34 ms·

The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

1613 points by pentagrama 1y ago

attah_ 1y ago
Still named backwards.
mlhpdx 1y ago
Not only open source, but extremely well documented.
gitroom 1y ago
[dead]
pjmlp 1y ago
Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs.
- 90s_dev 1y ago
  Unless they're just flat out lying, no: > This is the result of a multiyear effort to prepare for this
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    People lie in court under oath, so excuse my sceptism when key people across .NET, Typescript, Python and AI frameworks have been let go.
- jayd16 1y ago
  Can't help but be pessimistic about this or any news coming out of Build, given the circumstances.
- tgma 1y ago
  How would a 3% layoff in a big company affect anything unless they want to specifically axe some project? It’s just lubrication for the machine. 3% is less than nothing compared to the bloat in any bigco and let me tell you Microsoft’s reputation is not the leanest of the bunch.
  - jayd16 1y ago
    They're not uniform across every team and project. Certain projects can be hit very hard while others are not. Outside looking in, all we can really do is speculate.
    - tgma 1y ago
      Sure we can speculate that 3% is not news. Again, it’s a one way conclusion: I concede if they want to axe a project deliberately, that could show up in the layoff, but projects won’t incidentally get impacted because of a 3%. The causal relationship would be the opposite.
  - littlestymaar 1y ago
    It's really hard to cut actual bloat when running layoffs, because the more you work the less time you have to do politics and save your ass, so the less productive type of people tend to be pretty resilient to layoffs.
    - tgma 1y ago
      Have you worked at any of these large companies? It’s really easy actually (practically, not emotionally). It’s usually very obvious and there’s consensus who the bottom 10% are. Politics would affect promotions much more than layoff.
      - littlestymaar 1y ago
        > It’s usually very obvious and there’s consensus who the bottom 10% are. Sigh, and company keep them for sentimental reasons I guess…
- tester756 1y ago
  >Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs. Decisions, preparations and execution to open source such projects in big corporations to not happen within a week, two or month.
  - dec0dedab0de 1y ago
    you could probably say the same about layoffs
    - tester756 1y ago
      But the knowledge about layoffs is at very high levels at the beginning Managers learn about lay offs day or two before engineers
gjvc 1y ago
microsoft open sourcing a lot of things lately
- behnamoh 1y ago
  I wonder if companies open-source stuff mainly as part of a bigger strategy which primarily benefits them. could it be a way to access to a pool of free, contributing talent?
  - cokeandpepsi 1y ago
    I mean yeah, the money and growth these days is pulling people into choose their cloud/services platforms
    - DaSHacka 1y ago
      Why was this flagged? This isn't even a secret, a lot of SaaS companies will open source parts of their offerings to increase adoption, making the money back when larger orgs now want to use it, and are willing to pay for enterprise support plans to get the service straight from the horse's mouth. I think it's a fair exchange too, even as an individual I pay for plenty of smaller open-source SaaS services—even if they're more expensive than proprietary competitors—for the very reason that I could always selfhost it without interruption if SHTF and the provider goes under.
  - beanjuiceII 1y ago
    why would companies not do things that benefit them? and if it's meant pessimistically, let me take you back to a much worse time when Microsoft didn't open source anything
    - hulitu 1y ago
      > let me take you back to a much worse time Microsoft is not much better now.
  - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
candiddevmike 1y ago
Can I use a vanilla kernel with it yet?
- coconut08 1y ago
  What does the native wsl kernel not offer that you need?
  - candiddevmike 1y ago
    A version that tracks the underlying distro better, or even closer to mainline. Current WSL2 kernel is 6.6, kernel is 6.12 or 6.15. Debian Trixie will be 6.12.
  - azatom 1y ago
    sleep? strace shows that the sleep program uses clock_nanosleep, which is theoretically "passive." However, if the host suspends and then wakes up after the sleep period should have ended, it continues as if it were "active."
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Their kernel modifications and patches are public, and some of them have been upstreamed long ago. You'll need to compile your own to get the benefit, but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use your kernel of choice. Of course, if you want the native integration WSL offers, you'll need to upgrade the Linux driver/daemon side to support whatever kernel you prefer to run if it's not supported already. Microsoft only supports a few specific kernels, but the code is out there for the Linux side so you can port the code to any OS, really. With some work, this could even open up possibilities like running *BSD as a WSL backend.
- rfoo 1y ago
  I think you always can. In the past you may lose some features / have some bugs. For recent kernel versions (>= 6.6) the only patches WSL kernels have is dxgkrnl + some hacky fixes for clock sync. Others are all in upstream already. So you'll just lose WSLg / CUDA passthrough and nothing else now. Of course, there might be some regressions. They are usually only fixed (upstream) after WSL kernel gets upgraded and it starts to repro in WSL.
elif 1y ago
Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop or laptop, with no configuration required. Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I update my OS?"
- hobs 1y ago
  And yet when I reboot my computer windows has shown me an entirely new place I can see ads - this week it was my lock screen. So I left - I am willing to do more work to be spied on less, to be used as a product less, and to fight with my computer about who owns it less.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Yeah this is what pisses me off the most about windows. Telemetry that can't be turned off normally. Ads everywhere. Microsoft deciding when I must restart for updates. Microsoft trying to manage my behaviour telling me to try new features. Screw that. My computer is my own and must do what I choose. This feature thing is really one of their strategies. At work they send us "adoption managers" that run reports to check whether people use feature xyz enough and set up stupid comms campaigns to push them to do so. I really hate that. I decide how I use my computer. Not a vendor.
  - malux85 1y ago
    > and to fight with my computer about who owns it less. This is a great way of saying it and expresses the uneasy feeling windows has given me recently. I use Linux machines but I have 1 windows machine in my home as a media PC; and for the last several years windows has made me feel like I don’t own that computer but I’m just lucky to be along for the ride. Ramming ads on the task bar and start menu, forcing updates on me, forcing me to make a Microsoft account before I can login (or just having a dark UI pattern so I can’t figure out how to avoid it, for the pedantic). With Linux I feel like the machine is a turing complete wonderbox of assistance and possibility, with windows it feels like Microsoft have forced their way into my home and are obnoxiously telling me they know best, while condescendingly telling me I’m lucky to be here at all. It’s a very different feeling.
behnamoh 1y ago
meanwhile Apple won't even make it easy to boot Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
  It's easier to dual boot Asahi than Windows. Secure boot and disk partitioning are two examples of roadblocks that are streamlined in the Asahi installation, but quite difficult on Windows
- tgma 1y ago
  Apple has gone out of their way to build first party virtualization APIs in their OS to boot a Linux VM directly by specifying kernel and initrd on disk. That would be a direct point of comparison to WSL, not Asahi. What are you talking about? [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzlinuxbootloader https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzl... P.S. They also specifically built Rosetta for Linux to compile x64 Linux binaries into aarch64 to run inside Linux VMs on their machines.
  - frollogaston 1y ago
    I don't know about any of that, just that as a user, I cannot run Linux on my Mac easily.
    - tgma 1y ago
      You can’t? Just install UTM for a full VM one-click install (easier than wsl /install and two reboots) or any number of docker thingies that people build for the Mac.
      - frollogaston 1y ago
        Hm, never heard of that one but I'll try it.
        tgma 1y ago
mrpippy 1y ago
Note that this doesn't include lxcore.sys, the kernel side driver that powers WSL 1. (Also, I'm surprised that WSL 1 is still supported. It must be in maintenance mode though, right?)
- charcircuit 1y ago
  No, both are still fully supported despite what the numbering may suggest.
- boxfire 1y ago
  That's the only part I care about dang. I still use WSL1 and have done a number of interesting hacks to cross the ABI and tunnel windows into "Linux" userspace and I'd like to make that easier/more direct
  - senlala 1y ago
    I'm very interested in knowing about your hacks! Would you mind sharing a bit more? I'm also still using WSL1 and was hoping to be able to fix some of it's quirks :(
singularity2001 1y ago
couldn't they have saved millions of dollars if they open sourced it earlier?
- pasc1878 1y ago
  No. To get something substantial to work you need to have some (if not most) development work done by people who are being paid. In this case who except Microsoft would have paid for development here.
jleyank 1y ago
Check the license and its details. This might be great, or it might be MS looking to get free help. Especially with dev layoffs.
- wging 1y ago
  MIT: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE
  - jleyank 1y ago
    IANAL, but how is this license different from, say, the older BSD license - thought that was "have fun, do what you want, post a notice"? It doesn't say anything regarding ownership of changes, nor how to add copyright for such changes... Does this mean that MS is looking to own changes, or will there be a string of extra copyright notices for each (significant?) change?
    - jcranmer 1y ago
      The MIT license scrunches the first two clauses of the 3-clause BSD license into a single clause, and omits the third clause (the nonendorsement clause, which is already generally implied). As a practical matter, most of the basic "simple" open source licenses are functionally identical.
      - jleyank 1y ago
        But who owns the copyright to changes, and how is it recorded? I just am suspicious as to what or how large companies who sell/rent software deal with open-source, free stuff...
        wging 1y ago
        You can answer those questions for yourself, it's all in the repo.
        1y ago
ryanhecht 1y ago
Maybe someone will finally build my dream: a WSL distro that I can also dual-boot natively. I'd love to switch between bare-metal Windows with WSL and bare-metal Linux with virtualized Windows at my leisure!
- maccard 1y ago
  Parallels on Mac did this in reverse a decade ago. You could dual boot windows and MacOS, or you could boot into your windows OS while running MacOS and access both file systems properly.
  - OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
