The Future of Docker Desktop for Windows

https://engineering.docker.com/2019/06/docker-hearts-wsl-2/

by pestkranker • 7 years ago

202 135 7 years ago

engineering.docker.com

mfatica3• 7 years ago

Will I have full access to the GPU?

adzm• 7 years ago

Since it runs on hyperv I would hope so, but hard to find any official sources confirming that or not.

romanovcode• 7 years ago

Hyper-V machines do not have access to GPU, previous implementation is legacy and cannot be selected anymore. No one knows when the new implementation is going live.

tym02• 7 years ago

Based on this FAQ, no.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-faq#can-i-...

zamalek• 7 years ago

Note that during the talk they said they heard the cries for GPU access loud and clear (they mentioned AI). It will hopefully come later.

jmb12686• 7 years ago

This is great news. No more CIFS bind mounts required for volume sharing with Windows drives. This is a particular issue with on corporate / Enterprise windows boxes.

unilynx• 7 years ago

It was also pretty unstable. Low memory conditions inside the docker VM => SMB times out => I/O terminatedn => File corruption. At least it did support mmap, which was an issue with the original virtualbox-backed docker for Mac...

Now, fingers crossed for transparent inotify...

_eht• 7 years ago

I’ve been following this longstanding Docker issue: https://github.com/docker/docker.github.io/issues/6910

The comments make it pretty clear how the Github crew feels about it, but I’m curious the response over here.

Macha• 7 years ago

I usually just report promo emails received after this kind of forced sign-up as spam.

acdha3• 7 years ago

It seems unrelated to this article?

blinkingled4• 7 years ago

Boy I'm happy Microsoft is making Windows 10 into a great development platform for the web!

One of the rare things to feel upbeat about is that we have great choice when it comes to OSes.

e40• 7 years ago

Competition at the OS level is good. Windows getting better will only make others try harder.

As a former Windows user, then macOS convert, I look at what's happening on Windows with envy. macOS is getting prettier and perhaps more consistent, but buggier. It's very frustrating. I've had so many problems with security updates, with both the latest and other supported versions. Apple support is terrible these days. I filed a bug report with them and weeks later they give me absolutely lame replies.

The only thing that gives me pause, still, about Windows 10: it updates when it wants to and that is difficult to turn off (you can set your network to "metered" and I hear that will do it). Also the telemetry. I feel like it spies on its users more than Apple's product does.

blinkingled4• 7 years ago

The updates btw got a lot better even for Windows 10 Home users. It can be argued if letting users turn off the updates is a overall good idea or not but at least you have more flexibility in postponing them with 1903.

miaklesp2• 7 years ago

Updates were improved in 1903

lostmsu• 7 years ago

Many standard Windows apps are currently also quite buggy, including Store and Mail to name a few.

jmkni• 7 years ago

I just wish they would take the advertising right out of Windows 10, as well as Bing in the start menu etc.

It really ruins it.

h1d5• 7 years ago

Better late than never but I feel sorry to people using Windows for web dev when the tooling experience has been way worse than Mac for a decade now.

And some people can't even try to switch out of Windows.

blinkingled4• 7 years ago

I kind of feel the same way about using macOS. At this point in time if your hardware works with Linux you're missing out on a lot of things by using macOS. Windows/WSL2 removes the hardware compatibility part leaving macOS to catch up.

y4mi3• 7 years ago

I'm forced to use Windows at work and am so looking forward to wsl2.

Starting a new terminal with wsl1 takes so long and I'm less than happy with all terminal emulators.

ConEmu has broken copy paste, alacrity doesn't have proper tiling... Heck, I've started using hyper of all things.

