Windows and Linux: Together at Last?

[@AdenMocca]

Best video on WSL setup and use - definitely interested in the speed test. I've listened to people who work on the WSL project in podcasts and none of them layed down the underlying technologies as clearly as you did. Very good work!

[@Eric-kx7do]

I did real-time system development on AmigaDos back in the 90s. It was amazing how fast and efficient the OS was running on fairly low end hardware.

[@GnuReligion]

Yes, both Winders and Linux distros should go on a diet. I think CP/M fit on a page of memory.

[@markuskuhn9375]

@@GnuReligion Distributions like Tiny Core Linux still fit in about 16 MB of RAM, using busybox as the shell.

[@GnuReligion]

@@markuskuhn9375 Yup yup. Slax is pretty cool too. A while back, one could also put ext2fs on in a VFAT directory with UMSDOS. But seriously, it is never a problem shrinking an NTFS, to make room for dual booting, or booting from a pen drive. Preinstall Environments, resizing partitions, and dual booting may as well be alien technology for most users. Will BusyBox on a Pi Pico?

[@Wizardess]

@@GnuReligion Define page. Or do you mean CP/M in the x86 world? In the 8080 world it ran on a processor without pages - until you wanted to extend its memory range beyond 64k. (And I did commit that sin, too.) {o.o}

[@GnuReligion]

@@Wizardess Well, I think you can assume that I meant the amount of memory addressed 8-bits at a time, with 8 bits. But I was wrong anyway, just repeating something heard long ago. Looked up the specs for CP/M 3, and it takes up about 12.5k.

[@erkinalp]

Certain points not mentioned in the video: "sudo apt upgrade" actually only upgrades packages that can safely be upgraded without removing any. For a full upgrade, you should use "sudo apt dist-upgrade" instead. "sudo service apache2 start" invokes systemd under the hood. To invoke systemd more directly, you should use "systemctl start apache2" (without sudo, as systemctl will ask for elevation by itself if necessary) instead.

[@illya3859]

As someone who cares about privacy, free software, the customisation, and the Linux security model, WSL is not an option for me, I prefer getting the parts of Windows I need through Wine instead. But when I am required by work example to run Windows, I am very grateful to still have access to Linux via WSL. and have grown to appreciate it together with Windows Terminal a lot.

[@marcin2x4]

Moving to WSL2 was one of the first steps I undertook when moving towards cloud/data engineer roles. It helped me in learning filesystem and basic linux commands. I'm using WSL2 for most of my portfolio projects. Thx for the video to spread the word Dave!

[@Dorff_Meister]

I was so happy when WSL came around. It was SO NICE to not need to maintain Cygwin, anymore (which was imperfect but completely usable).

[@JuanManuelCuchilloRodriguez]

I use WSL2 every day for work. I actually run many GPU based AI libraries using Windows 11 + WSL2 + Docker + NVIDIA Container. It is easy and simple.

[@lashlarue59]

Were you able to run the graphical CUDA examples under WSL2?

[@MichaelMantion]

This kinda makes me cry. AI on windows. Hey you do you, hopefully you will make the move to linux sooner then later.

[@eadweard.]

@@MichaelMantion You remind me of the Jehovah's Witnesses, calling at your door uninvited, telling you that they hope you come to Jesus one day.

[@tehs3raph1m]

Hey I know some of those words...

[@herauthon]

We bring the Light - we bring you LAMP !

[@rh4009]

Dave, many thanks in advance for the drag-racing episode. I'd also like to know how memory and disk/filesystem are being partitioned, as well as GPU. I'm hoping you will include at least one game performance (FPS) analysis in your drag-racing episode. The thought of frankensteining two+ personalities on one computer motherboard is interesting, but invites many a question. How does the clipboard get shared between linux/windows? What about drag and drop? Perhaps there is room for an episode dedicated to the downsides of WSL2. So far you've mentioned a few that seem acceptable compromises for me, but each viewer would have their own expectations.

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

Completely not related here...... Bill Gates Drag-Races in his spare time now. We all seen it coming. Wsl 2.0 “WokeShitLiberals”

[@forbiddenera]

Yes. Moar deeper.

[@Immudzen]

Great video. I love seeing more stuff on WSL. WSL completely changed how I did the research for my PhD and it made a huge difference. I even used WSL2 and fuse to mount a remote computer over ssh as a directory on Linux and share it to Windows. It made it easy to drag and drop files, check results and all over an encrypted connection completely transparently.

[@jasonroos5781]

Thanks for that idea! Im def stealing that.

[@germancaperarojas4023]

Man, freaking killer video. Didn't knew about wsl. Can't wait to push those commands to my test machine.

[@theBoomerDoomer]

Great video, Dave! 👍VSCode + WSL has been a godsend. I use it every day with my work and it makes life so much easier. Having been trapped in a locked-down corporate environment on Windows with little else available to me besides VirtualBox for years, when WSL became available, I quickly enabled it on my company laptop before it could be 'hidden' from me as an option. 😂Fast forward a few years, and I'm given a Mac at my current company... after months of hell with that thing, I got Windows back and enabling WSL was literally the first thing I did on the new laptop. My life is so much better for it, as I have a pretty stable 'regular' desktop environment in Windows 10 (the last few versions of MacOS have NOT been as stable in my experience, having daily driven both on personal and work machines), and I get to have all the fun tools for my work in the Linux VM under WSL2. For me, this has definitely been the best tool for every job I've needed to do.

[@Nad70Radio]

As a French learning English, your videos are very helpful to improve my understanding of English, but also to learn so many things about OS we use everyday. Thanks for that!

[@midtskogen]

I switched from AmigaOS to Linux in 1992 and have never been a Windows user besides having to use NT (saved by cygwin) a few months for work in the mid 90's (NT was in my opinion the first proper modern OS from Microsoft). It's nice to see how far Windows has come since the days when it basically was a messy DOS application which could be ignored if it wasn't for the pain of buying a PC without having to pay for Windows. If only it could become as easy as in this video to install and use Windows on a Linux computer.

[@MichaelMantion]

I didn't mind it when it was a messy dos app. I also didn't mind NT5/Win2k. But most of the crap windows make is just so bulky yet restrictive.

