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> "More powerful than Linux" is silly. It's a VM. I don't think it's silly. Sure, it's a VM, but it's so nice that I barely reboot into Linux. You get the best

by 0x457 1y ago

> "More powerful than Linux" is silly. It's a VM. I don't think it's silly. Sure, it's a VM, but it's so nice that I barely reboot into Linux. You get the best of both worlds with WSL.

xnickb 1y ago
But you still get the worst of the Windows world, which is more than many are willing to deal with. I was using windows for years as my main gaming OS, but after they announced W11 being the only way forward. Switching to Linux on the desktop was like a breath of fresh air. I'll leave it at that. If I were to run an OS on a VM it's gonna be windows, not Linux
lxgr 1y ago
For me, the best part of running Linux as the base OS is not having to deal with Windows. No ridiculous start menu spam; a sane, non-bloated operating system (imagine being able to update user space libraries without a reboot, due to being able to delete files that other processes still have opened!); being able to back up my data at the file level without relying on weird block-level imaging shenanigans and so much more. How is inverting the host/guest relationship an improvement on that?
- phendrenad2 1y ago
  I have a theory that 99.9% of preferring Windows or Linux comes down to "do ads in the start menu trigger my OCD".
  - lxgr 1y ago
    It runs much deeper than that for me. Windows at its core just does not seem like a serious operating system to me. Whenever there are two ways to do something, its developers seem to have picked the non-reasonable one compared to Unix – and doing that for decades adds up. But yes, first impressions undoubtedly matter too.
    - iLemming 1y ago
      I have used Windows for years, and I loved it. I never understood why Linux and Mac users kept bashing on it. I just didn't know any better. These days I'm avoiding booting into Windows unless I really have no choice. The ridiculousness of it is simply limitless. I would open a folder with a bunch of files in it and the Explorer shows me a progress bar for nearly a minute. Why? What the heck is it doing? I just want to see the list of files, I'm not even doing anything crazy. Why the heck not a single other file navigator does that — not in Linux, not on Mac, darn — even the specialized apps built for Windows work fine, but the built-in thing just doesn't. What gives? I would close the window and re-open the exact same folder, not even three minutes later and it shows the progress bar again. "WTF? Can't you fucker just cache it? Da fuk you doing?" Or I would install an app. And seconds after installing it I would try to search for it in the Start menu, and guess what? Windows instead opens Edge and searches the web for it. wat? Why the heck I can't remove that Edge BS once and for all? Nope, not really possible. wat? Or like why can't I ever rebind Cmd+L? I can disable it but can't rebind it, there's just no way. Is it trying to operate my computer, or 'S' in 'OS' stands for "soul"? Or for whatever reason it can't even get the time right. Every single time I boot into it, my clock time is wrong. I have to manually re-sync it. It just doesn't do it, even with the location enabled. Stupid ass bitch. And don't even let me rant about those pesky updates. I dunno, I just cannot not hate Windows anymore. Even when I need to boot in it "for just a few minutes", it always ends up taking more time for some absolute fiddlesticks made of bullcrap. Screw Windows! Especially the 11 one.
      - skydhash 1y ago
        I loved windows XP and Windows 7. They were a bit brittle regarding malware, but I was using a lot of pirated software at the times, so that may have been me. Win 8 was bad UX wise, but 8.1 resolved a lot of the issues. But since then, I barely touched windows. I want a OS, not an entertainment center, meaning I want to launch a program, organize my files, and connect to other computers. Anything that hinders those is bad. I moved from macOS for the same reason, as they are trying to make those difficult too.
        1y ago
  - sssilver 1y ago
    I would say in my case it’s less about OCD and more about, inexplicably, dignity.
  - specproc 1y ago
    Advertising triggers a lot more than OCD in me outside of my start menu. On my machine, where I spend most of my waking hours, it was certainly the last straw for me. But there's also the thing where Microsoft stops supporting older machines, creating a massive pile of insecure boxes and normie-generated e-waste; and the thing where it dials home constantly; and the thing where they try and force their browser on you, and the expensive and predatory software ecosystem, and the insane bloat, and the requiring a Microsoft account just to use my own computer. Oh yeah, and I gotta pay for this crap?! I went full Linux back when Windows 11 came out and will only use it if a job requires. Utterly disgusting software.
  - II2II 1y ago
    The reason varies by the decade. Microsoft has a tendency to fix one thing, then break another. That said, a distaste for advertising goes beyond OCD. Advertisers frequently have questionable ethics, ranging from intruding upon people's privacy (in the many senses of the word) to manipulating people. It is simply something that many of us would rather do without.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    Seems sorta not cool toward people with OCD to use their condition for rhetorical effect.
    - porridgeraisin 1y ago
      Take a chill pill.
      - bee_rider 1y ago
