Penguin takeover: We tried running some GUI Linux apps on Windows the official way – and nothing exploded Microsoft has released the first public preview of Linux GUI applications on Windows 10 – so we wasted no time in taking it for a spin around the block. The ability to run GUI applications on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 is not new – enthusiasts have been able to run them via separately installed X server utilities for years …
Wait, MS is involved with brew?
Thanks for the heads up. What about MacPorts?
I was just looking at possible exporting some Linux app windows via X11, but it's been *years* since I have done this - actually, call it decades - as I've been busy with other things so I have to start from scratch..
> just a Windows desktop
This isn't just any Windows desktop, it's a Microsoft Windows desktop...
With clipboard and unconstrained Window positioning, expect the "Windows" desktop to morph into a Linux desktop. Remember MS don't have to announce anything until circa 2025 when W10 notionally goes EoL...
It's not there yet but it's an opportunity.
Most corporate PCs are standardized via a corporate disk image which is Windows. Their ecosystem is set up to configure, administer, and maintain Windows. If they support any Linux installations it is in conjunction with an enterprise support contract like RHEL.
This allows them to support their Linux users through their Windows ecosystem. Once it is in place, I wouldn't be surprised if they offered enterprise support for one or more specific distros.
Developers should view this as an opportunity to demonstrate that some Linux applications should be used in place of the Windows application. Although replacing Office is a long shot :(
Win 10 offers the SAME VM to consumers for incompatible Windows programs that Linux OS users use to run XP and Win7.
It also runs any version of Linux.
Also there is 32 bit and 64 bit WINE and even DOSbox for Win3.x 16 bit.
I agree some people have to run Windows boot. But I had Linux programmes in the Start Menu on NT 4.0 and XP via Services for Unix and a 3rd Party X-Windows server that integrated well to Explorer.
I gave it up when I upgraded to having a 64 bit CPU desktop with VM support. I was then running 32 bit XP and a 64 bit Ubuntu with an Oracle SQL in the VM. You CAN run a 64 bit OS in a VM on a 32 bit OS if the CPU supports it.
Now I only boot Linux Mint and use Wine or VM for Windows applications. Also browser can be more important for some people now. Thankfully Silverlight is in death throws.
"There will be complaints from the Linux hardcore..."
I think it's the Window's users that are complaining, not Lin/Mac/BSD users. I know I'm not switching to Windows just because someone has QT or whatever working... I mean for real? Understand Microsoft removes the software that causes bugs, which is their own software thus leaving very little to supply themselves. Windows users might/should be noticing this, thus some developers seemed inclined to help MIcrosoft's OS.
It's kind of crazy to walk into a BestBuy or whatever and use a modern barebones Win10 laptop as it has absolutely nothing on it besides spyware, literally spyware'd down to the kernel level. This is especially sad considering it's supposed to be a "Desktop" distro and not yet another definition for a virus scanner.
...that this is how Microsoft are going to monetise Linux and Linux applications via their enterprise agreements. I can see a rule in large enterprises that the base OS must always be Windows, suitable licensed and paid for, even if you have mission-critical Linux applications to run. No native Linux allowed (ner ner Red Hat...)
It also perhaps explains why the Wayland display server has been pushed so hard in some quarters...
Meanwhile.. Intel and AMD are rubbing their hands together, knowing anyone who isn't using an 8th Gen or equivalent processor will get performance issues due to Virtualization Based Security (VBS) which seems to get switched on the moment people put on the prerequisites for trying this.
After running Linux and Linux apps for literally DECADES now, Windows Server and Desktop are STILL a waaaaaaaaaay better end-user experience for working professionals in ANY occupation! There is just soooooooo much that makes proper and ocmmon sense in Windows over MacOS, iOS, Android, etc.
Just the simple WINDOWS FILE MANAGER is so obvious to me yet I can only get a REALLY GOOD ONE on Windows itself (or on our own internal OS software!). Just because I have o spend $60 USD for a per copy Windows 10 Enterprise site licence does not negate the fact that I am SAVING thousands of USD per user per year NOT having to go over and explain SUDO or command line piping parameters MULTIPLE TIMES to people who just want to install programs and make backup copies of their documents or name their external disks in a meaningful manner! Hmmmmm spend $60 vs a few thousand PER USER in support costs -- What would YOU do as an IT admin or CTO?
