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Honestly, WSL has got nothing over a VirtualBox VM using a virtio-net network device on it. - Real VM you can snapshot and transfer to another computer running

by fb03 3y ago

Honestly, WSL has got nothing over a VirtualBox VM using a virtio-net network device on it. - Real VM you can snapshot and transfer to another computer running VirtualBox, even on another OS, as VBox supports other operating systems. - With VcXsrv or Xorg on Cygwin, you'll get graphical apps just the same, and with the virtio-net network card on the VM (instead of Virtualbox's default Intel Pro1000 - my protip :D) you'll get enough speed to watch youtube on google chrome -- e.g.: More than sufficient speed for using an IDE like PyCharm etc - With VSCode, you don't even need a X server. Just use "Remote - SSH" and connect to your VM and keep your local lower input lag - Works just the same as "Remote - WSL" as both essentially use the same mechanism - a remote connection to a Linux server. - Services run automatically, as it's just a normal Linux install. No need to 'service docker start' on every WSL run - Doesn't hijacks your Virtualization extensions, like with WSL, which need Hyper-V which actually boots your computer with a Hyper-V hypervisor and blocks nested virtualization, meaning, you can't use other virtualization technologies properly outside of Hyper-V if you use WSL* * Btw, you also get a (small, but non-zero) performance hit on your Windows box by using WSL, even when it is not running, since now Hyper-V is what boots your system as the ring-0 guy. Yes, your Windows install basically becomes a "VM" hosted by Hyper-V. Unpopular opinion: WSL is okay for getting work done quick, but there are better solutions with better tradeoffs in how you handle control of your PC's hardware if you do a good VirtualBox set up imo.

chaychoong 3y ago
One nice thing about WSL: GPU "passthrough" (via GPU-PV) is handled out-of-the-box. There are some solutions (such as https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Easy-GPU-PV https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Easy-GPU-PV) that makes the process easy if you are using Hyper-V as the hypervisor, but it is not a straightforward task yet. Hopefully that will change in the future!
- fb03 3y ago
  I wasn't aware of that, thank you!
nikau 3y ago
> Real VM you can snapshot and transfer to another computer running VirtualBox, even on another OS, as VBox supports other operating systems wsl2 is just a disk image also, you can just shutdown wsl and copy the disk image to another machine.
TMWNN 3y ago
>- Real VM you can snapshot and transfer to another computer running VirtualBox, even on another OS, as VBox supports other operating systems. I just migrated my home setup to UnRAID. Among the things I was looking forward to was an improved VM experience; I had been happy with VirtualBox, but KVM in UnRAID is a "real Type 1 hypervisor" so had to be better, amirite fellas? Boy, was I shocked when I saw how poor the VM functionality is compared to VirtualBox. (Yes, I know that UnRAID's GUI does not contain all the functionality `virsh` has (I've heard that the next major release will improve on this). None of that changes the fact that KVM snapshots don't survive beyond reboots, making it impossible to do what I took for granted from back in the VMware days: Rebooting the server and expecting that my VMs will gracefully and automatically save, restart, and continue on.)
pjmlp 3y ago
Hyper-V is enough for most of us, no need for other virtualization technologies. I also don't mind that type 1 hypervisors have won, and if one is doing any kind of local Docker or Kubernetes development, the tiny impact of running Windows as a guest hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. Even though WSL hardly brings anything new over VMWare, much more feature rich than Virtual Box, it saves me the headache of being yet another thing I would care to install, or pay for.
hypercube33 3y ago
You mention a small performance hit with wsl...It's brother WSA (android subsystem) hits super hard on Windows 11 for some reason. I somewhat miss the kernel translation in favor of the new VM style for these like you mentioned since it's really a VM without some of the benefits like network management and clear cut performance boundaries

by fb03 3y ago

chaychoong 3y ago

One nice thing about WSL: GPU "passthrough" (via GPU-PV) is handled out-of-the-box. There are some solutions (such as https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Easy-GPU-PV https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Easy-GPU-PV) that makes the process easy if you are using Hyper-V as the hypervisor, but it is not a straightforward task yet. Hopefully that will change in the future!

fb03 3y ago
I wasn't aware of that, thank you!

nikau 3y ago

> Real VM you can snapshot and transfer to another computer running VirtualBox, even on another OS, as VBox supports other operating systems wsl2 is just a disk image also, you can just shutdown wsl and copy the disk image to another machine.

TMWNN 3y ago

>- Real VM you can snapshot and transfer to another computer running VirtualBox, even on another OS, as VBox supports other operating systems. I just migrated my home setup to UnRAID. Among the things I was looking forward to was an improved VM experience; I had been happy with VirtualBox, but KVM in UnRAID is a "real Type 1 hypervisor" so had to be better, amirite fellas? Boy, was I shocked when I saw how poor the VM functionality is compared to VirtualBox. (Yes, I know that UnRAID's GUI does not contain all the functionality `virsh` has (I've heard that the next major release will improve on this). None of that changes the fact that KVM snapshots don't survive beyond reboots, making it impossible to do what I took for granted from back in the VMware days: Rebooting the server and expecting that my VMs will gracefully and automatically save, restart, and continue on.)

pjmlp 3y ago

Hyper-V is enough for most of us, no need for other virtualization technologies. I also don't mind that type 1 hypervisors have won, and if one is doing any kind of local Docker or Kubernetes development, the tiny impact of running Windows as a guest hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. Even though WSL hardly brings anything new over VMWare, much more feature rich than Virtual Box, it saves me the headache of being yet another thing I would care to install, or pay for.

hypercube33 3y ago

You mention a small performance hit with wsl...It's brother WSA (android subsystem) hits super hard on Windows 11 for some reason. I somewhat miss the kernel translation in favor of the new VM style for these like you mentioned since it's really a VM without some of the benefits like network management and clear cut performance boundaries