4 ms·

I get it’s not what you’re asking for, but WSL on windows is a lot more friendly than anything Apple has done in the last decade to assist in Linux support.

by tw04 4mo ago

micromacrofoot 4mo ago
Apple doesn't have to do anything because it's already unix
- tw04 4mo ago
  Which doesn’t make it Linux, which is what op wants. It’s based on a BSD-based mach kernel. You might as well say someone asking for Linux should just run Irix, because hey, it’s UNIX!
  - t-3 4mo ago
    Who cares about the kernel? That only matters for hardware support, which is going to be much better with macOS on mac hardware. Macs can easily run 99%+ of the software that people use linux for, because *nix. The only real reasons to require linux in this situation are ideological (free software/GPL vs proprietary Apple) and aesthetic (you're used to X/wayland/systemd/whatever system software and don't like Apple's solution). It would definitely be nice if Apple helped people out by documenting and releasing source for the bootloader and firmware to make it easier to install third-party OSes on their hardware... but they're not a hacker-hobbyist nonprofit doing it for the love, so why would they?
  - micromacrofoot 4mo ago
    well it's a hell of a lot closer than wsl
    - int_19h 4mo ago
      WSL is literally the Linux kernel running in a VM, so WSL is actually closer. But you can have a Linux kernel running in a VM on macOS as well, and while it doesn't have something like WSL built-in, it provides enough foundation for others to build it: https://lima-vm.io/docs/ https://lima-vm.io/docs/
- pmontra 4mo ago
  It's usually enough but not always. Sometimes it happened that my customers using MacOS or WSL were not able to pass some tests or reproduce some bugs. That was due to some differences between the userland of the Linux servers, which are our build and deployment targets, and what they have on their Macs. I work on a Debian laptop (it used to be Ubuntu) and I can always run on it whatever sw runs on the servers. The languages are Python and Ruby, some bash. The developers on WSL (the Python project, Django) tend to have a simplified environment. For example they don't run Celery (I never investigated why) and run all the background jobs synchronously or they don't run those jobs at all. The ones on Macs (the Ruby project, Rails) have the full environment but I remember that they skipped some integration tests because they always failed on their Macs (Capybara and Chromedriver, I don't remember the details.) I was the one running the full test suite. By the way: all the CI services I used in the last 10 years are particularly bad at running those kind of tests. Maybe it's the amount of memory or the timing of the operations and those CI VMs (or containers?) don't play well with the assumptions of the test frameworks. Any language, any framework.
al_borland 4mo ago
WSL is inside Windows. I haven't found the need for anything like this on macOS, as it's Unix and I can just install stuff with Homebrew. When the Unix version of some package didn't do what something else I was running expected, I was able to install coreutils in just a few seconds and carry on. It seems the issue on Apple hardware is the fight to get Linux booting on bare metal with full support (what Apple supplied for Windows with Bootcamp when moving to Intel), which is the fight Asahi Linux is waging. Is WSL aiding in getting Linux booting from bare metal on proprietary hardware?
- tw04 4mo ago
  WSL provides a seamless filesystem experience between windows and Linux which is more than I can say for MacOS. And it’s supported by MS, not a community add-on. People downvoting me because Microsoft are just silly. It is literally undeniable that Microsoft has done more to provide Linux support in the windows ecosystem than Apple has with MacOS. The closest thing Apple has done to “support” Linux is add a hypervisor without a GUI that they’ll tolerate you using but don’t really support. Try opening up a case with Apple about a Linux issue running a hypervisor.framework Linux vm and let me know how it goes… Microsoft will absolutely support issues you run into with WSl.
  - kube-system 4mo ago
    > WSL provides a seamless filesystem experience between windows and Linux which is more than I can say for MacOS. They must have made major improvements since the last time I used it then, because filesystem issues was the #1 reason I moved away from WSL
  - al_borland 4mo ago
    macOS and Linux are both POSIX-compatible operating systems. I guess I’m unclear on why you’d need to run a Linux VM with full filesystem access, when the tools can be installed on macOS itself the filesystem is just the filesystem. It seems like an unnecessary layer of complexity for most standard use cases.
    - 4mo ago
drnick1 4mo ago
But what is the point of WSL if you can get run the real thing, without performance penalty, bloatware and spyware? WinBoat makes more sense if there is the odd program that does not have a substitute.
- wolvesechoes 4mo ago
  > without performance penalty, bloatware and spyware? And then you install multiple Electron apps.
rogerrogerr 4mo ago
WSL is 90% of a good product. They just quit improving it too early. Managing file permissions between Windows and WSL is a nightmare, it does horrific things to your filesystem if it ever runs out of memory, at least once every day a teammate is hitting a readonly filesystem issue. A team of some of the smartest people I know tried to smooth it over enough to be useful and we couldn’t do it. At my bigco, we have all but given up on it and moved everyone to EC2 or Macs for non-Windows workloads.
denysvitali 4mo ago
No. I *don't want Windows*. WSL is not an option for me. In fact, Linux is the only option, and it's what I chose. Thankfully AI nowadays does an amazing job in issue diagnostic and resolution, and even patches the kernel to make stuff work, so this is the viable solution.
lifty 4mo ago
What are you talking about? The Mac platform is so much more friendly for doing Linux related work. First of all it’s Unix so most tooling has MacOS variants, and secondly you have a miriad way to install WSL like VMs with shared disk.

