Now if only Windows would also get faster Windows file system access.
Use Windows Dev Drive. Much faster for development workloads.
WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
161–170 of 178 posts
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
He wanted it pre-configured and I pointed him to the one distro maintained by a Red Hat employee based on one of the most popular and supported distros.
Ya'll will complain about anything.
It is a live USB you can game on. You don't even really need to install it.
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
git and npm install are somewhat slower on vanilla Windows, true, but on WSL2 they're downright unusable
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#164I 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…
> 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.
This contrast is somewhat true of FAT but not NTFS.
Which is to say, in FAT, the direntry defines the first entry in the cluster chain, and the file size. But NTFS is not like this. There is a concept of inodes, which they call file IDs. Hardlinks are also a thing. You can also create a file, then delete its name, but leave the handle to the inode open. You can also open by file id.
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Windows' filesystem filter drivers add a lot of overhead to every operation, and Windows Defender and its realtime scanning in particular makes it 10x worse. (NTFS itself is fine.) Are there a lot of Microsoft operating systems that feature NTFS without filesystem drivers and Windows Defender?
It's the filesystem filter drivers that slow things down, not the filesystem drivers (ie NTFS) themselves. Filter drivers sit a layer above the filesystem driver and allow you to hook file operations to do things like antivirus scanning, transparent encryption and compression, realtime backups, and implement virtual files (à la Dropbox and OneDrive cloud files that are deleted from local storage and JIT downloaded wh…
NTFS itself is actually pretty good, but unless you disable the filter drivers and Windows Defender, overall system performance of NTFS isn't great. Except that you can't really run NTFS without those things. Technically you can, but you're not running without Windows Defender enabled except in very very specific circumstances. So the performance of NTFS itself without those things is a moot point because of that.
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#166Tangentially , 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…
Linux has a lot of inherent advantages here, like much deeper terminal support that let an agent make changes to practically any system setting on your behalf. Most importantly, if all else fails, the LLM agent can always check the source code to debug what's going on at the root, if you're using Linux. They don't have the option in Windows or MacOS.
This could mean that at some point, ironically Linux becomes the most user-friendly operating system for regular people as their AIs can diagnose and fix system issues and problems for them more easily than they can with proprietary operating systems.
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#167Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically the Apple and Google stuff that others like so much.
All 3 (Apple, Google, Microsoft) share a lot of the same negative behaviors, but only Apple and Google get a free pass for some reason. Microsoft is worse in many aspects, but look at the recent debacle with NightmareEclipse and how shitty MSRC is. Apple pulls the same crap and are even less transparent about security, but they get a free pass in tech circles for some reason.
I don't think Google gets a free pass--kind of the opposite, it gets the lion's share of the criticism (especially for privacy stuff) despite being the most open and up front about what they're doing. (If you want to know what data Chromeium is collecting, just check the source!)
I don't think there's any company that's done more to support transparent open-source software except Red Hat. Hell, in true Google style, they've built not one, not two, but four separate FOSS operating systems (Android, ChromiumOS, Fuchsia, and at this point it's time to admit Chrome has become an OS-within-an-OS), as well as being the second-biggest contributor to Linux.
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the file system filters that are an issue on Windows. It trades performance for extensibility. NTFS itself is a fast file system.
"NTFS itself is a fast file system" File access is significantly slower on Windows compared to Linux on the same hardware. You can run Linux inside a VM and it will easily beat the host OS in filesystem performance. If the problem is not NTFS, then it is in how the Windows OS uses it
> If the problem is not NTFS, then it is in how the Windows OS uses it
Isn't that exactly what the comment you are replying to is saying?
Re: WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
#170Wouldn't using NTSYNC on the Linux kernel side also improve filesystem performance?