux as my daily workstation for a year now, I've been blown away how easy it is (and generally transparent) to install and use Windows applications on Linux.
- spijdar 5y ago
  Actually, not quite. Wine is closer to what WSL1 was. The closest equivalent to "Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI" on WSL2 for Linux would just be ... running Windows in a VM, with FreeRDP doing per-app tunneling to the Linux host. I think there's even some software for automating this somewhere out there.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    >Wine is closer to what WSL1 was Not quite. Wine just translates windows syscalls to linux ones but WSL actually reimplemented the linux api inside the NT kernel (which was designed with the ability to use multiple OS apis.)
    - spijdar 5y ago
      Well, I said "closer", not an exact analogue. They're pretty close equivalents, though, as most Windows programs don't actually call syscalls directly, but link in an OS-provided DLL and call an exported symbol from it, with the userspace to kernel bits abstracted away from most user programs. Wine (mostly) re-implements those DLLs, effectively re-implementing the Win32 API (a userspace API) in Linux's userland. (programs are allowed to call the kernel directly, though, and Wine has to handle those cases esp. for DRM/anti-cheat code in games that poke at the kernel directly, recently Linux was patched to allow userspace programs to directly handle syscalls [0][1], making Wine ... closer to a WSL1 equivalent?) [0] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/10/1323 https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/10/1323 [1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/linux/syscall_user_dispatch.h https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/linux/...

mathnode 5y ago

For those that don't know, this will only be available in Windows 11, see https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/347#issuecomment-877695975 https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/347#issuecomment-87...

stronglikedan 5y ago
To be fair, it's also the first prerequisite on the linked page. > WSLg is going to be generally available alongside the upcoming release of Windows. To get access to a preview of WSLg, you'll need to join the Windows Insider Program and be running a Windows 10 Insider Preview build from the beta or dev channels.
nwatson 5y ago
Yeah bummer. My old Windows machine won't be upgradable to Windows 11 ... interestingly I was able to install the Windows 11 preview and even get the WSL2 update with the integrated X11/GUI and it worked great. However I was notified I couldn't upgrade to official build and the only recourse was to re-install Windows 10. I'll need to revert to one of the available X11 servers but I wiped out the old configuration and it's kinda painful to automatically set $DISPLAY and also get Norton Firewall to play along.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  I have a solution for the disk/partition type/layout incompatible with upgrading to newer Windows 11 builds (but not the TPM workaround) but I haven’t gotten around to packaging it and publishing it for download on our site.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Don't think I've heard about those, what all requirements changed on the storage side there?
    - ComputerGuru 5y ago
      I don’t know if it’s what the GP was referring to but partition requirements pertaining to MBR vs GPT and specific requirements for alignment, MSR properties, and order of partitions has been locked down considerably. Annoyingly they all manifest as an opaque “this PC isn’t compatible” or similar message.

AcerbicZero 5y ago

WSL seriously changed the amount of work I can do from my gaming PC, but I’m not sure if that’s actually a good thing based on my productivity over the past few months. That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user.

squarefoot 5y ago
> That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user. That's the tip of the iceberg MS want everyone to see, and point the finger at. MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative since they lost the battle when they attempted to kill it during the Ballmer era. The plan now is more subtle: making sure everyone using Linux will want to do that from a Windows machine, with all the implications about security and privacy, which would be non existent since any malware (or Windows itself) that for example used Windows keyboard drivers to sniff passwords while one connects say to the bank under WSL "because it's more secure" would be 100% undetectable from that Linux. The next step will be libraries to access Windows internals and GUI from WSL, so that one can build hybrids that run only on Windows+WSL; very convenient, but unfortunately now Linux is displaced and the only way to benefit from all that software will be to run it under Windows. In the end, MS will create their own Linux distro which runs on top of Windows and will essentially kill all other non-server oriented Linux distros. Most see WSL as a good thing; I see an elaborate, and have to admit, very clever, way to take complete control of Linux in the next years.
- NortySpock 5y ago
  So the Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI (WSLg) business plan looks like this, I assume: Step 1: get lots of devs using WSL / WSL GUI. Step 2: Get them comfortable with flexibly using WSL GUI on Linux and Windows interchangeably Step 3: roll out your poison pill: new Version X, offering great compatibility on Windows but bad integration with Linux; maybe Linux support is buggy or nonexistent, maybe the API doesn't mesh with Linux systems at all, maybe it has license conflicts and Linux has to do a rewrite to be FOSS or write a hacky FOSS shim. Whatever creates the most pain for Linux / FOSS users. Step 4: Stuck with being tied to WSLg, Developers go to the business and say "either we have to spend a lot of time fixing Linux issues or we buy Windows licenses" at which point the business happily buys Windows and Office 365 volume licenses and keeps going. Step 5: Microsoft maintains its monopoly for another 10 years. The "I want to stay independent" workaround is (I assume) writing API layers that can serve "thin GUI clients" on multiple platforms (I guess like Electron or a regular web application or something.)