When Linux developers FINALLY get their over-swollen programming-oriented heads out of their derrieres, they can FINALLY GET OVER the fact that Microsoft actually DOES MAKE GREAT OS software and end-user applications! Don't try and beat them! JOIN THEM and make some money for yourselves while you are at it!
v
In my experience, Windows 10 is a user experience mess. The Windows 10 explorer.exe file manager is a pain in the arse to use, it lacks features that are present in many linux GUI file managers i.e. tabs.
At the CLI I'll take Bash over Powershell thanks.
I imagine that the working professional users you're referring to are not software developer end-users. What you've said could be semi-relevant for people who never stray from working inside Outlook and a Word / Excel file all day long but don't try and present Windows as an operating system that is great for all use cases because it's not, it is riddled with issues.
I think that day came a bit back. I work for a firm that has increasingly locked down the desktop as they moved from XP to Windows 7 to 10. After the XP to 7 upgrade we found that it took 2-4 weeks of waiting on request tickets before a developer could actually check-in code. The one useful Win 7 app they allowed was the VMWare player. :-) (You see where this is going). We built an Ubuntu image and started deploying it with a java IDE, svn / git clients, HSQL, etc. and voila: New devs were committing code after a day or so. Since then they've embraced Macs for developers, which are not quite as locked down, so corporate solved their own problem in a different way, but those Ubuntu VMs were a godsend. Anon, since I still work for the same firm.
No, WSL is mostly a play for software developers who need to deploy to Linux VMs. This allows them to build and test everything on windows (even in VS if they want). Even Microsoft is deploying their own web applications to Linux hosts now so it makes sense. They want Windows on the desktop to remain even after all the servers are running Linux.
I can see how WSL could be useful for sysadmins, but they're not the target audience. General users aren't even going to care about WSL.
How much total memory and disk space is needed on a W10 machine to make all the stuff described in this article work seamlessly?
......compared with a vanilla Ubuntu install? .....compared to a vanilla W10 install?
And if the numbers are large, why would anyone go through the hoops described in the article simply to get gedit to run?
Chances are the resources required are greater than either, and I don't see how it could be otherwise given that the described setup is basically running both. I really don't think anyone, anywhere, has ever attempted to claim that WSL would be more efficient that straight Linux.
Obviously, you would not do this just to run gedit. But the point of the article is to demonstrate how WSL works, not how some big and complex piece of Linux software works.
Also, the ability to run simple things is a necessary stepping stone on the way to the ability to run complex things. If, every time a system got to that stage, people said "it only runs simple things, so it's pointless", we would not have systems that run complex things.
Benefits?
None.
And if the numbers are large, why would anyone ...
Why?
Hmm ...
Stupidity?
A "Look Ma !!! ...
I made it can run Linux apps in W10 !" moment?
Who knows ...
All this MS crap is not being pushed to solve anyone's problems.
You can run both Linux and a Windows VM at the same time in a 15 year old Linux host (eg: my Sun Ultra 24 Q9550 + 8Gb RAM) without having to jump through any hoops.
There's a lot of moolah behind all this.
Those of us who have been around IT for ~25 years know what it is all about.
O.
Benefits?
The benefits are being able to run Linux apps alongside Windows, just because that's no use to you doesn't mean it's no use to anyone else. Many developers have cross platform workflows these days.
You can run both Linux and a Windows VM at the same time in a 15 year old Linux host (eg: my Sun Ultra 24 Q9550 + 8Gb RAM) without having to jump through any hoops.
What's you're point here? You can do the reverse too, so what?
This is a preview of an upcoming feature... the hoops are because it's a preview. When it's released to everyone you'll have to tick a box in a dialog to install WSL, then download a distro from the MS store, it's not exactly rocket science.
There's a lot of moolah behind all this.
