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Microsoft's Linux Kernel

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Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#431

Post by gorio »

gambiting wrote: post #417
ex3xu wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable. This is definitely a problem especially considering that the shotgun approach to some Windows updates actually hurt the performance of some machines, even breaking Windows on occasion [0]. Howe…

So after a very long hiatus I have decided to try installing linux on a raspberry pi - and wow, the results were amazing. Using my decade-old knowledge of using fstab I added some drives to /etc/fstab and rebooted. Oooops. Raspbian would fail boot with a message "root account locked, couldn't open console". Fantastic - so if any of the fstab entries are missing, the entire system effectively bricks itself. The only w…

I think you are being unfairly downvoted. On of the major downsides to Linux is that while you can, and often have to, tinker to make it work you can break it on many levels. Sometimes it's even hard to know if it is working properly, until you realize it doesn't. Many developers uses virtualization just for those reasons alone. It might even be a major upside to using WSL, if they do it well.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#432

Post by delusional »

ex3xu wrote: post #403
rbanffy wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it fairly easy to work on both Mac OS X, Linux and WSL2 -- but not pre-WSL Windows The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable. > I don't know how/if they're going to handle freeing memory again -- here the NT kernel really needs t…

> The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable. This is definitely a problem especially considering that the shotgun approach to some Windows updates actually hurt the performance of some machines, even breaking Windows on occasion [0]. Howe…

> In fairness I would say that I've spent just as much or more time fixing rolling release issues on Arch/Manjaro.

That doesn't even matter much to me. Obviously, less time spent is better, but what really matters is the timing.

When I have to spend time upgrading my linux box, I have set time aside. I decide that I have a bit of time, and if it turns out to be a bigger job than expected, I can decide to abort and continue some other time.

On Windows the upgrade is always inconvenient, because you have no way of controlling it. Microsoft decides when the best time for you to upgrade is, and once it starts you have no means of punting on it.

Although the telemetry is certainly a problem too.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#433

Post by StudentStuff »

ndarwincorn wrote: post #387
Osiris wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a lot of time trying to get dynamic switching working and after countless hours I gave up. Optimus is definitely not a "solved problem", unless you know some method I didn't find in my dozens of hours of googling how to get it to work on a system76 laptop (Linux preinstalled) and a 2012 MacBook.

The "solved problem" is using the kernel implementation of muxless hybrid graphics (PRIME), not Nvidia's proprietary one (Optimus).

Yeah, the "happy path" here is applicable if you don't attempt to install janky/poorly maintained proprietary out of tree drivers. The reason these drivers are out of tree is usually due to either serious hardware flaws, incompetent/inept vendors, or a combination of both. AMD has (in large part) fixed this by reusing the kernel shim from AMDGPU (open source & mainlined in kernel) for their proprietary driver (AMDGPU-Pro).

Nvidia meanwhile has stated they will not support Wayland, and has sandbagged the integration of their Linux Kernel patches for their single board computers (like the ones that are used in Tesla's cars). They don't give a fuck if their clients are stuck on broken, insecure BSPs, and frankly they operate as a malicious vendor: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#434

Post by smilliken »

gambiting wrote: post #417
ex3xu wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable. This is definitely a problem especially considering that the shotgun approach to some Windows updates actually hurt the performance of some machines, even breaking Windows on occasion [0]. Howe…

So after a very long hiatus I have decided to try installing linux on a raspberry pi - and wow, the results were amazing. Using my decade-old knowledge of using fstab I added some drives to /etc/fstab and rebooted. Oooops. Raspbian would fail boot with a message "root account locked, couldn't open console". Fantastic - so if any of the fstab entries are missing, the entire system effectively bricks itself. The only w…

Our tools are either too powerful or too weak. To each their own. I can cope with a tool that is too powerful, but I can't cope with a tool that is too weak.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#435

Post by trollied »

mtzet wrote: post #265

This is really Microsoft catching up to the Mac in terms of integration with the open-source ecosystem which importantly drives the web. In the mid 2000's the Mac really took off due to being a good-enough Linux replacement on the command line, while taking care of all the hardware integration and providing a sleek desktop experience. This really helped the Mac take off among hackers. This system wasn't as open-sourc…

> I find it fairly easy to work on both Mac OS X, Linux and WSL2 -- but not pre-WSL Windows.