I realize that I probably never be happy on Windows when I can actually use i3wm at home, but if it could just suck less I'd be so ecstatic.

enlyth• 7 years ago

I'm curious, how is copy paste broken? I've been using Cmder for a while and haven't had any issues

y4mi3• 7 years ago

The middle of the copy pasted string is sometimes missing. So if I copy `echo hi && cat /etc/hostname` it's gonna paste `echo hitc/hostname`

It has 4 different paste methods in the settings, I encountered the bug on all at work. I've used it without encountering the bug before though, but I haven't figured out what causes it.

mikepurvis• 7 years ago

The new Windows Terminal is looking very nice so far:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

You still have to build it from source in VS 2017 or 2019, and there are a few rough edges (currently only middle click for copy/paste), but it's a great start. They should have some official binaries up pretty soon.

mruszczyk• 7 years ago

You can grab build artifacts from builds of the master branch off their CI. You need to enable developer mode to allow the loading of an unsigned binary.

https://dev.azure.com/ms/Terminal/_build/results?buildId=203...

kapep• 7 years ago

They just released an early preview build in the Windows Store:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-terminal-preview/9...

WWLink• 7 years ago

I am also pretty happy with WSL, but I'm even happier that I was able to get a mac at work lol.

Although I admit, sometimes the BSD toolchain poses some rather hilarious speedbumps. At that point WSL can be smoother? Weird.

m_mueller6• 7 years ago

I switched from Mac to WSL last year and yes, in some ways it is smoother. Having for example apt-get on top of the NT kernel is better than Homebrew on Darwin. It's worse in other ways that are slowly getting fixed, such as the sad state of terminal emulators on Windows. At least one thing will probably always be better on Mac: Settings/Defaults system with Plist files vs. Windows settings and the Registry. But to me that doesn't justify the lack of good laptop hardware choices anymore - PC laptops are so much better nowadays.

eropple• 7 years ago

Just install coreutils, findutils, and gnu-sed from Homebrew. Your muscle memory will thank you.

h1d5• 7 years ago

So, why don't people just install native Linux in VMware or something instead of keep fighting with the host OS?

shawnz2• 7 years ago

Interesting, I've never had an issue with WSL1 startup time. Meanwhile WSL2 startup time is supposed to be strictly greater due to its use of a VM. Maybe you have a configuration issue?

int0x80• 7 years ago

I would hope it is not a new VM each time?

derefr• 7 years ago

Could you just install a full-fat Linux desktop VM on your Windows workstation and live in it?

nexus2045• 7 years ago

I use Ubuntu inside Virtualbox at work, but it has caused almost everyone on my team issues at some point - the whole thing freezing and needing to be restarted, very laggy GUI (scrolling in VS Code gets ugly), network connectivity issues when switching WiFi hotspots (also doesn't work with Starbucks), running out of hard disk space if you didn't allocate enough to begin with, to name a few. Sure, there are always workarounds, but the time and productivity it has costed my team would have easily justified getting a Mac, which IT thinks is too expensive :shrug:.

m_mueller6• 7 years ago

I'm still stuck with Cmder/ConEmu, but it does something worse for me than breaking copy/paste: Breaking arrow-keys in insert mode in VI. I'm only a very light VI user, but it's still very bothersome.

dordoka• 7 years ago

This might help you:

https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder/issues/1832

davb• 7 years ago

My main issue with ConEmu was output performance. Paging through files in Vim over SSH was painfully slow. I recently switched the wsltty [0] and after changing some display prefences (Font: Consolas 9pt, Theme: dracula, Cursor: blinking block) I'm really satisfied with it as a terminal. Vim paging performance is greatly improved, and it's smaller and faster than Hyper.

Also, copy/paste works perfectly and I found that fewer of the default keybindings conflict with those in my shell, tmux and vim.