    Ok but MacOS is the worst of the 3 worlds. It can't run Linux or Windows apps
    - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
      Not true, 86box while slow on new apple ARM silicon can boot windows XP, and QEMU on Intel silicon will allow you to boot all thee OS at once. MacOS has a lot of issues (mostly by Apple recent policy changes), but posix systems are more alike than different. =3 https://github.com/Moonif/MacBox https://github.com/Moonif/MacBox https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases/tag/v4.2.1 https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases/tag/v4.2.1
- mikojan 1y ago
  When you use WSL2, Windows itself is running virtualized on Hyper-V.
- micw 1y ago
  At least with VirtualBox and VMWare it is possible (not actually WSL but still).
Matl 1y ago
OT but the name irks me; Windows subsystem for Linux makes it sound like some sort of official Wine layer. It's a Linux subsystem for Windows if anything. It makes it sound like Microsoft is giving some capability to Linux whereas it's the other way around.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  There's history here; there was an old thing called Windows Subsystem for Unix. Again, not what you'd expect from the name.
  - naikrovek 1y ago
    That was ”Windows Services for Unix”.
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  It's a “Windows subsystem” for running Linux, but yeah the naming is pretty confusing.
- avestura 1y ago
  Microsoft can't name a project leading with a trademark (Linux <something>), hence why it's called WSL. Source: https://x.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19 https://x.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19
  - philshem 1y ago
    If you want to see the thread https://xcancel.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19 https://xcancel.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s...
    - tacker2000 1y ago
      Very interesting comment there: “ I still hope to see a true "Windows Subsystem for Linux" by Microsoft or a windows becoming a linux distribution itself and dropping the NT kernel to legacy. Windows is currently overloaded with features and does lack a package manager to only get what you need...”
abhisek 1y ago
Not sure about the impact of WSL because personally did not use it but I do know couple of friends who stopped spinning up Kali VM because of WSL.
Night_Thastus 1y ago
I've been using WSL on and off for Linux development for the last few years. When it works, it's great! When it doesn't....oh man it sucks. It has been non-stop networking and VPN problems, XServer issues, window scaling issues, hardware accelerated graphics not working, etc. this whole time. I've spent more time trying to fix WSL issues then actually developing software. It's never gotten better. It's fast. It's powerful. But using it as a daily driver is very painful in my experience. I avoid it as much as possible and do most of my work in MSYS2 instead. Sure, it's much slower. But at least it works consistently and has for years.
- stevenwoo 1y ago
  I think I'm still on a beta version because I'm afraid to update it and breaking all the stuff I have working.
  - burnte 1y ago
    The beta version actually updates more often than the release group. I use the beta so I get the updates sooner. It's been rock stable for me for YEARS.
- CoolCold 1y ago
  I've tried WSLg for couple of times and all I run was something like xclock to ensure it works. I literally have 0 interest in running GUI Linux apps, so for me it all smooth sailing.
- wvenable 1y ago
  I use it all the time but then I've never run a GUI application in it.
- 90s_dev 1y ago
  I'm still waiting for the day I need to install WSL, but so far git-bash is working just fine.
- odie5533 1y ago
  I use WSL as daily drive for dev. Never had any issues. Love it. I use it from VS Code.
lenerdenator 1y ago
Killer. Now do NT.
- p_ing 1y ago
  Too much 3rd party code in Windows to make that feasible.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    Buy them.
hugo1789 1y ago
Nice but where is the code? Is it just very, very incomplete or a joke?
- muststopmyths 1y ago
  They do this sometimes during their Build conference. The code will probably show up after a keynote or session announcing it at the conference
  - muststopmyths 1y ago
    actually it's there. the link from the blog just points to a branch without the code
mosfets 1y ago
WSL is the main reason I switched from Mac/Linux to Windows two years ago. Excited to see this move!
- misano 1y ago
  so they gotch you
liendolucas 1y ago
I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to use Linux, do the proper switch once and for all. You will never look back. I haven't in almost 15 years. Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine. Edit: more than 15 years.
- Animats 1y ago
  That's sort of what Wine does. That's how I run the occasional Windows program on Linux.
- NelsonMinar 1y ago
  That works pretty well except for gaming. A lot of games detect if they are running in a VM and refuse to let you play, as an anti-cheat measure.
- ActorNightly 1y ago
  The big difference is hardware access. I used to do VFIO with hardware passthrough so I could have linux but still run windows software like CAD that takes advantage of the gfx card. That was a pain to set up and use. The other way, its very simple. WSL2 can run ML tasks with just a tiny bit of overhead in moving the data to the card.
  - lostmsu 1y ago
    PyTorch and most of other ML stuff have native Windows ports.
    - ActorNightly 1y ago
      Yes but the point is to not do dev on windows, because window "terminal" sucks
- ghotli 1y ago
  Counterpoint: things like the Valve Index for VR simply don't behave well in this environment no matter how much I've worked on getting it there. I'm not a novice either, $dayjob has me working on the lowest levels of Linux on a daily basis. I did linux from scratch on a Pentium 2 when I was 12. All that to say yes I happen to agree but edge cases are out there. The blanket statement doesn't apply for all use cases
Xplan 1y ago
[dead]
blindstitch 1y ago
I would love if the bug(s) with working on the windows filesystem from within wsl could now be fixed. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/discussions/9412#discussioncomment-11914903 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/discussions/9412#discussion...
- 1oooqooq 1y ago
  Microsoft too.
Animats 1y ago
Does this mean Microsoft is abandoning it as end of life? It's hard to tell intent here.
- gocsjess 1y ago
  Probably related to AI, given how closely integrated both WSL and AI is
footlose_3815 1y ago
M$ contributing to open source is great, but I switch to Linux because I don't trust Windows, the OS. Not because of accessibility.
jjcm 1y ago
When WSL came out I was absolutely overjoyed - finally an actual linux shell on windows! I use windows for my gaming pc, and I wanted to have a unified gaming/dev box. It felt like the solution. Over time though more and more small issues with it came up. Packages working not quite right, issues with the barriers between the two, etc. It always felt like there was a little bit more friction with the process. With Valve really pushing Proton and the state of linux gaming, I've recently swapped over to Ubuntu and Nixos. The friction point moved to the gaming side, but things mostly just work. Things on linux are rapidly getting better, and having things just work on the development side has been a breath of fresh air. I now feel that it's a better experience than windows w/ WSL, despite some AAA titles not working on linux.
- nickserv 1y ago
  Just curious, which games gave you problems?
  - jjcm 1y ago
    Overwatch is the big one - lots of random issues with it. But basically any game with Denuvo DRM is extremely high risk, resulting in either a ban or the game not running at all.
    - zamalek 1y ago
      Denuvo counts each proton version as a unique activation, might help you avoid this issue going forward
    - foresto 1y ago
      Can you remember any particular problems in Overwatch? I've been down that road, so there's a chance I might have some info that you would find useful. One problem that was unsolved last time I checked: Saving highlight videos. It used to work if you told Overwatch to use webm format instead of mp4, but Blizzard broke that somewhere along the line, possibly in the transition to Overwatch 2. (I worked around this with OBS Studio and its replay buffer feature.)
  - 1y ago
open-paren 1y ago
What distros are y'all using on WSL?
- gocsjess 1y ago
  debian bookworm; just to get my work, and hobbies done
- srfn 1y ago
  NixOS! [1] You can keep the entrie system config in a single git repo. For me, it's far easier to work with, than, let's say, Ubuntu. But beware, it has steep learning curve. [1]: https://github.com/nix-community/NixOS-WSL https://github.com/nix-community/NixOS-WSL
megous 1y ago
[flagged]
xyst 1y ago
Internal WSL maintainers must have been hit particularly hard by the quarterly layoffs.
sneak 1y ago
Microsoft doesn’t like open source software. This is cosplay. Microsoft releases the important parts of VS Code under proprietary licenses. Microsoft doesn’t release the source code for Windows or Office or the github.com web app under free software licenses. Don’t get it twisted. This is marketing, nothing more.
- Vaslo 1y ago
  If you can do it better and use a very permissive open license, no one is stopping you.
shutterstock 1y ago
WSL caused me to just install Ubuntu right over my Windows installation. That is how useful it was for me.
abshkbh 1y ago
Amazing, I briefly worked on WSL v1 in 2015! 10 years and going
nsxwolf 1y ago
I still don’t understand the naming. It’s a Windows subsystem that runs in Linux? But it’s a way to run a Linux environment on Windows?
dbacar 1y ago
I have to use Windows as my main box after nearly 6 years of MacOS (and before that Mint) and WSL2 helps me keep my sanity.
bni 1y ago
Every time I read this product name I think that the words come in the wrong order.
- Zambyte 1y ago
  (Windows subsystem) for (Linux)
  - jay_kyburz 1y ago
    A Windows Subsystem for running Linux
coldblues 1y ago
Copying files between Windows and WSL is EXTREMELY slow. I really wanted to give Windows a chance but the slowness completely destroyed that chance, along with the lack of hardware acceleration for GUI applications.
- jwnin 1y ago
  See if the trick in this article helps out: https://pomeroy.me/2023/12/how-i-fixed-wsl-2-filesystem-performance-issues/ https://pomeroy.me/2023/12/how-i-fixed-wsl-2-filesystem-perf...
stopthe 1y ago
A lot of people here are saying nice things about having dev environment on WSL. Honest question: how do you deal with with those minor but insufferable Windows' quirks like 0d0a line endings, selective Unicode support, byte-order-marks and so on. While right now I enjoy the privilege to develop on Linux, things may change.
- rizalp 1y ago
  For me, I just accepts the quirks and move on with other things in life.
- wvenable 1y ago
  The worlds don't really cross. If I'm using WSL to develop software using a Linux toolchain I'm not using any other Windows tools, other than VS Code, in that environment. I could but I just don't find the need. I could literally be remoted into an actual physical Linux box and the experience would be nearly identical. Occasionally I'll use File Explorer to manage my Linux file system or Linux tools on the Windows file system but really not the degree in which any quirks would be an issue.
- CoolCold 1y ago
