DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#501

Post by sergeykish » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #421

traverseda wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, that's fair. I'd encourage you to try something outside of the standard redhat/ubuntu distros. Manjaro is nice and is pretty much always up to date. Also has access to the AUR, so there are packages for pretty much everything. It's a lot easier to do interesting stuff. LVM can make two disks appear like they're one, but of course if you remove any of them they both fail. Doesn't really solve the underlying "I wa…

> I'd encourage you to try something outside of the standard redhat/ubuntu distros. Generally speaking they have the same problems as the mainstream distros, but with the additional caveat of even less chance of googling solutions and worse or no support at all from non-oss software. > LVM can make two disks appear like they're one, but of course if you remove any of them they both fail. Doesn't really solve the unde…

I've heard GoboLinux [0] does not follow Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux

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What you describe is like installing in $HOME. It's not unusual - python virtualenv, ruby rbenv, node_modules. This comes with trade off - either system knows where to search or one has to define per project. By FHS entire Linux tree is a project. In Windows... configuration is pain.

Flatpak someday.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#502

Post by computerex » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

cartoonfoxes wrote: post #470

computerex wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Embedded? Too many proprietary toolchains that don't run on Linux. It's funny/surprising that you'd say that, given that Linux is the single most dominant OS in the embedded device space. What toolchains are you referring to? Here are some well known ones. https://www.yoctoproject.org/ https://www.ptxdist.org/ https://openwrt.org/ > ML? nVidia [apparently I'm incorrect on this one]. Not only are you wrong about CUD…

>It's funny/surprising that you'd say that, given that Linux is the single most dominant OS in the embedded device space. What toolchains are you referring to? Here are some well known ones. No, and no. The parent was referring to embedded development toolchains - compilers, IDEs, endless small utilities, debuggers, analyzers, etc. etc. Commercial tooling is almost all Windows-exclusive, even if it's using a smatteri…

> The parent was referring to embedded development toolchains - compilers, IDEs, endless small utilities, debuggers, analyzers, etc. etc.

I know what the parent was referring to.

> Commercial tooling is almost all Windows-exclusive, even if it's using a smattering of open-source bits underneath.

No it's not. Literally both of the embedded OS' you mentioned (VxWorks/QNX) support Linux as first class hosts.

https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/software-solutions/embedded-so...

https://www.windriver.com/support/site_configuration/docs/wr...

What Windows exclusive tooling are you talking about?

And you are understimating the prevalence of Linux as the embedded OS for embedded devices.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#503

Post by the_why_of_y » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:26 PM UTC

traverseda wrote: post #417

Valmar wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's part of the systemd project umbrella? It's part of the systemd monorepo? It uses libsystemd? Maybe it's simply easier to maintain this way? elogind exists, if you care. It exposes the DBus interfaces that logind supports for applications to call. Thus, environments like Gnome can be supported on non-systemd systems if they emulate and/or expose and implement the required DBus interfaces.

That's sort of the complaint, why I accused them of "doing their own weird version of EEE". When faced with a choice of "make everybody else do a whole bunch of work so that they're not forced to use your entire project-umbrella" or "make some minor changes to our architecture so things aren't as tightly coupled" they almost always choose the one that forces you to use systemd.

To the extent that you believe that free software development should work such that random people on internet forums dictate the architecture to the people who are doing the work, and instead of writing their software to solve problems that actual users have, they should comply with these whims, you better prepare to be disappointed.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#504

Post by lostmsu » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

fesoliveira wrote: post #464

lostmsu wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Painful? What exactly is painful? Apart from the Settings/Control Panel debacle, I don't know any issues you could be facing on Windows, unless you do a lot of C/C++ development which is still problematic due to the lack of a proper package manager.

I must disagree with the C/C++ take. Visual Studio is still, for me, one of the best IDEs out there, and the single best one for C/C++ development. And for the longest time, Windows indeed didn't have a good package manager, but over the past few years we've had vcpkg, which fills the vacuum pretty well when it comes to getting libraries without much hassle.

