Quick question if you don't mind - what do the valve guys think of Windows Subsystem for Linux ? It's tempting even for me (who has used only Linux for 20 years now).
Or Windows gamers for that matter - it's not like there are a bunch of closed-source linux games that need WSL to run on Windows. I am puzzled by the assumption that Valve engineers somehow have a (professional) opinion on WSL
Is this really a threat? Because I haven't seen a shred of evidence to believe that Windows is going to block Steam. Hell they are actually releasing Xbox games on Steam!
But I guess Valve is flush with cash to throw at their hobby projects.
It was a big threat on Windows on ARM which only allowed you to install applications from the windows store or use an extremely slow x86 emulation layer. Microsoft blocked any browser from the windows store that was not based on the edge engine so Edge was the only usable browser available on ARM because emulated browsers simply cannot compete. Of course in the end it never went anywhere and even Edge's engine is about to be replaced with Chromium.
Nowadays Windows on ARM is basically the second coming of Windows RT, a massive failure. The biggest difference is that this time they decided to not produce a million devices too many.
Perhaps it's not going to block Steam because they have an escape path. They were leaning heavily into UWP right around the time Steam for Linux became a big thing.
> Filesystem performance is closer to windows than linux
Well.. filesystem performance is just bad under WSL period. Much worse than native NTFS or ext4 on the same hardware. It's so far from both that saying it's closer to one or the other doesn't _really_ make sense.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=wlinux-w...
In most tests, WLinux and WLinux Enterprise simply performed inline with the other Linux distributions benchmarked.
Performance is pretty much at par (and in some cases better than Linux).
Do you guys envision a long term disruption in this space ?