Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

boxofcables.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#11

Post by weird-eye-issue »

alberth wrote: post #6
chris_money202 wrote: post #4

They are undoubtly doing this because so many users operate out of /mnt/c with zero clue of that implication.

Would you mind elaborating (for those of us uninformed)

One example is that if you have a node modules folder on Windows and you try to delete it from WSL it can take 10 plus minutes whereas if you deleted it directly in Windows it would have just taken a few seconds

Also if you try running Next js from files on Windows from WSL it takes minutes for each page to compile to the point that any local development is impossible so you would have to either run the Next JS server on Windows or move the files to WSL

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#12

Post by tonymet »

alberth wrote: post #6
chris_money202 wrote: post #4

They are undoubtly doing this because so many users operate out of /mnt/c with zero clue of that implication.

Would you mind elaborating (for those of us uninformed)

WSL2 is a VM based on a Windows virtual disk file (VHD). inside that VHD IO is quite fast , a couple degrees worse than native. /mnt/c is how you access your windows files, but it's slow like NFS (socket based). anything needing high IOPS will be dog slow e.g. compiles, file scanning, etc.

the rule of thumb without the newest features is to copy work to/from /mnt/c into $HOME as needed.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#13

Post by weird-eye-issue »

nozzlegear wrote: post #9
thesis wrote: post #8

Moved to mac about 7 years ago because of horrible WSL file system speed was.

Same here, though I went to Linux first for several years. WSL file speeds, especially when running npm install, were the impetus that ultimately got me to switch off of Windows.

Sounds like you were just doing it wrong

Either you run npm install from Windows if you are operating on the Windows file system or you run it on WSL if you are operating on the WSL file system both cases will be very fast

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#14

Post by hparadiz »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #10
thesis wrote: post #8

Moved to mac about 7 years ago because of horrible WSL file system speed was.

You could just move your files to the WSL file system

That kind of defeats the entire purpose of them being accessible from the rest of the system.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#15

Post by hparadiz »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #13
nozzlegear wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, though I went to Linux first for several years. WSL file speeds, especially when running npm install, were the impetus that ultimately got me to switch off of Windows.

Sounds like you were just doing it wrong Either you run npm install from Windows if you are operating on the Windows file system or you run it on WSL if you are operating on the WSL file system both cases will be very fast

The entire Windows operating system is doing it wrong. Seriously who daily drives windows these days. lol.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#16

Post by phowat »

Tangentially , I was a heavy used of wsl and moved to linux a few months ago and LLMs made most of the downsides of using linux as a desktop go away for me. I chatted with claude about the migration to find the best distro, decided on Fedora. After the install I asked everything I wanted to configured and got straight answers. In 3 or 4 hours I had an even more comfortable experience than I had on windows. AI made the annoying parts of trying to figure out how to edit all the config files to have linux behave the way you want very easy. I also had claude code write a bunch of scripts that I could have done but would probably never bring myself to actually do it . WHen you have a coding agent readily available , having an open source desktop environment makes a lot more sense. I encourage everyone to try it.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#17

Post by hgoel »

phowat wrote: post #16

Tangentially , I was a heavy used of wsl and moved to linux a few months ago and LLMs made most of the downsides of using linux as a desktop go away for me. I chatted with claude about the migration to find the best distro, decided on Fedora. After the install I asked everything I wanted to configured and got straight answers. In 3 or 4 hours I had an even more comfortable experience than I had on windows. AI made th…

I did this too, made switching my desktop to Linux so much smoother. I have a Windows laptop for my Windows needs and most of my gaming is fine on the Steam Deck, so I realized I didn't need to always boot into Windows only to use WSL.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#18

Post by avaer »

Proton, Copilot, and literally this single issue are what pushed people to Linux. If I were in charge there would be a team devoted to fixing this a decade ago.

WSL singlehandedly stemmed much of tide of developers moving away from Windows, but WSL native filesystem performance gave devs that magical experience when they boot into Linux the first time and see that the filesystem doesn't have to be ass. There's always been hacks around this, but for many devs the easiest hack was to ditch Windows.

They should have moved heaven to fix this on day one, there's really no engineering excuse. Linux is open source.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#19

Post by weird-eye-issue »

hparadiz wrote: post #14
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just move your files to the WSL file system

That kind of defeats the entire purpose of them being accessible from the rest of the system.

You can access them from the rest of the system. For normal usage the performance is completely acceptable but for development tasks it matters.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#20

Post by weird-eye-issue »

hparadiz wrote: post #15
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you were just doing it wrong Either you run npm install from Windows if you are operating on the Windows file system or you run it on WSL if you are operating on the WSL file system both cases will be very fast

The entire Windows operating system is doing it wrong. Seriously who daily drives windows these days. lol.

Well before Windows I spent years with both Linux and Mac and I found Windows to be a good mix of stability and suitability for development now that WSL is a thing. Also for gaming it's the best by a long shot so just all around I've found it to be best and WSL made me never miss Linux.
Post reply on HN