[roelschroeven]

Wouldn't it be easier to use WSL? Microsoft has done al the hard work in getting native Linux code to run on Windows. I don't know how bare-bones you want it to be, but if you install Debian in WSL without extra packages, that seems pretty bare-bone to me. And it seems to me you avoid unnecessary friction from switching from OpenBSD to Linux later on.

WSL requires Windows 10 or 11 though.

[cess11]

Installing WSL was much harder than 'download and double click EXE' when I last did it. The 'app' shop installed something botched I now can't easily get rid of and then I had to do a few Powershell incantations to actually get an install that boots a Linux-like terminal. If I had to use Linux under Windows more than a few hours per year I'd Hyper-V it instead.

I'd also guess 'telemetry' pumps out all one does in WSL, while this might leak less of what the kids are doing.

[ryao]

I doubt that, since telemetry slows things down and it has been found that software runs faster under WSL than native Windows. A quick search found this, which shows a substantial performance difference for the same thing between native Windows and WSL:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vtc0fy/wsl2_faster_th...

There have been others who observed the same in the past (and with WSL1), although I do not have a list. I recall reading libc telemetry hooks on Windows that are absent as being claimed to be the cause, but I cannot find the page where I read that. The Reddit post has the alternative suggestion that process creation speed is the cause.

[cess11]

Suggesting that the entirety of the performance difference between Windows and WSL is due to telemetry is by far the weirdest MICROS~1 apologia I've come across.

Performance on my bare metal Linux machines is even better. Do you consider this to be sufficient proof that WSL has telemetry hooked into it?

[ryao]

No, since Windows is less efficient in general.

[cess11]

OK, so you agree that your argument was flawed.

[Firehawke]

Installing WSL2 as of the latest versions of Windows is as simple as "wsl --install" to get a basic Ubuntu install set up. It'll do all the steps, including turning on all necessary Windows features, in a single command.

[robohoe]

And you’re still locked in the Microsoft ecosystem.