Microsoft Build - DirectX and Linux (WSL) plus more

DirectX is a cancer.

OK that's some strong language so let me walk back a bit from that.

DirectX is a cancer. ... In the sense that, while perfectly capable of performing it's job and technologically 'OK', it's a tool that Microsoft created deliberately to keep developers on Windows and that's still it's job even to this day. It's constantly holding back the success of the open APIs and protocols like OpenGL and now Vulkan that would threaten the dominance of Windows.

Microsoft push DirectX onto developers because they want developers tied to a technology that Microsoft controls, not an open technology that the industry shares.

For this reason, I don't want to see DirectX 'spreading'. I want to see it 'phased out'.

But with DirectX so widespread, 'phasing out' DirectX and transitioning to Vulkan becomes a very tricky balancing act.

DXVK, translating DirectX into Vulkan for Wine, technically allows DirectX to spread further, so the positive impact of DXVK is 'complicated' to say the least. The negative side effect is that we see DirectX running fairly reliably on Linux now, with great performance. The positive side effect, is that the DirectX is being translated into Vulkan, and it's bringing more users away from Windows and to an OS where DirectX isn't natively available, where DirectX is a second class citizen, something that's being phased out with a compatibility solution in place.

Translating old DirectX games into Vulkan while pushing for new games to use Vulkan directly can be thought of as a slow transition. DXVK is open source and can even work on Windows too, so developers could potentially even use it to translate their existing Windows games from DirectX to Vulkan, although I can't think of a reason why they would unless it reliably produces superior performance.

So effectively, DXVK neuters DirectX.

But this 'DirectX <3 Linux' thing is very different.

Microsoft's motives are clear, if they control the technology stack developers use (cough, Github and NPM), they control developers, and if they control developers, they control where the best 3rd party support goes, and they can ensure that it goes to their products and services, not the competitions.

Microsoft created WSL, because if anyone is going to use Linux, Microsoft would rather that person do so in a way that Microsoft strictly controls.. and preferable in a VM under Windows.

It's no different to how we on the Linux side of the fence regularly try to convert Windows gamers to Linux:

"Switch to Linux, you can play those old Windows gamers under Proton!"

Why do we say that?

Because we want those gamers to be using Linux "most of the time", and only interacting with Windows software in situations where there's no native Linux version available, and where that lack of support would result in a loss of users for Linux. It's a very careful balancing act.

What Microsoft's now announcing with DirectX coming to WSL only, I find very concerning.

Effectively Microsoft are now attempting to do something which will fragment Linux. There will be one version of Linux available to a HUGE number of people across the world, everyone with access to WSL (think about how many Windows users there are in the world) will have access to a version of Linux that can directly access a reliable high performance version of DirectX.

To make matters worse?

OpenGL will be translated to DirectX (sound familiar?) and Vulkan is in a limbo state of "It might happen one day", but by the sounds of it, it won't be a first class citizen like DirectX on WSL.

Then there will be the 'Non-WSL' version of Linux that won't have that access, the version of Linux we all use. This effectively fragments Linux into two groups, keeping in mind WSL has 'potentially' a larger userbase than ours.

Software written for 'WSL' that uses DirectX won't work on regular Linux.
Software written for regular Linux that uses Vulkan won't work on WSL.

Think about that: Microsoft is encouraging the creation of Linux software won't work on any version of Linux except for a version of Linux only available on Windows in a VM.

To make things even worse?

Our only response to this, if it results in a significant drop in users to regular Linux, would be to effectively create a DXVK like compatibility layer on Linux that allows the same DirectX API access available on WSL, but translates it into Vulkan. But the performance and reliability would never be on par with that in WSL. Again achieving Microsoft's goal of controlling the technology stack, and thus controlling the developers and where the best third party support is, back on Windows.

Microsoft hinted at the 'possibility' of bringing DirectX to Linux, but don't for a moment think that means they will open source it.

Maybe some would say I'm over reacting, but after watching Microsoft for a very long time, all I see is the same ol Microsoft as ever, new year, new marketing, but same tactics. Stuff like this is why we absolutely need for Vulkan to replace DirectX on Windows, we need to kill DirectX, not let it spread further, and why we need to get the Linux marketshare higher.

