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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

#351

Post by welterde »

soraminazuki wrote: post #325
welterde wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archlinux had their own non-sysvinit system (which went away in favor of systemd) as does voidlinux (runit based) and alpine (OpenRC) today. The problem is less the init system itself, but applications that depend on a specific init system [1] (gnome used to be a major source of contention in that regard). [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd

Is applications depending on systemd particularly a bad thing? If we don't want applications to use non-SysVinit features, we might as well keep using SysVinit.

If you don't care about portability at all.. (regardless if it's just within linux or to *BSD).

And like I already mentioned in my previous post.. there are other alternatives around than just SysV-init..

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#352

Post by wildmusings »

rymate1234 wrote: post #191
wvenable wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not too sure about that, what about the support for DX12 in WSL? Can't deploy that to production outside WSL right now as far as I'm aware, unless they add DX12 support to azure Linux vms...

Given that the main use case is stuff like running machine learning tools, the only people directly targeting DX12 on WSL will probably be framework/library developers, who might want to add DX12 as one of the graphics systems they support. If that's the case, the vast majority of developers won't notice any difference other than more software supporting graphics acceleration when run in WSL (or, another way of looking at it, when Linux is running on the WSL "hardware"/"platform").

Sure, nothing stops you from targeting DX12 directly in your application code, but why would you do that? At that point, you'd just target Windows since your users would have to be running it anyway.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#353

Post by Valmar »

ori_b wrote: post #338
AsyncAwait wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> systemd still gets in my way regularly while the sh-based init systems tend to Just Work For me systemd based systems allow me to have declarative, portable unit files where init scripts don't. They allow me to reliably monitor and restart services, they shut things down properly instead of just force killing as many init scripts end up doing. I instantly know how to manage most major distros now that systemd's com…

> For me systemd based systems allow me to have declarative, portable unit files where init scripts don't. Portable to what?

Portable to other systemd-using Linux distros.

sysv init scripts simply weren't portable between distros, leading to tons of non-standard, incompatible fragmentation.

Users simply couldn't simply take their own scripts over to another distro and expect them to just work, given said differences.

With systemd, unit files will simply just work between all systemd distros, given the standardized format.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#354

Post by m12k »

tdsamardzhiev wrote: post #312
bad_user wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impression that " most of the action has moved to mobile " is just an impression. First of all the market share of desktop versus mobile is roughly 43% for the desktop, 57% for mobiles and tablets. More importantly however is that the rise of mobiles has been sharp since 2009, but it's been stagnating since 2017 and this stagnation trend is clear. Mobile devices too are a commodity, their market isn't growing any…

Yeah, most of the consumption has moved to mobile. But people who make stuff are still predominantly using desktop/notebook computers.

Right, and most of the consumption is being served from linux servers. So Microsoft is trying to use their strength on desktop and in production to stay relevant in that ecosystem, even though it involves other platforms than Windows - hence the focus on cross-compilation and cross-platform tech.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#355

Post by Valmar »

welterde wrote: post #322
soraminazuki wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can people replace SysVinit without "doing their own take on EEE"? Your alternative approach is still not going to be compatible with SysVinit either, not to mention it being strikingly similar to systemd.

Archlinux had their own non-sysvinit system (which went away in favor of systemd) as does voidlinux (runit based) and alpine (OpenRC) today. The problem is less the init system itself, but applications that depend on a specific init system [1] (gnome used to be a major source of contention in that regard). [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd

What apps depend on a specific init system?

Gnome does not depend on systemd, but rather logind.

KDE used to be the same, until someone started maintaining ConsoleKit2 again, proper, at which point they were happy to support it.

ConsoleKit was dropped because it just wasn't being maintained, and had various limitations.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#356

Post by 29athrowaway »

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…

On businesses and government Microsoft Office continues to have a dominant market share. And that's a lot of money.

Not only US government, but almost every government around the globe is using it. And on macOS, that's still the case.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#357

Post by halbritt »

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

No reasonable person at Microsoft considers Linux to be a threat on the desktop/laptop. No reasonable person at Microsoft considers Windows Server to be a threat to Linux on the server.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#358

Post by skohan »

m12k wrote: post #346
skohan wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers. That's why they bought Xamarin and Github. That's why they released VS Code. They're trying to win back developers by meeting them whereever they are, even if they know they are targeting platforms where Microsoft is not dominant and has no hope of becoming so. They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver while developing on Windows. They're…

Could you explain to me what you think an Extinguish step would look like in that sequence? Because I don't think there is a realistic one, and I don't think Microsoft thinks so either.

I think it's hyperbolic to imagine that MS will manage to fully extinguish Linux outside of WSL, but that's not the only way they could damage the linux ecosystem by leveraging the foothold they are building in the FOSS world.

It's not so hard to imagine picking up a legacy project at some point in the future, and pretty much having to develop it on Windows and deploy to Azure because of some WSL-specific dependencies baked into the framework it's built on.

That's just one scenario, but the point is why would you expect that they wouldn't leverage their market-share to disadvantage competitors if they ever got into position to do so? Just because they aren't in that position now doesn't mean we shouldn't be put off by the fact that they're building those levers to fragment the ecosystem now.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#359

Post by monocasa »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #223
quietbritishjim wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the comment by christoph-heiss, this is just a paravirtualisation technique and will appear like a normal Limux GPU driver to applications running on WSL, rather than a special DirectX for Linux API that won't work on Linux itself.

I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that this would expose a normal Linux GPU API. The blog post and the thread on the kernel mailing list seem quite clear in that this is explicitly designed with the goal of exposing the Windows driver API and associated client APIs like DirectX. From the email introducing the set of patches: > The projection is accomplished by exposing the WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model…

> I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that this would expose a normal Linux GPU API.

The fact that they went through the effort of porting Mesa to get OpenGL and Open CL support, and are working on Vulkan support.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#360

Post by generalk »

m12k wrote: post #346
skohan wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what WSL is about, trying to win back developers. That's why they bought Xamarin and Github. That's why they released VS Code. They're trying to win back developers by meeting them whereever they are, even if they know they are targeting platforms where Microsoft is not dominant and has no hope of becoming so. They're trying to make it feasible to target a linux webserver while developing on Windows. They're…

Could you explain to me what you think an Extinguish step would look like in that sequence? Because I don't think there is a realistic one, and I don't think Microsoft thinks so either.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression here is that Windows Subsystem for Linux will support DX12, but not broader Linux support for DX12.

So if you want a machine that can play games and run a Linux dev toolchain, that would require a Windows install. If you can incentivize folks who may never have installed Windows to do so, and keep them there as the only place they can both play games and use their preferred dev environment, then you've extinguished that portion of the desktop linux install base.

EDIT: Also I absolutely love the "I don't think Microsoft thinks so either." Microsoft is a for-profit corporation who's eyeing a way to get users who traditionally avoid them to come to their platform and stay there. They aren't some benevolent font of cool tech, they're trying to sell you products.

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