[@CFSworks]

@Whyworry Street I second this but would like to add: What kinds of bugs do you remember encountering in those early days?

[@outbackchillin5628]

I do run windows on my linux machine in a VM .. but not as easy as this !

[@timurtheterrible4062]

Well, there's Wine.

[@RnRJohnny]

I ran Windows NT4 under Linux Redhat with VMWare back in the early 2000s. I was impressed with AmigaOS in the early 90s seeing it on a friends machine.

[@JimDooley]

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I would love to see benchmarks for WSL vs Linux on bear metal.

[@cyndicorinne]

As a former computer science professor, I like your concise description of the WSL and what it means for the user. As well, I had a professor when I was in college for operating systems who was also quite practical, and the text was Custer’s Inside Windows NT. All to say, I’m really enjoying your videos. Not only the windows related ones but also the interview with the Commodore 64 developer.

[@TheRhazhiel]

Amazing video, i have experimented with WSL, but you manage to pack a deep dive into 16 mins. Cheers Dave!

[@matthyslaubscher8151]

Mr Plummer. Please never stop sharing content and your opinions/thoughts. Thank you for everything upto now. Thank 👍

[@jas_bataille]

That skit at the beginning is pure comedy gold. The production value of KZbin videos never cease to amaze me!!!

[@franciscopires3806]

Excelent video!! I would love to hear more Commodore Amiga stories :)

[@TerryLawrence001]

Awesome!! It's one of those "I never knew you could do that, but will always do it that way from now on" moments

[@argledotorg]

Switch user do. Use "sudo -u user" to switch to a user other than root [edit] Use case: manage services without escalating all the way to root. Really common for DB work in PostgreSQL and Oracle.

[@JohnPMiller]

Thanks! I was about to write the same thing. The default for the "su" command is root user, so people started guessing that it meant superuser, which it doesn't.

[@argledotorg]

@@JohnPMiller it's a reasonable guess given the common use and the default

[@akasickform]

In terms of Windows based SoC dev, you've just unlocked the door for me in this one single video

[@unvergebeneid]

WSL is an amazing technology and makes Windows much more useful!

[@4cps777]

KVM is an even more amazing technology and makes Linux better for showing Windows users how virtualization works. Also, it can be used to run VPSs.

[@unvergebeneid]

@@gorak9000 not a huge fan of KDE myself but that's the nice thing on Linux: you have a choice. Not just in terms of personal preferences but also in terms of the hardware you're using. My mom is using a Laptop some archeologist found in a cave in the Great Rift Valley (probably) but LXDE still runs perfectly fine on it.

[@4cps777]

@@gorak9000 Even minimal WM setups can still be made into full-fledged DEs. Everything about that assumption is just wrong,

[@unvergebeneid]

@@gorak9000 I'm a Gnome guy myself. Maybe I'll give KDE a go again some day but right now, I'm happy with what I have. I was never particularly fond of the look of Qt. LXDE's default settings on Lubuntu look fine IMHO. I do use Okular as my PDF reader though, funny you mentioned that :)

[@4cps777]

@@GoogleDoesEvil KVM was merged into the mainline Linux kernel in v2.6.20 which was released an entire year before Hyper-V was first released. Also, KVM is better than Hyper-V for most use cases I can think of.

[@podunkis]

Great video. I was already familiar with WSL, yet almost everything you covered was of value to me. This is one of those videos that is practical on its own, but it also gives you enough information to more effectively start the deep-dive process.

[@henrybecker2842]

Thank you Dave. That was very interesting and educational.

[@MagicMan123ification]

Can confirm.

[@GerhardusScheltema]

Awesome video Dave, I have been using Linux since 1996, but only recenty started using VSCode with WSL for small python and bash script development, now I cannot imagine my life without and kick myself everyday for not discovering it earlier.

[@scottharvey-davies1607]

As an advocate of both windows and linux, not to mention BSD/OSX. Thank you for a down to earth walk through of another option to dual booting.

[@darpandaswani04]

i dont know anything about Linus , is it good to go with wsl or should i prefer dual booting , i dont want my windows to get damage

[@MrGryph78]

I've been tinkering with WSL for a while now, but having returned to uni at the start of the year, the true power of WSL as a developer tool has me really impressed. VS code running on Windows can connect directly to the WSL instance and handle the compilation and running of code on the linux side of things, along with git and all the toolchain goodness that is so easy to install and use under linux. The addition of WSLg (gui apps being able to be run as windows on the Windows side of things) has just made thing even better. You can even work with CUDA from within your linux install as the GPU can now be accessed directly from the WSL instance, so cool.

[@yclept9]

I've run Cygwin under windows for 20 years. That more intimate connection works better in many ways, among them /dev/clipboard

[@BGDMusic]

i have cygwin but i don't know how to do anything and it feels like just a linux command like

[@gildersleeve5228]

Favorite video so far. Please keep them coming!

[@bertnijhof5413]

I run Linux and Windows side by side since 2009 using Virtualbox. My oldest still running VMs are Windows XP Home (Dutch version) and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, both installed and activated in April 2010. Those VMs survived 3 PCs and 4 CPUs (Pentium 4 HT; Phenom X3; Phenom II X4 and Ryzen 3 2200G). My Host OS is a minimal install of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on the OpenZFS 2.1.4 file system. The most frequently used VMs are: - Xubuntu 22.04 LTS for all communication apps (email; whatsapp; skype; kdeconnect; etc), the VM is loaded almost always. - Ubuntu 16.04 ESM used exclusively for my financials. The VM is encrypted, supported till 2026 and it uses the latest snaps for Firefox and LibreOffice. - Windows XP Home to play the wma copies of my LPs and CDs with WoW and TrueBass effects. My other main VMs are: - Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS for multimedia. - Ubuntu 22.04 LTS for trying new apps and for experiments, like running Dosshell; WordPerect 5.1 and Wolfenstein-3D in DOSBOX :) - Windows 11 Pro. The hardware from early 2019 is a Ryzen 3 2200G; 16GB DDR4 (3000MHz); 512GB SP nvme-SSD (3400/2300MB/s) and some leftovers from the Phenoms; 500GB and 1TB HDDs supported by 128GB sata-SSD now used as cache (L2ARC). For OpenZFS the memory cache (L1ARC) is limited to 4GB. All storage and all caches are lz4 compressed. Linux OSes boot in 9 to 14 seconds, Windows XP in ~16 to 25 seconds and Windows 11 in 20 to 30 seconds all dependent on the L1ARC memory cache content of the Host. My all time favorite OSes are available as VBox VM and they are: Windows for Workgroups 3.11; Windows XP Home; Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS/ESM :)