shpongled 5y ago

Will I be able to use i3?

IncRnd 5y ago
Yes.
judge2020 5y ago
This will be available in Windows 11, so your processor does have to be able to upgrade to that. If you're fine with an OS reinstall there are ways to force the install.
- darcyparker 5y ago
  I don't think he is referring to an i3 processor, but rather https://i3wm.org/ https://i3wm.org/
reificator 5y ago
I can't imagine you'd be able to use i3 for your windows apps from what I've read, but it should work with your Linux side.

lowtto 5y ago

WSL2 is essentially just.. Windows + Linux. I tried it and it is awesome. Cannot wait to see further progress that comes out of this. I really cannot leave Windows to be honest. The network effect is too strong. Coupled with recent Microsoft effort such as Visual Code, its looking like they are doing nothing but going towards the better direction than the old days. Who would have thought. Would you believe it if anyone said this to be the case, 10 years ago?

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Dual boot? This does look slick, I was an avid WSL user until I started dual booting. Now I almost never need to boot to Windows. I get that if you often need to switch it can be a pain in the ass but at least Linux respects my privacy and freedom.
- seanw444 5y ago
  Same situation here. Dual-booting Linux and Windows 10, and I figured I'd boot into Windows often enough for it to get obnoxious. But I only ever get on there to play a few demanding games (which I already don't play often anymore), or make music with an A+ DAW for making music that doesn't run super effectively on Wine. Linux handles everything else I do like a champ.
  - tck42 5y ago
    A friend of mine has been complaining that a DAW is the only thing keeping him stuck in Windows at this point as well. In his case, he specifically said that VST's were the problem. Was your experience the same?
    - necubi 5y ago
      Bitwig is a very good DAW with native Linux support. It's made by former Ableton devs so it definitely leans in that direction, but it works pretty well for other types of workflows too, especially with the recently released version 4. VSTs are definitely an issue; most high quality commercial plugins are still only released for mac/windows. However there are a few projects for running them in wine and it generally works pretty well. I do think we'll see more and more Linux in studios going forward, but it would help if Linux got its pro audio story together. Pipewire is a big step in the right direction but not yet mature.

avodonosov 5y ago

I already asked this in the past, and want to ask again. Is Microsoft a corporation of goodness now?

0des 5y ago
Embrace Extend <-- you are here Extinguish
- lghh 5y ago
  What are they extending? What functionality does this add to Linux that is only available on Windows?
  - spystath 5y ago
    One is their DirectX extension that only works on WSL2. It allows you to access the DX API through a shim driver. You can now have a Linux application that needs access to /dev/xdg which is only available in WSL2. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
villasv 5y ago
Asking if a publicly traded company this big is good or bad is pointless. A corporation is psychopathic; if it goes Patrick Bateman or Dexter Morgan depends on the environment. The current environment incentivizes expanding the developer ecosystem, hence DX investments.
cybernautique 5y ago
In my opinion, this is actually a question of values. My position: absolutely not, but I take it as axiomatic that Microsoft (et al.) are incapable of any actual "good." This is simply Window's attempt to build a new walled garden. If they were actually serious about advancing the state of civil computing, they'd make the NT core available as a microkernel that can be modularly placed into the Linux ecosystem. That is the _one_ thing I can think of which might raise my opinion of them (and I'm sure they lose sleep at night, knowing they haven't got my endorsement).

