Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 vs. Ubuntu Bash On Windows 10 Anniversary Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 vs. Ubuntu Bash On Windows 10 Anniversary Performance

When Microsoft and Canonical brought Bash and Ubuntu's user-space to Windows 10 earlier this year I ran some preliminary benchmarks of Ubuntu on Windows 10 versus a native Ubuntu installation on the same hardware. Now that this "Windows Subsystem for Linux" is part of the recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update, I've carried out some fresh benchmarks of Ubuntu running atop Windows 10 compared to Ubuntu running bare metal.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=23419

[Tritlo]

Could you explain how you upgraded the subsystem from 14.04.05 to 16.04? I'm having some problems with the official explanation.

P.S. Please keep the Bash on Ubuntu on Linux performance comparisons going!

[emblemparade]

Astonishing.

As usual, Phoronix breaks through the hand-waving and gets to the results. Say what you will about any of it, Windows is proving itself to be a compelling OS for running Linux and Unix software. Their partnership with Canonical has made it extremely easy to use their Linux subsystem support with a very a full repository of software. Whether this is actually necessary or desirable is a separate issue. The fact is that it works today and works very well.

[edwaleni]

That x264 result has me fascinated. The only thing I can think of is that the SIMD support in Windows 10 has some Intel secret sauce that hasn't made it to the world of FOSS. I know Intel provided MSFT a lot of help with SIMD performance explicitly for Skylake, but with WSL overhead I wouldn't expect it to outperform native.

[FuturePilot]

Any explanation for the better performance with stream and x264 on WSL?

[zeealpal]

I've also found it incredibly easy to run a number of GUI apps, simply installing xming, and setting an output in the bash shell lets me run some applications quite easily (obviously not 3d). Had no problem with Firefox, Nautilus Thunar, VLC opens, but can't output video (no video device)

More interestingly, I have enjoyed the fact that running LuxRender in the command line in Ubuntu on Windows (Linux compile) was significantly faster than the Windows one, most likely due to the compiler options. I've found this quite handy for rendering some longer scenes.

[FuturePilot]

Any explanation for the better performance with stream and x264 on WSL?

[SemperIdem]

Did you disable Windows Defender during the tests?

[Dick Palmer]

Astonishing.
Windows is proving itself to be a compelling OS for running Linux and Unix software.... The fact is that it works today and works very well.

Well, just how compelling rather depends on the task, doesn't it? I'm not sure Windows barely achieving 1% of Linux's performance on some of the tests is quite the sort of 'astonishing' you had in mind

Of course some of the other results were really impressive so I share your general sentiment

[dennischeung]

Is it possible to add the "Ubuntu 16.04 In VirtualBox On Windows 10" / "Ubuntu 16.04 In Hyper-V On Windows 10" compare to "Ubuntu 16.04 In VirtualBox On Windows 10 (Windows Subsystem for Linux)"


The comparation of memory usage and IO performance can be interesting