[0] https://github.com/mintty/wsltty

mffnbs• 7 years ago

WSL2 is dependent on hyper-v, though.

pnutjam• 7 years ago

Try mobaxterm. T works great on it's own, but will also hook into your wsl.

s_c_r• 7 years ago

Have you tried the mintty solution for WSL?

https://github.com/mintty/wsltty

I've found it to be the most consistent and performant. Still not the same as being in a native Linux environment, of course, but it's the closest I've been able to get in Windows.

scardine• 7 years ago

I just got WSL2 from the Windows Insider updates and it is great so far. Things like git are way faster and I can run docker on Linux.

emptyfile• 7 years ago

Oh god yes, git status finally works in less then 10 seconds. That's actually the only thing I wanted from Microsoft.

tracker14• 7 years ago

If you're using Docker on Linux in WSL2, how well are volume mounts to the host OS? I try not to use them in Docker Desktop as, for example, a sqlite3 file in the host and the guest access will eventually corrupt the file in my experience. MSSQL in docker also performs at about 1/100th the throughput if I put the data files in a volume.

I've hence been avoiding volumes for things other than static files or backup/restore directories.

erichdongubler• 7 years ago

In the meantime, have you checked out MSYS2? It's the best option I've found for a *nix toolchain until WSL2 arrives. :)

kristianp• 7 years ago

Starting a new terminal with wsl1 takes so long? It takes less than 2 seconds on my machine. I guess if you have some file-intensive process, such as starting a rub/python interpreter to run a script that would slow things down due to the slow file access.

I use wsltty for the terminal, it's pretty minimal, but better than the windows terminal.

mrkstu• 7 years ago

So, I think the main sticking point here is the lock-in of Hyper-V. By making a new popular feature completely dependent on a technology that explicitly disables the use of competitive hypervisors, they're giving with one hand and taking with the other.

If I was on VM-Ware's executive team, I'd be seriously thinking about filing an anti-trust complaint and the open source community should be thinking about whether submarining virtualbox is worth what Microsoft is doing here.

damnyou5• 7 years ago

Don't all hypervisors disable other hypervisors?

tym02• 7 years ago

Hypervisor Framework and VirtualBox seem to cohabit just fine on MacOS.

skrebbel2• 7 years ago

While running, yes. On Windows if you enable Hyper-V support, even when you're not using it at the moment, you can't use VirtualBox without reboots and shit.

stephenr3• 7 years ago

No.

I concurrently build vagrant boxes (using Packer) for VirtualBox, VMWare and Parallels on macOS.

matthew-wegner• 7 years ago

No. It's a fairly common use case to i.e. virtualize several ESXi hypervisors underneath ESXi itself, in order to test clusters or other setups. VMWare calls the feature VHV, "virtual hardware-assisted virtualization". More generally, it's typically just "nested virtualization". It does look like it needs some CPU features, but which are now old enough to be essentially commodity.

(and yes, ESXi is a type 1 hypervisor--it's definitely something Microsoft could enable more broadly, instead of limiting the scope to Hyper-V nested setups)

ccurrens• 7 years ago

There is the Windows Hypervisor Platform[1] component recently added in windows, that at least allows other VMs to share the hypervisor using a common API. IIRC, VirtualBox 6 supports it.

To me, it seems like the use of Hyper-V was probably necessary to get the tight integration they needed to make the use of WSL 2 as seamless as it is today with the lightweight containers.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/api/

TheChaplain• 7 years ago

I tried VirtualBox with Hyper-V and it's really slooow.

VBx also have some extra goodies like the built-in DHCP-server, host-only networking and so on which Hyper-V seems to be lacking.

withinrafael2• 7 years ago

Heads up, as of Windows 10 1903 (latest update), VirtualBox QEMU, and friends will fail when attempting to use WHP. It appears to be critically broken in these builds of Windows. (It's fixed upstream in 20H1 builds.)

morpheuskafka3• 7 years ago

Hyper-V is already required for many security features like memory isolation. Also, Windows has an open hypervisor API (iirc QEMU is working on support for it) to allow other apps to leverage Hyper-V. VirtualBox hasn't really been competitive with VMWare or Hyper-V for a long time and many of it's key features are under the nonfree extension pack anyway. As a level 1 hypervisior--which by definition is a core part of the OS--Hyper-V will always have the advantage over third-party level 2s.

throwaway2048• 7 years ago

The Level 1/2 distinction is almost purely marketing, especially with hardware level virtualization abilities like VT-x and VT-d. In no meaningful way does the fact that Hyper-V is somehow a "level 1" hypervisor make it better at being a virtual machine host.

mappu2• 7 years ago

iirc QEMU is working on support for it

It's great and seamless, just pass `-accel whqx` (instead of `-accel hax` or `-accel kvm`).