CraftingLinks 5y ago

I just might switch to linux instead.

themodelplumber 5y ago
You can always fall back on the Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI, aka WINE/DOSBox/VMW/VBX/QEMU, with varying levels of integration/fiddle/config.
- kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
  Varying levels of integration, with fiddling being required less and less (eg. Proton), and with a nuch higher level of privacy. Also, I don't want my computer to feel like a billboard for Candy Crush Saga.
  - themodelplumber 5y ago
    Sorry, your reply was missing a sub-legible customer experience improvement key. Please re-authorize at your nearest _Subway_.
speed_spread 5y ago
Most corporate PC users do not have that option. WSL solves that.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  This is the most plausible explanation. Since most of the newer dev frameworks use very unix like CLI, windows as a dev operating system was feeling very left out. VSCode made this painfully obvious. Most corporates would just offer you a mac instead. WSLg is pretty cool, but if you have a choice, running ubuntu or debian is better, with emulation for whatever windows legacy stuff you need to support.
  - pjmlp 5y ago

wvenable 5y ago

That seems like a very complex architecture. RDP client and server? That seems like a strange approach for a single machine solution.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Ironic statement considering how X was designed to work.
- wvenable 5y ago
  I posted this because I've used Linux GUI apps on Windows with WSL1 and an X server. This seems much more complex than that.
cogman10 5y ago
It's because WSL2 abandoned the initial goals of WSL1 and just did a VM instead. I wish MS continued evolving WSL1 instead of doing the VM approach but c'est la vie.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  >I wish MS continued evolving WSL1 I do too but only from a techy POV. I think it was awesome they expanded their old posix apis into a drop in linux replacement and wish it could have continued being expanded.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    For me, it comes down to the fact that WSL1 apps were ran like native apps. That was amazing. It meant I could kill a WSL1 app from task manager. It meant that those apps were only taking the memory they used, not an entire VM's worth of memory. It meant I didn't have to manage yet another virtual machine environment on my PC. WSL2 is certainly the way to go if you want a more "true" linux experience. I just lament the fact that WSL1 came so close to being true enough.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago

reilly3000 5y ago

I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to support. Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows build or corollary app. I get how ‘you never have to leave Windows’ is a nice thing for their business, but I don’t see this being a reason I would stop dual-booting. The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games. Otherwise I really enjoy the bloat-free, ad-free, telemetry-free, snappy, tractable, and undistracted experience that is Linux desktop computing. It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.

908B64B197 5y ago
> It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support. Other way around. The Kernel getting real support for NTFS (was merged into Linus' tree a month ago [0]) there's hope to get native performance on WSL2. Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next decade. [0] https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-have-improved-ntfs-file-system-support/ https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-have-...
- pritambaral 5y ago
  Linux and Windows use mutually exclusive permission/ACL bits, even on the same NTFS filesystem.
  - pxc 5y ago
    > even on the same NTFS filesystem can you explain a bit how this works?
    - pkaye 5y ago
      I think they use extended attributes in NTFS to provide the Linux file system permission. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/file-permissions https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/file-permission...

son_ngu 5y ago

This is exciting. I dual boot Windows and Linux, cause although I really like my setup on Linux, the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me. I wonder if I can use something like bspwm, maybe not... haha

earthscienceman 5y ago
Have you tried KDE plasma?

rvz 5y ago

Extend. > Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've EXTENDED the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop. It has been admitted.

oaiey 5y ago
RDP is a proprietary protocol of Microsoft. Extending their own protocol sounds pretty normal. And the code seems available on their weston-mirror. It just a merge away. Microsoft does enough shady things in the now, let us not try not force some EEE pattern.

downWidOutaFite 5y ago

Amazingly this seems better integrated than Mac's XQuartz which I always find awkward and buggy. If it weren't for the forced ads and updates I would consider switching back to Windows.

sys_64738 5y ago

How long before even Linus migrates to Windows as his daily driver?

zzandd 5y ago

So how long until us poor fellows running enterprise windows see this? I currently use vcxsrv which works mostly fine, but it's hard to convince other people to adopt the multitude of hacks I have to make this work, and supporting windows in builds is painful.

tonoto 5y ago

you don't have to wait until Windows 11 for this nonsense. I am unfortunately locked at my current mission to be on a Windows laptop, my first Windows experience in years. As soon as I read up on wsl2 I installed it and inside installed the xrdp server and a corresponding lightweight environment, then just rdp into it (but every time the wsl gets restarted, you'll have to do a /etc/init.d/xrdp restart). Although, I can't wait until I get to a sane environment again. Without Windows and all headache it brings me...

