Windows 10 WSL vs. VirtualBox Ubuntu Performance On An Intel Core i9 7900X

[Xaero_Vincent]

Why test WSL with just VirtualBox? Test it with VMware Player, Xen, and KVM (built-in Linux virtualization) too. VirtualBox is known to have weaknesses in certain areas and testing only with that isn't a complete benchmark.

BTW, folks who rather use Linux as their primary OS can make something seamless / interesting like WSL but using Linux desktop as the primary rather than Windows. You can see what I mean here:

[andyprough]

BTW, folks who rather use Linux as their primary OS can make something seamless / interesting like WSL but using Linux desktop as the primary rather than Windows.

Nice work!

[reimar]

On IO performance: on my installation, I had massive issues due to the built-in virus scanner while compiling. It would use at least 1 and up to 2 cores of a 4 core machine, constantly.
If you want reasonable compilation performance with WSL you have to disable on-access virus scans at least for your build directories (you can configure paths to exclude). That admittedly half defeats the purpose of having on-access scanning, but it's just too slow. Not sure if this is a WSL specific issue, I never compiled a large enough project in e.g. Visual Studio to know if it has the same issue.

[bug77]

Being a long time user of Cygwin (now the 64 bit version) at work, And also some times using mingw while in a cygwin environment. I'm curious how it compares to WSL. Is WSL better than cygwin?

Basically WSL IS Ubuntu. Cygwin has that installer where you pick and choose what (think) you need, whereas with WSL you get apt and can install stuff at will, knowing every CLI tool in Ubuntu is available.
Not a night and day difference and I certainly haven't benchmarked performance, but I think WSL has the potential to become the better choice. Currently the console is a bit iffy, stuff like apt's progress animation will mess it up, WSL may decide to use your IPv6 address only to fail to connect to update servers... It's in beta for a reason.

[zboson]

Last I checked the VirtualBox documentation it recommended setting the number of threads to the number of physical cores. So 10 threads should be used instead of 20. Last time I checked VirtualBox it gets the topology wrong. The first two threads map to one physical core instead of two physical cores. It might even a problem with CPUID in virtualbox. I don't remember the details exactly now but I think it might be a bug in Virtualbox. I think apicid in /proc/cpuinfo possibly reports incorrectly in Virtualbox. The result could be that for a application which requests threads equal to the number of cores it ends up using a compact topology rather than a scattered topology.

It may be worth trying 10 threads instead of 20 and also checking /proc/cpuinfo between native Linux and VirtualBox.

[beevvy]

On IO performance: on my installation, I had massive issues due to the built-in virus scanner while compiling. It would use at least 1 and up to 2 cores of a 4 core machine, constantly.
If you want reasonable compilation performance with WSL you have to disable on-access virus scans at least for your build directories (you can configure paths to exclude).

This.

If you want to compare apples to apples, best disable "real-time protection" in Windows Defender. Or just disable the whole thing like this: https://www.tenforums.com/antivirus-...d44#post234396

[starshipeleven]

I love Clear Linux's download page. It's a good example of why Linux will never be popular because of the confusing number of varieties

Clear Linux is aimed at technical users. Look at Linux Mint instead

[starshipeleven]

Basically WSL IS Ubuntu. Cygwin has that installer where you pick and choose what (think) you need, whereas with WSL you get apt and can install stuff at will, knowing every CLI tool in Ubuntu is available.
Not a night and day difference and I certainly haven't benchmarked performance, but I think WSL has the potential to become the better choice. Currently the console is a bit iffy, stuff like apt's progress animation will mess it up, WSL may decide to use your IPv6 address only to fail to connect to update servers... It's in beta for a reason.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...get-for-cygwin you can install cygwin programs later too, and there is a package manager for it.

[bug77]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...get-for-cygwin you can install cygwin programs later too, and there is a package manager for it.

Still, a little more awkward to use and you don't really know which utilities are available; not a big problem, because I expect all the usual suspects are there anyway. Plus, I haven't tried it yet, but with WSL, PPAs should work, too.
Like I said before, I feel it's a toss up between the two at the moment, but WSL has the potential to become the better solution.

[starshipeleven]

Still, a little more awkward to use and you don't really know which utilities are available; not a big problem, because I expect all the usual suspects are there anyway.

Minor nitpick: the package manager (a shell script actually) can list all available packages as there is a package manifest in the online repository, you write apt-cyg listall

or use a apt-cyg fork with full features like this one https://github.com/kou1okada/apt-cyg

Plus, I haven't tried it yet, but with WSL, PPAs should work, too.

AFAIK they do, also in the list here you can find https://github.com/ethanhs/WSL-Programs some software that was installed from the ppa and reported working.