I still did not have good experience with vcpkg, but, admittedly, I don't do a lot of C++.

How do you configure compiler to use libraries downloaded from vcpkg? CMake? Something else?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#505

Post by cycloptic » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #493

cycloptic wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some do provide that, such as Ubuntu LTS and RHEL. Others don't. Expecting every distro to have the exact same release & support cycle is nonsensical.

Linux LTS releases are not particularly stable from the perspective of someone who wants to distribute applications as binaries. Its API can change with every release, i.e. every two years. It's incredibly unlikely that a binary compiled for Ubuntu 18.04 will be able to run on Ubuntu 20.04 (as in Python etc.). To contrast, if you take a Win32 game from 2003 that targets DirectX 9, it probably runs fine on the latest…

My original statement was that if this is really a problem for you then you need to stop writing and distributing proprietary binaries and open source your game. I know this is a hard pill for game developers to swallow but there is no other way. Open source communities move fast, they are not going to slow down just to support some opaque binary blob that is illegal to redistribute or fix bugs in, and that the original developer doesn't even care about anyway. It is nonsensical to expect these communities to work exactly like Windows. These are not fortune 500 companies with billions in the bank like Microsoft that can afford to keep innovating while also supporting every single legacy program in existence forever. The only way open source communities can provide the same level of support is if you provide source code that other interested parties can keep up-to-date without worry of being sued.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#506

Post by zokier » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #496

zokier wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That directly implies that every single version has had lot to improve. And this is not to diss wine, but it is difficult problem they are tackling.

Holding software to that standard eliminates most of it. "No, I haven't tried Google Docs yet. They're still adding features and fixing bugs. I'm holding out until it's stable."

Context matters a lot. I'm not holding Wine to unreasonable standards, its a matter of recognizing reality of the situation and that Wine is not such a exact mirror of WSL and as such it will continue to have significant issues.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#507

Post by dividedbyzero » Wed, May 20, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

kalium-xyz wrote: post #254

dividedbyzero wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the other way round: Do I still need to dual-boot or switch to Linux if this works? Or can I stick with Windows and have the best of both worlds?

I do not agree with it being "The best of both worlds". You do not control windows, it controls you. You must adapt to it being in your life and the choices made by its designers, this is both not secure and insanity for a software engineer to allow as an ongoing situation. Even dual booting windows will mean its updater will overwrite the partitioning table of your drive and hide any other OS you have installed, and…

I'm using Apple products for my computing needs, and I din't particularly like Windows, but Apple tends to be even more opinionated and restrictive – and I really like that a lot. It's a big feature of the ecosystem that I get a lot of pretty good defaults that work quite well, even if they aren't what I'd build from scratch if I had to. That way I don't have to expend energy crafting everything myself and can spend that energy on whatever it is I wat to do with my computer. I don't care about the exact type of steel used for my hammer, just give me a reasonably good one and let me build that thing. In that way, MacOS currently is the best of both worlds for me – hassle-free if somewhat constrained, but I still have a UNIX underneath, iTerm, all sorts of utilities, and so on.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#508

Post by modmans2nd » Wed, May 20, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

Step 1) Put a Linux Kernel on Windows as a separate subsystem

Step 2) Port all APIs to this Kernel

Step 3) Switch over to Linux as the main kernel and make the windows kernel a a Linux sub system to support legacy win32 apps.

Step 4) Make all win32 support into a containerized system

Microsoft moves to a Linux based system it offers for free and is only used for integration and support of it’s services.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#509

Post by modmans2nd » Wed, May 20, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

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…

No. They are not that company anymore and it’s been clear they have not been that way for over a decade.

This is a step towards moving their API over to Linux so they can dump Windows as an OS and provide it as a docker container service service for enterprise.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#510

Post by chrsw » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #479

chrsw wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 righ…

They're not doing everything right. They're doing something objectionable, like other people are also doing. Except they're being called out for it because of their reputation of having one of the most hostile anti-competitive practices the industry has ever seen. It's the price you pay for having such bad credit, even if your intentions initially seem benevolent.