Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

by anchpop • 5 years ago

618 457 5 years ago

phkahler• 5 years ago

> Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've extended the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop. We've also added various functionality to it, such as support for multi-monitor, cut/paste, audio in/out, etc...

Did they push those changes upstream? This seems like it could be another way to run GUI apps in containers on Linux too.

ubercow13• 5 years ago

You can already run GUI apps in containers using pure wayland, just bind the socket into the container.

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

Likewise X, if you pass it the socket (although there are caveats around everything but just X11, like audio, which have to be routed out separately)

ziftface• 5 years ago

just bind the socket into the container

I thought Wayland relied on shared memory with the compositor to work? I could be way off though

password4321• 5 years ago

https://github.com/microsoft/weston-mirror

I could not find any reference to it upstream or mention in the mailing lists.

earthscienceman2• 5 years ago

This was my exact question, as much as I hate Microsoft and Windows (15 years of using linux now in my brief 32 years on the planet).... this could be the project that pushes Wayland to fruition finally. It could also significantly improve GUI support in general.

I guess getting the right thing for the wrong reasons is better than not getting them at all? I'm not a very good pragmatist.

linux2647• 5 years ago

The README mentioned that they have their changes in a separate public GitHub repo and that they plan to upstream it

ecnahc515• 5 years ago

Windows + WSL2 is starting to catching up with Chrome OS + crostini. How exciting.

b2158262• 5 years ago

Now someone make a Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI.

rubyn00bie• 5 years ago

Isn't that pretty much what Wine does? Having been using Linux as my daily workstation for a year now, I've been blown away how easy it is (and generally transparent) to install and use Windows applications on Linux.

spijdar3• 5 years ago

Actually, not quite. Wine is closer to what WSL1 was. The closest equivalent to "Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI" on WSL2 for Linux would just be ... running Windows in a VM, with FreeRDP doing per-app tunneling to the Linux host.

I think there's even some software for automating this somewhere out there.

teddyfrozevelt• 5 years ago

I guess it would be this: https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps

b2158262• 5 years ago

Thanks, this sounds like an interesting project. Will look into it.

mathnode• 5 years ago

For those that don't know, this will only be available in Windows 11, see https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/347#issuecomment-87...

stronglikedan• 5 years ago

To be fair, it's also the first prerequisite on the linked page.

WSLg is going to be generally available alongside the upcoming release of Windows. To get access to a preview of WSLg, you'll need to join the Windows Insider Program and be running a Windows 10 Insider Preview build from the beta or dev channels.

nwatson• 5 years ago

Yeah bummer. My old Windows machine won't be upgradable to Windows 11 ... interestingly I was able to install the Windows 11 preview and even get the WSL2 update with the integrated X11/GUI and it worked great. However I was notified I couldn't upgrade to official build and the only recourse was to re-install Windows 10.

I'll need to revert to one of the available X11 servers but I wiped out the old configuration and it's kinda painful to automatically set $DISPLAY and also get Norton Firewall to play along.

ComputerGuru6• 5 years ago

I have a solution for the disk/partition type/layout incompatible with upgrading to newer Windows 11 builds (but not the TPM workaround) but I haven’t gotten around to packaging it and publishing it for download on our site.

JorgeGT2• 5 years ago

I see that those of us with a 7th gen Intel core CPU that "need not to worry because W10 will be supported for years" will immediately start missing functionality.

tonyedgecombe2• 5 years ago

To be honest I’m not going to miss the annual update that messes with all my settings and tries to force a MS account on me.

shados2• 5 years ago

At the very least the support requirement is a soft one, not a hard one. A large portion of motherboards from that era had firmware updates to officially support Win11, and Win11 WILL work on an i7-7700k even though its not in the list. You unfortunately won't get it through Windows update and will have to install the hard way.

And if there's problems, you'll be sorry out of luck.

Pisses me off, but at least it's not a complete blocker.

q-rews• 5 years ago

Support doesn’t mean you get all the new features.

pedro22• 5 years ago

WHAT??????

I always thought it would be enabled on Windows 10.

AcerbicZero• 5 years ago

WSL seriously changed the amount of work I can do from my gaming PC, but I’m not sure if that’s actually a good thing based on my productivity over the past few months.

That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user.

squarefoot2• 5 years ago

That aside it’s terrific to see MS putting something good into Windows rather than just removing things and taking choice away from the end user.

That's the tip of the iceberg MS want everyone to see, and point the finger at.

MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative since they lost the battle when they attempted to kill it during the Ballmer era. The plan now is more subtle: making sure everyone using Linux will want to do that from a Windows machine, with all the implications about security and privacy, which would be non existent since any malware (or Windows itself) that for example used Windows keyboard drivers to sniff passwords while one connects say to the bank under WSL "because it's more secure" would be 100% undetectable from that Linux.

The next step will be libraries to access Windows internals and GUI from WSL, so that one can build hybrids that run only on Windows+WSL; very convenient, but unfortunately now Linux is displaced and the only way to benefit from all that software will be to run it under Windows. In the end, MS will create their own Linux distro which runs on top of Windows and will essentially kill all other non-server oriented Linux distros.

Most see WSL as a good thing; I see an elaborate, and have to admit, very clever, way to take complete control of Linux in the next years.

NortySpock• 5 years ago

So the Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI (WSLg) business plan looks like this, I assume:

Step 1: get lots of devs using WSL / WSL GUI.

Step 2: Get them comfortable with flexibly using WSL GUI on Linux and Windows interchangeably

Step 3: roll out your poison pill: new Version X, offering great compatibility on Windows but bad integration with Linux; maybe Linux support is buggy or nonexistent, maybe the API doesn't mesh with Linux systems at all, maybe it has license conflicts and Linux has to do a rewrite to be FOSS or write a hacky FOSS shim. Whatever creates the most pain for Linux / FOSS users.

Step 4: Stuck with being tied to WSLg, Developers go to the business and say "either we have to spend a lot of time fixing Linux issues or we buy Windows licenses" at which point the business happily buys Windows and Office 365 volume licenses and keeps going.

Step 5: Microsoft maintains its monopoly for another 10 years.

The "I want to stay independent" workaround is (I assume) writing API layers that can serve "thin GUI clients" on multiple platforms (I guess like Electron or a regular web application or something.)

jcastro• 5 years ago

MS want people to stop using Linux as an alternative

Linux desktops as they currently stand aren't even close to a threat to Windows, this is Microsoft using the Linux userspace to get developer mindshare back from OSX.

matja• 5 years ago

That seat that Microsoft have on the Linux Foundation board of directors will come in useful for that.

city41• 5 years ago

I wonder how many people who rely on Linux have truly moved to WSL? I gave it a try and I find real Linux vastly superior. Hybrid Windows+WSL apps, what is the point? Developing Windows apps with .NET is very easy and pleasant.

Don't get me wrong, I agree we should be concerned about WSL. But I think it's also very possible Microsoft recognizes developers that aren't developing with MS tech (ie anything but .NET these days) pretty much never use Windows and they are trying to patch that gap.

shpongled• 5 years ago

Will I be able to use i3?

IncRnd• 5 years ago

Yes.

judge2020• 5 years ago

This will be available in Windows 11, so your processor does have to be able to upgrade to that. If you're fine with an OS reinstall there are ways to force the install.

darcyparker• 5 years ago

I don't think he is referring to an i3 processor, but rather https://i3wm.org/

reificator• 5 years ago

I can't imagine you'd be able to use i3 for your windows apps from what I've read, but it should work with your Linux side.

lowtto• 5 years ago

WSL2 is essentially just.. Windows + Linux. I tried it and it is awesome. Cannot wait to see further progress that comes out of this. I really cannot leave Windows to be honest. The network effect is too strong. Coupled with recent Microsoft effort such as Visual Code, its looking like they are doing nothing but going towards the better direction than the old days. Who would have thought. Would you believe it if anyone said this to be the case, 10 years ago?

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

Dual boot? This does look slick, I was an avid WSL user until I started dual booting. Now I almost never need to boot to Windows.

I get that if you often need to switch it can be a pain in the ass but at least Linux respects my privacy and freedom.

seanw444• 5 years ago

Same situation here. Dual-booting Linux and Windows 10, and I figured I'd boot into Windows often enough for it to get obnoxious. But I only ever get on there to play a few demanding games (which I already don't play often anymore), or make music with an A+ DAW for making music that doesn't run super effectively on Wine. Linux handles everything else I do like a champ.