iammisc 5y ago

This might actually be the year of the Linux desktop

annoyingnoob 5y ago
Or the year of Lindows or Winux.

jjcon 5y ago

I don't want to want this, but I do. Only semi-related but what I really want is for easy windows apps on linux that work without fail. I prefer my linux box and generally hate the windows ui (don't get me started on windows settings or audio). I've tried switching to linux full-time but I don't know if I can hack it. Games are 90% there and I can do without the few that don't work with proton, but there are just too many apps that only work on my windows side that I just don't think I can dump windows. Wine gives me inconsistent results and breaks for just about anything that needs registry access, not to mention its pretty complicated. I'm hoping to stumble on some tool I've been missing out on that makes everything easier because I wan't to run linux as my daily... I just don't know if it is practical.

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jraph 5y ago
Would a Windows VM on your Linux system help? Maybe some apps have robust alternatives?
smichel17 5y ago
Which apps? Not that it makes a difference for this conversation, but I'm interested in keeping up to date with what the "killer apps" are that keep people from switching.
- Briq7 5y ago
  I just recently switch from windows to linux. Was planning to do some 3D printing tomorrow, but saw that Fusion360 had poor Wine support. So I probably need to learn a new software or setup a VM or something.
  - flexer2 5y ago
    Fusion360 is the only thing I run a VM for. There’s a repo out there that sets up wine and installs it but it just doesn’t work very well at all. I’m using VMWare Player and set up the virtual disk to boot from the Windows drive and run it that way. It works really well. Other 3D printing stuff like PrusaSlicer works great on Linux. I’d love to have a native version of Fusion though. Maybe someday.

pkulak 5y ago

Google has been doing this for years with ChromeOS and... it kinda works. It mostly works if you stick with their distro (Debian Stable - 1), but I've never been able to get their display forwarding tools to work anywhere else. Seems like Linux is complicated enough without running it in a VM and forwarding everything up to to the host OS.

thrower123 5y ago

What Linux desktop apps do people want to run on Windows? I'm struggling to think of anything I would use that isn't ported alteady, being GTK or QT or Java based.

certifiedloud 5y ago
As someone who is forced to use either Mac or Windows at work, I would love this for the sole purpose of using i3 again.
zzandd 5y ago
The use case I care about, and I imagine the use case Microsoft do as well, is developing for Linux on windows, so running an ide and not having to worry about a complicated cross compiling toolchain backing it.
rocqua 5y ago
I imagine if your app needs to interact with your Linux system, running it within WSL is a lot nicer.

smartmic 5y ago

This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience because you leave up your freedom and privacy at the door of the Windows login. Anyone who is serious about the future of openess, freedom and privacy rights in software and general should strive for the original. I advocate not to hand over MS the control over the Linux desktop.

neilsimp1 5y ago
I only had to scroll a few more lines down from your post here to find an example supporting your statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28486717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28486717
TimTheTinker 5y ago
Large companies will always find a way to profit from the most valuable aspects of society at large.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Correction: This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience for people who feel the same as you do, that your privacy is highly-valuable and Windows takes some of it away. I don't agree with those feelings, so it is indeed the best GNU/Linux experience for me.
azalemeth 5y ago
I also wonder if this is the end of the "embrace" phase or the start of the "extend" one.
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sam0x17 5y ago
I completely agree with the sentiment of what you're saying. That said, that's not at all what this is. They are just making it easier to run GUI apps in WSL. This is already something you can do with VcXSrv or any windows-based X server. I've actually been using VcXSrv to run a full Ubuntu Buddgie desktop with GPU acceleration and native performance on my work machine for over a year now. If anything, this has made it easier to _get away from_ the telemetry and crap that goes along with a default windows install because windows has absolutely no idea what I'm doing within my WSL installation. So yeah, nothing to see here, if anything this is good as it makes linux more accessible to people stuck in windows-only environments. This isn't even M$ making a desktop environment. They have just written an X server into windows instead of having to install one yourself. side note: I'd also be quite happy if Windows slowly removed the windows parts and replaced them with unixy parts until the whole windows ecosystem could be considered unix-based. That would be so great for so many reasons.

rdudek 5y ago

So does that mean DirectX will be fully available under any Linux distro at some point?

alecksag 5y ago

Just waiting for some Linux-based VDIs now. Azure Virtual Desktop is all RDP-based. It also used to be called "Windows" Virtual Desktop. While it's not something I would necessarily use for myself, having the option is really empowering especially for engineers within companies.

justinc8687 5y ago

How is this better than just running vcxsrv and inside WSL setting DISPLAY=WINDOWS_HOST_IP:0? I've been doing this to run graphical linux apps for a couple years now, both on WSL1 and on a regular Hyper-V Linux VM.