Exactly. DirectX was used as a lock-in tool for decades, so it's as toxic as it gets.


Last edited by Shmerl on 21 May 2020 at 3:38 am UTC

gradyvuckovic is so right it hurts.

MS is saying you don't need to go through the hassle of getting a Linux machine or installing it in a VM, it's right here all done for you, keep using Windows. It's also saying you don't need to learn OpenGL or Vulkan, you can just keep using DirectX.

WSL's capabilities or fitness for a particular purpose or technical merits right now are irrelevant. It'll evolve over time and the marketing message is already out there: you don't need Linux, you just need Windows. Plus the whole we love Linux thing, it's just meant to convince people MS isn't evil any more, MS has changed, come use our products.

MS isn't evil or good, it's a publicly traded company whose only purpose is to generate shareholder value. And they've been doing a very good job of it considering they're still around and they have a desktop OS and office software monopoly.

So this whole exercise is just meant to reinforce the general conviction that you can do everything in Windows, everything else is inferior because you can't do everything there. And they're right.

Oh, and one more thing. If there's a problem with WSL, if it runs slowly or something doesn't work, the perception will be it's Linux's fault, not Windows'. And yes, if someone writes something in DirectX or anything else that'll only work in WSL, the system requirement will immediately be "Linux in WSL".

This is exactly what happened with Java. MS started shipping Extended (as in the second E) Java with Windows and everyone immediately started writing exclusively for it, to the point Sun's Java became useless. This in turn meant that in practice you could only run the thousands of pieces of (the theoretically portable and cross-platform) Java software on the web if you were running Windows and IE. And that's what's happening with Linux right now.


Last edited by damarrin on 21 May 2020 at 6:09 am UTC

Microsoft Wayland Compositor

OK, I'm ready for the old folks' home. I no longer understand the world. You all come visit me one day, OK?

That's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. It's part of how they (briefly) won the browser wars. It is not how they got rid of Lotus 1-2-3, for instance.

Fair enough, but my point was really that the precise EEE strategy is just a specific manifestation of a general mindset at Microsoft.

Not gonna argue with that.

Don't be fooled about Microsoft's stance and their aim here, it's not because they love Linux. They're going where the developers are to continue pulling people to Microsoft services. Nothing more.

Come on Microsoft is just doing what every single other company contributing to Linux is doing: their own interest.
Don't be naive, it's not different from Google, Intel, Valve, they all want to make money using Linux in many different ways, they are not charities.
Is that bad? Not necessarily, it will just increase the choice that we have in my opinion.
I think that the new Microsoft is not interested anymore in the OS market, since they are mainly into services now, so it makes perfectly sense.

DirectX is a cancer.

Aye, true.

OK that's some strong language so let me walk back a bit from that.

No, that's fine.

What Microsoft's now announcing with DirectX coming to WSL only, I find very concerning.

Effectively Microsoft are now attempting to do something which will fragment Linux. There will be one version of Linux available to a HUGE number of people across the world, everyone with access to WSL (think about how many Windows users there are in the world) will have access to a version of Linux that can directly access a reliable high performance version of DirectX.

This I disagree with, though. This isn't fragmenting Linux. These people aren't using Linux. They're using Windows, which already has DirectX. Nearly all of them aren't even aware that there's a Linux in there, and those who are, aren't using it to play games, with or without DirectX.
Everyone who would have been considered a Linux user before this announcement is unaffected by it; they were lacking DirectX as compared to Windows users before, and they still are. This seems to me a pretty minor development.

Software written for 'WSL' that uses DirectX won't work on regular Linux.
Software written for regular Linux that uses Vulkan won't work on WSL.

If anything, that just makes WSL less useful. I mean, surely one of the major points of WSL must be to be able to test things that you're writing in Windows but intend to run in production on Linux. Another might be to run Linux software that doesn't run on Windows. If neither of those are going to work what's the point? It's not like anyone's going to deploy production software designed to run on WSL, surely. Nobody's going to have cloud servers running Windows so they can use the Linux VM inside it.

Don't be fooled about Microsoft's stance and their aim here, it's not because they love Linux. They're going where the developers are to continue pulling people to Microsoft services. Nothing more.

