7 ms·

Well, this has increased the changes of my next laptop being a Surface Book by around 100%. I already loved the form factor of the thing, but lack of bash was a

by untog 11y ago

Well, this has increased the changes of my next laptop being a Surface Book by around 100%. I already loved the form factor of the thing, but lack of bash was absolutely causing me to hesitate and wonder if I could justify doing all my work in a Linux VM or something (I can't). I'm genuinely very tired of OS X, which (to my perception at least) has gotten steadily worse with every version. I for one will be happy to switch.

dimgl 11y ago
Really...? What would you change about OSX? I just switched from Windows to a Mac and I can't see myself ever going back...
- untog 11y ago
  Like I said, maybe it's my perception, but I've lost count of the number of times it has failed to connect to a Wi-Fi network, randomly crashed... it's been unable to connect to any links from http://t.co http://t.co for months, for goodness sake (this has recently been fixed). I think part of my objections are that OS X used to be absolutely rock solid, around the Snow Leopard era. An entire release dedicated just to tuning up the OS! Unheard of now - I will never install a new version until the x.1 patch is out, there are always huge bugs. I don't expect Windows to be rock solid, I just don't expect it to be any worse than OS X any more.
  - dimgl 11y ago
    I haven't had any bugs at all on El Capitan.
- Osiris 11y ago
  I have far more issues with OS X than with Windows. I get kernel panics, waking from sleep crashes, weird issues with external monitors not being detected as connected, or worse, disconnected. Windows also offers a lot more customizations than OS X. However, there are things I like about OS X also, like spaces and multi-touch trackpad support. I use both on a daily basis.
  - berberous 11y ago
    I don't disagree that quality has dropped a bit lately, but I don't think your experience with OS X is typical. I have not had a kernel panic in years. Maybe time you did a clean install.
    - Osiris 11y ago
      The panics I get are related to Thunderbolt, so I suspect it's an issue with the Thunderbolt kernel drivers. I run two external Apple Thunderbolt monitors and that's at the core of most of my issues.
      - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        I run two external Thunderbolt monitors through a couple of cheap adaptor boxes and have never had a problem. I suspect RAM issues. OS X isn't great if - say - Chrome eats all the memory. And if the RAM itself isn't rock solid, you will get crashes. A lot of issues went away when I installed 32GB.
      - SpaceCadetJones 11y ago
        This could very well be it. I was about to comment that I've been using OS X for about 10 years and I'm pretty sure I can count the number of kernel panics I've had on my fingers. Most of those happened a long time ago.
  - balls187 11y ago
    > I get kernel panics, waking from sleep crashes, weird issues with external monitors not being detected as connected, or worse, disconnected. This is a real problem for me as well. Not enough to make me want to ditch my Mac, but it's a real PITB.
- vardump 11y ago
  Working SMB networking would be nice. Tired of mysterious issues. I can't remember a single time in past year when whole directory copy/move to SMB share succeeded. OS X just gives me these descriptive "error -51" or whatevers. (It's really mature (not!) of OSX to have that blue screen icon for SMB shares.) Stable USB stack would be nice as well. Ever since El Capitan, virtual machines I run off USB drive have been getting random I/O timeouts. OS X tends to need quite a bit more memory than Win10. Win10 is as usable on 2 GB RAM as OS X on 4 GB. OS X graphics driver is also pretty slow, some 30% slower than on Windows. OpenGL support is pretty bad on OS X. On Windows 10 side my biggest issues are unstable (or temporarily unavailable) RDP and bluetooth stereo audio stuttering. RDP color accuracy leaves also a lot to be desired.
  - vetinari 11y ago
    Funny, that it's SMB that I hate on Windows. With OSX or Linux its no problem to access shares with different credentials, no matter whether Windows server in AD or standalone samba-based NAS, while it is a major pita in Windows.
    - vardump 11y ago
      Odd. I think my issues might have something to do with file sizes. Maybe there are some issues with files over 2 GB or 4 GB. I don't know. I've just resorted to using FTP (ugh!) and USB drives to get files out of my OS X machines.
      - vetinari 11y ago
        The network is OK? Are you connected over wifi? No packet loss? And even though it is 3x3 MIMO, copying 20GB vm images is not something you want to do over wifi, so in the end I've got the Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter. Works like a charm, shorted the transfer by more than 10x. SMB by itself never gave a problem (clean install of 11.0, then continuously updated to 11.4).
        vardump 11y ago
- haldean 11y ago
  There's no Surface Pro equivalent for OSX (the iPad Pro not running a real OS is too bad), and Mac machines are crazy expensive for what's inside. At least, that's why I switched.
