- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
Today we’re very excited to announce the open-source release of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This is the result of a multiyear effort to prepare for this, and a great closure to the first ever issue raised on the Microsoft/WSL repo:
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I still will never understand why it’s not called Linux Subsystem for Windows.
I got hung up on this before too but it’s apparently “Windows Subsystem for (using) Linux”
Maybe they just named it like the previous attempt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
I know there’s a lot of hate for Microsoft on Lemmy, but WSL is one of the best parts of Windows. It’s really powerful and well integrated to Windows. Since I still can’t leave for pure Linux install, I’m glad for WSL.
Funny that the Linux is best part of Windows lmao
Microsoft hate is justified.
WSL made windows tolerable in the time I had to use a windows machine for work.
macOS is still the better choice for corp approved work, integrates decently with IT systems and is a “real” unix system underneath.
Linux on a corporate desktop is mostly about how well you know the IT guys and do they trust you. And of course the software stack.
Linux on a corporate desktop is mostly about how well you know the IT guys and do they trust you. And of course the software stack.
I would say it depends more on the commitment of the IT admins to support and manage a fleet of Linux workstations. There are Linux “Active Directory” servers, configuration provisioning tools, ways to centrally and automatically rollout updates, etc. It really depends on if the IT guys invest the same amount of effort to support them or not.
2000 people, 3k+ devices and one dude wants a Linux laptop.
Not happening 😀
But it did work in a smaller company of around 30 people, mostly because the IT guy was a Linux user too
Easy fix, install proxmox and run corpo-os in that as well as a proper desktop os. Just need to max out the ram on the shitbox thet give you and now you can switch almost seemlessly
Well I worked for a while at a large international corporation that maintained (and AFAIK is still continuing) a managed Linux system, which worked well enough. And there where a lot more people, especially the people that were the most productive, interested in it.
Sure that might have just been a nice island inside the larger company, but the people there were the internal consultants, which often had to pull other projects out of the gutter.
If you over your specialists ways to use the tools they need, you will improve the whole company.
IT just said no for WSL “ask your manager”
My manager barely knows how to read his email
and doesn’t understand why I want 3rd screen
Just buy a single 45" curved one then.
He doesn’t like that my cubicle computer would not be all the others
WSL is EEE
Great! With this source code out, I can finally complete the port to Linux. I call it WSL24L, aka “Windows Subsystem For Linux 2, For Linux”
Do you name every FOSS project? This is uncannily close to what an actual open source project would be called, including the logic behind it.
Nah, needs more recursion. The ‘W’ in “WSL” stands for “WSL”
Is this something to do with the three Es?
This is for WSL2, not for WSL1. WSL2 is just a VM, not a big deal it it’s open-sourced. WSL1 is superior to WSL2 in every way. BTW, WSL2 is not a continuation of WSL1, they are being developed in parallel. I still try to use WSL1 whenever possible. For Linux specific features, like systemd dependancy and mounting file systems, I’d use full-featured VM instead of WSL2.
I thought WSL2 had a few specific advantages over WSL1, something about disk writes and/or Docker? But yeah, WSL1 was such a cool concept. My understanding is they implemented all the syscalls and API in it so it’s basically native.
I tried to use them, as I do most tools like that. On Windows I have always stuck with the MSYS environment that Git for Windows gives you. It’s easy enough to work with and has most everything I care about. Plus it’s easy to set up. With wsl it’s more like a separate thing, it wasn’t as easy to run in place. A lot of times I still used batch or powershell scripts so it wasn’t totally bash. Like Docker is easier to use from not bash in Windows because the syntax is so wonky.
But now I don’t use Windows at all.
I’ve recently started using windows again for work, after not touching it for like 15 years, msys2 makes it tolerable.
I’m a devops engineer, and my company won’t allow me to use WSL. Go figure.
MSYS2 is odd, I could never figure out how to set it up a sort from the one with Git. When I was more of a power user I used Cygwin. Babun is cool but unmaintained last I remember, and is just Cygwin with some enhancements.
As much shit as MS gets (and rightfully so) around 2019 they began turning their reputation around for dev stuff. They’ve lost all that good will though.
I could never figure out how to set it up a sort from the one with Git.
