this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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Today we’re very excited to announce the open-source release of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This is the result of a multiyear effort to prepare for this, and a great closure to the first ever issue raised on the Microsoft/WSL repo:

https://github.com/microsoft/WSL

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[–] stebator@lemmy.world 24 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

This is for WSL2, not for WSL1. WSL2 is just a VM, not a big deal it it's open-sourced. WSL1 is superior to WSL2 in every way. BTW, WSL2 is not a continuation of WSL1, they are being developed in parallel. I still try to use WSL1 whenever possible. For Linux specific features, like systemd dependancy and mounting file systems, I'd use full-featured VM instead of WSL2.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 10 hours ago

I thought WSL2 had a few specific advantages over WSL1, something about disk writes and/or Docker? But yeah, WSL1 was such a cool concept. My understanding is they implemented all the syscalls and API in it so it's basically native.

I tried to use them, as I do most tools like that. On Windows I have always stuck with the MSYS environment that Git for Windows gives you. It's easy enough to work with and has most everything I care about. Plus it's easy to set up. With wsl it's more like a separate thing, it wasn't as easy to run in place. A lot of times I still used batch or powershell scripts so it wasn't totally bash. Like Docker is easier to use from not bash in Windows because the syntax is so wonky.

But now I don't use Windows at all.