Windows Subsystem for Linux

[Rusky]

Oh ffs onlyonemac, give it a rest. The FSF's values are neither the only worthwhile values to judge a system by, nor worth the same to everyone. Linux is not simply superior to Windows by every possible metric, and neither Microsoft nor their users are committing any grievous moral error by creating or using WSL.

Shut up and go back to Slashdot or say something worthwhile. This is the OSDev form, not the FSF forum- some discussion of software freedom is to be expected, but let's not derail a thread that could be about OS design.

[iansjack]

@onlyonemac - I'm not about to waste my time arguing with a Linux bigot. I've no time for OS bigots; they just give their chosen one a bad name.

I'm afraid that you're going to have to continue with a one-sided argument.

[glauxosdever]

Hi,


I still think Linux fulfills my needs better than Windows, but no OS is perfect. If there was a perfect OS, would we even try to develop our owns?

But seriously, from a philosophical point of view, I don't think being able to run Ubuntu binaries on Windows restores the potential harm some Secure Boot implementations will induce if they allow only Windows to be booted (some allow the user to add keys to boot other operating systems and that's good). Most Linux users, anyway, prefer running a pure Linux system, instead of being able to run Ubuntu binaries inside Windows (especially if they dislike Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical for their policies).

Nevertheless, from the practical point of view, it might be a solution for those who are stuck with Windows and they are not allowed to install an emulator, so they can run Linux in it (for example work machines).


Regards,
glauxosdever

[onlyonemac]

but let's not derail a thread that could be about OS design.

Oh I could say plenty about OS design here: how about taking an OS that's supposed to be free and open and shoving it into a proprietary container and restricting users to the choice of only one distro?

[iansjack]

How about trying to stop users using open-source software on Windows? Talk about hypocrisy.

[onlyonemac]

And this is exactly the reason why WSL shouldn't exist.

WSL shouldn't exist because it runs everything Linux can and more?

WSL shouldn't exist because it deceives users into thinking that they can get all the benefits of Linux wihtout actually using Linux.

Windows is plenty customizable [...] there are utilities for reskinning your window manager

In other words, Windows is only customisable if you install extra bloat and hack it up in ways that it was never intended to be used and that break more things than they're worth. In Linux, if I want to re-skin my login screen, I just need to copy and edit one or two XML files, and that's not a hack because the login screen is designed to be customised through the use of XML files. Likewise, installing a new window manager theme is one click away, and if I don't like the icon in the applications menu that that theme chooses I can change it with a few shell commands.

This is not a Windows problem. svchost is a host process that hosts services (which are not wholly standalone programs but rather modules that run under the generic sandboxing host process). Third-party drivers and software can include services that are run by the generic host process, and if we're going to be blaming services for making an entire OS crap, then Linux is worthless because the touchpad user-space daemon likes to busy hang on my single-core laptop when I put resume it from sleep in a virtual terminal and it makes the entire computer unusable.

As I said, these are completely different systems so I doubt that they all have exactly the same problematic driver, and on one of the systems it was the Windows Update service that was causing the problem anyway (I still haven't found a fix for that, either - I tried emptying the Windows Update cache, reinstalling Windows Update, and running all of the crappy "FixIt" tools from Microsoft, and it still uses a whole CPU core and refuses to install any updates). By contrast, I've only had issues with two Linux systems, and one was an old laptop (which would sometimes hang when switching to a virtual console) from the era when laptop manufacturers were notorious for putting lots of proprietary components in laptops and Linux support was known to be poor on laptops, and the other was an old nVidia card which Noveau wouldn't recognise and I couldn't find a proprietary driver for it (and it worked except for the 3D acceleration).

I don't know what you're getting your information from, but NTFS supports every Unicode character in filenames except NUL and forward-slash. Win32 has a few other restricted characters because the API handles globbing and argument sets for all Win32 programs to give a consistent interface across the system.

