When WSL came out I was absolutely overjoyed - finally an actual linux shell on windows! I use windows for my gaming pc, and I wanted to have a unified gaming/dev box. It felt like the solution.
Over time though more and more small issues with it came up. Packages working not quite right, issues with the barriers between the two, etc. It always felt like there was a little bit more friction with the process.
With Valve really pushing Proton and the state of linux gaming, I've recently swapped over to Ubuntu and Nixos. The friction point moved to the gaming side, but things mostly just work.
Things on linux are rapidly getting better, and having things just work on the development side has been a breath of fresh air. I now feel that it's a better experience than windows w/ WSL, despite some AAA titles not working on linux.
I would do it the other way round: use Windows in a virtual machine from Linux. If you are in Windows and have the urge to use Linux, do the proper switch once and for all. You will never look back. I haven't in almost 15 years.
Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine.
WSL 2 is one of the biggest reasons I'm able to be productive as a blind software developer. With it I'm able to enjoy the best desktop screen reader accessibility (Windows and NVDA) as well as the best developer tools (Linux). I hate Microsoft's AI and ads force-feeding as much as anyone else but trust me, you'd do the same if you were in my shoes. Screen reader accessibility on Mac Os is stagnating even faster than the os itself and even though Linux / Gnome accessibility is being worked on, it's still ready only for enthusiasts who don't mind their systems being in a constant state of somewhat broken, as illustrated by this series of blog posts from just a few weeks ago: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...
I've been using WSL on and off for Linux development for the last few years.
When it works, it's great! When it doesn't....oh man it sucks. It has been non-stop networking and VPN problems, XServer issues, window scaling issues, hardware accelerated graphics not working, etc. this whole time. I've spent more time trying to fix WSL issues then actually developing software. It's never gotten better.
It's fast. It's powerful. But using it as a daily driver is very painful in my experience. I avoid it as much as possible and do most of my work in MSYS2 instead. Sure, it's much slower. But at least it works consistently and has for years.
Every time I praise WSL on hn I pay the karma tax but I will die on this hill. WSL is more powerful than Linux because of how easy it is to run multiple OS on the same computer simultaneously. It's as powerful as Linux with some janky custom local docker wrappers for device support, local storage mapping, and network mapping. Except it's not janky at all. It's an absolute delight to use, out of the box, on a desktop or laptop, with no configuration required.
Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I update my OS?"
I still can't believe how people use windows as their main system with all the extremely invasive telemetry and bogus "AI" features that hogs a LOT of resources at idle
Not a Windows user, but I think WSL is great. I see a lot of Windows user criticising Linux for... essentially not looking like Windows. "Linux Desktop will never reach mass adoption unless it [something that boils down to 'looks more like Windows']".
The thing is: I consider myself a real Linux user, and I don't want it to look like Windows. And I hate it when Windows people try to push Linux there, just because they want a free-with-no-ads version of Windows.
In that sense, if WSL can keep Windows users on Windows such that they don't come and bother me on Linux, I'm happy :-).
People just want to bash Windows left n right. But no other OS in history has been this mature with handling GUI snd and providing the flexibility, customisations etc.
Before I say anything, Windows 11 is bad.
I remember playing with Win98, XP , I would modify many many registry settings, mod binary files to do something with games, you could access all sorts of weird hardware which only had drivers for windows!
Windows 98-7 were best for learning stuff about computers (inner workings etc).
I remember, to remove viruses (XP)I was trying to hard delete system 32 folder, it deleted lots of files and it continued to run!
WSL is amazing. Nothing short of it. My laptop SSD controller died on a conference. I bought a 200 dollar netbook running windows, installed WSL, downloaded the MDADM packages, was about to mount the encrypted drive with cryptsetup, mount the ext4 partition, then chroot into it, then my home drive was like working on my old laptop.
I did this in about 20 minutes, with the help of chatgpt.
In the end I was able to keep working through the trip and provide some demos to clients which landed us some big deals.