[@harryhall4001]

I don't think Virtual Box is really that performant. Since you on Linux your better of using something based on KVM. This also supports some experimental graphics acceleration using VirGL. There is also the possibility to use VMWare that has even better graphics support. I am actually kind of impressed this runs decently on a 2200G as these aren't high end processors or that new. A modern Ryzen 5 or Alder lake i5 would be better.

[@javabeanz8549]

I don't know how easy it would be to get it as a VM image, but my favorite Windows was XP Pro SP3. If it weren't for the bad habits of rearranging network masks randomly and moving which monitor gets which part of the desktop seemingly randomly, it would have been Windows 7 Pro SP1.

[@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT]

Very cool, brother! Very cool....

[@sphbecker]

Not the same thing. Running a VM is basically as isolated as duel booting, but with both running at the same time. This approach basically gives your Windows multiple personality disorder, it becomes both systems.

[@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT]

@@sphbecker humorous, but not accurate.

[@alitayyab693]

Super great video makes excited to learn more and get started! Love the "stay organized" motto !!

[@CoreyThompson73]

ifconfig is depreciated (even though I still use it all the time).. ip is the "replacement" command, ip addr will give you the addresses.... ip should be installed by default and won't require the iptools package

[@5lickwi11]

Really enjoy when you dive into WSL. It's awesome to watch you tinker around with it

[@Sh0nX]

But, you can't do the reverse, use Linux's UI (X11 or Wayland) and run Windows side by side and that i mean *replace* the Windows taskbar, etc and just use Linux as the main display ie, with KDE/GNOME running Windows apps in reverse... so its still Windows controlling the UI then I'd consider Linux and Windows 'together', this isn't .. fully..

[@bigal8604]

Great video Dave and thanks!! I successfully installed WSL and performed all updates as you did in the video on my older Asus M77 and i7-3770K at 3.50GHZ 4 cores. Only issue to troubleshoot is launching Audacity results in a cascade of exceptions. Cool stuff!!

[@ggiiaaccoommoo]

When I was a freshman in College (in 2002, in Italy), you were either a Windows guy or a Linux guy. I was a Linux guy. We would have (verbal) fights all the time with the Windows people, arguing that Microsoft is evil for this and that reason. These things today feel like world peace to me. I'm very happy how both Microsoft and the open source community evolved in the past years.

[@warrenb2856]

Really? I was a Microsoft Systems Engineer is the 90s. Just moved to Ubuntu and love it! Today, I am like you were in 2002 and today you are like I was in 2002. You were right about Microsoft in 2002, I never could understand how they could be so evil in the 90s. Maybe they have changed. LOL

[@paulroemer5992]

WSL 2.0 sounds interesting and I can think of a lot of potential uses to have Linux and Windows available at the same time. This is what I like about your channel you never know what surprise is next. Hope to here more about WSL!

[@AlexSeesing]

Great tutorial. Watched it twice as it contains a lot of useful information

[@colingale]

Thankyou sooo much for the tip on WSl2 and serial ports, that was the last hurdle for me to import my full linux dev environment into windows.

[@michael.w.salter]

As a retired programmer of 35 years, I hate windows. It was the most frustrating development environment, especially after patches when things would break! I have a Windows laptop, but only use it for certain apps. As I use Android, and a little linux, your video has caught my interest. I'm going to give this a try. Thanks for the video Dave.

[@crazymarko1278]

This is the most useful video I've seen in quite a while. Major kudos!

[@JamesJones-zt2yx]

"Microsoft has embraced Linux..." Sorry, I can't help asking myself when the extend stage starts.

[@igorthelight]

Well... Most developers don't need a separate Linux install because of WSL so... ;-)

[@igorthelight]

@@mojojojo1529 100% agree

[@PaulRandle-sc8qk]

Microsoft NEEDS linux to compete with AWS.

[@---vw9cc]

As a long time WSL Fan I am simple, I see someone talking about it, and I hit like and subscribe :D

[@ducky1681]

1:23 Embrace... sound familiar? Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[@eadweard.]

Yeah and Khrushchev once said "We will bury you", but if someone were still fretting about that now then you'd rightly consider them an obsessive crackpot.

[@briankendall1978]

I just recently encountered WSL for the first time, while installing Docker desktop on a Windows laptop. Seeing this video was interesting and helped me to understand what is probably going on with Docker desktop.

[@jeremiahlyleseditor437]

Excellent topic. I never knew that windows 10 integrated linux this easy. Great Work

[@JacobP81]

Before I even started watching this I knew it was gonna be a WSL video. Great job, great video. Thanks.

[@calidusebhd1790]

Embrace, extend, and extinguish

[@sortof3337]

Your book is really really good. I can already see how much better my life will be after I implement it in my life.

[@evanbarnes9984]

This seriously kicks ass! I was considering dual booting my PC, but this looks even better to me. I'd rather have both OSes able to run in parallel like this, instead of rebooting to switch

[@paulie-g]

@@sprinteroz2239 Just run Windows in a VM for the (rare) cases when you need a Windows-only application that doesn't run with Wine. That way when Windows breaks, needs a reinstall or whatever else, you still have a fully functional box. You also get to run a rolling-release Linux distro like Arch or SUSE Tumbleweed or whatever else you choose rather than the disappointing choices in WSL.

[@sphbecker]

@@paulie-g you are missing the point of WSL. Either system could host the other as a VM, that is early 2000s stuff. WSL (which admittedly has always been around a very long time, but often overlooked), has a totally different goal, use both sets of software on the same system. With a VM you have two totally different file systems, which can be a pain.

