WSL2 Adding Support For Mounting Physical Disks, EXT4 Access And More From Windows

[phoronix]

Phoronix: WSL2 Adding Support For Mounting Physical Disks, EXT4 Access And More From Windows

The latest functionality Microsoft is adding to their Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) is support for attaching and mounting physical disks within WSL2...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=WSL2-Mount-Physical-Disks

[tildearrow]

EXT4End

[flower]

well... good work. i needed this for around 20yrs.
BUT: are there really people that format the whole drive instead of partitions?

and what about eg mdadm, lvm, losetup, luks?

[Danny3]

Of course they added support for it.
Their greed for data collection has no boundaries.
They would do anything to get their hands on our files and upload to their servers.
It wasn't long ago they released a "free" antivirus for Linux which has or will have soon the same collecting feature.
I guess dual-booting with Windows 10 is not safe anymore, if it ever was.
Glad I have never installed such crap on my computers.

[uid313]

Wow, this is amazing!

Can I run GNOME in WSL? What about Snaps and Flatpaks?
Maybe it is time to uninstall Linux and just run Windows instead...

[mcoffin]

I can't wait for Windows Update to write random things to my ext4 partitions. Windows having a driver for it would be a compelling reason for me to switch filesystems just to make sure it can't read it anymore.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

I can't wait for Windows Update to write random things to my ext4 partitions. Windows having a driver for it would be a compelling reason for me to switch filesystems just to make sure it can't read it anymore.

Icydock makes drive carries that you could use to slide out and protect the linux drive.

[Chewi]

Wow, this is amazing!

Can I run GNOME in WSL? What about Snaps and Flatpaks?
Maybe it is time to uninstall Linux and just run Windows instead...

I'm not sure if you're trolling here but in case you're not, you more or less can now. GNOME probably wants systemd running but there are tricks to make that happen. Some people run an X server on Windows. I ran Weston and accessed it via RDP for a little while but while the performance was okay, it wasn't amazing. I've since switched to using Xpra, which works really well. No need for a full blown desktop with that, you can just mix the Linux windows with your Windows ones, though in my case, I remotely connect from my Gentoo desktop instead. Microsoft are cooking up their own GUI solution but I doubt you'll be able to use that remotely.

Disclaimer: I do work for Microsoft now but no, I don't know any more than any of you.

[uid313]

I'm not sure if you're trolling here but in case you're not, you more or less can now. GNOME probably wants systemd running but there are tricks to make that happen. Some people run an X server on Windows. I ran Weston and accessed it via RDP for a little while but while the performance was okay, it wasn't amazing. I've since switched to using Xpra, which works really well. No need for a full blown desktop with that, you can just mix the Linux windows with your Windows ones, though in my case, I remotely connect from my Gentoo desktop instead. Microsoft are cooking up their own GUI solution but I doubt you'll be able to use that remotely.

Disclaimer: I do work for Microsoft now but no, I don't know any more than any of you.

Oh GNOME requiring systemd is a bummer, else it would be pretty cool to run most of GNOME on Windows.
I would rather run Wayland than X. I wouldn't want to have to remote into some full-blown distribution though.

Running Linux GUI Apps is on the way, Don't think you'll be able to run a nested window though, You can do it now with a separate X server installed.

Yeah, but maybe I want Wayland, not X. And is it just .debs or also Snaps and Flatpaks?

[kpedersen]

Yeah, but maybe I want Wayland, not X

It is because of X11's client / server architecture that it works in WSL2. Consider that it is due to the weakness of Wayland's scope that Wayland compositors do not work across VM boundaries.

Every single compositor will also have to find their own unique and fragmented solution to this problem. It is quite possible that the compositor you use will lack this functionality for a while compared to others.