A commercial company, trying to make money??? Whatever next. It's a good job all that linux development is done alturistically, for free.
Those of us who have been around IT for ~25 years know what it is all about.
No, you're clinging onto a view of a company that doesn't exist anymore. 25 years ago MS were evil, trying to destroy compettion through monopolistic practices.
I'm not convinced this is true anymore. Go and read the WSL blog, it's fascinating, and a real look at how Microsoft has changed.
For example:
We also wanted WSLg to be open-source and ensure that all communications between Linux, running in the WSL 2 virtual machine, and the Windows host followed either documented standard or defined in open-source code available on both end of the communication channel. No secret sauce allowed.
That's not the 90s Microsoft.
Flipping heck, they've built the whole thing atop of Weston, they could've just built a quick and dirty X server, they've open sourced the bits of RDP they added to the Weston RDP backend. To quote further...
At the moment, we’re building these components from a project mirror while we work on upstreaming our contribution back to the respective projects. Our goal is to eventually build WSLg from purely upstream components, making WSLg a great and simple production environment for folks wanting to tinker with Wayland or Weston.
That's not the MS I grew to hate 25 years ago. Or if it is, they're much better at disguising it.
@fia:
> No, you're clinging onto a view of a company that doesn't exist anymore. 25 years ago MS were evil,
> trying to destroy compettion through monopolistic practices.
True, and, personally, I don't think companies "change their spots" much. If you think they're changing, well, marketing!
> That's not the MS I grew to hate 25 years ago. Or if it is, they're much better at disguising it.
Like intel screwing amd, microsoft for me: never apologised (or, even better, never 'admitted guilt' -- how often has a company done that!): never admitted => won't invest, either time or money.
Sorry guys, but if you can avoid the cancers but you don't, well maybe you're part of the problem.
Apologies if that comes across too strong but, damn, those two companies could've done so much better for the industry by taking a higher moral ground.
The MS you grew to hate 25 years ago was all about Embrace, Extend, Extinguish..
Has that changed?
MS are now making money off the backs of open source devs, while at the same time wresting control away from the open source community. And when they bought both LinkedIn and GitHub, they bought control over the reputations of individuals in that community.
They are just as evil as they were back in the Bill Gates days, but it's easier for them to hide because every tech company and its dog is doing the 'evil' thing now.. Even Google dropped 'don't be evil' from its corporate constitution. Amazon, Facebook, Google and even governments such as the CCP are all competing to see who can be the most evil these days, but Microsoft were evil before it was cool.
Because running gedit isn't the point and the hoops won't exist (or will be much simpler) once WSLg stops being a beta.
The point is to be able to run Linux apps that don't exist on Windows or to be able to test code that is developed on Windows but deployed on Linux.
"he point is to be able to run Linux apps that don't exist on Windows or to be able to test code that is developed on Windows but deployed on Linux."
Sorry, but what the hell does that statement mean? Why would you develop Linux code (NOT apps, PROGRAMS) on Windows to be deployed on Linux? Phhhh.
Because most of one's co-workers only do productivity stuff, so corporate IT can give everyone the same basic kit and the devs can do their real work seamlessly.
For quite a while now I've been working this way - as I don't do GUIs - the real work happens on a Linux server on the other side of the world, and I use VS code on the work laptop to edit the files.
"And if the numbers are large, why would anyone go through the hoops described in the article simply to get gedit to run?"
Especially since, if you are a huge gedit fanboi or fangirl etc, a native Windows version of gedit is available on choclatey.
Are there any desktop apps that are available on Linux, but not on Windows? Do they work reliably on WSL?
Yes I know about server and command line stuff. There is plenty of that on Linux that isn't available on Windows. If you want to run server stuff, just use a regular Hyper-V virtual machine.
>And if the numbers are large...
Depends on what you mean by 'large'. With AMD Ryzen 7 laptops with 16GB RAM and SSD, available for circa £1000 (inc. vat), I suspect it won't be long before this is the norm for business-grade laptops - including those with Intel 10th and/or 11th generation chips inside...
Like the Redmondian Clowns did when they decided a user typing "Internet" in the start menu should be diverted to Edge instead of IE.
