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

141–150 of 178 posts

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#141

Post by NoGravitas »

0x1d7 wrote: post #64
omcnoe wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/mnt/c is a mounted C: drive in WSL2, that allows WSL2 guests to read/write files on the Windows host. The mount is fine and speedy enough, but the underlying reads/writes turn into native NTFS reads/writes through Windows. NTFS file API is incredibly slow - high fixed overhead for initial file access. So patterns like node_modules with many small individual files (or compiling code in general) are much much slower o…

It's the file system filters that are an issue on Windows. It trades performance for extensibility. NTFS itself is a fast file system.

This is what I keep hearing. However, I have never had the good fortune of using a Windows installation where NTFS was allowed to be fast.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#142

Post by NoGravitas »

torginus wrote: post #98
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand? I never understood why this was considered acceptable, how is windows filesystem so slow compared to linux? I am familiar with the issue, doing any sort of ruby development is a nightmare on windows because each require loads a file becoming increasingly slow at boot time

WSL2 operates through a file-level translation layer, not unlike NFS in Linux, which can be a huge performance problem for programs that manipulate lots of tiny files, like git or npm.

Programs that manipulate lots of tiny files are a performance nightmare on Windows even leaving aside the issue of WSL2.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#143

Post by dwattttt »

hparadiz wrote: post #40
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that gaming on Linux has gotten a lot better over the last several years but let's not pretend like Windows still isn't far ahead on this Also how can drivers be easier to install than on Windows when updating my GPU driver is one click?

Here's a pre-configured Fedora based distro that is zero clicks. You sign into Steam and go. Drivers are preinstalled. You literally sign into steam and hit play. https://nobaraproject.org/

Your answer to "GPU driver updates on Windows are one click, how can Linux be easier" is "here's another distro, install this instead"? This is ridiculous

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#144

Post by IshKebab »

hootz wrote: post #136
IshKebab wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience. I installed the IoT version of Windows 11 and have changed exactly one setting (put the start menu back on the left where it rightfully belongs). Nothing else has required any changes at all to get sanity, which is more than you can say for Mac (which requires half a dozen extra apps to make it same - SteerMouse, Karabina, Spectacle, etc.), or Linux, where the UI is mostly sane - if you're using KD…

The Task Manager that many times also stopped responding or was permanently stuck behind a frozen full screen game? On Linux, KDE has the plasma System Monitor, and if you can't use it for some reason you can switch your entire session to a TTY with CTRL+ALT+F2 and kill any process you want.

> you can switch your entire session to a TTY with CTRL+ALT+F2 and kill any process you want.

How intuitive. That's often disabled, and I've definitely had machines that were so frozen even that didn't work. I guess sysrq keys might have worked but if you're seriously going to suggest that you haven't understood the problem.

> The Task Manager that many times also stopped responding or was permanently stuck behind a frozen full screen game?

Hasn't happened once for me for as long as I can remember.

In fairness Linux has been pretty solid for me too after upgrading to 128GB of RAM and 64GB of swap. But I never needed to do that on Windows.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#145

Post by evanjrowley »

oofbaroomf wrote: post #34
evanjrowley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you meant Pluton and not Proton? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25191319

Proton is a tool Valve made, based on Wine, to easily run Windows games, on Linux [0]. GP meant Proton. [0]: https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton

Sorry, I thought you were enumerating gerivances against Microsoft and not better alternatives. Pluton has been controversial because it's been marketed as a "security" solution when in reality is's just doing DRM. Originally greated for the Xbox, it's kind of the antithesis of Valve's Proton.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#146

Post by beart »

rdwrrr wrote: post #106

Give me one good reason why anyone would bother with any of this at all?

Corporate mandate to use windows. Crowdstrike scans make doing anything on the command line a non-starter. For example, adding mise to my powershell prompt adds multiple seconds! to each powershell command execution... it's just not even feasible at that point to work in Windows. WSL resolves these issues.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#147

Post by nozzlegear »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #77
nozzlegear wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory is murky here, but I don't think WSL even had two different file systems at the time.

How would you run Linux without Linux having its own file system that doesn't even make sense

I can't tell if you're trolling me or just unfamiliar with WSL1?

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#148

Post by JdeBP »

torginus wrote: post #101
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…

This really isn't factually based. MFT entries are conceptually equivalent to i-node table entries. And the execute bit is what traversal checking bypass is all about.

Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access

#149

Post by ryanshrott »

kenz0r wrote: post #36

What killed WSL for me was the incredibly janky way I had to share USB peripherals. usb-ipd works 80% of the time, all the time.

80% is being generous. I gave up on USB for WSL altogether and just pass the whole controller through with Hyper-V. On laptops, though, that is not always possible.
Post reply on HN