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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

#471

Post by zamalek »

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…

> 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.

Are we reading the same blog post?[1]

[1]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/wp-content/uploads/si...

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#472

Post by foxhill »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #383
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…

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…

> 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.

interesting. i put ubuntu 20.04 on this and it's been plain sailing. now usually i'd say i've got a high tolerance for bullshit when it comes to linux, but i'm not exadurating when i say i did not have to touch the terminal to:

1. install it without any extra crap

2. switch from nouveau to the nvidia driver - version 440.64, a very recent driver (which isn't very fair to nouveau, i didn't even give it a try, really)

3. install steam and games and have them work flawlessly from the get-go. games i've played:

* counter-strike global offensive (a lot..)

* the binding of isaac (would be bad if this didn't run!)

* deus ex mankind divided (was _very_ surprised to see this available and working perfectly, to be honest)

* black mesa

a short list, but i've only had the machine for a week.

i know it's stupid to say "hey i didn't have to use the terminal", but really, ubuntu has come a long way. i couldn't have said that last year, i don't think.

> nVidia has shit Linux support so that's a no-go.

eh, i'm gonna respectfully disagree there. linux support from nvidia has been a bit patchy (and the nvidia driver windows isn't exactly a dream at times, too), but i've been using nvidia driver on linux on various installs on various architectures on various hardware for _years_ and i've never had a significant problem. AMD, on the other hand.. i don't miss fglrx.

> I also have a used Oculus Rift, which again rules out Linux.

well i also wont support facebook, so that's not an option for me :)

honestly, it's _really_ disheartening to see the replies to this comment and see how far the normalisation of deviance has come. the _only_ tool we have as end users to stop companies from being shit is to vote with our wallets. and yet the majority of responses is to just give up and accept that that's how it is.

i think we're doomed as a species :)

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#473

Post by golergka »

franga2000 wrote: post #306
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…

> 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-te…

Well, I've been working with Unity for 11 years now, but my experience with building for Linux is limited, so I'll go with experience from mobile and console development, and say that with shaders (which never ceases to surprise with platform-specific glitches), filesystem (although Unity is supposed to abstract it out, once you get serious about resource management, this abstraction starts to leak), input (because you want to support gamepad with minimum hassle for the player), and million of unknown unknowns that hopefully will be found by QA, but realistically, by very angry players, I'd budget at least a couple of man-months for this. With sales in hundreds or even tens of thousands, we can expect to get about 2% of audience from Linux, which will account for single-digit thousands, or hundreds of copies sold. With a price tag of $10-20, after Steam cut, taxes, regional prices, sales and refunds, it's about $5-10 of revenue per unit, so in total, about $10k.

If that would just be the money a single developer got for 2-3 months of work, it could still be fine for some regions (not everyone on HN is from US). But with a studio, you also have to spend money on marketing, payroll taxes, rent, and development of future projects, which most likely sell even worse.

So, no, I really don't see how porting to Linux would pay. Most of developers that I talked to who did it admitted that supporting OSX and Linus turned out to be a giant waste.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#474

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

freeone3000 wrote: post #405
CodeGlitch wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real developers automate. It's hard to automate without a terminal :)

If you're using a terminal to automate on windows, you're going to have a bad time. You'll want something like AutoHotKey which has been around for a long while.

While you're not wrong, I think that you're referencing a different flavor of automation than GP is.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#475

Post by colejohnson66 »

quantummkv wrote: post #435
colejohnson66 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is back to it's old shenanigans after a big PR blitz. And your evidence being what exactly? Yes, they’ve done EEE before, but there’s no evidence that they are doing it now. It’s been two decades .

This announcement is the evidence. They release some directx stubs that are completely useless outside of windows and of absolutely zero importance to anyone in the Linux Ecosystem and make a huge Microsoft hearts Linux push with it with confetti, unicorns and blushing dev-twitter influencers. While the actual meat of directx will still be proprietary and windows-exclusive where they call the shots and make the money…

Releasing something exclusive is not evidence of EEE. Yes, it’s embracing, but that’s it.

How do you know they don’t plan to port DirectX to Linux? They’re currently attempting to upstream their changes, so why wouldn’t they port DX itself? They also don’t have to open source it (although I wish they would); they could just release a binary blob that you download and install.

Also, how do you expect Microsoft to kill Linux? To me, it seems that people who willingly choose to use Linux over Windows are generally the kinds of people who won’t be persuaded to move back. Microsoft can’t kill Linux.

Have you ever looked past your preconceived biases and considered that maybe Microsoft has actually had a change in culture over two decades? I don’t think so, because the people who scream “EEE” are the kinds of people who’ll never be swayed in their opinion.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#476

Post by zamalek »

xabotage wrote: post #99
Rusky wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> Microsoft will pursue its long term business interests.

Just like all positive sum games, open source is in everyone's interests, including Microsoft's. Egoistic alturism: serving your own interests [through] serving everyone else's interests.

All the people here railing on how Microsoft is destroying open source clearly don't understand the very premise of the thing that they think they are defending.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#477

Post by colejohnson66 »

Rusky wrote: post #422
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…

> The key is that the proprietary Microsoft specific API added by this patch is only usable in a WSL environment The other key, which everyone crying "Extend" seems so eager to ignore, is that they don't actually want anyone to use this API: https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1139 "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 compe…

> There is no intent for anyone in the Linux world to start coding for the DX12 API.

I took that to mean that the developers on Linux are the people who won’t switch to DX even if it was ported.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#478

Post by golergka »

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…

Because when I open a 300-page, media-heavy game design document in Google docs on my i7, 32gb computer it still lags when I scroll it. And the last time I tried to use OpenOffice (or whatever was the fork called, I mix them up), I couldn't shake the feeling that UX was created by developers who just wanted to check the boxes in the list of features, without any field testing whatsoever.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#479

Post by monocasa »

chrsw wrote: post #463
monocasa wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VMWare is probably the company with the worse reputation than Microsoft since they spent more than a decade shipping large part of Linux linked against their proprietary hypervisor in a blatant GPL violation. And yet here's where their paravirtualized GPU driver lives https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/gpu/dr...

Microsoft has a history of anti-competitive practices that crippled the industry. In either case, serious objections are justified and severe handling of one case doesn't invalidate the handling of the other.

There's been Microsoft levels of anticompetitive practices from every proprietary hypervisor vendor. The others are seen as "oh, look! They're working with Linux! yay!" for a code dump across the wall (like vmware, and arguably z/VM), whereas here Microsoft appears to be doing everything right and working with upstream to modify a minimal MVP and are being lambasted for it.

It feels like they're doing everything right and everything we've asked for, for decades, and being shunned for it. What's the mechanism here for Linux winning and Microsoft being allowed into the community and what should they be doing different?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#480

Post by golergka »

cycloptic wrote: post #409
jaywalk wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the solution to a platform not making enough money to justify supporting it is... giving away your game for free! The self-centered attitude of your comment is astounding, but all too common in open source communities.

You don't have to give your game away for free. I urge you to look into how prominent open source companies are actually making money and think about how it can be applied to games. It's not an impossible reality. You claim I am being "self-centered" but the fact is if you don't provide something that the distros can work with and instead try to route around everybody and ship an untestable blob then that's your faul…

These prominent open source companies that you're taking about make money from consulting or cloud services. There's no well understood and well rested way to do that as a game company.

It doesn't mean that there's no such way, but it does mean that attempting to find it is very risky. Making games is already a very high-risk, high-reward industry, do adding this amount of risk to the equation is advice that's insane for all but most successful companies.

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