  may be you missed the point - in WSL, you are with Linux/unix based env. So your Vim or other editors and tools just work like in regular Linux, Windows part until needed can be invisible and uninvolved. Other tools like VSCode IDE, has special handling (extension) to work _inside_ WSL and only keep GUI frontend on the Windows side (very close to how it works over SSH). On the other hand, I quite often use "explorer.exe ." inside WSL to open File Explorer and jiggle around with files downloaded/created/modified (say with sed) in WSL and it works fine too. Or use MarkText markdown editor on folder inside WSL being some git repo and I'm adding docs/instructions there.
  - stopthe 1y ago
    Well that gives some hope, unless they (I'm speculating about future possible employer) just disable WSL
dataflow 1y ago
Anybody know what the deal is with neither Oracle nor Microsoft trying to make it possible for VirtualBox and WSL2 to coexist without severe performance impact? What the heck is the issue that neither side knows how to solve? Or is there a deliberate business decision not to solve it?
- rizalp 1y ago
  It's because WSL2 is using HyperV behind the scenes, and HyperV is a Type 1 (Native Hypervisor), running directly on top of hardware. When you activate it, it also makes you host windows OS virtualized as well, albeit with native access for some components like GPU etc. That's why all other Windows Hypervisor (Virtualbox, VMWare Workstation) will experience one issue or another when WSL2 is activated, because more abstraction is happening and more things could go wrong.
  - dataflow 1y ago
    That makes no sense. Are you actually familiar with the technical issues or are you hand-waving? WSL2 itself is a Linux VM running in top of Hyper-V. Heck, as far as I know other Hyper-V VMs run fine alongside WSL2 too. Why can't a VirtualBox Linux VM do the same?
    - rizalp 1y ago
      Because Virtualbox and VMWare Workstation is Type-2 hypervisor, they run on top of the host OS (Windows), and not directly on hardware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor
      - dataflow 1y ago
        That doesn't in any way explain why VirtualBox couldn't be made to run on top of Hyper-V. You might as well tell me Linux apps can't be made to run on Windows because Windows isn't Linux.
        1y ago
badmonster 1y ago
big news
throwaway48476 1y ago
The title is misleading and ambiguous as to whether this applies to WSL1 or WSL2.
- est 1y ago
  still yet to find out.
nottorp 1y ago
That page has no mention of the actual license though.
- Totoradio 1y ago
  MIT License: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE
  - nottorp 1y ago
    Are they ashamed, if they didn't mention it in the announcement?
    - opan 1y ago
      I think they have been using that license for a while when releasing stuff. Windows Terminal, the new PowerShell, etc.
asim 1y ago
Wow. In 2009, when it looked like Microsoft was the most closed company of all time, I was telling people at work, they should port windows to the linux kernel. What happened over the next 15 years, I don't think people would have believed it if you told them back then. Things have changed.. ALOT. Now granted, this isn't what I said they should do, but you know, eventually they might see the light.
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago
  Never see anything Microsoft does in the direction of open source as “they have seen the light”. It’s a trap. Claiming open source friendliness is the bait, Windows is the trap itself.
  - frollogaston 1y ago
    Yeah I remember when they bought Github and my coworker was telling me how they've turned a new leaf and want to support foss... nope, they wanted to train an AI on all the code there.
  - formerly_proven 1y ago
    Yep, see VS Code etc. This whole thread is basically frogs praising the cozy warming water in the pot.
    - turtletontine 1y ago
      What specifically about VS Code? I personally don’t use it, pretty much just cause I’m comfortable with my current development environment, and nothing has spurred me to migrate in a while. I’ve been vaguely suspicious to see Microsoft rapidly gain such a huge market share with VS Code, but I don’t know any specific criticisms about it.
      - loloquwowndueo 1y ago
        VS code is designed to fracture. https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
Boogie_Man 1y ago
Why isn't it "Linux Subsystem for Windows" as it is a Linux subsystem running on a Windows os?
- CivBase 1y ago
  It's hard to argue it's even a subsystem anymore. More like "Integrated Linux VM for Windows".
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  I think it's because WSL refers to the Windows subsystem that allows you to run Linux, not to the Linux system itself. You still have to download and install Linux on top of it, or at least you did the last time I used it a few years ago.
  - transpostmeta 1y ago
    I always assumed it was because it was a Subsystem for Linux that allowed it to be run as a guest on a Windows host. But your version works too. Microsoft ist really terrible at naming things, that's for sure.
- bubblethink 1y ago
  There may also be some trademark law precedent that forces this naming convention. Even on the google play store, if you have 3rd party apps for something, it's always "App for X", the name cannot be "X app".
- FateOfNations 1y ago
  A "Windows Subsystem" is a concept that dates back to the original Windows NT line of operating systems. Historically, there've been a number of supported "Windows Subsystems", essentially APIs for the kernel. In Windows NT 3.1, there were multiple subsystems: Win32, POSIX, and OS/2, plus a separate one specifically for security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem While WSL2 isn't implemented as an architectural sub-system (it uses a VM instead), WSL1 was far closer to the original architecture, providing a Linux compatible API for the Windows kernel.
jve 1y ago
Sec guy (who was mainly a linux guy) was never happy to let people use WSL in corp due to security bugs. Can anyone chime in - is this still a concern? Was it ever a concern?
- Hilift 1y ago
  WSL is an easy compliance trick when you want to run your own Postfix/Dovecot installation.
- jwnin 1y ago
  Depends. How do you feel about an OS running on your network that's not subject to your standard OS hardening, mandatory agent stack?
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  QEMU has win64 builds, and the guest OS can access SAMBA/NFS/SSHFS host shares. Getting guest OS hypervisor to work is soft locked on Home licensed windows, so options are often limited to Win guests on linux hosts. In general, the utilities on posix systems heavily rely on a standardized permission and path structure fundamentally different than windows registry paradigms. Even something as simple as curl... while incredibly useful on windows, also opens a scripting ecosystem that side-channels Microsoft signing protections etc. Linux VM disk image files can be very small (some are just a few MB), simply copied to a physical drive/host later given there is no DRM/Key locks, and avoids mixing utf8 with windows codepage. Mixing ecosystems creates a Polyglot, and that is going to have problems for sure... given neither ecosystems wants the cost of supporting the other. Best method, use cross platform application ports supported on every platform. In my opinion, Windows should only be used for games and industry specific commercial software support. For robust system privacy there are better options now, that aren't booby-trapped for new users. =3
- pxc 1y ago
  It's not about bugs, it's that users can do basically whatever they want in their WSL2 guest VMs and most endpoint security software has little control over it or visibility into it. It's a natural little pocket of freedom for users, which is great but undermines efforts to lock those systems down (for good or ill).
wiseowise 1y ago
And written in C#! Right? Right?…
qwertox 1y ago
I despise Windows 11 so much, but have to use it. I have a 24/7 box with Ubuntu running a couple of Linux and Windows VMs and that's the way I like it. I don't touch the Ubuntu host except for when I need to reconfigure it. All development is done on Windows laptop via SSH to those VMs. When I tried using Ubuntu via WSL, something didn't feel right. There were some oddities, probably with the filesystem integration, which bothered me enough to stop doing this. Nevertheless, I think it's really great what they now did. Now all what's missing is that they do it the other way around, that they create a 100% windows compatible Wine alternative.
- applied_heat 1y ago
  What hypervisor are you using for the windows vms?
  - qwertox 1y ago
    QEMU/KVM.
anticensor 1y ago
WSL1 is the good one, WSL2 just runs Linux simultaneously alongside Windows.
mdtrooper 1y ago
Is it a good news for Wine or ReactOS (Can they learn something to improve their projects)?
- einpoklum 1y ago
  Probably not. WSL2 is a kind of a VM, so it should be bypassing the Windows API.
- okanat 1y ago
  No. WSL2 is a Linux VM. It doesn't expose Windows API internals or implementation details. It uses normal, already well-documented public ones. Wine and ReactOS can already use the publicly available documentation and they are still behind on many such APIs' implementation. Windows is a big OS. It takes serious man power to implement many things.
sigmonsays 1y ago
what if this really is a long haul embrace, extend, extinguish. Guess time will tell
Dwedit 1y ago
WSL1 was hobbled by needing to calculate Unix Permission numbers and hardlink counts for every file. On Windows, you need to create a handle to the file to get those things. That's a file open on every file whenever you list a directory.
varbhat 1y ago
Cool! Now make Microsoft Office Open Source! I understand you won't,so atleast release the Linux versions of them!
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  I remember way, way back when Internet Explorer first came out, there was talk of a Unix/Linux version coming soon.
  - wvenable 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX 1997 to 2001 (IE 4 to IE 5 SP1)
- rizalp 1y ago
  That would not be a sound strategy. Microsoft choose to make a OS a commodity, but not services and platforms, as part of the strategy to commoditize the complements like developer tooling Commoditize your complements: https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement
everdrive 1y ago
I'm not be sarcastic or funny when I ask this. Why isn't this called the Linux subsystem for Windows? It seems like a Linux subsystem running on Windows. If it were the other way around, (ie, a Windows Subsystem for Linux) I'd think that Linux would be the primary OS, and something like WINE would the subsystem.
- dazhbog 1y ago
  Management or marketing needs "Windows" to be the first word when people write articles about it..
- burnte 1y ago
  Trademark law. They'd have to license the TM to have a product name that leads with another entity's trademark.
- alisonatwork 1y ago
  I think it's supposed to be read as "the Windows subsystem for [running] Linux [applications]". Back in the old days there used be a thing called Services For UNIX (SFU), which was a bunch of Windows tools and services that provided UNIX-like behavior. Then came Subsystem for UNIX Applications (SUA). And now it's WSL.
palata 1y ago
Not a Windows user, but I think WSL is great. I see a lot of Windows user criticising Linux for... essentially not looking like Windows. "Linux Desktop will never reach mass adoption unless it [something that boils down to 'looks more like Windows']". The thing is: I consider myself a real Linux user, and I don't want it to look like Windows. And I hate it when Windows people try to push Linux there, just because they want a free-with-no-ads version of Windows. In that sense, if WSL can keep Windows users on Windows such that they don't come and bother me on Linux, I'm happy :-).
