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Windows Subsystem for FreeBSD
- bni 1y agoI look forward to running Windows on FreeBSD
- chalst 1y agoYou can run Windows on bhyve: https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve/Windows https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve/Windows
- CJefferson 1y agoThis is cool, I hope it gets finished, and Microsoft Can help if required. I love WSL2, I basically live in it. I need Office, and working laptops, too much to go full time Linux, and I want to be able to play games so I don’t want a Mac (yes I know Mac has some games, but not anything compared to windows).
- tiahura 1y agoRight there with you. The crazy thing is that with the way MS is moving Office away from native towards garbage React, they're facilitation moving away from Windows.
- pjmlp 1y agoI was already enjoying VMware Workstation and Virtual Box, depending on private vs corporate laptop, since returning to Windows as main on with Windows 7. What WSL has brought is that now it is one thing less to install. However what got me started with Linux back in 1995, was the not so great support of POSIX in Windows NT. Had Microsoft kept selling Xenix, or done Windows NT POSIX subsystem property, Linux would most likely never taken off. Quite ironic given how Bill Gates used to talk about Xenix taking over.
- toast0 1y ago> What WSL has brought is that now it is one thing less to install. How? You still have to install WSL, it's not on the machine out of the box, although if it's really just about not installing things, you might use Hyper-V, that may already be installed.
- pjmlp 1y agoHyper-V is required for the Windows 10 security improvements regarding kernel and drivers sandboxing, and even more so on Windows 11. Enabling WSL isn't the same as going through VMWare Workstation or Virtual Box installation, and naturally paying for the commercial features.
- canucker2016 1y agoMicrosoft gave up on Xenix/Unix when AT&T took interest in a commercial Unix and exerting influence/control over the direction of Unix. Microsoft didn't see a profitable future in following AT&T.
- walkabout 1y agoThere’s one major benefit to separating your gaming and work machines, if you aren’t also using a lot of graphics horsepower for work[0]: NVidia and AMD graphics cards tend to ~double major problems on a machine (or halve system stability, to put it another way). This was even true of Macs, back when they were on x86. Now, this won’t help if you play a lot of new games at launch (and aren’t ok playing them on a console instead of PC) or lots of multiplayer games with heavy-handed anti-cheat, but otherwise, Linux as a gaming OS has become pretty damn viable lately. Windows hasn’t been for anything but gaming for me since somewhere around the turn of the millennium, and I’ve just finally been able to ditch it completely. Which is really nice. What I’m getting at is all-Linux (if you have more tolerance for Linux on the Desktop jank than I do) or Mac-for-work, Linux-for-play are now both non-terrible combos for having gaming available, and unless you need Nvidia or AMD graphics on your work machine (in which case, sure, may as well share that hardware for both roles), there are real benefits to work-system stability you can get by separating those. (I do agree with you that running Linux under virtualization on either Windows or Mac is the only non-crazy-making and/or non-professionally-embarrassing way to work in Linux on a laptop, and I write that as someone who did run Linux on a laptop as my primary serious OS for most of a decade) [0] nb. depending on what “a lot” means, Apple Silicon with a lot of system memory might still be a really good option.
- dijit 1y agoOffice is the true killer. Games are pretty much there for linux, reasonable stress about anti-cheat aside; but the network effects of Microsoft office are the real poison pill. The irony of course is that if it wasn’t for games you could have a good time using office on MacOS with their cut down versions: but no such version exists for Linux and FreeBSD. Since its purely network effects, I’ve taken to trying to promote Google Docs usage; since their tools anywhere with a modern browser, which is practically every modern desktop environment. I know its pushing another US tech giant, but somehow the network effects are less egregious.
- leoedin 1y agoThe web versions of Office tools are pretty good these days. There’s a few missing features, but you can get by mostly. I don’t think my company even gives licenses for desktop office by default any more.
