DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#201

Post by lostmsu » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

hetspookjee wrote: post #170

lostmsu wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually use Docker and Ansible a lot for ML??? Doing something custom on top of the GPU is also not much different on Windows, than Linux. CUDA is basically the same. OpenCL and Vulkan are available too. I'd like to hear perspective of a person, who actually does ML specifically on Linux for some reason.

Well CUDA is only one thing. Especially in the python environment it's only a matter for time before you run in some wierd dependency issue that is Windows only. For example, getting XGBoost completely up and running on Windows requires you to either build it yourself or download a .dll from a university link. Installing it on Linux is just a proper pip install. Also windows not having a build in C compiler makes you…

It looks like Anaconda supports XGBoost on Windows.

You might be right about C compiler. But something itched when you mentioned Docker. Could getting Windows SDK installed be harder, than installing Docker?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#202

Post by FeepingCreature » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:23 AM UTC

bitcrazed wrote: post #175

lucasyvas wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, of course, decidedly not a Linux distro though. If it was, it wouldn't be an issue. I think there are positives, but it looks a lot like "Extend" to me. I can't even say I wouldn't use it - it might be nice! But I will not use any WSL-only capability, that's for sure.

Hi. Microsoft PM working on WSL, Terminal and Windows. WSL2 literally runs user-mode distros (and their binaries) in containers atop a shared Linux kernel image ( https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel ) inside a lightweight VM that can boot an image from cold in So when you run a binary/distro on WSL2, you are LITERALLY running on Linux in a VM alongside all your favorite Windows apps and tools. If some of t…

The question isn't asking whether you, a Windows user who runs Windows, benefit. The question is asking what it does to Linux users who don't run Windows even a little. (And I think you know that.)

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#203

Post by owaislone » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:25 AM UTC

As far I understood the article, this does bring the DirectX API to Linux but in it's current shape it's only usable in WSL as the API implementation uses the virtual devices under the hood provided by WSL.

Legal/licensing issue aside, how hard would it be to re-purpose this to make it available under something like Wine or even natively on Linux with real graphics devices? How much of this is till locked in on the Windows host side?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#204

Post by lostmsu » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #192

lostmsu wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually use Docker and Ansible a lot for ML??? Doing something custom on top of the GPU is also not much different on Windows, than Linux. CUDA is basically the same. OpenCL and Vulkan are available too. I'd like to hear perspective of a person, who actually does ML specifically on Linux for some reason.

It is being used both for training and inference in order to package dependencies and scale up.

Just curious: what kind of models are you training, that require scale-up using Docker/Ansible/Kubernetes?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#205

Post by owaislone » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:27 AM UTC

It seems Microsoft is getting closer to making Windows a fully Linux compatible OS. I wouldn't be surprised to see them get rid of virtualized distros running in WSL at some point and Windows natively becoming POSIX complaint.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#206

Post by FeepingCreature » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:27 AM UTC

Rusky wrote: post #61

wmf wrote: post #6

...and extend. I'm sure this architecture was easier for MS but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux.

In the linked thread the Microsoft developers explicitly deny that this is the intent, if that's worth anything to you. The goal, rather, is to take all the usual (for the Linux side) GPU stuff and give it access to the Windows host's GPU, when running on WSL. That is, they are already working on getting OpenGL/Vulkan/etc. to run on top of this: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/intr... Rather t…

Why would Microsoft's word be worth anything to anyone?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#207

Post by FeepingCreature » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:28 AM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #113

squarefoot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux. Which is exactly what I was expecting since day one when WSL was announced. WSL is going to slowly kill Linux, or to be more accurate, it will kill any Linux (be it on servers or desktops) not Microsoft branded and distributed. Forks on smaller embedded systems will resist for a while, until one day MS decides to port some killer tec…

I think Windows has been trying to kill linux for what, almost 30 years? Some of that conspiracy mentality may have been valid 15 years ago, but probably not anymore.

You're saying it's invalid because it was too right?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#208

Post by turbinerneiter » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:29 AM UTC

dade_ wrote: post #72

squarefoot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux. Which is exactly what I was expecting since day one when WSL was announced. WSL is going to slowly kill Linux, or to be more accurate, it will kill any Linux (be it on servers or desktops) not Microsoft branded and distributed. Forks on smaller embedded systems will resist for a while, until one day MS decides to port some killer tec…

Yeah, but right now it solves the problem of not being able to run code on WSL that does run fine in Linux. What really stops me from using Linux on the Desktop is compatibility issues with my laptop(s), reliable sleep/wake and rendering issues with High DPI display. Microsoft released an MS Teams client for Linux which astonished me. So, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

The Teams client in Linux sucks, it is missing half the features and you have to pkill it after use, because simply closing it doesn't actually stop the program + it spins your fan like crazy doing God knows what in the background.

Still, thanks, I guess.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#209

Post by Valmar » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #141

Avamander wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an attempt to win back ML segment from Linux to Windows. There are three letters back in my mind that sound like screaming, but too early to tell unfortunately.

The thing with WSL is that it doesn't win back the ML segment from Linux to Windows for production workloads. This is just a developer workstation friendly move that explicitly doesn't tie you to Windows itself. It seems like Microsoft is continuing to see Linux as a production server target while positioning Windows to remain relevant as a workstation OS. Ostensibly, this is a move to compete with Mac OS and not Lin…

> This is just a developer workstation friendly move that explicitly doesn't tie you to Windows itself.

Ah, but it does tie the developer to Windows ~ this DirectX module can only be used with WSL2, which only runs on Windows.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#210

Post by lostmsu » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:35 AM UTC

hetspookjee wrote: post #168

lostmsu wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I don't quite understand what stopped those developers from running machine learning on their GPUs under Windows itself. Most frameworks work just fine. I've been doing quite a lot of TensorFlow with both Python and .NET. The only time I faced the need for Linux box is trying a demo project from OpenAI, which did not use the features it required Linux for on a single machine anyway.

My experience with GPU accelerated development is quite horrible on Windows for anything other than the NVIDIA prepped docker container. There was always something missing or some drover was incompatible. In the long run I have always regretted developping Python on Windows, also often because whatever was developped was to be deployed on a Linux box. I do not think it's purely windows to blame here though. It's only…

> horrible on Windows for anything other than the NVIDIA prepped docker container

o-O nvidia-docker does not even support Windows.

I think the only thing you need to know is which CUDA version your cuDNN requires, and it was quite clearly stated on the download page. Also the same on Linux. For nvidia-docker you used to need a specific driver version.