[@paulie-g]

@@sphbecker Not necessarily, Linux hosting a Windows VM has a plethora of options for filesystem sharing. And no, VMs performant enough for use is *not* "early 2000s stuff". I know, I was there, and the best performance story was a hacked Linux kernel in the form of Virtuozzo that performed well enough precisely because it wasn't a VM. Server use cases only as well. Everything else was garbage at that point. I am *not* missing the point of WSL (embrace, extend, extinguish). I simply expressed my opinion that it's not worth giving up distro choice *or* running a system that doesn't break randomly and irrecoverably on top of one that does, all just in order to run Windows with WSL and get some more integration. There is so little no-alternative Windows-only software left that it's just not worth running Windows except in a VM unless you spend all day in that sort of software (eg as a pro video editor, photoshop jockey, maybe some specific CAD or old EDA toolchains).

[@sphbecker]

@@paulie-g it all comes down to your goal. I know the technology is totally different, but running WSL on Windows has a similar user experience to running Wine apps on Linux. If your goal is side-by-side multi platform apps and want the host to be Windows, then it is a good fit. If that isn’t your goal, then a Linux host or Linux VM may be a better fit. And yes, you can find a different way to do most things WSL does. My point was around what it does out of the box, I wasn’t saying it does things that would be impossible without it.

[@aloeisthestuff9622]

Cute Reeses Cup advert. Simpler action is to use 2 drives and install whatever sytem on ONE at a time with the other unplugged. Then plug in and chose which drive at boot. Saves many headaches and wasted time in the long run. Heck, I am TRI booting on this machine at this time, Win 11, Win 7, Linux Mint.

[@satiric_]

One thing to remember - Microsoft in its infinite wisdom has decided to shaft those of us who don't like Windows 11, and the graphical features of WSL are only usable in Windows 11. As far as I can see, there's no technical reason as to why this should be - they just decided to give a bunch of people the finger to force people into a same-but-slightly-worse OS.

[@esphilee]

"embrace, extend, and exterminate"

[@NIronwolf]

Is that why I can't get the xclock etc to run? I'm still on 10 because my CPU "isn't supported".

[@skyeisfullyawesome]

You can install an x-server locally on Win10 and have graphical apps from both WSL1 and WSL2 forward to that still, but I agree. The only feature I want from Win11 is the updated WSL2, but so many of the UI changes are extremely off-putting

[@sprinteroz2239]

@@skyeisfullyawesome I use a tool called classic shell it is free and will change your menu and file system to work like windows 7 much easier to navigate new windows as it stays the way you want and you can change the look and function to what yo want, also you can turn it on and off so you can go back to windows version you are running, 10 out of 10 program

[@robonator2945]

​@@skyeisfullyawesome honestly I updated and, after using O&O shut up 10 (which works on 11 as well) to remove all the spyware, then changing the Mac wannabe centre taskbar back to normal it feels pretty normal to me. The rounded corners are a bit off putting, but they're pretty minor, and everything else was basically just relearning some basic shit. Of course I'm still planning on switching to linux soon because I shouldn't have to go through all that effort just to update, but still.

[@cfrend]

This is amazing. WSL & WSL2 enabled Docker Desktop's Kubernetes cluster feature as well. Windows/Linux/CloudNative this is such a huge range of right-tool-right-job

[@tylerbloom4830]

This is really cool! A great thing for folks that want to try out Linux for the first time. However, as a desktop Linux user, I can't live without my i3 windows manager...

[@thesilentgeneration]

You are such a bright person. Some of us though are not so bright or experienced. However, ignoring all the tech talk, this seems a pretty straightforward way to run both. To me, it beats downloading VirtualBox then creating a USB flash drive and booting up from there. It saves a lot of time.

[@UserNotReady]

Dave, you missed a step setting up VSCode to connect to WSL (or maybe I missed it in your vid), but you need to make sure you have installed the Remote - WSL extension inside of VSCode first. If the extension is not installed, VSCode will otherwise open the linux folder fully in Windows without giving you the integration. (And thanks for making great content like this)

[@DavesGarage]

But I didn't set it up, and it was a brand new machine... is it possible it's coming down automatically with the current versions of VSCode? I was careful to use a new machine so I didn't skip any install steps, but it's possible!

[@iuse4rchbtw]

@@DavesGarage i think vscode will automatically download (and install) the remote extension when you first start it up in wsl. btw, love your vids 😉

[@tim000x3]

I think this was added automatically when you do the wsl --install as opposed to doing each step manually like how it used to be done with wsl 1.

[@abeharris9938]

finally ... thank you so much ... ive been curious about this for a long while now. thanks for the clear instruction and demo

[@Muzer0]

Your chown command is a bit of a hacky solution. The cleaner way would be to find out which group your system is creating those devices under (I think on Ubuntu it might be dialout by default, because serial devices were often dial-up modems) and then adding your user to that group by using sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER (the -a being immensely important here, otherwise all your groups will be replaced with dialout rather than dialout being appended to the list), and finally opening a new terminal session to pick up the change.

[@jasonsachinger3276]

You don't need to separate the -a -G. It can be "sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER"

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@jasonsachinger3276 True, but it's helpful for any newbie reading it to understand those are two options.

[@DamienSawyer]

Regards the -a, wow! What a footgun!

[@sigmond_meliamne]

Haven't tried this with TTY devices, but I assume you could also use udev rules to have finer control over which devices are accessible by the user, so a random TTY device that gets plugged in isn't immediately available in user space. Though with WSL, the act of needing to forward the device to the subsystem may serve as enough security

[@ehjelle]

Just do sudo adduser dave dialout. It will add the group to the user.

[@johnmiddleton8923]

Dave- Outstanding! In the last sixteen minutes I have been given access to more direct usable information then from a week of attending a class. My issue is that I’m not a high bandwidth communicator; so, as I’m taking notes, I’m constantly pressing the left directional key and replaying the key points, as there are many. Let the drag race begin. Thanks As an aside, the book was great.

