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Windows Linux

WSL 2 In Windows 10 Now Supports Mounting Linux Filesystems Like EXT4 (microsoft.com) 69

rastos1 writes: Starting with Windows Insiders preview build 20211, WSL 2 will be offering a new feature: wsl --mount. This new parameter allows a physical disk to be attached and mounted inside WSL 2, which enables you to access filesystems that aren't natively supported by Windows (such as ext4).
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WSL 2 In Windows 10 Now Supports Mounting Linux Filesystems Like EXT4

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  • great (Score:2, Insightful)

    by aRTeeNLCH ( 6256058 )
    Now marks the start of the era when Linux users have to fear Windows viruses...
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      The era of Linux on the Desktop!
      • Damn, I ran out of mod points!

      • I use linux everyday for web development for years. I cannot find a single good reason not to switch to wsl2. All my gui apps have a win version that is better or at least just as good as the linux version: Chrome, Slack, VS code, Sublime, Skype, dbeaver, Postman, Spotify, open office.... Oh and exporer.exe is probably a better file manager than nautilus. Combine this with countless win only apps e.g. a weird vpn, paint.net, heidqsl, ms office and it is getting clear: Windows is becoming the best DE for lin
  • I may have missed this and I am a bit of a Linux neophyte but will this allow the mounting of encrypted drives?

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I may have missed this and I am a bit of a Linux neophyte but will this allow the mounting of encrypted drives?

      Yes. WSL2 is fundamentally different from WSL. The latter adds Linux calling conventions and syscalls to the Windows kernel so Linux binaries can run under the Windows kernel. This like like the BSD binary compatibility layer.

      WSL2 changes things dramatically - instead of emulating the Linux kernel, WSL2 uses a special hypervisor and runs the real kernel under it, so binaries run under the real kern

  • For an OS in 2020 (This should had been done in the year 2000) We really need the ability to read different file systems. As many new devices are Android (Linux Kernel) and iOS (Unix Kernel) Windows should be able to access different file systems.

    For the most part for compatibility we have been suck on FAT32 for a long time. Microsoft hasn't been too open on making NTFS work well on non-windows systems. but for the fact that we have computers that are roughly 1000x more powerful then they were 23 years

    • Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Friday September 11, 2020 @12:15PM (#60496350)

      Microsoft introduced a successor to FAT32: ExFAT. Then they patented key features, and announced to the world that they pinky-promise in a totally not-legally-binding way not to sue any open source implementations. Surprisingly enough, support was never incorporated into the linux kernel and a lot of distros don't support it without installing some additional packages.

      The problem is that MS will not support any filesystem they don't control, and no-one else can support one that they do. To add further insult to injury, the SD Card Association made ExFAT mandatory on SDXC cards, so they all have to be sold pre-formatted to ExFAT any reformating as anything else makes them not-quite-complient and sets up a host of compatibility problems with consumer electronics - plus it means MS gets a tiny royalty on every card and device that uses SDXC. Oh, and Microsoft just happens to be a member of the SD Card Association.

      • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

        Nearly every Linux distro has a fuse-exfat module installed by default. Has Microsoft sued any distro provider over it?

        • I suppose it depends how many you consider 'a lot.' As far as I know they havn't sued, but they also havn't promised not to, which is why it's still not in the kernel. The did announce an intention to make it properly open under open-source-compatible license terms last year, but I don't know if they ever went through with it - my grumbling may be outdated.

        • Re:ExFAT (Score:5, Informative)

          by SignOfZeta ( 907092 ) on Friday September 11, 2020 @01:41PM (#60496804) Homepage

          Doubtful. Microsoft still has patents on it, but they released the patent rights and made the specification public last year. There's been some form of exFAT support built into the Linux kernel since version 5.4.

      • Then they patented key features, and announced to the world that they pinky-promise in a totally not-legally-binding way not to sue any open source implementations.

        Hey, hold on. Pinky-promises are super serious -- according to my 13-year-old niece.

        • Which is why MS hasn't sued anyone over it despite ExFAT actually being readable in pretty much every Linux distro since they all ship with the FUSE module.

      • Oh, and Microsoft just happens to be a member of the SD Card Association.

        Ooooh scary. Conspiracy. There must be underhanded deals going on. ... On wait, every tech company on the planet is an SD Card Association member, and for Microsoft like the overwhelming majority of companies it means absolutely nothing because members are not automatically party to the development process, unlike say the 13 companies sitting on the board.

        Of which one is Samsung, who have developed file systems as well.

        Conspiracy!

      • Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday September 11, 2020 @02:58PM (#60497158) Homepage Journal

        This is all out of date. Linux kernel has support for ExFAT, the patents were donated to the Open Invention Network. The OIN exists to allow patents to be used in Linux without fear of having to pay royalties.

        • I remember reading that MS announced an intention to do that last year. I've not followed the news since, though I do remember having to install a FUSE package to get ExFAT on my ubuntu laptop. So I probably am a bit behind on recent developments.

          • The patents were released to OIN, and the spec published, August last year. Since then, the kernel has already seen not one, but two exFAT drivers (first one was in staging). Now it's just a matter of it trickling down to the distros, for those that don't use bleeding edge kernels (like Arch or Debian unstable). Debian Buster has the kernel in backports. Fedora is shipping it in their next release later this year.

      • Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)

        by PinkyGigglebrain ( 730753 ) on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:48PM (#60497634)

        ... MS will not support any filesystem they don't control,

        Sorry, not 100% accurate.

