I'm guilty of using WSL to bypass what the IT department has done, but that's partly due to our IT department being borderline useless. To prove my point to them one time, I took a project and compiled it in Windows normally, in a fresh Windows VM, and in WSL. A 20 second compile in WSL took 2 minutes on the Windows host.

My work would be impossible without WSL, and yes I am guilty of hiding from the security systems... Because the security systems are so invasive they keep locking files I'm trying to open so IDEs don't even work properly under Windows.

Dang. WSL is literally the only thing that maintains my sanity when I am forced to do anything on Windows. I don't work in an enterprise environment, mind you.

Users with local non-AD connected systems (which bypass GPOs)

Found your problem. Nothing to do with Linux/WSL.

Windows that needs the Ol' Yeller treatment.

FTFY

Ok so you can provide your users with an option to use a sane OS then.

I remember on Reddit once some guy was talking about how he installed Ubuntu and it only had a terminal no GUI and it didn't have APT only Snap. Took me a minute but I figured out he had installed Ubuntu Core or whatever they call their embedded system.

And given Canonical's corporate garbage fire website I can see how. I kinda hate the brand names they all independently come up with. Fedora isn't much better, the way you learn Fedora Silverblue is the immutable version that comes with the Gnome desktop is you ask on Reddit, because their website is 94% marketing drivel.

Real answer: this is talking about computers with windows 11 installed that also run Ubuntu through a service called WSL, or Windows Subsystem for Linux; basically you have a windows 11 pc that can do linux stuff too.

A native Ubuntu machine would be installed directly to the hard drive and booted that way.

Native Linux PCs speak in penguinese and celebrate their mesiah the great Torvaldius giver of kernels.

My guess is not just traditional developers, but anyone doing any amount of coding, like data scientists, business analysts, etc.

Especially if they're using AI, those tools work better on Linux, or as is the case most places, wsl2 inside Windows.

I believe Windows is kept because of the Office tools. However, Windows needs 12 layers of security tools that constantly get in your way, so the path of least resistance is to just stay in your wsl2 sandbox.

The knee jerk reaction to this from enterprise IT is often to restrict access to WSL. This solves the problem, but creates disgruntled users who will continue to try and work around it.

What they should consider, in my opinion, is giving these people real Linux workstations that can be enrolled in group policies, SSO, and all that good stuff. Commercial vendors of Linux will support these use cases.

Some places roll out Macs, which work almost as well, but the hardware is more expensive. Hardware and commercial software support may be better, though, I don't know.

I think either is a superior alternative to Windows.

Unfortunately most people are intimidated and wary of Linux because "some of my programs might not work"

Average people aren't going to learn a new system because the whole "devil you know" thing.

Simply, the majority of people would rather stick with MS than install a new OS.

Not really. Microsoft did WSL to keep Linux users from leaving, and to gain back Windows server share. Both worked, but keeping me in Windows by allowing me to use Linux means I'm still using, expanding my usage, and becoming more dependent on Linux.

It's exposing Windows devs to Linux, and getting people using it. Every WSL installation of Ubuntu is an installation that likely would never have been done otherwise.

As other people in this thread points out, WSL is not ideal but it really saves the ass of anyone forced to use Windows at work.

I have a thinkpad handed to me from work with windows on it and all the usual restrictions. I tried for a while to use it by constantly running a virtual machine with Linux, but Windows is not a stable enough environment to host that. So in the end I just bought myself a framework laptop because nobody actually controls that I use the laptop provided by work.

Not everyone is that lucky. Canonical found a way to make their life easier. I think that's objectively great, no matter what you think about Canonical as a company.

WSL is not generally something people use because they are afraid of changing to Linux, they use it because they are not allowed by IT to change their OS.

the awkwardly-written title is referring to ubuntu via WSL ("on Windows 11") as opposed to just running linux ("native").

the article is pretty clear what it's about, even the caption on the first image straight up says what i just wrote. you read it instead of just reading the title, right?

That was true 15 years ago. There are now plenty distributions focused towards new users. And to be fair standard distributions have become very user friendly.

I installed Fedora on my mother’s laptop because she was complaining about it being slow and loud, on top of windows occasionally breaking after updates. She’s had no problem so far and seems to be happy with it. I just set it to auto update everything every week and that’s it.

Functionally all new apps are "Linux development work", as modern C# solutions are containerised and hosted on Linux servers.

Microsoft gave up on Windows servers a decade ago when they released .net Core, as it was the sound solution to ensure continual growth of Azure and fighting off Java adoption hosted through AWS/GCP

.net framework is a niche framework now, which just a few legacy platforms run today.

However the reason IT requires Mac and Windows for everyone, is because they can lock those machines down. Like mad down, they don't want to build software to lock Linux machines down from a central place.

I wouldn’t work there either but those places exist and we must mourn the souls who toil there.

Its just shittier Debian.

I like mint for easier access to newer packages/drovers for my gaming VM but that's about it.

I am a Ubuntu to user now. However, I find myself reading Arch wiki far more and a bit Debian's but barely Ubuntu's. But I agree that Ubuntu is the industry standard and it's acceptable to distribute a deb and test it on Ubuntu LTS and call it a day. Other distros can simply dig into it and make it work. Containers and sandboxes are great, but I hate the concept to only distribute things that way. Snap Flatpak LXC Incus Docker Podman etc. stuff don't work on some restricted/weird environment.