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How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

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Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#201

Post by bitwize »

deprave wrote: post #101
ksk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To level the playing field, and if we are to take your opinion seriously, it would be beneficial to know what books or articles or whitepapers you have read to inform yourself about the design of the NT kernel.

I'm sorry, who's "we"? You replied to a comment that presented fact. The fact is that Windows use is mostly limited to desktops. As far as you're concerned, I could be entirely illiterate and my argument would still hold because it's based on fact. If you want to claim Windows is superior, please don't point us to design documentation. Show us actual numbers and use cases where Windows outperforms Unix, or is used in…

There are more server deployments of Windows than there are of Linux.

This is because Linux's server workload is mainly the Web. But every departmental office needs an Exchange server...

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#202

Post by pbarnes_1 »

bitwize wrote: post #46
ataylor284_ wrote: post #38

> The real NtQueryDirectoryFile API takes 11 parameters Curiosity got the best of me here: I had to look this up in the docs to see how a linux syscall that takes 3 parameters could possibly take 11 parameters. Spoiler alert: they are used for async callbacks, filtering by name, allowing only partial results, and the ability to progressively scan with repeated calls.

This is a recurring pattern in Windows development. Unix devs look at the Windows API and go "This syscall takes 11 parameters? GROAN." But the NT kernel is much more sophisticated and powerful than Linux, so its system calls are going to be necessarily more complicated.

This was maybe the case at Linux 2.0, but is not the case now.

Also, Windows development is infinitely more painful than Unix/Linux.

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#203

Post by pbarnes_1 »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #51
bitwize wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a recurring pattern in Windows development. Unix devs look at the Windows API and go "This syscall takes 11 parameters? GROAN." But the NT kernel is much more sophisticated and powerful than Linux, so its system calls are going to be necessarily more complicated.

>the NT kernel is much more sophisticated and powerful than Linux Source? It's not sophisticated enough or powerful enough to be the most used kernel on super computers (and in the world). Windows pretty much only dominates the desktop market. Servers, super computers, mainframes, etc, mostly use Linux. A few years ago there was even a bug in Windows that caused degradation in network performance during multimedia pl…

I don't know why you're getting downvoted since the parent is basically stating random opinions about "power" and "sophistication" without anything to actually back it up.

11 param functions don't say "power" to me. They say "poorly thought out API design". Much can be said for most Windows APIs in general.

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#204

Post by dblohm7 »

MarkSweep wrote: post #152
trentnelson wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BindIoCompletionCallback is very old, the new threadpool APIs should be used, e.g.: https://github.com/pyparallel/pyparallel/blob/branches/3.3-p... Regarding the differences between IOCP and epoll/kqueue, it all comes down to completion-oriented versus readiness-oriented. https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-...

The documentation for the new thread pool APIs in Windows say that it is more performant than the old ones. Do you have any experience transitioning from the old thread pool to the new one, and if so did you notice performance differences?

Last decade I wrote a server based on the old API and BindIoCompletionCallback. I can't comment on the performance differences, but the newer threadpool API is much better to work with.

IMO one of the biggest problems with the old API is that there is only one pool. This can cause crazy deadlocks due to dependencies between work items executing in the pool. The new API allows you to create isolated pools.

The old API did not give you the ability to "join" on its work items before shutting down. You could roll your own solution if you knew what you were doing, but more naive developers would get burned.

You also get much finer grained control over resources.

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#205

Post by Joeri »

trentnelson wrote: post #168
adamnemecek wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, I've been saying something like this for some time. Thanks for the answer. I guess what I'm interested is somewhat obscure/historical operating systems and also HW that are in some way superior to currently popular solutions. The more comparative the better. Also your reading list has quite a few Oracle SQL entries so I'm guessing it's your preferred DB of choice. What features are you using that aren't availabl…

As far as commercial vendors go I really preferred SQL Server from about version 2000 onwards. I got into Oracle again recently for a consulting project with a finance client (who basically have unlimited Oracle licenses) and really quite enjoyed it since the Oracle 7/8 days. You can do some phenomenally sophisticated things... I extensively leveraged things like partitioning, parallel execution (dbms_parallel_execut…

They also have a text mining engine which lets you dump almost any filetype in the database and do sophisticated full text queries, including generating html snippets with highlighted matches. And they have a native column type for storing geometry, so you can do geometric queries and aggregates, for which they then also have a web viewer engine with tiled maps support, so you basically have the core of a GIS engine. There's a ton of cool stuff in there, I haven't even looked at half of it.

