Initial Benchmarks Of Microsoft's WSL2 - Windows Subsystem For Linux 2 On Windows 10 Is A Mixed Bag

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Initial Benchmarks Of Microsoft's WSL2 - Windows Subsystem For Linux 2 On Windows 10 Is A Mixed Bag

Since the release of WSL2 as a Windows 10 Insider Preview update this week, we've been putting the new Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 under some benchmarks compared to WSL1 and bare metal Linux. While WSL2 has improved the I/O performance thanks to the new Hyper-V-based virtualization approach employed by WSL2, the performance has regressed in other areas for running Linux binaries on Windows 10. Here are our preliminary benchmark results.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=27978

[k1e0x]

On those screenshots, that is a really weird OS Michael... is that a KDE skin?

Also.. there you have it folks.. it's a dog. Just use KVM (or Bhyve) and pass windows through when you need it.

[oleid]

Hmm, now I'm wondering how native windows and Ubuntu in e.g. VirtualBox perform relative to the already performed tests.

[Guest]

It's better than nothing. I hope this will make docker more bearable on Windows for those who chose to torture themselves with that mistake of an operating system.

[milkylainen]

Sure, mixed bag. But mostly eons better than the previous attempt. Some generations of tuning and it should be pretty decent.

[AsuMagic]

Sure, mixed bag. But mostly eons better than the previous attempt. Some generations of tuning and it should be pretty decent.

I doubt that MS will magically come up with a magic trick that makes WSL2 suddenly faster than every VM competitor on the market...
You're not going to see as much of a drastic change as WSL1 -> WSL2 is.

It would be funny to see, as some sort of middle ground between WSL1 and WSL2 something like coLinux to become a thing again but I doubt it. From a performance standpoint, I wonder what it would be worth. (Smells like a stability disaster, though)

[cb88]

I doubt that MS will magically come up with a magic trick that makes WSL2 suddenly faster than every VM competitor on the market...
You're not going to see as much of a drastic change as WSL1 -> WSL2 is.

It would be funny to see, as some sort of middle ground between WSL1 and WSL2 something like coLinux to become a thing again but I doubt it. From a performance standpoint, I wonder what it would be worth. (Smells like a stability disaster, though)

I mostly use Windows at work and Linux at home... and WSL1 was already good enough for what I needed it for, it completely obviates the need i had for Cygwin and MSYS2 (as a user not a developer). It also works quite well with VcXsrv... and the few applications I need I can just map onto my desktop via shortcuts which is way more convenient than a VM.

[JeansenVaars]

Oh wow, nice.

I currently use WSL1 for work, and I am suffering the IO but CPU computations are good (i.e. running some programs outside of IO).
Hope they can fix the slow CPU times, but definitely IO is welcome. And definitely having capabilities of running docker will save me a lot of pain.

I am assuming WSL2 tests were running on an EXT4 partition?

[k1e0x]

I doubt that MS will magically come up with a magic trick that makes WSL2 suddenly faster than every VM competitor on the market...
You're not going to see as much of a drastic change as WSL1 -> WSL2 is.

It would be funny to see, as some sort of middle ground between WSL1 and WSL2 something like coLinux to become a thing again but I doubt it. From a performance standpoint, I wonder what it would be worth. (Smells like a stability disaster, though)

Agreed, Hyper-V is Hyper-V. It's not going to magically get any faster than native going this route.

Containers > VM's.

[ferry]

I doubt that MS will magically come up with a magic trick that makes WSL2 suddenly faster than every VM competitor on the market...
You're not going to see as much of a drastic change as WSL1 -> WSL2 is.

It would be funny to see, as some sort of middle ground between WSL1 and WSL2 something like coLinux to become a thing again but I doubt it. From a performance standpoint, I wonder what it would be worth. (Smells like a stability disaster, though)

What WSL1 probably needs is a windows native ext4 implementation. WSL2 being a VM doesn't bring anything new to the table.