Windows 10 WSL vs. Docker on Windows 10 vs. Bare Metal Linux Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Windows 10 WSL vs. Docker on Windows 10 vs. Bare Metal Linux Performance

With the recent Windows 10 Fall Creator's Update there were some improvements to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) particularly around boosting the I/O performance (though further WSL performance work is coming), so this week I've been carrying out some fresh benchmarks of Windows 10 WSL with its openSUSE and Fedora options. For additional perspective I also compared the performance to running benchmarks with Linux containers on Docker under Windows 10 and lastly the "bare metal" Linux performance.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25589

[edwaleni]

This is an excellent test and throwing in Clear Linux was a great idea.

I noticed Clear Linux suffered in Docker on tests that required a lot of SIMD or vector processing, is Docker exposing the CPU instructions properly?

This is exactly why I like reading Phoronix.

[QuImUfu]

I think it would have been interesting to compare it to cygwin performance, too.

Apart from that i would be interested in wine-perforrmace in disk and CPU taxing tasks, as seemingly every wine benchmark is mainly about grapics/games.

[andyprough]

What file system is in use on WSL, Michael? Is it VoIFs?

I was impressed that Leap actually beat Ubuntu on a few of those tests this time. When you installed on bare metal, did you use EXT4 for all of them?

[commiethebeastie]

What file system is in use on WSL, Michael? Is it VoIFs?

SlowpokeFS.

[Michael]

What file system is in use on WSL, Michael? Is it VoIFs?

I was impressed that Leap actually beat Ubuntu on a few of those tests this time. When you installed on bare metal, did you use EXT4 for all of them?

Each distro/OS file-system was their defaults.

[andrei_me]

Interesting that some tests were faster on WSL instead of on bare metals.

Intel should talk with Microsoft to get Clear Linux on the store as a option too

[SystemCrasher]

So Windows sucks at IO & filesystems and sucks at process creation, sends all keypresses to MS, comes with weird license terms and costs something. Really good reason to use Linux on bare metal, any day

[AndyChow]

That the x264 encoding is faster on WSL than bare metal linux makes little sense. It was done completely on the CPU, right? I'm thinking maybe it's a turbo-power thing where Windows 10 just handles power states better for that particular chip than on linux. Intel Turbo boost technology doesn't sound like something linux would master right away.

[profoundWHALE]

It would be pretty sweet to see Windows h.264 vs Windows WSL h.264 vs Linux.