In my experience, Microsoft have decided that if you type “Internet” in the start menu, you actually, obviously want to search the web for that word.
Searching the Internet for “Internet” is not quite as bad as googling “google”, but still risky.
I was demoing this to classes I was giving in 1999. MS Services for Unix, linux applications and a 3rd party X-Window server.
But since January 2017 I wiped the Windows boot & win NTFS partition on my dual boot laptop and made it ext4, and mounted it in home.
I run a choice of VMs on an external 3.5" USB drive. I have 32 bit Wine for some old Windows programs that don't work on 64 bit Win7 or Win10 and some that do. Can't remember when I last ran one.
So it's nice that MS is now "supporting" Linux instead of calling it a cancer. It won't affect much except maybe some devs in corporate places that insist the PC must only boot Windows.
Why?
The only thing I can see here is MS trying to woo GNU/Linux users off actually using GNU/Linux.
Then once that happens...
Why? would a GNU/Linux developer want to develop any GNU/Linux code on MS Windows anyway?
Why? What benefit does it do to go through all the shite and crappiness?
I disagree - Microsoft has pretty much given up on making money from Windows, instead they want to maintain the dominance of MS Office (for which licenses are very lucrative) in corporates.
Well, apart from that, they can get to sell the corporates nice expensive Windows licenses.
They definitely aren't looking to convert Linux desktop users... where we may see conversion effort is Linux based cloud -> Azure.
A huge amount of developers work in either Windows or MacOS as there are a lot of tools that only work on those platforms. Whether that is good or bad is largely a religous debate, the reality is that it is a fact of life.
The result is a lot of people write code on Win/Mac that eventually runs on Linux - Python, Java, Node, Go, etc are all x-platform and not Linux specific.
Exactly, overnight Windows becomes *the* developer platform supporting the latest laptops. Linux desktop has 1-2% market share with slow support for the latest HW. Devs favour Macbooks because of the underlying linux like OS but have to play the Apple tax for last gen HW... U also get the opportunity to play some games too...
None of the developers you describe will be affected by this.
Similarly, no Windows diehard is going to be suddently a Linux convert because of this.
However, there are other developers, who just want to do their job, with whatever tools they have to hand, and for those, this is useful. (Heck, these days I work for a MS shop, and still find it useful to have proper linux available occasionally, admittedly still WSL1, but there you go).
I personally use a BSD as my server OS and Windows/macOS as my desktops, because I dislike X, and I can get what I want to do done in either. This WSL stuff is interesting to me.
> Why? would a GNU/Linux developer want to develop any GNU/Linux code on MS Windows anyway?
They don't, but MS wants to force corporates to make these developers use Windows. Clouid users run Linux VMs and developers write Linux programs to run in those VMs. MS wants those developers to use Windows to ensure 100% Windows usage in corporate sites.
Perhaps there will be some tweaks in Azure so that the Linux VMs will only run programs developed with WSL.
MS can't force any company to do anything. But they can sell them tech that is potentially useful to them.
And why would MS want to restrict the Azure market size by limiting it to WSL-developed software only? And how would they even do that? Software built in a WSL environment is actually built in Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever distro(s) you've chosen to run in WSL. They're exactly the same binaries as you'd get installing the distro natively, from the same repos. The only way MS could distinguish WSL built software is if the distro maintainers put the detector and flags into the tool chain themselves.
"Why? would a GNU/Linux developer want to develop any GNU/Linux code on MS Windows anyway?"
Because it's convenient to have a single machine that targets two platforms. I have code I need to compile / test on Windows and on Linux. Now I could run two machines side by side and maybe hook up an NFS so they share the source dir, and then maybe edit code on the one machine and have a console to the other to do it.
Or I could just type "bash" in Windows and up starts Ubuntu in seconds and I can do it that way. And that's what I choose to do because it's fast and convenient.
I do believe that is called trying to plug the holes in the sinking ship.