ComputerGuru6• 5 years ago

As the author of EasyBCD, I can tell you that interest in dual-booting has collapsed to near zero over the past decade.

josteink• 5 years ago

Coupled with recent Microsoft effort such as Visual Code

Which is officially supported on Linux.

There might be reasons to run Windows, but this is not one :)

wizwit999• 5 years ago

I think hes referring to how you can run the VSCode GUI in Windows but develop on WSL because they built an integration. It's pretty neat. And most people are using Windows for other reasons (drivers, gaming ,etc), this just makes development not a pain anymore.

peakaboo• 5 years ago

It's about the culture. Windows doesn't respect your privacy and you are treated like a child, because most people who run Windows wants Microsoft to make all decisions for them, just like a parent.

wyldfire• 5 years ago

I really cannot leave Windows to be honest. The network effect is too strong.

I suspect whatever's keeping you on Windows isn't really the network effect. It's usually: comfort level/personal preference, or a set of software that vendor(s) can't/won't port to another non-Windows platform.

The fact that so many applications have been rewritten as browser-accessible services has liberated me. I haven't owned a system with a Microsoft OS since ~2004 or so.

rocqua2• 5 years ago

Don't forget corporate policy. I would do all of my work on linux except I am barely allowed.

Tools like teams and outlook are also just not as good on Linux, and really important for work.

SCdF• 5 years ago

or a set of software that vendor(s) can't/won't port to another non-Windows platform.

Is that not the network effect? I.e. everyone uses Windows so developers target their software for Windows, so everyone uses Windows?

filomeno• 5 years ago

Would you believe it if anyone said this to be the case, 10 years ago?

To be honest, Microsoft astroturfers have long existed, for much more than 10 years.

fgonzag• 5 years ago

I was also amazed with WSL, it genuinely made me think I didn't have to leave Windows anymore. It is honestly one of the best products Microsoft has launched recently. The development tools division of Microsoft is on fire and should be commended.

The Windows division is another story though. With all the Windows 11 news I decided to give desktop Linux a spin for the nth time in 20 years. Installed Manjaro and I'm extremely impressed. Even though I have Nvidia graphics everything is buttery smooth, all my productivity tools are there, setting up my VPN was far easier than Windows, and even more amazingly most of my games work well thanks to the recent push by Valve and the steam deck.

I will probably stick with it this time, so maybe for me 2021 finally is the year of the Linux desktop.

MichaelRust• 5 years ago

its looking like they are doing nothing but going towards the better direction than the old days

https://rentry.co/areweweloveopensauceyet

tmccrary55• 5 years ago

"awesome"

avodonosov4• 5 years ago

I already asked this in the past, and want to ask again. Is Microsoft a corporation of goodness now?

0des• 5 years ago

Embrace

Extend <-- you are here

Extinguish

lghh• 5 years ago

What are they extending? What functionality does this add to Linux that is only available on Windows?

villasv• 5 years ago

Asking if a publicly traded company this big is good or bad is pointless. A corporation is psychopathic; if it goes Patrick Bateman or Dexter Morgan depends on the environment.

The current environment incentivizes expanding the developer ecosystem, hence DX investments.

cybernautique4• 5 years ago

In my opinion, this is actually a question of values. My position: absolutely not, but I take it as axiomatic that Microsoft (et al.) are incapable of any actual "good."

This is simply Window's attempt to build a new walled garden. If they were actually serious about advancing the state of civil computing, they'd make the NT core available as a microkernel that can be modularly placed into the Linux ecosystem. That is the _one_ thing I can think of which might raise my opinion of them (and I'm sure they lose sleep at night, knowing they haven't got my endorsement).

p_j_w• 5 years ago

I'm of a similar opinion. If they want to prove that they heart Linux, that's what they're going to have to do. Or, at the very least, document everything (including DX) so that the Wine devs can do their thing even if MS don't care to help. Until then, "MS <3 Linux" is nothing more than PR speak in my mind.

avodonosov4• 5 years ago

Why this should be exactly microkernel?

screye• 5 years ago

Balmer was their wake up call. A lot of destructive policies that ensure short term benefits destroy long term sustainability.

They are good, just as any public can be good company. IE. Just a little bit more sensible about cooperation instead of demolition.

markus_zhang• 5 years ago

Please define what is good.

burkaman• 5 years ago

Microsoft is a group of 180,000 people, it's too big to be classified like that. A small subset of them are making this cool thing, and you can debate whether or not their intentions are good, but that's about as far as you can go in making a broad moral judgement.

jayd16• 5 years ago

Hmm probably closer to true neutral.

monocasa• 5 years ago

Microsoft has just shifted to being what IBM was in that late 90s for all intents and purposes. IBM didn't care what you ran on their platforms, even at the OS level. They just wanted that sweet sweet support contract and computer leasing money. "You want to run Linux on our mainframes? Hell yeah, sign here." Now with Azure, Microsoft gets money of the same shape, and correspondingly makes some of the same strategic choices.

CraftingLinks• 5 years ago

I just might switch to linux instead.

themodelplumber2• 5 years ago

You can always fall back on the Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI, aka WINE/DOSBox/VMW/VBX/QEMU, with varying levels of integration/fiddle/config.

kaladin-jasnah• 5 years ago

Varying levels of integration, with fiddling being required less and less (eg. Proton), and with a nuch higher level of privacy. Also, I don't want my computer to feel like a billboard for Candy Crush Saga.

speed_spread2• 5 years ago

Most corporate PC users do not have that option. WSL solves that.

smackeyacky• 5 years ago

This is the most plausible explanation. Since most of the newer dev frameworks use very unix like CLI, windows as a dev operating system was feeling very left out.

VSCode made this painfully obvious.

Most corporates would just offer you a mac instead. WSLg is pretty cool, but if you have a choice, running ubuntu or debian is better, with emulation for whatever windows legacy stuff you need to support.

wvenable3• 5 years ago

That seems like a very complex architecture. RDP client and server? That seems like a strange approach for a single machine solution.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 5 years ago

Ironic statement considering how X was designed to work.

wvenable3• 5 years ago

I posted this because I've used Linux GUI apps on Windows with WSL1 and an X server. This seems much more complex than that.

cogman104• 5 years ago

It's because WSL2 abandoned the initial goals of WSL1 and just did a VM instead.

I wish MS continued evolving WSL1 instead of doing the VM approach but c'est la vie.

edgyquant2• 5 years ago

I wish MS continued evolving WSL1

I do too but only from a techy POV. I think it was awesome they expanded their old posix apis into a drop in linux replacement and wish it could have continued being expanded.

ComputerGuru6• 5 years ago

The amount of effort that went into WSL1 including the number of bug-for-bug changes involved was tremendous. It blew my mind when WSL2 was announced because the hyper visor approach was already possible (and in use) before WSL1 was announced but MS made an explicit decision to do the extra work to make their own Linux subsystem for Windows the harder/better way… then gave up.

ripdog• 5 years ago

From what I recall, an MS engineer explained why they gave up on WSL1 as being intractable issues with the way Windows and Linux interact with the filesystem, leading to major, unfixable performance issues.

folmar• 5 years ago

RDP is ready, tested and quite complete. Much better than designing a new protocol.

reilly30006• 5 years ago

I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to support. Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows build or corollary app. I get how ‘you never have to leave Windows’ is a nice thing for their business, but I don’t see this being a reason I would stop dual-booting. The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games. Otherwise I really enjoy the bloat-free, ad-free, telemetry-free, snappy, tractable, and undistracted experience that is Linux desktop computing.

It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.

Other way around. The Kernel getting real support for NTFS (was merged into Linus' tree a month ago [0]) there's hope to get native performance on WSL2.

Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next decade.

[0] https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-have-...

pritambaral• 5 years ago

Linux and Windows use mutually exclusive permission/ACL bits, even on the same NTFS filesystem.

smoldesu• 5 years ago

Linux has had read-only support for NTFS longer than WSL has been around. And if you think that Kernel patch is a testament to the greatness of Windows, you should try reading some of it. It's infamously incomprehensible.

I'd be onboard with Windows as a next-gen dev environment if it was compatible with more filesystems, had a more organized file structure, featured greater CPU compatibility, and eliminated the system registry altogether.

gitgud• 5 years ago

Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next decade.

