4 ms·

They are also adding an wayland server. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-build-2020-summary/#wsl-gui https://devblogs.

by miffe 6y ago

They are also adding an wayland server. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-build-2020-summary/#wsl-gui https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-windows-subsy...

ghostpepper 6y ago
Aren't large parts of the wayland stack incompatible with NVIDIA drivers? It would be ironic if Microsoft was the one to bridge that gap.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  That's more a matter of buffer management. Though it may turn out , if their work is too tied to NVIDIA, to only support NVIDIA's de facto proprietary selection: EGLStreams. Though in principle, there's nothing preventing them from using GBM instead of EGLStreams, and there are some good practical reasons such as having compatibility with the broad base of existing accelerated Wayland windowing libraries and applications.
- josefx 6y ago
  You can use Wayland with NVIDIA drivers. The problem is that NVIDIA and the open source drivers expose different buffer management APIs and Wayland does not abstract over that, so it has to be explicitly handled by every client application. Some Wayland clients refuse to support both, others had NVIDIA support patched in by NVIDIA itself.
  - dcgudeman 6y ago
    Sorry if this question misses the point but how did AMD avoid this issue? Are their drivers open source?
    - josefx 6y ago
      AMD started to support the development of the open source driver several years ago by publishing hardware specs. . I am not sure if they switched completely or are still maintaining a closed source driver on the side - I haven't bought AMD cards in years, my last one only "works" with the binary blob. The people working on the NVIDIA open source driver have no official support and were fighting with signed firmware blobs last I heard. I wish them luck, but even on older cards it is more likely to crash your system than render anything.
      - ghostpepper 6y ago
        Single data point here but I just switched from an NVIDIA GTX 960 (2015 card) to an AMD RX 570 (2017), both using open source drivers, and the performance improvement in Wayland/Sway is huge. My understanding is that even 2015 is too new for nouveau to run with high performance due to something called reclocking, where the card starts up at a minimal clock rate and then it's up to the drivers to reconfigure it for running at the advertised clock.
chrismorgan 6y ago
> These changes are on the WSL’s team roadmap and you can expect to hear more about this work by holiday 2020. As if describing things in terms of northern hemisphere temperate seasons wasn’t bad enough (and still worse commonly showing how little you care about any place other than the USA and maybe Canada by using the name “fall”), now we have this: “holiday 2020”. I don’t know when this is talking about. I’d have guessed northern hemisphere summer school break first, but I guess that’s just about finished now, so it can’t be that. Christmas time would have been my next guess, but surely you’d describe that as “by the end of 2020”? And then other possibilities occurred to me—Halloween? Thanksgiving? I have no idea at all what Americans would call “holiday” as a time of year.
- rjeli 6y ago
  it’s a neutered term for Christmas.
- sciurus 6y ago
  Northern hemisphere summer school breaks vary but typically run in the May-August time range, so they're just starting rather than ending. They're referring to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_and_holiday_season https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_and_holiday_season
- jamesgeck0 6y ago
  Holiday == November or December. Thanksgiving and Christmas are the big ones, but we use generic terms like "holiday" to accommodate people who celebrate different holidays around those times. This is pretty common terminology; IIRC the "War on Christmas" has been a thing for a couple decades. > I’d have guessed northern hemisphere summer school break first, but I guess that’s just about finished now Summer break more or less just started for most students here. The fall term will start around August.
_ph_ 6y ago
That would be great news - something I asked for since the presentation of WSL - I just hope it uses the new graphics driver infrastructure, as the first implementation mentioned in your link seems to be using RDP, which is less efficient. But if it does, that would be excellent news.

by miffe 6y ago

ghostpepper 6y ago

Aren't large parts of the wayland stack incompatible with NVIDIA drivers? It would be ironic if Microsoft was the one to bridge that gap.

microcolonel 6y ago
That's more a matter of buffer management. Though it may turn out , if their work is too tied to NVIDIA, to only support NVIDIA's de facto proprietary selection: EGLStreams. Though in principle, there's nothing preventing them from using GBM instead of EGLStreams, and there are some good practical reasons such as having compatibility with the broad base of existing accelerated Wayland windowing libraries and applications.
josefx 6y ago
You can use Wayland with NVIDIA drivers. The problem is that NVIDIA and the open source drivers expose different buffer management APIs and Wayland does not abstract over that, so it has to be explicitly handled by every client application. Some Wayland clients refuse to support both, others had NVIDIA support patched in by NVIDIA itself.
- dcgudeman 6y ago
  Sorry if this question misses the point but how did AMD avoid this issue? Are their drivers open source?
  - josefx 6y ago
    AMD started to support the development of the open source driver several years ago by publishing hardware specs. . I am not sure if they switched completely or are still maintaining a closed source driver on the side - I haven't bought AMD cards in years, my last one only "works" with the binary blob. The people working on the NVIDIA open source driver have no official support and were fighting with signed firmware blobs last I heard. I wish them luck, but even on older cards it is more likely to crash your system than render anything.
    - ghostpepper 6y ago
      Single data point here but I just switched from an NVIDIA GTX 960 (2015 card) to an AMD RX 570 (2017), both using open source drivers, and the performance improvement in Wayland/Sway is huge. My understanding is that even 2015 is too new for nouveau to run with high performance due to something called reclocking, where the card starts up at a minimal clock rate and then it's up to the drivers to reconfigure it for running at the advertised clock.

chrismorgan 6y ago

> These changes are on the WSL’s team roadmap and you can expect to hear more about this work by holiday 2020. As if describing things in terms of northern hemisphere temperate seasons wasn’t bad enough (and still worse commonly showing how little you care about any place other than the USA and maybe Canada by using the name “fall”), now we have this: “holiday 2020”. I don’t know when this is talking about. I’d have guessed northern hemisphere summer school break first, but I guess that’s just about finished now, so it can’t be that. Christmas time would have been my next guess, but surely you’d describe that as “by the end of 2020”? And then other possibilities occurred to me—Halloween? Thanksgiving? I have no idea at all what Americans would call “holiday” as a time of year.

rjeli 6y ago
it’s a neutered term for Christmas.
sciurus 6y ago
Northern hemisphere summer school breaks vary but typically run in the May-August time range, so they're just starting rather than ending. They're referring to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_and_holiday_season https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_and_holiday_season
jamesgeck0 6y ago
Holiday == November or December. Thanksgiving and Christmas are the big ones, but we use generic terms like "holiday" to accommodate people who celebrate different holidays around those times. This is pretty common terminology; IIRC the "War on Christmas" has been a thing for a couple decades. > I’d have guessed northern hemisphere summer school break first, but I guess that’s just about finished now Summer break more or less just started for most students here. The fall term will start around August.

_ph_ 6y ago

That would be great news - something I asked for since the presentation of WSL - I just hope it uses the new graphics driver infrastructure, as the first implementation mentioned in your link seems to be using RDP, which is less efficient. But if it does, that would be excellent news.