[@TweakerThomasVB]

As usual a very interesting video 😄. You pointed out the IP address can be found with 'ifconfig'. But it turns out net-tools has become obsolete and is therefor no longer installed by default on most modern Linux distributions. The modern way is to use 'ip addr' or simply 'ip a', if you want to add statistics to the output you use 'ip -s a'.

[@lesliesavage9229]

Without installing anything, ifconfig runs fine on Linux Mint.

[@JamieStuff]

@@lesliesavage9229 That's because Ubuntu (which Mint is derived from) still has it. The three "foundational" distributions (Arch, Debian, and Red Hat) have all deprecated the older 'net-tools' package, which contains ifconfig, and are now using the 'iproute2' package.

[@imikla]

Ha! We both used the chocolate in the peanut butter clip in a KZbin video! Great video! Subbed and liked. Also bought your book (for… reasons). I'm looking forward to reading it!

[@outbackchillin5628]

Awesome ! I wasn't aware of this . I hate that I have to use windows sometimes , and this looks like a much better way than dual booting . Thanks for showing .. and yes .. show more please !

[@JustinEmlay]

Hardware GPU support was only recently added. It's no where near 100% yet. WSL is not a full replacement.

[@RealGingerTea]

Can you also test, windows vs windows with wsl2 installed? Does it add any latency to audio devices or soundcards? And does it add any performance penalty to windows itself?

[@CTimmerman]

@@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT This video has been up for less than 2 hours and already has over 4000 views. I think many viewers would have similar hardware, so devoting a few seconds in the video would save thousands of hours and GBs.

[@zolexander1991]

Actually there is a small latency between the GPU and the audio device, I tested it with a Firefox browser( video play) - I had around 80-150 ms sound latency on Firefox browser on Ubuntu 20.04 in WSLg. It's only a small one, but hopefully later it can be a lot less. I think the WSL2 audio, was made through pulseaudio networkshare. I love WSLg, but it does'nt have native systemd and snap support so I must to wait for a better version.

[@excessionary]

@@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT Whoa there, no need to be so angry... While the specifics are going to vary somewhat between systems, the question of whether (Windows) performance penalties result from installing WSL, and therefore migrating bare metal Windows into a VM, seems both valid and interesting. The statistics wouldn't be precisely the same on other people's systems compared to Dave's obviously, but I very much doubt anyone was expecting that. A general indicator is still useful, and may satisfy one's curiosity. What Dave does on his channel is entirely up to him of course, but I don't think suggestions should be ridiculed.

[@EricParker]

It does but in most cases it's not super noticeable. It does generally make non hyper-V vm software unusable on your system (virtualbox / vmware "support" running with Hyper-V enabled but it is a slideshow).

[@excessionary]

@@EricParker Good overview, much appreciated!

[@JimFikes]

Thanks, Dave. This was a fantastic video. Thanks for showing each of your steps.

[@matthewrease2376]

First of all: WSL (2) is really cool, I won't lie. It works very well, and provides essentially bare metal performance. But there's one problem: I (and many others) don't want Linux and Windows to be "together". I want this proprietary OS as far away from what I love as possible, but to be fair, this isn't for Linux users, it's for Windows users. Also, Microsoft isn't truly embracing Linux - they can't, it's a competitor. WSL is a hugely smart move for dastardly reasons: it will stop many people from moving to Linux. Because why should they, when WSL exists?

[@lesliesavage9229]

They will also think Linux works badly, like having problems with setting up the USB ports, when in reality on bare metal that isn't the case.

[@SuperDavidEF]

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

[@PixLgams]

@@lesliesavage9229 They will think Linux is only good for it's terminal. Admittedly the terminal is the best part, but it's how everything is consistent, customizable and works together that counts. When everything's a nail, all you need is a hammer. Not to mention that Linux has more efficient desktop environments than Windows. Let me replace Windows' desktop with KDE Plasma already!

[@lesliesavage9229]

@@PixLgams I switched to Linux, and I need to use Windows from time to time because I work on other people's computers, and I find Windows very frustrating, now that I use Linux daily. It's not just one thing either, but a whole bunch of things. The desktop in Linux is incredible compared to Windows, and Microsoft has no excuses for doing a half backwards job of it. Then Linux is just plain fast and streamlined compared to Windows. Not to mention, Linux isn't selling your data to everyone who wants to take a look at it. Windows has gotten better at virus protection, but is that because Linux is their main competitor? Microsoft keeps copying Linux, instead of doing a good job from the beginning.

[@lesliesavage9229]

@@SuperDavidEF You are absolutely right.

[@hstrinzel]

Yes, THANK YOU in advance for the speed comparison with Linux vs Virtualized vs Windows... GREAT VIDEO!

[@TobiasTimpe]

Linux filesystem support (ext, btrfs, ZFS) on Windows would be nice, just like .tar, .rar, .gzip extraction etc.

[@eadweard.]

It's there. You can mount any ext-based etc vhdx file.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

There's an experimental native BTRFS support. EXT still requires third party software.

[@TobiasTimpe]

@@eadweard. Does it work for flash drives yet?

[@eadweard.]

@@TobiasTimpe I _believe_ so. You would need to pass it through as a USB device. I don't know if the default WSL kernel includes mass storage drivers though, so it might need some extra fiddling if not. Edit: I'm assuming you mean EXT formated flash drives.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Windows doesn’t do add-on filesystems very well. The kernel itself makes too many assumptions about NTFS.

[@floydffrogfloydffrog7453]

I clicked on this on a whim expecting another light weight discussion of VMs couched in terms like "Wow It's amazing". Imagine my delight to learn about WSL1 and 2, especially since I'd turned my back on things MS quite some time ago. I'm pretty in love with the Pop_OS! desktop and with only a few exceptions gaming on Linux is pretty much a thing now so I don't really have any reasons to start running Windows again. But once in a while I need to dual boot Windows to do something and so I can't carry on like Windows doesn't exist for me. Anyhow, my point is that not only is this video informative in a dense and valuable manner but the information is fresh, clear, and accessible, which is not something you can say about most technical videos. Well done!

