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by dleslie 2220 days ago
I switched from WSL2 back to WSL1 because the git action times on the NTFS shared drive were _minutes_ long in WSL2.

I didn't use WSL2 for too long and so I wonder: are processes in WSL2 manageable by Task Manager and Windows Defender as in WSL1? That integration with Windows tooling made WSL1 killer for deploying tools to non-programmers; give them a powershell script and they can run the app and manage it in a familiar way.

1 comments

are processes in WSL2 manageable by Task Manager and Windows Defender as in WSL1?

I haven't tried (just installed Windows 10 v1909 last night) but I don't think so, given that WSL2 sits in a VM, which WSL1 didn't.

I liked WSL1, but it had a lot of the same drawbacks that Cygwin had, which was that Windows and Linux are different enough under the hood that you start running into issues with file system performance and containers, and WSL2 fixes that at the cost of being clumsier with file management.

The solution I recall for WSL2 is to put the shared files inside the Linux instance instead of putting it in NTFS.

Putting the shared files inside the Linux instance is a non-starter for me.
Putting the shared files inside the Linux instance is a non-starter for me.

What requirement do you have that has to be managed without going over to the Linux side of the system?

Unity and its suite of tools. Anything that slows access to disk IO can add significant time to my large-project build turnaround.
In the case of Unity, why do you need Linux crossover? I can see also having a Unity development setup in bare-metal Linux if you plan to target Linux gaming, but WSL currently doesn't give you graphics.

The game development scenario feels to me like a case where a Windows based toolchain is going to be more coherent. I might be missing something though.

No, I don't _really_ need Linux crossover. I greatly prefer a Linux CLI environment as that's been how I've been comfortable as a developer for nigh-on three decades now.

No, we don't/won't support a Linux port of our product at this time, and as a primary developer it's not worth my time to be hassled by it.

But WSL1 is _so nice_. I've fought with MSYS, MSYS2, Cygwin, various other bash environments and such, and I find none are quite as good as WSL1+X410.

And, let's be honest, if WSL2 is just another VM then it's a worse product than the other VMs that are available and far more mature. Hell, Canonical's Multipass is as good or better.

I really don't get why they went the VM route with WSL2. It seems to totally wipe out any advantage that WSL had over the other VM products.