[Discuss] WSL 2

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 10:30 PM Rich Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 6 May 2019 21:50:22 -0400
> Bill Bogstad <bogstad at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > It looks like both the current emulated environment as well as full
> > Linux kernel will be usable on the same system.
>
> Yup. Which, amusingly enough, grants end users a freedom that is absent
> from many contemporary Linux distributions: running with or without
> systemd and all of its hard-coded interdependencies.

I am ambivalent about systemd.   I just want things to work when I
install them, which
for the most part is the case with systemd at this point.  On the
other hand, I don't like WSL1's
bare shell environment either.   Even in the current incarnation which
allows daemon
processes to continue to run after you close your bash window is a
pain.   I had to write
my own shell script to start "necessary" daemons (cron, rsyslog, sshd,
cups) which I have
started from a Windows batch file when I login to Windows.   I never
log out of windows
and I effectively get the benefits of the automation of system upkeep
which my Linux distribution
(Ubuntu) provides.  Unfortunately, some of the standard cron scripts
on Ubuntu check the system
for the status of systemd before running and since WSL1 doesn't use
systemd, so they fail.  I'm hoping that
WSL2 will allow a "full" Ubuntu distribution to be run so I can
concentrate on getting work done rather than
figuring out why "standard" things don't work.  If they are going to
be supporting a full Linux kernel environment,
it seems to me that it is a pretty short step to allowing an arbitrary
init process, whether it be systemd, SystemV init,
or something else.

Bill Bogstad