Watch Out: Microsoft Windows WSL1 Currently Borked With Ubuntu 20.04

[ServerGarbage]

Waiting for the day when Windows starts using the Linux kernel, hope i don't die.

[F.Ultra]

Does anyone know if people actually use WSL, and if so for what? I assume so, since Microsoft considers it worthwhile to continue to support it. I have a Windows partition for the occasional gaming, and out of interest I tried WSL1 there a few months ago. I found the experience slow and lack-luster, to the point of preferring Cygwin if I have to use a terminal on windows, and that is saying something! Maybe this has changed with WSL2, but even then I don't believe GUI programs are supported.

As a result, I struggle to see who this is for. I have seen some vague suggestions it is for software developers, who need Linux to build stuff, but would prefer (or who's IT departments prefer) to work in Windows. Maybe this is true for some fields, but as a software developer in the field of robotics, the lack of GUI support (with proper 3D acceleration) is crippling.

Don't know how it's actually used but Microsofts view is that it's for Linux Server developers so that they "can remain" in Windows even when they develop and maintain Linux Servers.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Does anyone know if people actually use WSL, and if so for what? I assume so, since Microsoft considers it worthwhile to continue to support it. I have a Windows partition for the occasional gaming, and out of interest I tried WSL1 there a few months ago. I found the experience slow and lack-luster, to the point of preferring Cygwin if I have to use a terminal on windows, and that is saying something! Maybe this has changed with WSL2, but even then I don't believe GUI programs are supported.

I use it, simply because I can build and run some mission-critical software on it that flat out won't work with Cygwin, no matter how hard I try. It's not super speedy, but it means that until Microsoft decide to make Office work on Linux (was that some aviating porcines I just saw?) so that I don't need Windows at all other than for a personal box for gaming, I am able to pull over some files from a dataset and visualise in the native program.

I've not tried WSL2, but WSL1 for my (extremely limited) purpose does just what I need. It's also quite amusing to do some quick crunching in Linux-only software in "Windows", even if it is unrealistic for anything serious.

[AusMatt]

Virtualbox can use Hyper-V as the hypervisor. Last I recall, you had to enable "Windows Hypervisor Platform" (WHPX) in addition to the standard Hyper-V stuff for it to work. Several virtualization platforms can do this now:

VirtualBox 6 and higher
VMware Workstation 20H1 Tech Preview (and whatever version it eventually becomes)
QEMU 2.12 (which also supports Apple's hypervisor accelerator)

You'll probably get a small performance hit doing this, at least in the early days. I know Libvirt had done some work on Hyper-V support as well. Maybe somebody's gone out of their way to make a Windows build? I haven't seen any native builds, but there's a few options using cygwin and msys.

With the addition of WHPX, it'd be nice to see some good virtualization management tools pop up on Windows so people who want to stay out of Hyper-V as much as possible can fulfill that dream.

Also, you're not a traitor for running windows. Plenty of people do it for work or for games. Maybe someday we'll be able to cut it out entirely, but not today. Honestly, it's nice that we're able to use more FOSS tools on Windows now with things like this. Making them available on Windows makes the transition easier, and helps admins set up all the machines with the same software set.

I don't know why anyone would go near WSL (particularly WSL1) when you can just run a VM. I've been using Hyper-V for my Linux VMs on Windows 10 because I find that it's disk I/O is so much faster than VirtualBox (I haven't benchmarked it though). Maybe this is just on high performance NVME M.2 media...

I was going to say that someone just needs to write a nice GUI front end for Hyper-V (ala VirtualBox) but it sounds like having VirtualBox using Hyper-V as it's hypervisor (VirtualBox 6.x with "Windows Hypervisor Platform" enabled) is the solution I've been looking for.

[SystemCrasher]

TL;DR: "Windows is shitty version of linux". Lol, Microsoft, go ditch your NT kernel to oblivion, it uncompetitive and odd.

[bug77]

Ok, thanks. Maybe I was just being a little lazy, this is really good info! Maybe not entirely like I'd want it to be, but not totally bad, and sounds like this should keep improving in these areas.

