Microsoft Developer: You Still Should Have Anti-Virus With Windows Subsystem For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Microsoft Developer: You Still Should Have Anti-Virus With Windows Subsystem For Linux

While disabling Windows Defender or other anti-virus programs may partially help offset the performance losses imposed by running Windows Subsystem for Linux, a.k.a. "Bash for Windows" or Ubuntu and other distributions running natively atop Windows 10 and now Windows Server 2019, it's not the root cause of the I/O performance bottleneck and is not a recommended course of action...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Windows-Defender-WSL-Needed

[tildearrow]

Why though? Windows Defender sucks anyway...

[pdffs]

Defender destroys performance for more than just WSL - whenever I'm forced to spend time on Windows, I routinely see nearly a core dedicated to Defender, and throughput in the toilet, whenever I/O is happening.

[boxie]

inb4 Microsoft move to ZFS to eliminate the ntfs performance bottleneck :P

[sarmad]

There is a better solution than disabling Windows Defender: install Linux on bare metal.

[SkyWarrior]

They have to do this because WSL environment can also execute windows executables. Try running a command line exe or com via WSL. You will get the point.

[starshipeleven]

Defender destroys performance for more than just WSL - whenever I'm forced to spend time on Windows, I routinely see nearly a core dedicated to Defender, and throughput in the toilet, whenever I/O is happening.

That's because it detects that you are only using it once in a while so it runs quick scans in the background. If you were using Windows all the time it would do that only weekly or so.

That said I keep that crap disabled in my VMs, on Win10 where it's not possible to do so with its own GUI, you have to use Policies or registry edit https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

[starshipeleven]

There is a better solution than disabling Windows Defender: install Linux on bare metal.

Most productive Windows software won't run on Linux.

To be fair it rarely runs decently (or at all) on latest Windows version too.

[LightBit]

Disabling Windows Defender is the first thing I do after install.

[Michael_S]

There is a better solution than disabling Windows Defender: install Linux on bare metal.

Yes. As an individual, I think that makes the most sense. Or if you really need Windows, set up dual boot and use the Windows partition as little as you can so you can be more productive.

But at a lot of jobs they have tools that don't work on Linux, or even tools that could work on Linux but that corporate IT only supports on Windows or Mac. If I lived in the middle of a city I'd tell an employer like that to go to hell and find a better job. Since I was dumb enough to settle in the suburbs, 98% of the jobs that would let me run Linux on raw hardware involve a longer commute. I hate Windows, but not enough that I'm going to spend an extra hour sitting in my car five days a week.