[@bluehatguy4279]

I use a Linux system as my daily driver, and keep a Windows machine around for games, and a DOS machine around for other games. ...actually a lot of machines, but that's not important... I can see how WSL might be attractive if you actually liked the Windows interface and had no personal investment in using the filesystems on Linux, but I can't say that I personally care for it at this time. That's ignoring that I don't like for Windows to be the one in charge of installing and updating my Linux. If I have to pick a GUI to live with, it's going to be one of the options on Linux. Windows had a nice GUI way back, but they've kinda gone off the rails and never climbed back on. I have often wished I could replace the GUI of Windows with that of Linux. If I could run Plasma Desktop or XFCE Desktop natively on Windows, I wouldn't even care if I were on Win 7, 10 or 11, because the choice of Windows would be reduced to what features I still needed to play my games. Running these GUI options may be possible under WSL, but it's not the same as being the actual GUI of the system when it lives in a different bottle. If I'm on a Windows system, then I still need that GUI to be able to launch Windows software. I get closer to what I want by running WINE under Linux, but of course, that comes with its own set of problems when games are the goal. WINE is a nice app, but Windows is a moving target, so WINE is forever chasing taillights.

[@jasonroos5781]

Ive eventually gotten used to the win 11 UI but man the things they did to make it tablet and surface friendly are just unforgivable... grr.

[@stratfanstl]

Fantastic explanation and how-to. Concise and informative. I've tried WSL v1 but will try this new version.

[@denvera1g1]

What i'd like to do is install SteamOS through WSL2, i think it would be fun to see how well games run on both windows and linux with DXVK, sure Ubuntui can do basically the same thing, but i like the idea of having a one-stop-shop OS for playing games. Its just too bad you cant hybernate the OS that your not using at the moment without going through the trouble of setting up a traditional hypervisors with separate KVM for each guest

[@notjustforhackers4252]

Steam OS. why? just install MESA, WINE, gamescope, X11 and Steam. ( I'm willing to bet it won't work though ).

[@joncppl]

wsl has no vulkan support (yet). :(

[@entelin]

That will almost certainly never be a thing. You would need to passthrough your gpu into the vm to get reasonable performance, except now windows would be without one unless you have two cards... You can do this on linux actually, but even so I really recommend against adding additional layers between you and the game.

[@denvera1g1]

@@entelin While i dont disagree that placing a hypervisor between the OS and metal is not ideal, it works fine, this is how you get wonderful videos like the game streaming server series from Craft Computing. IF your hypervisor could switch the GPU on the fly, you'd only need one GPU for the actively displayed guest OS. This is really the only way this would be feasable, as without live switching between guests, you'd have to restart, and at that point just dual boot. You could use the APU for the 'backgreound' OS, and the more powerful GPU you select for the active OS, and when switching between OSes, it just swaps the GPU, maybe suspending any game to RAM/disk.

[@denvera1g1]

@@notjustforhackers4252 I dont think it would work without a way for the hypervisor to swap GPUs between guest OSes without bringing either of them down. If it has to bring either of them down, you might as well just dual boot. Right now if you have a GPU that supports partitioning, like the Radeon Instinct Mi25, or any of the Tesla/Grid cards from the past..... 6 years? you can already do this and have multiple gaming VMs running at the same time. What i propose is a normal computer, with normal GPU, that is able to 'suspend' or place the OS you're not using in the background, say, running on the E cores, or the second chiplet, and dynamically select which OS gets which GPU(or no GPU if you only have one that doesnt support partitioning), i dont know of any hypervisor that supports this without restarting the guest OSes where this kind of hardware configure change occurs

[@joemelnick]

Dave, great video. Speed Test +1. I have been using WSL for a couple years. Did not know that you could install and run graphical linux applications. Very cool. Thank you.

[@LCTRgames]

As both Windows and Linux are running under the Hypervisor I'm presuming that both will suffer a performance penalty compared to bare metal? Would be interested to know if you could run a standardised test on both (code compile, Geekbench, etc) and see which of the 2 are effected more by the Hypervisor layer.

[@esenterre]

Awesome video Dave! Thanks it's very interesting!

[@guavaeater7150]

Hi Dave, could you include GPU performance benchmarks comparing the performance of 3D apps under WSL to native Windows and Linux?

[@leavemealone535]

I didn't know about WSL for the longest time! Until I heard you talking about it in another video. Truly the best of both worlds!

[@ltxr9973]

It would be pretty cool if there was a way to replace dwm with a window manager like xfce or i3.

[@pramanjtechnologies2869]

Hi Dave , this is the best video that I have seen for an introduction of WSL 2 ! Thanks a lot for the same. I needed Linux for running react native and was about to install it on a VM but someone told me about WSL 2 and I tried to search for an introduction to it. This video explained it to me the best! I installed it on my windows 11 machine as per your video. However, for me the graphics tools like xclock, xcalc, gimp are not working properly! The applications open but graphics is all distorted! I hope the VC Code works for me , that's what my primary interest is. Will appreciate your comments.

[@jimsmindonline]

USB is one thing that still doesn't seem good enough yet. I'd be interested to see it tested to compare the difference in transfer speed. (I suspect it's way lower) I tried setting up a DVR system with a USB 2 sat tuner. I know it works perfectly on both my 'pure' Linux and Windows boxes. In WSL it constantly glitched out as if the data rate was too low.

[@aloeisthestuff9622]

Try some of the home brew USB enclosures for NVME sticks and watch them grow wings and Fly. Still depends on what they are plugged in to.

[@giga-chicken]

Dude, you're a lifesaver, I had no idea that hyperv supported nested virtual machines, but now after running that command I can run docker on my VM.

[@DavesGarage]

Glad I could help!

[@makethingsbetter]

It’s come a long way since the 90’s has Linux. I was a HP-UX admin back then, 4 node cluster, man we made that thing dance! I would be interested in the wsl threading capabilities vs windows. It seems to be limited in Win10, only limited like the network sessions are limited, registry hack required, but maybe it’s fixed in later editions of win10

[@hanro50]

As a Linux user. You're 100% correct. Sudo stands for super user do. You can actually get into the root account with the su command. This is needed on Debian as the net install version of Debian doesn't ship with sudo.

