Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Microsoft Promotes Windows Subsystem For Linux "WSL" To GA Status

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #31
    Artim Have a look at how an hypervisor / VM works ... and what MS has done in WSL ... after we'll ba able to discuss.
    WSL is NOT a VM and less an hypervisor, it is an emulator like softwares for gameboy games.

    dragorth The first link is the source of an emultator. A lot of sub-directories are missing. I know it because of :
    Linux WorkPC 6.0.9-amd64 #20221116 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Nov 16 10:34:42 CET 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

    The second link is a method to create a « kernel » application over WSL (need to access to NT USB drivers and NT IP stack). It's not because there's Kernel in the title that you can fully-manage the WSL « kernel ».
    I have the same remarks about your sentence on Android. Google Play Store is just an application, not a kernel. At the beginning, Android real name is Android/Linux like we can hear GNU/Linux. Android can be seen as a Windows/DOS, on the kernel point of view.

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by Linuxxx View Post
      While it's always nice to see increased Linux usage, having this tucked away inside Windows means even less incentive for corporation desktops to switch over to a bare-metal setup.

      In the end, Microsoft's embrace mentality always turns out to be a winning strategy for them, unfortunately...
      This is a solution for testing, not prod. Even the most die-hard MS fanatic would not recommend running production loads on WSL.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by TNZfr View Post
        dragorth The first link is the source of an emultator. A lot of sub-directories are missing. I know it because of :
        Linux WorkPC 6.0.9-amd64 #20221116 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Nov 16 10:34:42 CET 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
        ... It's a custom kernel, what are you not understanding about this? It's been customized and had a lot of things ripped out because it doesn't need any of that. It doesn't need GRUB or Systemd or any of that because Windows supplies that functionality through a custom Hyper-V implementation and Linux drivers. Why would it need GRUB? Windows is booting it. In fact, their Linux fork deviates from standard desktop Linux so much that they had to change a lot just to let Systemd run at all. Same for the graphics stack, it's an actual engineering effort to get their fork to interact with the Windows desktop.

        Originally posted by TNZfr View Post
        Artim Have a look at how an hypervisor / VM works ... and what MS has done in WSL ... after we'll ba able to discuss.
        WSL is NOT a VM and less an hypervisor, it is an emulator like softwares for gameboy games.

        The second link is a method to create a « kernel » application over WSL (need to access to NT USB drivers and NT IP stack). It's not because there's Kernel in the title that you can fully-manage the WSL « kernel ».
        I have the same remarks about your sentence on Android. Google Play Store is just an application, not a kernel. At the beginning, Android real name is Android/Linux like we can hear GNU/Linux. Android can be seen as a Windows/DOS, on the kernel point of view.
        And the rest of this is nonsense/technobabble.
        Not even sure what "Android is like Windows/DOS" (Windows 1.x-3.x?), they're not even remotely comparable. Windows 3.x is genuinely a full OS with memory manager and everything, DOS was basically just the bootloader. Linux is an OS, it has a memory manager and driver stack and everything else, Android is pretty much just a display server and a custom JVM that apps are forced to run on.
        I don't know if you're drunk or just trying really hard to sound smart.
        Last edited by Ironmask; 23 November 2022, 09:16 AM.

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by TNZfr View Post
          Artim Have a look at how an hypervisor / VM works ... and what MS has done in WSL ... after we'll ba able to discuss.
          WSL is NOT a VM and less an hypervisor, it is an emulator like softwares for gameboy games.

          dragorth The first link is the source of an emultator. A lot of sub-directories are missing. I know it because of :
          Linux WorkPC 6.0.9-amd64 #20221116 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Nov 16 10:34:42 CET 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

          The second link is a method to create a « kernel » application over WSL (need to access to NT USB drivers and NT IP stack). It's not because there's Kernel in the title that you can fully-manage the WSL « kernel ».
          I have the same remarks about your sentence on Android. Google Play Store is just an application, not a kernel. At the beginning, Android real name is Android/Linux like we can hear GNU/Linux. Android can be seen as a Windows/DOS, on the kernel point of view.
          Since you obviously never learned what a VM is, maybe you should check that all yourself first, before you continue on embarrassing yourself.

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by TNZfr View Post
            Artim Have a look at how an hypervisor / VM works ... and what MS has done in WSL ... after we'll ba able to discuss.
            WSL is NOT a VM and less an hypervisor, it is an emulator like softwares for gameboy games.
            I really don't think YOU understand what hypervisors are or how they work.

            Hypervisors are just translating hardware accesses. They don't translate higher-level constructs like API / system calls. This has nothing to do with the existence of e.g. GRUB or a /boot partition; there's no reason that a hypervisor could not theoretically just skip the whole irrelevant process of firing up GRUB to bootstrap the system. This is not usually done on COTS hypervisors because vendors like VMWare have no reason to invest in additional engineering that would then require them to ship customized images.

            If the software is modifying system calls, APIs and whatnot (like WINE), then you could call it an emulator: it's emulating an OS or its API without actually running that code natively. That isn't what WSL2 does. You can see this by noting its requirement for the Virtual Machine Platform which installs a hypervisor and relies on VT-x.

            Comment


            • #36
              ll1025 puh...calling WINE an emulator is quite the stunt. But with the rest you're right. WINE (and for all I understand WSL1) isn't modifying any system calls etc, it's merely redirecting them. That's why they have to rewrite all those dlls and provide them in order for Windows programs to work. You could say it's also using emulation by sending DirectX to a translator that translates it to OpenGL/Vulkan, but other than that there's ​a reason for the name "WINE is not an emulator".

