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Discussion on: Remote SSH into an Ubuntu VM on Windows

 
awwsmm profile image
Andrew (he/him) • Edited

While I agree generally with your sentiment, I'd still prefer a full distro over "reverse Wine". From Wiki:

This subsystem is not capable of running all Linux software, such as 32-bit binaries, or those that require specific Linux kernel services not implemented in WSL. Since there is no "real" Linux kernel in WSL, kernel modules, such as device drivers, for Linux can't be run.

It is possible to run some graphical (GUI) applications (such as Mozilla Firefox) by installing an X11 server within the Windows (host) environment (such as VcXsrv or Xming), although not without caveats, such as the lack of audio support or hardware acceleration (resulting in poor graphics performance). Support for OpenCL and CUDA is also not being implemented currently, although planned for future releases.

That said, Microsoft explicitly states that WSL is oriented to the development of applications, and not for desktop environment or production servers, recommending the use of virtual machines (Hyper-V or Kubernetes) and Azure for those purposes.

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andresekou profile image
André Sékou (Mapy)

Bien dit Andrew!