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DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#341

Post by TheKarateKid »

m12k wrote: post #264
lalaland1125 wrote: post #213

It appears that Microsoft has now initiated the "Extend" phase of their classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish playbook. The key is that the proprietary Microsoft specific API added by this patch is only usable in a WSL environment as it relies on many pieces of proprietary closed source software that Microsoft is unwilling to open source. This patch does nothing but fragment the Linux ecosystem and encourage people to…

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dom…

Very well stated.

People should be much more concerned about EEE from Google, as we’ve been seeing more of all the time with Chrome.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#342

Post by computerex »

bad_user wrote: post #294
m12k wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dom…

The impression that " most of the action has moved to mobile " is just an impression. First of all the market share of desktop versus mobile is roughly 43% for the desktop, 57% for mobiles and tablets. More importantly however is that the rise of mobiles has been sharp since 2009, but it's been stagnating since 2017 and this stagnation trend is clear. Mobile devices too are a commodity, their market isn't growing any…

> The tooling they make for developers has always been top notch

I have to emphatically disagree there. Up until recently Windows didn't even have a decent terminal app. As a developer I tend to shy away from Windows precisely because the *Nix alternatives offer a better development experience, from cli to package management and more.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#343

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

m12k wrote: post #264
lalaland1125 wrote: post #213

It appears that Microsoft has now initiated the "Extend" phase of their classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish playbook. The key is that the proprietary Microsoft specific API added by this patch is only usable in a WSL environment as it relies on many pieces of proprietary closed source software that Microsoft is unwilling to open source. This patch does nothing but fragment the Linux ecosystem and encourage people to…

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dom…

> Look at a comp sci class in the last decade, and you'll see 1/2-2/3rds of them with MacBook Pros in their laps,

Perhaps in some countries, definitely not everywhere. At my university, there is only a single Mac across 40 or so laptops.

> because it compiles iOS apps

I doubt students buy Macs for that. iPhones are not nearly as popular outside the US.

> and it's a *nix

Students don’t care about its UNIX certification. Most don’t even know what that is when they start their undergrad.

> it easily runs most of the same tools as a linux webserver

No, it does not. Many important dev tools are not available, not even through brew.

> That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers

Globally, the majority of developers are on Windows/Linux, not macOS.

> They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver

I’d bet this is about avoiding Linux becoming the major platform for ML/DS/AI, rather than anything about macOS.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#344

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

kristopolous wrote: post #161
wmf wrote: post #6

...and extend. I'm sure this architecture was easier for MS but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux.

That's not the point. They are trying to not IBM themselves. They and the clones won the war with IBM in the 80s and 90s because IBM was worried about things that didn't matter: they wasted time with things like an operating system CP/X86 that ran DOS and 3270 emulators to their mainframes on top of a GUI system called mermaid (3270 PC) while Microsoft was writing Windows 3. Oh yeah did I mention some configurations…

> And it may eventually take down Oracle.

Oracle is basically a department of the NSA/CIA/FBI. Sales to companies are just cover for the real game. It will never go away.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#345

Post by kgwxd »

kristopolous wrote: post #154

I also found the phrasing of this to be ambiguous. Windows (subsystem for Linux) has a Windows host running Linux Or (Windows subsystem) for Linux has Windows running on a Linux host They've been using this phrasing since the OS/2 and POSIX subsystem days and it was also confusing then Quarterdeck did it right with Desqview/X by just renaming their WIN16 subsystem as winx. Then you would see "desqview winx" and know…

Wasn't it originally something like "Linux Subsystem for Windows" and there was some legal problem with the word "Linux" being first?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#346

Post by m12k »

skohan wrote: post #324
m12k wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dom…

> That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers. That's why they bought Xamarin and Github. That's why they released VS Code. They're trying to win back developers by meeting them whereever they are, even if they know they are targeting platforms where Microsoft is not dominant and has no hope of becoming so. They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver while developing on Windows. They're…

Could you explain to me what you think an Extinguish step would look like in that sequence? Because I don't think there is a realistic one, and I don't think Microsoft thinks so either.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#347

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

gmanley wrote: post #120

I found this reply to be especially interesting: https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1309 > I also have another concern from a legal standpoint I'd rather not review the ioctl part of this. I'd probably request other DRI developers abstain as well. > This is a Windows kernel API being smashed into a Linux driver. I don't want to be tainted by knowledge of an API that I've no idea of the legal status of derived works. (it…

On the other hand, if Microsoft themselves are publishing this code as open source, on the open, on one of the most important projects out there, and are actively asking other experts from other companies to review it, I would imagine they are weakening their arguments on the potential litigation.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#348

Post by na85 »

soraminazuki wrote: post #325
welterde wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archlinux had their own non-sysvinit system (which went away in favor of systemd) as does voidlinux (runit based) and alpine (OpenRC) today. The problem is less the init system itself, but applications that depend on a specific init system [1] (gnome used to be a major source of contention in that regard). [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd

Is applications depending on systemd particularly a bad thing? If we don't want applications to use non-SysVinit features, we might as well keep using SysVinit.