I get it’s not what you’re asking for, but WSL on windows is a lot more friendly than anything Apple has done in the last decade to assist in Linux support.

by tw04 4mo ago

I get it’s not what you’re asking for, but WSL on windows is a lot more friendly than anything Apple has done in the last decade to assist in Linux support.

micromacrofoot 4mo ago

Apple doesn't have to do anything because it's already unix

tw04 4mo ago
Which doesn’t make it Linux, which is what op wants. It’s based on a BSD-based mach kernel. You might as well say someone asking for Linux should just run Irix, because hey, it’s UNIX!
- t-3 4mo ago
  Who cares about the kernel? That only matters for hardware support, which is going to be much better with macOS on mac hardware. Macs can easily run 99%+ of the software that people use linux for, because *nix. The only real reasons to require linux in this situation are ideological (free software/GPL vs proprietary Apple) and aesthetic (you're used to X/wayland/systemd/whatever system software and don't like Apple's solution). It would definitely be nice if Apple helped people out by documenting and releasing source for the bootloader and firmware to make it easier to install third-party OSes on their hardware... but they're not a hacker-hobbyist nonprofit doing it for the love, so why would they?
- micromacrofoot 4mo ago
  well it's a hell of a lot closer than wsl
  - int_19h 4mo ago
    WSL is literally the Linux kernel running in a VM, so WSL is actually closer. But you can have a Linux kernel running in a VM on macOS as well, and while it doesn't have something like WSL built-in, it provides enough foundation for others to build it: https://lima-vm.io/docs/ https://lima-vm.io/docs/
pmontra 4mo ago
It's usually enough but not always. Sometimes it happened that my customers using MacOS or WSL were not able to pass some tests or reproduce some bugs. That was due to some differences between the userland of the Linux servers, which are our build and deployment targets, and what they have on their Macs. I work on a Debian laptop (it used to be Ubuntu) and I can always run on it whatever sw runs on the servers. The languages are Python and Ruby, some bash. The developers on WSL (the Python project, Django) tend to have a simplified environment. For example they don't run Celery (I never investigated why) and run all the background jobs synchronously or they don't run those jobs at all. The ones on Macs (the Ruby project, Rails) have the full environment but I remember that they skipped some integration tests because they always failed on their Macs (Capybara and Chromedriver, I don't remember the details.) I was the one running the full test suite. By the way: all the CI services I used in the last 10 years are particularly bad at running those kind of tests. Maybe it's the amount of memory or the timing of the operations and those CI VMs (or containers?) don't play well with the assumptions of the test frameworks. Any language, any framework.

al_borland 4mo ago

WSL is inside Windows. I haven't found the need for anything like this on macOS, as it's Unix and I can just install stuff with Homebrew. When the Unix version of some package didn't do what something else I was running expected, I was able to install coreutils in just a few seconds and carry on. It seems the issue on Apple hardware is the fight to get Linux booting on bare metal with full support (what Apple supplied for Windows with Bootcamp when moving to Intel), which is the fight Asahi Linux is waging. Is WSL aiding in getting Linux booting from bare metal on proprietary hardware?

tw04 4mo ago
WSL provides a seamless filesystem experience between windows and Linux which is more than I can say for MacOS. And it’s supported by MS, not a community add-on. People downvoting me because Microsoft are just silly. It is literally undeniable that Microsoft has done more to provide Linux support in the windows ecosystem than Apple has with MacOS. The closest thing Apple has done to “support” Linux is add a hypervisor without a GUI that they’ll tolerate you using but don’t really support. Try opening up a case with Apple about a Linux issue running a hypervisor.framework Linux vm and let me know how it goes… Microsoft will absolutely support issues you run into with WSl.
- kube-system 4mo ago
  > WSL provides a seamless filesystem experience between windows and Linux which is more than I can say for MacOS. They must have made major improvements since the last time I used it then, because filesystem issues was the #1 reason I moved away from WSL
- al_borland 4mo ago
  macOS and Linux are both POSIX-compatible operating systems. I guess I’m unclear on why you’d need to run a Linux VM with full filesystem access, when the tools can be installed on macOS itself the filesystem is just the filesystem. It seems like an unnecessary layer of complexity for most standard use cases.
  - 4mo ago

drnick1 4mo ago

But what is the point of WSL if you can get run the real thing, without performance penalty, bloatware and spyware? WinBoat makes more sense if there is the odd program that does not have a substitute.

wolvesechoes 4mo ago
> without performance penalty, bloatware and spyware? And then you install multiple Electron apps.

rogerrogerr 4mo ago

WSL is 90% of a good product. They just quit improving it too early. Managing file permissions between Windows and WSL is a nightmare, it does horrific things to your filesystem if it ever runs out of memory, at least once every day a teammate is hitting a readonly filesystem issue. A team of some of the smartest people I know tried to smooth it over enough to be useful and we couldn’t do it. At my bigco, we have all but given up on it and moved everyone to EC2 or Macs for non-Windows workloads.

denysvitali 4mo ago

No. I *don't want Windows*. WSL is not an option for me. In fact, Linux is the only option, and it's what I chose. Thankfully AI nowadays does an amazing job in issue diagnostic and resolution, and even patches the kernel to make stuff work, so this is the viable solution.

lifty 4mo ago

What are you talking about? The Mac platform is so much more friendly for doing Linux related work. First of all it’s Unix so most tooling has MacOS variants, and secondly you have a miriad way to install WSL like VMs with shared disk.