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#206

Post by pjmlp »

trentnelson wrote: post #160
bitwize wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inertia and the fact that select/epoll/kqueue loops are "good enough".

Bingo. Not only that but exploiting NT optimally takes a lot of knowledge about a lot of very low-level kernel details, which you sort of need to make a concerted effort to really learn, which is made harder by no official access to (recent) source code. So I genuinely think there are just fewer programmers out there that specialize in this sort of stuff. There's definitely a correlation between well-above-the-averag…

It also requires enjoying programming on Windows and buying all the Microsoft Press books that have tons of healthy information how the whole stack works.

Which doesn't work in the free (as in beer) culture world of modern UNIX.

So only those of us that feel like rewarding the work of others do get the information how everything works.

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#207

Post by pjmlp »

deprave wrote: post #65
bitwize wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to system call interfaces, it's because Dave Cutler has forgotten more than many modern "kernel hackers" will ever know about how to design an OS.

I appreciate the name-dropping. Dave Cutler's skills aside, Unix predates Windows by decades, and to anyone remotely familiar with kernel development it is clear that the sheer quantity and complexity of subsystems stem from the fact that nobody but Microsoft can actually see, modify, and redistribute Windows' source code. Unless you can actually say "here's why Windows is qualitatively better" and point out specific…

> I'll just point you to the fact that the internet infrastructure and most of the servers on it, along with every Apple desktop and pretty much every mobile device, run Unix.

I wonder how much of the internet infrastructure would run Unix if free (as in beer) clones like *BSD and GNU/Linux did not exist in first place.

How much internet infrastructure would run actually Unix if ISPs had to choose between Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, Digital UX, Tru64 and Windows licenses?

Free is always more valued than quality.

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#208

Post by abaines »

bitwize wrote: post #83
tremon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the NT kernel is much more sophisticated and powerful than Linux That does not follow from the example. All it shows is that Microsoft prefers to put a lot of functionality in one interface, while Linux probably prefers low-level functions to be as small as possible, and probably offers things like filtering on a higher level (in glibc, for example). Neither explanation has anything to do with sophistication. I p…

Actually it does, as it mentioned that the extra parameters are for things like async callbacks and partial results. The I/O model that Windows supports is a strict superset of the Unix I/O model. Windows supports true async I/O, allowing process to start I/O operations and wait on an object like an I/O completion port for them to complete. Multiple threads can share a completion port, allowing for useful allocation…

I believe Linux since 2.5 has 'proper' asynchronous system calls, io_getevents(2) and co.

Further information: https://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/~vass/linux-aio.txt

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#209

Post by dang »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #103

You should also mention that you're the author of Windows only software that directly exploits certain features specific to Windows. An implementation of python that according to http://pyparallel.org/ out-performs pretty much every other technology. Is that correct? I'm also wondering if anyone has replicated these results? From what I can find not a single person has replicated your tests. According to your own web…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866402 and marked it off-topic.

Re: How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls

#210

Post by dang »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #127
trentnelson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm incredibly biased. But that bias has come from assessing the technical details and concluding that NT really is superior, if that's any consolation. PyParallel flogs the Windows versions of things like Go, Node and Tornado because none of those were implemented in a way that allows the NT completion-oriented I/O facilities to be optimally exploited. It's depressing, honestly. In the sense that open source softwar…

So no one has replicated your findings and you're better than everyone else? K. edit: TBH it looks like you're making multiple accounts to comment on your own posts to make the comments that disagree with you appear lower. You and the child above mine had this same conversation 383 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584269 This is pathetic. for posterity: https://web.archive.org/web/20160609010955/https:…

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