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DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#301

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

m12k wrote: post #264
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…

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dom…

> you'll see 1/2-2/3rds of them with MacBook Pros in their laps, because it compiles iOS apps

Apple can be as hardheaded as Microsoft. I have several Apple machines and each of them was bought specifically for developing iOS apps, other uses appeared later. Apple can provide Swift for Windows and Linux, but they will never allow building iOS apps on non-Mac hardware.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#302

Post by NeverFade »

m12k wrote: post #264
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…

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dom…

> EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase.

EEE was more effective when Microsoft was completely dominant, but it's clearly still effective even when that dominance has diminished.

This move, for instance, will cause Linux users to depend on a proprietary, closed-source API entirely controlled by Microsoft. It's very bad for Linux and very good for Microsoft. It's a lever of Microsoft control, extended into the rival Linux system. Very easy to see how it effectively fragments the Linux ecosystem and allows Microsoft to forcibly pull users who come to depend on DirectX from Linux to Windows by manipulating this lever - reducing Linux support in the future, etc.

This is classic EEE, and the only way you can dismiss it is if you believe their PR, as apparently you do:

> they are no longer the 500 pound gorilla in the room, they're the "hey, fellow kids" oldtimer trying to fit in and get in on a piece of the action.

As the other comment explained, they are still a huge gorilla in spaces that are absolutely vital to Linux: server, desktop, and laptop.

Linux as we know it lives or dies on the server and desktop / laptop markets. Yes, Android is technically based on the Linux kernel, but it builds an entirely different ecosystem on top of it. The Linux ecosystem is only on the server and PC - exactly where Microsoft is competing.

Finally, the availability of this proprietary API will reduce the incentive for hardware companies like Nvidia to allow development of direct Linux support (drivers etc) for their products - which is what Linux really needs in order to survive, let alone prosper.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#303

Post by jholman »

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.

Windows is a painful OS to use for anything other than gaming and web browsing, I agree. (Well, it was, until WSL.) If I ever again own a work-first non-gaming desktop, I will once again install some Debian GNU/Linux on it.

(My gaming desktop, of course, runs Windows.)

On laptops, however, I continue to find myself jumping through idiotic hoops to use Linux. The driver support is always just-barely-good-enough. Maybe it's audio, maybe it's graphics, maybe it's power management. Maybe it's something involving networking-after-power-management or some crap involving "don't unplug your headphones while the lid is down". On my current work laptop, a beautiful Thinkpad Carbon X1, I can't get the power management to work properly, so I just have to accept that there's no hibernate. I'm constantly forgetting to shut down, put it in my backpack, and then pull it out drained. What a pain in the ass. Could someone fix this problem, probably. Can I? Not in the dozens of hours I've put into it. I hate doing IT, I hate it I hate it I hate it.

However much Macs make me want to vomit in my mouth, I can see the appeal. The drivers work at least 90% as well as Windows drivers, and the UX is at least half as good as a lightly-tuned Linux machine. "Jack of all trades, master of none, is oftentimes better than master of one"

Anyway, before this lockdown ends, I'm upgrading my laptop distro to this new distro I've heard of out of Redmond, I think it's called "Windows".

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#304

Post by shandor »

NeverFade wrote: post #302
m12k wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm not saying saying we should "trust" Microsoft not to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish if they could - but they can't and they know it, so that's not their strategy. EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. They won on desktop, but today most of the action has moved to mobile (where Windows lost completely to iOS and Android) and webservers (where Linux is massively dom…

> EEE was hinged entirely on the dominance of Windows and IE for the Extinguish phase. EEE was more effective when Microsoft was completely dominant, but it's clearly still effective even when that dominance has diminished. This move, for instance, will cause Linux users to depend on a proprietary, closed-source API entirely controlled by Microsoft. It's very bad for Linux and very good for Microsoft. It's a lever of…

> As one last point to consider: Linux as we know it lives or dies on the server and desktop / laptop markets

I agree with your general sentiment, but just wanted to note that high-end embedded systems are also a very Linux-heavy domain. Even though from hardware side it might look similar to the mobile space (ARMs everywhere etc.) it is actually a completely different world.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#305

Post by simias »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #293
traverseda wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of that is coming from redhat/IBM, which is currently doing their own take on EEE. Believe me I get pissy about that too.

Honest question, is your opinion that we should have been stuck with something like SysVinit just so it's more convenient for the BSDs, while the likes of RedHat contribute the majority of the work? And if yes, can you point to an example of *BSD doing something similar while pushing their platform forward?

This is a loaded way to frame the question, some of us were just fine being "stuck" with SysVinit. I try not to get dragged into systemd flamewars because life is too short but it's disingenuous to claim that before systemd init systems were some kind of inescapable hellscape.

I administrate multiple systemd-based linux distros, FreeBSD servers and buildroot-based embedded systems and I can tell you that systemd still gets in my way regularly while the sh-based init systems tend to Just Work and are very simple to understand and maintain.

Of course I know that a big reason is that I'm very familiar with un*x system administration and the gotchas of shell scripting while systemd is probably more approachable for somebody who doesn't want to learn arcane knowledge about chmod and file locking and setuid and symbolic links but I think that explains why there's still so much pushback against systemd all these years later: people who care about init systems know enough about them that systemd feels over-engineered and unnecessarily complex while not bringing a lot to the table.