- tryauuum 1y ago
  Not a Windows user, but I hate WSL. Looks like microsoft realizing they will lose a generation of developers to linux so they implemented linux inside their OS. Now people won't see the joys of recompiling kernel :)
  - CoolCold 1y ago
    I've stopped seeing joys of recompiling kernel [and consequence reboots of servers which easily could take 10 minutes and that's without IPMI /KVM] since 2009-2010
    - palata 1y ago
      Fortunately, Desktop users never need to recompile their kernel, it's really just a choice. And I hope that you don't use WSL for servers :).
      - CoolCold 1y ago
        Nope, WSL is for operator machines desktops/laptops, pure Linux for servers.
  - naikrovek 1y ago
    WSL isn’t Linux implemented in Windows. WSL 1 was, but it is not the good version of WSL that most use. WSL 2 is a special purpose VM which has ties into Windows in a few key ways to make interoperability easier. You can run a program on Windows and pipe its output to a Linux program for example. Windows and WSL can trade system RAM back and forth as needed. Networking between the two is very smooth. You can recompile the kernel for WSL all you want, and many do. Microsoft make their changes public as required by the GPL. You can use your own kernel without anything from Microsoft. You can easily create your own WSL distributions, customized to your hearts content. It’s more than the sum of its parts, really. Feels that way to me, anyway.
unit149 1y ago
[dead]
froh 1y ago
great news :-) now how about mainlining the kernel patches? so we get a chance of a more current and Linux distro provided wsl kernel :-)? https://github.com/issues/created?issue=microsoft%7CWSL%7C11071 https://github.com/issues/created?issue=microsoft%7CWSL%7C11...
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
Cool! This means I can fix mDNS now!
labadal 1y ago
I never even realized that it was tivo-ized. Probably because I haven't been on windows since before WSL became a thing.
ewy1 1y ago
While I had to, I enjoyed using WSL1 on Windows. It was disappointing to find WSL2 has no user upside; it just discards the benefits of WSL1 in favor of the simpler implementation. Shame for all of the people who worked hard on WSL1 only to be virtualized into nonexistence.
broknbottle 1y ago
Podman offers the same experience natively but also supports VMs via podman machine.
Vaslo 1y ago
WSL is amazing if you work for a non tech company that is a windows house but want to do development in Linux. It’s seamless (at least to my middle ability) for VS Code.
rnd0 1y ago
>Lxcore.sys, the kernel side driver that powers WSL 1 This isn't open source, and considering that this is probably what ties into/sets up WSL as a windows subsystem that's a bit of a bummer. The rest is just a Virtual Machine for the most part, isn't it?
your_challenger 1y ago
WSL is a landmine of bad design. I lost all my data once, and that incident made me switch to a Mac. Here's how you can lose all your data - and Microsoft engineers won’t care: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/8992 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/8992 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9830 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9830 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9049#issuecomment-2620221535 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9049#issuecomment-26...
- dbacar 1y ago
  Mac IS the Sotate of the Art at the developer experience. The only annoyance was the virtualisation on Arm but having UTM/Multipass/Virttualbox now, it is the best. If you are up to too many containers, a linux box would be more preferable.
- pxc 1y ago
  I've hit real data loss bugs in WSL, as well— files disappearing, sometimes even rendering the WSL guest unbootable.
- wbkang 1y ago
  I read your issue, and it's not so different from `sudo rm -rf /` as opposed to an actual design flaw.
  - your_challenger 1y ago
    `sudo rm -rf /` requires you to be a superuser or provide a password, whereas running `wsl --unregister` does not require elevated privileges.
tonyhart7 1y ago
why is not called Linux subsystem for windows??? or its just programmer bad naming things
- not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago
  It's one of those things that make sense if you understand the details. Windows NT itself has had an architecture supporting environment subsystems for things like Win32, POSIX, OS/2 for decades. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT for more details. Later, it made it relatively easy to host Linux and Android too. You can imagine they commonly called these things "subsystem for XYZ". So "Windows subsystem for Linux" made sense for those in the know. Does sound weird outside of the world of NT though
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  It's just HN commenters not knowing how to read
  - tonyhart7 1y ago
    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcREVRSJJ6WnfAINaZH7zWq83iEKlds-s1J6Nw&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcREVRSJ...
karunamurti 1y ago
WSL is ok, I can run drop down terminal quickly to run any command and VS Code is well integrated with it. Too bad it's very slow.
roundup 1y ago
Is there fuzzing documentation?
udev4096 1y ago
I still can't believe how people use windows as their main system with all the extremely invasive telemetry and bogus "AI" features that hogs a LOT of resources at idle
- gowthamgts12 1y ago
  i use it only for gaming. no developer i know personally uses windows. either they are on mac or linux.
- grishka 1y ago
  Some people don't know that computers can be fast. Others modify their system to remove/neutralize all this crap. There are even tools to automate that.
  - ruszki 1y ago
    It’s not even that difficult to manually remove these from Windows. It’s like a handful of configs. It’s way easier to do that than make (probably) any Linux distro to work with my current and previous setups. Which btw I could never achieve even with considerable amount of tinkering.
  - udev4096 1y ago
    "Some people are just stupid"
    - Ylpertnodi 1y ago
      But most are just ignorant. Ignorance, not being a crime, of course.
    - 71bw 1y ago
      Blunt and yet so true
- guardian5x 1y ago
  And yet games run pretty fast on Windows.
tuukkao 1y ago
WSL 2 is one of the biggest reasons I'm able to be productive as a blind software developer. With it I'm able to enjoy the best desktop screen reader accessibility (Windows and NVDA) as well as the best developer tools (Linux). I hate Microsoft's AI and ads force-feeding as much as anyone else but trust me, you'd do the same if you were in my shoes. Screen reader accessibility on Mac Os is stagnating even faster than the os itself and even though Linux / Gnome accessibility is being worked on, it's still ready only for enthusiasts who don't mind their systems being in a constant state of somewhat broken, as illustrated by this series of blog posts from just a few weeks ago: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/ https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...
- craigaloewen 1y ago
  This is so awesome to hear!!
- hodgesrm 1y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. I'm not visually impaired but even so the graphics and presentation features on Windows seem noticeably better than the competition.
- protocolture 1y ago
  >Screen reader accessibility on Mac Os is stagnating Apocryphally, a lot of this was apparently developed at the direct insistence of Steve Jobs who had some run ins with very angry visually impaired people who struggled to use the early iphone/ipad. That said, my source for this is one of the men who claims to have spoken to Mr Jobs personally, a visually impaired man who had lied to me on several fronts, and was extremely abusive. However I couldn't find anyone inside apple management or legal who would deny his claim. And he seemed to have been set the expectation that he could call the apple CEO at any time.
pawanjswal 1y ago
WSL going open source is a huge win for devs. Can’t wait to see what the community builds with it!
nar001 1y ago
I hope they'll do WSA next!
atoav 1y ago
WSL in combination with the enshittification of Windows was the thing that finally convinced me to switch from Windows as a main driver to Kubuntu/Linux. KDE Plasma is IMO the best grapical desktop environment at the moment, including MacOS.
cranium 1y ago
And now for the reverse (Windows on Linux): https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
dd_xplore 1y ago
People just want to bash Windows left n right. But no other OS in history has been this mature with handling GUI snd and providing the flexibility, customisations etc. Before I say anything, Windows 11 is bad. I remember playing with Win98, XP , I would modify many many registry settings, mod binary files to do something with games, you could access all sorts of weird hardware which only had drivers for windows! Windows 98-7 were best for learning stuff about computers (inner workings etc). I remember, to remove viruses (XP)I was trying to hard delete system 32 folder, it deleted lots of files and it continued to run!
PRWeb2025 1y ago
[dead]
thrownaway561 1y ago
WSL along with VSCODE has been a godsend for Rails development.
hk1337 1y ago
I wonder if this is in any way connected to devcontainer becoming more prominent in Github and VSCode?
olav 1y ago
I'd rather stay in Linux and use Windows if I really must. Can we have an LSW, then?
- jerryhomelab 1y ago
  Like Wine?
- stephenr 1y ago
  Virtual Machines exist.
- rstuart4133 1y ago
  qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -smp cores=4 -drive file=windows.qcow2,index=0,format=qcow2,if=virtio -display gtk -usb -device qemu-xhci,id=xhci -device usb-tablet -m 8G -vga std Win10_1803_EnglishInternational_x64.iso -netdev user,id=net0,restrict=off,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 -device virtio-net,netdev=net0
tw1984 1y ago
WSL is a stupid idea. Microsoft should just stop developing and maintaining its windows kernel and built a windows compatibility layer on top of Linux.
calvinmorrison 1y ago
WSL is amazing. Nothing short of it. My laptop SSD controller died on a conference. I bought a 200 dollar netbook running windows, installed WSL, downloaded the MDADM packages, was about to mount the encrypted drive with cryptsetup, mount the ext4 partition, then chroot into it, then my home drive was like working on my old laptop. I did this in about 20 minutes, with the help of chatgpt. In the end I was able to keep working through the trip and provide some demos to clients which landed us some big deals. Go WSL!
husamia 1y ago
Microsoft is always too little too late just in time to save the day!
apatheticonion 1y ago
WSL1 got my hopes up that we were on the path to Windows supporting the Linux user space API but then it was cancelled and replaced with a virtual machine based solution that I didn't need WSL2 to implement myself (with more flexability and capabilities). I'd much prefer a proper compatibility layer that converts Linux system calls to their equivilent Windows calls and those calls be exposed from the Windows kernel itself. That way I could just run Linux applications, bash, zsh and development tools directly on top of Windows without needing any "remote development tools" in my IDE or whatever. Something closer to MSYS2/git bash/busybox for win - but where tools can ignore their Windows specific stuff like the filepath seperator. It's fine I guess

