For the comparison to os x docker, the biggest slowdown for os x docker is the file system mapping. It basically breaks any reasonable performance chart: look up posts getting into alternatives like mutagen. The slowdown makes using an IO-heavy dev flow like live editing via `npm run watch` relatively unusable: 30X+ slowdowns are normal. There might be high CPU overheads too (I recall we had to tweak seccomp), but when basic IO is so slow, the rest doesn't matter.

In contrast, yes, wsl2 has 5% CPU hits (hyperv, ...),but a sane FS mapping, so the total overhead is imperceptible for a windows dev box.

I was pleasantly surprised to see wsl2 Just Work. Our only issue preventing wsl2 from being the official team rec over native Linux has been wsl2's lack of opencl, and that's just specific to our use of GPUs. As someone whose preferred dev box has been osx for ~20 years, even when at MS, I was biased against Windows for most dev... but no longer.

Oh right yeah — to be honest because I was so used to file system mapping being so slow (and even on my W10 box it’s not perfect for deep file system trees like node_modules), I stopped using it.

VSCodes “Create Remote Dev Container from Repository” functionality has made it even easier. My dev containers have no overlap with the host filesystem so macOS and Windows are equally performant for my use cases :)

Yes, wsl2 afaict works like that and a bit improved. Instead of dual booting or a restricted dev env, I click my Linux terminal icon and jump into a full & fast Ubuntu, including UIs when helpful. Sharing with Windows is possible through a shared mount of C:, but I rarely encounter it, basically only for a web downloads folder or working around certs. Same thing for VS Code, have a Windows mode and a wsl2 mode, and it opens the right one for you.

Almost all our dev is generic, so that means Windows for Office/web/... and full Linux for dev (except no real OpenCL).

Just curiosity, what are you using the GPUs for?

interactive graph ai + graph viz, such as for understanding it/sec/fraud/customer log activity

HyperV is lightweight and from what I understood, windows runs on top of hyperV too when you enable WSL2. You may lose a few % of performance in video games.