it's a linux container but through WSL and natively integrated into windows. that's basically it.
It replaces the need to install docker and mess with a lot of hackery instead with an officially first party supported linux container subsystem.
Edit: and since I forgot to mention a key value-add of this is that it's integrated with group policy, defender etc so you can limit specific users or groups or OUs, etc to running specific containers or to exposing specific resources/network devices/hardware/etc to WSL at all. It makes managing all of it no different than managing any other part of an enterprise windows setup.
And likewise WSL has native antivirus/anti-intrusion instrumentation hooks via a Microsoft Defender for Endpoint/MDE plugin to WSL so that unlike with docker, etc you don't get a sudden blindspot that's non-trivial to monitor (or that comes with a heavy perf penalty).
So it's not something for me, but like everything Microsoft makes, it's for our BOFH's who will torment us with yet another corporate compliance machine.
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a feature of Windows that allows you to run a Linux environment on your Windows machine, without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting -- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about
Those who can’t or won’t move off of Windows have some other way to run Linux stuff in a virtual machine that integrates into a native terminal. I’ve found it quite awkward in general, and honestly haven’t thought much of it since I just decided to move to Linux.
As a Linux developer on Windows, I find this feature really compelling. I had been doing this by importing debian and alpine images manually, to reduce the scope of agents to a limited vm instance with limited credentials.
With WSL, you can control which Windows dirs are accessible (read or read-write). you can easily clone new VMs (distros ) as a new instance.
WSL containers adds convenience and consistency to the manual steps I was doing before.
for example: a primary debian developer env, a second Debian maintainer/developer instance, multiple alpine containers (for each agent stack, one with cloud keys, one with messaging keys).
This adds a very feature rich vm and container experience on top of WSL2 , which was great to begin with.
The author literally spells out why this isn't always the case:
> Yes to start out it’s 95% booleans. But then you want a rollout. And then you want some targeting rules. And then you want non booleans… maybe some json. Oo wouldn’t it be nice if the json could conform to a schema… and then eventually you are like damn I really want to change these without deploying. Or you want to read the same flag from multiple services.
I really like that this exists, but I found the menus and UI to be rather non-intuitive. My main use case was to sync reading progress between my Kobo and my iPhone. I was able to do this using KOReader on the Kobo & the Readest app[1] on iPhone (also open source).
Ultimately I decided to get rid of KOReader because it felt a bit laggy. The gestures (eg: swiping up on the left side to increase frontlight brightness) didn't work well either.
I eneded up writing my own software to sync progress from Kobo to a KOReader Sync server[2] which my Readest app also connects to (love that unlike the Kindle, the Kobo is quite an open system). You can even set it up so you can SSH into it[3].
I really appreciate that KOReader is an option. On my older Kindle (first-gen Paperwhite), the default reading experience had declined until page turns take several seconds. Firmware update and factory reset wouldn't fix it. Using the default reader just wasn't a viable scenario.
I jailbroke it, launched KOReader, and it's like I have a new e-reader. The amount of customizability gets kind of in the way, but once it's set up I don't really think about it from one month to the next. I also didn't feel the need to upgrade my original install either.
Amazon bricked the first gen paperwhite, so I went on a similar journey. I started out making a single rust app on it, then went down the rabbit hole of trying to replace the shell/launcher. https://github.com/justinledwards/ferrink-home-assistant and "ferrink" is the launcher. It is pretty snappy on the paperwhite for what it is.
I tried to set up KOReader multiple times and always got stuck figuring out where all the settings are and how exactly they work. It seems very complete, but I'm just too dumb to actually use it.
I went through the same on my 10-inch Android tablet. The key is just sticking with it long enough to get it set up for your needs and prefs. I'm glad I did because it's really great. While the docs are quite good, if you get stuck just use an LLM. Once you get it configged, you won't be using the UI much.
KOR is both complete and very capable. It can very probably do everything you'll ever want but, as many people observe, the UI is just a bit weird. That's not to say the UI is broken or inconsistent, its simply that its approach is a little different than you'd expect. Once I got familiar with the main flow of the UI, it hasn't been an issue for my daily-use needs. If you care about flexibility, control, features and having it "your way", I think it's well worth the one-time effort to set up. It's also extensible with plug-ins and the UI is entirely user-moddable with Lua scripts. I use several found here: https://github.com/sebdelsol/KOReader.patches.
There's a search function hidden near the help menu. That was handy whenever I lost a menu item, which was frequently. I do like it now it's set up and it accurately reports the battery level, unlike the Kobo reader which says 40% then 0%.
I use the Project:Title[1] addon, I think someone else here on HN suggested it a few months ago. The only catch is that you need to update it manually each time after updating KOReader
I was a bit dumbfounded by the original KoReader browsing UI, I would have expected something more organized, but I thought "maybe it's just a setting I haven't discovered yet".
It looks like I need one of those instead. Will do when I have some time.
Does this support collating books of the same series together?
I also found all existing e-reader software to be lacking, and all I really wanted was a basic reader. I ended up writing my own with Rust and MyPDF (the latter doing all the heavy loading).
The hardware is great, but the software is pretty lacking. Apparently a lot of the tools out there are from folks in similar situation: had the hardware, but the software to drive it was lacking.
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