<story><title>Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability</title><url>https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/04/wsl-2-general-availability/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chx</author><text>Well, if you want to use multimedia and do web development on the same machine, what are you going to do? Linux support is somewhere between nonexistent and utterly broken for the first one and the same can be said for the second on Windows. So your choices are, 1. run Linux primary, put Windows in a VM 2. run Windows primary and put Linux in a VM 3. Give up and just run a separate Linux server.</text></item><item><author>juped</author><text>WSL was very cool from a pure tech standpoint, but I&amp;#x27;ve never been clear what the actual use case for it was. WSL2 seems to be more along the lines of coLinux, which I felt the same way about when it was new.</text></item><item><author>chx</author><text>I am giving up.&lt;p&gt;WSL1 was a great invention but Microsoft gave up on it, either because of the filesystem performance problems or because of the debuggers. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;2028&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;2028&lt;/a&gt; (lldb, rr, delve all affected). This looks like a dreaded case of the first 90% is easy, it&amp;#x27;s the second 90% that is hard. Imagine implementing a translator for a vast majority of Linux syscalls just to find certain flavors of ptrace are just not doable. I do not have insider knowledge to ascertain this happened but this would be my educated guess.&lt;p&gt;WSL2 is a VM like any other VM with an uncertain promise for better networking experience and even less certain promise for cross OS file performance which is much, much worse than WSL1 which was already abominable. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4197#issuecomment-604592340&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4197#issuecomment-60...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was a very nice dream, pity it didn&amp;#x27;t work out.&lt;p&gt;Because I am using an eGPU Windows 10 needs to stay as the primary OS on the laptop. I bought a little fanless machine from Aliexpress (with laptop-like hardware) for &amp;lt;$300 USD it&amp;#x27;ll be my home Linux server. What can one do?&lt;p&gt;I guess &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;VFIO&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;am10z3&amp;#x2F;success_thunderbolt_egpu_passthrough_on_dell_9560&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;VFIO&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;am10z3&amp;#x2F;success_thunde...&lt;/a&gt; could be a solution if I wanted to go back to Linux primary but I really badly don&amp;#x27;t want to. Constant hardware headaches were par for the course -- I was solely Linux 2004-2017. I don&amp;#x27;t want to be again. If there would be a cheap remote sysadmin service... but it doesn&amp;#x27;t exist. QuadraNet will sysop a server for $39 a month, that&amp;#x27;d be awesome for a laptop... but I have never seen anyone doing that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davnn</author><text>What problems did you experience in web development on Windows? I worked with Linux, Mac and Windows, but I didn‘t have any problems on any platform with a typical modern webpack&amp;#x2F;react&amp;#x2F;angular&amp;#x2F;typescript&amp;#x2F;elm etc.. stack. Even docker support with Hyper-V is okay imho.</text></comment>
<story><title>Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Moving into General Availability</title><url>https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/04/wsl-2-general-availability/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chx</author><text>Well, if you want to use multimedia and do web development on the same machine, what are you going to do? Linux support is somewhere between nonexistent and utterly broken for the first one and the same can be said for the second on Windows. So your choices are, 1. run Linux primary, put Windows in a VM 2. run Windows primary and put Linux in a VM 3. Give up and just run a separate Linux server.</text></item><item><author>juped</author><text>WSL was very cool from a pure tech standpoint, but I&amp;#x27;ve never been clear what the actual use case for it was. WSL2 seems to be more along the lines of coLinux, which I felt the same way about when it was new.</text></item><item><author>chx</author><text>I am giving up.&lt;p&gt;WSL1 was a great invention but Microsoft gave up on it, either because of the filesystem performance problems or because of the debuggers. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;2028&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;2028&lt;/a&gt; (lldb, rr, delve all affected). This looks like a dreaded case of the first 90% is easy, it&amp;#x27;s the second 90% that is hard. Imagine implementing a translator for a vast majority of Linux syscalls just to find certain flavors of ptrace are just not doable. I do not have insider knowledge to ascertain this happened but this would be my educated guess.&lt;p&gt;WSL2 is a VM like any other VM with an uncertain promise for better networking experience and even less certain promise for cross OS file performance which is much, much worse than WSL1 which was already abominable. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4197#issuecomment-604592340&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;microsoft&amp;#x2F;WSL&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;4197#issuecomment-60...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was a very nice dream, pity it didn&amp;#x27;t work out.&lt;p&gt;Because I am using an eGPU Windows 10 needs to stay as the primary OS on the laptop. I bought a little fanless machine from Aliexpress (with laptop-like hardware) for &amp;lt;$300 USD it&amp;#x27;ll be my home Linux server. What can one do?&lt;p&gt;I guess &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;VFIO&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;am10z3&amp;#x2F;success_thunderbolt_egpu_passthrough_on_dell_9560&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;VFIO&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;am10z3&amp;#x2F;success_thunde...&lt;/a&gt; could be a solution if I wanted to go back to Linux primary but I really badly don&amp;#x27;t want to. Constant hardware headaches were par for the course -- I was solely Linux 2004-2017. I don&amp;#x27;t want to be again. If there would be a cheap remote sysadmin service... but it doesn&amp;#x27;t exist. QuadraNet will sysop a server for $39 a month, that&amp;#x27;d be awesome for a laptop... but I have never seen anyone doing that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theevilsharpie</author><text>The Linux multimedia story improves significantly if you avoid Nvidia GPU hardware. My work desktop (AMD Radeon) and laptop (Intel HD Graphics) work fine, and perform as the hardware should.</text></comment>