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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

#121

Post by Koshkin »

squarefoot wrote: post #80
kalium-xyz wrote: post #5

The Year of the linux desktop has come

Actually, the year of Linux on the desktop will never come also thanks to this. Developers will find more comfortable writing Linux software on Windows (some already do); desktop users will have both worlds at hand without being forced to dual boot; Linux gamers won't have any reasons to keep using native Linux. Etc. I foresee in a not so distant future Microsoft integrating Windows UI elements and events hooks right…

Looks like a very realistic scenario. From this prospective Linux is slated to become just another part of the MinGW world, thus having nothing to do with Linux as a potential end in itself. I would not be surprised if one day WSL is advertised as "the best environment for Windows programming."

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#122

Post by Iv »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #85
deadbunny wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, from one of the MS staff replies further in the thread[1] > There is a single usecase for this: WSL2 developer who wants to run machine learning on his GPU. The developer is working on his laptop, which is running Windows and that laptop has a single GPU that Windows is using. Can't say I can get behind MS trying to shift maintenance for a Windows only "feature" onto the Linux devs here. 1. https://lkml.org/lkml…

Is there a possibility Linux upstream won't accept it?

Why would it? That's a functionality that can't be used without Microsoft proprietary parts. Unless I missed something, I don't think there is an open source implementation of DirectX somewhere?

I doubt the linux devs ever see WLS as a target they have to maintain themselves.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#123

Post by isatty »

monocasa wrote: post #57
4cao wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. In the meantime I also noticed the following comment from Dave Airlie on LKML [1]: > This is a driver that connects a binary blob interface in the Windows kernel drivers to a binary blob that you run inside a Linux guest. It's a binary transport between two binary pieces. [...] I can see why it might be nice to have this upstream, but I don't forsee any other Linux distributor ever enabling it or having to…

He's pretty against it on a number of fronts. That being said I don't see why distros like Ubuntu that allow non free code wouldn't ship with it out of the box. They already support Nvidia binary drivers anyway, so why wouldn't they support a transport bridge that'd let people use them on WSL too? Also, he notices that it's intended to be more than a bridge in the future, as they're already working on integrating it…

Because this benefits only WSL. I don’t think that the Linux maintainers should spend time and effort maintaining a shim that only benefits users on another operating system. It does not even lead to cross platform code if a dev uses this on WSL.

Microsoft can ship it however they please though within bounds of licenses.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#126

Post by dang »

raphlinus wrote: post #8
_vbdg wrote: post #2

> This also enables third party APIs, such as the popular NVIDIA Cuda compute API, to be hardware accelerated within a WSL environment. Dollars to donuts this is why Microsoft is implementing this. GPU acceleration is becoming a critical feature for many users (but especially developers) and this will continue. If WSL is to be a serious competitor, this is necessary and I'm glad to see it showing up. This is true of…

The associated blog post ( https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/ ) does have more details on exposing display functionality. There is no swapchain functionality yet, but it's clear they're working on it, and part of the work is "DxCore", which seems to be a cleaned up and simplified version of DXGI. So not now, but soon.

We've changed to that from https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742. Thanks!

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#127

Post by dang »

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…

(The originally submitted URL was https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742.)

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#128

Post by dang »

badRNG wrote: post #54

The title is misleading. This isn't DirectX on Linux. This is DirectX API access for WSL exclusively. It will lock ML projects into Windows/WSL for the price of access to the DirectX API and at the expense of development of other projects like Vulkan for native Linux.

We've changed from https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742 to the blog post it links to, which hopefully makes things clearer.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#129

Post by dang »

4cao wrote: post #21

Is it really "DirectX on Linux," or more like "DirectX on Windows Subsystem for Linux?" Is it going to be useful for Linux in general, outside WSL?

We've changed from https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742 (and that title) to the blog post that it points to (and its title), which presumably makes things clearer.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#130

Post by dang »

satvikpendem wrote: post #41

This is probably a better article directly from Microsoft: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/ OpenCL, DirectX and CUDA all seem to be available for GPU acceleration on WSL. One other exciting thing is GPU accelerated GUI Linux apps on Windows. You may not need an X server anymore. I'm looking forward to using i3 on Windows.

Changed to that from https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/742. Thanks!
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