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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

#381

Post by scbrg »

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.

What you're saying is essentially: If we can't come up with a way in which Microsoft could proceed to the Extinguish phase, they can't. Because clearly, if we, after spending five minutes thinking about it, can't come up with something, then it is also impossible for this company that has spent three decades perfecting the concept, and literally has billions of dollars to throw at the problem.

Presumably because we smart and they dumb. Or something, I don't know?

Personally, I think that their thirty years of experience and billions of dollars might make it possible for them to come up with a plan I wouldn't have thought of.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#382

Post by monocasa »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #89
monocasa wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it'll be locking projects into windows. There's no user space DirectX library here. The whole point looks to take your CUDA code that would run just fine on Linux without a hypervisor, and run it just as well in WSL2. ie. this is at worst still the embrace stage, IMO.

They are providing libd3d12.so, that is a user space library that apps can link to. At the moment, that library only works under WSL, but I guess the DXVK folks can connect their implementation too.

> The plan is for Microsoft to provide shims to allow the existing Linux userspace interact with DX12; I'll explain below why we had to pipe DX12 all the way into the Linux guest, but this is not to introduce DX12 into the Linux world as competition. There is no intent for anyone in the Linux world to start coding for the DX12 API.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1139

And backing that up, they ported Mesa to get OpenGL and OpenCL in the Linux guest and are working on a Vulkan port as well.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#383

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

foxhill wrote: post #276
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…

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…

I'd love to be using an open source desktop, but sadly Linux Desktop is still a goddamn garbage fire as far as I'm concerned. Not that long ago (months) I would say that 4 out of 5 of my desktop and laptop computers ran Linux, but now that number is 1/5 because I just got sick of dealing with Linux Desktop bullshit on them. My main gaming rig runs nVidia because it is frankly best in class, and nVidia has shit Linux support so that's a no-go. I also have a used Oculus Rift, which again rules out Linux.

There's a reason Windows is still dominant in the Desktop space despite all its problems.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#384

Post by wicket »

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…

It looks like they are already at the "Extinguish" phase for email. Try reading this:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1527

:(

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#385

Post by traverseda »

soraminazuki wrote: post #314
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…

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.

>How can people replace SysVinit without "doing their own take on EEE"?

By not tightly bundling their init with other OS components, by not having GNOME desktop somehow depend on what init system you're using (as opposed to services running under that init system).

Also you know how shell scripts have `#!/usr/bin/env bash` at the top of them? Well the reason why my hypothetical init system would be compatible with SysVinit is because instead of `#!/usr/bin/env bash` it would have `#!/usr/bin/env new_init_language` at the top of it. 'new_init_language" could implement almost all the same features that systemd unit files do.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#386

Post by tech-historian »

pjmlp wrote: post #377
computerex wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tooling they make for developers has always been top notch I have to emphatically disagree there. Up until recently Windows didn't even have a decent terminal app. As a developer I tend to shy away from Windows precisely because the *Nix alternatives offer a better development experience, from cli to package management and more.

Not every developer needs a terminal app to feel like one. In fact Mac OS also didn't have any until OS X.

OS X was released in 2001, which is a pretty long time ago.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#387

Post by AsyncAwait »

ori_b wrote: post #362
Valmar wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh. That hasn't been my experience. Where did they standardize the names and set of the services you can depend on?

> Where did they standardize the names and set of the services you can depend on?

You're ignoring what the parent said and talking past.

It's not the 'sets' that are standardized, it's the set of commands that are applicable to a systemd service and to any systemd Linux distro that is.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#388

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

computerex wrote: post #350
golergka wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Windows software. Don't want to get into an OS war here but merely stating your opinion as fact without supportive evidence is not in the spirit of HackerNews. > it's still awful for normal users, abysmal for office work For office work a lot of workload has moved to the…

> Don't want to get into an OS war here but merely stating your opinion as fact without supportive evidence is not in the spirit of HackerNews.

These things are pretty much self evident.

> Linux is ok for certain types of developers

Web developers and HP computing. Game developers? Haha, no. Embedded? Too many proprietary toolchains that don't run on Linux. Productivity and business applications? See below section on office work. ML? nVidia [apparently I'm incorrect on this one].

> it's still awful for normal users

Alright, this is a bit subjective, but is supported by the stats that show Linux Desktop still in a distant and well deserved third place. You list a few tasks that you seem to believe are "normal user" tasks, I submit to you that you drastically underestimate the things a normal desktop computer user does with their computer, since most of the tasks you listed are now things that people do on phones and tablets.

> abysmal for office work

In most offices, Microsoft Office is an indispensable productivity tool (which many HNers, having little experience with real office work, will underestimate severely) and it is only supported on Windows (No, the web version is not the same).

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#389

Post by pjmlp »

tech-historian wrote: post #386
pjmlp wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every developer needs a terminal app to feel like one. In fact Mac OS also didn't have any until OS X.

OS X was released in 2001, which is a pretty long time ago.

Yet classical Mac OS developers were able to do without one for 17 years, and I bet most developers actually targeting Apple devices still do without one, when I look around the office over here and see InteliJ, XCode and AppCode.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#390

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cycloptic wrote: post #380
coldpie wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you've never released a popular product on Linux. It's a lottttt more effort than you're implying. To do it well, you need to have Linux as a target from the start of your development, it's not something you can tack on to the end. Linux graphics drivers are very different from Windows (the AMD stack isn't even the same codebase). Linux window managers are... wild. You need to build to an ABI that will be…

Open source your games. Open source is the only practical way that existing distros are able to test and support the majority of packages that they ship. If you do that, the cost of supporting all those other things will fall on the distros, not on you, but you need to actually play ball with them and give them something workable that isn't an opaque binary blob that is illegal to redistribute, modify or reverse-engi…

> Open source your games. Open source is the only practical way that existing distros are able to test and support the majority of packages that they ship

Which might be one of the reasons Linux Desktop is so awful to develop for.

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