WSL is essentially a little virtual machine running within Windows, but you can access the Windows filesystem from within it. The Windows filesystems are accessible under /mnt; the default location for user profiles under Windows is at /mnt/c/Users/, for example.
I created soft links to my Windows home directory and the other directories I frequently access from within WSL in my WSL home directory to make it easier to work with them.
Since I have to live in Windows most of the time for work, WSL has been a convenient way for me to do the stuff I like to do in Linux as most of it is done via terminal. I’ve found it to be more convenient and better integrated than running linux in a traditional VM, or flipping it around, running Windows in a VM from Linux.
It’s not 100% like running Linux but when I absolutely need to be 100% in a linux environment I just boot off of my expansion storage.
i think in general with linux one gets what one pays for, and often issues are “standard enough” for the linux user that they’re easy to sort out if one is experienced. without linux experience none of this matters because it will be a nightmare, so it really depends on proficiency. i’ve been using linux for twenty years (not always as my main OS) and i would say that the framework experience so far has been close to perfect (my desktop gets top grades).
fractional scaling on wayland is supported almost everywhere. at the time of this writing the only apps i tried where fonts are weird are the jetbrains IDEs. yes, one can’t escape the command line to both enable it and force it for several apps (signal, firefox, etc.)
agree on hw acceleration on firefox, ALTHOUGH it might be sorted by default in the next couple of months
wifi is fine. some people have reported issues but i have had none so it must mean something.
hibernation is not the best thing to set up but it’s also not a hard requirement for me. plus it’s been patchy on macs too in the past.
overall there are two real issues:
fractional scaling (as you mentioned)
patchy power management, as there are several possible solution but no “standard way”
nevertheless, neither of these two things are deal-breakers to me.
they don’t any longer, it’s not 2006. personally i just think that the unix experience on windows is vastly inferior to macos’. if you want to program it’s either mac or linux, if you want to play it used to be windows now it’s windows and linux. if you want to do hardcore creative stuff it’s windows or mac. you can program on windows and do video editing on linux, but the ux won’t be the same. at the end of the day one chooses their priorities
I understand where you’re coming from. That’s how I think about my car; just a tool to get me from A to B with as little fuss as possible. I have no desire to understand or customize or maintain anything under the hood. That’s how my wife feels about her laptop too, so I’d never dare push Linux on her; better to stay in the mainstream with first-class support from every hardware vendor and enterprise.
But you’re not seeing the other side quite right. I don’t use Linux because I think it “just works” better than Windows, or just because it’s a hobby. Using Linux is about wanting to have more control over what my own machine is doing. I find that Windows is a resource hog because it’s busy doing all kinds of things that I never asked it to do, pushing O365 services, Windows Hello with Microsoft accounts, Edge, Bing, Cortana, and sponsored content on me at every turn. I find that I can opt out (sometimes) only until the next update resets things to the same dark patterns.
By contrast, Linux allows me to customize everything to be as lean or as full-featured as I want, supporting a variety of competing desktop environments and package managers and repositories with a variety of competing philosophies. It doesn’t make me feel like my own machine is subscription service under the control of a mega cap corporation. I can install it on as many machines as I want to experiment or do work without worrying about licenses. Using it as a daily driver is harder, but builds knowledge that’s valuable for working in the computer science, software, and IT worlds where Linux is popular.
That’s not so much “the other side”. It still a tool in this ‘more control’ use case. In this case, control comes with skills pre-requisites. And that’s cool too. Like I mentioned, I use all three platforms. It’s about picking the path of least resistance to accomplish the task required. i.e. General population don’t use an OS to use the OS…they use the OS as a medium to accomplish some goals / tasks output.
The piece you quoted was specifically for the ‘hobby’ case.
Fair enough. My interpretation of your comment was that the only benefit to using the harder-to-use tool (Linux) was the self-satisfaction of getting it to work, i.e. as a hobby. I just wanted to discuss the other reasons why I find it to be a more likable and sometimes more useful tool, despite requiring more of an investment to get it to work.
Think there’s a mis-communciation somewhere. The very early response was regard hardware support from Windows vs Linux. Not so much about the '“using”…but more about getting things to work. Slight distinction there.
Second part of this…that’s a skillset readiness / preparedness matter. Agree…learning harder skills…and practicing…will eventually make it not ‘harder’…whatever that maybe.
e.g. Crossing the road is a skill. 1 year-old doing it, vs a 10 year-old doing it. Once something is not hard to do…the next logical question is “is there a faster way”. Some will ask the latter question first. Either way, skill has to be part of the equation. And as mentioned, it’s a combination of the right tool, and skill, and tool selection.
Linux isn’t always 'harder to use"…it’s just not always the easiest tool either. (vice-versa, however you want to flip that logic, Linux, Windows, macOS, AIX, *BSD…etc)
If it makes those in whatever camp feel happy:
s/Linux/< anythingelse >/g
What is frictional scaling? Does it have to do with the trackpad? In case it’s a typo and you mean fractional scaling: I don’t think that has anything to do with the particular framework hardware – unless you mean that the resolution makes 1.5x an attractive choice. My experience on Wayland has been absolutely stellar; particularly because it actually works properly between different monitors with individually-set scalings. For legacy X11 apps it’s indeed not perfect, but it’s recently improved considerably.