Big claim, most devs I've met either use Mac or Ubuntu. Can't remember anyone using Windows...

d_k_f• 5 years ago

Whenever you want to natively operate on files within WSL instead of going through the network share abstraction, this is definitely helpful. I'm running my git GUI (Sublime Merge) on the Linux side and am currently piping the UI through to Windows using VcxServe. If I can remove another dependency using this - great.

phendrenad25• 5 years ago

I think it's mostly a "because they can". WSL is a no-brainer because developers are used to Unix shells and most programming languages are Unix-first, Windows-maybe. But WSLg feels like a weird experiment with no purpose.

mainedotpy• 5 years ago

This could very well be the case, but as someone who is just dipping a toe into programming, installing and using WSL2 knowing that I can fall back on GUI when I can't figure out bash is a feature for me.

hawtkey• 5 years ago

I think the main target is ML applications that depend on GPU access and being able to run a WM is just a side-benefit.

PennRobotics• 5 years ago

My networked workplace computer needs to be able to compile a Windows application plus peripherals running various other architectures. The Windows part happens best in Windows, while the other parts are remarkably painful to compile without Linux. And all the platforms can compile in parallel.

jonathanlydall• 5 years ago

As someone who uses Windows as their main driver, I will personally find it a useful way to test/debug our Electron based app on Linux. Right now I’m using a full VM.

When you consider that Edge is available for Linux, MS could very well be using WSLg to develop it.

So it seems to me that this just makes it easier to anything you need to do on Linux, “on” Windows.

Of course making it easier for people on Windows to make software for Linux seems like a way to help Linux, which is a bit confusing to see MS do.

pxc3• 5 years ago

Right now I’m using a full VM.

WSL2 is also a full VM

fomine3• 5 years ago

Also looks good to debugging puppeteer with head on docker container.

MikusR4• 5 years ago

They made it specifically for machine learning

reilly30006• 5 years ago

I was looking into this further because it’s sort of impacting my dual-boot workflow. I have ext4 media drives on Linux that aren’t viewable or readable from Windows, but Linux can at least read the NTFS drive. The third parties I’ve tried in the past for making Ext4 readable in Windows File Explorer have some sketchy security concerns and/or missing Win10 support.

It looks like using the method described in the link below it’s now possible to mount ext4 drives via WSL2 and even browse them in File Explorer:

https://superuser.com/a/1630438

It’s not clear if they are also writable or not, I’m off to try it!

reilly30006• 5 years ago

So far no good. That feature was a preview release that required insider builds, which require enabling telemetry that sends, among other things, "information about websites you browse, apps and features you use..." Moreover, I'm not able to use Windows 11 which has the feature because of my AMD Threadripper 1950X processor.

AkshitGarg• 5 years ago

You can use WSL to mount ext4 and other filesystems supported in linux.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk

II2II• 5 years ago

I wonder what Linux exclusive software they are hoping to support.

It would be more of a case of how well certain software works, or how well that software works together, than one of supporting Linux exclusive software. There have been a variety of ways to run Unix software under Windows for decades. Quite often, there are quirks to deal with unless considerable effort has also been put into the Windows native version. I doubt that WSL will actually appeal to many existing Linux users, but it will probably prevent the slow flow of people from Windows to Linux.

I agree that native ext4 support would be more useful for people who dual boot.

merb• 5 years ago

the reverse would also be pretty useful. heck if they would pull off office for linux even when they would charge windows pro and a 365 license it would probably be welcomed.

reilly30006• 5 years ago

I would buy that the moment it is released. That would be the fabled Year of the Linux Desktop.

lobocinza6• 5 years ago

Would be bad for vendor lock-in.

mcbuilder• 5 years ago

I have a Windows machine for my work at giant megacorp. I run Linux on my at home machines, but the honest to god I can't believe it's not Linux experience I've gotten from WSL has been great. I pretty much tab into my full screen Linux Window manager running in a X11 client window and get down to work.

sixothree• 5 years ago

Qemu manager would be good.

gigel82• 5 years ago

IIRC, they were primarily interested in getting GPU acceleration (for ML tasks) to work in WSL2.

I presume getting GUI working on top of those GPU APIs was a trivial task (and maybe done by one of their interns or during a hackathon).

reilly30006• 5 years ago

That sounds like the killer app. GPU passthru can be an absolutely gnarly undertaking with any virtualization system.

gobookdev• 5 years ago

Anyone could already do it with a few lines of code.

Edit: Seems people don't believe me, here's an article how to do it: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-dev-appconsul...

PufPufPuf2• 5 years ago

GPU passthrough on WSL2 is a thing since around December 2020 -- but I'm not sure if it's in stable yet, I had to install an insider build for it. It works surprisingly well and I was able to develop my ML project using it (with the help of VSCode devcontainers)

mook• 5 years ago

It sounds like they did significant work getting the whole stack to work well, from Wayland to the RDP back-end to improvements to the RDP client on the Win32 side.

Your interns must be rock stars on meth.

eyelidlessness2• 5 years ago

They’re supporting servers. That’s the whole story. They won business desktops but lost enterprise in the “anything that requires network access”, and want to continue to sell software to those customers. Making development less onerous supports that goal.

accurrent• 5 years ago

To be honest, theres alot of research related software (including for visualization) that works on Linux only or has very poor support for windows. As a roboticist one example that comes to mind is the whole open source robotics ecosystem with ROS/Gazebo which is pretty linux only. Personally I've been using linux as a daily driver for 10+years now so its not a problem for me per-se, however I'm sure there are many who would be interested in seeing better windows support. I've heard of similar issues in the domain of particle physics and a few other niche research areas.

Stratoscope8• 5 years ago

Even though our dev environment at work is Ubuntu, I greatly prefer running Windows on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme, because of the superior hardware support for the devices I use. Specifically:

• I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?), and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu. They pair only as headphones with no microphone. On Windows they work "out of the box".

• I use a triple-monitor configuration with three 4K displays: the ThinkPad's internal 15" display and two 24" externals. In Ubuntu I can only get two displays to work. (BTW one external display is in landscape mode above the ThinkPad, and the other is to the left in portrait mode. I highly recommend this configuration - the portrait mode display is great for reading docs and especially PDF files.)

• I run the external displays at 200% scaling and the internal at 300% to match the differing pixel density. I didn't see any way to support this configuration in Ubuntu, much less be able to move an app window between displays and have it automatically update its scaling factor to match the display. This works "out of the box" in Windows.

So I run Windows on the hardware and Ubuntu with my dev tools like PyCharm and SmartGit in a VMware VM. (VMware works a lot better for this than VirtualBox - the display response is much snappier.)

Of course these are my own needs, and I have no quarrel with anyone who has different preferences. But I welcome anything Microsoft can do to make this an even smoother experience than it already is.

p2t2p• 5 years ago

This. It is basically a way out for people that don't want to run Mac.

JoshTriplett• 5 years ago

• I run the external displays at 200% scaling and the internal at 300% to match the differing pixel density. I didn't see any way to support this configuration in Ubuntu, much less be able to move an app window between displays and have it automatically update its scaling factor to match the display. This works "out of the box" in Windows.

This works if you use Wayland rather than X11. I'm using a similar configuration today.

Teknoman1172• 5 years ago

To be honest, with the amount of video meetings I have, I invested in a far better audio setup than Bluetooth headset microphone.

The amount of meetings I've had where the audio from the other end sounds like the BART announcements is too high...

That being said, I know what you mean. However, I'm actually rather annoyed at the headset microphone functionality on windows, because if anything starts using the microphone, it switches modes and the audio quality goes way, way down. Fine for a zoom call maybe, but having horrible audio in a video game is not fun. I constantly have to go to control panel to turns off hands-free telephony.

godelski• 5 years ago

About the headphones, are you sure you've selected the right thing in the app? Not pulseaudio, but zoom. I had this problem that zoom would ignore whatever I set with pulse. Once I figured this out my problems went away.

For games, proton has come a long way. I don't find myself needing to boot out of Linux very often anymore.

Abishek_Muthian2• 5 years ago

like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu.

Is this due to Apple having drivers for AirPods for Windows or Is Windows Bluetooth stack that good?

chx3• 5 years ago

WSL v2 is a VM too and better integrated. I like it very much.

Too• 5 years ago

Ubuntu by default pairs Bluetooth headsets as A2DP, which has higher quality for music but no mic-support. You have to go in to Ubuntu bluetooth sound settings and change the output device to headset mode every god damn time you turn on the headset. And then toggle it back to A2DP if you want to listen to music again. I don't know how Windows or iOS deals with this but there both modes seem to work seamlessly.