[@-zero-]

I use it the other way around, I use linux for everything, only when I need adobe suite boot windows using kvm from linux.

[@jessepollard7132]

MUCH more secure than using Windows for the hypervisor.

[@slycordinator]

While lots of Linux sites say differently, I think sudo really stands for "switch user do". The older su command is for switching to another user. When a user is not specified, it defaults to the root/superuser. But you can still use it to switch to any user. And then sudo allows you to run (do) commands as another user. Like su, it defaults to the root/superuser. But in general, you can have it run commands as any user of your choosing. Edit: On newer versions of Linux that no longer include ifconfig, you likely have the ip or ip-route package that's mostly replaced it. 1) "ip a" gives you all the ip information of all devices 2) "ip -4 a" is same for only ipv4 3) "ip -6 a" and same for only v6

[@MikaelMurstam]

super user do

[@slycordinator]

@@MikaelMurstam I'm saying that I feel that it's not superuser do, since while it defaults to run things as the superuser, it allows you to run programs as *any* user (including the superuser).

[@snuggie12]

@@slycordinator you are correct. Simply typing "man sudo" provides plenty of proof such as the one liner at the top or the presence of the "-u" argument.

[@slycordinator]

@@snuggie12 And the top of the manpage in the section for the command name says: "sudo, sudoedit - execute a command as another user"

[@andikunar7183]

Great video, thanks! Would love to see the benchmarking …. And a pity, that Apple‘s hypervisor for the M1 does not support nested hypervisors. Sadly there’s no WSL2 or Docker Desktop under Windows for arm on a M1 Mac e.g. running Parallels. Running it via separate Parallels VMs isn‘t just as nice/integrated. Greetings from another ex-Microsoftie (94-2009 in Europe)

[@nickwallette6201]

At this point, I just want vmWare to update Fusion to support x86 emulation on M1. They've been completely asleep at the wheel. They even posted a blog saying, essentially: "we don't have any plans at this time, but if there's enough demand, maybe we'll look into it." WHUT? Fusion went from being able to virtualize Mac OS, Linux, and Windows, to being able to virtualize .... Linux for ARM. The product is nearly completely useless now, and they're not sure whether there's a business case for x86 emulation? Aye carumba... What exactly is it you say you _do_ here, vmWare?

[@andikunar7183]

@@nickwallette6201 - to my knowledge, ANY virtualization solution on MacOS on Apple silicon (this includes VMware) MUST use the underlying Apple Hypervisor functionality (where on MacOS/Intel they could also use their own + extend functionality). And this Apple hypervisor to my knowledge does not virtualize the full M1/M2 functionality, but only the standard "arm" functionality (rumored to be much slower in x64 translation than the supposed HW-accelerated translation Apple built in). With MacOS Ventura, Apple is extending THEIR hypervisor to support Rosetta2 as a function for arm LINUX-guests. Meaning, that special arm-Linux versions under VMware/Parallels will hopefully soon get native x64 binary support FOR APPLICATIONS. But this does NOT mean x64 operating system guest support on M1/M2 (Windows, Linux,...)

[@EwanMarshall]

Neither does Hyper-V for WSL2 on windows. What it does have is an API that allows other software to use Hyper-V as the backend, I've seen this break regularly.

[@andikunar7183]

@@EwanMarshall - Thanks, I know to little about running nested hypervisors within x64 Hyper-v/WSL2. It just works for me in x64 MacOS/Parallels for running Windows with WSL2,… (=guest not host)

[@nickwallette6201]

@@andikunar7183 Huh. OK, so that's the first time I've seen that point made. All of the explanation I've seen come out of vmWare's documentation and commentary seemed to suggest they just say on their thumbs while Apple worked on migrating away from x86, and then when it happened, they were like "oh, wow, well, since the CPU isn't x86 anymore, we would have to write our own CPU virtualization from scratch, and golly, that would take a while!" I figured if they had worked with Apple during the development phase, they might've been able to hook into the Rosetta emulation layer, or at least have a head-start in building their own software-only solution. It's not like the need to run non-Mac OS, x86-based applications was a revelation. You would think Apple would want to ease that transition as well, and would've been happy to help. 🤷

[@chuckricketts7797]

In most distributions, ifconfig is deprecated. You would usually use 'ip addr' instead.

[@daveturner5305]

Dave - What would you say the pros and cons are about running virtual windows under virtual box. Most of the programs I use run under linux with only a few under windows. Performance tests both ways would be interesting.

[@TakumiJoyconBoyz]

You may want to look up SomeOrdinaryGamer's videos on setting up Windows under a Linux Hypervisor with full hardware pass-through. If done properly the only issue is some very specific multiplayer online games won't work and you'll lose about 2 logical cpu cores to Linux when using Windows.

[@daveturner5305]

@@TakumiJoyconBoyz Takumi - thank you for your response. Whilst I'm not a gamer or video user I do quite a bit of photo and graphic manipulation using open source software, which is my preference. Unfortunately Wine is not truly compatible with some purchased Windows software that I need. I used to run dual boot under Linux until a Windows update somehow destroyed the dual booting. Since I also like to experiment a lot it seems a 'no brainer' to use virtual machines until a new program is proved to be stable. Hence my interest in deciding whether Linux or Windows should be the 'hypervisor'. All constructive advise is welcome. Tx Dave

[@glitchy_weasel]

@@daveturner5305 There's also VMware. While not FOSS like VirtualBox, I find that it provides exceptional driver support. Their implementation of 3D/hardware acceleration allows the virtual machine to take advantage of the real GPU of the system including all of its video memory. While the performance is inferior to true GPU passthrough, it's much easier to configure and both host and VMs can use the GPU at the same time. TechHut has a video about setting up a Windows VM under a Linux host with VMware.

[@MaderHaker]

@@daveturner5305 if you are comfortable with dabbling a bit more, try kvm/qemu. It has few parts, first kvm as type I hypervisor, qemu emulates supporting hardware. All is tied with libvirt library, and this library exposes API that allows you usage of Virtual Manager as gui manager app. Best performance, and honestly, no more than hour to setup. And if needed, you may passthrough pci devices

[@TakumiJoyconBoyz]

@@MaderHaker Yeah, KVM/QEMU and VirtManager was basically the tutorial I was sending him to. Highly agree and recommend it.