That’s because the one provided with git is a nerfed version of msys2. If you install msys2 as a standalone thing from their website, you get everything you need for a functional CLI on windows. Most importantly, you get a real package manager and decently populated repositories.
I had a typo. I meant “apart from the one with Git”
Don’t you think this is another Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy from Microsoft?
That’s exactly what it is. Any time now you’ll see “the best way to run Linux: on windows” or similar.
Does Lemmy even know what EEE means anymore or are we regurgitating words we heard from some article now?
What’s it going to embrace and extend? WSL has existed for ages and is just a way to run Linux in a convenient container on top of Windows. That’s it. It’s not an attempt to “extenguish” Linux, literally just make the development experience on Windows less painful so people don’t switch to another OS. This has nothing to do with EEE.
Open sourcing it with a permissive license can only be a good thing, and again they’re doing it to be more appealing to devs and maybe get free bug fixes from the open source community. It isn’t some grand conspiracy. But of course this community will react to news of “proprietary blob is now open source” with pessimism.
literally just make the development experience on Windows less painful so people don’t switch to another OS.
You said it right there yourself and don’t seem to realize it.
Why have a laptop or a dual boot with Linux when you can now more easily stay on the proprietary OS ?
This is called market retention.
Preventing migration to another OS, another software ecosystem.
The ‘Embrace’ and ‘Extend’ parts of EEE.
And if it works, then in a few years, MSFT will figure out how to further monetize some other part of its software ecosystem that is either reliant on, or much much easier for an average user of WSL to use than switching their whole setup or stack all the way over to Linux.
Call that EEM for ‘monetization’ if you want, or ‘enshittify’ for another E…
…the commonly used term to describe software or services or platforms that suddenly jump over to making previously free stuff cost money, put ads everywhere, break the previously free features and put the ‘new’ working versions behind some kind of paywall…
… All after you’ve captured your market and dominated as many competitors as possible.
Standard monopolist strategy throughout the entite history of capitalism, same general concept goes back even further.
I think it’s an attempt to keep people on their platform who need easy access to a unix-like shell. Linux has it and so does mac os. Windows didn’t until they introduced wsl.
Well windows had cygwin and mingw
I had to move back to those a few times instead of using WSL during the early days. There were quite a few growing pains.
Fixed it fully by installing Linux.
Ye, and cygwin, mingw and msys are terrible compared to wsl
has, they still work great and keep me sane
MSYS2 is my current choice for GNU/Windows
I think it’s more embrace. They have to compete against so many more entities now.
This is my thought, they’ve all but lost the battle for cloud servers and they’d rather the developers computers were Windows. WSL allows that.
Poorly. WSL is awesome but it’s I/O performance is not at a level which will make developers on bigger projects happy.
Azure is their primary revenue source now, they didn’t lose anything
Yeah but imagine if they could collect licence fees after every AWS server as well.
The world is not enough for these companies.
I think you’re probably right. Microsoft seems less invested in winning an operating system battle at this point. They’re positioning services and abstractions that care less about the end device’s operating system, more so that they’re at least on that device.
I wouldn’t be surprised we see Microsoft “embrace” Proton and Wine in the next 5 to 10 years as it’s far easier to let “the community” predominantly handle supporting legacy Windows versions that have to handle it themselves.
They can’t suddenly lose that entire OS revenue machine however and would need to transition. But I doubt that Redmond are naive to the disruption Wine and Proton are having and how technical users are starting to jump ship.
It’s kind of the opposite in my mind, WSL is (was) Microsoft capitulating to the fact that Linux is not going away, same with Azure. WSL is mostly for companies. Some companies have a huge contract with Microsoft and manage all laptops with it. Then they grow big enough that they can’t ignore Linux because they have people who need to work on Linux. WSL is the way Microsoft keeps their clients, because otherwise they move to Apple based IT.
EEE would have been investing in PowerShell, PuTTY, or similar.
I don’t think that, as Microsoft hasn’t done a lot (any?) of that stuff in recent years. It’s good to be cautious but really what is the problem with opening the source for something that already existed for a while and is embraced by many?
It’s because they have pivoted to subscriptions on office, ads on windows and general data harvesting.
Normally I would say yes, but WSL is so incredibly necessary for a developer that it might be legit.