Jnr7• 5 years ago

Bluetooth headsets (I have Bose) and automatic input switching works with pipewire, fractional scaling with different settings for each monitor works with Wayland.

I am using it on Archlinux without any problems whatsoever.

The problem with Ubuntu is - when it releases their latest version, it is already shipping a couple years old software versions.

And for pipewire, wayland, mesa and other desktop related things you want to run the latest version at all times. This is one of the major reasons why Valve chose Archlinux as a base for their new SteamOS version for Steam Deck.

tlamponi2• 5 years ago

  > I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?), and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu.

I do not want to be the cliché Linux user and recommend some config change and assert that would have been simple and helped 110%, but out of interest, did you also try something like

  > Set ControllerMode = bredr or ControllerMode = dual by editing
  > /etc/bluetooth/main.conf file
  > systemctl restart bluetooth

(paraphrased and s/sysv/systemd/ from https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-pairing-apple-airpods-as-h... )

kafkaIncarnate2• 5 years ago

I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?)

I'm way more productive with email and just a couple phone calls a week as needed.

zerocount• 5 years ago

Nice setup. I prefer one large monitor over dual displays and a desktop over a laptop. I just don't have any use for the small laptop screen and keep it closed most of the time.

hpcjoe• 5 years ago

On linux mint, zoom works fine, with bluetooth headphones, attached speakers, bluetooth speakers, etc. Has for years (well, I started using it (bluetooth headsets with linux) in 2008 or so, and it worked then as well).

On windows, brand new Dell laptop for work, with an insanely locked down version of windows 10, zoom often crashes, especially when sharing my screen. This in turn takes down many other applications. Generally making the whole windows experience far from optimal.

My Sager Laptop a few years ago, and now my HP Omni (personal) laptop, I regularly drive 2 screens and the laptop display. Works. Out of the box. Work windows 10 laptop, its a crap shoot at best. And I can't use the NVidia card very much in windows 10, simply because the system is so locked down. Thus I'm stuck with an expensive and useless feature. One that works flawlessly in my locked down linux box.

On different scalings for different monitors, its built in to mint.

I'm guessing you are either running a very old version of Ubuntu (literally all the complaints you made are many years out of date, having been solved long ago), or you copy-pastaed from somewhere else. My priors on this are 60% the latter 40% the former.

On my linux laptop, I run windows the way it should be run (if you really need to run it). In a kvm instance. Never touching real hardware. And whats funny about this, is that the virtualized Win10 is faster than the far more expensive windows 10 work laptop right next to it.

Go figure.

FWIW, I've been using Linux on my desktop for 23 years, and as my primary OS on my desktop/laptop for 20 of those years. So ... YMMV.

WhyNotHugo4• 5 years ago

This seems mostly anecdotal, but I've been using Bluetooth headsets and headphones on Linux since around 2008, and most have worked out of the box with no issues.

I do remember at the time, windows didn't really work with those Bluetooth headphones, and I actually started bringing my own Linux laptop to work just so I could use my headphones.

When it comes to Zoom, I'd say the problem is having to use that crap and not the fact that they barely support Linux. MS Teams also won't work on Linux, but it's hard to claim it's an issue on Linux's side. I'd suggest looking at something like Jitsi, which is also encrypted and takes security into consideration.

Ubuntu is a pretty bad example for anything though: they're usually trying to reinvent the wheel and it's very common for things not to work there and work anywhere else. I personally have mixed feeling because they both make Lonux more popular and build good tools, but also give Linux a bad rep at the same time. Maybe give Fedora a shot?

Finally, per-display scaling works fine on Wayland, but won't work on Xorg. I believe Ubuntu still uses the latter.

jpalomaki• 5 years ago

If all your development is on Linux, it’a convenient to run IDE there as well.

jbhouse3• 5 years ago

you would be surprised at what a large effect the removal of friction can have. I bet this will convince a decent chunk of people that dual booting isn't worth it

sharken2• 5 years ago

Exactly, don't underestimate what removal of a few annoying hoops to jump through can do.

The other day I wanted to compare gitk on Windows with the same on Linux. But there was no Xserver installed, so the idea was dropped.

The whole reason was to see if gitk also had that annoying enumeration at startup in Linux.

alex_smart• 5 years ago

So even if a windows build is available, sometimes the user experience of linux-first software on windows can be subobtimal because of differences in filesystem and process model of the two operating systems. I much prefer using git and emacs within WSL than their windows builds.

The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games

Another reason to use windows is if you are on a laptop and care about battery life. Browsers on Linux still don't have hardware accelerated video playback.

lobocinza6• 5 years ago

Another reason to use windows is if you are on a laptop and care about battery life. Browsers on Linux still don't have hardware accelerated video playback.

That's just not true. Might be a problem with some GPUs but not with all. At least I got hardware accelerated video playback on Chromium with my AMD GPU.

nailer2• 5 years ago

Every single person who has ever claimed Linux runs flawlessly on a piece of hardware has had some flaws. I include myself here - I once bought a laptop with entirely OSS mainline kernel supported hardware and compositing didn’t work on external displays.

99% hardware support isn’t good enough. I want to make new software not troubleshoot other people’s.

kaba02• 5 years ago

Thinkpads generally work perfectly. Also, windows hardly has even 99% compatibility with hardware. There is hardware that behaves better under linux than windows as well.

ezoe• 5 years ago

Terminal emulator.

lancebeet• 5 years ago

I use WSL with VcXsrv on my work machine. For me, the biggest feature is that I can share clipboard between vim running in WSL and windows. It's also often significantly faster to get a program up and running in Linux than on Windows, especially if it has lots of dependencies.

usrusr• 5 years ago

Everything I use in my Ubuntu daily driver has a Windows build or corollary app.

And using them is an endless shuffle with fractured distribution and update. WSL gives you apt-get. And good luck when every port you use integrates with a different subset of the ca 5 SSH options that are in common use on Windows.

anaisbetts2• 5 years ago

It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk

WhyNotHugo4• 5 years ago

I suspect this is to try to push large business/corporate clients to drop Linux.

Windows adds support for running Linux apps, then spreads some FUD about Linux, and convinces companies they need to ban dual-booting and only allow Windows internally.

It certainly does _sound_ like MS.

eitland• 5 years ago

Almost everything I use runs faster on Linux so even if it isn't Linux exclusive I'd very much prefer to run it on Linux.

VS Code brilliantly lets me develop on WSL2, IntelliJ is getting there but with these new developments it might become easier to run everything on Linux.

That said, IT at work not only tolerates Linux but actively support it so I might be back on Linux again very soon.

jvanderbot2• 5 years ago

Well, ROS?

I can't tell you how many people want to mess around with the robot operating system but don't want to dive head first into Linux. Hell, my very large robotics company won't even give you a linux machine. You're forced to use Mac or Windows or build it yourself.

But in general, I haven't dual-booted my main machine since WSL got good, and I'm a linxu-first kind of person with a penchant for windows gaming.

pjmlp7• 5 years ago

I bet Microsoft would rather that they used Azure Sphere OS or Azure RTOS for that purpose.

Rd6n62• 5 years ago

I just really like the OS experience of Ubuntu. I’d rather run a windows vm but the gpu doesn’t play very nice sometimes

son_ngu• 5 years ago

This is exciting. I dual boot Windows and Linux, cause although I really like my setup on Linux, the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me.

I wonder if I can use something like bspwm, maybe not... haha

earthscienceman2• 5 years ago

Have you tried KDE plasma?

rvz• 5 years ago

Extend.

Weston is the Wayland project reference compositor and the heart of WSLg. For WSLg, we've EXTENDED the existing RDP backend of libweston to teach it how to remote applications rather than monitor/desktop.

It has been admitted.

oaiey• 5 years ago

RDP is a proprietary protocol of Microsoft. Extending their own protocol sounds pretty normal.

And the code seems available on their weston-mirror. It just a merge away.

Microsoft does enough shady things in the now, let us not try not force some EEE pattern.

downWidOutaFite• 5 years ago

Amazingly this seems better integrated than Mac's XQuartz which I always find awkward and buggy. If it weren't for the forced ads and updates I would consider switching back to Windows.

sys_64738• 5 years ago

How long before even Linus migrates to Windows as his daily driver?

zzandd2• 5 years ago

So how long until us poor fellows running enterprise windows see this?