1613 points by pentagrama 1y ago

attah_ 1y ago

Still named backwards.

mlhpdx 1y ago

Not only open source, but extremely well documented.

gitroom 1y ago

[dead]

pjmlp 1y ago

Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs.

90s_dev 1y ago
Unless they're just flat out lying, no: > This is the result of a multiyear effort to prepare for this
- pjmlp 1y ago
  People lie in court under oath, so excuse my sceptism when key people across .NET, Typescript, Python and AI frameworks have been let go.
jayd16 1y ago
Can't help but be pessimistic about this or any news coming out of Build, given the circumstances.
tgma 1y ago
How would a 3% layoff in a big company affect anything unless they want to specifically axe some project? It’s just lubrication for the machine. 3% is less than nothing compared to the bloat in any bigco and let me tell you Microsoft’s reputation is not the leanest of the bunch.
- jayd16 1y ago
  They're not uniform across every team and project. Certain projects can be hit very hard while others are not. Outside looking in, all we can really do is speculate.
  - tgma 1y ago
    Sure we can speculate that 3% is not news. Again, it’s a one way conclusion: I concede if they want to axe a project deliberately, that could show up in the layoff, but projects won’t incidentally get impacted because of a 3%. The causal relationship would be the opposite.
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  It's really hard to cut actual bloat when running layoffs, because the more you work the less time you have to do politics and save your ass, so the less productive type of people tend to be pretty resilient to layoffs.
  - tgma 1y ago
    Have you worked at any of these large companies? It’s really easy actually (practically, not emotionally). It’s usually very obvious and there’s consensus who the bottom 10% are. Politics would affect promotions much more than layoff.
    - littlestymaar 1y ago
      > It’s usually very obvious and there’s consensus who the bottom 10% are. Sigh, and company keep them for sentimental reasons I guess…
tester756 1y ago
>Given the layoffs round from last week, in a record earnings year, I wonder if this is a side effect of those layoffs. Decisions, preparations and execution to open source such projects in big corporations to not happen within a week, two or month.
- dec0dedab0de 1y ago
  you could probably say the same about layoffs
  - tester756 1y ago
    But the knowledge about layoffs is at very high levels at the beginning Managers learn about lay offs day or two before engineers

gjvc 1y ago

microsoft open sourcing a lot of things lately

behnamoh 1y ago
I wonder if companies open-source stuff mainly as part of a bigger strategy which primarily benefits them. could it be a way to access to a pool of free, contributing talent?
- cokeandpepsi 1y ago
  I mean yeah, the money and growth these days is pulling people into choose their cloud/services platforms
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    Why was this flagged? This isn't even a secret, a lot of SaaS companies will open source parts of their offerings to increase adoption, making the money back when larger orgs now want to use it, and are willing to pay for enterprise support plans to get the service straight from the horse's mouth. I think it's a fair exchange too, even as an individual I pay for plenty of smaller open-source SaaS services—even if they're more expensive than proprietary competitors—for the very reason that I could always selfhost it without interruption if SHTF and the provider goes under.
- beanjuiceII 1y ago
  why would companies not do things that benefit them? and if it's meant pessimistically, let me take you back to a much worse time when Microsoft didn't open source anything
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > let me take you back to a much worse time Microsoft is not much better now.
- ThrowawayR2 1y ago

candiddevmike 1y ago

Can I use a vanilla kernel with it yet?

coconut08 1y ago
What does the native wsl kernel not offer that you need?
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  A version that tracks the underlying distro better, or even closer to mainline. Current WSL2 kernel is 6.6, kernel is 6.12 or 6.15. Debian Trixie will be 6.12.
- azatom 1y ago
  sleep? strace shows that the sleep program uses clock_nanosleep, which is theoretically "passive." However, if the host suspends and then wakes up after the sleep period should have ended, it continues as if it were "active."
jeroenhd 1y ago
Their kernel modifications and patches are public, and some of them have been upstreamed long ago. You'll need to compile your own to get the benefit, but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use your kernel of choice. Of course, if you want the native integration WSL offers, you'll need to upgrade the Linux driver/daemon side to support whatever kernel you prefer to run if it's not supported already. Microsoft only supports a few specific kernels, but the code is out there for the Linux side so you can port the code to any OS, really. With some work, this could even open up possibilities like running *BSD as a WSL backend.
rfoo 1y ago
I think you always can. In the past you may lose some features / have some bugs. For recent kernel versions (>= 6.6) the only patches WSL kernels have is dxgkrnl + some hacky fixes for clock sync. Others are all in upstream already. So you'll just lose WSLg / CUDA passthrough and nothing else now. Of course, there might be some regressions. They are usually only fixed (upstream) after WSL kernel gets upgraded and it starts to repro in WSL.

elif 1y ago

Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop or laptop, with no configuration required. Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I update my OS?"

hobs 1y ago
And yet when I reboot my computer windows has shown me an entirely new place I can see ads - this week it was my lock screen. So I left - I am willing to do more work to be spied on less, to be used as a product less, and to fight with my computer about who owns it less.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Yeah this is what pisses me off the most about windows. Telemetry that can't be turned off normally. Ads everywhere. Microsoft deciding when I must restart for updates. Microsoft trying to manage my behaviour telling me to try new features. Screw that. My computer is my own and must do what I choose. This feature thing is really one of their strategies. At work they send us "adoption managers" that run reports to check whether people use feature xyz enough and set up stupid comms campaigns to push them to do so. I really hate that. I decide how I use my computer. Not a vendor.
- malux85 1y ago
  > and to fight with my computer about who owns it less. This is a great way of saying it and expresses the uneasy feeling windows has given me recently. I use Linux machines but I have 1 windows machine in my home as a media PC; and for the last several years windows has made me feel like I don’t own that computer but I’m just lucky to be along for the ride. Ramming ads on the task bar and start menu, forcing updates on me, forcing me to make a Microsoft account before I can login (or just having a dark UI pattern so I can’t figure out how to avoid it, for the pedantic). With Linux I feel like the machine is a turing complete wonderbox of assistance and possibility, with windows it feels like Microsoft have forced their way into my home and are obnoxiously telling me they know best, while condescendingly telling me I’m lucky to be here at all. It’s a very different feeling.

behnamoh 1y ago

meanwhile Apple won't even make it easy to boot Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon.

OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
It's easier to dual boot Asahi than Windows. Secure boot and disk partitioning are two examples of roadblocks that are streamlined in the Asahi installation, but quite difficult on Windows
tgma 1y ago
Apple has gone out of their way to build first party virtualization APIs in their OS to boot a Linux VM directly by specifying kernel and initrd on disk. That would be a direct point of comparison to WSL, not Asahi. What are you talking about? [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzlinuxbootloader https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzl... P.S. They also specifically built Rosetta for Linux to compile x64 Linux binaries into aarch64 to run inside Linux VMs on their machines.
- frollogaston 1y ago
  I don't know about any of that, just that as a user, I cannot run Linux on my Mac easily.
  - tgma 1y ago
    You can’t? Just install UTM for a full VM one-click install (easier than wsl /install and two reboots) or any number of docker thingies that people build for the Mac.
    - frollogaston 1y ago
      Hm, never heard of that one but I'll try it.
      - tgma 1y ago

mrpippy 1y ago

Note that this doesn't include lxcore.sys, the kernel side driver that powers WSL 1. (Also, I'm surprised that WSL 1 is still supported. It must be in maintenance mode though, right?)

charcircuit 1y ago
No, both are still fully supported despite what the numbering may suggest.
boxfire 1y ago
That's the only part I care about dang. I still use WSL1 and have done a number of interesting hacks to cross the ABI and tunnel windows into "Linux" userspace and I'd like to make that easier/more direct
- senlala 1y ago
  I'm very interested in knowing about your hacks! Would you mind sharing a bit more? I'm also still using WSL1 and was hoping to be able to fix some of it's quirks :(

singularity2001 1y ago

couldn't they have saved millions of dollars if they open sourced it earlier?

pasc1878 1y ago
No. To get something substantial to work you need to have some (if not most) development work done by people who are being paid. In this case who except Microsoft would have paid for development here.

jleyank 1y ago

Check the license and its details. This might be great, or it might be MS looking to get free help. Especially with dev layoffs.

wging 1y ago
MIT: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE
- jleyank 1y ago
  IANAL, but how is this license different from, say, the older BSD license - thought that was "have fun, do what you want, post a notice"? It doesn't say anything regarding ownership of changes, nor how to add copyright for such changes... Does this mean that MS is looking to own changes, or will there be a string of extra copyright notices for each (significant?) change?
  - jcranmer 1y ago
    The MIT license scrunches the first two clauses of the 3-clause BSD license into a single clause, and omits the third clause (the nonendorsement clause, which is already generally implied). As a practical matter, most of the basic "simple" open source licenses are functionally identical.
    - jleyank 1y ago
      But who owns the copyright to changes, and how is it recorded? I just am suspicious as to what or how large companies who sell/rent software deal with open-source, free stuff...
      - wging 1y ago
        You can answer those questions for yourself, it's all in the repo.
      - 1y ago

ryanhecht 1y ago

Maybe someone will finally build my dream: a WSL distro that I can also dual-boot natively. I'd love to switch between bare-metal Windows with WSL and bare-metal Linux with virtualized Windows at my leisure!

maccard 1y ago
Parallels on Mac did this in reverse a decade ago. You could dual boot windows and MacOS, or you could boot into your windows OS while running MacOS and access both file systems properly.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
  Ok but MacOS is the worst of the 3 worlds. It can't run Linux or Windows apps
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    Not true, 86box while slow on new apple ARM silicon can boot windows XP, and QEMU on Intel silicon will allow you to boot all thee OS at once. MacOS has a lot of issues (mostly by Apple recent policy changes), but posix systems are more alike than different. =3 https://github.com/Moonif/MacBox https://github.com/Moonif/MacBox https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases/tag/v4.2.1 https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases/tag/v4.2.1
mikojan 1y ago
When you use WSL2, Windows itself is running virtualized on Hyper-V.
micw 1y ago
At least with VirtualBox and VMWare it is possible (not actually WSL but still).

