News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Pengwin – A Linux Distro Optimized for WSL Based on Debian. Parent comment

Re:Pengwin – A Linux Distro Optimized for WSL Based on Debian by dbt00 on Friday April 12, 2019 @06:49PM (#19649737)
Using git as a filesystem performance metric is horribly flawed -- git was written from the beginning to perform perfectly on Linux. It's the most native linux application I can think of.

(Not because it's using secret system calls, but because its design was vetted and performance tailored for Linux.)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Pengwin – A Linux Distro Optimized for WSL Based on Debian by gshulegaard on Friday April 12, 2019 @08:11PM (#19650170)
I didn't really specify git myself, but it doesn't seem like NTFS is a particularly high performance filesystem these days:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4....

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-transfer-files-faster-wi...

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ubuntu-oneiric-ocelot-b...

https://superuser.com/questions/1124472/why-is-linux-30x-fas...

I also want to point out that just because NTFS isn't the fastest filesystem on the block doesn't mean it is a bad one. From what I can gather just casually googling it seems like NTFS emphasizes safety at the cost of performance at times. So depending on your workload and desired behavior NTFS might be the file system of choice for you. It's also worth noting that IF NTFS is intended to be more user-safe it sort of makes sense why may be the choice for the most common OS which aims to serve all users (not just technical ones).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Pengwin – A Linux Distro Optimized for WSL Based on Debian by therealjumbo on Friday April 12, 2019 @08:25PM (#19650226)
I thought it was mainly because windows doesn't have a dir cache in the kernel. The WSL filesystem performance thread is linked above which goes into this.

And that can't be fixed without involving 10 different teams and potentially outside partners.

And there's something wrong with the filesystem, which can't be fixed without the same deal except that will definitely require the cooperation of the outside partners because apparently you can write an extension for NTFS and fixing it would break the existing extensions, which Microsoft doesn't have the source for and doesn't ship.

And there's a thousand other paper cuts, and a very large fraction of those would require cross-team coordination and testing, which is a horrible time sink in a large company.

Fundamentally, Windows has poor performance when dealing with lots of little files, which is exactly what compiling large code bases involves. And to top it all off, their build system, conspires against their own OS. You'll get better performance using cmake + ninja (on Windows that is) then you will with cmake + visual studio.

Edit: also as a practical matter, if all my company's code is in git, and all outside code bases I work with are in git, I kinda would like decent git performance regardless of the origins of the tool.

I use windows as an outlook appliance at work, and as a gaming appliance at home. Otherwise I do everything in linux and am much happier.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Pengwin – A Linux Distro Optimized for WSL Based on Debian by ncmncm on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:13PM (#19650659)
It is also extremely slow on big files. Try opening a file, seeking out to 10GB, and writing 4KB. Instant, on any Unix. Better have something else planned for the afternoon, on Windows.
[ Parent | on HN ]