There are working binaries here: https://shadycode.com/qemu-binaries-for-windows-64-bit-with-...

CWuestefeld2• 7 years ago

This is our big problem. Our development "workstations" are virtualized in VMWare. That's incompatible with Hyper-V, so MS is locking us out of this technology.

runevault• 7 years ago

Modern VMWare still doesn't support Hyper-V? That's unfortunate to hear. My old version doesn't so I have to reboot anytime I want to get into my VMWare VMs, yet I'd made the (sounds to be incorrect) assumption that would be fixed in newer versions.

signal11• 7 years ago

If your dev workstations are virtualized already, why not ask your tooling team to provide virtualized Linux workstations? If you deploy to Linux this is something they should provide anyway, for dev/prod parity.

rcarmo• 7 years ago

You can do what I do in WSL 1, which is to forward the Docker daemon port from the VM and point your local CLI to it via the TCP port.

I've been doing that for years now (I originally built my own Docker client binary for the Mac and pointed it to a Linux box, did the same when I ran Parallels on my Mac, and still do it occasionally with ARM boxes at home). People forget that Docker was designed as a client-server solution, and that the server bit works fine.

You can ask your sysadmins to set up a VMware instance running boot2docker and link it directly to your Windows workstation.

m_mueller6• 7 years ago

Aren't they replacing Hyper-V for the next version descriped in the post? I thought it now runs natively on top of WSL syscalls and the NT kernel.

cpuguy83• 7 years ago

WSL 2 is a full Linux kernel running in Hyper-V rather than an emulation layer on top of NT.

The article is about two things:

1. WSL 1 was not enough to run docker on it 2. WSL 2 is what was needed and with it Docker can use it and replace the Linuxkit based bits it currently ships, and get other improvements along with it.

wmf• 7 years ago

WSL1 is syscall emulation on the NT kernel. Docker does not use WSL1. WSL2 is a Linux VM on Hyper-V which will be used by Docker Desktop.

tw04• 7 years ago

If I was on VM-Ware's executive team

You mean the product they've all but abandoned?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/01/vmwar...

submarining virtualbox

Oracle will manage that on their own regardless of what Microsoft does. They already started by making the extension pack free to download but licensed so they can catch unsuspecting users in one of their famous audits.

joemaller1• 7 years ago

We work with a lot of independent contractors, many of whom get by fine with Window Home, so this is great news:

...because WSL 2 works on Windows 10 Home edition, so will Docker Desktop

Glad to see this too:

bind mounts from WSL will support inotify events and have nearly identical I/O performance as on a native Linux machine

Fr0styMatt88• 7 years ago

I didn't think Hyper-V was available on Windows 10 Home Edition; has this changed or was it always available?

dstaley• 7 years ago

It's not. It's possible Microsoft is making an exception for WSL2, but I highly doubt the user will be able to run arbitrary VMs on HyperV without a Pro edition of Windows.

mimixco• 7 years ago

This is a big step toward the full merger of Windows and Linux on the desktop, which is the most logical way forward for both platforms. Kudos to Docker for taking a primary role and following Microsoft in this direction.

mikhailt• 7 years ago

Can you explain how this is the most logical way forward for Linux?

For me, it feels it could be the opposite with Windows potentially impacting how Linux moves forward by having more devs using WSL instead of actual Linux and not actually optimizing for native Linux support.

