20 ms·

Could be a MBP replacement for developers. The only thing is those of us running on OS X, how is Windows 10? I love my command line and linux like commands and

• mholt 11y ago
  I would just install Linux on it.
  • eric_cc 11y ago
    Good luck getting the touch screen to work flawlessly with your Linux install
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • ossreality 11y ago
      Touch screens work great out of the box on every laptop I own under Linux and Gnome. I love it when I can tell people that haven't used Linux based on the antiquated stereotypes they whip out smugly. Oh dear god why was I un-hell-banned? Oh no, apparently just selected comments are unbanned...? Or else one of the mods accidentally upvoted my last post 12 times?
    • cyrus_ 11y ago
      Not sure about this particular machine, but touchscreen laptops work just fine with Linux nowadays from what I can gather.
    • korva 11y ago
      Yup, I'm running Ubuntu in a Lenovo Yoga - for the most part it's great, but the touchscreen stuff and tablet mode do not work at all.
    • izolate 11y ago
      As a developer who spends the entire time in the terminal and only touches the keyboard... so?
      • RaleyField 11y ago
        Unless you are reading this in lynx then you do sometimes use graphical terminals. For some people reading websites and consuming other media that don't require much textual input is more comfortable in 'tablet mode'. Dual use nature of Surface computers allows people to carry around one device instead of two and with no syncing required.
• togusa 11y ago
  It's all there, just different. PowerShell = bash, Chocolatey = homebrew, Windows Server Containers = docker, Hyper-V+powershell = vagrant, DSC = ansible etc etc. I don't use Windows 10 for reference though. Still on 8.1 until they fix a few things and release a version-matched server platform.
  • bradyd 11y ago
    Vagrant works on Windows. You can use Hyper-V or VirtualBox for the virtual machine environment.
    • togusa 11y ago
      I know. However it's buggy on windows and painful for deploying windows VMs on (with packer).
  • mpweiher 11y ago
    > PowerShell = bash While a great fan of PowerShell in theory, in practice it seems to be extremely cumbersome. Sort of the opposite of bash and other Unix shells, which suck in theory and are very useful/convenient/powerful in practice.
    • Someone1234 11y ago
      Cumbersome or you just aren't familiar with it yet? The whole design of PS is meant to make it so you can "guess" the names of cmdlets you've never used before. Everything is Verb-Noun, Get-Service, New-Service, Restart-Service, Stop-Service, etc. Discoverability is valued over succinctness.
      • UK-AL 11y ago
        Although you can have succinctness, most commands have shortcuts for them. Get-Content = gc or cat for example
      • Karunamon 11y ago
• sleepychu 11y ago
  RE:Homebrew. I feel like most of the time I'm developing on OSX I'm just trying to fill in the gaps. I wish I could get the same battery life out of my air on real unix.
• bsimpson 11y ago
  I was intrigued by the first Surface tablet until I played with one in person and realized even with the fancy Metro skin, it's still crappy-old Windows.
• pvnick 11y ago
  Indeed windows for development is not always as streamlined as a unix-based system like OS X. I use a surface pro 3 with windows 8.1 and wrote a python script that opens a cygwin terminal at the top of my screen to provide Guake-like functionality for windows. Most development work I do however is done within a Ubuntu virtual machine, but then again I've usually been doing web development over the past couple years.
  • ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    Someday someone should write a book published by one of the tech book publishers about how to set up non Visual Studio dev environments on Windows (RoR, Django, PHP/MySQL, etc). It seems like things have gotten to the point where developing on Windows == MSFT dev tools, and everything else is Mac/*nix.
    • pvnick 11y ago
      It certainly feels that way, perhaps because I'm so used to apt on linux and windows just doesn't have any equivalent tools that I'm aware of. There's still a long ways to go on the software side to bridge the gap between the Microsoft and open source ecosystems.
    • wdmeldon 11y ago
      It honestly feels a lot like all the kids in the neighborhood just got new mountain bikes and you're still using a scooter. You can usually keep up, but as soon as they go off the road, you're on your own. VMs are 100% the way to go, but I am consistently frustrated by incompatibility, especially with the nodejs ecosystem. Windows users are a huge minority so tools are rarely built with a non *Nix environment in mind.
    • Too 11y ago
      With WAMP you can get php and MySQL running quickly. Python and java also works very good on windows, both runtime and selection of dev environment.
    • kyriakos 11y ago
      been using windows for web development for a long time. almost every tool comes with windows support. there are some exceptions but there are always alternatives.
• dragontamer 11y ago
  http://thenewstack.io/docker-just-changed-windows-server-as-we-know-it/ http://thenewstack.io/docker-just-changed-windows-server-as-... Microsoft explicitly has made Windows10 Docker compatible.
  • psquid 11y ago
    That link seems to be about Windows Server (no version stated, but given it's upcoming, presumably 2016), did you mean to post a different one?