        MS, and every other main stream OS supports UDF [wikipedia.org] filesystems, used primarily for DVD's. But UDF also makes a great file system for USB thumb drives [duncanlock.net] because Windows (Vista to 10), MacOS, and Linux all support R/W with just a base install.

        • Have you actually tried using UDF for USB drives on a long term basis? It's not really very usable, except when you need to write something once and leave it be. If you keep updating files, it'll corrupt the filesystem eventually.

    • Shouldn't file systems just be implementations of a driver interface, that themselves use a block storage kernel interface?

      And can't anyone just write such a driver?

  • https://superuser.com/question... [superuser.com]

    There are a variety of different solutions in there.

    • And they all suck, because none of them give native support - they are all userspace hacks.

    • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      Nobody said it wasn't possible, but it's very nice to be able to do in a near-native *nix shell context on windows. Most the solutions in there are 3rd party flaky and mostly GUI based so more suitable for just getting data back and forth. Your disk can contain shell scripts that are now usable under WSL. There's a lot to like about being able to do this.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Will Windows now recognize and respect grub now?

  • Windows has nothing without ZFS
    • ReFS is pretty nice. You know, besides it not being supported as a boot volume, not supporting whatever crappy NTFS features App1 and App2 require, not being open-source or open-specification, and seeing its predecessor NTFS continue to see active development. It's like Microsoft wants to implement the ZFS feature set as a hobby.
    • Call me when ZFS doesn't take a GB of RAM per TB of disk storage...

      There should be a pcZFS that isn't designed for data center scenarios.
      Sadly, btrfs is a trainwreck.

      • BAReFO0t: Call me when ZFS doesn't take a GB of RAM per TB of disk storage... ZFS: Call me you want to run me on the intended hardware I was designed for.

        You know just because Linux can use X,Y features doesn't mean everything was intended for a Desktop machine! Your complaining about ZFS taking 1GiB per 1TiB of storage, yet it was designed for enterprise class data centers! You know the ones that have gobs and gobs of RAM, yea those... Where a GiB per TiB is like looking at your conventional memory in DO

      • Call me when ZFS doesn't take a GB of RAM per TB of disk storage...

        I would have called but I don't have your number. Anyway, I have a 25 TB volume right now mounted on a device with 4gb of RAM, so no issues there. You may be confused about memory requirements for deduplication.

  • Was hoping wsl2 would have joystick support. I guess supporting adb is a step in the right direction.

  • ...now there's more and more Linux in Windows. Next, there's less and less Windows in Microsoft Linux until, at the end, there's only Wine left to execute legacy Windows crapware. Pretty clever if you ask me.
    • Business-wise that makes a lot of sense. Dump all the hardware support costs and rollout their own version of Wine, or even buy CodeWeavers. If their telemetry efforts are not as profitable as they hope, they well might do it.

      Getting MS Office on Linux before LibreOffice gets any more popular should be a priority for them. I phased out Excel when I did my taxes last spring. Haven't used MS Office since.

      • Who still uses MS Office?
        Why?
        When was the last time you needed a feature that LO didn't have? And I don't mean "...that you could not find due to it not being MS Office", no offense.

  • Windows is starting to reach parity with linux. Its been a long time coming and a sure sign that windows is now a threat to the Linux desktop.
    I learned my FUD from watching Microsoft.
    • The biggest threat to Windows has always been MS/Windows. :)

      Luckily, the users hated it so much that they kept using it anyway. (Moo)

      There were times when MS could have literally announced to shit into every client's gasping mouth, and they would still kept Windows.

    • Feature parity is pretty much impossible without rewriting the entire kernel. NtCreateProcess() are how processes start. It's so far removed from the *NIX/BSD fork/exec style of starting processes that there's no way to make that happen.

    • No such thing.
      Either it is Linux, OR it is on the "desktop".

      Linux is for computer users.
      The desktop is for application users. (Aka those that didn't get the core concept of a computer.)
      Those are diametrically opposite usage scenarios.

      Call me when I can script *arbitrary* application UI interfaces. And I don't mean convoluted introspection or disability interfaces.

  • by tsa ( 15680 )

    I wish Apple did this too.

    • I don't think you understand Unix. Or POSIX.
      Most Linux software can jist straight-up be compiled.for any other Unix, including macOS.

      So macOS and Linux already mostly overlap.
      You can run X application in macOS (afaik), and CUPS is standard on Linux too, for example.

      And I know that I already mounted ext3/4 on a Mac.

      • by tsa ( 15680 )

        "And I know that I already mounted ext3/4 on a Mac."

        As far as I know you need a special app for that. It would be nice to be able to just use mount for it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

  • That BSD is dying.
  • Can it handle LUKS/dm-crypt too?

  • Except if you install the latest 2004 Windows patch which breaks it! LOL https://www.computerworld.com/... [computerworld.com]
  • Extend, pending ...

    Anyone who thinks this is a "Good Thing" needs to read up on MS's history and remember that they have NOT changed their goals.

  • This is just asking for it. I'm gonna keep my Win10 just where it is, if i need my ext4 drive, i'll boot into linux
    • You're not allowing Windows to touch your ext4 partitions. You're allowing a Linux kernel running in a lightweight VM to do that.

  • We're getting closer to the point where devs can ignore Windows and just release for Linux and let MS sort out the compatibility layer for their legacy system.

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