MikusR 5y ago
With hardware acceleration and CUDA?
- kingosticks 5y ago
  And audio?
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  I am yet unsure how it is able to use "hardware acceleration" considering it is using RDP.
dboreham 5y ago
It just works?
- nickjj 5y ago
  It seamlessly works with VcXsrv too after you set your DISPLAY. I've been using it for years too, even back in 2018 while running Sublime Text within WSL 1 as a primary code editor. If you place your VcXsrv config in your Windows startup folder everything automatically works. I haven't touched my config in years. The machine boots and it's all good, complete with proper clipboard sharing so you can copy things to and from WSL.
  - reissbaker 5y ago
    I could never get VcXsrv to work with DPI scaling well. So many hacks upon hacks...
    - 5y ago

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tambeb 5y ago

I haven't had any problems running all types of GUIs in WSL (1 & 2) through Xming for years now.

naruhodo 5y ago
I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with Cygwin back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a way, for several decades now.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with Cygwin back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a way, for several decades now. And Cygwin still runs like a champ today. At least for my use case.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  And before Cygwin was relevant, we had X-Win32 and Hummingbird.

modeless 5y ago

> Please note that for the first release of WSLg, vGPU interops with the Weston compositor through system memory. If running on a discrete GPU, this effectively means that the rendered data is copied from VRAM to system memory before being presented to the compositor within WSLg, and uploaded onto the GPU again on the Windows side. This is a pretty big limitation. Hopefully it can be addressed soon.

Dylan16807 5y ago
It's not amazing but a quick calculation says that a full 1080 screen will generally transfer in just under half a millisecond.
- mike_hock 5y ago
  If that's the only loss of performance, that sounds amazing compared to running anything under Wine.
  - Longhanks 5y ago
    If only wine had the full source code to anything Windows available, as does Microsoft with anything Linux
  - hparadiz 5y ago
    ??? I game on Wine all day and it's sometimes faster than Windows.
- fermentation 5y ago
  Yeah, an extra DtoHtoD in most applications is pretty bad. Here it should be good enough to get the feature up and running, and I imagine it’s something they’re planning on optimizing.
ripley12 5y ago
This talk (from November last year) discusses a pretty detailed design for a zero-copy architecture. Sounds like it will be addressed soon. https://youtu.be/EkNBsBx501Q?t=1438 https://youtu.be/EkNBsBx501Q?t=1438

hansoolo 5y ago

It's so weird to see Teams on the Windows Desktop next to a Linux Desktop Window... [0] [0] https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/raw/main/docs/WSLg_IntegratedDesktop.png https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/raw/main/docs/WSLg_Integra...

ramses0 5y ago

Is it finally the year of Linux on the desktop yet?

_emacsomancer_ 5y ago
It's the year of Embrace+Extend on WSL.

waych 5y ago

I've been using this for the several weeks on Windows 11 insider builds and its great! For those asking comparing versus X forwarding, at least for my purposes, I've found X over a socket very limiting in that remote opengl basically stops at version 1.1. With WSLg my apps run on MESA version 4.5, meaning they actually run. I haven't even tried with the vGPU driver yet and its already a very nice improvement. Would be even nicer if PCIe device assignment wasn't locked behind Windows Server licensing however.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

This is pretty cool. I've been using VcXsrv to run an X server on the windows side so that I can pop open gui Linux tools (setting the DISPLAY variable manually to {windows host IP}:0) The two remaining glitches here are harmonizing file system support across both domains (its fine if you are in the Linux domain and reach over and get or put files into the Windows domain, but the other direction has "issues". And some sort of USB support so that devices can be handled in either domain easily[1]. Mostly I find it is an easy way to use my Linux work flow on a machine that for other reasons has to have Windows on it. Overall the impact is lower than it is if I run an actual VM. [1] Recently discovered that a windows executable running on the Linux side can "see" the USB stuff so running dfu-util works from the Linux side.