• Analemma_ 11y ago
  They're trying, they're moving in the right direction, but it's still a ways away. Some nice things recently: - The console host application on Windows 10 finally doesn't suck. Resizeable, copy-paste supported, word wrap text selection, etc. - It seems like they're trying to make their dev tools use a lot less "black box magic", the kind that that's wonderful when it works right and impossible to debug when it goes wrong. At an ASP.NET workshop recently, Scott Hanselman went to great pains to emphasize that everything he was doing in the VS GUI could also be done from the command line. - Nuget keeps improving. It's still not a replacement for apt or even Homebrew, but they're listening to feedback and making the changes people request. I feel like in another year or so it could be a real contender. Edit: Formatting
• slantyyz 11y ago
  >> Could be a MBP replacement for developers. The only thing is those of us running on OS X, how is Windows 10? >> I love my command line and linux like commands and tools. - Homebrew - Bash scripts - Docker (Windows 10 currently not supported) - Vagrant I switched from OSX to Windows last year. I thought I'd miss stuff, but you don't. There are package managers like chocolatey to replace homebrew. I use Cmder as my terminal and it works a lot like Mac's terminal. It was probably the key app that made my transition easy. I use Vagrant on Windows and it works fine. Can't say much about bash scripts or Docker though, since I rarely run those locally.
  • baby 11y ago
    I use babun for everything. It's cygwin on steroids with oh-my-zsh. You have a packet manager called "pact" that works way better than chocolatey (so far)
  • jtreminio 11y ago
    > I use Vagrant on Windows and it works fine. Not really - there are some big differences to keep in mind. If your shared folders have symlinks, they won't work within the VM unless you're using Virtualbox's native shared folders, which is dog slow. Permissions are also messed up if your VM is on an NTFS HDD - all files and all folders will basically be 755/777 within the VM. There are plenty more tradeoffs.
  • bkjelden 11y ago
    > I use Cmder as my terminal and it works a lot like Mac's terminal What advantages does this provide over the Windows 10 terminal? Windows 10 fixed all of my biggest gripes with cmd.exe
    • slantyyz 11y ago
      It's more about muscle memory and not having to retrain your brain. After using Mac for such a long time, it's nice to not have to recondition yourself to having to use backslashes or using commands like `dir` instead of `ls`.
• qntmfred 11y ago
  I use both a MBP and a Win10 laptop. I really do like Win10, and honestly probably better than OS X. I have a powershell console open on Win10 just as often as I have the terminal open on OS X. It's just a different dialect of command line than what some folks are used to
• arel 11y ago
  As a developer my first question would be: Can I dual boot linux on it? If so it would be an extremely attractive developer machine and switch to Windows when you need it. The hardware is the show stealer here.
  • elipsey 11y ago
    This. Is the bootloader locked? So far I have mixed feelings about tablets. I like the "tablet" part but not the "it is cryptographically sercured from doing anything that might upset a government, corporation, or business model" part.
    • Someone1234 11y ago
      The Surface Pro 3 you could. Just had to disable Secure Boot for setup, boot from a USB stick, and after installation you could re-enable it (assuming you had a Linux distribution that supports Secure Boot signing). Obviously nobody outside of Microsoft will know if that remains true with the Surface Pro 4.
      • Arnavion 11y ago
        Secure Boot is always disable-able on x86. This has been true since Surface Pro 1.
        • cmurf 11y ago
          The Windows 10 hardware certification permits the OEM to make Secure Boot not disablable. But the way the major distros work, they get a pre-bootloader signed with the Microsoft key through Microsoft's signing service, and that pre-bootloader contains a key permitting the chaining of the real bootloader, the kernel, signed with the distro key. So it's not a big problem.
          • Arnavion 11y ago
            Up till W8.1, the spec (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj128256 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj...) explicitly requires the ability to disable Secure Boot: On non-ARM systems, the platform MUST implement the ability for a physically present user to select between two Secure Boot modes in firmware setup: "Custom" and "Standard". Custom Mode allows for more flexibility as specified in the following: ... B.If the user ends up deleting the PK then, upon exiting the Custom Mode firmware setup, the system is operating in Setup Mode with SecureBoot turned off. ... Enable/Disable Secure Boot. On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv. I can't find the doc for W10. Has the language changed? Can you link it? The closest thing I found is https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn898540 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn... which isn't really a spec, but does say: For most PCs, you can disable Secure Boot through the PC’s firmware (BIOS) menus. For logo-certified Windows RT 8.1 and Windows RT PCs, Secure Boot is required to be configured so that it cannot be disabled. which seems to imply that it is no longer a hard requirement for x86 unlike before.
• joshkpeterson 11y ago
  I tried to do become OS ambidextrous last year. After a couple weeks, still felt slower / bogged down by the differences. I hated it and gave up.
• WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  I'm running Windows 10 with multiple Linux server distros in the background. Hyper-V shuts them down and brings them up with Windows. WinSCP is my file manager and Putty is my terminal. I prefer this over OS X on Apple hardware because I can get the exact Unix experience that I want without having to fight with Apple about who is in control of the machine. Perhaps more importantly, I get the desktop experience that I love, which is Windows.
