The Pros and Cons of Linux in Windows

Using Linux in Windows just keeps getting better... Let's go over the Pros and Cons of WSL and why some won't use "native" Linux anymore.

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[LarsNieuwenhuizen]

Liked this video. I’m a web developer. Worked with Mac a until a few years back until docker became a standard more and more in projects. And switched to Linux professionally due to the slow fs volume mounts issue on Mac. Became a big Linux fan because of it. My personal old Mac is still working but out of updates and battery is dead. Considering switching back to windows because of wsl. Even though I screamed for years I’d never go back to windows 😄 tried wsl yesterday on a windows 11. Was installed quickly, ran into no problems whatsoever. Installed my projects, got my dev setup up and running as fast as in plain Linux installation. Gotta give Microsoft and the wsl developers credits.

[galangaidil]

Progamming on wsl feels smooth like butter, installing packages from NPM extremly fast compare to native windows. Working on framework like Laravel is much much much faster. I love this kind of windows products.

[Imakubex]

I like the new WSL on Windows 11 as it provides native graphics support. I'm a physicist who do a bit of simulation work and the library I use only works in Unix systems, with the recommended install being in a conda environment. My work laptop uses Windows so obviously Anaconda in WSL is perfect. My 10 year old home computer runs Ubuntu

[abrarshaikh]

10:18 I can say one thing that, wsl is definitely holding me back to not completely migrate to linux!

[OmegaMusicYT]

Listen.

If sql is sequel
And Json is Jason

THEN WSL IS WEASEL

[itsamemarkus]

The main reason I don't use Linux as my main system is that I haven't found a linux distro that handles different resolution monitor setups as good as Windows does. (I use 3 monitors, one 4k and 2 slightly older ones with lower res) I use WSL daily, but I still hope that I can one day use a native Linux distro as my daily driver.

[MegaManNeo]

I have my gaming machine running Win 10 and I remote connect to it from my Linux/Android systems either via SSH or Parsec/NoMachine.
It's solid combo that works, especially since I am really casual these days anyway and I don't want to waste so much electricity just for web browsing or Discord.

[akurasubject]

There's this "Windows subsystem for android" on windows 11 soon which i wonder if it could have same experience as WSL without having to dual boot to android x86. In that case it would be cool to have 3 in 1 native crossover apps in just 1 OS.

[anurag]

I converted from Fedora to Windows with WSL2 a long time ago. It was mainly due to gaming and nvidia optimus issues but since Windows is stable as hell since 5 yrs, I don't intend to go back to Linux again.

[lekrsu]

I love Linux, but nowadays I'm solely running Windows on my main workspace. The only reason for this is the performance drawbacks and bugs that Nvidia users must deal with in the Linux world, especially those with different resolution monitors and refresh rate. If I was running an AMD system, then sure, Linux would be great! My Dell XPS laptop with an iGPU however works more than just fine, and was even unusable on Windows because of horribly bad drivers believe it or not.

In the future I hope to see Nvidia and Wayland become as mature as the desktop experience on Windows is, and then I'll certainly look at running Linux on my workspace again. :))

[bzedude]

As a programmer and gamer, I find the Linux Desktop to be much better for my workflow.

Having a proper package manager like pacman for all my favorite software(it even manages my favorite zsh extensions), being able to use my computer while it's updating, seamlessly launching software with my favorite DE, and being able to endlessly configure my system with my favorite text editor(much of my software having config files).

I get that you could configure stuff in windows with vim, but Linux really invites you to do that sort of thing.

[TheSulross]

WSL is Microsoft's concession that they lost the war for the server side

[maynnemillares]

You have ignored the biggest drawback of WSL2, storage file system. WSL depends on the underlying Windows NTFS.

NTFS in 2021 is really terrible, especially for disk-intensive tasks. Let us not go to the direction of using NTFS on an HDD, as that is the worst experience for everyone on Windows.

[masterlight]

"There is no systemd so it's fast"
The whole windows bloats : allow us to introduce ourselves

[bukh]

I'm loving WSL2 and found myself using windows more often.
I still have my dual boot. and i don't think I'm getting rid of it any time soon.

[abhisek]

We can do the same with an ssh to a vm which has ubuntu server running on it and it just uses around 250 MB of RAM. And a backup friendly and portable vm is more reliable and customizable than WSL because if the host Operating System crashes, wsl dies along with it.

[IgoR.R.]

Windows is really resource heavy. I was using wsl for around year or so. Working with nodejs, django and docker was hard because wsl was crashing from time to time cos it was running out of RAM. I have 16gb of RAM, and it wasn't enough. I switched back to native Linux and it feels better now, cos now I don't need to restart the whole thing from time to time.

[anthonii.x]

I think WSL is fine, but my problem with Windows won't be fixed by putting linux is a semi virtual machine to run along side it. If I want GNU tools, I use Cygwin, if I want tools like ssh they're just built into windows, etc etc. Not trying to be dogmatic or anything, but I don't really see the point in using WSL unless like you said I'm programming.

Even at my job it's pretty easy to manage linux servers from windows machines, and Cygwin along with some other tools have helped me far more than WSL has. Not to say I'm opposed to it, but WSL comes with it's own set of problems.

Main Issues:
- Separate account login from regular windows login, in an enterprise environment where your password changes every 6 months this is annoying.
- The permissions do not carry over to your windows "drive", so permissions are a bit wacky
- In order to use commands from wsl in windows you have to do "wsl [command]" which is kind of annoying, as opposed to Cygwin where you have the binaries built for windows directly on your system
- The core linux functionality that I love can't be included in WSL, as you mentioned. Systemd, grub, the way that the system handles kernel updates, networking, and KVM

I think it's a cool thing to have, and certainly has it's uses, but I think you're overplaying what it is. Most tools that I use in linux are open source so I wouldn't even bother spinning up a virtual machine to use most of these things, because they're already on windows.

[AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Chris. Obviously not for me but I can see how it could be nice for you.

[Rahul-geff]

I am going to buy a new laptop soon, and windows 11 is enticing indeed🙄 With 16gb ram, maybe it will run fine. But, linux is just so responsive and customized to my taste that I am confused what to do😂