WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

[Roman]

Don't, please don't, discard cygwin. Cygwin's a valuable open source project, and by discarding it for WSL you're just saying "I don't care about open source, I just want to run Linux tools on Windows" and helping M$ take over a need which has already been filled by cygwin.

If you care so much about freedom, then, I guess, you shouldn't use Windows.

[mmk]

Don't, please don't, discard cygwin. Cygwin's a valuable open source project, and by discarding it for WSL you're just saying "I don't care about open source, I just want to run Linux tools on Windows" and helping M$ take over a need which has already been filled by cygwin.

No, discarding Cygwin for WSL would imply that WSL is doing a better job that Cygwin is. It's not about open source or closed source, just whatever is more convenient or useful, at least that's how I view it. I haven't used
Cygwin in a while (maybe a year or so now?) but it was unbearably slow. It would take substantially longer to do tasks, and building a cross compiler took hours. From my testing with WSL, it was much faster and has an Ubuntu-y feel (as it is an Ubuntu userspace with apt and all that stuff) which I like and am used to.

WSL does a better job than Cygwin in that you don't have to compile programs with Cygwin linking in the Cygwin DLLs, as WSL handles the system call translation itself and the executables are exactly the same as they would be on a Linux system, which is another plus.

I'd rather use the better software (of course in ways that's subjective) than using something open source for the sake of open source.

[Ycep]

Shouldn't this be called Linux Subsystem for Windows?
It is Linux Subsystem, made for Windows.
When they add Windows Subsystem for Linux with support for DirectX I will immediately port to openSUSE.

[mmk]

Shouldn't this be called Linux Subsystem for Windows?

The name is a bit odd. It's a Windows subsystem, probably why they started off with that. And its purpose is to run Linux applications on Windows, so I guess they
decided to tack on "Linux" to the name so we got WSL.

[Kazinsal]

Don't, please don't, discard cygwin. Cygwin's a valuable open source project, and by discarding it for WSL you're just saying "I don't care about open source, I just want to run Linux tools on Windows" and helping M$ take over a need which has already been filled by cygwin.

That dollar-sign-in-Microsoft's-name thing is the most childish 90s crap.

Cygwin is a mess of stuff that doesn't always work due to trying to shove Unix into Windows' userspace and compiling Unix binaries as Win32 PE/COFF. WSL should be hailed as a way to actually use Linux tools on Windows properly, not as some evil corporate conspiracy to destroy open source.

I'd rather use the better software (of course in ways that's subjective) than using something open source for the sake of open source.

[iansjack]

Yep. Using open source software just because it is open source, and not using a more efficient alternative, is just plain stubborn.

But, actually, it's not a choice. You are still using open source software; it's just that you can now use rather more, and it works a whole lot better.

[crunch]

Don't, please don't, discard cygwin. Cygwin's a valuable open source project, and by discarding it for WSL you're just saying "I don't care about open source, I just want to run Linux tools on Windows" and helping M$ take over a need which has already been filled by cygwin.

That dollar-sign-in-Microsoft's-name thing is the most childish 90s crap.

Cygwin is a mess of stuff that doesn't always work due to trying to shove Unix into Windows' userspace and compiling Unix binaries as Win32 PE/COFF. WSL should be hailed as a way to actually use Linux tools on Windows properly, not as some evil corporate conspiracy to destroy open source.

I'd rather use the better software (of course in ways that's subjective) than using something open source for the sake of open source.

Agreed on all points. I think WSL will actually encourage more people to use open source tools by lowering the barrier to entry. It's much easier to use WSL with open source programs than to try and compile open source programs designed for *nix with cygwin.

Plus Microsoft has really come a long way with respect to open sourcing stuff, i.e. .NET, TypeScript, etc etc

[glauxosdever]

Hi,


Please stop fighting before it's too late.

WSL has been discussed in another topic and the fights were widespread for almost all of the 14 pages of that topic. Finally, it was locked (as expected).

So, do yourselves a favor and don't start a flamewar (again).


Regards,
glauxosdever

[matt11235]

Don't, please don't, discard cygwin. Cygwin's a valuable open source project, and by discarding it for WSL you're just saying "I don't care about open source, I just want to run Linux tools on Windows" and helping M$ take over a need which has already been filled by cygwin.

That dollar-sign-in-Microsoft's-name thing is the most childish 90s crap.

Cygwin is a mess of stuff that doesn't always work due to trying to shove Unix into Windows' userspace and compiling Unix binaries as Win32 PE/COFF. WSL should be hailed as a way to actually use Linux tools on Windows properly, not as some evil corporate conspiracy to destroy open source.

I'd rather use the better software (of course in ways that's subjective) than using something open source for the sake of open source.

Agreed on all points. I think WSL will actually encourage more people to use open source tools by lowering the barrier to entry. It's much easier to use WSL with open source programs than to try and compile open source programs designed for *nix with cygwin.