Come on Microsoft is just doing what every single other company contributing to Linux is doing: their own interest.
Don't be naive, it's not different from Google, Intel, Valve, they all want to make money using Linux in many different ways, they are not charities.
Is that bad? Not necessarily, it will just increase the choice that we have in my opinion.
I think that the new Microsoft is not interested anymore in the OS market, since they are mainly into services now, so it makes perfectly sense.

That's like saying 20 years ago "the new Microsoft is not interested anymore in the OS market, since they are mainly into office software now". One major point of the OS is that you can leverage that desktop monopoly to push other software and services. If MS didn't control the platform they'd have a much harder time selling the rest of their stuff.

That's like saying 20 years ago "the new Microsoft is not interested anymore in the OS market, since they are mainly into office software now". One major point of the OS is that you can leverage that desktop monopoly to push other software and services. If MS didn't control the platform they'd have a much harder time selling the rest of their stuff.

No, it's different now. I'm not talking about software like MS Office, services are a completely different beast.
That's what I'm talking about https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-developer-reveals-linux-is-now-more-used-on-azure-than-windows-server/
Microsoft just wants to make money with Linux, there's no interest in the "extinguish" part of EEE, and the same applies for other companies like Google, Intel and Valve.
Don't get me wrong btw, I've always been against the "old" Microsoft behavior and I don't install Windows on my PCs since a decade at least.


Last edited by ckonte on 21 May 2020 at 8:45 am UTC

MS isn't evil or good, it's a publicly traded company whose only purpose is to generate shareholder value.

This mindset always rubs me the wrong way. As if it's somehow a mechanical or natural process that doesn't involve human beings making decisions that benefit a relatively small set of human beings over the good of a larger set of human beings. Ethics applies to every single decision people make, and neither businesses nor governments deserve a free pass.

It's up to you if you want to reward harmful behaviour or not, but please don't buy into that bullshit mindset. And I'm not saying "all corporations are evil" here, just that as long as corporations wield influence and have legal rights that equal and indeed often exceed those of citizens, we can and should hold them to equal if not higher ethical standards as well.

MS isn't evil or good, it's a publicly traded company whose only purpose is to generate shareholder value.

This mindset always rubs me the wrong way. As if it's somehow a mechanical or natural process that doesn't involve human beings making decisions that benefit a relatively small set of human beings over the good of a larger set of human beings. Ethics applies to every single decision people make, and neither businesses nor governments deserve a free pass.

It's up to you if you want to reward harmful behaviour or not, but please don't buy into that bullshit mindset. And I'm not saying "all corporations are evil" here, just that as long as corporations wield influence and have legal rights that equal and indeed often exceed those of citizens, we can and should hold them to equal if not higher ethical standards as well.

My point here is that this is an inherent characteristic of a publicly traded company - it exists to generate value for shareholders only, all its other actions are ancillary to that. It takes genuine effort from many individuals within a company for it not to display exclusively this behaviour. That is why there are various laws, including anti-monopoly laws, which are designed to limit companies in the ways in which they can pursue said value.

Only in the case of MS, these laws, or rather law enforcers, fail to act. People, including those in power, want to continue using Windows and Office and so they take substitute action to pretend they're going against the MS monopoly, like telling them to offer browser choice or whatever. It's also a good example how this mechanism actually works, since MS no longer have a dominant browser. However, since it's not only MS themselves, but also practically everyone else, that want the desktop OS/office software monopoly to continue, it does.

It's a subtle kind of monopoly, though, and that's why it's so powerful. It's not that people can't get/use another product. It's that their lives are made more difficult if they do and thus they don't want to.

MS isn't evil or good, it's a publicly traded company whose only purpose is to generate shareholder value.

This mindset always rubs me the wrong way. As if it's somehow a mechanical or natural process that doesn't involve human beings making decisions that benefit a relatively small set of human beings over the good of a larger set of human beings. Ethics applies to every single decision people make, and neither businesses nor governments deserve a free pass.

It's up to you if you want to reward harmful behaviour or not, but please don't buy into that bullshit mindset. And I'm not saying "all corporations are evil" here, just that as long as corporations wield influence and have legal rights that equal and indeed often exceed those of citizens, we can and should hold them to equal if not higher ethical standards as well.