Why should my window manager dictate what programs are allowed to start it?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#349

Post by Chouhada »

franga2000 wrote: post #306
golergka wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a game developer, for most mid-tier inside titles releasing Linux version costs more than it makes, so, no. And regarding using Windows: company's behavior is important, but product quality, especially when it's a tool you use every day for work, is more important. Linux is ok for certain types of developers, it's still awful for normal users, abysmal for office work and obviously not a choice if you develop Windo…

> As a game developer, for most mid-tier inside titles releasing Linux version costs more than it makes, so, no. What are the main costs of releasing a Linux version of a game when using Unity or Unreal? My limited experience with Unity has been "check the Linux box, click the build button". It even cross-compiles no problem. People I know tell me Unreal is similar. It's not like they have to do a full run of play-te…

> What are the main costs of releasing a Linux version of a game when using Unity or Unreal? My limited experience with Unity has been "check the Linux box, click the build button". It even cross-compiles no problem. People I know tell me Unreal is similar.

For a simple game that uses the entire UE4 stack, you might be able to get away with that if none of your code is Windows-specific and works exactly the same on the Linux distribution you are targeting. Once you start using your own middleware and libraries from outside of the default engine, you need to make sure every single one works across all the platforms you're targeting. Many won't have a Linux compatible version, and those that do may only work against specific distributions and hardware. Even then: Have they changed the window manager? What have else they customised?

There have been many issues with anti-cheat solutions over the years on Linux.

> It's not like they have to do a full run of play-testing for Linux. Just check if it starts, play for 10 minutes and release that.

For a simple game, you may get away with this. Anything larger will require significantly more testing. I've been a producer on large games, and the QA process starts very early on. You don't 'finish' a game and then QA starts - It's an ongoing process that consists of significantly more than just launching a game.

>We know we're a minority so we're willing to put up with bugs

Some people don't see it that way though. People who have paid for a product have the right for it to work properly. Tickets for Linux support are often higher [1], so the time investment against payback can be problematic.

GPU driver support on Linux can also still be problematic. From feature differences against Windows, to crashes. These all take additional development time. Linux developers are often more difficult to acquire in the game dev world. QA even more so.

Game dev is really hard. Some of it is hidden by engines like UE4 on the surface, but as soon as you start digging down into serious development, it's difficult.

[1] https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#350

Post by computerex »

golergka wrote: post #281
foxhill wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i (and others) called this 3 years ago[1]. people need to stop using windows, entirely. i recently built a gaming machine, pretty high spec, and i've resolved to never install windows on it. there are plenty of games i can't play, a few that i would like to. but i wont give money to developers that wont release linux versions of their games - even when they are utilising engines that have linux ports (PUBG being the…

As a game developer, for most mid-tier inside titles releasing Linux version costs more than it makes, so, no. And regarding using Windows: company's behavior is important, but product quality, especially when it's a tool you use every day for work, is more important. Linux is ok for certain types of developers, it's still awful for normal users, abysmal for office work and obviously not a choice if you develop Windo…

> Linux is ok for certain types of developers, it's still awful for normal users, abysmal for office work and obviously not a choice if you develop Windows software.

Don't want to get into an OS war here but merely stating your opinion as fact without supportive evidence is not in the spirit of HackerNews.

> it's still awful for normal users, abysmal for office work

For office work a lot of workload has moved to the web browser. Creating documents and working on spreadsheets for instance can now all be done online with Microsoft's Office offering and other competing products like Google Docs.

And why is it awful for normal users? ChromeOS for example is just linux, and that whole platform is targeted towards 'normal users'. I use linux on all of my personal devices and I use these devices to do very 'normal user' activities like watching YT, social media, blogging, etc. There are many communities that consist of 'normal users' like /r/Thinkpads or /r/LinuxOnThinkpad that are currently enjoying linux.

Precisely why do you think it's awful for normal users and office work?

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