Matl 1y ago

OT but the name irks me; Windows subsystem for Linux makes it sound like some sort of official Wine layer. It's a Linux subsystem for Windows if anything. It makes it sound like Microsoft is giving some capability to Linux whereas it's the other way around.

rsynnott 1y ago
There's history here; there was an old thing called Windows Subsystem for Unix. Again, not what you'd expect from the name.
- naikrovek 1y ago
  That was ”Windows Services for Unix”.
littlestymaar 1y ago
It's a “Windows subsystem” for running Linux, but yeah the naming is pretty confusing.
avestura 1y ago
Microsoft can't name a project leading with a trademark (Linux <something>), hence why it's called WSL. Source: https://x.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19 https://x.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19
- philshem 1y ago
  If you want to see the thread https://xcancel.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s=19 https://xcancel.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610?s...
  - tacker2000 1y ago
    Very interesting comment there: “ I still hope to see a true "Windows Subsystem for Linux" by Microsoft or a windows becoming a linux distribution itself and dropping the NT kernel to legacy. Windows is currently overloaded with features and does lack a package manager to only get what you need...”

abhisek 1y ago

Not sure about the impact of WSL because personally did not use it but I do know couple of friends who stopped spinning up Kali VM because of WSL.

Night_Thastus 1y ago

I've been using WSL on and off for Linux development for the last few years. When it works, it's great! When it doesn't....oh man it sucks. It has been non-stop networking and VPN problems, XServer issues, window scaling issues, hardware accelerated graphics not working, etc. this whole time. I've spent more time trying to fix WSL issues then actually developing software. It's never gotten better. It's fast. It's powerful. But using it as a daily driver is very painful in my experience. I avoid it as much as possible and do most of my work in MSYS2 instead. Sure, it's much slower. But at least it works consistently and has for years.

stevenwoo 1y ago
I think I'm still on a beta version because I'm afraid to update it and breaking all the stuff I have working.
- burnte 1y ago
  The beta version actually updates more often than the release group. I use the beta so I get the updates sooner. It's been rock stable for me for YEARS.
CoolCold 1y ago
I've tried WSLg for couple of times and all I run was something like xclock to ensure it works. I literally have 0 interest in running GUI Linux apps, so for me it all smooth sailing.
wvenable 1y ago
I use it all the time but then I've never run a GUI application in it.
90s_dev 1y ago
I'm still waiting for the day I need to install WSL, but so far git-bash is working just fine.
odie5533 1y ago
I use WSL as daily drive for dev. Never had any issues. Love it. I use it from VS Code.

lenerdenator 1y ago

Killer. Now do NT.

p_ing 1y ago
Too much 3rd party code in Windows to make that feasible.
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  Buy them.

hugo1789 1y ago

Nice but where is the code? Is it just very, very incomplete or a joke?

muststopmyths 1y ago
They do this sometimes during their Build conference. The code will probably show up after a keynote or session announcing it at the conference
- muststopmyths 1y ago
  actually it's there. the link from the blog just points to a branch without the code

mosfets 1y ago

WSL is the main reason I switched from Mac/Linux to Windows two years ago. Excited to see this move!

misano 1y ago
so they gotch you

liendolucas 1y ago

I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to use Linux, do the proper switch once and for all. You will never look back. I haven't in almost 15 years. Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine. Edit: more than 15 years.

Animats 1y ago
That's sort of what Wine does. That's how I run the occasional Windows program on Linux.
NelsonMinar 1y ago
That works pretty well except for gaming. A lot of games detect if they are running in a VM and refuse to let you play, as an anti-cheat measure.
ActorNightly 1y ago
The big difference is hardware access. I used to do VFIO with hardware passthrough so I could have linux but still run windows software like CAD that takes advantage of the gfx card. That was a pain to set up and use. The other way, its very simple. WSL2 can run ML tasks with just a tiny bit of overhead in moving the data to the card.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  PyTorch and most of other ML stuff have native Windows ports.
  - ActorNightly 1y ago
    Yes but the point is to not do dev on windows, because window "terminal" sucks
ghotli 1y ago
Counterpoint: things like the Valve Index for VR simply don't behave well in this environment no matter how much I've worked on getting it there. I'm not a novice either, $dayjob has me working on the lowest levels of Linux on a daily basis. I did linux from scratch on a Pentium 2 when I was 12. All that to say yes I happen to agree but edge cases are out there. The blanket statement doesn't apply for all use cases

Xplan 1y ago

[dead]

blindstitch 1y ago

I would love if the bug(s) with working on the windows filesystem from within wsl could now be fixed. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/discussions/9412#discussioncomment-11914903 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/discussions/9412#discussion...

1oooqooq 1y ago
Microsoft too.

Animats 1y ago

Does this mean Microsoft is abandoning it as end of life? It's hard to tell intent here.

gocsjess 1y ago
Probably related to AI, given how closely integrated both WSL and AI is

footlose_3815 1y ago

M$ contributing to open source is great, but I switch to Linux because I don't trust Windows, the OS. Not because of accessibility.

jjcm 1y ago

When WSL came out I was absolutely overjoyed - finally an actual linux shell on windows! I use windows for my gaming pc, and I wanted to have a unified gaming/dev box. It felt like the solution. Over time though more and more small issues with it came up. Packages working not quite right, issues with the barriers between the two, etc. It always felt like there was a little bit more friction with the process. With Valve really pushing Proton and the state of linux gaming, I've recently swapped over to Ubuntu and Nixos. The friction point moved to the gaming side, but things mostly just work. Things on linux are rapidly getting better, and having things just work on the development side has been a breath of fresh air. I now feel that it's a better experience than windows w/ WSL, despite some AAA titles not working on linux.

nickserv 1y ago
Just curious, which games gave you problems?
- jjcm 1y ago
  Overwatch is the big one - lots of random issues with it. But basically any game with Denuvo DRM is extremely high risk, resulting in either a ban or the game not running at all.
  - zamalek 1y ago
    Denuvo counts each proton version as a unique activation, might help you avoid this issue going forward
  - foresto 1y ago
    Can you remember any particular problems in Overwatch? I've been down that road, so there's a chance I might have some info that you would find useful. One problem that was unsolved last time I checked: Saving highlight videos. It used to work if you told Overwatch to use webm format instead of mp4, but Blizzard broke that somewhere along the line, possibly in the transition to Overwatch 2. (I worked around this with OBS Studio and its replay buffer feature.)
- 1y ago

open-paren 1y ago

What distros are y'all using on WSL?

gocsjess 1y ago
debian bookworm; just to get my work, and hobbies done
srfn 1y ago
NixOS! [1] You can keep the entrie system config in a single git repo. For me, it's far easier to work with, than, let's say, Ubuntu. But beware, it has steep learning curve. [1]: https://github.com/nix-community/NixOS-WSL https://github.com/nix-community/NixOS-WSL

megous 1y ago

[flagged]

xyst 1y ago

Internal WSL maintainers must have been hit particularly hard by the quarterly layoffs.

sneak 1y ago

Microsoft doesn’t like open source software. This is cosplay. Microsoft releases the important parts of VS Code under proprietary licenses. Microsoft doesn’t release the source code for Windows or Office or the github.com web app under free software licenses. Don’t get it twisted. This is marketing, nothing more.

Vaslo 1y ago
If you can do it better and use a very permissive open license, no one is stopping you.

shutterstock 1y ago

WSL caused me to just install Ubuntu right over my Windows installation. That is how useful it was for me.

abshkbh 1y ago

Amazing, I briefly worked on WSL v1 in 2015! 10 years and going

nsxwolf 1y ago

I still don’t understand the naming. It’s a Windows subsystem that runs in Linux? But it’s a way to run a Linux environment on Windows?

dbacar 1y ago

I have to use Windows as my main box after nearly 6 years of MacOS (and before that Mint) and WSL2 helps me keep my sanity.

bni 1y ago

Every time I read this product name I think that the words come in the wrong order.

Zambyte 1y ago
(Windows subsystem) for (Linux)
- jay_kyburz 1y ago
  A Windows Subsystem for running Linux

coldblues 1y ago

Copying files between Windows and WSL is EXTREMELY slow. I really wanted to give Windows a chance but the slowness completely destroyed that chance, along with the lack of hardware acceleration for GUI applications.

jwnin 1y ago
See if the trick in this article helps out: https://pomeroy.me/2023/12/how-i-fixed-wsl-2-filesystem-performance-issues/ https://pomeroy.me/2023/12/how-i-fixed-wsl-2-filesystem-perf...

stopthe 1y ago

A lot of people here are saying nice things about having dev environment on WSL. Honest question: how do you deal with with those minor but insufferable Windows' quirks like 0d0a line endings, selective Unicode support, byte-order-marks and so on. While right now I enjoy the privilege to develop on Linux, things may change.