        What makes you think I’m not chill already? You engaged in a slightly rude trope, and I provided a very mild push back, at least from my point of view the stakes are all correctly low.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  > imagine being able to update user space libraries without a reboot That's... a very weird criticism to level at Windows, considering that the advice I've seen for Linux is to reboot if you update glibc (which is very much a user space library).
  - lxgr 1y ago
    Why? It directly results in almost every Windows update requiring a reboot to apply, compared to usually only an application restart or at most desktop logout/login on Linux. Having to constantly reboot my computer, or risk missing important security patches, was very annoying to me on Windows. I've never had to reboot after updating glibc in years of using Linux, as far as I can remember.
  - deepsun 1y ago
    The only time I need to reboot my Linux Mint is when the Linux kernel is updated. I understand why.
    - samtheprogram 1y ago
      I responded "This is not true" to a sibling comment about this same topic, but about "shared libraries", which is the opposite problem (multiple programs could load the same shared library and try to interact). This is absolutely not true for Linux kernel updating. While you won't be using the new kernel before rebooting, there's 0 risk in not rebooting, because there's exactly 1 version of the kernel running on the machine -- it's loaded into memory when your computer starts. There's of course rare exceptions, like when a dynamically linked library you just installed depends on a minimum specific version of the Linux kernel you also just installed, but this is extremely rare in Linux land, as backwards compatibility of programs with older kernels is generally a given. "We do not break userspace"
      - doubled112 1y ago
        One problem not rebooting with the kernel is drivers. They aren’t all built in. Most distros leave the current running kernel and boot into the new one next time. Some, like Arch, overwrite the kernel on an update, so modules can’t be loaded. It is a shock the first time you plug in a USB drive and nothing happens.
- 0x457 1y ago
  > For me, the best part of running Linux as the base OS is not having to deal with Windows. This is correct, but let's not pretend that linux is perfect. 99% of linux _for me_ is my terminal environment. WSL delivers on that _for me_. I don't see any start menu spam because I rarely use it, when I do I type what I'm looking for before my eyes even move to look at that start menu. oh, I can play destiny 2 and other games without shenanigans. Also don't need to figure out why Slack wants to open links in chromium, but discord in firefox (I have to deal with edge asking to be a default browser, but IMO it's less annoying). Oh and multi-monitor with multiple DPI values works out of the box without looking up how to handle it in one of the frameworks this app uses.
  - viraptor 1y ago
    > when I do I type what I'm looking for before my eyes even move to look at that start menu. That's a /s, right? When I start typing immediately after the windows button, the initial letters are lost, the results are bad either way, and most turn into just web suggestions rather than things named exactly like the input.
    - aydyn 1y ago
      Turn off web suggestions then?
      - viraptor 1y ago
        I did. They come back after some of the updates.
    - 0x457 1y ago
      > That's a /s, right? When I start typing immediately after the windows button, the initial letters are lost, the results are bad either way, and most turn into just web suggestions rather than things named exactly like the input. No, I rarely have issues with search in start menu.
jchw 1y ago
Similarly powerful would be totally fine. More powerful really is silly. Personally I couldn't make a lot of my workflows work very well with WSL2. Some of the stuff I run is very memory intensive and the behavior is pretty bad for this in WSL2. Their Wayland compositor is also pretty buggy and unpolished last I used it, and I was never able to get hardware acceleration working right even with the special drivers installed, but hopefully they've made some progress on that front. Having Windows and Linux in the same desktop the way that WSL2 does obviously means that it does add a lot of value, but what you get in the box isn't exactly the same as the thing running natively. Rather than a strict superset or strict subset, it's a bit more like a Venn diagram of strengths.
- davrosthedalek 1y ago
  By default wsl2 grabs half of the memory, but that's adjustable. The biggest pain point I have is to run servers inside wsl that serve to non-localhost (localhost works auto-magically). I am surprised you had such problems with wsl2 graphics acceleration. That just worked for me, including CUDA accelerated workloads on the linux side.
palata 1y ago
> You get the best of both worlds with WSL. You obviously don't. Maybe WSL is the best compromise for people who need both Windows and Linux. But it's ridiculous to think that WSL is better than just Linux for people who don't need Windows at all. And that's kind of what the author of this thread seems to imply.
- davrosthedalek 1y ago
  I think that case could be made. For example for people who have a laptop that is not well supported by linux. With WSL they get linux and can use all of their hardware.
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    If it’s impossible to massage Linux into working well with your laptop – sure. But you’re missing out so much, like, well, not having to deal with Windows.