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by uid313 View Post
                What are the file system benefits of Linux?
                I don't care much about the file system, it it is invisible to me, ext4 and NTFS both work the same for me, and I don't really notice any difference.
                Encryption and compression, layers like LUKS and LVM, and more. A lot of it you can do on Windows, I just prefer the Linux Way. Regardless of the OS, once configured, file systems should be invisible to you (unless you're doing something file system specific like taking a snapshot).

                For my use-case -- WSL2 is to OpenZFS what Proton is to Games. Basically, I don't trust the ZFS on Windows driver yet and its easy enough to compile a custom kernel for WSL2 to use. I can put all my games on my 3-disk RaidZ and I don't have to do all that cross-platform disk juggling bullshit when I switch operating systems.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by kozman View Post
                  What's the userbase saying about it and is it simply a toy that lets those in Windows-land play but with no serious look towards production-level use.
                  I imagine it's popular among web developers who would develop inside containers regardless, but engineering firms all over Europe are not picking it up despite enforcing Windows as a host on development laptops and then Linux VMs for getting stuff done.
                  I tried proposing it and demoing it to boomers to avoid sharing huge VM images and to make a serious attempt at standardizing around containers even for embedded development, but I found WSL2 atrocious myself. Also, it's hard to sell new technologies to people that are so accustomed to their "old and proven" method, and there aren't enough young developers to care about it. There are very few non-boomers left in the field developing serious embedded software and the statistics are bleak for new generations. There are younger folks being hired to do documentation & coding but since there are no embedded developers to be found, HR resorts to hiring desperate people from Physics and Mathematics and other fields with no real software background (they might know some MATLAB or Python for research purposes).

                  Anyway, the best way to describe WSL2 without exaggeration is that it's slow to the point of making you feel uneasy for the time wasted waiting at the prompt for simple file operations; git operations are affected as well, and small commits feel like they take forever to prepare compared to bare metal Linux. Mind you, this is on recent 10th+ gen Intel laptops with decent SSDs.
                  I would still recommend it if you're a prisoner of Microsoft-centric IT departments and want to automate the process of setting up a Linux development environment with specific toolchains, but I fear performance will always be disappointing.
                  Skilled workers (a handful of enlightened boomers included) resort to violating company policy and only using the company laptop as an interface for internal networks, then they go on with their life using Macs or Linux machines.

                  The heart of the problem is that management sees the one IT department as a catch-all solution for every other department's needs. Engineering departments would greatly benefit from a separate IT capable of administering Unix machines and/or enforcing alternative solutions like WSL(1? 2? I only tried 2) and containers. But then again, Unix administrators cost more than 18 year olds with a couple of "I know Windows stuff" certificates.

                  tl;dr In Europe, WSL(1/2) hasn't won over (even more awful) VirtualBox VMs for engineering/embedded development.

                  Originally posted by Ironmask View Post
                  For the record, Microsoft has already lost the desktop space. Only Microsoft knows this, nobody else.
                  This is not meant as an "ackchooallee" but Ubuntu did have a bug number 1 about Windows being the primary "desktop" (more like, user-facing) OS and it was marked as fixed due to... Android being more popular, I think (that might have been explained by Shuttleworth himself, even, in a blog post of his; sorry, I'm super lazy). Cheers.
                  Last edited by chocolate; 23 November 2022, 10:07 AM.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by Ironmask View Post

                    ... It's a custom kernel, what are you not understanding about this? It's been customized and had a lot of things ripped out because it doesn't need any of that. It doesn't need GRUB or Systemd or any of that because Windows supplies that functionality through a custom Hyper-V implementation and Linux drivers. Why would it need GRUB? Windows is booting it. In fact, their Linux fork deviates from standard desktop Linux so much that they had to change a lot just to let Systemd run at all. Same for the graphics stack, it's an actual engineering effort to get their fork to interact with the Windows desktop.
                    Ok, you talk about of the kernel aspect you see from your seat.
                    A kernel is not just a software interface between applications and memory management / thread scheduling ... it does a lot more. To undestand, just compile a kernel, install it, boot it and try to understand how it works.

                    Originally posted by Ironmask View Post
                    And the rest of this is nonsense/technobabble.
                    Not even sure what "Android is like Windows/DOS" (Windows 1.x-3.x?), they're not even remotely comparable. Windows 3.x is genuinely a full OS with memory manager and everything, DOS was basically just the bootloader. Linux is an OS, it has a memory manager and driver stack and everything else, Android is pretty much just a display server and a custom JVM that apps are forced to run on.
                    I don't know if you're drunk or just trying really hard to sound smart.
                    Mouhahahaha ....
                    * DOS is a kernel not a bootloader.
                    * Windows 3.x is a graphical application running on a DOS kernel.
                    * Linux is a kernel.
                    * GNU/Linux is an OS.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by TNZfr View Post
                      Ok, you talk about of the kernel aspect you see from your seat.
                      A kernel is not just a software interface between applications and memory management / thread scheduling ... it does a lot more. To undestand, just compile a kernel, install it, boot it and try to understand how it works.


                      Mouhahahaha ....
                      * DOS is a kernel not a bootloader.
                      * Windows 3.x is a graphical application running on a DOS kernel.
                      * Linux is a kernel.
                      * GNU/Linux is an OS.
                      And now I know you're trolling.
                      That or you're underage.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X