Cygwin really helped me with the Windows part of that for many years. I switched to a Powerbook about a year before the Intel switch & haven't looked back since. Linux has never been a good enough desktop all-rounder to make me switch to it as a desktop OS. Maybe I should take another look.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#436

Post by rolph »

I wonder if they fixed this yet? from 2017 when wsl was beta and not a default component.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/12/microsoft_downplays...

apparently a bash on linux in wsl can deliver a payload to the windows environment.

if windows is going to ship with its wsl turned on by default, bashware has to be addressed.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#437

Post by StudentStuff »

robrtsql wrote: post #422
ndarwincorn wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're gonna reference the wiki, cite the right article[1]. Under the 'GPU Offloading' heading (the feature most folks want in dual discrete/integrated laptops): > Note: This setting is no longer necessary when using the default intel/modesetting driver from the official repos, as they have DRI3 enabled by default and will therefore automatically make these assignments. Explicitly setting them again does no harm,…

Most people want to use the proprietary drivers, because nouveau's performance is prohibitively low for gaming. And that only supports switching GPUs with a reboot. It does work, but it's not very nice, which is what we are upset about.

Choose a vendor that isn't actively fighting the OS they sell and support if you want your hardware to work as expected: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/03/nvidia_server_gpus/

eGPUs in a laptop format is a bit silly, you sacrifice the mobility of the laptop to get a very cut down discrete mobile GPU. AMD has started to eat this market alive due to the performance per watt advantage: https://redd.it/bc5hkg

Consumers are much more likely to bring a sub-5lb HP x360 everywhere than a bulky 8+lb laptop.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#438

Post by gambiting »

ex3xu wrote: post #430
gambiting wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So after a very long hiatus I have decided to try installing linux on a raspberry pi - and wow, the results were amazing. Using my decade-old knowledge of using fstab I added some drives to /etc/fstab and rebooted. Oooops. Raspbian would fail boot with a message "root account locked, couldn't open console". Fantastic - so if any of the fstab entries are missing, the entire system effectively bricks itself. The only w…

With great power comes great responsibility, I guess. I agree it would have been nice for Linux to come with a few more sanity checks by default, like maybe a warning flag for rm -rf /* and dd commands...

I'm just more offended that the default behaviour on an extremely popular distro is failed boot = brick. You don't even get a basic command prompt to fix something, the default behavior is to lock everything down and forbid access, making it impossible to repair the machine from itself. Windows will reboot a few times and then automatically start in safe mode when this happens, you don't need to extract the drive to manually edit some text files before the system can boot again.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#439

Post by noufalibrahim »

mtzet wrote: post #265

This is really Microsoft catching up to the Mac in terms of integration with the open-source ecosystem which importantly drives the web. In the mid 2000's the Mac really took off due to being a good-enough Linux replacement on the command line, while taking care of all the hardware integration and providing a sleek desktop experience. This really helped the Mac take off among hackers. This system wasn't as open-sourc…

> Most of us don't want to mess about with the desktop stack. If the stack we care about is open-source and runs across many systems, then we still have the freedom.

A tangential point but a relevant one nonetheless. I owe most of my tech. skills to the fact that it was hard to get a Linux distribution running on a cheap PC. I had to read up about hardware, learn how to fix installation issues, sometimes recompile the kernel with different options (and hence study them) and a number of other things simply because it didn't "just work". It gave me an intimate comfort with Linux that I just don't have with any other system (including MacOS which I used for about 2.5 years).

I completely get the notion that when one is a professional he or she shouldn't need to meddle with system level quirks to get a productive environment and a desktop and thankfully, modern Linux is more or less there. I haven't had any major trouble in a long time with it. However, during college or early years, having a system that demands some amount of work to get it working has, atleast to me, be crucial in honing my skills. I wouldn't change that even if I could. I'd vigourously defend it.

Re: Microsoft's Linux Kernel

#440

Post by vbezhenar »

hermitdev wrote: post #86
filmgirlcw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on Windows (and my work machine is a MacBook Pro FWIW) WSL 2 is a lot like that -- it's a VM in the sense that it uses Hyper-V, but it's super lightweight. And in fact, when WSL 2 is enabled, both Windows AND Linux are running in the same type of VM (separate, obviously), so it's near-native performance in a lot of ways. There are still some I/O issues that the team is actively…

I'm nervous about WSL 2. I use WSL at home quite a bit and I'm on the Fast Insider ring. My PC hasnt been able to boot Win10 for over a year with virtualization support enabled in my BIOS. No errors or anything, just hangs at boot. Ive left feedback in the hub, but crickets. Don't know what the problem is. It used to work, but at some point an update broke it. Not bleeding edge hardware, either. About a 4 to 5 year o…

I had similar problem. With Hyper-V my PC BSODed like every other day. I did some investigation on dumps and I think that problem was in nvidia driver (not entirely sure, though, but stacktraces were from that driver). I don't really know whether it resolved or not, because I decided not to use Hyper-V ever again, VirtualBox is much better.
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