I'm more surprised that it wasn't already on WSL, WSL has been out for /awhile/ now. I used to use it for cross platform development before I moved my gaming rig over to Debian

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Either way, glad to see it. 👌

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

very true

[–] renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 9 points 2 months ago

I swear WSL already had Arch.

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Does this really expand to Windows users? As a non-technical user, this is the first I've heard of WSL and I'm sure I'm not alone.

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think WSL is pretty much a developer thing in reality

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

That makes sense. I definitely could see a use case for developers, but I don't see many average pc users having a need for or even being aware of this service.

[–] pohart@programming.dev 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It does more to make windows accessable to Linux users.

And really speeds up Java compilation.

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

It makes more sense that it has benefits in that direction than the other way around.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 months ago

As a technical user, I think of WSL as almost exclusively for technical users. It's not really intended to enable normal users to run Linux programs, and more as an excuse to convince companies to keep developing on Windows. If the devs say "we need to write backend code for Linux servers, so we need our dev machines to run Linux" then management sets them up with linux, while the rest of the company uses windows. But if MSFT says "hey look, you can develop code for Linux in windows, and you can even deploy it in windows on our azure servers" then management says "great, everyone can use windows" and keeps buying those licences.

[–] AustralianSimon@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

It's for developers to not switch dev machines from Windows. The average user would be far better served with Mint or Ubuntu versions of Linux for Windows like experience.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It is pretty popular if you want Linux tools on Windows

Avoid gWSL though, it is a unstable mess

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

I actually just canned windows in the past month. I'm not a developer or "power user," but I ran back to Linux due to the screen capture and A.I. nonsense that Microsoft has been pursuing recently. I have been very happy with my recent experience on Linux and don't imagine going back to Windows in any fashion. There have been incredible strides made since I was last on Linux, about 15 years ago.

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 3 points 2 months ago

wow, it didn't exist before? like, I've seen arch and Debian included more than anything else and somehow it was missing?

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The name of that thing is so confusing. It's an alternative to wine, right?

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nope, it uses the MS hypervisor to run a VM of Linux with a deep filesystem and networking integration

[–] x00z@lemmy.world -4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So it's like Wine but worse.

And for Linux instead of Windows.

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 6 points 2 months ago

It's more like QEMU actually.

[–] balder1993@programming.dev 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Maybe you mean the opposite to wine? The 1st WSL (called V1) was a sort of simulation of the Linux terminal, but wasn’t too compatible. The current version (V2) is a full virtual machine that kind of shares the network and file system automatically, so it can run basically any Linux command line tool.

[–] kogasa@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago

It's a Windows Subsystem that is responsible For (Running) Linux. Yes, everyone thinks it should have been called Linux Subsystem for Windows.