3 ms·

Wasn't the main purpose of WSL2 to make WSL finally usable because before v2 it had really bad IO perf?

by k__ 6y ago

pletnes 6y ago
There are other issues, too. At least at some point, absolutely no haskell based apps would run, since their stdlib used some syscall which WSL1 did not implement. Broke pandoc for me. Stopped bothering with WSL1 there and then. Other issues which colleagues encountered include abysmal performance and broken python installations as PATHs and other environment details are wildly mixed inside WSL. I just don’t understand why some people were seemingly happy with WSL1, there were so many rough edges. WSL2 is much much better in my experience, on virtually all fronts.
resfirestar 6y ago
Except they moved performance backwards in WSL2 for accessing files shared with Windows: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
alerighi 6y ago
It didn't have bad IO performance. It had the same IO performance as Windows. The problem is software that is badly written and does bad assumptions, like that continuing opening/closing files is good just because in Linux is good, that maybe true on most UNIX systems but nobody said that. I think that WSL2 is a very very bad idea, you are no longer making a POSIX subsystem of Windows, a way to use the POSIX API in the Windows kernel, without any emulation (basically the same thing as WINE), you are running a virtual machine. I would say that WSL2 performance is very bad if you work in the Windows filesystem. Sure, if you work from the WSL home directory that is mounted in a ext4 virtual filesystem performance is good, it's a VM. But this is useless, you see the main advantage of WSL over having a VM or a dual boot was integration with Windows, the ability to use bash scripts to manipulate your Windows files, the ability to launch Windows executables and pipe the output into a POSIX executable. All of that is useful if there is a strong connections between the two systems, if I can work with WSL in the same home directory as Windows where I have all my files. How is useful if before working on something (that could be a stupid thing like running a script to rename a bunch of files) I have to first copy the files that I intend to work on in the WSL home, run what I have to turn, and copy them back? And what if I want my IDE in execution in Windows with the project in Windows and I want to launch on the project bash scripts? I hope they will not discontinue WSL1! If they will discontinue WSL1, unfortunately I will have to go back to cygwin that was not great but worked mostly fine, since I need integration between Windows and Linux.

Wasn't the main purpose of WSL2 to make WSL finally usable because before v2 it had really bad IO perf?

by k__ 6y ago

Wasn't the main purpose of WSL2 to make WSL finally usable because before v2 it had really bad IO perf?

There are other issues, too. At least at some point, absolutely no haskell based apps would run, since their stdlib used some syscall which WSL1 did not implement. Broke pandoc for me. Stopped bothering with WSL1 there and then. Other issues which colleagues encountered include abysmal performance and broken python installations as PATHs and other environment details are wildly mixed inside WSL. I just don’t understand why some people were seemingly happy with WSL1, there were so many rough edges. WSL2 is much much better in my experience, on virtually all fronts.

resfirestar 6y ago

Except they moved performance backwards in WSL2 for accessing files shared with Windows: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197

alerighi 6y ago

It didn't have bad IO performance. It had the same IO performance as Windows. The problem is software that is badly written and does bad assumptions, like that continuing opening/closing files is good just because in Linux is good, that maybe true on most UNIX systems but nobody said that. I think that WSL2 is a very very bad idea, you are no longer making a POSIX subsystem of Windows, a way to use the POSIX API in the Windows kernel, without any emulation (basically the same thing as WINE), you are running a virtual machine. I would say that WSL2 performance is very bad if you work in the Windows filesystem. Sure, if you work from the WSL home directory that is mounted in a ext4 virtual filesystem performance is good, it's a VM. But this is useless, you see the main advantage of WSL over having a VM or a dual boot was integration with Windows, the ability to use bash scripts to manipulate your Windows files, the ability to launch Windows executables and pipe the output into a POSIX executable. All of that is useful if there is a strong connections between the two systems, if I can work with WSL in the same home directory as Windows where I have all my files. How is useful if before working on something (that could be a stupid thing like running a script to rename a bunch of files) I have to first copy the files that I intend to work on in the WSL home, run what I have to turn, and copy them back? And what if I want my IDE in execution in Windows with the project in Windows and I want to launch on the project bash scripts? I hope they will not discontinue WSL1! If they will discontinue WSL1, unfortunately I will have to go back to cygwin that was not great but worked mostly fine, since I need integration between Windows and Linux.