Fwiw, the same goes for trying to run a VM + Docker on Windows
Microsoft may try hard, but Windows is a terrible platform for developers. It's good for other things, but development is only an option if you can stay in Visual Studio.

[ehansin]

Virtualbox can use Hyper-V as the hypervisor. Last I recall, you had to enable "Windows Hypervisor Platform" (WHPX) in addition to the standard Hyper-V stuff for it to work. Several virtualization platforms can do this now:

VirtualBox 6 and higher
VMware Workstation 20H1 Tech Preview (and whatever version it eventually becomes)
QEMU 2.12 (which also supports Apple's hypervisor accelerator)

You'll probably get a small performance hit doing this, at least in the early days. I know Libvirt had done some work on Hyper-V support as well. Maybe somebody's gone out of their way to make a Windows build? I haven't seen any native builds, but there's a few options using cygwin and msys.

With the addition of WHPX, it'd be nice to see some good virtualization management tools pop up on Windows so people who want to stay out of Hyper-V as much as possible can fulfill that dream.

Also, you're not a traitor for running windows. Plenty of people do it for work or for games. Maybe someday we'll be able to cut it out entirely, but not today. Honestly, it's nice that we're able to use more FOSS tools on Windows now with things like this. Making them available on Windows makes the transition easier, and helps admins set up all the machines with the same software set.

Thanks for the info and heads up! Also, was mostly joking about the traitor bit - you know how people can be around here, pretty set sometimes that there is but the "one true way" I couldn't do the kind of work I do for my day job just on Linux, it's just fact. None the less, still a fan and user, would not be here if I wasn't.

[ehansin]

A simple search will answer that: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq

More OT, with WSL2 available, I wouldn't give WSL1 another thought.

Ok, thanks. Maybe I was just being a little lazy, this is really good info! Maybe not entirely like I'd want it to be, but not totally bad, and sounds like this should keep improving in these areas.

[Terrablit]

Curious if anyone knows the answer to this: If I understand correctly, WSL2 uses it's own Linux kernel in virtualization, vs. just being a Linux systems call to NT kernel call translation layer as in WSL1. WSL2 is supposed to use Hyper-V as the virtualization. And (again), if I remember correctly, running/enabling Hyper-V blocks the ability to run VirtualBox, at least I think I remember that experience. Does anyone know if you can run WSL2 and VirtualBox together? Doesn't need to be at the same time, I just don't want installing WSL2 to block VirtualBox usage. Maybe WSL2 just runs Hyper-V 'as needed' then goes away otherwise. Maybe I can play with this to figure out, but yeah, don't run insider builds for now. Since I am going to do a clean wipe install after spring release (yes, I also run Windows - what I traitor I am!), I might enable the insider build for now and see what happens.

Virtualbox can use Hyper-V as the hypervisor. Last I recall, you had to enable "Windows Hypervisor Platform" (WHPX) in addition to the standard Hyper-V stuff for it to work. Several virtualization platforms can do this now:

VirtualBox 6 and higher
VMware Workstation 20H1 Tech Preview (and whatever version it eventually becomes)
QEMU 2.12 (which also supports Apple's hypervisor accelerator)

You'll probably get a small performance hit doing this, at least in the early days. I know Libvirt had done some work on Hyper-V support as well. Maybe somebody's gone out of their way to make a Windows build? I haven't seen any native builds, but there's a few options using cygwin and msys.

With the addition of WHPX, it'd be nice to see some good virtualization management tools pop up on Windows so people who want to stay out of Hyper-V as much as possible can fulfill that dream.

Also, you're not a traitor for running windows. Plenty of people do it for work or for games. Maybe someday we'll be able to cut it out entirely, but not today. Honestly, it's nice that we're able to use more FOSS tools on Windows now with things like this. Making them available on Windows makes the transition easier, and helps admins set up all the machines with the same software set.

[chithanh]

ehansin You are correct, WSL2 prevents use of virtualization that is incompatible with Hyper-V. Also there is now (since build 19603) filesystem access to WSL2 which presumably also uses the virtualization.

upgrade to WSL2

Problem is that in many ways, WSL2 is not an upgrade but a step backwards compared to WSL1.