ryanmarsh 5y ago

This is cool and I’m not knocking it. Just wanted to point out the irony that back in my day there was lots of fear that MS would embrace extend and extinguish Linux. How ironic would it be if this happened inadvertently because WSL got that good.

dirkg 5y ago

I'd love to use WSL2 but the longstanding issue with slow I/O between WSL <-> NTFS host is a dealbreaker. It basically means you have to keep all your data inside ext4 in Linux and that defeats the whole point - e.g. you can't keep your code, or files you download etc in Windows. With WSL you can keep all data in NTFS, have near native speeds but you can't run a bunch of Linux cmdline tools. I don't know if they can solve it, its basically sending data across the network, But this is the last barrier to a great Linux on Windows.

waych 5y ago
Ah yes, 9p2000. The network filesystem where caching is non-existent and left as an after-thought.
dboreham 5y ago
I thought I'd have that problem but I just keep all my dev files in WSL2 now and I stopped using Intellij. VSCode has very fast WSL2 filesystem remoting.
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  Try IntelliJ Projector. It's awesome.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Does it really defeat the point? I see WSL2 as a Linux VM with less hoops to jump through. Sharing data with the host system isn't useful, since I don't have programs on Windows that need to communicate with programs in Linux, and I store everything in github/gdrive anyway.
the8472 5y ago
Maybe go the other direction. Add an ext4 disk to the VM and then access it through \\WSL$\

vzaliva 5y ago

One could run Linux and use Wine to run some Windows apps. On the other hand one can run Windows and use WSL to run some Linux apps. Depending on the individual's needs which apps are important to have access to the decision could go either way. This is why Microsoft is investing in projects like this - to tip the scales and lure more users to run Windows as primary OS. P.S. And then there is Google which wants you not to care about OS as long as it could launch Chrome browser, and to use web apps instead of native.

tdeck 5y ago
It's almost like they're trying to embrace the Linux ecosystem and extend it for windows users...
- jbhouse 5y ago
  extinguish coming soon
ineedasername 5y ago
or just download Virtual Box or the free VMware Player. If you're on Linux, running Windows in "Unity" mode is already about as seamless as WSL2 w/ GUI appears to be.
- IronWolve 5y ago
  This. Been using seamless mode on virtualbox for a decade(s)?, have a full terminal on windows, and now i can run vscode in my linux vm while in a windows desktop. I just use mate and with hide buttons on the panel enabled. WSL1 with Windows Terminal works good for now quick youtube-dl's, WSL2 needs hyper-v, so kinda deal breaker for me as a virtualbox user.
chx 5y ago
With WSL v2 , you can run Windows and all Linux apps. WSL v1 had limitations but WSL v2 is a VM -- a more integrated VM than usual but still.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

This isn’t surprising given all the incentives that led to WSL1, but it’s still a damn wild ride to arrive here.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dboreham 5y ago

I use it for two things: 1. Running Linux build tools that expect to pop up a browser for SSO auth (e.g. with ECS). These tools do the right thing if you install chrome in WSL. Otherwise you need to copy the URL into a windows browser which is slightly inconvenient and for me sometimes inscrutably doesn't work. 2. Running UI dev tools that don't work properly cross-OS from Windows. E.g jconsole Java networking seems to be mostly broken between the host OS and processes listening in WSL so this is a workaround. Run the GUI client in Linux. JVM process discovery also works which is nice.

Daegalus 5y ago
there are tools that solve this. I think it's even called WSL Tools. adds a few things to launch browsers on windows side with urls on Linux side and other things. not sure about java, haven't touched that in over a decade

coding123 5y ago

This reminds me of an old VMWare version where you could break out windows from the guest OS into the host. I'm surprised it wasn't patented by VMWare (or maybe that expired?) Either way, pretty awesome to have this.

phendrenad2 5y ago
Pretty sure VirtualBox has that still.

voidfunc 5y ago

I used WSLg for several months and just recently switched back to x410. WSLg is badly broken with non-trivial apps like IntelliJ IDEA.