  • dugmartin 11y ago
    If you haven't tried it out I'd suggest checking out SuperPutty (https://github.com/jimradford/superputty https://github.com/jimradford/superputty) - it allows for multiple Putty windows in a tabbed interface.
    • 0xFFC 11y ago
      I use exact same configuration , ARCH and DEBIAN cli in background and putty in windows 10 for my C development , and btsync for syncing file between two . I hate tabbed interface , especially in command line. One good reason is window managers , with windows 10 window manager I get almost perfect tiling window manager functionality , but with tabs ?
    • samstave 11y ago
      Thanks for this! I'm using putty and without tabs it drives me nuts. When I read the GP comment my first thought was "yeah same but tabless terminals sucks!" Then I saw your comment. Didn't know about super putty - switching today.
  • partiallypro 11y ago
    I really enjoy Bitvise over PuTTy. If you haven't checked it out, give it a gander. BUT, in the upcoming Windows 10 update SSH support is coming to Windows' shell. So technically you won't need either. It will be more like Terminal on Mac. I still will be using Bitvise, just because of how it manages key files, etc.
    • 11y ago
• gdulli 11y ago
  I use Windows as a desktop but have it host a VirtualBox Linux VM for my real work because I don't find either Windows or OSX acceptable for serious Linux development. OSX is actually more insidious because it sort of looks like Linux and makes you think it just about can be Linux, but it's just not. Under VirtualBox my development environment can match my production environment almost completely. There's no awkward "but here's how you do it in Windows/OSX" that mostly works but often doesn't in some subtle way. I haven't tried Windows 10 yet but this setup has worked very well under Windows 7 and 8.1 so I expect it will be fine under 10 since it's just an evolution. I've used this setup in OSX and Windows and it goes more smoothly in Windows. One of the keys to it is that you use SMB to mount your VM disk as a local drive to the host, so you get the benefit of any Windows editor.
  • wlesieutre 11y ago
    I toyed around with a similar setup recently (but I'm not actually doing any Linux development) to try out Nuclide, Facebook's big addon for Atom. Basically you run a server in your Linux VM that Atom/Nuclide (running in Windows) connects to, and it lets you edit files in the VM as if your project folder were local. For those who like a GUI, I think it's worth looking at to save yourself the hassle of VirtualBox guest tools, etc. that never seem to work reliably. And frankly, I've never been particularly happy with the performance of a virtualized Linux GUI, though most of that blame goes to Ubuntu and its apparently impossible to get rid of (in some locations) fading animations. Anyway, neat tool, worth checking out. You set up a VM to match whatever you'll be deploying to and then work on files in the VM from an editor in Windows. When it works smoothly it's really cool.
  • sorenjan 11y ago
    Using VMWare Workstation fullscreen in Windows 10 is great, since Microsoft finally added virtual desktops. Just put the cursor on the toolbar at the top of the screen (to send keyboard input to the host) and press Ctrl+Win+Left/Right to quickly switch between VMs or host desktop.
    • bduerst 11y ago
      What's the i/o latency (clicks, typing, etc.) on linux VMs in W10? Is it a native VM? Two years ago I was using VMware in W7, but ended up dual booting Linux since the lag was so annoying.
• pdpi 11y ago
  I occasionally have to work with Windows servers. Most of the rest, for me, is somewhat painful, but Powershell is probably going to make you wish somebody would port it to unix-y OSes. Just a shame that all the convenient line-editing commands don't work.
• fencepost 11y ago
  You might be interested in the most recent episode of Shop Talk Show (http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/186-dave-goes-windows/ http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/186-dave-goes-windows/) and associated blog posts. One notable thing from the blog side was significant issues with RoR, but otherwise I think there's a lot of good.
• on_and_off 11y ago
  As an Android developer, I don't think I could seriously use Windows. Anecdotally, out of my 10 colleagues working on our app, 8 use OsX, one Windows and one Debian. - Drivers are a pain in the ass for Android devices on Windows. You always need to install one when you first connect a device. - The linux like commands are awesome on OsX and not something I can give up easily. - Some very important tools are OsX only : ColorSnapper2, Sketch, Zeplin (it does have a webapp though)
• r-w 11y ago
  Try Cygwin! It’s a *nix environment for Windows. I plan to install it once I get my hands on this beauty. Package management still works for CLIs, I suppose.
  • PT_2014 11y ago
    If you are interested in Cygwin - try Babun. http://babun.github.io/ http://babun.github.io/ its a prepackaged Cygwin with a great command line and good package management.
• hapticdata 11y ago
  I feel the same. The biggest annoyance is not having a better command-line application, at least provide tabs or split-windows. With enough work I can get around not having unix but having open 4 powershells is annoying.
• twodayslate 11y ago
  Powershell is pretty powerful. You can do some crazy/awesome things with it. It has a learning curve but is worth the time to learn it.