Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#21

Post by uabstraction » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:08 AM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #9

Longhanks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hardware supports it, you may be able to pull a 180 and run a Windows VM on the bare metal using hardware passthrough. There's a great community here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vfio

Wow, that works? Video games are pretty much the last thing that holds me on Windows. Everything else is solved on Linux. I am very interested in any solution for this problem.

It works, but you need to cherry-pick the hardware. I've seen GTA V running smoothly IN A VM with this configuration. The CPU must support VT-d, which my i7-4770k sadly doesn't. You also need a second GPU to use with the host operating system (nVidia Optimus for laptop users doesn't cut it).

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#22

Post by Lord_Zane » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:10 AM UTC

Longhanks wrote: post #7

kozikow wrote: post #6

I am currently dual booting between Arch Linux and Windows 10. Moving to something like this one day makes me conflicted. On one hand I feel like I would betray open source, on the other hand I wouldn't have to restart my machine to play games...

If your hardware supports it, you may be able to pull a 180 and run a Windows VM on the bare metal using hardware passthrough. There's a great community here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vfio

Id love to do this, since I pretty much just need league of legends support. Only problem is, its a vm. How would windows 10 licensing thing work?

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#23

Post by swiley » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:13 AM UTC

Lord_Zane wrote: post #22

Longhanks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hardware supports it, you may be able to pull a 180 and run a Windows VM on the bare metal using hardware passthrough. There's a great community here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vfio

Id love to do this, since I pretty much just need league of legends support. Only problem is, its a vm. How would windows 10 licensing thing work?

Windows 10 licencing from dream spark seems to work in qemu-kvm. Idk how normal Windows 10 works with that, I only use it to run the occasional required software for class.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#24

Post by socmag » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:19 AM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #9

Longhanks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hardware supports it, you may be able to pull a 180 and run a Windows VM on the bare metal using hardware passthrough. There's a great community here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vfio

Wow, that works? Video games are pretty much the last thing that holds me on Windows. Everything else is solved on Linux. I am very interested in any solution for this problem.

Serious general open question here. It strikes me as odd that on the one hand you say you want to ditch windows in favor of FOSS, but then go on to say that you use Windows just to play games.

The interesting thing is that games are some of the most costly and closed source things in software today. Windows costs the price of two games or less.

Further, if you own a PlayStation, an XBox it's likely you have spent hundreds of dollars on closed source games. If you bought a fancy graphics card, would you expect that to be free as well?

I love FOSS software as much a as the next person, but people who write software do have to live. Like game developers, employees of NVIDIA, even the people who make the Arch Linux distribution.

I'm truly not picking on you or FOSS, I just find it hard to rationalize FOSS zealotry that is almost universally hypocritical to some degree. Even Linus gets $10m a year or something like that. I'm not even sure to be honest what FOSS software IS any more.

It's a serious question, because I'm really confused.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#25

Post by briansteffens » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:20 AM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #16

briansteffens wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just only play Linux games. I mean sure, you'll eventually get tired of Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of Mordor. But when that happens you can just play Shadow of Mordor.

Hehe, there's actually a pretty decent amount of games for Linux these days, but if you're an enthusiast then it's not enough.

Yeah I was exaggerating a bit, I find plenty of games to play. If you're not too picky about which game you play, you can find a lot of good games. It's when all your friends are playing something specific and telling you to play it with them but it's Windows only that you feel the pain and are tempted to reboot into Windows :)

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#26

Post by wtallis » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:26 AM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #19

Kenji wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that works? Video games are pretty much the last thing that holds me on Windows. Everything else is solved on Linux. I am very interested in any solution for this problem.

same. is this a selective process? i mean, can I allow access to my video card and but still not to the rest of the CPU/memory/storage?

Yes. Most Intel CPUs from the past decade have supported hardware virtualization extensions (VT-x) that allow for efficient virtual machines, where the host system allocates CPU time and memory much as it would for an ordinary userspace process. Select Intel CPUs also support an IOMMU extension (VT-d) that allows PCIe devices to be virtually isolated from the host system; effectively, the device's DMA goes in to the VM's memory space instead of the host system's memory space. This can be done on a per-device granularity. It allows the OS in the VM to access the device exactly the same way it would if the OS were running on bare metal, so no driver changes are necessary.

Storage for VMs is still primarily emulated rather than virtualized, but you can use VT-d to grant a VM exclusive access to a HBA or RAID card or NVMe SSD, because VT-d works for any type of PCIe device.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#27

Post by iamdave » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:28 AM UTC

socmag wrote: post #24

Kenji wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that works? Video games are pretty much the last thing that holds me on Windows. Everything else is solved on Linux. I am very interested in any solution for this problem.

Serious general open question here. It strikes me as odd that on the one hand you say you want to ditch windows in favor of FOSS, but then go on to say that you use Windows just to play games. The interesting thing is that games are some of the most costly and closed source things in software today. Windows costs the price of two games or less. Further, if you own a PlayStation, an XBox it's likely you have spent hun…

I didn't pick up many hints that they were using Linux purely because FOSS, that seems like a projection?; personally I went entirely Linux because I'm fond of the nearly infinitely granular controls I can make over the UI and UX (plus a few system level things) that I can share with others, get improvements on and reiterate into my daily use. Perhaps there's a similar trend here to the user you're responding to; I am merely speaking out of anecdote.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#28

Post by shmerl » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:30 AM UTC

WSL is useful for some, but personally I'm more interested in reverse (Wine), mostly for some games without native Linux releases.

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#29

Post by jfmyers9 » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:31 AM UTC

socmag wrote: post #24

Kenji wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that works? Video games are pretty much the last thing that holds me on Windows. Everything else is solved on Linux. I am very interested in any solution for this problem.

Serious general open question here. It strikes me as odd that on the one hand you say you want to ditch windows in favor of FOSS, but then go on to say that you use Windows just to play games. The interesting thing is that games are some of the most costly and closed source things in software today. Windows costs the price of two games or less. Further, if you own a PlayStation, an XBox it's likely you have spent hun…

They didn't say anything about using Linux because of FOSS. They said games were the only thing keeping them on Windows. There is a possibility that they just enjoys using a Linux OS over Windows for general computing?

Re: Arch Linux adapted for Windows Subsystem for Linux

#30

Post by socmag » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 12:37 AM UTC

socmag wrote: post #24

Kenji wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that works? Video games are pretty much the last thing that holds me on Windows. Everything else is solved on Linux. I am very interested in any solution for this problem.

Serious general open question here. It strikes me as odd that on the one hand you say you want to ditch windows in favor of FOSS, but then go on to say that you use Windows just to play games. The interesting thing is that games are some of the most costly and closed source things in software today. Windows costs the price of two games or less. Further, if you own a PlayStation, an XBox it's likely you have spent hun…

The bit... "Moving to something like this one day makes me conflicted. On one hand I feel like I would betray open source, on the other hand I wouldn't have to restart my machine to play games..."