• hungryish@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • sol87@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Sestren@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

  • callmepk@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

  • Flemmy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

  • amanwithausername@vlemmy.netOP
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    1 year ago

    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”

  • yaaaaayPancakes@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • avapa@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My company mandates Windows laptops but I mostly work with Linux VMs hosted on our servers. WSL2 and Visual Studio Code (with Remote SSH and WSL2 plug-ins) are the best things that happened to Windows in years. Without these tools I would simply be unable to work.