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CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

devblogs.nvidia.com

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Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#41

Post by washadjeffmad »

cma wrote: post #11
black_puppydog wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like it's gonna be terrible for people already doing ML. Now, the following has more than a bit of elitism, I'm aware of that, so please don't comment to point that bit out... I'm afraid that searching for answers to specific ML questions will start feeling like trying to google some Windows problems (every few years when I make the mistake of trying to help someone out) where it's all "download this, then…

Hope we don't see things like: "Google announces today that to work around Windows' file path length limitations, Tensorflow's directory structure is being rewritten to use three characters or less per directory."

I recently helped a friend with their museum's collection management software. The server and client were Windows based, and even with the proper dependencies and provisioning, the installs kept failing.

Some of the paths were too long and the installer could only be executed after being unpacked to root.

It's been a while since I more than casually gutted and used Windows as an app container, but I hadn't realized how much has remained the same after more than two decades.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#42

Post by avandvrnot »

curiousgal wrote: post #17
FiReaNG3L wrote: post #2

This is BIG for machine learning adoption! 2 years ago it was a nightmare to setup everything on a Windows box, and wasn't working in any VMs (WSL or VirtualBox). Very excited about this.

Other than C# and other Microsoft specific stacks, I've found coding on Windows to be absolutely horrible compared to Linux.

If I can’t ask for the budget available for any Windows project _for tooling and libraries ^0 I never really know how much of a problem was it being a Windows project. Even then I used to like to ask about experiences with a handful of different parts of the windows systems which frequently suggested that either the programmer was pretty new to windows or that something was amiss, it was usually my experience to find more unix talent avoiding windows by default and at least with a BSD tcp stack and any communications project, windows jobs kept turning out to be for executive management demonstration purposes which was a very important opportunity for getting into more significant financial programming work.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#43

Post by alerighi »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #13
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Pity. CUDA was/is proof positive that Linux on the desktop is perfectly feasible and that you can use it to both do a UI and do meaningful computation on the same machine without getting tied down into all kinds of licensing schemes. Opening this further up to Windows gives fewer people a really good reason to try out Linux as their daily driver. I personally don't get why any developer would prefer Windows over Linu…

Well, CUDA is about the opposite of open source. It needs special hardware and a closed source driver. CUDA on Windows was already a big deal in engineering. Scientists and academics preferred Linux (and python, and docker) and Windows is playing catch up there to become compatible with the tools that have grown in popularity over the last 5 years. Personally, as an open source advocate, I think competition (even fro…

Also Linux is becoming the new Windows, and is one of the reason I stopped using it. What is the point of using a system that on every release is more and more bloated and full of crap that it breaks?

Docker for example, I hate it, it serves no purpose beside wasting disk space and slowing down your machine. BTRFS is a bugged imitation of ZFS. Wayland not only is bugged but even does less things than Xorg.

Most scientists and academics then just don't know how to write software or administer operating systems, and if they program they write the worst crap of spaghetti code possible, no wonder they like Linux, Docker and python.

I use macOS, at least I have a system that has a decent user interface, and for my server I started using whenever I can FreeBSD, much more stable, much more simple, good documentation, a good operating system.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#44

Post by fartcannon »

anonymousDan wrote: post #12
benbristow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does kind of feel that way. Having a full Windows Desktop with good graphics drivers and software like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, commercial games etc. and Linux for the programming/server-software side of things. I have literally no reason to dual-boot with Ubuntu anymore. WSL2 and Visual Studio Code fulfils all my Linux coding requirements. Maybe (probably?) a bad thing but it's damn convenient.

Yeah I just started using Windows 10/WSL yesterday and I have to say I'm impressed. Are there any downsides/painpoints I should be aware of?

