4 ms·

Honestly, it's good to hear. I really like Windows 7, and I appreciate that a lot of work has gone into making me more efficient as a user. I'm a Mac/Windows/

Honestly, it's good to hear. I really like Windows 7, and I appreciate that a lot of work has gone into making me more efficient as a user. I'm a Mac/Windows/Gnome user currently and I have to say Windows 7 is my favorite desktop OS so far (except for web development, I like a native *nix shell). It's great to see progression and what MS is capable of in the face of competition.

endtime 17y ago
>Windows 7 is my favorite desktop OS so far (except for web development, I like a native *nix shell). I'm exactly the same. I've found that logging into a Linux machine and tunneling X actually works fine for me; it's definitely an easier solution than dual booting.
nailer 17y ago
It's also the only OS that has full scalability. You raise the DPI, everything on screen is increased in size, and 95% are still crisp. Only think is I wish you could make the dock icons bigger.
sliverstorm 17y ago
> except for web development, I like a native nix shell I like the shell for anything nitty-gritty, and cygwin doesn't quite cut it. I figure if they would build a Windows UI on a *nix core- essentially the same feat as OS9 -> OSX- so long as it was at least decent, I'd probably willingly pay full retail and never stray, at least for desktops/laptops.
- iamelgringo 17y ago
  They are actually starting to build powershell into a lot more of their core apps. You can really do a lot of cool things with powershell. It's just an ugly looking language, IMO, so I tend to use iPython as my scripting language. It's really nice to be able to drop in to PowerShell if you need it, though. I run Win 7 at home, on all my boxes, and I'm running Win3K on EC2 as a server. I can remote in from my phone, as well as my netbook without any problems. My deployment is automated and scripted. I'm going to switch to Server 2008 soon, so I can get a remote shell if I need it.
  - tl 17y ago
    It also has shitty performance. 32-bit emacs on my windows machine at work can't open a 300 MB text file for analysis. Turns out that 32-bit emacs uses a 28-bit pointer (256 MB file size limit, 64-bit emacs handles up to 1 million TB). So, I tried splitting the file. Here's my result: On my home machine using linux / bash / cat | head+tail: about 4 seconds On my (slower) work machine using cygwin: about 10 seconds Using powershell: writes about 100-200k / sec (so about 25-30 minute if it ran to completion), but it chokes around 64MB. I know, you can write a bunch of .net code in powersheel and get non-terrible performance. That's not the point; idiomatic code should not be unusable.
- psranga 17y ago
  Yep, agreed. My major complaint with Cygwin is the lack of a decent package manager. 'sudo apt-get install' on ubuntu is addictive.
  - sliverstorm 17y ago
    Same here. Plus awkward integration with the actual filesystem (/ should be C:), and I've always hated cmd.exe as compared to virtually any linux xterm
    - ak2 17y ago
      You can install Cygwin into C:\ actually, which makes / == C:\. I find that does make it feel much better integrated with Windows. And there are several alternatives to the default console: mintty and rxvt if you don't want to run an X server, and xterm and rxvt-unicode if you do.
      - sliverstorm 17y ago
        Thank you! That's fantastic advice. Still not perfect, but much better!
sankara 17y ago
I'm in the same boat too. W7 is my favorite OS so far and I do miss the shell. I adapted myself to use Cygwin to fill the gap though. Windows powershell, while a good effort, is not exactly what I'm looking for. The goodness of a shell extends beyond the raw commands. cygwin + rxvt + zsh is my current shell setup and it works pretty well for me.
- jsulak 17y ago
  I'm the same, except I use cygwin + mintty, which I find to be a better (and better-looking) than rxvt on Windows.
- yesimahuman 17y ago
  VirtualBox+Linux usually satisfies my shell needs, and the rest I'll use putty for (which is definitely showing its age)
rbanffy 17y ago
> It's great to see progression and what MS is capable of in the face of competition. For the kind of money if cost, it's really a tiny, somewhat disappointing, progression. This - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 - would have been a real improvement.
- yesimahuman 17y ago
  I wouldn't know...thank you BizSpark! :)
  - rufugee 17y ago
    You will in, oh, three or so years....after you're sufficiently assimilated...