For an example, Valve's Proton vs. native linux games, if I was a game dev, I wouldn't bother porting any Windows games to Linux, just rely on Proton instead.

antisemiotic• 7 years ago

For an example, Valve's Proton vs. native linux games, if I was a game dev, I wouldn't bother porting any Windows games to Linux, just rely on Proton instead

I see what you mean, but on the other hand, most game development studios already didn't bother to port anyway.

jraph• 7 years ago

I hope they will pick Linux as the kernel and Plasma as the desktop environment in this full merger, and ls as the listing directory command.

bdcravens• 7 years ago

ls as the listing directory command

ls works in Power Shell (though I believe it's just an alias)

2wrist• 7 years ago

So... will WSL2 need to be installed as per WSL? because WSL will not install on my work machine as the machine is locked down by the firm.. So will I lose local Docker?

heywire• 7 years ago

From what I understand, this will only affect Linux containers running on Windows. Is that correct? What about Windows containers? I know they're not nearly as popular, but we did evaluate them at one time for running a legacy Windows application. I doubt we're alone in that use case.

Zardoz84• 7 years ago

So WSL2 would use a lightweight VM running a Linux kernel to avoid the slow windows I/O.

vbezhenar• 7 years ago

I'm very skeptical of this new technology. I used VirtualBox for years and I will continue to do so. I just don't see any reason to switch to that new technology. Mounts? VirtualBox can do that. Fast boot? Well, VirtualBox boots in seconds, that's more than enough for me. Dynamic memory allocation? VirtualBox has memory balooning, if I ever would run into memory limits, I can always do that. And zero problems with all those Hyper-V conflicts, like Android emulators, snapshot support, VM import/export, actually any OS rather than just Linux, etc.

AdrianB13• 7 years ago

I used VMware since 2007, HyperV and VirtualBox for more than 5 years and I don't have such strong opinions, I use the one that is available and does the job. Because I had less problems with VMware and HyperV, I almost gave up to VirtualBox, YMMV.

geggam3• 7 years ago

Amazes me how far people go to avoid simply running Linux, why isnt that the preferred option here ?

rat9988• 7 years ago

Because I'm too lazy and too cheap to have two computers.

alexhutcheson• 7 years ago

Because they want a laptop with decent power management that doesn't freak out when connecting or disconnecting additional displays, but they don't necessarily want a Dell XPS or a ThinkPad. They might also appreciate the ability to quickly nuke their Linux environment and create a new one if they really mess up their configs somehow.

geggam3• 7 years ago

None of the issues you speak of are relevant to running linux on a laptop instead of windows. Linux has decent PM and I havent had glitchy issues with displays in years.

The idea of nuking the linux environment gets easier when you run one natively as you start to understand the system better.

I understand the idea where everyone wants to have the same ecosystem to run things on (docker) but the best part of linux was the fact it wasnt the same as windows

This convergence of the operating systems is concerning

miaklesp2• 7 years ago

Only reading about video driver issues and sleep/hibernation configuration puts me off Linux desktop. Windows is a great and modern user-friendly OS. Office 365 is awesome too. WSL is the latest missing piece.

metasaval• 7 years ago

For me, personally, I just play way too many games to have running Linux as a daily driver a viable option. I've tried multiple times to move (Manjaro with Lutris was the closest I've gotten, but to be fair I haven't tried Steam Proton yet), but it's never stuck. Yea I could dual boot and just keep Windows around for gaming, but I'm lazy and flip-flop between coding and gaming too often. For my uses, I've been able to use Windows as a decent dev environment with no major issues, but WSL2 would make things even better.

Note: this is all for personal projects on my home desktop, my work laptop is Windows and I have no problems with it for my current position.

nikolay• 7 years ago

It's sad that all this needs Windows 10 Pro, which makes all learner developers unable to use Docker to learn properly unless they upgrade.

The Future of Docker Desktop for Windows

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