WSL is a stupid idea. Microsoft should just stop developing and maintaining its windows kernel and built a windows compatibility layer on top of Linux.
WSL1 got my hopes up that we were on the path to Windows supporting the Linux user space API but then it was cancelled and replaced with a virtual machine based solution that I didn't need WSL2 to implement myself (with more flexability and capabilities).
I'd much prefer a proper compatibility layer that converts Linux system calls to their equivilent Windows calls and those calls be exposed from the Windows kernel itself.
That way I could just run Linux applications, bash, zsh and development tools directly on top of Windows without needing any "remote development tools" in my IDE or whatever.
Something closer to MSYS2/git bash/busybox for win - but where tools can ignore their Windows specific stuff like the filepath seperator.
Wow. In 2009, when it looked like Microsoft was the most closed company of all time, I was telling people at work, they should port windows to the linux kernel. What happened over the next 15 years, I don't think people would have believed it if you told them back then. Things have changed.. ALOT. Now granted, this isn't what I said they should do, but you know, eventually they might see the light.
I'm not be sarcastic or funny when I ask this. Why isn't this called the Linux subsystem for Windows? It seems like a Linux subsystem running on Windows. If it were the other way around, (ie, a Windows Subsystem for Linux) I'd think that Linux would be the primary OS, and something like WINE would the subsystem.
WSL1 was hobbled by needing to calculate Unix Permission numbers and hardlink counts for every file. On Windows, you need to create a handle to the file to get those things. That's a file open on every file whenever you list a directory.
Maybe someone will finally build my dream: a WSL distro that I can also dual-boot natively. I'd love to switch between bare-metal Windows with WSL and bare-metal Linux with virtualized Windows at my leisure!
WSL is amazing if you work for a non tech company that is a windows house but want to do development in Linux. It’s seamless (at least to my middle ability) for VS Code.
Microsoft doesn’t like open source software. This is cosplay.
Microsoft releases the important parts of VS Code under proprietary licenses. Microsoft doesn’t release the source code for Windows or Office or the github.com web app under free software licenses.
Don’t get it twisted. This is marketing, nothing more.
Copying files between Windows and WSL is EXTREMELY slow. I really wanted to give Windows a chance but the slowness completely destroyed that chance, along with the lack of hardware acceleration for GUI applications.
A lot of people here are saying nice things about having dev environment on WSL. Honest question: how do you deal with with those minor but insufferable Windows' quirks like 0d0a line endings, selective Unicode support, byte-order-marks and so on.
While right now I enjoy the privilege to develop on Linux, things may change.
Anybody know what the deal is with neither Oracle nor Microsoft trying to make it possible for VirtualBox and WSL2 to coexist without severe performance impact? What the heck is the issue that neither side knows how to solve? Or is there a deliberate business decision not to solve it?
While I had to, I enjoyed using WSL1 on Windows. It was disappointing to find WSL2 has no user upside; it just discards the benefits of WSL1 in favor of the simpler implementation.
Shame for all of the people who worked hard on WSL1 only to be virtualized into nonexistence.
I despise Windows 11 so much, but have to use it. I have a 24/7 box with Ubuntu running a couple of Linux and Windows VMs and that's the way I like it. I don't touch the Ubuntu host except for when I need to reconfigure it.
All development is done on Windows laptop via SSH to those VMs. When I tried using Ubuntu via WSL, something didn't feel right. There were some oddities, probably with the filesystem integration, which bothered me enough to stop doing this.
Nevertheless, I think it's really great what they now did.
Now all what's missing is that they do it the other way around, that they create a 100% windows compatible Wine alternative.
WSL in combination with the enshittification of Windows was the thing that finally convinced me to switch from Windows as a main driver to Kubuntu/Linux.
KDE Plasma is IMO the best grapical desktop environment at the moment, including MacOS.
OT but the name irks me; Windows subsystem for Linux makes it sound like some sort of official Wine layer. It's a Linux subsystem for Windows if anything.
It makes it sound like Microsoft is giving some capability to Linux whereas it's the other way around.