Personally I never use it except for docker desktop. I just use powershell
That’s their playbook. But honestly I think anyone who plays with WSL will either get a taste and begin learning/transitioning to Linux or device to stick with their “safe” windows machine
WSL is just a way to actually get some shit done when there’s a terrible business reason for requiring a native Windows install.
My Microsoft Surface became vastly more useable once I installed Linux on it.
WSL allows me to develop in a Linux environment while still enjoying my very custom Windows setup and programs that I am used to. So no, WSL did not make me choose a side, but instead helps me to get the best of both worlds at once.
Maybe. But Microsoft owns the workplace, so when you get a job they’ll demand you can only use Windows, or if you’re lucky enough to be allowed to use Linux, the Microsoft management software will suck so much you’ll want to use Windows. Microsoft is silently implementing their EEE strategy, and this is only a small part of that. Before long they’ll release their AI-focused cloud-connected Linux distro with Windows Desktop compatibility.
Docker doesn’t exist in a usable state on Windows, so its an attempt to allow management of servers using Windows, as Windows Server fades away from usage entirely.
Docker works with windows containers, plus wsl can be used as the backend for docker. I use it all the time
No real reason to extinguish here, Microsoft is a services company and can offer those services on Windows and Linux.
I’d wager you’re more likely to see an official compatibility layer on Linux supported by Microsoft before you see them move to extinguish.
It could be another Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy from Microsoft, because if the increase in Linux user share leads to an increase in malware, most of those users aren’t experts.
So there will be an increase in antivirus software for Linux, but that will also lead to DRM in Linux, and Linux may become what I swore to destroy. While BSD distributions, Redox OS, and other systems take over to become the new Linux as it was in its beginnings.
Anyone who’s running WSL is probably closer to an “expert” than the average windows user
deleted by creator
sudo apt-get assorted -lettuce -cheese -onion
Thanks for the kek
Making WSL open source could actually lead to some useful contributions and better transparency overall ; and good for Linux tools?
fuck microsoft and windows so hard. had to reinstall that shitshow on my mothers computer because a driver update fucked the whole networkstack… they throw error codes and what not but give no help whatsoever. the conclusion of everyone for every problem is to reinstall windows… shitshow of an os, keep your dirty hands of linux!! can’t wait to nuke it and install linux there and have no windows machine left
I reinstalled Windows and had to shit my pants because I was so disgusted in myself. Fuck windows
Fair play to Microsoft here. Hopefully we see some pull requests from non-ms employees and a better wsl experience for us all
What kind of axe do you need?
I am legit excited to install WINE Subsystem for Linux
Or how about KDE on ReactOS on WSL?
The possibilities are endless
ReactOS has SUCH potential. I really wanna see it thrive.
Unfortunately building it was a disaster a few years ago, I should give it another go.
Why were you trying to build it? You can find both ““stable”” release and nightly builds on ReactOS website.
ReactOS 0.4.16 was just released, but I do recommend just getting a nightly build, unless it doesn’t work and you have enough patience to try out the regular version as well.
To try and contribute! :P gotta start somewhere
Also try out winegui.
Pretend I’m an idiot (should be easy), and tell me what this all is up in here.
Classic Microsoft Business Strategy
Embrace- Extend
- Extinguish
Means that now anyone can fork the project and make changes or iterate on it without needing to wait for Microsoft to fix things.
Fanks
Np! Also forgot to add, I haven’t checked the license but generally with proper open source projects (as in not just source available) it means that even if Microsoft tries to revert this at any point, having forks of this version and continuing to develop and distribute versions of it is A-OK
So besides the brownie points, im curious what having it open sourced will benefit. Not like you can fork it to run on a different OS. You can make some extensions but to do what? You can’t really tie it further in to the host OS unless you know of some undocumented Win32 APIs.
Maybe im just not thinking creatively enough.
im curious what having it open sourced will benefit
MS won’t have to pay their own people to work on it anymore.
They released their code as MIT which is far more permissive than I was expecting. I was expecting some sort of proprietary license.
But they need to keep doing stuff like this. Devcontainers for VS Code is still proprietary and keeps me from running codium.
Watch someone reverse the thing into turbocharged WINE
The entire thing is for running Linux software on Windows, it’s the complete opposite of Wine.
The infrastructure can be duplicated and studied tho. Would be cool if a little dreamy
Sure, but not useful for wine or Linux