rizalp 1y ago
For me, I just accepts the quirks and move on with other things in life.
wvenable 1y ago
The worlds don't really cross. If I'm using WSL to develop software using a Linux toolchain I'm not using any other Windows tools, other than VS Code, in that environment. I could but I just don't find the need. I could literally be remoted into an actual physical Linux box and the experience would be nearly identical. Occasionally I'll use File Explorer to manage my Linux file system or Linux tools on the Windows file system but really not the degree in which any quirks would be an issue.
CoolCold 1y ago
may be you missed the point - in WSL, you are with Linux/unix based env. So your Vim or other editors and tools just work like in regular Linux, Windows part until needed can be invisible and uninvolved. Other tools like VSCode IDE, has special handling (extension) to work _inside_ WSL and only keep GUI frontend on the Windows side (very close to how it works over SSH). On the other hand, I quite often use "explorer.exe ." inside WSL to open File Explorer and jiggle around with files downloaded/created/modified (say with sed) in WSL and it works fine too. Or use MarkText markdown editor on folder inside WSL being some git repo and I'm adding docs/instructions there.
- stopthe 1y ago
  Well that gives some hope, unless they (I'm speculating about future possible employer) just disable WSL

dataflow 1y ago

Anybody know what the deal is with neither Oracle nor Microsoft trying to make it possible for VirtualBox and WSL2 to coexist without severe performance impact? What the heck is the issue that neither side knows how to solve? Or is there a deliberate business decision not to solve it?

rizalp 1y ago
It's because WSL2 is using HyperV behind the scenes, and HyperV is a Type 1 (Native Hypervisor), running directly on top of hardware. When you activate it, it also makes you host windows OS virtualized as well, albeit with native access for some components like GPU etc. That's why all other Windows Hypervisor (Virtualbox, VMWare Workstation) will experience one issue or another when WSL2 is activated, because more abstraction is happening and more things could go wrong.
- dataflow 1y ago
  That makes no sense. Are you actually familiar with the technical issues or are you hand-waving? WSL2 itself is a Linux VM running in top of Hyper-V. Heck, as far as I know other Hyper-V VMs run fine alongside WSL2 too. Why can't a VirtualBox Linux VM do the same?
  - rizalp 1y ago
    Because Virtualbox and VMWare Workstation is Type-2 hypervisor, they run on top of the host OS (Windows), and not directly on hardware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor
    - dataflow 1y ago
      That doesn't in any way explain why VirtualBox couldn't be made to run on top of Hyper-V. You might as well tell me Linux apps can't be made to run on Windows because Windows isn't Linux.
      - 1y ago

badmonster 1y ago

big news

throwaway48476 1y ago

The title is misleading and ambiguous as to whether this applies to WSL1 or WSL2.

est 1y ago
still yet to find out.

nottorp 1y ago

That page has no mention of the actual license though.

Totoradio 1y ago
MIT License: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/LICENSE
- nottorp 1y ago
  Are they ashamed, if they didn't mention it in the announcement?
  - opan 1y ago
    I think they have been using that license for a while when releasing stuff. Windows Terminal, the new PowerShell, etc.

asim 1y ago

Wow. In 2009, when it looked like Microsoft was the most closed company of all time, I was telling people at work, they should port windows to the linux kernel. What happened over the next 15 years, I don't think people would have believed it if you told them back then. Things have changed.. ALOT. Now granted, this isn't what I said they should do, but you know, eventually they might see the light.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago
Never see anything Microsoft does in the direction of open source as “they have seen the light”. It’s a trap. Claiming open source friendliness is the bait, Windows is the trap itself.
- frollogaston 1y ago
  Yeah I remember when they bought Github and my coworker was telling me how they've turned a new leaf and want to support foss... nope, they wanted to train an AI on all the code there.
- formerly_proven 1y ago
  Yep, see VS Code etc. This whole thread is basically frogs praising the cozy warming water in the pot.
  - turtletontine 1y ago
    What specifically about VS Code? I personally don’t use it, pretty much just cause I’m comfortable with my current development environment, and nothing has spurred me to migrate in a while. I’ve been vaguely suspicious to see Microsoft rapidly gain such a huge market share with VS Code, but I don’t know any specific criticisms about it.
    - loloquwowndueo 1y ago
      VS code is designed to fracture. https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

Boogie_Man 1y ago

Why isn't it "Linux Subsystem for Windows" as it is a Linux subsystem running on a Windows os?

CivBase 1y ago
It's hard to argue it's even a subsystem anymore. More like "Integrated Linux VM for Windows".
aaronbaugher 1y ago
I think it's because WSL refers to the Windows subsystem that allows you to run Linux, not to the Linux system itself. You still have to download and install Linux on top of it, or at least you did the last time I used it a few years ago.
- transpostmeta 1y ago
  I always assumed it was because it was a Subsystem for Linux that allowed it to be run as a guest on a Windows host. But your version works too. Microsoft ist really terrible at naming things, that's for sure.
bubblethink 1y ago
There may also be some trademark law precedent that forces this naming convention. Even on the google play store, if you have 3rd party apps for something, it's always "App for X", the name cannot be "X app".
FateOfNations 1y ago
A "Windows Subsystem" is a concept that dates back to the original Windows NT line of operating systems. Historically, there've been a number of supported "Windows Subsystems", essentially APIs for the kernel. In Windows NT 3.1, there were multiple subsystems: Win32, POSIX, and OS/2, plus a separate one specifically for security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem While WSL2 isn't implemented as an architectural sub-system (it uses a VM instead), WSL1 was far closer to the original architecture, providing a Linux compatible API for the Windows kernel.

jve 1y ago

Sec guy (who was mainly a linux guy) was never happy to let people use WSL in corp due to security bugs. Can anyone chime in - is this still a concern? Was it ever a concern?

Hilift 1y ago
WSL is an easy compliance trick when you want to run your own Postfix/Dovecot installation.
jwnin 1y ago
Depends. How do you feel about an OS running on your network that's not subject to your standard OS hardening, mandatory agent stack?
Joel_Mckay 1y ago
QEMU has win64 builds, and the guest OS can access SAMBA/NFS/SSHFS host shares. Getting guest OS hypervisor to work is soft locked on Home licensed windows, so options are often limited to Win guests on linux hosts. In general, the utilities on posix systems heavily rely on a standardized permission and path structure fundamentally different than windows registry paradigms. Even something as simple as curl... while incredibly useful on windows, also opens a scripting ecosystem that side-channels Microsoft signing protections etc. Linux VM disk image files can be very small (some are just a few MB), simply copied to a physical drive/host later given there is no DRM/Key locks, and avoids mixing utf8 with windows codepage. Mixing ecosystems creates a Polyglot, and that is going to have problems for sure... given neither ecosystems wants the cost of supporting the other. Best method, use cross platform application ports supported on every platform. In my opinion, Windows should only be used for games and industry specific commercial software support. For robust system privacy there are better options now, that aren't booby-trapped for new users. =3
pxc 1y ago
It's not about bugs, it's that users can do basically whatever they want in their WSL2 guest VMs and most endpoint security software has little control over it or visibility into it. It's a natural little pocket of freedom for users, which is great but undermines efforts to lock those systems down (for good or ill).

wiseowise 1y ago

And written in C#! Right? Right?…

qwertox 1y ago

I despise Windows 11 so much, but have to use it. I have a 24/7 box with Ubuntu running a couple of Linux and Windows VMs and that's the way I like it. I don't touch the Ubuntu host except for when I need to reconfigure it. All development is done on Windows laptop via SSH to those VMs. When I tried using Ubuntu via WSL, something didn't feel right. There were some oddities, probably with the filesystem integration, which bothered me enough to stop doing this. Nevertheless, I think it's really great what they now did. Now all what's missing is that they do it the other way around, that they create a 100% windows compatible Wine alternative.

applied_heat 1y ago
What hypervisor are you using for the windows vms?
- qwertox 1y ago
  QEMU/KVM.

anticensor 1y ago

WSL1 is the good one, WSL2 just runs Linux simultaneously alongside Windows.

mdtrooper 1y ago

Is it a good news for Wine or ReactOS (Can they learn something to improve their projects)?

einpoklum 1y ago
Probably not. WSL2 is a kind of a VM, so it should be bypassing the Windows API.
okanat 1y ago
No. WSL2 is a Linux VM. It doesn't expose Windows API internals or implementation details. It uses normal, already well-documented public ones. Wine and ReactOS can already use the publicly available documentation and they are still behind on many such APIs' implementation. Windows is a big OS. It takes serious man power to implement many things.

sigmonsays 1y ago

what if this really is a long haul embrace, extend, extinguish. Guess time will tell

Dwedit 1y ago

WSL1 was hobbled by needing to calculate Unix Permission numbers and hardlink counts for every file. On Windows, you need to create a handle to the file to get those things. That's a file open on every file whenever you list a directory.

varbhat 1y ago

Cool! Now make Microsoft Office Open Source! I understand you won't,so atleast release the Linux versions of them!

aaronbaugher 1y ago
I remember way, way back when Internet Explorer first came out, there was talk of a Unix/Linux version coming soon.
- wvenable 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX 1997 to 2001 (IE 4 to IE 5 SP1)
rizalp 1y ago
That would not be a sound strategy. Microsoft choose to make a OS a commodity, but not services and platforms, as part of the strategy to commoditize the complements like developer tooling Commoditize your complements: https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement

everdrive 1y ago

I'm not be sarcastic or funny when I ask this. Why isn't this called the Linux subsystem for Windows? It seems like a Linux subsystem running on Windows. If it were the other way around, (ie, a Windows Subsystem for Linux) I'd think that Linux would be the primary OS, and something like WINE would the subsystem.

dazhbog 1y ago
Management or marketing needs "Windows" to be the first word when people write articles about it..
burnte 1y ago
Trademark law. They'd have to license the TM to have a product name that leads with another entity's trademark.
alisonatwork 1y ago
I think it's supposed to be read as "the Windows subsystem for [running] Linux [applications]". Back in the old days there used be a thing called Services For UNIX (SFU), which was a bunch of Windows tools and services that provided UNIX-like behavior. Then came Subsystem for UNIX Applications (SUA). And now it's WSL.

palata 1y ago

Not a Windows user, but I think WSL is great. I see a lot of Windows user criticising Linux for... essentially not looking like Windows. "Linux Desktop will never reach mass adoption unless it [something that boils down to 'looks more like Windows']". The thing is: I consider myself a real Linux user, and I don't want it to look like Windows. And I hate it when Windows people try to push Linux there, just because they want a free-with-no-ads version of Windows. In that sense, if WSL can keep Windows users on Windows such that they don't come and bother me on Linux, I'm happy :-).