The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source
(blogs.windows.com)1594 points by pentagrama 19 May 2025 | 1176 comments
Comments
Over time though more and more small issues with it came up. Packages working not quite right, issues with the barriers between the two, etc. It always felt like there was a little bit more friction with the process.
With Valve really pushing Proton and the state of linux gaming, I've recently swapped over to Ubuntu and Nixos. The friction point moved to the gaming side, but things mostly just work.
Things on linux are rapidly getting better, and having things just work on the development side has been a breath of fresh air. I now feel that it's a better experience than windows w/ WSL, despite some AAA titles not working on linux.
Given what Windows has become and already discussed here on HN I would even hesitate to run it in a virtual machine.
Edit: more than 15 years.
When it works, it's great! When it doesn't....oh man it sucks. It has been non-stop networking and VPN problems, XServer issues, window scaling issues, hardware accelerated graphics not working, etc. this whole time. I've spent more time trying to fix WSL issues then actually developing software. It's never gotten better.
It's fast. It's powerful. But using it as a daily driver is very painful in my experience. I avoid it as much as possible and do most of my work in MSYS2 instead. Sure, it's much slower. But at least it works consistently and has for years.
Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I update my OS?"
(Also, I'm surprised that WSL 1 is still supported. It must be in maintenance mode though, right?)
Here's how you can lose all your data - and Microsoft engineers won’t care: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/8992 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9830 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9049#issuecomment-26...
The thing is: I consider myself a real Linux user, and I don't want it to look like Windows. And I hate it when Windows people try to push Linux there, just because they want a free-with-no-ads version of Windows.
In that sense, if WSL can keep Windows users on Windows such that they don't come and bother me on Linux, I'm happy :-).
Before I say anything, Windows 11 is bad.
I remember playing with Win98, XP , I would modify many many registry settings, mod binary files to do something with games, you could access all sorts of weird hardware which only had drivers for windows!
Windows 98-7 were best for learning stuff about computers (inner workings etc).
I remember, to remove viruses (XP)I was trying to hard delete system 32 folder, it deleted lots of files and it continued to run!
This isn't open source, and considering that this is probably what ties into/sets up WSL as a windows subsystem that's a bit of a bummer.
The rest is just a Virtual Machine for the most part, isn't it?
I did this in about 20 minutes, with the help of chatgpt.
In the end I was able to keep working through the trip and provide some demos to clients which landed us some big deals.
Go WSL!
I'd much prefer a proper compatibility layer that converts Linux system calls to their equivilent Windows calls and those calls be exposed from the Windows kernel itself.
That way I could just run Linux applications, bash, zsh and development tools directly on top of Windows without needing any "remote development tools" in my IDE or whatever.
Something closer to MSYS2/git bash/busybox for win - but where tools can ignore their Windows specific stuff like the filepath seperator.
It's fine I guess
Can anyone chime in - is this still a concern? Was it ever a concern?
Microsoft releases the important parts of VS Code under proprietary licenses. Microsoft doesn’t release the source code for Windows or Office or the github.com web app under free software licenses.
Don’t get it twisted. This is marketing, nothing more.
While right now I enjoy the privilege to develop on Linux, things may change.
Shame for all of the people who worked hard on WSL1 only to be virtualized into nonexistence.
All development is done on Windows laptop via SSH to those VMs. When I tried using Ubuntu via WSL, something didn't feel right. There were some oddities, probably with the filesystem integration, which bothered me enough to stop doing this.
Nevertheless, I think it's really great what they now did.
Now all what's missing is that they do it the other way around, that they create a 100% windows compatible Wine alternative.
KDE Plasma is IMO the best grapical desktop environment at the moment, including MacOS.
now how about mainlining the kernel patches?
so we get a chance of a more current and Linux distro provided wsl kernel :-)? https://github.com/issues/created?issue=microsoft%7CWSL%7C11...
Now do NT.
It makes it sound like Microsoft is giving some capability to Linux whereas it's the other way around.
Right?
Right?…