Hardware accelleration: I think that’s an issue with Firefox (hopefully soon-to-be-solved) that affects all hardware, not just the Framework hardware.
Wifi: I have seen absolutely no problems or regressions with it. It has worked flawlessly all the time (which hasn’t been the case with all WiFi drivers in the past). Perhaps I’ve been lucky to sail past regressions … Note, though, that in Windows regressions do happen (for various things), so I’m not so sure that regressions happening in general is setting linux and windows apart.
Hibernation: that’s also not Framework-hardware-specific. The fact that s2idle needs kernel command-line parameters to function acceptably is the one point where I concede that linux support of the framework hardware is less-than-ideal.
The decision whether to enable hibernation OOTB is with the distributions, independent of framework hardware.
In my experience (but I got the laptop sufficiently late that Fedora 35 was already available), the framework laptop is actually one of the best supported laptops under linux – even better than the Dell XPS Developer edition a few years ago that shipped with linux and needed separate steps (probably not with the shipped install though) to get wireless/bluetooth working.
Yeah, general state of Firefox on Linux I suppose. Poor user experience in this case.
Yeah, if your particular kernel has been patched by the distro, or you don’t update the kernel often, you may have been lucky enough to have skipped over it.
This is not to set Linux and Windows apart, but more related to the wifi experience over the past 9 months since Framework was released…
Yeah, distribution.
We can keep slicing the user experience to fault this project, that project, that distro… Hell, hardware doesn’t have issue if you don’t put software on it to use them. So sure, if you see good support from your chosen distro with great hardware support, power to you.
Nothing will stick…and nothing will get the attention that’s required for a polished experience.
If you intended to scope the question to hardware support by Linux [kernel]…then really, it doesn’t matter how you look at it if you’re not looking at the end result of user experience. Tunnel vision into hardware support alone isn’t really task fulfilling. That is, your response seems to slice the hardware, away from distro, away from project, away from updates…and intentionally not look at the end-to-end.
Anyway…some see issues in things, some don’t. Different mentality.
So Nils, I’m with you - I’m a *nix guy… but yea, there are things are work better. Specifically - I’ve been trying to get MiraCast working on Arch/GNOME/Wayland for months… gnome-network-display, if I remember correctly… and maybe its MY Samsung TVs, or … theres work arounds… but I’m a pretty decent nix sysop and no dice; 20 seconds under Win11 and I can cast, duplicate, extend or 2nd monitor. Poof. Yes - the battery life is another one… it lasts like a normal Apple laptop now; and suspend/hibernate do work perfectly.
I like the Intel display application that allows for extended tweaking of the display - HDR settings, and all super easy…
Yes, I do see where it falls on its face; registry entries that don’t go away with an uninstall - other THINGS that I’m only beginning to see after a week of use… I know. But, the experience isn’t BAD - and I can load all my *nix services right on this desktop… I still have my full *nix server running in the other room; and can remote in with ease… I have a Whonix VM running right in Windows, just like I used to on nix…
Who knows, maybe I’ll go back - but I do like having the Frame.work buzzing along the best that it can. It IS a different experience. Yes, the Windows … way - is still there… but with the WSL its pretty nice.
It never did on Arch - not that I cared much; I’m always connected to AC power… .but it is nice just having the battery things work. Simply; and without mucking around… and again, I’m a nix guy.
So over the months I’ve owned the Frame, I built a really well-done Arch install… everything worked and there was really only minimal ‘issues’. Battery/suspend being one of them - MiraCast/projection to TVs being another. Both work great under Windoze - and like… I’m 100% a nix guy. I just figure most of my laptops are Thinkpads; and those are LINUX HAPPY. The Frame.work really wasn’t - so why am I fighting it… and BUILDING the system like you described… so I just thought I’d take Win for a spin… and I’m learning new things - the WSL/WSL2 is great… things just work… why don’t I put the laptop where it runs best, and still have all my nix systems at my fingertips.
Yes, I’m already seeing a LITTLE of the Windows fuckery… registry items that remain after an install… but I’m gonna see how long I can ride this thing. Theres been a lot that I’ve liked so far… and little that I don’t.
And yes, 95% of my systems still run nix.
[And one iMac running MacOS…]
OMG… BUT, the WSL just to have on a Windows box… that is really great - but you arent like talking to linux machines EASILY. it takes a lot of mucking around and BS… NOT simply ‘linux on windows’ like some fanboys like to say…
agreed on all these. i ran Arch Linux w/ Wayland and fractional scaling was fine… i even used fractional scaling WITH font scaling to get the perfect look for me - and it didnt hiccup at all.