tryauuum 1y ago
Not a Windows user, but I hate WSL. Looks like microsoft realizing they will lose a generation of developers to linux so they implemented linux inside their OS. Now people won't see the joys of recompiling kernel :)
- CoolCold 1y ago
  I've stopped seeing joys of recompiling kernel [and consequence reboots of servers which easily could take 10 minutes and that's without IPMI /KVM] since 2009-2010
  - palata 1y ago
    Fortunately, Desktop users never need to recompile their kernel, it's really just a choice. And I hope that you don't use WSL for servers :).
    - CoolCold 1y ago
      Nope, WSL is for operator machines desktops/laptops, pure Linux for servers.
- naikrovek 1y ago
  WSL isn’t Linux implemented in Windows. WSL 1 was, but it is not the good version of WSL that most use. WSL 2 is a special purpose VM which has ties into Windows in a few key ways to make interoperability easier. You can run a program on Windows and pipe its output to a Linux program for example. Windows and WSL can trade system RAM back and forth as needed. Networking between the two is very smooth. You can recompile the kernel for WSL all you want, and many do. Microsoft make their changes public as required by the GPL. You can use your own kernel without anything from Microsoft. You can easily create your own WSL distributions, customized to your hearts content. It’s more than the sum of its parts, really. Feels that way to me, anyway.

unit149 1y ago

[dead]

froh 1y ago

great news :-) now how about mainlining the kernel patches? so we get a chance of a more current and Linux distro provided wsl kernel :-)? https://github.com/issues/created?issue=microsoft%7CWSL%7C11071 https://github.com/issues/created?issue=microsoft%7CWSL%7C11...

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

Cool! This means I can fix mDNS now!

labadal 1y ago

I never even realized that it was tivo-ized. Probably because I haven't been on windows since before WSL became a thing.

ewy1 1y ago

While I had to, I enjoyed using WSL1 on Windows. It was disappointing to find WSL2 has no user upside; it just discards the benefits of WSL1 in favor of the simpler implementation. Shame for all of the people who worked hard on WSL1 only to be virtualized into nonexistence.

broknbottle 1y ago

Podman offers the same experience natively but also supports VMs via podman machine.

Vaslo 1y ago

WSL is amazing if you work for a non tech company that is a windows house but want to do development in Linux. It’s seamless (at least to my middle ability) for VS Code.

rnd0 1y ago

>Lxcore.sys, the kernel side driver that powers WSL 1 This isn't open source, and considering that this is probably what ties into/sets up WSL as a windows subsystem that's a bit of a bummer. The rest is just a Virtual Machine for the most part, isn't it?

your_challenger 1y ago

WSL is a landmine of bad design. I lost all my data once, and that incident made me switch to a Mac. Here's how you can lose all your data - and Microsoft engineers won’t care: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/8992 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/8992 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9830 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9830 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9049#issuecomment-2620221535 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9049#issuecomment-26...

dbacar 1y ago
Mac IS the Sotate of the Art at the developer experience. The only annoyance was the virtualisation on Arm but having UTM/Multipass/Virttualbox now, it is the best. If you are up to too many containers, a linux box would be more preferable.
pxc 1y ago
I've hit real data loss bugs in WSL, as well— files disappearing, sometimes even rendering the WSL guest unbootable.
wbkang 1y ago
I read your issue, and it's not so different from `sudo rm -rf /` as opposed to an actual design flaw.
- your_challenger 1y ago
  `sudo rm -rf /` requires you to be a superuser or provide a password, whereas running `wsl --unregister` does not require elevated privileges.

tonyhart7 1y ago

why is not called Linux subsystem for windows??? or its just programmer bad naming things

not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago
It's one of those things that make sense if you understand the details. Windows NT itself has had an architecture supporting environment subsystems for things like Win32, POSIX, OS/2 for decades. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT for more details. Later, it made it relatively easy to host Linux and Android too. You can imagine they commonly called these things "subsystem for XYZ". So "Windows subsystem for Linux" made sense for those in the know. Does sound weird outside of the world of NT though
TiredOfLife 1y ago
It's just HN commenters not knowing how to read
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcREVRSJJ6WnfAINaZH7zWq83iEKlds-s1J6Nw&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcREVRSJ...

karunamurti 1y ago

WSL is ok, I can run drop down terminal quickly to run any command and VS Code is well integrated with it. Too bad it's very slow.

roundup 1y ago

Is there fuzzing documentation?

udev4096 1y ago

I still can't believe how people use windows as their main system with all the extremely invasive telemetry and bogus "AI" features that hogs a LOT of resources at idle

gowthamgts12 1y ago
i use it only for gaming. no developer i know personally uses windows. either they are on mac or linux.
grishka 1y ago
Some people don't know that computers can be fast. Others modify their system to remove/neutralize all this crap. There are even tools to automate that.
- ruszki 1y ago
  It’s not even that difficult to manually remove these from Windows. It’s like a handful of configs. It’s way easier to do that than make (probably) any Linux distro to work with my current and previous setups. Which btw I could never achieve even with considerable amount of tinkering.
- udev4096 1y ago
  "Some people are just stupid"
  - Ylpertnodi 1y ago
    But most are just ignorant. Ignorance, not being a crime, of course.
  - 71bw 1y ago
    Blunt and yet so true
guardian5x 1y ago
And yet games run pretty fast on Windows.

tuukkao 1y ago

WSL 2 is one of the biggest reasons I'm able to be productive as a blind software developer. With it I'm able to enjoy the best desktop screen reader accessibility (Windows and NVDA) as well as the best developer tools (Linux). I hate Microsoft's AI and ads force-feeding as much as anyone else but trust me, you'd do the same if you were in my shoes. Screen reader accessibility on Mac Os is stagnating even faster than the os itself and even though Linux / Gnome accessibility is being worked on, it's still ready only for enthusiasts who don't mind their systems being in a constant state of somewhat broken, as illustrated by this series of blog posts from just a few weeks ago: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/ https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...

craigaloewen 1y ago
This is so awesome to hear!!
hodgesrm 1y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. I'm not visually impaired but even so the graphics and presentation features on Windows seem noticeably better than the competition.
protocolture 1y ago
>Screen reader accessibility on Mac Os is stagnating Apocryphally, a lot of this was apparently developed at the direct insistence of Steve Jobs who had some run ins with very angry visually impaired people who struggled to use the early iphone/ipad. That said, my source for this is one of the men who claims to have spoken to Mr Jobs personally, a visually impaired man who had lied to me on several fronts, and was extremely abusive. However I couldn't find anyone inside apple management or legal who would deny his claim. And he seemed to have been set the expectation that he could call the apple CEO at any time.

pawanjswal 1y ago

WSL going open source is a huge win for devs. Can’t wait to see what the community builds with it!

nar001 1y ago

I hope they'll do WSA next!

atoav 1y ago

WSL in combination with the enshittification of Windows was the thing that finally convinced me to switch from Windows as a main driver to Kubuntu/Linux. KDE Plasma is IMO the best grapical desktop environment at the moment, including MacOS.

cranium 1y ago

And now for the reverse (Windows on Linux): https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

dd_xplore 1y ago

People just want to bash Windows left n right. But no other OS in history has been this mature with handling GUI snd and providing the flexibility, customisations etc. Before I say anything, Windows 11 is bad. I remember playing with Win98, XP , I would modify many many registry settings, mod binary files to do something with games, you could access all sorts of weird hardware which only had drivers for windows! Windows 98-7 were best for learning stuff about computers (inner workings etc). I remember, to remove viruses (XP)I was trying to hard delete system 32 folder, it deleted lots of files and it continued to run!

PRWeb2025 1y ago

[dead]

thrownaway561 1y ago

WSL along with VSCODE has been a godsend for Rails development.

hk1337 1y ago

I wonder if this is in any way connected to devcontainer becoming more prominent in Github and VSCode?

olav 1y ago

I'd rather stay in Linux and use Windows if I really must. Can we have an LSW, then?

jerryhomelab 1y ago
Like Wine?
stephenr 1y ago
Virtual Machines exist.
rstuart4133 1y ago
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -smp cores=4 -drive file=windows.qcow2,index=0,format=qcow2,if=virtio -display gtk -usb -device qemu-xhci,id=xhci -device usb-tablet -m 8G -vga std Win10_1803_EnglishInternational_x64.iso -netdev user,id=net0,restrict=off,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 -device virtio-net,netdev=net0

tw1984 1y ago

WSL is a stupid idea. Microsoft should just stop developing and maintaining its windows kernel and built a windows compatibility layer on top of Linux.

calvinmorrison 1y ago

WSL is amazing. Nothing short of it. My laptop SSD controller died on a conference. I bought a 200 dollar netbook running windows, installed WSL, downloaded the MDADM packages, was about to mount the encrypted drive with cryptsetup, mount the ext4 partition, then chroot into it, then my home drive was like working on my old laptop. I did this in about 20 minutes, with the help of chatgpt. In the end I was able to keep working through the trip and provide some demos to clients which landed us some big deals. Go WSL!

husamia 1y ago

Microsoft is always too little too late just in time to save the day!

apatheticonion 1y ago

WSL1 got my hopes up that we were on the path to Windows supporting the Linux user space API but then it was cancelled and replaced with a virtual machine based solution that I didn't need WSL2 to implement myself (with more flexability and capabilities). I'd much prefer a proper compatibility layer that converts Linux system calls to their equivilent Windows calls and those calls be exposed from the Windows kernel itself. That way I could just run Linux applications, bash, zsh and development tools directly on top of Windows without needing any "remote development tools" in my IDE or whatever. Something closer to MSYS2/git bash/busybox for win - but where tools can ignore their Windows specific stuff like the filepath seperator. It's fine I guess