[HN Gopher] Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI
___________________________________________________________________
Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI
Author : anchpop
Score : 213 points
Date : 2021-09-10 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tonoto wrote:
| 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...
| ramses0 wrote:
| Is it finally the year of Linux on the desktop yet?
| iammisc wrote:
| This might actually be the year of the Linux desktop
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Or the year of Lindows or Winux.
| mathnode wrote:
| For those that don't know, this will only be available in Windows
| 11, see
| https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/347#issuecomment-87...
| JorgeGT wrote:
| 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.
| shados wrote:
| 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.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| According to The Verge, they may block security updates if
| you install manually through the ISO, so that's a no go for
| me: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/28/22646035/microsoft-
| window...
| shados wrote:
| Ok, if that's true, I'm back to raging about how
| absolutely ridiculous this is. Why obsolete a computer
| that can still run almost anything on high-ish settings
| @.@ Because there's 0.01% more crash or whatever....
| blibble wrote:
| so they can get an extra $60 out of the OEM when you buy
| another PC
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| 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.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| 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.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Don't think I've heard about those, what all requirements
| changed on the storage side there?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I don't know if it's what the GP was referring to but
| partition requirements pertaining to MBR vs GPT and
| specific requirements for alignment, MSR properties, and
| order of partitions has been locked down considerably.
| Annoyingly they all manifest as an opaque "this PC isn't
| compatible" or similar message.
| jjcon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Would a Windows VM on your Linux system help? Maybe some apps
| have robust alternatives?
| caust1c wrote:
| 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/
| jjcon wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| smichel17 wrote:
| 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.
| mcswell wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| jjcon wrote:
| 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.
| Briq7 wrote:
| 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.
| flexer2 wrote:
| Fusion360 is the only thing I run a VM for. There's a repo
| out there that sets up wine and installs it but it just
| doesn't work very well at all. I'm using VMWare Player and
| set up the virtual disk to boot from the Windows drive and
| run it that way. It works really well. Other 3D printing
| stuff like PrusaSlicer works great on Linux. I'd love to
| have a native version of Fusion though. Maybe someday.
| owalt wrote:
| > 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.
| therein wrote:
| 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.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Does Windows think that audio devices are being connected
| or disconnected? That's the only time I've had the default
| device switch on me. Annoyingly it can end up happening if
| you have a display that presents itself as an audio
| endpoint and then that display is turned off or even just
| goes to sleep.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jjcon wrote:
| 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.
| owalt wrote:
| Makes sense actually. That's been an annoyance of mine as
| well. I suppose I never realized it's better on other
| platforms.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| 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.
| alecksag wrote:
| 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.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| 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.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pxc wrote:
| > Right now I'm using a full VM.
|
| WSL2 is also a full VM
| reilly3000 wrote:
| 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!
| II2II wrote:
| > 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.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Linux and Windows use mutually exclusive permission/ACL bits,
| even on the same NTFS filesystem.
| smoldesu wrote:
| 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.
| MikusR wrote:
| They made it specifically for machine learning
| d_k_f wrote:
| 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.
| modeless wrote:
| > 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not _amazing_ but a quick calculation says that a full
| 1080 screen will generally transfer in just under half a
| millisecond.
| fermentation wrote:
| 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.
| mike_hock wrote:
| If that's the only loss of performance, that sounds amazing
| compared to running anything under Wine.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| 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.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| shpongled wrote:
| Will I be able to use i3?
| judge2020 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I don't think he is referring to an i3 processor, but rather
| https://i3wm.org/
| reificator wrote:
| 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.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Yes.
| pkulak wrote:
| 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.
| pygar wrote:
| 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...
| floxy wrote:
| Hardware drivers for new machines? As in, Windows supports all
| the hardware in your machine, but Linux doesn't (yet).
| scandinavian wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Are you talking about WSL1 or WSL? Wsl2 is much much faster
| due to having a virtualized real linux kernel running
| scandinavian wrote:
| Accessing the WSL filesystem from WSL is indeed a lot
| faster on WSL2. Accessing the Windows filesystem from WSL
| or vise versa is even slower in WSL2 compared to WSL1.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-
| version...
|
| > As you can tell from the comparison table above, the WSL
| 2 architecture outperforms WSL 1 in several ways, with the
| exception of performance across OS file systems.
| easton wrote:
| System performance is, IO between Windows and Linux isn't.