carlosdp 11y ago
Yea same here, the Surface Pro is just such a nice piece of powerful hardware and a great form factor to carry around. Having bash/linux subsystem on Windows makes it a pretty damn nice development machine for pretty much anything (web/games/etc.).
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  If you don't mind having an extremely bloated OS, which is why I quit programming on Windows and switched to Linux in the first place. Now they've just added even more bloat and I imagine developing using the "linux environment" will be a huge pain in the ass because it'll basically be like programming on a new operating system. Can't get node.js to run on your "Linux environment" and access a database running on windows? Good luck finding an answer for that on stackoverflow. You'll have to target yet another environment for any app you develop. Will it be running on a Windows server? A Linux server? A server running "Windows with bash"?
  - parasubvert 11y ago
    Bloat is an overused, nebulous concept. Most people actually like rich desktops and lots of features, which is why Mac laptops have proliferated in the dev community. Things like Node.js already run pretty well on Windows as it is, and MS is building native tooling in Node.js (e.g. their Azure CLI). With this change, Microsoft is definitely going to encourage a lot of Surface adoption for geeks.
eanzenberg 11y ago
Increasing a ~0% chance by 100% is still ~0ish%
- lalaithion 11y ago
  No, it's ambiguous whether he was talking about percentage or percentage points.
digi_owl 11y ago
> Well, this has increased the changes of my next laptop being a Surface Book by around 100%. And thus MS has achieved their goal.
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  Everywhere I go on the internet today everyone seems to agree that the next laptop they're going to buy is a Windows Surface Pro ™. I'm convinced MS has shills on social media pushing their crappy products. No I will not buy your product just for your crappy OS with a crappy VM layer that just adds more bloat. I'll program on Linux and if I need to test on Windows then I'll automate the process. I'm just imagining the headaches people are going to have getting the Linux layer to interact with the Windows layer. There are no answers on stack overflow for this new dev environment.
  - mastax 11y ago
    Yes of course. Anyone who doesn't recognize that your opinionated development style is superior has to be a shill.
freekh 11y ago
Me too, but to be honest I am not quite sure what I don't like about Mac OS X anymore. At work I got Arch with i3 which is (extremely) addictive, but at home I have Mac OS X (and I use for work too). I don't really have any specific problems (compared to Arch :) with Mac OS X. Still I was thinking to put Arch on it, but I don't want to tinker to be able to watch netflix after a long flight in that 'weird' network which the wifi driver version X.Y doesn't like :) Windows felt weird after getting used NIX-ish systems so it was out of the question. I have tried to figure out why I want a non-mac for my laptop and concluded I just like change... :) I was almost settled on that dell xps with ubuntu, but if the Surface Books get thunderbolt 3 and this before the autumn I am pretty sure I can't resist anymore... EDIT: typo
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  Why don't you just use Linux in a VM on Windows? I don't really understand why native bash (and full Linux ABI) would make Windows a better development environment than just running a Linux VM. If you plan on using the Linux environment and having it interact with the Windows environment you're going to have the same limitations that you would with a VM, OR you'll have to change your workflow because the way a program running under a Linux environment interacts with some windows service is going to be a completely new thing. Will I be able to use a windows only service to interact with a command line program written in python running in the Linux layer? If I can't interact with the windows layer completely then it's very much like a VM or a container running inside a jail. What happens when I install python or nodejs and stuff just doesn't work right? Like say I have a database running on windows and I want to interact with it with python. Will I have to rely in Windows making sure the compatibility layer always work?
  - freekh 11y ago
    Honestly: don't know... :) I suppose when looking for a new fancy (and expensive) gadget I would like it to work like I want it to out of the box. I can admit it is not a rational thing: I would have to install stuff either way, but it makes me _want_ it less... I know it doesn't make sense, but I believe that is it... :)
niutech 11y ago
Have you forgotten about privacy issues in Windows 10 or you just don't care?
- gpvos 11y ago
  I thought you could turn them all off if you were really diligent?
  - niutech 11y ago
    Apparently not: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...
    - gpvos 11y ago
      The leaking random machine ID is pretty bad. The other things seem rather harmless, or you can turn them off.
bigphishy 11y ago
Just use linux.

