[tragictrash]

Tell me you don't use Linux without telling me you don't use linux

Wsl is pretty terrible in my experience. your better off using a vm you manage yourself. Every vendor has shared folders. Each one can use a x server to display programs in your windows window manager.

[ygjb]

Oh please. Tell me you are a Linux zealot without telling me you are a Linux zealot. Its a tool in the toolbox. I use Linux everyday on servers at work, two desktops at home, and servers for my partners businesses.

My main personal notebook is a windows device w/WSL and my main work notebook is a MacOS device, because at the end of the day, I need my computer's to just work, painlessly.

WSL is great for alot of Linux userspace stuff and is a fantastic CLI for interacting with and managing remote servers, alongside the ease of Windows. Of course it's not as performance, and had some edges, but I happily accept the trade-offs due to great driver support and the flexibility to run almost any software on one device.

[tragictrash]

I think you misunderstood that remark intended to be humorous. Its too bad you took offense.

Your right about it being a tool. A tool which has better alternatives.

A virtual machine running in virtual box or some other vendor's VM has literally none of the limitations that wsl2 does.

WSL 2 Doesn't fully support all userspace stuff, I bump into that all the time.

You can ssh into other boxes using PowerShell.

It is objectively bad compared to the alternatives.

[Osiris]

"better"? Every tool has pros and cons and tradeoffs. I run Linux, Windows, and MacOS. Each one has it's pros and cons. Each is the "better" tool depending on the need.

The same goes for programming languages and engineering problems. I train my team to identify multiple possible solutions to a problem then identify pros and cons and then pick the solution that optimizes for the most important goal. There is rarely a "right" solution.

[JonChesterfield]

There is rarely a right solution but there are always wrong ones. Searching for pareto optimal contours is great but implies the existence of pareto pessimal contours where N poor solutions combine to make something maximally rubbish.

Software dev is not in a design space where all things are broadly equivalent with small pros and cons to choose between. It's more a discontinuous surface with orders of magnitude of cost/benefit changes as one meanders over a given cliff.

[tragictrash]

This cliff being performance, stability and my sanity.

[jbluepolarbear]

Tell me you don’t use WSL without telling me you don’t use WSL.

I use WSL everyday and it’s no different than using native Linux. What’s so terrible? It’s easy to setup and easy to add to windows terminal.

[tragictrash]

File system performance sucks. No fuse support. No direct hardware access. I've experienced stability issues with it. Don't get me started on the networking or custom init put in by Microsoft. Systemctl calls don't work.

It is most definitely not just like regular Linux.

I actually used it pretty extensively for years before I figured out it was causing more friction than it was worth. It's convenient, I'll give you that, but again, it's objectively worse than the other tools available. You should try them.

[Osiris]

What's the big deal if he likes it? It works for him. It's fine.

[tragictrash]

Just because someone likes and uses something doesn't mean there aren't better alternatives that they could benefit from using and learning about.

[8note]

X servers suck though.

Vscode renders sharply without having to do extra work.

Both wsls are reasonably enjoyable. Much better than ssh-ing to a Linux host

[tragictrash]

You realize your using an x server to do that, right? It's just one thats bundled in with windows, and you don't have to configure.

[Osiris]

I thought vs code ran natively as a Windows app and just used a remote connection to wsl to do file management and run cli commands ?

I don't think vs code is running inside the wsl environment directly.

[tragictrash]

There's a couple ways you can do this. The latest revision of WSL lets you run Linux gui apps that appear in a x server window, and you can pin them to the taskbar/start menu. That is definitely using a built in x server.

Opening vscode in windows and opening the Linux vm's file through the "filesystem"(it's a network share) is unstable. You really have to open vscode in Linux, or run it in windows and ssh into the virtual machine for it to work well.