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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

#511

Post by NeverFade »

AshleyGrant wrote: post #448
NeverFade wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft holds a large and fast-growing share of the enterprise server market with products like Office365, Exchange, and Sharepoint.

O365 is SaaS. Customers that are hosting Exchange on-prem are being encouraged to move to O365 for email. Same for SharePoint. If I had to guess, O365 is helping to reduce, not grow, the market share of Windows server.

What's important is that server-side services that Microsoft offers are replacing Linux servers. Whether it's SaaS like Office365 or more traditional server software like Exchange and Sharepoint is not crucial.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#512

Post by sergeykish »

sergeykish wrote: post #501
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ---- 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 someda…

Now, as I think about it, ruby is not like FHS

    └── gems
        ├── irb-1.2.3
        │   ├── exe
        │   │   └── irb
        │   └── lib
        │       ├── irb
        │       └── irb.rb
        └── rack-2.2.2
            ├── bin
            │   └── rackup
            └── lib
                ├── rack
                └── rack.rb
vs

    ├── bin
    │   ├── irb
    │   └── rackup
    └── ruby
        ├── irb
        ├── irb.rb
        ├── rack
        └── rack.rb
FHS approach does not support multiple versions, gems approach requires declaring version in code or Gemfile, playing with PATH, considerable slowdown https://github.com/Shopify/bootsnap

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#513

Post by unnouinceput »

hgoel wrote: post #321
unnouinceput wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vulkan means cross-platform independent of OS. This is a move by Microsoft to lure any undecided/new game developers back to their walled garden. If you don't see this, let's talk in 10 years again - assuming Microsoft doesn't crap on it along the way.

Being able to run dx12 in a virtualized environment that's still under Windows (and thus not actually changing anything vs just developing only for windows) is going to lure undecided game developers how?

Say you're a game developer under Linux, OK? Then this comes along and you give it a try. This combined with all the great game engines that are pure Windows these days (see Unreal Engine 5 demo that was launched these days) and you now can target Linux using that. What do you do - continue with Vulkan or offer your game using this?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#514

Post by monocasa »

chrsw wrote: post #510
monocasa wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They're not doing everything right. They're doing something objectionable

What exactly? The only performant way to expose GPUs to guests while still allowing them to be used by the host (or multiple guests) for GPUs that don't have hardware support for partitioning themselves (ie. pretty much all discrete GPUs) is to replicate the ioctl layer from the host up into the guest. Any other solution is a non starter if you care about getting the perf you'd expect from the paravirtualized GPU.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#515

Post by pepino »

monocasa wrote: post #482
kawsper wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that today with Qemu and PCI-passthrough. You just boot a VM, and pass it a physical grapics card. Check out https://old.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ I guess this will be the standard until we can have nicer graphics drivers for Linux.

That requires two GPUs though, one for the guest and one for the host.

Not with Intel: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_GVT-g

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#516

Post by monocasa »

pepino wrote: post #515
monocasa wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That requires two GPUs though, one for the guest and one for the host.

Not with Intel: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_GVT-g

Right, it's easier to have an SR-IOV situation with an integrated GPU that doesn't have it's own VRAM.

That's not the usual situation for people that are trying to use this scheme.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#517

Post by mcv »

simiones wrote: post #317
mcv wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many companies, including the one I work for, have most development happening on Windows. It is far easier to manage for Enterprise use-cases, with all relevant services integrated and obtained from a single vendor. Not to mention that there are quite a few development environments for more obscure platforms that still only exist for Windows. Overall, since most development time is spent in an IDE, the OS is really o…

Sure, companies may love it, but developers hate it.

I use a Windows laptop at the company I currently work for, because everything is locked down and I wouldn't be able to get my own laptop connected to the network. (Or so I thought; I co-worker managed to use the Windows laptop as a bridge to his own Macbook.)

Now you're right that as long as I stay in the IDE, it's not so bad. But every once in a while I need to do something outside the IDE, and I immediately get slapped in the face by how stupid some things are. And because it's an enterprise environment, some things are even worse than usual; opening a folder, or saving something, can be unreasonably slow because either it's a network drive or it needs to be checked for viruses and malware while I'm trying to use it. Or for some other reason. I don' t know, I just experience the extreme slowness.

Also, on top of the old terrible DOS shell, there's now also a Power Shell that's supposed to be better. It apparently has some powerful features I don't really grasp, but it's still not remotely as good as bash. And sometimes the command line really is unavoidable.

But the real pain is at home. When I activate Windows 10 on a new machine, I need to create a Microsoft account. I don't want one, but it takes serious determination to avoid it, because behind every message is another trick to sucker you into an MS account. When you finally do manage to create a local account, you're immediately expected to compromise your security with 3 insecurity questions, and no way to avoid it as far as I can tell. Previous versions of Windows did not have this stupidity.

Also, somehow Windows keeps losing my mic, speakers or camera. Once I've found the right troubleshooter, it immediately figures out how to fix it, which is great, but it also keeps losing them again. And finding the right troubleshooter takes a couple of steps and a bit of searching. I feel like I need to pin several relevant troubleshooters to the taskbar.

And then there's the total lack of access control. To install anything, you need to be admin. I gave my son a restricted account, but he can't do anything with it. I'd like to be able to create an account that can instal games, but can't compromise the system. No such option in Windows. If you can do anything, you can do everything. Unless you're in an enterprise environment, in which case you often still can't do anything. So I guess more detailed access control does exist, but only for enterprise users or something.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#518

Post by kristopolous »

kgwxd wrote: post #345
kristopolous wrote: post #154

I also found the phrasing of this to be ambiguous. Windows (subsystem for Linux) has a Windows host running Linux Or (Windows subsystem) for Linux has Windows running on a Linux host They've been using this phrasing since the OS/2 and POSIX subsystem days and it was also confusing then Quarterdeck did it right with Desqview/X by just renaming their WIN16 subsystem as winx. Then you would see "desqview winx" and know…

Wasn't it originally something like "Linux Subsystem for Windows" and there was some legal problem with the word "Linux" being first?

Apparently people have used the words swapped to mean the same thing.

It's bad.

Microsoft releasing something to run windows software on Linux, maybe for some exorbitant fee and only on say, the commercial versions of RHEL to undercut Wine progress, not only doesn't seem out of the question but also a reasonable defensive strategy and something I totally missed the announcement of. It's not like I'm a tech reporter, I go into my work for a couple weeks missing everything pretty often

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#519

Post by wvenable »

unnouinceput wrote: post #513
hgoel wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to run dx12 in a virtualized environment that's still under Windows (and thus not actually changing anything vs just developing only for windows) is going to lure undecided game developers how?

Say you're a game developer under Linux, OK? Then this comes along and you give it a try. This combined with all the great game engines that are pure Windows these days (see Unreal Engine 5 demo that was launched these days) and you now can target Linux using that. What do you do - continue with Vulkan or offer your game using this?

You can't target Linux using that. I think you misunderstand what this is. It doesn't help nor hurt Vulkan or Linux development -- this only exists to "optimize" the Linux VM in Windows.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#520

Post by unnouinceput »

wvenable wrote: post #519
unnouinceput wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you're a game developer under Linux, OK? Then this comes along and you give it a try. This combined with all the great game engines that are pure Windows these days (see Unreal Engine 5 demo that was launched these days) and you now can target Linux using that. What do you do - continue with Vulkan or offer your game using this?

You can't target Linux using that. I think you misunderstand what this is. It doesn't help nor hurt Vulkan or Linux development -- this only exists to "optimize" the Linux VM in Windows.

ehh, nevermind
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