mmgutz 5y ago

Can you run whole desktop environments like XFCE, Gnome; or run a Window Manager like i3? I'm a long time VMware user and never really used Unity (name?) view which allows running Linux apps seamlessly on Windows or Mac. WSLg seems to be the same feature.

midwestemo 5y ago
I don't know about WSLg specifically but last time I heard if you runs a x server with an application like VcXsrv, install XFCE and configure it to use the x server. You can pretty much run XFCE or any other desktop environment in WSL. I don't know about the performance however.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

Anyone else worrying about Windows swallowing up Linux? I hope their intentions are altruistic.

spijdar 5y ago
For better or for worse, I'm not sure the aggregate direction Microsoft takes as a company is either altruistic or malicious, I'm pretty sure it's ultimately profit driven. I expect there are MS engineers who see this as altruistic and executives that see this as a way to keep developers from moving off Windows and ultimately as customers. In the end, I'm not sure what this will mean for "desktop Linux". I've already had one colleague dump "bare metal Linux" in favor of Win10 + WSL2.

fb03 5y ago

I have been getting by with VcXsrv just fine, for simple apps like IDEs and stuff (vs code, pycharm community). The advantage of wslg would be running hardware accel'd apps?

gigatexal 5y ago

Can this run tiling window managers?

jbhouse 5y ago

DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Got this running on my Surface Book the other day. Totally useless, but very cool!

vermaden 5y ago

If the host system is Linux then this can be called Windows Subsystem for Linux (the same thing that WINE does). If the host system is Windows then its Linux Subsystem for Windows. Please do not fuck with logic.

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
Windows (subsystem for Linux) i.e. a subsystem of Windows that is for Linux. I think.

apatheticonion 5y ago

I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to drop WSL and manage my own VM manually. I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2. This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? When is WSL2 running and when is it not? etc etc Ultimately, I would rather run Linux on my desktop as a daily driver but the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me to live (at least) 8 hours a day in. Gnome 40 looks great though, can't wait too see what the future holds. My dream is running Linux as a daily driver where the UI is more polished than MacOS. Windows will run in a VM and will be used for API calls for playing games (I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation).

cprecioso 5y ago
About your last point, this was posted a couple weeks ago on here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870399
dgan 5y ago
I don't understand claims "desktop experience is not there yet". What do you even need so specific? Care to explain? I tend to think it's more of people's problem at that point than linux desktop experience problem
- apatheticonion 5y ago
  It's not _functionally_ problematic, just aesthetically. Mostly it's just that I never go a full day without performing some kind of maintenance on my Linux desktop environment to try to get it looking right, and it never looks right. I also run multiple monitors, so that aspect tends to throw in some extra jank. At this point, running Gnome completely unmodified has been the most success I have had - but even Gnome 40 has some questionable design decisions. Windows is a poor example of polish but I feel there's a lot we can learn from by looking at MacOS's desktop environment. Having used each for significant amounts of time (years) and currently living on Windows, MacOS really takes the prize for the "nicest place to live but worst landlord".

pharmakom 5y ago

Microsoft has so much ego that rather than simply making a Linux distro they insist we run Linux on Windows.

rvense 5y ago
They probably know they can't stop developers from deploying to Linux. They're trying to the Windows desktop relevant.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They don't need to try while fighting 1% GNU/Linux desktop. The whole point of WSL is to bring into Windows, those devs that buy Apple hardware instead of supporting Linux OEMs, and couldn't care less as long as they have their POSIX like experience.
phendrenad2 5y ago
How would a Microsoft Linux distro be different from, say, Ubuntu? Would it bundle WINE, perhaps with Microsoft insider knowledge of how their APIs work? How would they make money on Windows if everyone could just use that?
Xevi 5y ago
> simply making a Linux distro It would take decades to migrate Windows users to a Linux distro.
pjmlp 5y ago
They don't insist, this is for the folks that should be supporting Linux OEMs but rather pay Apple.

p0d 5y ago

I've been using linux for 20 years and my one frustration is missing Powerpoint. I recently joined the world of education and they are Powerpoint mad. Hats off to LibreOffice but Powerpoints look like they have been dragged through a hedge backwards. Is anyone solving this problem on linux locally or maybe wsl is the way for me to go?