I never said anything about NTFS. I don't care whether it's the fault of the kernel, the filesystem, or simply the interface, but whatever part it is it prevents me from entering certain commonly-used characters in filenames, and even if it's just the interface that's still what most people see of NT (and not completely seperable from the kernel) and therefore enough to qualify in a "Microsoft is crap" argument.

a system I have that has eight Marvell Fast Ethernet NICs in it

I'm going to assume that the problem is because your NICs are perhaps obsolete or obscure hardware, as you haven't really given enough information to properly assess the situation and what may be causing the problem (or even exactly wha tthe problem is). Linux can utilise as many NICs as you can fit in your computer in ways that no other OS that I've ever seen can.

and every surround sound system I've ever encountered

My motherboard has onboard surround-sound and it works fine with the right software. Make sure that your media player supports surround-sound output - I use VLC and I've never had any problems getting the right channels to play through the right speakers.

Also, stop mis-spelling my username.

[onlyonemac]

How about trying to stop users using open-source software on Windows? Talk about hypocrisy.

I'm not trying to stop that. We already have plenty of open-source software for Windows, a lot of big open-source projects compile for both platforms, and there are open-source solutions to running UNIX software on Windows.

[iansjack]

And this is exactly the reason why WSL shouldn't exist.

WSL shouldn't exist because it runs everything Linux can and more?

WSL shouldn't exist because it deceives users into thinking that they can get all the benefits of Linux without actually using Linux.

That explains a lot. The problem is that you just don't understand WSL. Fair enough.

[gerryg400]

WSL shouldn't exist because it deceives users into thinking that they can get all the benefits of Linux wihtout actually using Linux.

There's no deception. It's real.

In my opinion this has nothing to do with Linux. This is about trying to stop the rapid defection of developers to Mac. It's too late for me, I jumped years ago but others might be tempted to stay on Windows with these tools available.

[jojo]

This is about trying to stop the rapid defection of developers to Mac.

Is there something particularly bad about that?

How about this one, guys: If you don't like something, don't use it? The question here isn't 'do you think WSL should exist' it's 'if you've used it, how has it performed for you'.

Tools are tools and companies are companies. Microsoft does not have some secret agenda to destroy linux, which, with all the distros out there and not even counting in the fact that you could bogart a bunch of sources and start your own doomsday prepper distro, would be a ridiculous thought on the face of it. So you can keep using linux forever and just ignore windows and WSL completely, what's the fear here?

Like, I agree with what you're saying, onlyonemac, re: customizability advantages &c. But what's your point? That windows is evil and trying to kill us all? Maybe more reasonably that somewhere in here (ignoring how this doesn't make sense considering the money they've invested in Azure) their intention is to become the defacto corporate provider of linux platforms? You know... kind of like RedHat and Oracle already are?

[iansjack]

Maybe more reasonably that somewhere in here (ignoring how this doesn't make sense considering the money they've invested in Azure) their intention is to become the defacto corporate provider of linux platforms? You know... kind of like RedHat and Oracle already are?

I think your statement makes a lot of sense (although I suspect they just want to be another provider rather than the de facto one) but I don't understand the bit that I have emboldened. IMO Azure is one of the reasons why they are trying to attract Linux users, bearing in mind that they support Linux on Azure. So you make it easy for people running Windows desktop to develop applications that they can deploy to a Linux server running on Azure. That makes good business sense to me.

[jojo]

they support Linux on Azure

This I did not know. I thought it was specifically a stack of Windows technologies, and I've never really touched the thing, so I probably shouldn't have mentioned it at all.

[Kazinsal]

Azure is a stack of stacks. There's not just generic Microsoft and Linux cloud services, but build servers, third-party containers like Drupal and Oracle servers, cloud-based endpoint protection, Redmine, Docker container hosting and templates...

It's quite a service.

[mallardest]

I just installed Windows 10 in a Virtual Machine to try it out.
QEMU, vim, gcc, grub2/xorriso and nasm all work fine (although QEMU needs -curses to work).
However it doesn't seem very stable; the bash windows just close by themselves sometimes.

[Schol-R-LEA]

Open source isn't inherently secure.

The entire idea of 'secure software' is a dangerous illusion. We'd all be better off erasing the adjectival form of the word 'secure' from our technical vocabularies altogether, and find a more accurate one for the processes of preventing intrusions, blocking malicious software, and maintaining system stability.