- dijit 1y agoI get why you'd say the web versions are "pretty good" for most people, and I agree they've improved, but I think that's only true if you're doing basic stuff. The moment you hit a complex corporate or academic document, the web version of Office falls apart. It's materially worse than even LibreOffice when you consider a power user's reality. The real killer is Excel. The web version has zero support for crucial tools like Power Query or Power Pivot, which are essential for any modern data analysis. You can't run, edit, or even create serious VBA/Macros, and advanced data validation and conditional formatting are stripped down to the bone. For Word, if you're in law or academia, forget it. Features like Table of Authorities or Table of Figures are either completely missing or so simplified they are useless. Even the ability to handle standard APA or MLA citation styles is heavily cut down compared to the desktop app. And for PowerPoint? You lose access to serious third party add-ins, and the granular control over animations and timers that professionals need just isn't there. So, while the web version might be fine for a quick edit of a simple file, if you need to reliably work with a complex document from a Windows-based company, the compatibility issues and missing features will force you into a desktop app eventually. If you're going to be forced into a desktop experience anyway, you might as well bite the bullet and go LibreOffice for its feature completeness on Linux/FreeBSD. It's a stronger bet than relying on Microsoft's cut-down web versions.
- MBCook 1y agoI understand your reasoning. Personally I love living in my Mac, I’m much happier than I would be under Windows. You’re 100% right for gaming. But I’ve solved that by being a console person. I already mostly was. I’m much prefer the appliance like nature and many of the kinds of games that show up there. If I still wanted to play more “PC style“ games or just indie things that aren’t available on the consoles I would have a spare Windows machine just for that.
- sebazzz 1y agoIs FreeBSD used a lot?
- cimnine 1y agoThe OS of PS4 and PS5 is apparently based on FreeBSD. Netflix uses FreeBSD for its CDN servers. pfSense and OPNsense are popular firewalls that are based on FreeBSD. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_FreeBSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Free...
- ori_b 1y agoFor a new, buzzy company: Antithesis built their hypervisor on it.
- hylaride 1y agoJunOS from Juniper is also based off of FreeBSD (I think they're moving to Linux, though) as (were?) NetApp filers (they made heavy use of the Berkley FFS snapshots back in the day). FreeBSD was popular for many appliances, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as it was generally rock-solid, had very mature networking, and the legal departments at the time liked the more permissive licence. It's getting less and less common to see it, though. Sheer market share numbers mean performance, driver support, user familiarity, and companies no longer being afraid of the GPL mean that has Linux pretty much taken over. It makes me a bit sad, but the OS on most Juniper gear is just a control plane for ASICs nowadays and NetApp has moved on to more advanced filesystems. Finding developers to write drivers/software for Linux is probably an order of magnitude easier.
- wkat4242 1y agoThey are scared shirtless of GPL-3 though. See all the hoops that apple jump through to avoid it.
- KolenCh 1y agoThat’s related to anti-tivolization in GPLv3 and basically Apple is forced to stop shipping things that’s updated to GPLv3. That’s not just about scared, assuming being scared means they are irrational and they could have adopted it if they want. Legally they cannot ship it unless they are changing their business model.
- metaltyphoon 1y agoDoes this open the possibility for easier cross compilation to macOS?
- p_ing 1y agomacOS doesn't have much to do with FreeBSD, so no. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
- okanat 1y agoYou got some downs for a simple question. While macOS used some userspace components from FreeBSD, it has no commonality with it. Darwin is a different kernel that works completely differently. macOS also has quite a bit its own stuff in the userspace.
- metaltyphoon 1y agoThank you for an actual answer.
- liendolucas 1y agoUff, they are really really pushing for people to keep using Windows, huh? Some time ago it was Windows Subsystem for Linux. Now this. I already said the same in that HN thread and will repeat it here: Let's do it the other way round: run Windows in FreeBSD with bhyve and voila. But even better, just switch to FreeBSD. It's an amazing and rock solid OS. Microsoft loves open source so much that they are putting efforts into... making you keep using their lousy closed source OS infested with telemetry and dark patterns. No thanks.
- devnullbrain 1y ago>This is a personal, experimental project and is not affiliated with Microsoft, the FreeBSD Foundation, or the FreeBSD Project. Use at your own risk.
- liendolucas 1y agoUh, apologies for not properly reading about the project. It was not my intention to diminish the project or the its author. Feel free to downvote my comment!
- rkagerer 1y agoI realize not everyone will care about this, but I find the naming for these WSL-like subsystems is confusingly backwards. i.e. It should have been Linux Subsystem for Windows, or Window's Subsystem for [Linux | FreeBSD | etc].
