/etc/sysctl.conf is a good example; on some systems it just works, on some systems you need to enable a systemd service thingy for it, but on some systems the systemd thingy doesn't read /etc/sysctl.conf and only /etc/sysctl.d.
So a simple "if you're running Linux, edit /etc/sysctl.conf to make these changes persist" has now become a much more complicated story. Writing a script to work on all Linux distros is much harder than it needs to be.
Apps were not supposed to open /etc/resolv.conf by themselves. If they did, they are broken. Just because the file is available, transparently, doesn't mean it is not a part of the internal implementation.
Even golang runtime checks nsswitch for known, good configuration before using resolv.conf instead of thunking to glibc.
Statically linking glibc was always strongly discouraged. Even if you did it, nss and iconv are always dynamically loaded, and they need symbols from glibc itself, so your statically-glibc-linked binary would need to load dynamic libc anyway!
No, something doesn't need to check it, today it exists only to serve broken applications (and systems broken by their admins). Its semantic doesn't allow to express the needs of resolvers today (like per-interface or per-zone resolving or other mechanisms, like mDNS).
How the resolver is configured is its internal issue; apps should just use getnameinfo().
Linux desktop is a distro concern now. Not an ecosystem concern. It’s long left the realm of an linux concern when MacOS went free (with paid hardware of course) and Windows was giving away free windows 10 licenses to anyone who asked for it.
Deepin desktop and elementary are on the top of my list for elegance and ease of use. Apps and games need a solid ABI and this back and forth between gnome and kde doesn’t help.
With so many different wm’s and desktop environments, x11 is still the only method of getting a window with an opengl context in any kind of standard way. Wayland, X12, whatever it is, we need a universal ABI for window dressing for Linux to be taken seriously on the desktop.
I've got a VM with a full linux distro at my fingertips. Virtualization has gotten more than fast enough. And now, with windows 11, I get an X server integrated with my WSL instance so even if I WANTED a linux app, I can launch it just like I would if I were using linux as my host.
It does suck that the WSL1 notion of "not a vm" didn't take off, but at the same time, when the VM looks and behaves like a regular bash terminal, what more could you realistically want?
some privacy, no telemetry, no ads, and the computer only applying updates that I choose and only rebooting when I ask it to?
(I know it's a lot to ask for these days...)
I believe providing it helps vendors to improve and fix issues quicker.
Comparing it to the real linux is like comparing powershell prompt to full windows.
WSL is passable for running Docker containers, and that is if you add a ton of complicated socket forwarding machinery and Window-side service management automation to it, which is what Docker Desktop does.
Without that, WSL2's lack of a proper init system means that you literally don't even have a way to automatically start `dockerd`. And you have the same story for the integration of that Docker daemon with the other Linux WSL hosts.
> Comparing it to the real linux is like comparing powershell prompt to full windows.
True, although in a way this comparison is unflattering to Linux because PowerShell is generally better made, better documented, and less hostile to automation or customization than most software that comes with Windows.
That's exactly the reason why I mentioned simple docker containers.
Once I needed to make some of them work with macvlan/ipvlan, and docker desktop on mac and windows were both completely unusable.
However, for webdev, native linux would be fine as well.
But if you're used to Linux, Windows is not only borderline unbearable in a cultural way, but you're likely to notice that a ton of important pieces of WSL (and the wider Windows CLI environment) are broken, inadequate, missing, or just different in a way that makes them unattractive to longtime Linux users.
> I've got a VM with a full linux distro at my fingertips. [...] when the VM looks and behaves like a regular bash terminal, what more could you realistically want?
To name a few, things, limited strictly to WSL:
- your distro's normal init system / a standard way to configure persistent services
- binfmt_misc interop that works consistently (for example, some applications cause hangs for unclear reasons, when I pipe them into `clip.exe`
- integration for services that involve running agents and/or hardware access (e.g., Docker, GnuPG, SSH)
- WSLg support on Windows 10, whose absence is purely artificial (what version of Windows my corporate laptop runs is not up to me)
- passable performance with files on the Windows side so that basic amenities like a Git prompt in your shell don't suck
- bridged networking or some other advanced networking configuration> - bridged networking or some other advanced networking configuration
Sounds like something in sysadmin's language.
I hope WSL will keep within the current paradigm, not trying to replace your Proxmox test lab.
it's quite possible it'll work out as well as IBM's OS/2 running Windows apps did
You seem fixated on the Free Beer misinterpretation of Free Software.
There were indications that windows and Linux May converge. Instead we got WSL2. A lot of times we decide to develop something because of the pain of using the other thing. Sometimes we develop something as a “me too”. Sometimes we develop something that is just better. Sometimes, it’s worse.
My point is the fight for a foothold in Linux desktop looked promising for a bit. SteamOS looked like it was gaining, steam…
The reality is there are complexities at that level that people don’t want to deal with and we all have opinions on how it should work, should look, and should be called.
Red Hat (former RH’er myself) should take this on and really standardize something outside of core and server land. And no, it should not be Gnome.