Re: Cygwin a bit slow

[Adam Dinwoodie <adam@dinwoodie.org>]

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 at 16:19, J M via Cygwin wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm seeing that Cygwin is a bit slow, directly and after comparing to
> simple ubuntu virtual machines by example.
>
> Specifically:
>
> - Copy and paste texts in vim, I see clearly the slow in paste.
> - Using sed and/or grep that count approx. between 6x and 8x respect to
> virtual machine simple ubuntu.
> - In general multiple bash commands are slower.
>
> Can you analyze this?
>
> I'm use the last updated Windows 11 and a fresh Cygwin.

This is expected. Cygwin runs as a compatibility layer between Windows
and the POSIX applications, and that compatibility layer has
significant performance overheads. Running in a virtual machine –
including WSL – has far fewer of those overheads, at the expense of
requiring a complete separate operating system, all the virtualisation
infrastructure, and poorer access to the Windows OS.

There is clearly a trade-off here, and for a lot of folk who would
have used Cygwin in the past, WSL is going to be a better choice:
those disadvantages are much less relevant than they were five or ten
years ago. Obviously, if you have ideas for how to improve Cygwin
performance, the project is always looking for volunteers; there's
more information at https://cygwin.com/contrib.html.

HTH

Adam