- asveikau 1y agoThe explanation they give is they need to put their trademark, Windows, before Linux. Sometimes they say this is advice from the legal department. I still think they could fulfill that requirement and call it the "Windows Linux subsystem" or something, but what do I know? Unrelated, but I think the WSL2 design is kind of stupid. It's just a VM. I think the WSL1 design, where it was a syscall layer, is a better call. But that was slower, IIRC chiefly because the NT filesystem syscalls are slower than Linux's VFS. Rather than improve that problem, they side-step it by running Linux in a VM.
- ronsor 1y agoImproving that problem probably would've been a massive undertaking. That aside, there's the problem that implementing kernel mechanics is a lot more than faking syscalls: the various types of namespaces, FUSE, random edge cases that applications do expect, kernel modules, etc. At the end of the day, users don't want to stumble into some weird compatibility issue because they're running not-quite-Linux; it's a better UX to just offer normal Linux with better integration. The WSL2 design isn't stupid, it's practical. What I will give you is that it's not elegant in an "ivory tower of ideal computing" sense.
- Brian_K_White 1y agoCan I even use a usb serial port yet after how many years? (Possibly by now but how long did it take, and does it actually work well?) It is stupid in that it's not really any kind of subsystem, it's just a vm. VMs have their uses, but it's basically just an app. The reason hardware such as my usb serial example (or any serial) worked on wsl1 was because it actually was a subsystem.
- dev1ycan 1y agoWinapps is really such a great addition to Linux, being able to run Adobe/Office apps is really great, it makes it so that basically the only reason you would need Windows at all is those terrible games with kernel level anticheat like League of Legends, it's so funny how League can put malware on your pc but it still doesn't have voice chat 15 years after release.
- gtk40 1y agoWhat does this have to do with running FreeBSD software on Windows?
- invader 1y agoYet another klunge in the ivory tower of software bloat. It is like all existing software is gravitating towards a single point of singularity, with all existing platforms merging into an incomprehensible black hole, sucking the whole of humanity with it. There was no real point in WSL in the first place, except for desperate attempts by Microsoft to stay relevant in the cloud age. To take two huge and very different systems with all their bugs and idiosyncrasies, merge them (creating even more bugs and idiosyncrasies along the way), and call it progress? I call it insanity. Only now with FreeBSD.
- p_ing 1y ago> There was no real point in WSL in the first place, Microsoft doesn't do anything without filling a gap or fulfilling customer requirements. It clearly had "a point".
- invader 1y agoSo Micro$oft is a customer-oriented company now? Haven't heard such a good joke in a while. Microsoft, being a monopoly, hardly cares about customers, especially about closing some imaginary "gaps". What they care about is preserving their dominant or monopoly position wherever they can, since in the last 25+ years, they lost so badly so many times, they shifted from "owning" the whole industry to being a monopoly in particular segments. They are basically repeating the path of IBM from being the industry to being irrelevant and struggling desperately to stop that inevitable process. If Microsoft had listened to its customers, it would never have neglected and killed Skype, it would have continued to support XNA, so adored by the indie game devs, it would never have closed Arkane Austin and Ghostwire studios, it would have never preinstalled spyware with every single Windows installation... But Microsoft hardly cares.
- p_ing 1y ago> So Micro$oft is a customer-oriented company now? Haven't heard such a good joke in a while. I've seen many customer requested changes go into various products at Microsoft as having requested such changes.
- bzmrgonz 1y agosay what??? why cant we just port winapps. one visualizer for the few years windows has of life....yes i said it, bad actors and their ai tools will retire windows before the end of the decade!!!
- nylonstrung 1y agoGreat news for all 12 FreeBSD/Windows users!
- hollowonepl 1y agoInteresting attempt. If that worked then maybe Darwin and then a virtualization/emulation layer to launch MacOs apps on Windows. That would be nice equalizer to what’s possible with full hardware acceleration the other way, back from MacOS.
- chalst 1y agoSome parts of more recent versions of Darwin aren’t fully open source.
- vijay1025 1y agoWow, Windows Subsystem for FreeBSD. I'm sure that's the first in the world. This is like Windows user's gateway drug for the FreeBSD world. It has the potential to introduce FreeBSD to thousands of Windows users. This is the best UI/UX FreeBSD could ever wish for. Seriously, mad props for getting that to work. Awesome work!