Plus Microsoft has really come a long way with respect to open sourcing stuff, i.e. .NET, TypeScript, etc etc

Extend, embrace and extinguish. /s

On topic: Does e2tools work on WSL? I'm not able to mount anything and not sure what else to try.

[crunch]

On topic: Does e2tools work on WSL? I'm not able to mount anything and not sure what else to try.

I just installed it, seems like it works. I've been working on a bootloader for ext2/elf and wanted a little more functionality than I could figure out how to squeeze out of e2tools (like writing to specific inodes... in particular, inode 5). The code is definitely still a work in progress, but you can feel free to mess around with it. Currently only writing to/dumping information from images is supported. You can specify which inodes to write to, or just use the next available one. I'll probably add more functionality in the coming days, since the code is all portable to my kernel.

[onlyonemac]

On the other side having a linux on windows, for me at least due to visual studio, which works easily is pretty handy.

Except you don't actually have Linux on Windows; you have the Ubuntu userspace on Windows, running on top of a proprietary Linux-compatible kernel.

If you care so much about freedom, then, I guess, you shouldn't use Windows.

I don't use Windows.

No, discarding Cygwin for WSL would imply that WSL is doing a better job that Cygwin is. It's not about open source or closed source, just whatever is more convenient or useful, at least that's how I view it.

[...]

I'd rather use the better software (of course in ways that's subjective) than using something open source for the sake of open source.

I often forgo convenience to avoid using proprietary tools. I find proprietary software development a very disgusting attitude towards users and refuse to support it in any way.

WSL should be hailed as a way to actually use Linux tools on Windows properly, not as some evil corporate conspiracy to destroy open source.

Except I'm afraid to say that it actually is the first step in destroying open source software, and I'm disappointed that everyone else is too naive to see that. Unfortunately Microsoft have a very good (read: cunning) marketing department.

That dollar-sign-in-Microsoft's-name thing is the most childish 90s crap.

Except it's still true, and it says everything that needs to be said.

Plus Microsoft has really come a long way with respect to open sourcing stuff, i.e. .NET, TypeScript, etc etc

Except WSL isn't open source. In fact it's quite the opposite: a way to run open source software (yes, there's open source software for Windows, but the majority of it still lies in the Linux world) on a proprietary platform. Also, Microsoft didn't exactly "open source" .NET lol; they open sourced the core of .NET which is nowhere near as worthwhile as Mono for actually running .NET Windows applications on Linux.

Extend, embrace and extinguish. /s

That's what I said last time.

[Kazinsal]

Guess what.

These are unmodified binaries provided by Canonical from Debian's upstream running on Windows.

I'm sorry that you're too stubborn to get over the unfounded hate for Microsoft that you learned from early Linux users on the internet as an impressionable and naive child.

[Roman]

I don't use Windows.

What I wanted to tell is that saying that leaving Cygwin for WSL is bad because WSL is proprietary makes no sense, because Windows is non-free, closed and incompatible anyway. A WSL user is a Windows user => he/she is quite unlikely to care about open source at all.

[onlyonemac]

What I wanted to tell is that saying that leaving Cygwin for WSL is bad because WSL is proprietary makes no sense, because Windows is non-free, closed and incompatible anyway. A WSL user is a Windows user => he/she is quite unlikely to care about open source at all.

Except that:

• Even if the user doesn't care about open-source software, it's still important and intentionally leaving Cygwin is not doing anyone any favours except Microsoft.
• Cygwin may be the first step in encouraging a potential Linux user to use Linux, and teaching them about the values of open-source software. WSL isn't going to do that because it just reinforces the idea that "you can get everything you need from Microsoft" (which may or may not be true, but is nevertheless helping Microsoft to create enough FUD for them to monopolise even more of the computing industry).

[onlyonemac]

Guess what.

These are unmodified binaries provided by Canonical from Debian's upstream running on Windows.

I'm sorry that you're too stubborn to get over the unfounded hate for Microsoft that you learned from early Linux users on the internet as an impressionable and naive child.

I see you didn't read my post properly. As I said, it's the Ubuntu userspace running on Windows. I never said anything about the binaries being modified. What I said was that there's no Linux kernel involved (and this is an important point to remember); the (open-source) Ubuntu userspace is running on top of a proprietary Linux-compatible extension to Windows.

Also hate is not unfounded when you're talking about a company that:

• Charges insane prices for their products, because they know that 90% of computer users are either too dumb or too powerless to avoid using them and will be forced to pay.
• Refuses to give users the products and features that they want, instead trying (and succeeding, see first point) to drive the market in whatever direction they feel like.
• Uses sheer power resulting from their monopolistic control over the computing industry to deny users the ability to use alternative software (i.e. SecureBoot, which is compulsory on Windows tablets which would otherwise be Android-compatible and impossible to disable on an increasing number of desktops and laptops).
• Inconveniences users without giving them a choice (automatic updates that use a lot of network bandwidth to download, especially a problem for users with usage-capped internet connections, slow the system down unacceptably while installing, and often break stuff).
• For all the money that they get and control that they exert, their software doesn't even work properly.