Coming soon; Running Linux Blender builds on Windows?

I am not making this up, because Microsoft has recently announced support for GUI apps. on their “Linux Subsystem For Windows” feature.

If it is what I think it is, it means the possibility of getting many of the speed and memory advantages Linux users enjoy on Windows (because we can use builds made using GCC instead of MSVC). Some are arguing that this is proof that we have finally entered the decade of Linux (which ironically has been spearheaded by Microsoft itself).

There’s even talk as to whether Windows itself will become Unix-based (and as such create a common base for all PC systems to the delight of developers), but that is just rumor so far. Together with renewed competition in hardware, this could become the most interesting decade for computing in general since the 1990’s or even the 1980’s.

Subsystem sounds like a virtual machine, I do not think there would be any advantages of using Blender on a Linux subsystem of windows, Windows will retain some memory and graphic power for itself. I can run windows on Linux through VM as if it was a normal program but it does not take advantage of my systems capabilities and is very limited.

If you want the best of both worlds I suggest or a separate partition or a separate HD and make a dual boot system.

You can already do command-line renders for faster speeds using WSL/WSL2 and Linux Blender builds. I guess that invalidates the theory according to which Blender is faster on Linux because there’s less stuff running in the background.

140s vs 170s in this scene using the latest Blender 3.0 alpha builds.

From what I have heard (mostly on ex MS employees that are now Youtubers), Windows codebase is arcane and troublesome.

Despite that in some “miraculous” way they managed to make it possible to port in on ARM and slap some new improvements on the kernel, but still, they lost the smartphone battle.

And things not going well, all casual users are using Android tablets and the trend keeps getting more and more towards portable devices.

Apart from those who do real work on PC or just play games, PCs are getting old and practically useless for casual users.

However I must admit that in favor of competition some companies deserve a nice slap so they become more human-friendly once again.