So on Windows 10, this is how I roll
Yes those GUI windows are all Linux apps.
Why in the name of all that is Sacred?
Well...
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Nice setup! A warm welcome to dev.to, too. What's your thought on just virtualizing Windows inside of Linux? I whipped up Win10 and macOS Big Sur and it works perfectly — the integration really works well. And I don't have to deal with Windows updates 100% of the time!
Thanks! Yeah unfortunately I would actually personally prefer the Windows window manager over OSX, you end up needing to use brew which often conflicts with native packages etc. And in real terms in my environment it feels like Linux under the hood and I literally only use Windows as a window manager. I even have windows terminal set up to launch WSL by default and run ssh etc from there (no putty), symlinks to Downloads folder and Desktop to make it feel super integrated but I'll maybe write about those another time ;)!
That seems like a lot more work than running WSL in Windows, or Cristini Linux in Chrome OS. Your setup might work, but it costs time.
I love how simple it is to buy a Chromebook, flip an option to true, and now I can run any Linux apps installed with apt. It's the no hassle that is worth the value.
Very true, coming from a Chromebook owner myself! Crostini is great now that it's (relatively) stable. I was considering putting Chromium OS/CloudReady on my main PC, but instead I opted for Debian as it gives me much more customisability in terms of desktop environment etc.
It's true. The real window manager in this setup is the X11 server running on Windows (it's this piece of the puzzle making the shots to Windows API). It's actually quite easy to set up though (install and launch on Windows, set the DISPLAY environment variable in WSL). It has it's cons though: forget cross-developing OpenGL apps in that manner. The best you get is OpenGL 1.4, which is very basic.
Still, that toolbar integration is quite nice and useful. :)
It's a window manager in the sense that Gnome is a window manager or KDE is a window manager or (my beloved and preferred) i3 is a window manager. May be technically debatable but it's a common use of the term (i3's domain name is i3wm.org where wm stands for "window manager", but it sits on top of X11 too).
In this instance, I'd call X11 the window server, but Windows is still the window manager for the system. Those are still Windows'... well... windows. They'll show up with alt + tab etc. and they'll appear in the toolbar. The communication with WSL is via X11 protocols though.
And it's cool - Wayland is coming which should provide more options too - this is merely a convenience script to make launching feel more native :)
Agreed. :) I didn't want to go into too much detail and it came out a bit different than what I meant.
Cool setup. I was investigating the suspend resume issues with a similar setup. When you said there was a workaround were you referring to github.com/nbdd0121/x11-over-vsock?
That's one of them yeah :). You can also do stdout buffering I haven't decided which is faster but they both work!
Can you point me in the right direction to start playing with stdout buffering?
Sure, first of all you find one of the socat ports for windows, download it, then run:
Original source: github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/46...
Good luck!
Thanks for the tips on this. I got this up and running after a bit of fiddling. I've decided on the socat solution with the WSL1 pass through, as the performance was terrible when using the windows port of socat. Apps load instantaneously and it's robust across sleeps and network connection changes like x11-over-vsock.
Yeah that's my setup too :). Can't wait to have proper wayland support then we wont need any of that and it'll be even snappier :)
If you figure out how to run windows on a Linux window manager, let me know. Windows desktop environment is my number 1 biggest turn off. Lol
I would use windows a lot more if I could get a tiling manager or gnome on there.
Just a heads up to people who have a custom WSL2 setup
I run Arch and had to install lib32 cairo. You can install from
pacman -Ssq lib32orpacman -Ssq lib32 | pacman -S -Thanks! I'm sure it'll help someone!
I like the Destiny loading background. Another reason why I cant spend 100% time in linux, love this post.
The wallpaper is from another pet project that I have neglected in a long time - porting Variety for Linux to Windows ;) github.com/varietywalls/variety/pu...
I'm getting a feeling it will end by Windows being more lika macOS but instead of direct Unix core it will be Linux. However even if my feeling's right, I don't think it will happen anytime soon, more like 3+ years.
This really depends on your preference.
I'm Linux & FOSS person. I will install Linux on any new device I purchased.