by 0x457 1y ago

> "More powerful than Linux" is silly. It's a VM. I don't think it's silly. Sure, it's a VM, but it's so nice that I barely reboot into Linux. You get the best of both worlds with WSL.

xnickb 1y ago

But you still get the worst of the Windows world, which is more than many are willing to deal with. I was using windows for years as my main gaming OS, but after they announced W11 being the only way forward. Switching to Linux on the desktop was like a breath of fresh air. I'll leave it at that. If I were to run an OS on a VM it's gonna be windows, not Linux

lxgr 1y ago

For me, the best part of running Linux as the base OS is not having to deal with Windows. No ridiculous start menu spam; a sane, non-bloated operating system (imagine being able to update user space libraries without a reboot, due to being able to delete files that other processes still have opened!); being able to back up my data at the file level without relying on weird block-level imaging shenanigans and so much more. How is inverting the host/guest relationship an improvement on that?

phendrenad2 1y ago
I have a theory that 99.9% of preferring Windows or Linux comes down to "do ads in the start menu trigger my OCD".
- lxgr 1y ago
  It runs much deeper than that for me. Windows at its core just does not seem like a serious operating system to me. Whenever there are two ways to do something, its developers seem to have picked the non-reasonable one compared to Unix – and doing that for decades adds up. But yes, first impressions undoubtedly matter too.
  - iLemming 1y ago
    I have used Windows for years, and I loved it. I never understood why Linux and Mac users kept bashing on it. I just didn't know any better. These days I'm avoiding booting into Windows unless I really have no choice. The ridiculousness of it is simply limitless. I would open a folder with a bunch of files in it and the Explorer shows me a progress bar for nearly a minute. Why? What the heck is it doing? I just want to see the list of files, I'm not even doing anything crazy. Why the heck not a single other file navigator does that — not in Linux, not on Mac, darn — even the specialized apps built for Windows work fine, but the built-in thing just doesn't. What gives? I would close the window and re-open the exact same folder, not even three minutes later and it shows the progress bar again. "WTF? Can't you fucker just cache it? Da fuk you doing?" Or I would install an app. And seconds after installing it I would try to search for it in the Start menu, and guess what? Windows instead opens Edge and searches the web for it. wat? Why the heck I can't remove that Edge BS once and for all? Nope, not really possible. wat? Or like why can't I ever rebind Cmd+L? I can disable it but can't rebind it, there's just no way. Is it trying to operate my computer, or 'S' in 'OS' stands for "soul"? Or for whatever reason it can't even get the time right. Every single time I boot into it, my clock time is wrong. I have to manually re-sync it. It just doesn't do it, even with the location enabled. Stupid ass bitch. And don't even let me rant about those pesky updates. I dunno, I just cannot not hate Windows anymore. Even when I need to boot in it "for just a few minutes", it always ends up taking more time for some absolute fiddlesticks made of bullcrap. Screw Windows! Especially the 11 one.
    - skydhash 1y ago
      I loved windows XP and Windows 7. They were a bit brittle regarding malware, but I was using a lot of pirated software at the times, so that may have been me. Win 8 was bad UX wise, but 8.1 resolved a lot of the issues. But since then, I barely touched windows. I want a OS, not an entertainment center, meaning I want to launch a program, organize my files, and connect to other computers. Anything that hinders those is bad. I moved from macOS for the same reason, as they are trying to make those difficult too.
      - 1y ago
- sssilver 1y ago
  I would say in my case it’s less about OCD and more about, inexplicably, dignity.
- specproc 1y ago
  Advertising triggers a lot more than OCD in me outside of my start menu. On my machine, where I spend most of my waking hours, it was certainly the last straw for me. But there's also the thing where Microsoft stops supporting older machines, creating a massive pile of insecure boxes and normie-generated e-waste; and the thing where it dials home constantly; and the thing where they try and force their browser on you, and the expensive and predatory software ecosystem, and the insane bloat, and the requiring a Microsoft account just to use my own computer. Oh yeah, and I gotta pay for this crap?! I went full Linux back when Windows 11 came out and will only use it if a job requires. Utterly disgusting software.
- II2II 1y ago
  The reason varies by the decade. Microsoft has a tendency to fix one thing, then break another. That said, a distaste for advertising goes beyond OCD. Advertisers frequently have questionable ethics, ranging from intruding upon people's privacy (in the many senses of the word) to manipulating people. It is simply something that many of us would rather do without.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Seems sorta not cool toward people with OCD to use their condition for rhetorical effect.
  - porridgeraisin 1y ago
    Take a chill pill.
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      What makes you think I’m not chill already? You engaged in a slightly rude trope, and I provided a very mild push back, at least from my point of view the stakes are all correctly low.
bigstrat2003 1y ago
> imagine being able to update user space libraries without a reboot That's... a very weird criticism to level at Windows, considering that the advice I've seen for Linux is to reboot if you update glibc (which is very much a user space library).
- lxgr 1y ago
  Why? It directly results in almost every Windows update requiring a reboot to apply, compared to usually only an application restart or at most desktop logout/login on Linux. Having to constantly reboot my computer, or risk missing important security patches, was very annoying to me on Windows. I've never had to reboot after updating glibc in years of using Linux, as far as I can remember.
- deepsun 1y ago
  The only time I need to reboot my Linux Mint is when the Linux kernel is updated. I understand why.
  - samtheprogram 1y ago
    I responded "This is not true" to a sibling comment about this same topic, but about "shared libraries", which is the opposite problem (multiple programs could load the same shared library and try to interact). This is absolutely not true for Linux kernel updating. While you won't be using the new kernel before rebooting, there's 0 risk in not rebooting, because there's exactly 1 version of the kernel running on the machine -- it's loaded into memory when your computer starts. There's of course rare exceptions, like when a dynamically linked library you just installed depends on a minimum specific version of the Linux kernel you also just installed, but this is extremely rare in Linux land, as backwards compatibility of programs with older kernels is generally a given. "We do not break userspace"
    - doubled112 1y ago
      One problem not rebooting with the kernel is drivers. They aren’t all built in. Most distros leave the current running kernel and boot into the new one next time. Some, like Arch, overwrite the kernel on an update, so modules can’t be loaded. It is a shock the first time you plug in a USB drive and nothing happens.
0x457 1y ago
> For me, the best part of running Linux as the base OS is not having to deal with Windows. This is correct, but let's not pretend that linux is perfect. 99% of linux _for me_ is my terminal environment. WSL delivers on that _for me_. I don't see any start menu spam because I rarely use it, when I do I type what I'm looking for before my eyes even move to look at that start menu. oh, I can play destiny 2 and other games without shenanigans. Also don't need to figure out why Slack wants to open links in chromium, but discord in firefox (I have to deal with edge asking to be a default browser, but IMO it's less annoying). Oh and multi-monitor with multiple DPI values works out of the box without looking up how to handle it in one of the frameworks this app uses.
- viraptor 1y ago
  > when I do I type what I'm looking for before my eyes even move to look at that start menu. That's a /s, right? When I start typing immediately after the windows button, the initial letters are lost, the results are bad either way, and most turn into just web suggestions rather than things named exactly like the input.
  - aydyn 1y ago
    Turn off web suggestions then?
    - viraptor 1y ago
      I did. They come back after some of the updates.
  - 0x457 1y ago
    > That's a /s, right? When I start typing immediately after the windows button, the initial letters are lost, the results are bad either way, and most turn into just web suggestions rather than things named exactly like the input. No, I rarely have issues with search in start menu.