My point here is that this is an inherent characteristic of a publicly traded company - it exists to generate value for shareholders only, all its other actions are ancillary to that. It takes genuine effort from many individuals within a company for it not to display exclusively this behaviour. That is why there are various laws, including anti-monopoly laws, which are designed to limit companies in the ways in which they can pursue said value.

And my point was that none of this is a valid excuse, and people should judge the actions of a corporation in the same terms as they'd judge those of an individual. If a person can do good or evil, a corporation can do good or evil. There's no ambiguity there. Just excuses.

This is exactly how it is used at my company. The virtualization engine is locked off in BIOS because apparently someone in the past used a VM to "hack into the computer" (I have no idea what precisely was involved in this). Therefore we have no option to just use a Linux VM, let alone a whole partition. And I am a data scientist, so I do a lot of AI/ML development, as well as general dev work; so my IT's default position to me is "Well, you can use WSL...". But if WSL2 is going to use Hyper-V, I cannot see how it can run without virtualization enabled (at which point I'll just set up a VM anyways :) ). Though I do have other personal machines running Linux and only remote into the Windows laptop as needed for some file access and stuff that has to be done on desktop Office.

That "hacked from a VM" sounds like a lame excuse. In the company I work all data scientist have a custom company Ubuntu installation. They also have the option to use Windows or Mac and I know that there are Linux VMs made by IT (and also Windows, but this is due to the covid-19). Anyway, as far I can tell all of them use Linux.

Microsoft hinted at the 'possibility' of bringing DirectX to Linux, but don't for a moment think that means they will open source it.

Nope... Never said anything of the sort... For sure they will use DX12 as a lock-in tech. That's the main MS advantage. Open sourcing it doesn't make sense, strategically speaking.

Still, there are 2 things that attracted my attention, in this paragraph, about DX12 on Linux:

1- "I'm not ready to discuss this at this time..."

So, should we consider that something is effectively brewing on the DX12 + Linux side of things? If so, in what form? Was it a broader discussion involving a possible WinUI + DX12 + Linux kernel desktop OS? Not saying that I'm hyped or that it's goind to happen. It just rises my curiosity...

2- The technical description of how it could be done is well tought out... Again, in what context was the discussion held? I mean, It's not been dismissed with a flat out "No". What is Microsoft not allowed to tell us, yet? For a guy that was not ready to discuss... He said much, imo.

It feels like they are officialy looking in direction X but the road is bringing them closer to Y, by the day. These "cryptic" pieces of informations should be food for thoughts.

Not pretending that it's good or bad, though. Probably not good, but absolutely not all bad.

Personally, I'm never going to use a Linux based Windows OS. Anyway it will still be filled with MS' adwares and spywares. I'll stick to pure Linux with Vulkan, but I prefer to be warned than surprised by what's to come from Microsoft.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 21 May 2020 at 3:02 pm UTC

This is exactly how it is used at my company. The virtualization engine is locked off in BIOS because apparently someone in the past used a VM to "hack into the computer" (I have no idea what precisely was involved in this). Therefore we have no option to just use a Linux VM, let alone a whole partition. And I am a data scientist, so I do a lot of AI/ML development, as well as general dev work; so my IT's default position to me is "Well, you can use WSL...". But if WSL2 is going to use Hyper-V, I cannot see how it can run without virtualization enabled (at which point I'll just set up a VM anyways :) ). Though I do have other personal machines running Linux and only remote into the Windows laptop as needed for some file access and stuff that has to be done on desktop Office.

That "hacked from a VM" sounds like a lame excuse. In the company I work all data scientist have a custom company Ubuntu installation. They also have the option to use Windows or Mac and I know that there are Linux VMs made by IT (and also Windows, but this is due to the covid-19). Anyway, as far I can tell all of them use Linux.

I wish that was the case in my company. The problem is that it is a primary Microsoft partner (selling Azure services, transitioning other cloud infrastructures into Azure, etc.), so a main part of the business - outside of data science consulting - is heavily related to MS services. And on top of that our IT is pretty incompetent on everything that is not Windows. So when you merge the two...

Oh and I definitely agree that it is a lame excuse. We are still trying to figure out what it could have entailed among the data science team :)