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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

#101

Post by torginus »

asveikau wrote: post #52

I was always disappointed with the design of wsl2. The wsl1 design of a syscall layer atop NT had greater architectural purity. They way I heard it, they introduced a virtual machine into the design specifically in order to bypass poor NT filesystem performance. I'm sure it's easier said than done, but it would have been nice if they instead fixed the issues on the NT side, rather than side step them with a VM.

Imo it was the right call. Linux filesystems, file attributes are different from Windows, and the two never would've been completely compatible. The two big ones, are the execute bit, and the very fact that windows files represent the data on disk, while Linux ones are just a hardlink to the inode.

It is what it is. My workflow is that I rsync the relevant files from Windows to Linux, do the work, and rsync them back. It's clunky but works well enough.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#102

Post by poink »

keithnz wrote: post #69
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…

Just a comment on Proton... I've recently shifted to linux (garuda ) as a native OS for gaming (still dual booting, but linux is my main OS now, I used to run linux VMs in windows). My experience with Proton is that only ~30% of my games work out of the box. Some games like dota2, and factorio are native linux and work MUCH better (faster/higher fps) in linux. A bunch of windows games work fine, other's semi work, an…

Anticheat is indeed a huge blocker, and given how invasive shady kernel anticheat software is on Windows I kinda hope it stays that way

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#103

Post by rounce »

torginus wrote: post #100
hparadiz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux drivers are now first class and are faster and easier to install than any Windows drivers. There's no bullshit extras with them. They just work. Plus steam launches games in containers so there's zero configuration. If you don't know what you're talking about it is in fact better to say nothing than to just make shit up.

I, who has to professionally support installs running Linux with Nvidia hardware, would personally say the situation is very far from ideal on Linux. I dislike this 'my dad can beat yours' kinda competition when it's very clear Linux still has significant issues to resolve.

Out of interest are they running OKM or proprietary driver?

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#104

Post by [deleted] »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #91
keithnz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a comment on Proton... I've recently shifted to linux (garuda ) as a native OS for gaming (still dual booting, but linux is my main OS now, I used to run linux VMs in windows). My experience with Proton is that only ~30% of my games work out of the box. Some games like dota2, and factorio are native linux and work MUCH better (faster/higher fps) in linux. A bunch of windows games work fine, other's semi work, an…

Isn't Garuda an arch distribution? It could be that (less common, so more issues). Running SteamOS likely has better chance of running games, but yeah the linux experience is not streamlined at times (but it is functional!)

[deleted]

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#105

Post by mzajc »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #91
keithnz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a comment on Proton... I've recently shifted to linux (garuda ) as a native OS for gaming (still dual booting, but linux is my main OS now, I used to run linux VMs in windows). My experience with Proton is that only ~30% of my games work out of the box. Some games like dota2, and factorio are native linux and work MUCH better (faster/higher fps) in linux. A bunch of windows games work fine, other's semi work, an…

Isn't Garuda an arch distribution? It could be that (less common, so more issues). Running SteamOS likely has better chance of running games, but yeah the linux experience is not streamlined at times (but it is functional!)

SteamOS is also an Arch distribution, though I'm not sure how significant the changes are. AFAIK Lutris uses Ubuntu's libraries for better compatibility across distributions, maybe Steam does something similar.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#108

Post by torginus »

rounce wrote: post #103
torginus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, who has to professionally support installs running Linux with Nvidia hardware, would personally say the situation is very far from ideal on Linux. I dislike this 'my dad can beat yours' kinda competition when it's very clear Linux still has significant issues to resolve.

Out of interest are they running OKM or proprietary driver?

Proprietary for now, not sure how good the open source one is. But the proprietary has many quirks/bugs and limitations especially when i comes to things like Linux specific Vulkan extensions.

I don't know the full story, but afaik, AMD/Intel Mesa based drivers are fully open source and are built in a much more Linux-native way. But unfortunately hardware choice is out of my jurisdiction.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#109

Post by DanielHB »

thesis wrote: post #8

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

I am not very impressed with macos file system speed when using docker, same problem really.

If you build 100+ megabytes images several times per day it really sucks.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#110

Post by DanielHB »

rahkiin wrote: post #88
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 serve…

Anything with node_modules takes ages on my Windows machine, whether it is through WSL, Docker or direct, largely in part due to corporate filters, checks, anti-virus and malware protectors and endpoint control.

Although the stuff you mention is true, it is not the only reason. NTFS is just notoriously bad at reading/writing tons of small files.

It also has a lot of problems with locking files that are open by a process, if you have a rogue process reading your node_modules npm install or rm node_modules can hang until that process finishes.

yarn2 keeps dependencies as tarballs instead of extracting them to disk, imported files get loaded from the tarball at runtime. Makes a massive difference in windows.

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