Born to Gentoo+i3, forced (by work) to WSL
It’s so true though
I even look at myself that way whenever I use wsl on my gaming box to hop onto another system. I disgust myself.
Oh no, Linux users are jealous that Windows is the best distro out there!
Anyways…
In this case it’s a bloated hypervisor, no?
No.
What if… WSL is a gateway drug to Arch?
Don’t do drugs, kids!
I still don’t know what WSL is for.
Windows Stolen Linux
Run Linux stuff on Windows.
A big use case is development with Docker containers.
Thanks - I can kind of see that, as docker on windows is majorly broken. I think I’d just run it in a linux vm, as I do with most of my developing, but I can see some might not want that overhead.
Consider dropping Windows instead
That’s the best bit about WSL (at least, version 2) is that it is a VM running a full version of Linux using Microsoft Hypervisor. There’s a bunch of drivers included that allow Windows and Linux to share filesystems and if you run Wayland/X apps in Linux they run on the Windows desktop.
Sharing filesystems could be useful, I can see that.
I do that with target dev platforms anyway, using things like NFS, samba and sftp, but I do see that it could work well for this.
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I love having it at work, so I can write and run bash scripts on my Windows work PC.
I have dozens if Linux servers available to me but sometimes it just is easier to run a script locally.
I too do that, working from a windows vm and writing code for linux - but I push it to a linux vm for testing. Never occurred to me to use WSL and have another environment to configure and maintain for dev that’s different to the target one.
But fair play if that suits you! Each to their own, and I’m sure I do things that make no sense to others.
I only use Windows because I have to work with a corporation’s IT helpdesk staff to get on their VPN if I want to do contract work for them. They are not likely to help me get connected from Linux; they’ll just find another contract dev. Once in, I do everything in Linux because my code will ultimately run in a Linux cloud container of some sort. WSL works well enough for me to do this. I’d rather have Linux on bare metal, but whatever. I’m in; I’m coding; I’m getting paid. I’ll put up with a little bit of suck.
To keep developers on the platform, because their own ecosystem is shit.
Honestly if it frees me from MinGW I would be happy
Serious answer,
Windows subsystem for Linux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows the use of a GNU/Linux environment from within Windows, foregoing the overhead of a virtual machine and being an alternative to dual booting.
Them tryna suck us back into their dysfunctional os, not gonna work on me Mr Micro
Oddly enoigh, they recognize this and are patching the hundreds of tiny holes. I would argue they began trying (IMO malformed) fixes back since the launch of windows 8.
I do know what it is, I just don’t know why you’d use it instead of proper linux, or a vm.
Bad management
Anecdote: I have an IDE that only works on Windows that can build applications for Linux. I use MinGW as part of the packaging process (AND I FUCKING HATE IT OH MY GOD. All of the pathing is broken!). As of yesterday I learned that WSL is a thing that might replace MinGW and make some processes of packaging for linux targets a little easier.
My company only allows us to use the company-provided Windows image, so I do all my work inside a WSL2 tmux session.
JetBrains IDEs and VSCode also have WSL connectors so it works acceptably well.
It also handily dodges all the Windows security policies (like installing software). You can even run Xorg apps from it.
I’m still forced to use MS Teams and Outlook, though…
Good answer. Like a michelin chef working at McDonald’s and having a little secret area of his own.
its for when the reqs include azure ad and the whole office has a m$ fetish yet you still gotta get your bag without losing your decades-built toolset AND you have a choice at all
That sounds like hell.
edus and with the heavy m$ edu discounts attract and hold
WSL is just a chroot running under Windows.
Look what they have to do to mimic a fraction of our power
Look what they have to do to mimic a fraction of our power
I think that sounds more like Cygwin.
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Omg I haven’t heard of cygwin in years! the nightmares…
“WSL”?
Windows/Sex/Location
Windows Subsystem for Linux
Windows subsystem for linux.