The downsides are Windows telemetry and desktop monopoly.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#45

Post by Skunkleton »

alerighi wrote: post #36
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Pity. CUDA was/is proof positive that Linux on the desktop is perfectly feasible and that you can use it to both do a UI and do meaningful computation on the same machine without getting tied down into all kinds of licensing schemes. Opening this further up to Windows gives fewer people a really good reason to try out Linux as their daily driver. I personally don't get why any developer would prefer Windows over Linu…

First a developer you don't do only programming: you maybe have to work with documents, do a presentation, a spreadsheet and thus use Office. You maybe have to make some icons or logos and thus you need Adobe Illustrator. You maybe need to connect to a printer like the one that we have at my office that good luck doing that on Linux. You maybe need a CAD software to designa PCB, you need whatever other software that…

Just to add to this: Linux is happy to work in whatever way is convenient to you. WSL2 is case and point here. Windows is less flexible. If I can get everything I want out of one environment (stable gui, business software, and a native-like linux shell), that will save me the hassle of multiple machines, traditional VMs, or dual booting.

I don't think we will see the Linux Subsystem for Windows 2 ever. I also am not enamored with GUI side of the Linux world. WSL2 seems like a not bad place to land.

In my ideal world, Microsoft would base Windows on a mainline linux kernel. That would make me so happy.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#46

Post by deno »

cbhl wrote: post #31
pantalaimon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without the technical issues of Desktop Linux (aka the Wayland Nightmare) Nobody is forced to use Wayland. It’s still quite experimental, I think only Gnome enables it by default.

Xming on Windows isn't exactly a walk in the park either -- I'd still rather use the native, proprietary build of VSCode on a proprietary OS with the SSH extension if I'm on a high-DPI screen.

VSCode works just fine with hidpi on Linux. It’s just an Electron app after all, and Chromium has had hidpi support since forever.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#47

Post by jpm48 »

This is quite light on detail, have just installed, was thinking that nvcc would be installed to WSL2 as part of the process. It wasn't so did it via apt which worked fine. Built a sample (with some hacking of the SM versions which should be higher as I have an RTX) and when I run the basic Matrix mult demo get code=38(cudaErrorNoDevice) Anyone else had any luck?

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#48

Post by 29athrowaway »

When you mention Microsoft + EEE, you get downvoted.

Well, they have so far: 1) embraced Linux. 2) extended it with proprietary functionality (Windows living outside WSL), and now what is next?

How is this not the same?

Of course, the MS employee will downvote me automatically, the VS code users will downvote me too, and I will lose 5 karma for saying the truth.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#49

Post by alerighi »

FiReaNG3L wrote: post #2

This is BIG for machine learning adoption! 2 years ago it was a nightmare to setup everything on a Windows box, and wasn't working in any VMs (WSL or VirtualBox). Very excited about this.

I mean there are services like Amazon AWS, Azure, Google Cloud that will set up everyting for you. The money you pay them to me is worth the time you otherwise would have spent to do the setup yourself.

Re: CUDA on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

#50

Post by SXX »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #13
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Pity. CUDA was/is proof positive that Linux on the desktop is perfectly feasible and that you can use it to both do a UI and do meaningful computation on the same machine without getting tied down into all kinds of licensing schemes. Opening this further up to Windows gives fewer people a really good reason to try out Linux as their daily driver. I personally don't get why any developer would prefer Windows over Linu…

Well, CUDA is about the opposite of open source. It needs special hardware and a closed source driver. CUDA on Windows was already a big deal in engineering. Scientists and academics preferred Linux (and python, and docker) and Windows is playing catch up there to become compatible with the tools that have grown in popularity over the last 5 years. Personally, as an open source advocate, I think competition (even fro…

WSL2 and all these features don't have anything to do with open source either. It's basically a shim for communication of two proprietary bits of software on both sides. Fortunately all these graphics and compute shims will never get merged into upstream kernel so they'll be second-class citizens like forever.

Dave Airlie who is maintainer of Linux graphics subsystem will never allow to merge it since it's can only be used for proprietary software.

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