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WSL1 wasn't really a VM though? IIRC it was implementing syscalls over the Windows kernel.
by paulryanrogers 1y ago
WSL1 wasn't really a VM though? IIRC it was implementing syscalls over the Windows kernel.
- ongy 1y agoI think that's the point. You don't have to run the full kernel to run some linux tools. Though I don't think it ever supported docker. And wasn't really expected to, since the entire namespaces+cgroup stuff is way deeper than just some surface level syscall shims.
- quietbritishjim 1y agoIndeed, WSL1 isn't a VM. As I said, it's just: > an emulation layer for Linux syscalls on top of quite a different operating system. My point was that, in principle, it could be possible to implement Linux containers on another OS without using VMs. However, as you said (and so did I), in practice no one has. Probably because it's just not worth the effort compared to just using a VM. Especially since all your containers can share a single VM, so you end up only running 2 kernels (rather than e.g. 11 for 10 containers). That's exactly how Docker on WSL2 works.
- derekdb 1y agogVisor has basically re-implemented most of syscall api, but only when the host is also Linux.