Re:The Day Windows Died
by AdeptusAquinas on Monday April 03, 2023 @04:56PM
(#35431163)
Bash does not work the same on Linux and Mac, as the version for Mac is the GPLv2 option which has a different, reduced syntax vs the common version in Linux (or WSL2 versions of linux), so a linux bash script may well fail when run on MacOS. Further more, the binary architectures are different so a linux ELF binary wont work on Mac either.
Your WSL comparisons are incorrect as well: WSL Linux on Windows can not only access and run commands like find over the entire windows file system, but it can also run windows executables - these start in windows even though triggered from bash or whatever in Linux. And vice versa: Windows can run linux binaries which start in WSL (or dual use it like Docker for windows which uses a wsl backend). Furthermore, if that floats your boat, if you start a linux gui application (I occasionally do with browsers or certain recon tools) it runs fine in a window as part of the windows ui experience.
So its not really like a linux vm on mac at all, not even considering the vastly better performance you get from WSL vs a VM.
One easy example:
Bash/sh works the same on Linux and Mac. Nowhere on windows is that true: cygwin mangles paths in a demonstrable script-braking way.
WSL is not windows. It is literally linux running on windows. Which is even more complicated than running a half-baked shell. You're basically using a different OS which is an admission that windows is so awful. Might as well run VNC on a Linux box.
If you want to objectively compare WSL and macOS, you need to run Linux in a virtual machine on mac, that would be the correct comparison.