Initial Impressions of WSL 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#81

Post by abricot » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #69

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tail wagging the dog incentives here. Part (not all) of the Mac resurgence was that you needed a Mac to develop iPhone apps. Part (not all) of the new Windows resurgence is that if you even really want to play around with ML or VR dev you need a Windows machine. I feel like it's about the possibilities - with WSL, Windows Terminal I get what's essentially the mac experience but can suddenly do so much more.

The Mac’s “resurgence” started around 1999 with the introduction of the iMac - 9 years before the App Store opened. Apple currently sells around 16-20 million Macs a year. No matter how good WSL is, if you want to develop iOS apps, you still have to buy a Mac. There are around 200 million consumer PCs sold a year. Do you really think any significant number or sold to develop VR apps - that market is minis use.

They resurged because windows laptops was straight trash and wireless worked like shit. Apple only needed to do a few things better back then.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#82

Post by cesarb » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #65

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? WSL1 was like that, but it was severely handicapped by NT filesystem performance, especially for small files or metadata operations. There are a lot of small operations that are more than 2 orders of magnitude slower on Windows than on Linux, and a lot of Linux software just expects them to be fast, so WSL1 is not a great experience for a lot of stuff.

Note that the performance didn't really have anything to do with NTFS. This is trivial to prove if you just try a different filesystem.

Yes, this long issue comment explains how the true cause is the design of the Windows IO subsystem: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#83

Post by shawnz » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #77

mehrdadn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the performance didn't really have anything to do with NTFS. This is trivial to prove if you just try a different filesystem.

WSL 1 and WSL 2 can coexist and be used according to what needs one's scenarios present. I imagine MS collected enough requirements to also justify a full Linux VM. There will be some slowness somewhere, the 2 versions now let you choose on which side of the boundary to place it. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq

WSL 2 can't coexist with other virtual machine software though (unless it leverages Hyper-V)

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#84

Post by Lammy » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #65

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? WSL1 was like that, but it was severely handicapped by NT filesystem performance, especially for small files or metadata operations. There are a lot of small operations that are more than 2 orders of magnitude slower on Windows than on Linux, and a lot of Linux software just expects them to be fast, so WSL1 is not a great experience for a lot of stuff.

Note that the performance didn't really have anything to do with NTFS. This is trivial to prove if you just try a different filesystem.

To be fair, I read that as "NT (kernel) filesystem performance" and didn't assume it meant NT File System as in NTFS.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#85

Post by GGfpc » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #58

scarface74 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac is 10% of Apple’s revenue. How much of that 10% do you really think are developers that would switch just because Microsoft supports Linux? Especially considering that macOS is a real certified Unix not just tacked on.

There are tail wagging the dog incentives here. Part (not all) of the Mac resurgence was that you needed a Mac to develop iPhone apps. Part (not all) of the new Windows resurgence is that if you even really want to play around with ML or VR dev you need a Windows machine. I feel like it's about the possibilities - with WSL, Windows Terminal I get what's essentially the mac experience but can suddenly do so much more.

What makes windows better than osx for VR?

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#86

Post by shawnz » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #57

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #18

> Those pain points were solved in WSL 2 by embedding a whole first-party Linux VM inside Windows Wait so now it's just a regular Linux virtual machine? I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? Kinda not as impressive now.

> I thought it was a thin translation layer between the kernels? WSL1 was like that, but it was severely handicapped by NT filesystem performance, especially for small files or metadata operations. There are a lot of small operations that are more than 2 orders of magnitude slower on Windows than on Linux, and a lot of Linux software just expects them to be fast, so WSL1 is not a great experience for a lot of stuff.

Personally I never had a problem with filesystem performance on WSL 1. I certainly don't think it was so bad that the whole thing needed to be scrapped in favor of a virtual machine.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#87

Post by emsy » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

> you do a lot of disk writes and stat calls on tens of thousands of files.

Found the root problem right there. What the fuck is going on in modern web dev.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#88

Post by mehrdadn » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #82

mehrdadn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the performance didn't really have anything to do with NTFS. This is trivial to prove if you just try a different filesystem.

Yes, this long issue comment explains how the true cause is the design of the Windows IO subsystem: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...

Yeah, and I'm not sure I really buy everything they say there either. For example, "unfortunately that means sending more operations down to the file system" seems a little tough to swallow. There's no reason it has to be that way for file systems they control, which I dare say is the case for almost all their users. They could just implement separate APIs that optimize the cases where all sides of the equation are well-known, and only fall back (as they mention) when there's an unknown somewhere. (Not that I'm suggesting these are easy. Just commenting on the technical premises they're providing.)

Also they said "That doesn't mean we've given up either", but you really have to do some mental gymnastics to convince yourself that moving to a VM wasn't "giving up" on solving these problems in WSL1.

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#89

Post by tsar9x » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

frankohn wrote: post #44

As a long time free software and linux supporter I am a little bit afraid of this. It seems like a very smart move from Microsoft. They get rid of the abysmal performance of windows's file system and spawning new processes by using... linux! Provide also an excellent terminal so that developers have the best experience with command line tools, all this without leaving the convenience of Windows! Not surprising since…

My view is that WSL2 will help developers who are stuck on Windows (many enterprises force Windows on users).

I don't think Linux will be affected as much. Moreover, Linux is better than ever:

- you can buy laptop with Linux from two companies: Dell and System76, soon from Lenovo

- performance can't be beat (especially for development, with native docker and kvm for virtualization)

- amazing package managers, with fwupd you can even update firmware

- graphics stack is really good and getting better, firefox on wayland with video decoding support, wayland with great hidpi support

- work on chromium on wayland in progress (beta already available), we will have electron apps with hidpi support

- no bloatware (candy crush, 100s of processes...)

- gaming with Proton is miles better than gaming on macOS, still behind Windows for known reasons

Obviously if you need Adobe/Office, Linux loses many points :)

Re: Initial Impressions of WSL 2

#90

Post by unicornfinder » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

d2161 wrote: post #76

drey08 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. With WSL I can seamlessly access files from both Linux and Windows. I use the Terminal (Windows) and various Unix tools for a lot of stuff (compiling & testing on Posix, objdump, debugging). And I use Windows GUI tools for editing (Sublime), diffing (BeyondCompare), and so on. I get the best of both worlds. But WSL2 file access in `/mnt/c/` is now unbearably slow. So I just stick with WSL1. From what I've read,…

Why not just store files in WSL home directory? It's faster than accessing from mnt/c

Well it depends on your use case. If you're using WSL to develop web apps then storing it all in WSL is fine, but if you want to use Linux tools to process a load of files in your Windows drive then it's not quite as smooth sailing...