My personal computer is Windows mainly because of gaming and game dev, but WSL means I don’t have to dual boot to tinker on a web project or something. In a way, it killed the Linux desktop for me, but I still use Linux as much as ever. With Docker as well.

I think most actual Linux users saw this as expanded access to the Linux environment, and easier ways for Windows users to dip their toes in. That was the feel i got from the general community at the time.

I don’t understand the pointless hate over wsl. Sure, it doesn’t replace Linux. It also doesn’t have to… Just having access to basic nix functionality from a windows desktop is still a useful feature. It makes stuff like putty mostly obsolete. It let’s windows users unpack tarballs without 7zip. It let’s developers play video games while “compiling”. It’s just an all-around convenient tool to have.

Maybe Microsoft wanted it to replace the Linux desktop, but since when has anyone really cared about what Microsoft wanted :P

Personally, I think WSL is a great start point to introduce users in Windows to take the first step to Linux. Me myself and several people from what I know starts from WSL and end up using Linux full-time

That’s funny, I did the opposite - I got used to developing on osx, then Linux, but that was always on my work computer - my desktop has always been Windows (I’m still using the same license and chassis from the computer I bought in high school a decade and a half ago).

Then I burnt out hard, and started picking up contracts here and there, but didn’t have the money to pick up a second computer powerful enough for gaming or work. So I ran virtualbox and avoided cmd like the plague for a while… It was driving me nuts, so I made plans to run Linux with Windows in a hypervisor - I was looking at pci passthrough so I could give it direct access to the graphics card.

But then wsl came out and it just didn’t seem as important. Even as Linux gaming has grown, I just haven’t felt the need to switch… It’s sometimes finicky and setting everything up on a new computer is a pain, but the only time I considered switching one of my machines over is setting up LLMs - that was a real pain to coax into working, and it’d run better on Linux

Transcript:

[Miracle of the word wide web meme template]
“Thanks to the miracle of windows subsystem for linux…”
“…I can use the Linux terminal from the comfort of windows”
[Computer monitor showing windows update screen]
“Marvelous”

I used WSL extensively at a couple of previous jobs. Sometimes IT only gives you the choice of Windows or Mac. I’m quite happy to have a Linux machine at my current job, but WSL has gotten the job done for me when I lacked that option.