I currently use vcxsrv which works mostly fine, but it's hard to convince other people to adopt the multitude of hacks I have to make this work, and supporting windows in builds is painful.

tonoto• 5 years ago

you don't have to wait until Windows 11 for this nonsense. I am unfortunately locked at my current mission to be on a Windows laptop, my first Windows experience in years. As soon as I read up on wsl2 I installed it and inside installed the xrdp server and a corresponding lightweight environment, then just rdp into it (but every time the wsl gets restarted, you'll have to do a /etc/init.d/xrdp restart). Although, I can't wait until I get to a sane environment again. Without Windows and all headache it brings me...

iammisc• 5 years ago

This might actually be the year of the Linux desktop

annoyingnoob• 5 years ago

Or the year of Lindows or Winux.

jjcon4• 5 years ago

I don't want to want this, but I do.

Only semi-related but what I really want is for easy windows apps on linux that work without fail. I prefer my linux box and generally hate the windows ui (don't get me started on windows settings or audio). I've tried switching to linux full-time but I don't know if I can hack it. Games are 90% there and I can do without the few that don't work with proton, but there are just too many apps that only work on my windows side that I just don't think I can dump windows.

Wine gives me inconsistent results and breaks for just about anything that needs registry access, not to mention its pretty complicated. I'm hoping to stumble on some tool I've been missing out on that makes everything easier because I wan't to run linux as my daily... I just don't know if it is practical.

jraph• 5 years ago

Would a Windows VM on your Linux system help? Maybe some apps have robust alternatives?

smichel172• 5 years ago

Which apps? Not that it makes a difference for this conversation, but I'm interested in keeping up to date with what the "killer apps" are that keep people from switching.

Briq7• 5 years ago

I just recently switch from windows to linux. Was planning to do some 3D printing tomorrow, but saw that Fusion360 had poor Wine support. So I probably need to learn a new software or setup a VM or something.

jjcon4• 5 years ago

For me there are a couple areas that just have a tough time in linux: VR Development, Digital audio workstations and niche utilities. It is getting better but still has a ways to go in these areas imo.

Specifically: VR Development - Unity now has a linux version which is great but there is no oculus runtime which means no oculus testing (SteamVR works but has some hiccups)

Digital audio workstations - Looking primarily at FL Studio, yes you can wine it but for me the audio delay makes it very difficult to use. I'd love to find solutions around this but haven't thus far.

Niche utilities - For game dev I've got a ton of old utilities for visualizing or converting old 3d object files to newer formats, sdks for old games that I occasionally need to pop into and all of them struggle or require a lot of setup to work properly on linux. For these I find myself booting over to windows, grabbing what I need and popping back to linux.

mcswell3• 5 years ago

If you're talking about Windows apps that keep me from switching to Linux, I have an oddball one: it's a keyboard re-mapper that I wrote back in Windows 3.1 and still use. It does the same re-mapping in every application (except for some reason in Microsoft Edge). It's not a simple 1-for-1 mapper, which I think is readily available in Linux.

At the simplest level, it re-maps ^H to the left cursor arrow, ^N to PageDown, etc.

But it gets more complicated: ^D maps to seven down cursor arrows (i.e. it moves the cursor down seven lines), ^U in the opposite direction. ^C usually (more details below) maps to ^Left (i.e. go to the beginning of the word), Shift-^Right (select to end of word), and ^C (copy selected text). (Notice the final ^C does not cause recursion!)

^A once goes to the beginning of the line, ^A twice goes to top of screen (I forget the exact keystrokes it emits, but this works with most apps), and ^A thrice goes to the beginning of the file. Analogously for ^E, but end.

Finally, it has two modes. In the normal mode, all the cursor control keys do their normal cursor movement thing. But type ^Q, and the cursor keys are now in select mode: ^H outputs Shift-Left, i.e. selects the character to the left, etc. Drop out of select mode with ^C (copy selection--different from what I described above!), ^X (cut selection), or ^Q again (do nothing with the selection).

I'd love to be able to reproduce this kind of behavior in Linux. I'm sure it's possible, but I don't know enough about keyboard re-mapping, or keyboard drivers, to do it.

owalt2• 5 years ago

don't get me started on windows settings or audio

I'll bite - what's wrong with the audio? Friends on mine in game dev often complain Linux audio is hopeless to work with.

therein2• 5 years ago

Keeps switching between different outputs in games and no matter what I do with the default communication device etc. it keeps happening. I lose audio in games on random intervals and I don't get it back until I switch my output device to something else and back.

Used to happen only in Warzone but now I'm noticing it affects games with other engines as well.

Granted I have a very non-standard setup but it shouldn't be causing any of these issues.

watermelon0• 5 years ago

Maybe they just mean the audio UI? It's complex, and at least on Windows 10 it's a mix of the new UI and old UI.

For example, figuring out how to configure and test surround sound channels means click through multiple dialogs, and it's not clear how exactly to get there.

With Windows 10, it's even harder to access sound mixer than it was on previous versions, and this is what to use in 99% after clicking on audio icon in the taskbar.

danudey• 5 years ago

Not the parent poster, but I'll chime in.

I have a pretty solid Dell laptop from work, and yet, there is one frustration that beats out anything else: audio.

I can't play music without it stuttering and skipping and sounding choppy and cutting out if something resource-intensive is happening, like Firefox loading a new page (but how often does THAT happen?)

Same with audio notifications. When my "new mail" notification sounds choppy, the underlying system must be just absolute garbage.

jjcon4• 5 years ago

My main complaint on windows is more on the UI than the technical audio. I've got like 15 audio devices listed under the audio menu and windows can never figure out which one I intend to be playing from (and gives them terrible names) so I have to constantly be manually switching it around until I find the right one. My experience on Mac and Linux is that they seem to be able to switch to the right device as it connects then switch back appropriately when it disconnects.

formerly_proven2• 5 years ago

USB hotplug is still a mess in Windows and so using any external audio interface or soundcard is just a mess.

The UI is complete garbage but siblings said enough about that dumpster fire already.

caust1c• 5 years ago

Have you heard of VFIO for Graphics Cards in Linux host with Windows Guest? Haven't tried it yet, but it's my winter project and I'm excited:

https://passthroughpo.st/

jjcon4• 5 years ago

I haven't personally done much with VFIO but I have looked at it. From my initial look it seemed as if it would require two gpus, one for the host and one for the guest but it looks like some people have single gpu setups working

https://github.com/joeknock90/Single-GPU-Passthrough

pkulak• 5 years ago

Google has been doing this for years with ChromeOS and... it kinda works. It mostly works if you stick with their distro (Debian Stable - 1), but I've never been able to get their display forwarding tools to work anywhere else.

Seems like Linux is complicated enough without running it in a VM and forwarding everything up to to the host OS.

thrower123• 5 years ago

What Linux desktop apps do people want to run on Windows?

I'm struggling to think of anything I would use that isn't ported alteady, being GTK or QT or Java based.

certifiedloud• 5 years ago

As someone who is forced to use either Mac or Windows at work, I would love this for the sole purpose of using i3 again.

zzandd2• 5 years ago

The use case I care about, and I imagine the use case Microsoft do as well, is developing for Linux on windows, so running an ide and not having to worry about a complicated cross compiling toolchain backing it.

rocqua2• 5 years ago

I imagine if your app needs to interact with your Linux system, running it within WSL is a lot nicer.

smartmic• 5 years ago

This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience because you leave up your freedom and privacy at the door of the Windows login.

Anyone who is serious about the future of openess, freedom and privacy rights in software and general should strive for the original. I advocate not to hand over MS the control over the Linux desktop.

neilsimp1• 5 years ago

I only had to scroll a few more lines down from your post here to find an example supporting your statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28486717

TimTheTinker• 5 years ago

Large companies will always find a way to profit from the most valuable aspects of society at large.

phendrenad25• 5 years ago

Correction: This can never be the best GNU/Linux experience for people who feel the same as you do, that your privacy is highly-valuable and Windows takes some of it away.

