Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

devblogs.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 548 posts

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#241

Post by albertzeyer »

mcv wrote: post #236
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.

But Windows is a painful OS to use for anything other than gaming. Ideally, I'd like to see the exact opposite of this: run Linux with a Windows subsystem just for gaming.

That's exactly what Wine is.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#242

Post by _ph_ »

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.

Agree. I am also looking for a laptop to mainly run Linux on. This quite widens the choices for me. Also, what keeps me and probably many others from running 100% Linux is the requirement of some commercial applications which are not available for Linux. So far using a Mac with a Linux VM was the best compromise for me, but now Windows becomes an appealing alternative.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#243

Post by skohan »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #240
lalaland1125 wrote: post #213

It appears that Microsoft has now initiated the "Extend" phase of their classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish playbook. The key is that the proprietary Microsoft specific API added by this patch is only usable in a WSL environment as it relies on many pieces of proprietary closed source software that Microsoft is unwilling to open source. This patch does nothing but fragment the Linux ecosystem and encourage people to…

While this was my initial thought as well, on a second thought that doesn't make too much sense. Well depending on whether you're wearing your tinfoil hat properly, you could say this is for testing the waters, but who the fsck would target their game at this? Write against naive Linux but use DirectX for the graphics? Just why? Sounds like the most stupid thing ever. The CUDA support thing from other comments below…

EEE is incremental by nature. This represents a lever they could use to create an ecosystem of Linux software which only works on WSL.

> but who the fsck would target their game at this?

It doesn't have to be games. Maybe MS releases an ML visualization library for Linux which requires D3D. It's not so far fetched.

Given the cumulative pain developers have had to deal with supporting IE6 over the years, I think it's warranted to be wary of this kind of thing.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#244

Post by _ph_ »

rvz wrote: post #159
dzonga wrote: post #139

EEE, slowly the Linux desktop | os environment will be a thing of the past. something you won't run directly but interact via the windows api. and your only other choice will be mac os on arm. the biggest mistake the linux ecosystem did, was being so fragmented. if they had rallied around one desktop env, then lots of people would've migrated. I personally use a t490 on ubuntu and a 2013 macbook. but even I I'm attem…

> the biggest mistake the linux ecosystem did, was being so fragmented. I'm not sure how many times I have pointed this out here, but given the lack of a standardized desktop environment, that is the reason why most software companies are reluctant to support Linux users. But in contrast with 'Android' in the mobile industry has succeeded in doing this with Linux as its kernel. For a typical or even a complex desktop…

While he is right that it is not a "kernel" issue in the strict sense, I have to say it would have been beneficial, if Linus had used his influence to push more for a better desktop environment.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#245

Post by mcv »

albertzeyer wrote: post #241
mcv wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Windows is a painful OS to use for anything other than gaming. Ideally, I'd like to see the exact opposite of this: run Linux with a Windows subsystem just for gaming.

That's exactly what Wine is.

It's exactly what Wine wants to be. Sadly that's not quite the same thing.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#246

Post by josteink »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #239
josteink wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This emulates a GPU driver. If I understand it correctly, it just means that GPU-accelerated code that previously only ran on "proper" Linux now can run on WSL too, being powered by DirectX behind the scenes. What's bad about that?

You don't understand it correctly. Nobody is complaining or even talking about the gpu driver. > DxCore & D3D12 on Linux Projecting a WDDM compatible abstraction for the GPU inside of Linux allowed us to recompile and bring our premiere graphics API to Linux when running in WSL. This is the real and full D3D12 API, no imitations, pretender or reimplementation here… this is the real deal. l > libd3d12.so and libdxcore…

OK. That's different. That sounds extendish indeed.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#247

Post by pantalaimon »

rezonant wrote: post #169
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.

My understanding is that this is meant to become transparent to the user, that really this is about enablement of hardware acceleration within WSL, and that the typical Linux userland graphics APIs like OpenGL would layer on top. So the goal isn't to get you to link to libdx12 or whatever it is they have here, it's actually a piece that will be used by Mesa to provide accelerated GL for plain old Linux apps to use wh…

The DirectML API is not otherwise available on Linux. If it promises cross vendor support (which is a good thing) tools and libraries will use it.

Those tools and libraries will then not work on native Linux.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#248

Post by _ph_ »

bb88 wrote: post #118
squarefoot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the year of Linux on the desktop will never come also thanks to this. Developers will find more comfortable writing Linux software on Windows (some already do); desktop users will have both worlds at hand without being forced to dual boot; Linux gamers won't have any reasons to keep using native Linux. Etc. I foresee in a not so distant future Microsoft integrating Windows UI elements and events hooks right…

> the year of Linux on the desktop will never come also thanks to this. I think you're giving MS too much credit here. Apple has one UI, and Windows has one UI (2 if you count windows in tablet mode). Linux has, what? 30? Quoth the Torvalds: "I still wish we were better at having a standardize desktop that goes across all the distributions… It’s not a kernel issue. It’s more of a personal annoyance how the fragmentat…

I think that both Ubuntu and Red Hat family being based on Gnome is a good thing for Linux on the desktop, as there is a clear target for Linux GUI applications. I like the fact, that you still have the freedom to run any kind of desktop environment of Linux, but a stable default can only help Linux.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#249

Post by Gaelan »

dgellow wrote: post #215
agildehaus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chocolate and peanut butter are pretty good together. Just sayin'.

Wait, is chocolate and peanut butter really a thing?! That sounds quite horrible to my non-US ears. Edit: yep, an online search seems to say that's an actual thing. I guess I'm part of the ten thousand today https://xkcd.com/1053/ . I will never understand the US fascination for peanut butter.

Reese's peanut butter cups [0] are a fairly popular "candy" item here. Try one if you get a chance, they're pretty tasty.

[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reeses-PB-Cups.jpg

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#250

Post by bonzini »

dgellow wrote: post #215
agildehaus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chocolate and peanut butter are pretty good together. Just sayin'.

Wait, is chocolate and peanut butter really a thing?! That sounds quite horrible to my non-US ears. Edit: yep, an online search seems to say that's an actual thing. I guess I'm part of the ten thousand today https://xkcd.com/1053/ . I will never understand the US fascination for peanut butter.

As a European, sandwich with Nutella on one bread side and peanut butter on the other is awesome (except for your cholesterol).
Post reply on HN