endtime 17y ago

>Windows 7 is my favorite desktop OS so far (except for web development, I like a native *nix shell). I'm exactly the same. I've found that logging into a Linux machine and tunneling X actually works fine for me; it's definitely an easier solution than dual booting.

nailer 17y ago

It's also the only OS that has full scalability. You raise the DPI, everything on screen is increased in size, and 95% are still crisp. Only think is I wish you could make the dock icons bigger.

sliverstorm 17y ago

> except for web development, I like a native nix shell I like the shell for anything nitty-gritty, and cygwin doesn't quite cut it. I figure if they would build a Windows UI on a *nix core- essentially the same feat as OS9 -> OSX- so long as it was at least decent, I'd probably willingly pay full retail and never stray, at least for desktops/laptops.

iamelgringo 17y ago
They are actually starting to build powershell into a lot more of their core apps. You can really do a lot of cool things with powershell. It's just an ugly looking language, IMO, so I tend to use iPython as my scripting language. It's really nice to be able to drop in to PowerShell if you need it, though. I run Win 7 at home, on all my boxes, and I'm running Win3K on EC2 as a server. I can remote in from my phone, as well as my netbook without any problems. My deployment is automated and scripted. I'm going to switch to Server 2008 soon, so I can get a remote shell if I need it.
- tl 17y ago
  It also has shitty performance. 32-bit emacs on my windows machine at work can't open a 300 MB text file for analysis. Turns out that 32-bit emacs uses a 28-bit pointer (256 MB file size limit, 64-bit emacs handles up to 1 million TB). So, I tried splitting the file. Here's my result: On my home machine using linux / bash / cat | head+tail: about 4 seconds On my (slower) work machine using cygwin: about 10 seconds Using powershell: writes about 100-200k / sec (so about 25-30 minute if it ran to completion), but it chokes around 64MB. I know, you can write a bunch of .net code in powersheel and get non-terrible performance. That's not the point; idiomatic code should not be unusable.
psranga 17y ago
Yep, agreed. My major complaint with Cygwin is the lack of a decent package manager. 'sudo apt-get install' on ubuntu is addictive.
- sliverstorm 17y ago
  Same here. Plus awkward integration with the actual filesystem (/ should be C:), and I've always hated cmd.exe as compared to virtually any linux xterm
  - ak2 17y ago
    You can install Cygwin into C:\ actually, which makes / == C:\. I find that does make it feel much better integrated with Windows. And there are several alternatives to the default console: mintty and rxvt if you don't want to run an X server, and xterm and rxvt-unicode if you do.
    - sliverstorm 17y ago
      Thank you! That's fantastic advice. Still not perfect, but much better!

sankara 17y ago

I'm in the same boat too. W7 is my favorite OS so far and I do miss the shell. I adapted myself to use Cygwin to fill the gap though. Windows powershell, while a good effort, is not exactly what I'm looking for. The goodness of a shell extends beyond the raw commands. cygwin + rxvt + zsh is my current shell setup and it works pretty well for me.

jsulak 17y ago
I'm the same, except I use cygwin + mintty, which I find to be a better (and better-looking) than rxvt on Windows.
yesimahuman 17y ago
VirtualBox+Linux usually satisfies my shell needs, and the rest I'll use putty for (which is definitely showing its age)

rbanffy 17y ago

> It's great to see progression and what MS is capable of in the face of competition. For the kind of money if cost, it's really a tiny, somewhat disappointing, progression. This - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 - would have been a real improvement.

yesimahuman 17y ago
I wouldn't know...thank you BizSpark! :)
- rufugee 17y ago
  You will in, oh, three or so years....after you're sufficiently assimilated...