[@KraftyLive]

Love the shout out for Amiga Dos :)

[@DavidAlsh]

I actually preferred WSL1. WSL2 is just a VM with some clever sugar to improve the experience. Using a VM to run Linux on Windows is something we've been doing for years and it has lots of annoyances - like networking issues, device mapping, hardware provisioning/releasing etc. WSL1 was more like a Linux emulator, more akin to Wine or Cigwyn. It had no integration issues and could have been made great with some work. I'm very sad it was discontinued.

[@clrcrtq]

thank you for your great content always! this is actually all i was wishing for for my old thinkpad

[@FBI_Master]

embrace extend extinguish

[@harth1026]

Since WSL was introduced, I've been using it to make sure my code compiles fine in both Windows and Linux. But all of my Linux performance testing is done on a dedicated system.

[@owlmostdead9492]

The Threadripper system should run faster under Linux, since the windows scheduler has still some issues with multi chip CPU's which Linux doesn't have.

[@eadweard.]

I think this is one of those "zombie" beliefs, something that was once true (sort of) but hasn't been true in years. I'm sure people will still be saying it in 2032.

[@niyablake]

@@eadweard. thread ripper system should run faster under Linux, since the windows scheduler has still some issues with AMD since MS optimized ad tested heavily on intel

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

Except WSL is not a bare metal hypervisor. The CPU is still managed by Windows.

[@owlmostdead9492]

@@eadweard. If you have no idea of HPC then please refrain from spewing things that are dumb. Read up on project Lasso if you want to learn something for once

[@owlmostdead9492]

@@BrunodeSouzaLino That's why "under Linux" means running Linux bare metal

[@personaldronerepair6141]

Absolutely love the walk down Reece's, memory lane!!

[@catgirlQueer]

very cool that this is all possible now not a big fan of the embrace extend extinguish vibes I'm getting from it tho I would run something like WSL if it'd let me run windows apps on a linux host instead, as I much prefer my tiling window managers and how (my personal) linux install handles windows personally, unless that happens I'll just be sticking with wine and proton

[@CTimmerman]

It's just OS/2 Warp but with exclusive OEM deals.

[@naikrovek]

EEE doesn't really work on open source stuff with a large user base, so I'm very curious where those vibes are coming from. a lot of this is open source, too. windows users of WSL will never outnumber actual linux users (linux is everywhere) so there's no chance that it could possibly extend or extinguish linux even if it wanted to. the features that have been added to WSL since its inception have been added due to user request. We, as a community, have asked for all of the things that are present now, and many of the things we've asked for aren't delivered, yet, or can't be. I was around during the EEE heyday as well, and I don't smell it, here.

[@catgirlQueer]

@@naikrovek they're coming from the whole "TPM should be enabled by default" thing for prebuilts which only allow signed bootloaders to run they're coming from windows (intentionally or not) asserting itself over GRUB after updates or sometimes even just running it in a dual boot configuration they're coming from the windows installer not even giving an option to set up dual boot

[@naikrovek]

@@catgirlQueer that's not at all the reason behind those things. also, why have you shifted topic away from WSL? anyway, unless the hardware vendor makes a stupid decision, there is nothing preventing anyone from using their hardware with open source operating systems. sensible defaults are in place if the OS shipped with the hardware is Windows, that's all. SecureBoot and the TPM are valuable security features unless you're a person that views a content hash served from the same site as the content itself as a secure download verification solution.

[@catgirlQueer]

@@naikrovek if you make linux proper harder to install while making WSL better more devs will just stick with Windows, it's not rocket science I hope I'm being overly paranoid about this but they're not good vibes

[@muddyexport5639]

Thanks! Glad I found your site.

[@zolaarczakle]

Or you can go the other way around: install any Linux distrib as an hypervisor (with or without GUI), then libvirt/virtmanager to manage qemu/kvm (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine, directly in the Linux kernel) and you can now create any VM you'd like. It works so well that's VMWare started by stealing their code.

[@SirRandallDoesStuff]

"stealing" in OSS is not the correct way of saying this.

[@EwanMarshall]

Vmware was founded in 1998, KVM was first released in 2006. Vmware were a massive name in virtualization long before even Xen, let along KVM was a thing.

[@samljer]

This is by far the better way.

[@EwanMarshall]

@@SirRandallDoesStuff It is also wrong as Vmware predates kvm by 8 years.

[@sprinteroz2239]

Thing is most users don't know linux or how to setup a KVM to run window in or install windows in linux. Windows has it here if they are able to integrate with linux then as the setup learning curve is less painfull. Also windows gains over 20 years of community collective input in the building process of linux, but it will bring linux to the wider community if they do integrate it in some how. Windows might even start to fund linux projects now as well...

[@Paddy_Roche]

Hello Dave, I found your channel about month ago. Thanks for doing this amazing stuff it is all pretty much over my head but fascinating all the same. This video has caused me to comment for the first time though because the info here is just awesome (Yes Brits are now saying 'Awesome' too). I had to do a lot of pausing to keep up but thanks so much for sharing this I now have Debian running on my windows machine (wow), I had no idea you could do this. anyway just wanted to say Hello and thanks I'm off to read a book I bought yesterday about Autism. Cheers Dave, all the very best to you.

[@technerd9655]

I'm not a developer. Just an IT Pro for home users and small (up to 20 seat) businesses and I avoid the CLI as much as possible...I like a GUI and don't need automation typically. But I am curious, does WSL allow for a full Linux desktop environment? Could you boot to the Linux desktop automatically and have Windows apps run the way Linux GUI apps do when Windows is the desktop environment?

[@familyshare3724]

Windows works exactly as always. The Linux terminal works like Linux. Linux can access the windows filesystem. Networking between Windows and Linux is a PITA (but if you don't program I doubt you'll notice). I don't run Linux GUI on WSL2 but in theory, yes, they should work fine too "as if" they were Windows apps.