jchw 1y ago

Similarly powerful would be totally fine. More powerful really is silly. Personally I couldn't make a lot of my workflows work very well with WSL2. Some of the stuff I run is very memory intensive and the behavior is pretty bad for this in WSL2. Their Wayland compositor is also pretty buggy and unpolished last I used it, and I was never able to get hardware acceleration working right even with the special drivers installed, but hopefully they've made some progress on that front. Having Windows and Linux in the same desktop the way that WSL2 does obviously means that it does add a lot of value, but what you get in the box isn't exactly the same as the thing running natively. Rather than a strict superset or strict subset, it's a bit more like a Venn diagram of strengths.

davrosthedalek 1y ago
By default wsl2 grabs half of the memory, but that's adjustable. The biggest pain point I have is to run servers inside wsl that serve to non-localhost (localhost works auto-magically). I am surprised you had such problems with wsl2 graphics acceleration. That just worked for me, including CUDA accelerated workloads on the linux side.

palata 1y ago

> You get the best of both worlds with WSL. You obviously don't. Maybe WSL is the best compromise for people who need both Windows and Linux. But it's ridiculous to think that WSL is better than just Linux for people who don't need Windows at all. And that's kind of what the author of this thread seems to imply.

davrosthedalek 1y ago
I think that case could be made. For example for people who have a laptop that is not well supported by linux. With WSL they get linux and can use all of their hardware.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  If it’s impossible to massage Linux into working well with your laptop – sure. But you’re missing out so much, like, well, not having to deal with Windows.