Microsoft Is Backporting WSL2 To Their Windows 10 2019 Releases

[randomizer]

If your 18+ months behind on Windows 10 updates, I would strongly recommend updating... Windows 10 is not like Linux where you can typically avoid updates for a long time and nothing breaks... Windows 10 started broken and the updates do actually substantially help it.

That being said I have found lately that Windows 10 is becoming harder and harder to justify running!

I'm only using it at work, and we're still on 1709 (with security updates of course). I've got to deal with bugs in WSL that have been fixed for years. At home I use Windows 8.1.

[mozo]

Windows 10 started broken and the updates do actually substantially help it.

Good joke

[spiritofreason]

The default NAT setup with WSL2 / Hyper-V doesn't work with IPv6. It made for a funky situation when Ubuntu's archive would only resolve to IPv6 addresses for some reason, and the repos would not be reachable. So there might need to be some tinkering, depending on your use case.

However, I think I'd prefer Linux on the outside and Windows in the VM, with performance-critical devices passed through. Consumer Intel devices aren't set up for it well, though, since PCIe ACS isn't supported on root ports for at least Skylake and derivatives (but maybe it is for Ice Lake and later? The data sheet has registers that suggest capabilities).

[edwaleni]

Latest versions of Virtualbox and VMware support using the Hyper-V API so they can provide virtualization on top of the Hyper-V engine.

• VMware Workstation 15.5 Now Supports Host Hyper-V Mode
• Use Virtualbox and Hyper-V at the same time

Excellent info. i will check this out.

[zexelon]

Awesome, now I'm only 18 months behind the earliest release that supports WSL2.

If your 18+ months behind on Windows 10 updates, I would strongly recommend updating... Windows 10 is not like Linux where you can typically avoid updates for a long time and nothing breaks... Windows 10 started broken and the updates do actually substantially help it.

That being said I have found lately that Windows 10 is becoming harder and harder to justify running!

[randomizer]

Awesome, now I'm only 18 months behind the earliest release that supports WSL2.

[mike456]

When should we get 3D accelerated Gui in wsl2?

[kpedersen]

I notice that the Windows 10 cumulative update documentation no longer obnoxiously states "Windows is a service and as such... blah, blah, broken ideas..."

So perhaps the fact they are backporting patches and features means they are finally realising people are rejecting the idea or constant breakage and sticking with older known releases (i.e *not* a service).

[mozo]

Yeah, started to figure out how these things work. For WSL2 to work, you have to enable Hyper-V, which is a Type 1 hypervisor. This meaning, and something I only learned recently, that Hyper-V is loaded first before any OS. So if I enable Hyper-V to run WSL2, then my Windows 10 boot is also running on top of Hyper-V. Maybe that is not an issue, but kind of didn't like that. Would rather when I boot into Windows 10 that it ran on bare metal, not on top of a Type 1 hypervisor.

And also, as stated, running a Type 1 hypervisor (i.e. Hyper-V) blocks the usage of any Type 2 hypervisors (e.g. VirtualBox). Not my ideal situation since I do use VirtualBox for things. Not saying I couldn't run any virtual machines with Hyper-V. But see first point

If I am factually wrong on some of the details, I am not offend to be corrected.

Just don't use Windows 10. It's a pile of crap.

[Mangix]

LTSC not included. Unfortunate.