Its basically a microsoft linux kernel, running in a hypervisor, with a linux distro built on top. The subsystem also supports xserver and wayland too
For once I think I agree with Linux purists.
Fuck I might need a shower.
Aww, cry harder.
I started using Linux when it was Redhat, in the 1990s, and it came on a bunch of CDs.
And I use WSL in addition to Debian, Raspbian, and Ubuntu.
Knock this tribal bullshit off.
I started with Slackware. It came on floppies.
Now move to the back of the line youngster.
I’ll never forget the first time I finally got Linux 0.1 to boot on my abacus.
Some people hate practically it seems
Yeah, why would they post something like this to the community for serious takes about Linux?
CD’s?! Ooh La La Mister Fancy French man with the digital media! Back in our day linux came on a plastic 45 inside Fruity Pebbles cereal and it had loose crusty sugar in the grooves that introduced errors in X that meant the screen scrolled like an out-of-whack tv and you had to wait for the prompt to roll by so you could try another resolution that would core dump and spit you back to the A:\ drive and eject the disc into your shins like a frisbee! And that’s the way we liked it!
Aww, cry harder.
Some real pleasant people here.
Yea… But I have 3 Linux VMs running in Hyper-V. That counts for something right?
It is honestly better
I don’t think anyone is a “wsl user” so much as they’ve found themselves in a position where the lowest friction solution is utilizing wsl for a given situation.
Around 2019, even up until like 2022 if you wanted to run docker in windows, that was how to do it.
Pretty much my situation. Work stuff, Windows machine, but Linux/Docker workflow and I refuse to let go of my POSIX shell.
All the good stuff available and you choose a POSIX shell? To each their own I guess.
Granted, I still prefer it to PowerShell, but only in how it feels, not conceptually.
Eh I’m not hard set on full spec compliance. I use ZSH, it’s not technically POSIX compliant but close enough that I virtually never have to think about it. Technically correct would probably have been “sh derivative” or something.
I still prefer it to PowerShell
Who hurt you?
Why?
Not enough caffeine. Please disregard.
That’s where I was a few years ago, and then I switched back to proper Linux. I was only keeping Windows at all for games, but then most of the games I played started working fine on Linux (thank you, Valve).
Plus, I tried doing some TensorFlow stuff with CUDA (Nvidia) GPU acceleration. In theory, you can do it in pure Windows, but nobody has bothered trying to do that. You’re on your own if you try it. The usual way is to do GPU passthrough to WSL. There have been three different ways to do that over the years, only one of which currently works. If you happen to Google a page that tells you one of the wrong ways, there’s a good chance you’ll need to reinstall to get it working the right way.
Using pure Linux for this stuff is no problem. Just use Nvidia’s server drivers instead of gaming drivers. All the AI datacenters are using Nvidia GPUs on Linux, so Nvidia is highly motivated to make this work. Someday, Windows might be as easy to use as Linux.
I learned the shell in wsl before I switched to Linux full time. I wasn’t trying to learn it intentionally. Just didn’t want to develop software on windows. It’s a great gateway drug that reduces friction by a lot.
The terminal is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
It’s not a story the Vibe Coders would tell you
What’s the current best way to run docker on Windows?
I’m still using wsl(2) for that in 2025 because it seems to be the path of least resistance on Win11.
That could very well be the best practice. I haven’t had to run docker in windows since then.
Linux community: why don’t more people use Linux? Also Linux community: LOL LOOK AT THESE STUPID FUCKERS TRYING LINUX WRONG, LETS ALL GO SHIT ON THEM
goddamn do yall deserve eachother and your 0.01% OS share or whatever meaningless percentage of the OS market you represent.
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All I know is that the WSL is a massive step-up from Cygwin or Mingw32. We’ve been here before. The most recent incarnation before WSL was a klunky VirtualBox VM steered by Packer. The idea that you can mash a few buttons and get an Ubuntu VM with filesystem mapping that “just works” is a huge improvement.
As a counterpoint to all of the people saying that you’re overreacting:
They’re right.
However, I think the sentiment of your comment is valid and correct. Memes like this do ultimately serve to alienate newer Linux users.
I think people are mostly responding to the way that your comment is worded, which conveys a much stronger reaction than is necessary for something that ultimately doesn’t cause very much harm.
Nobody is happy when you call them out for marginalizing people they view as inferior. I get the same reaction when call out family members being blatantly racist at family gatherings. I don’t care about the reactions of people who choose to engage only with my tone, they’re not here to interact with me or my opinions in a meaningful way. Last, I don’t believe I overreacted at all. I called out shitty alienating behaviour in response to a meme that implies an outgroup community is disgusting or inferior based on their operating system choice. As I see it the tone of the meme was significantly more insulting than the tone of my response.
You have to consider that your tone is important when trying to make a point.
It doesn’t help to call someone out in a way that’s callous and without any consideration toward how they may feel about being called out. All it does is elicit a strong emotional reaction which often results in them doubling down and being defensive of their behavior.
If you call someone out gently, and they’re not willing to listen, then you can ratchet it up a little depending on the severity of the behavior… until you reach a point where it’s clear that you’re not going to get anywhere.
So yeah, again, it’s toxic behavior to alienate a subset of Linux users when the community is already very fragmented. But your comment wasn’t just saying the behavior was shitty, it was also implying that the people who engage it in are shitty people. I understand that’s (hopefully) not what you meant, but humans tend to think that behavior==identity and it takes effort to override that. Naturally, when the quality of one’s person is in question, they’re going to be quite defensive.
I feel like I’m being admonished by a schoolteacher and honestly I probably deserve it. You’re probably right but I’m grumpy about it and need to re-read this later when I’m less grumpy about it
One of the main points of using Linux is so that you don’t have to use Windows. Like I get WSL is useful in certain scenarios, but it’s whole existence is basically counter to why the majority of Linux users use Linux.
Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooosh
How?
Encouraging the use of WSL to new Linux users is asinine. It’s a niche tool with a shitload of bugs and caveats, not something that should be widely used as a daily driver. It’s not “shitting on” anyone to tell them they shouldn’t be using WSL as their daily driver distro, just like it’s not “shitting on” someone to tell them not to use a hammer to drive in a screw.
I made a comment about the gatekeeping attitude of the community and you responded to me with a critique of WSL. The point I made sailed entirely over your head, hence the whoosh.
Saying “don’t use WSL as your first Linux distro” isn’t gatekeeping though, it’s just good advice.
Sure, that’s a valid position to have. Your position only relates to the OP meme in the loosest possible sense; the meme presents WSL users as inferior objects of disgust, which is clearly distinct from a claim that WSL is not the right starter distro for most people. As I see it you’re effectively whitewashing an elitist talking point by pretending it’s about helping new users, or you just didn’t notice the elitism because you are not part of the targeted out-group.
Do you realize it’s just a funny meme picture on the internet? We are on linuxmemes@lemmy.world and the picture is so mild, it’s just a friendly poke for fun and you just try to tear us a new asshole for that, damn, chill.
its funny even if its a dead horse. don’t sweat it. folks will tell on themselves given the right prompt.
It’s not funny, it’s gatekeeping.
this homeless trans is laughing because of all the concerns in the world you’re bent over a weak joke that contains nuance considering the character showing disgust and disdain. he’s a baddy! 🤣
I’m glad you found a laugh and a moment of lightness while you’re struggling, and I hope the world becomes a kinder place for you as soon as possible. This is still a joke where the punchline is “windows user (ie, outgroup) disgusting”, and I hope you can understand why it’s bad to put that kind of energy out in the world then pretend it’s a joke.
You’re gatekeeping.
World Surf League?
Lol I thought they were random words, but no.
I’m not sure what Linux users have against the World Surf League either, saw some footage from Margaret River the other day and it looked like a great event!
Windows users when they see a wine user???
I’m glad wsl exists so I don’t have to bother with windows and people can still run my programs.
