3 ms·

> They may not have managed 100% Linux compatibility, but they could've simply relabeled it Windix or something My take on it was that they were never able to

> They may not have managed 100% Linux compatibility, but they could've simply relabeled it Windix or something My take on it was that they were never able to implement all the syscalls (WSL just couldn’t reliably run some production server software), and filesystem calls were horribly slow (try npm install on a reasonably large JS project if you have any doubt). You may be right — but I’d still like to dream that one day Microsoft will release a true Linux (or OpenSolaris, BSD, or whatever!) OS of their own, which their Office apps will fully support. That’ll be the day I weigh another option besides macOS.

wahern 7y ago
Accessing Windows' NTFS volume from WSL2 Linux is (and will always be) even slower. I have no doubt they've could've substantially improved file access, but management pulled the plug. WSL1 was basically just a proof of concept, afterall. Also, don't forget that Windows and NTFS has never been known for performance. Expecting file access to be as fast as ext4 from a Linux kernel was just the wrong set of expectations. If you want Linux performance you need to use Linux, of course, accessing it's own block device directly; and people demanding that are going to get it with WSL2. The cost is that integration will be worse, both in terms of ease of use as well as performance. AFAIU WSL2 is using 9P now and in the future probably virtio-fs (https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/ https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/) or something similar. People keep saying how lightweight the WSL2 VM is. Well, that's how all modern VM architectures are now. If you launch a vanilla Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD kernel inside Linux KVM, FreeBSD bhyve, or OpenBSD VMM there's very little hardware emulation, if any[1]; they all have virtio drivers for block storage, network, balloon paging (equivalent of malloc/free), serial console, etc; for both host and guest modes. [1] I don't think OpenBSD VMM supports any hardware emulation.
- deleted 7y ago
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- pjmlp 7y ago
  WSL2 does use 9P, here is the BUILD session about it. "The new Windows subsystem for Linux architecture: a deep dive - BRK3068" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwhMThePdIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwhMThePdIo

wahern 7y ago

Accessing Windows' NTFS volume from WSL2 Linux is (and will always be) even slower. I have no doubt they've could've substantially improved file access, but management pulled the plug. WSL1 was basically just a proof of concept, afterall. Also, don't forget that Windows and NTFS has never been known for performance. Expecting file access to be as fast as ext4 from a Linux kernel was just the wrong set of expectations. If you want Linux performance you need to use Linux, of course, accessing it's own block device directly; and people demanding that are going to get it with WSL2. The cost is that integration will be worse, both in terms of ease of use as well as performance. AFAIU WSL2 is using 9P now and in the future probably virtio-fs (https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/ https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/) or something similar. People keep saying how lightweight the WSL2 VM is. Well, that's how all modern VM architectures are now. If you launch a vanilla Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD kernel inside Linux KVM, FreeBSD bhyve, or OpenBSD VMM there's very little hardware emulation, if any[1]; they all have virtio drivers for block storage, network, balloon paging (equivalent of malloc/free), serial console, etc; for both host and guest modes. [1] I don't think OpenBSD VMM supports any hardware emulation.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 7y ago
WSL2 does use 9P, here is the BUILD session about it. "The new Windows subsystem for Linux architecture: a deep dive - BRK3068" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwhMThePdIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwhMThePdIo