runtime VS WSL

Compare runtime vs WSL and see what are their differences.

runtime

Kata Containers version 1.x runtime (for version 2.x see https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers). (by kata-containers)
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runtime WSL
4 406
2,095 16,652
- 1.5%
8.3 8.6
almost 3 years ago 1 day ago
Go PowerShell
Apache License 2.0 MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

runtime

Posts with mentions or reviews of runtime. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2021-03-19.
  • AER: Error of this Agent is Reported First
    1 project | /r/archlinux | 9 Apr 2023
    Let me give you an example. [Here's one of the best questions I've ever asked on the internet.]https://github.com/kata-containers/runtime/issues/2795) I've seen many better questions asked, but this is the best I've been able to manage. I provided a decent description of the problem, a test-case that allowed other people to reproduce it as well (not relevant in your case), what I tried that didn't work, and the exact log messages and system information that indicated the problem. I then followed up with the people who were helping me and the problem was resolved.
  • Set *minimum* CPU allocation for a service
    1 project | /r/linuxadmin | 5 May 2021
    in parts of prod we use a combination of cgroups (mentioned in the thread already), taskset https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/taskset.1.html, and in other cases (HPC workloads on large clusters) Kata Containers to isolate and optimize application resources: https://katacontainers.io/
  • Docker for Mac M1 RC
    15 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Mar 2021
    It might use a hypervisor though, as the pendulum swings back

    https://katacontainers.io/

  • Building a secure/sandboxed environment for executing untrusted code
    4 projects | dev.to | 16 Jan 2021
    Kata Containers

WSL

Posts with mentions or reviews of WSL. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-28.
  • GoboLinux
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Feb 2024
    It absolutely 100% can be true.

    As an example: Windows Services for Linux 2 used a special init daemon to interact with the host OS.

    That meant no systemd. That meant that the `systemctl` program wasn't there.

    This baffled legions, armies, of wannabe sysadmins.

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55579342/why-systemd-is-...

    https://superuser.com/questions/1785697/systemd-in-wsl-on-wi...

    https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9477

    https://askubuntu.com/questions/1132230/unable-to-run-any-sy...

    People on the whole have no idea how this stuff works, and they just copy magic incantations from StackOverflow to get stuff to happen. If that doesn't work, then this OS is broken. The end.

    For these guys, WSL was broken.

    Result:

    MS hired Lennart Poettering.

    https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/07/lennart_poettering_re...

    He "fixed" it. Systemd now works in WSL2. All those guides for noobs now work. Everyone is happy.

    In a world where tools like Flatpak and Snap are proliferating and it's driving deep divisions between Linux distros, if you think the average person struggling with Linux is going to use `ldd` to work out where the dependencies for something live, I'm afraid you are a deep guru who lives on a different plane of existence.

    We now have widely-used packaging systems which simply embed an apps entire dependency tree into a package to avoid people having to work out the difference between `apt` and `rpm`. Thousands of terabytes of disk are being burned to make this stuff go away.

    Yes, this is too hard. Way too hard.

  • Why Linux utilities tend to run poorly on Windows
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Jan 2024
    Better source: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...
  • Weird graphical glitch/problem in Ubuntu WSLg (OpenGL)
    1 project | /r/bashonubuntuonwindows | 10 Dec 2023
  • RamRamRamEveryoneSleepingOnDocker
    3 projects | /r/ProgrammerHumor | 7 Dec 2023
    One of the bugs where on the Docker side. As I have said, there have been several since release with a lot of impact period overlap. The latest and greatest is not resolved.
  • Laravel dev in Windows - Laragon vs Docker?
    1 project | /r/laravel | 7 Dec 2023
    It's the issue of abysmal I/O performance in communication between the mounted WSL2 virtual hard disk and Windows mounts inside the WSL2 distro.
  • WSL freeze seems fixed in 2.0.12
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Dec 2023
  • What's the right way to open files in the system's default program from Ubuntu 22.04 in WSL 2 please?
    1 project | /r/bashonubuntuonwindows | 6 Dec 2023
    I found this github page and I was able to reproduce this from the answer
  • Ask HN: Best Docker open source alternative?
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Dec 2023
    * Docker engine and not Docker Desktop in a VM. WSL2 works well after some configuration: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/6655#issuecomment-11...
  • Broadcom to Cut Almost 1,300 VMware Jobs in California After Takeover
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Nov 2023
    Seems to more of a Defender issue than a WSL one, see https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/8995

    After adding exclusions for the fsnotifier-wsl process and and both variants of the WSL distro path my disk performance was improved.

    Adding the idea64.exe process also helped since I was trying to run IntelliJ against projects inside WSL.

  • Bricked WSL 2 after 2.0.9 / Windows 10
    1 project | /r/bashonubuntuonwindows | 21 Nov 2023

What are some alternatives?

When comparing runtime and WSL you can also consider the following projects:

wsl-vpnkit - Provides network connectivity to WSL 2 when blocked by VPN

wslg - Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios

amicontained - Container introspection tool. Find out what container runtime is being used as well as features available.

genie - A quick way into a systemd "bottle" for WSL

for-mac - Bug reports for Docker Desktop for Mac

Scoop - A command-line installer for Windows.

singularity - Singularity has been renamed to Apptainer as part of us moving the project to the Linux Foundation. This repo has been persisted as a snapshot right before the changes.

Single-GPU-Passthrough

kubernetes-goat - Kubernetes Goat is a "Vulnerable by Design" cluster environment to learn and practice Kubernetes security using an interactive hands-on playground 🚀

setup-msys2 - GitHub Action to setup MSYS2

microshift - A small form factor OpenShift/Kubernetes optimized for edge computing

mkcert - A simple zero-config tool to make locally trusted development certificates with any names you'd like.