Microsoft is promising to dramatically improve its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with GUI app support and GPU hardware acceleration. The software giant is adding a full Linux kernel to Windows 10 with WSL version 2 later this month, and it’s now planning to support Linux GUI apps that will run alongside regular Windows apps.
This will be enabled without Windows users having to use X11 forwarding, and it’s mainly designed for developers to run Linux integrated development environments (IDE) alongside regular Windows apps.
Microsoft is really trying very hard to bring as much of the Linux world to Windows, to the point where both seem to be almost merging into one. It’s a fascinating future for sure, but for me personally, it won’t draw me back to Windows from Linux.
That being said, the technology behind all this is deeply fascinating and interesting – among other things, Microsoft is bringing Direct3D 12 to Linux, but only to WSL, and it’s closed source. I have no idea if this could be of any benefit to Wine/Proton, but if it will be, it could be huge.
Not really. It’s basically just a pipe driver, similar to what Wine does for Vulkan, except for DirectX 12 because DirectX is the only officially supported API on Windows.
Anything relevant to Wine/Proton could already be accomplished by sticking a debugger in between the higher and lower-level DLLs on an existing Windows DirectX 12 setup.
Zero benefit.
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAPM=9tx4wh-Lk6Dffsdh-7mYvXx+GX2AxhrGqFgyN8-AWJvP6A@mail.gmail.com/T/#mf3452e16999a72e9157c4c8292338200355f132d
–We have consider the possibility of bringing DX to Linux with no Windows cord attached. I’m not ready to discuss this at this time .–
Thinking above is from Microsoft personal “Zero benefit” may is not be exactly true on term. Remember for what they are doing you still have to port core direct x12 to run on Linux as .so files.
–but in the hypothetical that we were do this, DX would be running on top of DRI/DRM on native Linux.–
This is also interesting. Think if it this way once they have got dx12 to work on Linux as .so files on WSL with this driver they then can work on having it work without the windows driver on DRI/DRM instead.
Now of course when I first saw dx12 running natively on Linux with mesa on top the thing that crossed my mind is it possible to perform a ndiswrapper on windows graphics drivers. Then I remembered still would need a legally install-able dx12 run-time to-do that then next part crossed my mind.
How is the wsl dx12 move going to handle flatpak and snap that are graphical containers. I think Microsoft personal has missed that userspace and the kernel in a lot of cases don’t ship unified. Its simple to miss that flatpak installs it own versions of Nvidia userspace. So dx12 userspace on Linux under the current flatpak model would have to be installed in flatpak.
Its going to be interesting to see how this small stone at top mountain that started rolling for how many other stones will have to join it.
So, first it was embrace, now extend. Not sure if that will work for them – why write DX12 games for WSL if users can run them natively on Windows already.
This is not for games, this is for compute.
Graphic and sound support are essential for those coming from a Windows background. Command line configuring is a last resort. This move is for Windows users who expect seamless GUI integration. Otherwise they’d just continue to dual boot or use a VM.
It’s a matter of perspective. Totally get Linux users have a different viewpoint.
The fact that they’re doing this with Wayland instead of X is interesting.
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2020-May/266691.html
And of course the kernel developers basically said “lolno, open source this please” when asked.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/960
Interesting, but not surprising. Wayland is the successor to X11, by the X11 developers, and it’s much simpler to use to achieve compatibility with existing applications because it doesn’t go the X11 or legacy Firefox route of making tons of internal details part of the public API.
Devil’s advocate again. I guess. The more Microsoft has it’s legs in Linux the more it releases publicly. I know the OSC is always on with EEE but I’ve yet to really see any major case of this happening. The extinguish phase.
Honestly I’m starting to wonder if Microsoft is looking to release a commercial version of Linux such as the Red Hat idea. Or SUSE.
If they do so with their own WINE-type system They may have something.