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Yeah don't get too excited, it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage, and I'm not sure if RAM does either (interested in knowing i

Yeah don't get too excited, it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage, and I'm not sure if RAM does either (interested in knowing if they've done anything related to that), which were what I found most useful about WSL1. I wish they'd instead put all their effort from this into legitimately fixing the issues in WSL1 instead.

mtzet 6y ago
The disk issue was probably going to be difficult to solve even with the WSL1 model if they wanted good IO performance. Using a proper Linux filesystem underneath is a decent compromise IMO. The RAM issue is a clear setback, and makes it annoying trying to do large compile jobs on the Linux side, though it's been a while since I've tried it. In theory it could be possible to handle coorporation between the Linux and Windows RAM usage patterns since they're running a very heavily modified kernel. I'd be very interrested in knowing if anything is hapenning on that front.
- gmueckl 6y ago
  Isn't Linux already capable of handing unused memory back to an underlying hypervisor? I vaguely remember that MS contributed code to support that kind of interaction with HyperV. Am I wrong?
sz4kerto 6y ago
They do adjust memory reservation dynamically if I'm correct. It's very nice overall.
patentatt 6y ago
I think hyper-v does dynamically scale ram usage of vms, so it’s at least plausible that wsl2 does as well
cesarb 6y ago
> it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage That's possible in theory, I've done it with libvirt/KVM. You have to enable discard on all filesystems and swap on the guest, use a virtual disk interface which can pass the discard requests to the host, and configure the host to release the corresponding blocks on a discard request. I don't know if WSL2 comes configured to do all that, but if not, it shouldn't be too hard for them to add this functionality.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I imagine that could cause some awful fragmentation?

mtzet 6y ago

The disk issue was probably going to be difficult to solve even with the WSL1 model if they wanted good IO performance. Using a proper Linux filesystem underneath is a decent compromise IMO. The RAM issue is a clear setback, and makes it annoying trying to do large compile jobs on the Linux side, though it's been a while since I've tried it. In theory it could be possible to handle coorporation between the Linux and Windows RAM usage patterns since they're running a very heavily modified kernel. I'd be very interrested in knowing if anything is hapenning on that front.

gmueckl 6y ago
Isn't Linux already capable of handing unused memory back to an underlying hypervisor? I vaguely remember that MS contributed code to support that kind of interaction with HyperV. Am I wrong?

sz4kerto 6y ago

They do adjust memory reservation dynamically if I'm correct. It's very nice overall.

patentatt 6y ago

I think hyper-v does dynamically scale ram usage of vms, so it’s at least plausible that wsl2 does as well

cesarb 6y ago

> it's just a VM. The disk usage doesn't automatically shrink with usage That's possible in theory, I've done it with libvirt/KVM. You have to enable discard on all filesystems and swap on the guest, use a virtual disk interface which can pass the discard requests to the host, and configure the host to release the corresponding blocks on a discard request. I don't know if WSL2 comes configured to do all that, but if not, it shouldn't be too hard for them to add this functionality.

mehrdadn 6y ago
I imagine that could cause some awful fragmentation?