[gecko]

Would I be correct that you tried WSL in late summer/fall last year? I'm asking because WSL got a pile of new syscalls, a couple of which (if I recall correctly) fixed the unicorn issue you hit. Likewise, there are now standard GPOs you can distribute that exempt WSL from Defender. I 100% agree that running a Linux VM can sometimes be a lot better (and it's not exactly hard, given that Hyper-V has been in Windows for forever and has strong command-line support), but I find that I can use WSL for virtually everything these days compared to even six months ago.

[abrookins]

Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Running with all the latest updates on a new Surface Book 2, I ran into a variation of this open issue: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982.

That was only the last and final blocking issue I ran into, after a series of minor (or at least, not serious) problems that I powered through during too many late nights.

Couple of things:

- Hyper-V. Was excited for this and tried it, since I had already set up Docker for Windows and pointed the CLI tools in WSL at it. However, Hyper-V didn't appear to have any support for the "shared folder" concept that VMWare and VirtualBox do. Is your only option here to set up Windows share and use Samba?

- I dislike running VMs generally, but would have gone that route if I could have gotten a setup I liked. However, after reconfiguring everything to use VirtualBox (including Docker) and creating a single VM there to do Docker and Linux stuff on, it seemed to tax the machine too much (i5 8GB SB2). With a beefy machine that would have worked better, but Windows 10 isn't that appealing if I have to buy the highest-spec machines and run VMs... that's exactly where it was 5-10 years ago.

I have a lot more to say about WSL and Windows 10, and it probably deserves a blog post. I haven't returned the Surface yet because I'm kinda in love with it, but also if I can't do all my work on it, then it's not something I need to own.

[gecko]

    Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Running with all the
    latest updates on a new Surface Book 2, I ran into a variation of
    this open issue: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982.

Well that stinks. I'd swear I hit this and it got resolved with the inotify-related patches, but clearly I misremembered. Might be thinking of uwsgi or something.

Re. Hyper-V: yeah, I do a Samba mount. This in my experience actually performs a ton better than VirtualBox shared folders, but it's been a long time. I have no idea how it compares to VMware's implementation. (VMware and VirtualBox also have the ability to cleanly virtualize a graphics-accelerated Linux desktop, which is not something I need or care about, but might be a show-stopper for both WSL and Hyper-V if you do.)

[abrookins]

That's okay -- I'm sure they fixed something like that issue! The WSL team has been crazy busy, and their work so far is super impressive.

VirtualBox shared folders had their own problems. `npm` wants to create symlinks for commands provided by packages, but VirtualBox doesn't support symlinks by default on Windows shares. So you have to execute an arcane command to enable that feature -- every time you restart the computer.

Interesting to hear that performance is decent with the Samba share. I presumed it would be otherwise. In that case, Hyper-V with Samba may be my last shot at getting the machine to work for me... we'll see if I can muster any more enthusiasm.

[Fnoord]

It is possible to create directory symlinks in Windows. It is called junctions [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point

[gecko]

NTFS actually has support for proper symbolic links, which are not the same as junction points. I come across this confusion fairly often and I'm not clear why. (`mklink /d` is what you're looking for, and do note that this is different from `mklink /j` in meaningful ways. Do note these commands must be run from an Administrator shell prior to Windows 10.)

[EDIT: Also, reading GP, it looks like their issue is something about VirtualBox support for symlinks, not Windows support for symlinks. Symlinks are enabled in Windows by default, so they'd only have to do something special if they were on a domain that disabled them in the group policy--but in that case, they wouldn't be able to turn them back on themselves on a reboot anyway.]

[FireBeyond]

> Actually, it was as recently as this very week!

Which WSL distro did you use? Perhaps only works under, say, Ubuntu 18.04... (not perfect, but better, perhaps)?

[abrookins]

You know, I tried 16.04. 18.04 is worth a shot!