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Even Windows doesn't agree with that. They started with a syscall wrapper for running Linux binaries, and ended up running a full Linux kernel next to the NT o

Even Windows doesn't agree with that. They started with a syscall wrapper for running Linux binaries, and ended up running a full Linux kernel next to the NT one because that was faster. There are absolutely parts of Linux with all the architecture and engineering rigor of a favela. Real big "I want a new room and have two sheets of corrugated steel, a neighbor's wall, and an afternoon" energy. There are also major parts of it that have benefited from decades of 'this tweak that won't be driver ABI compatible increases efficiency in this use case by measurable but single digit perf'. And yes, there's politics to getting that merged, but the barrier is way lower in Linux. You try a lot of that in how Microsoft builds software and at best you put a target on your back because you just made a lot of work for another team. At worst that amount of differently siloed work just kills the idea in the first place.

dmitrygr 5y ago
> They started with a syscall wrapper for running Linux binaries, and ended up running a full Linux kernel next to the NT one because that was faster Actually, it was because NTFS semantics do not match ext semantics and lots of linux apps expect the latter. MS was clear on that...
- monocasa 5y ago
  No, it's not NTFS versus ext in the sense you mean. The Microsoft messaging on this is misleading at best. It's that the NT filesystem stack puts the FS cache between user space and the FS driver, whereas on Linux it sits between FS driver and the block device driver. What that means is that on Linux, you get caching of blocks containing FS metadata for free, but on NT it has to be manually performed. That kills perf when looking at a lot of metadata. When they say NTFS is to blame, they mean the NT FileSystem stack.
dmitrygr 5y ago
> You try a lot of that in how Microsoft builds software And yet on same hardware, windows gets twice the battery life and idles at about half the power. Maybe NT's way IS better afterall?
- monocasa 5y ago
  https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Windows-Linux-Power-Dell-XPS https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Windows-... Same power efficiency. And did you come back here an hour later to get another quip in?
  - dmitrygr 5y ago
    > Same power efficiency. Are we looking at the same graph? https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=1807102-RA-DELLXPSBO89&sha=c390920&p=2 https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=1807102-RA-DELLXPSB... windows is idling at less than half the power! Idle power matters since most laptops spend most of their time idle waiting for the comparatively-slow humans to press keys > And did you come back here an hour later to get another quip in? And "quip" is a questionable (bordering on implied ad-hominem) word choice given that my only fault is disagreeing with you.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      > windows is idling at less than half the power! Idle power matters since most laptops spend most of their time idle waiting for the comparatively-slow humans to press keys The min use under Windows is slightly lower, the average is higher, and most importantly of all, the battery life (the metric we actually care about) appears about the same. As the article says "Overall, the power use between Windows 10 and the four tested Linux distributions was basically on-par with each other." and "Beyond this data, the battery life of this Dell XPS laptop has been about the same as seen under Windows 10 with the testing thus far. So overall it's a pleasant surprise with not having tested any other Kabylake-R laptops and wasn't quite sure if the Linux power efficiency would be able to run on-par with Windows 10 at this point." So it would appear that your new claim (that Windows gets twice the battery life) is without merit. I wish laptops were like a phones, where race to idle is key, but they're not. The upper levels of the software stacks both on Windows and Linux aren't there yet.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  In many benchmarks done by Phoronix, software ran faster on Windows.
lmm 5y ago
> They started with a syscall wrapper for running Linux binaries, and ended up running a full Linux kernel next to the NT one because that was faster. That doesn't necessarily mean the Linux implementation is good; it could be that the syscall API is bad and can't be implemented any other way.
- monocasa 5y ago
  It's VFS metadata query throughput as I've explained below. The syscall API for such things (fstat(2)) is pretty unobjectionable.

dmitrygr 5y ago

> They started with a syscall wrapper for running Linux binaries, and ended up running a full Linux kernel next to the NT one because that was faster Actually, it was because NTFS semantics do not match ext semantics and lots of linux apps expect the latter. MS was clear on that...

monocasa 5y ago
No, it's not NTFS versus ext in the sense you mean. The Microsoft messaging on this is misleading at best. It's that the NT filesystem stack puts the FS cache between user space and the FS driver, whereas on Linux it sits between FS driver and the block device driver. What that means is that on Linux, you get caching of blocks containing FS metadata for free, but on NT it has to be manually performed. That kills perf when looking at a lot of metadata. When they say NTFS is to blame, they mean the NT FileSystem stack.

dmitrygr 5y ago

> You try a lot of that in how Microsoft builds software And yet on same hardware, windows gets twice the battery life and idles at about half the power. Maybe NT's way IS better afterall?

monocasa 5y ago
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Windows-Linux-Power-Dell-XPS https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Windows-... Same power efficiency. And did you come back here an hour later to get another quip in?
- dmitrygr 5y ago
  > Same power efficiency. Are we looking at the same graph? https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=1807102-RA-DELLXPSBO89&sha=c390920&p=2 https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=1807102-RA-DELLXPSB... windows is idling at less than half the power! Idle power matters since most laptops spend most of their time idle waiting for the comparatively-slow humans to press keys > And did you come back here an hour later to get another quip in? And "quip" is a questionable (bordering on implied ad-hominem) word choice given that my only fault is disagreeing with you.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    > windows is idling at less than half the power! Idle power matters since most laptops spend most of their time idle waiting for the comparatively-slow humans to press keys The min use under Windows is slightly lower, the average is higher, and most importantly of all, the battery life (the metric we actually care about) appears about the same. As the article says "Overall, the power use between Windows 10 and the four tested Linux distributions was basically on-par with each other." and "Beyond this data, the battery life of this Dell XPS laptop has been about the same as seen under Windows 10 with the testing thus far. So overall it's a pleasant surprise with not having tested any other Kabylake-R laptops and wasn't quite sure if the Linux power efficiency would be able to run on-par with Windows 10 at this point." So it would appear that your new claim (that Windows gets twice the battery life) is without merit. I wish laptops were like a phones, where race to idle is key, but they're not. The upper levels of the software stacks both on Windows and Linux aren't there yet.
DeathArrow 5y ago
In many benchmarks done by Phoronix, software ran faster on Windows.

lmm 5y ago

> They started with a syscall wrapper for running Linux binaries, and ended up running a full Linux kernel next to the NT one because that was faster. That doesn't necessarily mean the Linux implementation is good; it could be that the syscall API is bad and can't be implemented any other way.

monocasa 5y ago
It's VFS metadata query throughput as I've explained below. The syscall API for such things (fstat(2)) is pretty unobjectionable.