I don't agree with those feelings, so it is indeed the best GNU/Linux experience for me.

azalemeth• 5 years ago

I also wonder if this is the end of the "embrace" phase or the start of the "extend" one.

sam0x17• 5 years ago

I completely agree with the sentiment of what you're saying. That said, that's not at all what this is. They are just making it easier to run GUI apps in WSL. This is already something you can do with VcXSrv or any windows-based X server. I've actually been using VcXSrv to run a full Ubuntu Buddgie desktop with GPU acceleration and native performance on my work machine for over a year now. If anything, this has made it easier to _get away from_ the telemetry and crap that goes along with a default windows install because windows has absolutely no idea what I'm doing within my WSL installation.

So yeah, nothing to see here, if anything this is good as it makes linux more accessible to people stuck in windows-only environments. This isn't even M$ making a desktop environment. They have just written an X server into windows instead of having to install one yourself.

side note: I'd also be quite happy if Windows slowly removed the windows parts and replaced them with unixy parts until the whole windows ecosystem could be considered unix-based. That would be so great for so many reasons.

rdudek• 5 years ago

So does that mean DirectX will be fully available under any Linux distro at some point?

alecksag• 5 years ago

Just waiting for some Linux-based VDIs now. Azure Virtual Desktop is all RDP-based. It also used to be called "Windows" Virtual Desktop.

While it's not something I would necessarily use for myself, having the option is really empowering especially for engineers within companies.

pygar• 5 years ago

This is undoubtedly cool but I'm curious to know of a use case that would warrant installing this. Could this just have been a step in creating "Windows Subsystem for Android" [0] that they decided to release as its own layer?

The screenshot on the github page shows VSCode, Edge, Blender, Xcalc, Xclock and GNOME file manager which are all either available natively on windows or redundant.

[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/wundows-subsystem-android-ben...

scandinavian3• 5 years ago

Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL and vice versa is extremely slow, so running for example your IDE in WSL and having your code etc. stored in WSL is useful. I think that is one of the big usecases. It's already kinda supported in vscode, where it runs a vscode server in WSL and Windows just runs the frontend.

It's useful for me when developing dotnet intended for Linux as I can store the code in WSL and be able to build, debug, run docker and so on directly from vscode.

hasperdi• 5 years ago

Are you talking about WSL1 or WSL? Wsl2 is much much faster due to having a virtualized real linux kernel running

r-w• 5 years ago

But I mean come on, they're Microsoft. If they really wanted filesystem access to be efficient across systems, we'd have it by now. Although convenient, I doubt that's on their list of primary motivations for doing this.

ineedasername3• 5 years ago

Why is it so slow? I use VMware player and swapping files is fine. WSL2 seems like it's just using a lightweight VM over HyperV... is Hyper V really that much worse than VMware (and VBox) in this?

floxy• 5 years ago

Hardware drivers for new machines? As in, Windows supports all the hardware in your machine, but Linux doesn't (yet).

Stevvo• 5 years ago

I can think of one niche use case; Houdini is a Linux/Unix native 3D graphics software which I would prefer to work with in a Linux environment, but on Windows to be alongside all the other applications in my workflow. I imagine there is software in other fields with similar situations.

Note there is nothing wrong with the Windows version of Houdini, it's just Linux is more suitable for it.

pjmlp7• 5 years ago

WSL was the rebirth out of Project Astoria failure.

https://mspoweruser.com/windows-subsystem-for-linux-started-...

reissbaker7• 5 years ago

WSLg doesn't seem to have much overlap with Windows Subsystem for Android (although WSL itself does). Android doesn't use Wayland, or generally any of the GUI stack that desktop Linux does.

Pretty sure the point of the WSL and WSLg projects are to lure developers who would otherwise use macOS. After all, your local environment is likely even closer to production using WSL than it is on the BSD-derived macOS userland and Darwin kernel. Actually, early on in its life macOS (poorly) supported X11 apps using XQuartz as a similar lure.

justinc8687• 5 years ago

How is this better than just running vcxsrv and inside WSL setting DISPLAY=WINDOWS_HOST_IP:0? I've been doing this to run graphical linux apps for a couple years now, both on WSL1 and on a regular Hyper-V Linux VM.

MikusR4• 5 years ago

With hardware acceleration and CUDA?

kingosticks• 5 years ago

And audio?

AshamedCaptain• 5 years ago

I am yet unsure how it is able to use "hardware acceleration" considering it is using RDP.

dboreham6• 5 years ago

It just works?

nickjj4• 5 years ago

It seamlessly works with VcXsrv too after you set your DISPLAY. I've been using it for years too, even back in 2018 while running Sublime Text within WSL 1 as a primary code editor.

If you place your VcXsrv config in your Windows startup folder everything automatically works. I haven't touched my config in years. The machine boots and it's all good, complete with proper clipboard sharing so you can copy things to and from WSL.

anaisbetts2• 5 years ago

DPI scaling (especially per-monitor DPI) is much much better, it it actually handled better than native Linux

tambeb• 5 years ago

I haven't had any problems running all types of GUIs in WSL (1 & 2) through Xming for years now.

naruhodo• 5 years ago

I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with Cygwin back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a way, for several decades now.

nobody9999• 5 years ago

I recall running the X11 server that came packaged with Cygwin back in the 90s. Where there is a will, there is a way, for several decades now.

And Cygwin still runs like a champ today. At least for my use case.

pjmlp7• 5 years ago

And before Cygwin was relevant, we had X-Win32 and Hummingbird.

modeless• 5 years ago

Please note that for the first release of WSLg, vGPU interops with the Weston compositor through system memory. If running on a discrete GPU, this effectively means that the rendered data is copied from VRAM to system memory before being presented to the compositor within WSLg, and uploaded onto the GPU again on the Windows side.

This is a pretty big limitation. Hopefully it can be addressed soon.

Dylan168072• 5 years ago

It's not amazing but a quick calculation says that a full 1080 screen will generally transfer in just under half a millisecond.

mike_hock• 5 years ago

If that's the only loss of performance, that sounds amazing compared to running anything under Wine.

fermentation• 5 years ago

Yeah, an extra DtoHtoD in most applications is pretty bad. Here it should be good enough to get the feature up and running, and I imagine it’s something they’re planning on optimizing.

ripley12• 5 years ago

This talk (from November last year) discusses a pretty detailed design for a zero-copy architecture. Sounds like it will be addressed soon. https://youtu.be/EkNBsBx501Q?t=1438

hansoolo• 5 years ago

It's so weird to see Teams on the Windows Desktop next to a Linux Desktop Window... [0]

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/raw/main/docs/WSLg_Integra...

ramses0• 5 years ago

Is it finally the year of Linux on the desktop yet?

_emacsomancer_• 5 years ago

It's the year of Embrace+Extend on WSL.

waych2• 5 years ago

I've been using this for the several weeks on Windows 11 insider builds and its great!

For those asking comparing versus X forwarding, at least for my purposes, I've found X over a socket very limiting in that remote opengl basically stops at version 1.1. With WSLg my apps run on MESA version 4.5, meaning they actually run. I haven't even tried with the vGPU driver yet and its already a very nice improvement.

Would be even nicer if PCIe device assignment wasn't locked behind Windows Server licensing however.

ChuckMcM• 5 years ago

This is pretty cool. I've been using VcXsrv to run an X server on the windows side so that I can pop open gui Linux tools (setting the DISPLAY variable manually to {windows host IP}:0)

The two remaining glitches here are harmonizing file system support across both domains (its fine if you are in the Linux domain and reach over and get or put files into the Windows domain, but the other direction has "issues". And some sort of USB support so that devices can be handled in either domain easily[1].

Mostly I find it is an easy way to use my Linux work flow on a machine that for other reasons has to have Windows on it. Overall the impact is lower than it is if I run an actual VM.

[1] Recently discovered that a windows executable running on the Linux side can "see" the USB stuff so running dfu-util works from the Linux side.

ryanmarsh• 5 years ago

This is cool and I’m not knocking it. Just wanted to point out the irony that back in my day there was lots of fear that MS would embrace extend and extinguish Linux. How ironic would it be if this happened inadvertently because WSL got that good.

dirkg• 5 years ago

I'd love to use WSL2 but the longstanding issue with slow I/O between WSL <-> NTFS host is a dealbreaker. It basically means you have to keep all your data inside ext4 in Linux and that defeats the whole point - e.g. you can't keep your code, or files you download etc in Windows.

With WSL you can keep all data in NTFS, have near native speeds but you can't run a bunch of Linux cmdline tools.

