Remix clone Hacker News

Thanks to the WSL System Distro, we no longer need distro-specific instructions to build a WSL custom kernel. A standard, ephemeral build environment is right there, on every WSL installation.

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sebazzz 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I do wonder why we would want a custom kernel though. On a physical machine you usually build custom kernels to enable certain hardware support, either directly or though kernel modules.

	▲	wormius 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not so much anymore (I believe they updated it) but originally they didn't allow kernel modules.... I believe they are adding module support now/soon. This mattered for me because I wanted to remap esc/caps and to do so would have required a module. I tried everything I could with xev/xmodmap (and I think even keyd, which was the thing that required the module). xmodmap won't work due to how windows interfaces with WSL input IIRC. So without module support I wouldn't be able to use keyd (again, IIRC, it's been a while). I just know that without module support I was unable to remap keys in the console (perhaps in GUI mode it could have worked, but I'm not using GUI). I ended up using PowerToys to remap globally/inside windows and it's fine, but it wasn't my preferred method. I can't recall if systemd mattered or not, but in my case I didn't want to use systemd. Perhaps it wouldn't have been an issue, but yeah. Recompiling with module support was the only way I would have been able to do that at that time.