Never once in the past years of running systemd have I thought "oh man, I sure am glad I'm using systemd and not an old SysV/BSD init system!". Not a single time. I did have multiple occurrences of systemd breaking stuff after an update though.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#306

Post by franga2000 »

golergka wrote: post #281
foxhill wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i (and others) called this 3 years ago[1]. people need to stop using windows, entirely. i recently built a gaming machine, pretty high spec, and i've resolved to never install windows on it. there are plenty of games i can't play, a few that i would like to. but i wont give money to developers that wont release linux versions of their games - even when they are utilising engines that have linux ports (PUBG being the…

As a game developer, for most mid-tier inside titles releasing Linux version costs more than it makes, so, no. And regarding using Windows: company's behavior is important, but product quality, especially when it's a tool you use every day for work, is more important. Linux is ok for certain types of developers, it's still awful for normal users, abysmal for office work and obviously not a choice if you develop Windo…

> As a game developer, for most mid-tier inside titles releasing Linux version costs more than it makes, so, no.

What are the main costs of releasing a Linux version of a game when using Unity or Unreal? My limited experience with Unity has been "check the Linux box, click the build button". It even cross-compiles no problem. People I know tell me Unreal is similar.

It's not like they have to do a full run of play-testing for Linux. Just check if it starts, play for 10 minutes and release that. We know we're a minority so we're willing to put up with bugs. Even if there's only 100 people who'd buy it only if it ran on Linux, that should pretty much cover the couple hours of dev time.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#307

Post by bigbizisverywyz »

Rusky wrote: post #117
xabotage wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The developers' word is irrelevant. Microsoft is a business. Microsoft will pursue its long term business interests. Developers are hired to do what the business directs. So the question is really, "what would best serve Microsoft's business interests?" and not "what do the developers intend?" because in time only one question matters and unfortunately it's not the one with the best interests of non-windows-users in…

The developers' intent does align with Microsoft's current interests -- as you say, they are hired to do what the business directs. Perhaps their interests will shift in the future, as they clearly have in the past. But the things they build now are not from the "extend" phase of an EEE arc. At worst they are in the "embrace" phase.

Embrace phase sounds about right.

If MS make it as easy to run desktop apps on Windows as it is on Linux, then the question of why even run a dedicated Linux machine if you can do everything on Windows? becomes relevant.

I suppose clipboard integration already works? And drag n' drop?

Once that mindset is heavily entrenched (e.g. in Enterprises), then the extend phase can begin.

I don't think MS are as scared as they were previously when Linux started to dominate the server landscape, and swathes of new developers (especially web backend) moved to a java, ROR and Python (or LAMP), where MS were absolutely nowhere in the stack.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#308

Post by traverseda »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #300
traverseda wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should have stuck with something like SysVinit, there's definitely room for improvement, but saying "it's either SysVinit or systemd" is a false dichotomy. If I was approaching building an init system I'd make a better language for writing init scripts than bash, some kind of interpreter that processes mostly declarative init files, sets things up, and then exits. An incremental improvement that work…

> If I was approaching building an init system I'd make a better language for writing init scripts than bash, some kind of interpreter that processes mostly declarative init file Guess what systemd does? > sets things up, and then exits And that's the crux of the issue isn't it? Because on modern systems, things need setting up and tearing down all the time.

> things need setting up and tearing down all the time.

Well not really, that's an artifact of systemd's over-engineered design. There's nothing stopping you from tearing something down from an init script or doing more complicated dependency management using the CLI as your RPC mechanism (but red hat needed a reason to use their in-house RPC mechanism).

Honestly something like systemd could be pretty reasonable if it wasn't created with the express intent of "combating fragmentation". Not that there aren't a whole bunch of technical and architectural issues with it, but still.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#309

Post by jholman »

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.

Chocolate and peanut butter is amazing.

And yes, as a sibling notes, Reese's peanut butter cups are actually alarmingly tasty, but.... as with any $1 chocolate bar, that's shitty HFCS-saturated chocolate and shitty palm-oil-laced peanut butter, with way too much sugar in it, so if you're too good for that, well, that's a credit to your tastebuds, good on ya.

So eat real chocolate with real peanut butter. Real peanut butter is nothing but peanuts and salt (it keeps well, but fresh-ground is better). Real chocolate, I trust you can figure out. Milk and dark are both good in this application.

Although, of course, peanuts are not true nuts (no more than macadamia or almond or walnut), they're nonetheless very nutty, and the effect is pretty similar to "almond bark", or hazelnuts with chocolate, or pecans and chocolate. And of course you can just eat peanuts with chocolate, an okay combination. But there's something weirdly perfect about peanut butter with chocolate, better than peanuts with chocolate.

But hey, although I'm not American, I am from America's hat, and I do like peanut butter in a few other formats too.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#310

Post by justinclift »

mcv wrote: post #283
mpartel wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine / Steam's Proton does a decent job, and some older games even work better with Wine than with Windows 10. If you have a spare GPU, a VM with PCI passthrough does an even better job, except for some anti-cheat software that artificially discriminates against this setup. In theory it ought to be possible to switch a single GPU to/from a VM without a reboot. In practice I have no idea how huge a refactoring to the…

> "some older games even work better with Wine than with Windows 10." This has been true for 16 bit games since long before Windows 10. Ages ago one of my favourite games stopped working on Windows, but Wine had no problems with it. So my impression has always been that Wine is excellent for really old games, but slightly more recent games, it could already be very hit and miss. > "If you have a spare GPU, a VM with…

> Doesn't every CPU these days have onboard graphics?

Don't bother attempting GPU passthrough on any laptop with an AMD CPU (eg Ryzen 2700U) and Radeon GPU (eg RX 560X).

It turns out the GPU passthrough needs a dump of the Radeon BIOS provided as a file, but no-one can dump the BIOS of discrete AMD laptop GPUs. :( :( :(

Note the complete lack of RX 560X BIOS's here:

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/?architecture=AMD

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