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WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

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Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#41

Post by tonymet »

themeiguoren wrote: post #2

I can’t find any benchmarks on this, anyone have a sense of the speedup that can be expected here? And for what it’s worth, that version isn’t available yet when I try to update WSL.

a test compile of hugo (moderate go app) on a AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS with SSD

WSL filesystem = 50s

virtiofs = 75s

it seems a lot faster. I don't use drvfs (windows files) usually. 50% performance gap is good.

And MS Defender kicked in beforehand losing about 10 seconds. with some config you could turn off defender and get this down to 60s

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#42

Post by tonymet »

themeiguoren wrote: post #2

I can’t find any benchmarks on this, anyone have a sense of the speedup that can be expected here? And for what it’s worth, that version isn’t available yet when I try to update WSL.

wsl version 2.7.7 seemed to work with the listed config + reboot

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#43

Post by tonymet »

themeiguoren wrote: post #2

I can’t find any benchmarks on this, anyone have a sense of the speedup that can be expected here? And for what it’s worth, that version isn’t available yet when I try to update WSL.

more or less this is what I ran to benchmark

https://gist.github.com/tonymet/ec7fc4af0eb11c9d5af22c76d056...

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#44

Post by tonymet »

sanp wrote: post #32

Hasn’t this always been the case? I have always run builds under WSL2 in Windows because of this.

when you mount "drvfs" (the automounting feature, or you can call mount -t drvfs) , it's usually plan9, which is like NFS.

with the new wsl version, kernel and config from that blog, it will mount virtiofs, or warn you

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#45

Post by [deleted] »

avaer wrote: post #18

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…

[deleted]

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#46

Post by ragequittah »

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 also did this as well as learned pfSense then OPNSense when pfSense went bad. Also made a pretty complicated XCP-ng setup. Learned all this with the ancient ChatGPT 3.5-4.0 models.

I can hear a subset of people cringe saying "but LLMs are BS machines and you aren't learning anything!" I heartily disagree on both fronts. The main thing holding users like me back from linux was always the snarky RTFM community and the fact that everything has 25 different answers (depending on distro, window manager, and many other factors). LLMs take care of all this friction for you very nicely.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#48

Post by lelandbatey »

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

Or, as they said, they didn't want to have to think about it so they chose to switch.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#50

Post by CamperBob2 »

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…

This. It is hard to exaggerate how easy Claude Code (or, I'm sure, any number of other harnesses of choice) makes it to migrate to a new operating system.

It is truly a Star Trek-level experience. Nobody who doesn't want to run Windows (and who isn't forced to run it) needs to run Windows anymore.

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