by untog 11y ago

dimgl 11y ago

Really...? What would you change about OSX? I just switched from Windows to a Mac and I can't see myself ever going back...

untog 11y ago
Like I said, maybe it's my perception, but I've lost count of the number of times it has failed to connect to a Wi-Fi network, randomly crashed... it's been unable to connect to any links from http://t.co http://t.co for months, for goodness sake (this has recently been fixed). I think part of my objections are that OS X used to be absolutely rock solid, around the Snow Leopard era. An entire release dedicated just to tuning up the OS! Unheard of now - I will never install a new version until the x.1 patch is out, there are always huge bugs. I don't expect Windows to be rock solid, I just don't expect it to be any worse than OS X any more.
- dimgl 11y ago
  I haven't had any bugs at all on El Capitan.
Osiris 11y ago
I have far more issues with OS X than with Windows. I get kernel panics, waking from sleep crashes, weird issues with external monitors not being detected as connected, or worse, disconnected. Windows also offers a lot more customizations than OS X. However, there are things I like about OS X also, like spaces and multi-touch trackpad support. I use both on a daily basis.
- berberous 11y ago
  I don't disagree that quality has dropped a bit lately, but I don't think your experience with OS X is typical. I have not had a kernel panic in years. Maybe time you did a clean install.
  - Osiris 11y ago
    The panics I get are related to Thunderbolt, so I suspect it's an issue with the Thunderbolt kernel drivers. I run two external Apple Thunderbolt monitors and that's at the core of most of my issues.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      I run two external Thunderbolt monitors through a couple of cheap adaptor boxes and have never had a problem. I suspect RAM issues. OS X isn't great if - say - Chrome eats all the memory. And if the RAM itself isn't rock solid, you will get crashes. A lot of issues went away when I installed 32GB.
    - SpaceCadetJones 11y ago
      This could very well be it. I was about to comment that I've been using OS X for about 10 years and I'm pretty sure I can count the number of kernel panics I've had on my fingers. Most of those happened a long time ago.
- balls187 11y ago
  > I get kernel panics, waking from sleep crashes, weird issues with external monitors not being detected as connected, or worse, disconnected. This is a real problem for me as well. Not enough to make me want to ditch my Mac, but it's a real PITB.
vardump 11y ago
Working SMB networking would be nice. Tired of mysterious issues. I can't remember a single time in past year when whole directory copy/move to SMB share succeeded. OS X just gives me these descriptive "error -51" or whatevers. (It's really mature (not!) of OSX to have that blue screen icon for SMB shares.) Stable USB stack would be nice as well. Ever since El Capitan, virtual machines I run off USB drive have been getting random I/O timeouts. OS X tends to need quite a bit more memory than Win10. Win10 is as usable on 2 GB RAM as OS X on 4 GB. OS X graphics driver is also pretty slow, some 30% slower than on Windows. OpenGL support is pretty bad on OS X. On Windows 10 side my biggest issues are unstable (or temporarily unavailable) RDP and bluetooth stereo audio stuttering. RDP color accuracy leaves also a lot to be desired.
- vetinari 11y ago
  Funny, that it's SMB that I hate on Windows. With OSX or Linux its no problem to access shares with different credentials, no matter whether Windows server in AD or standalone samba-based NAS, while it is a major pita in Windows.
  - vardump 11y ago
    Odd. I think my issues might have something to do with file sizes. Maybe there are some issues with files over 2 GB or 4 GB. I don't know. I've just resorted to using FTP (ugh!) and USB drives to get files out of my OS X machines.
    - vetinari 11y ago
      The network is OK? Are you connected over wifi? No packet loss? And even though it is 3x3 MIMO, copying 20GB vm images is not something you want to do over wifi, so in the end I've got the Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter. Works like a charm, shorted the transfer by more than 10x. SMB by itself never gave a problem (clean install of 11.0, then continuously updated to 11.4).
      - vardump 11y ago
haldean 11y ago
There's no Surface Pro equivalent for OSX (the iPad Pro not running a real OS is too bad), and Mac machines are crazy expensive for what's inside. At least, that's why I switched.