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
| speed_spread wrote:
| WSL2 disk access from the Windows side is very slow. It's
| the reciprocal problem of WSL1.
|
| WSL2 Linux apps now get proper performance now but if your
| IDE is on the Windows side, access time to project files on
| native Linux partition is terrible.
| r-w wrote:
| 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.
| scandinavian wrote:
| >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.
|
| Here's one of the developers saying it is hard back in the
| WSL days.
|
| https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-39
| 1...
|
| The reason makes sense to me, but I'm not an expert. Maybe
| you could expand on why you think they could do it but
| chose not to?
| son_ngu wrote:
| 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
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Have you tried KDE plasma?
| lowtto wrote:
| 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?
| josteink wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| rocqua wrote:
| 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.
| filomeno wrote:
| > 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.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| "awesome"
| fgonzag wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| MichaelRust wrote:
| > its looking like they are doing nothing but going towards the
| better direction than the old days
|
| https://rentry.co/areweweloveopensauceyet
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tck42 wrote:
| A friend of mine has been complaining that a DAW is the
| only thing keeping him stuck in Windows at this point as
| well. In his case, he specifically said that VST's were the
| problem. Was your experience the same?
| necubi wrote:
| Bitwig is a very good DAW with native Linux support. It's
| made by former Ableton devs so it definitely leans in
| that direction, but it works pretty well for other types
| of workflows too, especially with the recently released
| version 4.
|
| VSTs are definitely an issue; most high quality
| commercial plugins are still only released for
| mac/windows. However there are a few projects for running
| them in wine and it generally works pretty well.
|
| I do think we'll see more and more Linux in studios going
| forward, but it would help if Linux got its pro audio
| story together. Pipewire is a big step in the right
| direction but not yet mature.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| As the author of EasyBCD, I can tell you that interest in
| dual-booting has collapsed to near zero over the past decade.
| Silhouette wrote:
| How much of that effect do you think is due to recent
| Windows versions not playing nicely so you still get some
| hassle anyway and/or to improving options to run Windows
| virtually on a Linux host with close to native performance
| and compatibility?
| MikusR wrote:
| What do you mean by "not playing nicely". With UEFI boot
| you can dual boot all day. There is no need to modify
| MBR. So nothing gets overwritten on updates.
| thrower123 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| zzandd wrote:
| 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.
| rocqua wrote:
| I imagine if your app needs to interact with your Linux system,
| running it within WSL is a lot nicer.
| waych wrote:
| 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.
| smartmic wrote:
| 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.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I also wonder if this is the end of the "embrace" phase or the
| start of the "extend" one.
| neilsimp1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Large companies will always find a way to profit from the most
| valuable aspects of society at large.
| [deleted]
| sam0x17 wrote:
| 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.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> 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.
| password4321 wrote:
| https://github.com/microsoft/weston-mirror
|
| I could not find any reference to it upstream or mention in the
| mailing lists.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| You can already run GUI apps in containers using pure wayland,
| just bind the socket into the container.
| ziftface wrote:
| > 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
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| 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)
| earthscienceman wrote:
| 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.
| avodonosov wrote:
| I already asked this in the past, and want to ask again. Is
| Microsoft a corporation of goodness now?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Please define what is good.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Hmm probably closer to true neutral.
| 0des wrote:
| Embrace
|
| Extend <-- you are here
|
| Extinguish
| [deleted]
| lghh wrote:
| What are they extending? What functionality does this add to
| Linux that is only available on Windows?
| spystath wrote:
| One is their DirectX extension that only works on WSL2. It
| allows you to access the DX API through a shim driver. You
| can now have a Linux application that needs access to
| /dev/xdg which is only available in WSL2.
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/
| villasv wrote:
| 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.
| cybernautique wrote:
| 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).
| avodonosov wrote:
| Why this should be exactly microkernel?
| cybernautique wrote:
| Perhaps it needn't be; I, with my negligible OS dev
| experience, just like microkernel architectures better. It
| seems more sensible to have microkernels managed by a
| microkernel loader. This might be an opinion I come to
| recant in time. The core of my position is that Microsoft
| needs to stop doing Microsoft things if they want to be
| taken seriously as a good faith actor, but I'm not holding
| my breath.
|
| Until they make moves to break down the walls of their
| garden, they're just another barrier.
| p_j_w wrote:
| 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.
| screye wrote:
| 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.
| monocasa wrote:
| 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.
| justinc8687 wrote:
| 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.
| MikusR wrote:
| With hardware acceleration and CUDA?
| rdudek wrote:
| So does that mean DirectX will be fully available under any Linux
| distro at some point?
