Question: Pengwin Vs Ubuntu Vs Others

[diegonogueira]

Hi! I'm a new WSL 2 user. Today, I'm using WSL 2 with Ubuntu 18.04. What's the real difference compared with Ubuntu? How can I try before buy?

Thanks!

[crramirez]

Well, there are many differences that probably you have read already in Windows Store and in our web page, even in this project's readme.

So, in one paragraph the real difference with Ubuntu is that the team behind Pengwin is completely advocated to WSL. It means that all our developing, test and experience is in WSL. If a problem with WSL arises we usually are the first to fix it. All of the customizations behind pengwin are made for making the WSL experience more fluently. And of course, this support forum will help you in your WSL journey.

Now one big difference that you need to take into account. You are using Ubuntu 18.04 which is LTS. Pengwin is based on Debian unstable and testing. It means that all the newest packages come to Pengwin, so you'll be on the cutting edge and some things may break. This is where this support forum helps you and allows us to rapidly submit corrections.

That's being said you mentioned that you use WSL 2 and all the Pengwin features are not supported yet in WSL 2.

I recommend you read the issues here the Open and Closed ones so you can have an idea of what to expect. Also our twitter @PengwinLinux

We don't offer trial versions but a full refund policy.

Let's expect others to express their opinions.

Regards

[eliranwong]

Hi @diegonogueira ,

I am interested in the difference too.

I haven't tried Ubuntu in WSL2, so I would like to know more. So far, experience with pengwin in WSL2 is very satisfactory to me. Below are some highlights. I wonder if I can do the same with Ubuntu in WSL2, so I may recommend others.

• development tools works as expected, though some, e.g dart & stagehand, work only in WSL2
• with a few tweaks I documented at https://github.com/eliranwong/wsl2, I can run all gui apps, at least all gui apps I tried, including Qt5 apps with QtWebengine, etc...
• input method ibus works perfectly with all gui apps
• one amazing feature in pengwin is that Linux gui apps can use Wundows fonts directly without further configuration.
• good connection with Windows environment

pengwin with WSL2 now become the best development environment to me. as I haven't tried, I would like to know if I can do the same with a free distro like Ubuntu.

I also appreciate pengwin team for their excellent support.

Regards, Eliran

[eliranwong]

Today I tried Ubuntu. The first GUI I tried is based on Qt.

Launching this app in pengwin is very straightforward. but in Ubuntu, I need to install several missing libraries. even with that, I have no success to launch the app in Ubuntu.

I kept receiving the error:

qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found. This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

there is no difference even I reinstalled xcb multiple times.

I think I need to stick with pengwin.

[kamalhm]

For me, the fact that this is debian based and has an amazing first time setup wizard beats the other distro.

It's also very minimal, install what you need

[zwwi]

I have an issue of the display resolution in pengwin @crramirez : For instance, on firefox, everything is too big except for the system fonts (fonts in the tabs, settings etc.), that is, the fonts in webpages are too big (and I have to scale it to 50% for a proper size), the tab size is too big...

This happens also to other gui applications.

In contrast, there is no such issue in ubuntu. A comparison is given below: the left and right are synaptic in ubuntu and pengwin, respectively. here is a comparison of firefox:

How can I get the proper resolution?

[eliranwong]

I had similar experience when I first installed pengwin. I am not sure we share the same cause, so just share my case here.

After I installed pengwin-setup > GUI > HIDPI, everything became unreasonable BIG.

I reset pengwin and NOT installing HIDPI, gui apps looks normal since then. I now use X410 >DPI Scaling > High Quality instead of pengwin-setup's HIDPI.

[crramirez]

Well, I was about to ask if you installed the HighDPi support in Pengwin. It is not quite right; we have in the roadmap make a proper configuration using fractional scaling.

Check if you have this file:

/etc/profile.d/hidpi.sh

If you delete it, it reverts to the default behavior and should behave as Ubuntu.

Regards

[zwwi]

Thank you two! Indeed I had the file. I removed it, and the issue was solved.