The battery/suspend/hibernation, tho - I’m sorry but Windows spanks Linux on this front, period. You can just tell - from the first discharge to the first click to open a sleeping system to - everything. On the frame, it works ‘right’ on Windows. Linux is broken. Thats it.
heres where i agree with you, too. thats why i use linux for all my production systems. i use proxmox and VMs for services… i use stand alone [old or SBCs] for smallers scale services / home automation… i use larger VMs for webpages, gopher, bbses, self-hosting - linux is where you build for stability - that CERTAINLY isnt on windows… lol. i can already see this systems BS after 4 days…
BUT, i though to myself… why am i building this crazy [good] Arch system on the framework?? why not just put the thing that runs the best on THIS hardware; and use it to use/maintain my other *nix systems?? thats where i was… and so far so good.
but i agree… nix is where you can design something to run for a century. windows is where you play solitare while projecting to a samsung tv. both things that nix trips over. (the solitaire part was a joke. :P)
I’m curious – what’s the difference there with the linux-happy thinkpads you used before? I can see the concern that with modern hardware the general route nowadays seems to be s2idle or hibernate and nothing in-between, and I know from my MSSurface tablet that Windows indeed transitions from one to the other quite gracefully. On the FW i’m presently stuck on either s2idle or turning the thing off (which, with the fast booting nowadays, is quite doable and, with an encrypted disk, probably the more secure way of travelling anyway), but with the kernel command-line parameters, performance of that can now easily let the system last almost a week away from an outlet, so that doesn’t hurt my usage anymore. The battery usage in general when the system is on (but little used) under linux is now also very decent. Are you finding significantly better figures on Windows? Is the difference bigger than what you found on thinkpads?
The consumer-electronics example of streaming to a samsung tv: yes, I’m not surprised that works better under windows, but again that doesn’t seem bound to the framework hardware. My impression was that, as far as laptop hardware goes, the framework setup is particularly suitable for linux – after a few months teething pains from it being super-new (where my measure is basically: how well does Fedora deal with the hardware with a minimal amount of tweaking – and there FW beats the Dell XPS developer edition from a few years ago, which ships with linux [its main problem is that the keyboard bulges from an expanding battery, though])
Yup. You totally get it. Different hardware has different suitability…for different platforms…which determines the suitability to run different tasks.
And yeah, Windows has its own special kind of hell as well. I’m not bashing Linux or Windows. They’re just different…for different purposes, different people.
Or, if you use softlinks: rsync user@host:/rynsc_src ./winhome/target_dir/rsync_target.
It’s not full linux, that’s for sure. Anything that requires an init system, or anything that hosts a service for other computers to connect to is not going to work. As a work environment to connect as a ‘client’ to other *nix systems, it does what I need so I don’t have to reboot between environments. Other people will have other needs.
Those of us with tightly-fastened tin foil hats will never follow suit for privacy reasons, but most Linux folks would agree on two things:
To each, their own
Whatever works.
I’m glad you are enjoying your system, despite having a 30+ GB installation of malware on there.
It sounds like the shared infrastructure is on *nix, which is the way to go. Do be cautious if you need to access an NTFS resource from another device. I have seen a ton of issues in the forums the past six months or so with Linux breaking NTFS drives. I think they are patching the code a bit at the moment, but Paragon’s NTFS drivers really went to seed since being added to the kernel last fall.
So… let me share with you few must have tools and tips for Windows
Full disclosure - I’m macos user since 2013, hardware/embedded/linux developer (mostly as a tech lead) and now use fw laptop w Win11 as main os and fedora 36 as a boot option from expansion storage card.
Hyper-V. I couldn’t find any better hypervisor for Win. Smooth and responsive, minimal overhead. Docker and WSL2 works with it. I have 2-6 linux VMs running almost all-time with no impact on host OS.
Personally, I would suggest to turn off animations and transparency effects. That will remove noticeable fps drops on big screen
I’ve used Windows since Win95. I spend all day hammering on the whole Microsoft suite. I know what I’m missing out on.
I use Linux because I’m tired of being told what and how to do things with my own computer. It is 100% the philosophy of ‘I bought it, I own it’.
For the TLDR; my conversion story was when my old Win7 PC had a motherboard failure. I swapped out the MoBo, and Win7 decided it was a new computer it was not licensed to run on. That’s fine, I’d just bought a Win8 upgrade key, and I had an older XP CD around. Except Win8 was coded that it could only upgrade from 32bit to 32bit. So in order to replace the copy of Windows I had paid for with a newer copy of Windows I had paid for, I needed to pirate a copy of Windows. And my big prize was… getting to use the Metro interface for four years.
I put in a Linux Mint disk and everything was smooth as butter.
I like knowing what my kernel is running. I like having full visibility into the data my laptop is collecting and sending about me. I like knowing my workstation won’t shut off one day because Redmond decided it’s no longer profitable for them. I like being able to review the updates to my PC, in detail, and deciding I just don’t like that one. I will never have full trust in a Microsoft device. They don’t belong to us; they’re just on loan.