Desktop user statistics for Linux remain stubbornly low; many PC nerds will do a dual boot but end up reverting back for "some program". In my case, some program means losing out on Propellerhead Reason; and obviously, games. I'm probably amongst the minority that has raged on Win 8 and 10 so heavily that I'm prepared to sacrifice that "some program" and make Linux the daily driver. I no longer buy games without either official Linux support; or confirmed workarounds via Proton. And I can assure you Reason isn't a cheap program either. Even they are starting to switch to the subscription model too... Ugh.
Wine and Lutris obviously do similar jobs but, as they say, results may vary. In my experience to date, that is code for being decidedly unreliable. So is Proton, but at least configuring steam and proton is point and click.
Here's a random thought. If developers prefer developing on Linux; is it plausible they would only release "one" build of a program i.e. the Linux one, instead of two. And rely on WSL to get it to fly? Is there some sort of reverse-cancer model where Windows is what's attacked?
>Why? would a GNU/Linux developer want to develop any GNU/Linux code on MS Windows anyway?
Use the other end of the telescope - there are millions of more users of Windows; it is these MS are wanting to keep.
Remember, MS's problem isn't the Linux users per se, it's the steady stream of defections that at some point has the (real) potential to become a flood. Particularly if (or is it when?) MS Office (including Project and Visio) runs on both Windows and Linux...
How long would it take to bring a modern ~4GHz/16Gb RAM/1Tb SSD system to its knees by installing $OS1 on the bare metal, running $OS2 in a VM, installing $OS1 inside that VM, $OS2 inside that third VM, etc until the whole thing shit itself?
"It's VM's all the way down!"
>How long would it take to bring a modern...
Probably a lot longer than you think.
A client is running 4 WinServ VMs on WinServ Hyper-V on a 5 year old dual Xeon server, which in todays world rubs shoulders with benchmarks for performant desktops and are left standing by 4K video editing workstations.
As part of a DR investigation I've loaded this server on to a laptop (Ryzen 7 etc.) and had their circa 40 Office users sign in...
What will be interesting is to see how performant an RDS VM in which users can run WSLg applications is...
"what do i really need windows for".
Good question, solved it more than 20 years ago, I don't need windows.
But from Microsoft's point, using Linux means that Linux cannot kill Microsoft.
A bit of the the "if you cannot beat them, join them".
And Yes, I might be a bit optimistic in relation to the "Embrace, extend, and extinguish".
One thing is for sure, Microsoft cannot any longer just whistle and look the other way regarding Linux.
Does the new kernel and all of the rest mean that you trash your existing environment? I've built up quite a pile of code and development apps that I don't particularly want to destroy. Did this test run with an existing dev environment? What happened if so?
You can run multiple environments. Not tried it, but the help file gives command line options like:
--list, -l [Options]
Lists distributions.
Options:
--all
List all distributions, including distributions that are currently
being installed or uninstalled.
--running
List only distributions that are currently running.
--quiet, -q
Only show distribution names.
--verbose, -v
Show detailed information about all distributions.
--set-default, -s <Distro>
Sets the distribution as the default.
--distribution, -d <Distro>
Run the specified distribution.
They're serious. Not stupid.
There's no market for Office on Linux that would be worth the investment. (How many Linux desktop users are there... how many would refuse to run Office as a matter of principle?)
There's a market for SQL server on Linux... hence the investment.
As a Linux Mint user as my daily driver its interesting to see MS adding Linux GUI support to Windows, but I do question how many people need to run Linux GUI apps for software that don't have a Windows native version? As the amount of Windows software far outweighs the amount GUI based Linux apps.
So the only real use case I can think of is perhaps it would be useful to a developer writing a program that is going to be ported to Windows and Linux which they could test both versions side by side with one OS. But then its hard for me to understand why MS have spent time adding that functionality, for such as small subset of users.
Unless of course Microsoft have something up their sleeves for releasing some Linux GUI software in the near future and it helps their own interests having this functionality available.
"These are available in preview from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia – but will not help when the host machine is itself a VM."
Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor. Once you enable it to be able to run WSL2, even your base Windows becomes a VM. It just happens to have automatic PCI passthrough for things like your GPU.
I think you'll find that actually everything's a drum.
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