carlosdp 11y ago

Yea same here, the Surface Pro is just such a nice piece of powerful hardware and a great form factor to carry around. Having bash/linux subsystem on Windows makes it a pretty damn nice development machine for pretty much anything (web/games/etc.).

zxcvcxz 11y ago
If you don't mind having an extremely bloated OS, which is why I quit programming on Windows and switched to Linux in the first place. Now they've just added even more bloat and I imagine developing using the "linux environment" will be a huge pain in the ass because it'll basically be like programming on a new operating system. Can't get node.js to run on your "Linux environment" and access a database running on windows? Good luck finding an answer for that on stackoverflow. You'll have to target yet another environment for any app you develop. Will it be running on a Windows server? A Linux server? A server running "Windows with bash"?
- parasubvert 11y ago
  Bloat is an overused, nebulous concept. Most people actually like rich desktops and lots of features, which is why Mac laptops have proliferated in the dev community. Things like Node.js already run pretty well on Windows as it is, and MS is building native tooling in Node.js (e.g. their Azure CLI). With this change, Microsoft is definitely going to encourage a lot of Surface adoption for geeks.

eanzenberg 11y ago

Increasing a ~0% chance by 100% is still ~0ish%

lalaithion 11y ago
No, it's ambiguous whether he was talking about percentage or percentage points.

digi_owl 11y ago

> Well, this has increased the changes of my next laptop being a Surface Book by around 100%. And thus MS has achieved their goal.

zxcvcxz 11y ago
Everywhere I go on the internet today everyone seems to agree that the next laptop they're going to buy is a Windows Surface Pro ™. I'm convinced MS has shills on social media pushing their crappy products. No I will not buy your product just for your crappy OS with a crappy VM layer that just adds more bloat. I'll program on Linux and if I need to test on Windows then I'll automate the process. I'm just imagining the headaches people are going to have getting the Linux layer to interact with the Windows layer. There are no answers on stack overflow for this new dev environment.
- mastax 11y ago
  Yes of course. Anyone who doesn't recognize that your opinionated development style is superior has to be a shill.

freekh 11y ago

Me too, but to be honest I am not quite sure what I don't like about Mac OS X anymore. At work I got Arch with i3 which is (extremely) addictive, but at home I have Mac OS X (and I use for work too). I don't really have any specific problems (compared to Arch :) with Mac OS X. Still I was thinking to put Arch on it, but I don't want to tinker to be able to watch netflix after a long flight in that 'weird' network which the wifi driver version X.Y doesn't like :) Windows felt weird after getting used NIX-ish systems so it was out of the question. I have tried to figure out why I want a non-mac for my laptop and concluded I just like change... :) I was almost settled on that dell xps with ubuntu, but if the Surface Books get thunderbolt 3 and this before the autumn I am pretty sure I can't resist anymore... EDIT: typo

zxcvcxz 11y ago
Why don't you just use Linux in a VM on Windows? I don't really understand why native bash (and full Linux ABI) would make Windows a better development environment than just running a Linux VM. If you plan on using the Linux environment and having it interact with the Windows environment you're going to have the same limitations that you would with a VM, OR you'll have to change your workflow because the way a program running under a Linux environment interacts with some windows service is going to be a completely new thing. Will I be able to use a windows only service to interact with a command line program written in python running in the Linux layer? If I can't interact with the windows layer completely then it's very much like a VM or a container running inside a jail. What happens when I install python or nodejs and stuff just doesn't work right? Like say I have a database running on windows and I want to interact with it with python. Will I have to rely in Windows making sure the compatibility layer always work?
- freekh 11y ago
  Honestly: don't know... :) I suppose when looking for a new fancy (and expensive) gadget I would like it to work like I want it to out of the box. I can admit it is not a rational thing: I would have to install stuff either way, but it makes me _want_ it less... I know it doesn't make sense, but I believe that is it... :)

niutech 11y ago

Have you forgotten about privacy issues in Windows 10 or you just don't care?

gpvos 11y ago
I thought you could turn them all off if you were really diligent?
- niutech 11y ago
  Apparently not: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...
  - gpvos 11y ago
    The leaking random machine ID is pretty bad. The other things seem rather harmless, or you can turn them off.

bigphishy 11y ago

Just use linux.