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| Windows + WSL2 is starting to catching up with Chrome OS +
| crostini. How exciting.
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tambeb wrote:
| I haven't had any problems running all types of GUIs in WSL (1 &
| 2) through Xming for years now.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| 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.
| CraftingLinks wrote:
| I just might switch to linux instead.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Most corporate PC users do not have that option. WSL solves
| that.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| wvenable wrote:
| That seems like a very complex architecture. RDP client and
| server? That seems like a strange approach for a single machine
| solution.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Ironic statement considering how X was designed to work.
| wvenable wrote:
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| >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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| For me, it comes down to the fact that WSL1 apps were ran
| like native apps. That was amazing. It meant I could kill a
| WSL1 app from task manager. It meant that those apps were
| only taking the memory they used, not an entire VM's worth
| of memory. It meant I didn't have to manage yet another
| virtual machine environment on my PC.
|
| WSL2 is certainly the way to go if you want a more "true"
| linux experience. I just lament the fact that WSL1 came so
| close to being true enough.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah, the greatest features of WSL1 was the fact that it
| wasn't a VM. All apps were running natively and managed by
| the windows kernel.
|
| I now have to deal with the fact that every so often the
| WSL 2 VM will simply consume too much memory, which really
| stinks.
|
| WSL1 felt SO close to being perfect.
| nereye wrote:
| You can switch back and forth as required, from
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq#what-w...:
|
| What will happen to WSL 1? Will it be abandoned? We
| currently have no plans to deprecate WSL 1. You can run
| WSL 1 and WSL 2 distros side by side, and can upgrade and
| downgrade any distro at any time.
| wvenable wrote:
| They were amazingly successful -- more successful than
| should have been thought possible -- but they couldn't
| overcome the semantic file system differences.
| orf wrote:
| Is this documented anywhere? I'd be interested in reading
| more
| hansoolo wrote:
| 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...
| b215826 wrote:
| Now someone make a Linux Subsystem for Windows GUI.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| 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.
| spijdar wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| >Wine is closer to what WSL1 was
|
| Not quite. Wine just translates windows syscalls to linux
| ones but WSL actually reimplemented the linux api inside
| the NT kernel (which was designed with the ability to use
| multiple OS apis.)
| emilsedgh wrote:
| As far as I understand Wine does way, way more than that.
| Wine actually re-implements all Windows API's. Not
| syscalls, but higher level libraries like DirectX and
| whatnot.
| spijdar wrote:
| Well, I said "closer", not an exact analogue. They're
| pretty close equivalents, though, as most Windows
| programs don't actually call syscalls directly, but link
| in an OS-provided DLL and call an exported symbol from
| it, with the userspace to kernel bits abstracted away
| from most user programs. Wine (mostly) re-implements
| those DLLs, effectively re-implementing the Win32 API (a
| userspace API) in Linux's userland.
|
| (programs are allowed to call the kernel directly,
| though, and Wine has to handle those cases esp. for
| DRM/anti-cheat code in games that poke at the kernel
| directly, recently Linux was patched to allow userspace
| programs to directly handle syscalls [0][1], making Wine
| ... closer to a WSL1 equivalent?)
|
| [0] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/10/1323
|
| [1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include
| /linux/...
| zamadatix wrote:
| Neither reimplemented the other syscalls directly in the
| kernel. In WSL1 the NT kernel kicked Linux syscalls to an
| lxcore.sys driver to convert them into equivalent NT
| calls and objects. In WINE most things don't make direct
| syscalls (they make userspace Win32 calls and WINE
| reimplements that and many other Windows APIs in a way
| that calls Linux syscalls directly) but for those that do
| (e.g. game DRM) the Linux kernel added a
| SECCOMP_MODE_MMAP mode to seccomp() to trap unknown
| syscalls to a handler (in this case WINE) to do the same
| thing.
| teddyfrozevelt wrote:
| I guess it would be this: https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
| b215826 wrote:
| Thanks, this sounds like an interesting project. Will look
| into it.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| How long before even Linus migrates to Windows as his daily
| driver?
| zzandd wrote:
| 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.
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