VM's vs WSL -- these days VM's IMO are better

Hi folks
The original idea of WSL in Windows was good but these days VM's have become so efficient with decent virtualisation software that IMO there's nothing to be gained by running WSL (apart from the fact that a Windows VM needs a new license.)

With Linux distros when you use a VM it's usually Free and Open source. WSL has a "Non standard" customized Linux kernel written by Ms which itself can cause a lot of aggro when installing Linux apps -- especially ones that need a GUI. Plenty of live distros around so just create a VM, boot the live distro from ISO image or physical USB defined in the VM as a boot device - and away you go. Really simple. You can simply just switch to a different iso as boot device when you want to try a new live distro.

Even quite a loaded W11 VM doesn't kill even a modest machine these days. Plus you can run them concurrently and they use standard kernels (Linux VM's) etc . Here's a full blown W11 pro (canary build) running a few processes on hardware it shouldn't even be running on and still performs quite sweetly. I used to be in favour of WSL but I think these days especially if you want to run Linux using a VM is a far better bet.






Cheers
jimbo

Little clarity.

WSL version 1, provided a linux-compatible kernel written by microsoft and would translate. Thus linux binaries could run without modification.

WSL2 provides a full linux kernel, and full system call capabilities, a it's a vm that runs under Hyper-V. this lightweight utility vm has a rapid startup that takes a very small amount of RAM. And the memory it does use is dynamic, it can take more and give back to the host when it needs less.

The purpose of WSL really isn't to provide you with a virtual machine, but rather to provide you access to various linux tools, apps and such from within Windows quickly and easily.

I use WSL daily. I use it to run the dig command. I use it to run grep against files on my windows host to find things. If I need to get a file onto my Linux WSL instance, it's super easy...it literally just shows up in file explorer.



If i'm in a directory on my wsl instance and I want to use file explorer to find something, I can run explorer.exe . I can then easily move stuff around with the more GUI centric tools I may be more used to.



I can also use visual studio code, my editor of choice for my work tasks, so if I have a .yml file to modify on linux, i can run code . and it pop's up in windows, but provides me direct access to my linux file system.


So, overall i think you are missing the point of WSL and WSL2. It wasn't an attempt to get a vm running and find speed and performance. Instead, it's an integration that seamlessly allows you to use both OS's and interchange easily between the 2 to accomplish tasks.

BTW: I still use and endorse running Linux in a VM. It has it's purposes too. But turning to a stand-alone full linux install for tasks I want to do repeatedly in my IT based devops job isn't the best or quickest method of accomplishing the task.