I have to say this is nice packaging. It is weirdly not obvious how nice it is to cleanly use a different “machine” inside your desktop.

I never thought I’d prefer WSL to even my MacBook for working with remote servers and dev but somehow I do.

I of course know the many ways to roll something like this for myself, yes dev containers are better for many things etc. but it’s wierd how good the ergonomics of a WSL like container are.

I'm confused why VM + systemd-nspawn? From my understaing WSL 2 runs a single VM + something like systemd-nspawn per "linux installation", but it runs a VM because it needs linux kernel. Why not just do systemd-nspawn if you alread on linux?

How does it differ from existing tools kinda do exactly same, like e.g. toolbx. (And to a slightly lesser degree flatpack, snap, etc.)?

And what prevented adopting/supporting existing projects, instead of further tool ecosystem fragmentation? (kinda the same question, just differently phrased)

I have never heard of "Snow Linux" before. The homepage is minimal:

https://snowlinux.org/

I submitted the Github page as a new story:

https://github.com/frostyard/snowdesktop

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49907568

How does this compare to distrobox?

Yeah, I can see why you'd want this. Being able to cobble it together with other tools is one thing. Having it ready to go without a bunch of setup is still a win.

Got a quick demo? Just opening an editor, running a dev server, and showing how you access the files would help me get a feel for it.

This is most useful to people who run Linux as their daily driver so rather than saying its like WSL can you explain what it offers that existing Linux containers do not?

Its also sounds different from WSL which I thought is a VM rather than a container.

> It's yet another step in my long journey to keep my host installation free from all the changing and breaking dev dependencies that force a reinstall every few months.

Something that also require a bit of explanation. What do you do that makes this such a common problem.

Have you ever heard of Nix, direnv, Lorri, flakes, devShell etc.? Aren't containers overkill for most dev activities?

I'll give this one a try, thanks for sharing!

FWIW, I'm currently using systemd-nspawn via mkosi: https://github.com/systemd/mkosi

It makes an image and runs it in separate namespace. It can start at bash or init. It's very fast but there seem to be a problem creating an Ubuntu image on Debian and vice versa.

Nice. Cool that it supports graphics too!

I'm a bit of an outsider here (I don't understand computer) but a few weeks ago I was wrestling with the question of deploying an application on many boxen. After looking into Docker (and unikernels, lol) I arrived at the conclusion that "the operating system is part of my application."

A very bloated "part", which I did not write, don't understand very well, and which spontaneously self-modifies. An OS is a big bag of global mutable state! Ew!

This made me very sad. (At which point I was informed that I had basically reinvented NixOS from first principles?)

Also something about "we don't break userspace -- that's libc's job!"

https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/

this whole thing is a misunderstanding from legacy docker semantics. you can easily use namespaces in systemd as user in lighter ways, for example, keeping the rootfs but protecting home and binding a private tmpfs, or to bind a completely different rootfs, providing a vm-like experience. Please read the documentation before vibe coding; the name wsl for Linux just shows how lost you are.

The name WSL has always struck me as a bit back area (LSW would seem to make more sense, since it is a Linux subsystem for Windows). I guess they mean it as a Windows Subsystem for Linuxing.

Anyway, should this be called LSL or WSLL? Or maybe LSWSL.

I now prefer WSL over Darwin, especially with agents because I can easily scope disposable "VMs" that have a clean terminal integration.

It's neat seeing this experience come to linux.

Sure you "could" do this with a bunch of tools, but it's the UX that matters.

Creative idea to fix something that nobody thought was broken, but actually was.

So you've just basically reimplemented LXC?

What differentiates this from distrobox?

How does this compare to "sdme"?

- https://sdme.io

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eVfgzd_xyQ

Nice flip of the WSL idea the other way — simple interop like this keeps a one-person stack from turning into a VM zoo.

Looks very cool.

Now all you have to do is run NSL under WSL.

I've wanted a little more isolation than what distrobox can give me for a while now, and I did enjoy WSL when I used Windows. I've also never heard of Frostyard before, and the other repos look pretty interesting as well. Thanks for sharing!

Just a recommendation that difference between docker container and nsl on homepage is worth it

Always looking for a successor to https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant. Is this it?

Is the VM layer mostly for host hygiene, or are you also treating the instances as a real security boundary when something untrusted (deps or agent-written code) runs inside?

I use incus/LXD for this, though it does require a bit of faffing around with the networking.

The benefit is that its super low overhead (no VM).

Have you measured the performance penalty when compiling code in one of the containers against compiling on the host system itself?

The project is cool, but please use human written text.

The website's Claudisms are unbearable.

'National security letter' for Linux?

I think I'll stick to Nix & Podman.

would really like a NixOS for this. would be interesting to play with and figure out.

This is very cool. GG.

someone has to ask the question: can you run lsl in wsl?

There's already Distrobox, which does exactly the same thing but isn't slop.

Why is this better than just spinning up another distro in a VM?

Nobody wants this

IS it LXC containers or docker? Or are you running a custom chroot namespace setup?