I don't know if they can solve it, its basically sending data across the network, But this is the last barrier to a great Linux on Windows.

waych2• 5 years ago

Ah yes, 9p2000. The network filesystem where caching is non-existent and left as an after-thought.

dboreham6• 5 years ago

I thought I'd have that problem but I just keep all my dev files in WSL2 now and I stopped using Intellij. VSCode has very fast WSL2 filesystem remoting.

sz4kerto3• 5 years ago

Try IntelliJ Projector. It's awesome.

phendrenad25• 5 years ago

Does it really defeat the point? I see WSL2 as a Linux VM with less hoops to jump through. Sharing data with the host system isn't useful, since I don't have programs on Windows that need to communicate with programs in Linux, and I store everything in github/gdrive anyway.

the84722• 5 years ago

Maybe go the other direction. Add an ext4 disk to the VM and then access it through \\WSL$\

vzaliva• 5 years ago

One could run Linux and use Wine to run some Windows apps. On the other hand one can run Windows and use WSL to run some Linux apps. Depending on the individual's needs which apps are important to have access to the decision could go either way. This is why Microsoft is investing in projects like this - to tip the scales and lure more users to run Windows as primary OS.

P.S. And then there is Google which wants you not to care about OS as long as it could launch Chrome browser, and to use web apps instead of native.

tdeck• 5 years ago

It's almost like they're trying to embrace the Linux ecosystem and extend it for windows users...

jbhouse3• 5 years ago

extinguish coming soon

ineedasername3• 5 years ago

or just download Virtual Box or the free VMware Player. If you're on Linux, running Windows in "Unity" mode is already about as seamless as WSL2 w/ GUI appears to be.

IronWolve• 5 years ago

This. Been using seamless mode on virtualbox for a decade(s)?, have a full terminal on windows, and now i can run vscode in my linux vm while in a windows desktop. I just use mate and with hide buttons on the panel enabled.

WSL1 with Windows Terminal works good for now quick youtube-dl's, WSL2 needs hyper-v, so kinda deal breaker for me as a virtualbox user.

chx3• 5 years ago

With WSL v2 , you can run Windows and all Linux apps.

WSL v1 had limitations but WSL v2 is a VM -- a more integrated VM than usual but still.

the84722• 5 years ago

With WSL v2 , you can run Windows and all Linux apps.

Can it run perf yet? I.e. are they passing through hardware performance counters from the host?

eyelidlessness2• 5 years ago

This isn’t surprising given all the incentives that led to WSL1, but it’s still a damn wild ride to arrive here.

dboreham6• 5 years ago

I use it for two things:

1. Running Linux build tools that expect to pop up a browser for SSO auth (e.g. with ECS). These tools do the right thing if you install chrome in WSL. Otherwise you need to copy the URL into a windows browser which is slightly inconvenient and for me sometimes inscrutably doesn't work.

2. Running UI dev tools that don't work properly cross-OS from Windows. E.g jconsole Java networking seems to be mostly broken between the host OS and processes listening in WSL so this is a workaround. Run the GUI client in Linux. JVM process discovery also works which is nice.

Daegalus2• 5 years ago

there are tools that solve this. I think it's even called WSL Tools. adds a few things to launch browsers on windows side with urls on Linux side and other things.

not sure about java, haven't touched that in over a decade

coding123• 5 years ago

This reminds me of an old VMWare version where you could break out windows from the guest OS into the host. I'm surprised it wasn't patented by VMWare (or maybe that expired?)

Either way, pretty awesome to have this.

phendrenad25• 5 years ago

Pretty sure VirtualBox has that still.

voidfunc• 5 years ago

I used WSLg for several months and just recently switched back to x410. WSLg is badly broken with non-trivial apps like IntelliJ IDEA.

mmgutz• 5 years ago

Can you run whole desktop environments like XFCE, Gnome; or run a Window Manager like i3?

I'm a long time VMware user and never really used Unity (name?) view which allows running Linux apps seamlessly on Windows or Mac. WSLg seems to be the same feature.

midwestemo• 5 years ago

I don't know about WSLg specifically but last time I heard if you runs a x server with an application like VcXsrv, install XFCE and configure it to use the x server. You can pretty much run XFCE or any other desktop environment in WSL. I don't know about the performance however.

TrispusAttucks• 5 years ago

Anyone else worrying about Windows swallowing up Linux?

I hope their intentions are altruistic.

spijdar3• 5 years ago

For better or for worse, I'm not sure the aggregate direction Microsoft takes as a company is either altruistic or malicious, I'm pretty sure it's ultimately profit driven.

I expect there are MS engineers who see this as altruistic and executives that see this as a way to keep developers from moving off Windows and ultimately as customers. In the end, I'm not sure what this will mean for "desktop Linux". I've already had one colleague dump "bare metal Linux" in favor of Win10 + WSL2.

fb03• 5 years ago

I have been getting by with VcXsrv just fine, for simple apps like IDEs and stuff (vs code, pycharm community).

The advantage of wslg would be running hardware accel'd apps?

gigatexal• 5 years ago

Can this run tiling window managers?

jbhouse3• 5 years ago

DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS

wly_cdgr• 5 years ago

Got this running on my Surface Book the other day. Totally useless, but very cool!

vermaden• 5 years ago

If the host system is Linux then this can be called Windows Subsystem for Linux (the same thing that WINE does).

If the host system is Windows then its Linux Subsystem for Windows.

Please do not fuck with logic.

BenjiWiebe• 5 years ago

Windows (subsystem for Linux) i.e. a subsystem of Windows that is for Linux. I think.

apatheticonion4• 5 years ago

I love WSL1. With WSL2 and the move to Hyper-V, I just decided to drop WSL and manage my own VM manually.

I use the remote development tools on VSCode that power WSL to make everything feel like it's running on the host directly, just like WSL2.

This way I don't have any confusion born from it pretending not to be a VM. No issues with network port mappings, dns stuff, who owns what binary and how does it execute? When is WSL2 running and when is it not? etc etc

Ultimately, I would rather run Linux on my desktop as a daily driver but the desktop experience is not quite there yet for me to live (at least) 8 hours a day in. Gnome 40 looks great though, can't wait too see what the future holds.

My dream is running Linux as a daily driver where the UI is more polished than MacOS. Windows will run in a VM and will be used for API calls for playing games (I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation).

cprecioso• 5 years ago

About your last point, this was posted a couple weeks ago on here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870399

dgan• 5 years ago

I don't understand claims "desktop experience is not there yet". What do you even need so specific? Care to explain? I tend to think it's more of people's problem at that point than linux desktop experience problem

apatheticonion4• 5 years ago

It's not _functionally_ problematic, just aesthetically.

Mostly it's just that I never go a full day without performing some kind of maintenance on my Linux desktop environment to try to get it looking right, and it never looks right.

I also run multiple monitors, so that aspect tends to throw in some extra jank.

At this point, running Gnome completely unmodified has been the most success I have had - but even Gnome 40 has some questionable design decisions.

Windows is a poor example of polish but I feel there's a lot we can learn from by looking at MacOS's desktop environment. Having used each for significant amounts of time (years) and currently living on Windows, MacOS really takes the prize for the "nicest place to live but worst landlord".

RamRodification2• 5 years ago

I wonder if we will ever see some kind of GPU sharing for virtualisation

Hasn't this been solved for some time now? Or am I misunderstanding what you want? I remember seeing a few articles about using this for gaming on Windows VMs on Linux hosts. I haven't jumped in though so maybe it's not what I think it is.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_with_libvirt_qe...

I think it's also definitely in use for compute stuff on VMs in professional environments.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualizati...

Edit: Ah, maybe sharing a GPU between a host and VMs isn't possible at the moment. Only pass-through and maybe sharing between the VMs?

apatheticonion4• 5 years ago

I could be wrong but I think you can only pass through an entire GPU as long as it's unused on the host.

Sharing a used GPU, in the same way we can share a CPU with no performance loss via Intel Hyper v, is not possible.

NavinF8• 5 years ago

Nope, Nvidia will never let you pass PCIe virtual functions to VMs. They'd rather charge 7x the price for data center GPUs with that capability.

raman162• 5 years ago

What's missing from the Linux Desktop experience for you?

I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis, Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manager) is my daily driver. Everytime I switch to windows or Mac os, it always feels like a downgrade for me because I can't replicate the tiling experience. The one thing I love about mac, is the trackpad experience, I wish windows and Linux could get to that level.

hughrr• 5 years ago

For me, reliability. Literally I have to futz with it so often. I moved from a Mac recently to a T495 thinkpad with Radeon in it which is supposedly fully supported by Ubuntu. Turns out that depends on what day of the week it is. Constant GPU problems.

