Windows 11 WSL2 Performance Is Quite Competitive Against Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / Ubuntu 21.10

[lacek]

Linux has been ready since Ubuntu. You're just not ready for Linux.

Please stop creating "Cult of Linux". The world is sufficiently messed up by existence of "Cult of Mac".

[aht0]

Windows Server sees plenty of use outside web-/database services..

[blacknova]

I just want to point out to the people that claim Windows is not suited for server use that the Windows NT kernel was influenced heavily by BSD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

IMHO it is much more influenced by VMS.

[sorbus]

blacknova,

You do realize that Windows fails miserably as a server OS? Windows networks are only suitable for small scale operations. Not even Microsoft has tried to use Windows as a serious server OS for decades now- they use Linux for their servers and Linux powers Azure. So no, business by and large does not choose Windows over Linux. They use Windows for the desktop and Linux or some flavor of real Unix for servers... if they aren't one of those old fashioned companies still relying on Mainframe software, at least. I dare say part of why your sort of "business" still likes Windows on the desktop is the user friendliness perception and the belief that the learning curve is smaller when really doing certain things in either OS these days can be quite involved. Unix powers OS X and you never see anyone complaining about how hard Macs are to use, do you? If all you are doing is simple, every day tasks most users partake in no OS really requires you to know a lot anymore. Don't forget, Android & ChromeOS are built on top of modified Linux kernels and they are perhaps easy to use to a fault!

Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'Linux powers Azure'? The hypervisor in Azure AFAIK is a Windows Kernel image (perhaps a customised version of Hyper-V).

[eltomito]

WSL2 just a VM
so it means that Windows handles network stack

So, what does Windows do in in its network stack to make the (virtualized) Linux network stack run faster?

[timrichardson]

Microsoft was forced to do WSL to keep developers, since so much of the modern stack is not native to Windows. First it tried to port software to windows, then it tried to port Docker and have it run windows images (does anyone remember that), and in the end they have built an increasingly well integrated VM. Technically it is quite impressive, strategically it is a concession of defeat: there is now greatly reduced incentive for anyone to support Windows at any level in the modern stack, from developer workstation to servers to cloud services.
I don't know what it means for desktop linux.

Someone referred above to 1% linux desktop market share ... it's more like 2%, but among developers, linux desktop share is much, much higher. The arithmetic means that if 5% of Windows users see WSL and then use it to transition to desktop linux, and 10% of linux users go the other way, it will still increase native linux desktop market share. In any case, I doubt many linux users will go to WSL: they know what Windows offers and don't want it. wsl still brings many Windows horrors, such as the updates, and Microsoft's increasing tricks to upsell its services and products, which feels obnoxious to this linux user.