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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday July 11 2017, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the embrace-extend-extinguish dept.

Here's a statement that would have been unimaginable in previous years: Ubuntu has arrived in the Windows Store. As promised back in May, you can now download a flavor of the popular Linux distribution to run inside Windows 10. It won't compare to a conventional Ubuntu installation, as it's sandboxed (it has limited interaction with Windows) and is focused on running command line utilities like bash or SSH. However, it also makes running a form of Linux relatively trivial. You don't have to dual boot, install a virtual machine or otherwise jump through any hoops beyond a download and ticking a checkbox.

Source: Engadget


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:01PM (15 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:01PM (#537712)

    One fun thing about MS adding linux compatibility in W10: our tools exist in both Win and Lin flavors, and the linux version runs 10-20% faster when running in the W10 bash shell than the native Windows tools on the same machine (running the linux version in a linux install is the fastest)

    Makes me wonder how much faster other tools are running in bash or this new Ubuntu env than in native windows...

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:05PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:05PM (#537715)

    Really. The first thing that comes to mind is MS will find a way for Ubuntu to become infected...

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:12PM (6 children)

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:12PM (#537721) Journal

      systemd?
      I think there was some Linux distribution that added a phone-home on the search feature or such.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:53PM (3 children)

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:53PM (#537737) Journal

        That *was* Ubuntu, and it was sending search info to Amazon. Ubuntu has disappeared up its own ass.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:52PM (2 children)

          by Arik (4543) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:52PM (#537768) Journal
          Ubuntu started with some great ideas, but they jumped the shark years ago. At this point it makes no sense that anyone is still taking them seriously.
          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:39PM (1 child)

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:39PM (#537782) Journal

            Yeah, if there's one company the term "cultural appropriation" can actually be unironically levelled at, it's Canonical. They've gone from ostensibly embracing the Zulu concept of "ubuntu" (roughly "we are one/humans are because humanity is") to a bunch of literal latte-swilling hipsters. Their forum measures post count with coffeebeans FFS.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
            • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:28PM

              by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:28PM (#537800) Journal

              Their forum measures post count with coffeebeans

              I.I.II hahahavvvve.e.e.e.e n..onono aa.b.b.b.ssti.n.n.enence! *shake*shake*

              Classic case of fingers programming but the brain won't keep up and the resulting code ends up being code salad? ;-)
              At least the PR department planning author may suffer ;)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:50AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:50AM (#537923)

        The April 2016 release disabled the Ubuntu Shopping Lens by default. [google.com]

        It was something they tried and they responded to the negative feedback appropriately.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 12 2017, @06:42PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @06:42PM (#538233) Journal

          The big problem is that they even tried it. It's like the Belkin router MITM attack from the manufacturer. It should not even be attempted.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:31PM (6 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:31PM (#537803) Journal

    What does the tool do? and do you have the timing data available?

    Have you checked that the timing mechanism in win10/vm-linux is accurate using external means?

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:48PM (5 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:48PM (#537810)

      Synthesize, place and route FPGAs. Takes between 20 minutes and many hours, and we checked the wall clock and the timestamps.

      I don't know how Linux interpretation in Win10 could be that much faster than raw Win10 native executables from a similar codebase. It probably has a lot to do with the compiler directives being optimized better for the Linux ones, including but not limited to the different way the memory is used (it's highly memory-intensive, with huge logic databases). Or some of the linux emulation routines are better than the native OS they run on, which would be quite odd.
      Just an odd fun data point to highlight: software compiled for linux running faster in W10 than its native W10 counterpart.

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 11 2017, @10:38PM (4 children)

        by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @10:38PM (#537829) Journal

        Memory handling and compiler optimizations seems likely as you say.

        On the hardware side for synthesize, place and route FPGA. It seems a fast memory bus and definitely a large processor cache (Lx) speeds up completion of the task. Is that your experience too? additional tips?
        Additional cores should be a good thing but utilization of those seems dismal for this kind of application.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:07PM (3 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:07PM (#537835)

          (definitely offtopic)
          Lots of bandwidth, lots of cache, and high clock speeds are definitely more important than going beyond 8 cores. The Xilinx tools only use 8 cores briefly, and spend a lot of time between 1 and 4 (that's slowly getting better). So single thread optimum throughput, with enough memory architecture to cycle through an 8 to 32 GB chunk of RAM used for the database...

          The new i9-7820 seems like the best bang for the buck, until we get specs and benchmarks for Ryzen 9. At the cost of the waiting engineer, the i9 is still likely to win even if it's 50% more expensive.
          I wouldn't look at server parts: the slower cores are not our friend, and I have never noticed a need for ECC (YMMV). I just wish my PHB would get that.

          • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:54PM (2 children)

            by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:54PM (#537851) Journal

            Is the Xilinx tool spending so much time in a single core that having 2 or 4 is in the area of diminishing returns? From your experiences it seems 2 cores is almost an optimal point. A finer optimization is if it's more important with local processor cache vs fast memory bus, if one has to choose one over the other.

            • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 12 2017, @12:16AM (1 child)

              by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @12:16AM (#537866)

              In the last 3 years, they moved a lot of the single-threaded stuff to 2 and 4 threads (Syn, Route), so not having at least 4 cores is a costly savings.
              Having at least HT to accommodate the parts where they can spawn 8 threads will save time (reports). But if a company is paying engineers, there is no reason to skimp on $900 for a 8/16 chip+mobo (1500ish for a headless machine) to give each thread its own core. I suspect future Vivado versions will keep trying to add more threads as chips get bigger but clocks don't get faster.

              • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:29AM

                by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:29AM (#537916) Journal

                So even they can make progress ;) Is the UI still crap and crashy? such that makefiles makes the day?
                Is there some kind of powerful shared server pool for doing the synthesis or is everyone doing that on their own workstation?

                Any preferences on DRAM types or is it just the more Gbit/s the better? I noticed that anything above DDR2 have significant latency times for random access when looking at the communication setup.

                What's a Vivado version?