ThinkBeat 5y ago

I will be the curmudgeon here I guess. Microsoft has been following this strategy for a while. Announce something useful. I click in and look forward to start using it. How do I download it and get started? Oh I need to install a beta version of Windows on my computer to use this feature. I dont want to do that. Then weekly or biweekly new stories pop up and I hope it has had a proper release, but no, insider only. I would prefer if MS announced, "tool under development to be released 03/25" and then "ready for production today". Synched so that you can get the correct version of windows to use the new tool/feature/framework. It says it will ship with the next version of Windows, so it will ship in Windows 11 then? I wish there was a meta tag on Hacker News that identified if a program, platform, airplane, city building, etc is vaporware, under real development or production ready / move in ready / book a flight ready etc etc.

hacker_homie 5y ago
Then who would test it?

trashtester 5y ago

I wonder if WSLg will work on my passed-through 3090 from my linux host to my Windows VM, or of this requires barebone Windows.

jgilias 5y ago

I love it how in the screenshot in the description you can see that the shortcuts on the desktop are mostly games. Now you know why the hypothetical user is sticking around using Windows as their daily driver in the first place :)

mikaeluman 5y ago

For me WSL has completely replaced dual booting setups. There are still some quirks with integration such as certificates and more. I really can’t wait for the GPU experience to be fully supported and also be able to use pytorch from within containers. Microsoft is so far doing everything right with WSL IMO.

pjmlp 5y ago
For me that happened already 10 years ago with VMWare.
- mycall 5y ago
  You need a Quatro GPU to do that, right?

29athrowaway 5y ago

- Embrace - Extend <- You are here - Extinguish

whydid 5y ago
I was worried about this happening in the early 2000s, but not anymore. Have you seen how terrible Windows and Windows Server is?
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Has it ever been good at any point in time? No, yet people use it and develop for it.

elif 5y ago

I made the switch from full-linux to WSL about a year ago. I never used windows outside of gaming but I got tired of putting up with minor hardware/driver frustrations on my particular laptop (surface). I'm happy to report I have encountered zero issues. In fact, I don't think I've even used it for anything outside of emacs/cli. I am kinda surprised by this link since I've been using the x version of emacs this whole time.

sevensor 5y ago

As a WSL user at work, this addresses exactly zero of my problems with running Windows. Windows Defender is still going to randomly spin up and bring my machine to a halt. The Windows Start Menu with its ads is still there. There are still 15 pieces of device driver desktop experience crapware running in the background. The RAT required by our IT department is still resident. Adding GUI support doesn't move the needle: the missing feature is freedom.

miohtama 5y ago
> The RAT required by our IT department is still resident This sounds like organizational problem, not a technical problem. Have you considered applying a new position for another employer that allows to run Ubuntu/Red Hat/etc. environments?
themulticaster 5y ago
What's a RAT? I've never heard of it, and I'm afraid it's an not a googleable word. Remote Administration Tool? Something like Intel vPro?
- specktr 5y ago
  They’re likely referring to a remote access trojan (malware) which likely shares many features of whatever administrative tool the IT team uses at that company.
  - sevensor 5y ago
    Is there a fundamental difference between a remote administration tool and a remote access trojan?
    - reissbaker 5y ago
      Seems like roughly the same difference between a malware keylogger and say, X11. They both intercept all your keystrokes, but you wanted the latter one to do so and didn't want the former. ("But I didn't want the remote admin tool on my computer!" It's not your computer, it's the company's computer. And they wanted it there.)

CallMeJim 5y ago

In Windows 11 + WSL2 + Google Drive Sync, you can cd into Google Drive at /mnt/g and use it like a normal directory. I'm not sure when this became the case; it wasn't possible 6 months ago with Windows 10 + WSL2 + Google Drive File Stream.

mickotron 5y ago

Just do it already, MS. Replace Windows/NT kernel with Linux, and make Windows another Linux distro. Seems like you're kinda heading that way.

AnnoyedComment 5y ago

Fantastic. I predict this thread will be filled with reasonable, capable, intelligent technologists explaining that Linux doesn't have wide-ranging hardware support, with replies by Linux experts who tell them they're wrong.

juangburgos 5y ago

I have given WSL2 a chance recently and it sucks, the vmmem process eats all my memory. It is not a recent bug, it has been known since 2019 and hasn't been fixed. Beware: Don't loose your time with this (like I did) until you see the issue below fixed. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166