I have considered switching back to windows.

morrbo• 5 years ago

It's funny you mention tiling because honestly one of the biggest things preventing me from moving to linux full time is the lack of any decent window manager like https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzone... where I can arbitrarily draw/resize zones and drag and drop/snap windows on to them. Every window manager I've used in Linux, and gnome extension, all try and force you to have non resizable areas, areas of equal proportions, don't support snapping etc. And needed serious foo for moving a window about. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear it

NavinF8• 5 years ago

1. Update glibc and everything breaks

2. Update Nvidia drivers and everything breaks

3. 99% of laptops have at least one device with missing or broken drivers. 802.11ac is very old in 2021, but the most popular ac chips still need an out-of-tree driver which will break when you update your kernel. Have fun copying kernel patches from random forums

4. Even the smallest of changes (ex: set display scaling to something that's not a multiple of 100%) require dicking around with config files. Windows 10's neutered control panel is still leagues ahead of Ubuntu's settings app. (Why are the default settings so bad? High DPI 4K monitors have been out for a decade now. Maybe they've fixed this since I've last checked. Or maybe all the devs use 10 year old Thinkpads)

5. Every config file is its own special snowflake with its own syntax, keywords, and escape characters

6. Every distro is its own special snowflake so it takes forever to help someone unfuck their computer if you're not familiar with their distro. Releasing software on Linux is painful for a related reason: The kennel has a stable ABI, but distros don't. You have to ship half the distro with every app if you want it to work out of the box. Using Docker for GUI apps is insane, but sometimes that's that you gotta do.

7. The desktop Linux community seems to only care about performance on old crappy hardware.

8. Audio input and output latency is really high out of the box. That's one of many things that require tweaking just to get acceptable performance.

nanna2• 5 years ago

Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friends and familys aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.)

I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.

nanna2• 5 years ago

Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friend's and family's aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.)

I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.

andai• 5 years ago

There was recently some kind of fundraiser to hire a developer fulltime to make the trackpad support on Linux closer to macOS.

grey_earthling• 5 years ago

If your only experience with GNOME is Ubuntu, give Fedora a try. The parts are 95% identical but (in my opinion) the user experience is a lot more coherent, because it's all designed together and nothing's bolted on.

pharmakom• 5 years ago

Microsoft has so much ego that rather than simply making a Linux distro they insist we run Linux on Windows.

rvense• 5 years ago

They probably know they can't stop developers from deploying to Linux. They're trying to the Windows desktop relevant.

pjmlp7• 5 years ago

They don't need to try while fighting 1% GNU/Linux desktop.

The whole point of WSL is to bring into Windows, those devs that buy Apple hardware instead of supporting Linux OEMs, and couldn't care less as long as they have their POSIX like experience.

phendrenad25• 5 years ago

How would a Microsoft Linux distro be different from, say, Ubuntu? Would it bundle WINE, perhaps with Microsoft insider knowledge of how their APIs work? How would they make money on Windows if everyone could just use that?

Xevi• 5 years ago

simply making a Linux distro

It would take decades to migrate Windows users to a Linux distro.

pjmlp7• 5 years ago

They don't insist, this is for the folks that should be supporting Linux OEMs but rather pay Apple.

p0d• 5 years ago

I've been using linux for 20 years and my one frustration is missing Powerpoint. I recently joined the world of education and they are Powerpoint mad. Hats off to LibreOffice but Powerpoints look like they have been dragged through a hedge backwards. Is anyone solving this problem on linux locally or maybe wsl is the way for me to go?

ThinkBeat• 5 years ago

I will be the curmudgeon here I guess.

Microsoft has been following this strategy for a while. Announce something useful. I click in and look forward to start using it. How do I download it and get started?

Oh I need to install a beta version of Windows on my computer to use this feature. I dont want to do that.

Then weekly or biweekly new stories pop up and I hope it has had a proper release, but no, insider only.

I would prefer if MS announced, "tool under development to be released 03/25" and then "ready for production today". Synched so that you can get the correct version of windows to use the new tool/feature/framework.

It says it will ship with the next version of Windows, so it will ship in Windows 11 then?

I wish there was a meta tag on Hacker News that identified if a program, platform, airplane, city building, etc is vaporware, under real development or production ready / move in ready / book a flight ready etc etc.

hacker_homie• 5 years ago

Then who would test it?

trashtester• 5 years ago

I wonder if WSLg will work on my passed-through 3090 from my linux host to my Windows VM, or of this requires barebone Windows.

jgilias• 5 years ago

I love it how in the screenshot in the description you can see that the shortcuts on the desktop are mostly games. Now you know why the hypothetical user is sticking around using Windows as their daily driver in the first place :)

mikaeluman• 5 years ago

For me WSL has completely replaced dual booting setups.

There are still some quirks with integration such as certificates and more.

I really can’t wait for the GPU experience to be fully supported and also be able to use pytorch from within containers.

Microsoft is so far doing everything right with WSL IMO.

pjmlp7• 5 years ago

For me that happened already 10 years ago with VMWare.

mycall2• 5 years ago

You need a Quatro GPU to do that, right?

29athrowaway2• 5 years ago

- Embrace

- Extend <- You are here

- Extinguish

whydid• 5 years ago

I was worried about this happening in the early 2000s, but not anymore.

Have you seen how terrible Windows and Windows Server is?

29athrowaway2• 5 years ago

Has it ever been good at any point in time?

No, yet people use it and develop for it.

elif• 5 years ago

I made the switch from full-linux to WSL about a year ago. I never used windows outside of gaming but I got tired of putting up with minor hardware/driver frustrations on my particular laptop (surface).

I'm happy to report I have encountered zero issues. In fact, I don't think I've even used it for anything outside of emacs/cli.

I am kinda surprised by this link since I've been using the x version of emacs this whole time.

sevensor3• 5 years ago

As a WSL user at work, this addresses exactly zero of my problems with running Windows. Windows Defender is still going to randomly spin up and bring my machine to a halt. The Windows Start Menu with its ads is still there. There are still 15 pieces of device driver desktop experience crapware running in the background. The RAT required by our IT department is still resident. Adding GUI support doesn't move the needle: the missing feature is freedom.

miohtama• 5 years ago

The RAT required by our IT department is still resident

This sounds like organizational problem, not a technical problem. Have you considered applying a new position for another employer that allows to run Ubuntu/Red Hat/etc. environments?

themulticaster• 5 years ago

What's a RAT? I've never heard of it, and I'm afraid it's an not a googleable word. Remote Administration Tool? Something like Intel vPro?

specktr• 5 years ago

They’re likely referring to a remote access trojan (malware) which likely shares many features of whatever administrative tool the IT team uses at that company.

WhyNotHugo4• 5 years ago

It sounds like you really just need Linux and can skip Windows.

FWIW, all this WSL stuff is mostly Microsoft trying to Extend, Embrace and Extinguish Linux.

sevensor3• 5 years ago

It sounds like you really just need Linux and can skip Windows.

My point exactly! I've been making that case for a while and I think I'm gaining some traction.

moonchrome• 5 years ago

While I do get the "dirty" feel running Windows and I fully agree that having crapware installed by device drivers is shady - the start menu ads seem to be gone (along with awful tiles) in Windows 11. I also rarely use start menu (powertoys launcher, although it's been crapping out on Win 11 recently with focus and such).

I recently built a desktop since my MBP would turn in to a jet engine if I try to spin up a non trivial docker compose and I went for windows because I wanted to game - started on Windows 10 and was appalled at the ammount of crap they had preinstalled and there with the OS. Windows 11 beta has been much better in this regard.

CallMeJim• 5 years ago

In Windows 11 + WSL2 + Google Drive Sync, you can cd into Google Drive at /mnt/g and use it like a normal directory.

I'm not sure when this became the case; it wasn't possible 6 months ago with Windows 10 + WSL2 + Google Drive File Stream.

mickotron2• 5 years ago

Just do it already, MS. Replace Windows/NT kernel with Linux, and make Windows another Linux distro. Seems like you're kinda heading that way.

AnnoyedComment• 5 years ago

Fantastic. I predict this thread will be filled with reasonable, capable, intelligent technologists explaining that Linux doesn't have wide-ranging hardware support, with replies by Linux experts who tell them they're wrong.

Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI

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