5 ms·

Windows? It's really not that bad.

by highace 10y ago

javajosh 10y ago
I can see the marketing now. "Switch back to Windows: it's really not that bad."
- talmand 10y ago
  I thought that was the marketing for Windows 7 after the Vista fiasco.
- WayneBro 10y ago
  Why would they say that? They could simply point out all the things that you can do on Windows that you cannot do on macOS because Apple will not let you.
kbenson 10y ago
I would go so far as saying it's actually rather good now, and I replaced the Windows OS on every laptop and workstation I got from 1999 (Slackware :) to 2013 with Linux and a highly customized FVWM config, so I consider myself having a high bar. Although I did use a Mac as a workstation for a couple years ~ 2010, and found that particularly trying, so that may factor in to how people receive my assessment. It was close to what I wanted, but still far enough away to just generally annoy me by not being configurable enough to actually do what I wanted.
paultopia 10y ago
I've been dying for details about Windows 10 and the linux subsystem, and don't actually know anyone who uses it for serious work. Is it actually a replacement for the BSD-based goodness of OSX? Do you get GCC, Make, instantly-functional Python, etc. etc. etc.? Or are there a ton of rough edges? Seriously considering jumping ship to Microsoft and buying a Surface here...
- soneil 10y ago
  It's certainly worth playing with, but I'm not sure I'd depend on it actually working for any given task yet. YMMV of course, but you really want to give it a spin before you put any purchasing choices behind it. e.g., for my uses, I am constantly running into 'rough edges'. Huge swathes of /proc are missing, which breaks a lot of tools I simply expect to work. As an example, I have a very simple script for tooling with my raspberry pis. It does an ipv6 broadcast ping (ff02::1) on my ethernet interface, and ssh's to the address that returns. Nice easy way to solve the chicken & egg of sshing to a device that has no address configured yet. On 'Bash on Ubuntu on Windows', it fails because I can't use the -I(interface) option with either ping or ping6 - setsockopt(SO_BINDTODEVICE): Protocol not available. (and you can't broadcast without that, because the broadcast address is the same on every interface, so it can't figure it out itself). Then I can't list my own IP address, either the new way (ip addr show - SO_SNDBUF: Invalid Argument) or the traditional way (ifconfig - /proc/net/dev doesn't exist), which was my script's other requirement - because if I broadcast on my own interfaces, I'll also reply to them, so I need to know my own address to exclude it from the replies. Most of this may be very situational, or may be me doing things the wrong way, and may not affect what you expect to run on a linux subsystem. But it did hammer home for me quite quickly, that this isn't a unix environment - it's a very shallow veneer.
makeset 10y ago
I'll say this: I switched to MacOS after smashing my last Windows (XP) laptop to pieces on the wall in a fit of rage ten years ago. Since then, I'd honestly completely forgotten how a computer could possibly drive a person to physical violence, until I bought a Windows (10) laptop recently just to play some games, and OH MY GOD. It is so, so unbelievably mindbogglingly fucking terrible.

Windows? It's really not that bad.

by highace 10y ago

Windows? It's really not that bad.

javajosh 10y ago

I can see the marketing now. "Switch back to Windows: it's really not that bad."

talmand 10y ago
I thought that was the marketing for Windows 7 after the Vista fiasco.
WayneBro 10y ago
Why would they say that? They could simply point out all the things that you can do on Windows that you cannot do on macOS because Apple will not let you.

kbenson 10y ago

I would go so far as saying it's actually rather good now, and I replaced the Windows OS on every laptop and workstation I got from 1999 (Slackware :) to 2013 with Linux and a highly customized FVWM config, so I consider myself having a high bar. Although I did use a Mac as a workstation for a couple years ~ 2010, and found that particularly trying, so that may factor in to how people receive my assessment. It was close to what I wanted, but still far enough away to just generally annoy me by not being configurable enough to actually do what I wanted.

paultopia 10y ago

I've been dying for details about Windows 10 and the linux subsystem, and don't actually know anyone who uses it for serious work. Is it actually a replacement for the BSD-based goodness of OSX? Do you get GCC, Make, instantly-functional Python, etc. etc. etc.? Or are there a ton of rough edges? Seriously considering jumping ship to Microsoft and buying a Surface here...

soneil 10y ago
It's certainly worth playing with, but I'm not sure I'd depend on it actually working for any given task yet. YMMV of course, but you really want to give it a spin before you put any purchasing choices behind it. e.g., for my uses, I am constantly running into 'rough edges'. Huge swathes of /proc are missing, which breaks a lot of tools I simply expect to work. As an example, I have a very simple script for tooling with my raspberry pis. It does an ipv6 broadcast ping (ff02::1) on my ethernet interface, and ssh's to the address that returns. Nice easy way to solve the chicken & egg of sshing to a device that has no address configured yet. On 'Bash on Ubuntu on Windows', it fails because I can't use the -I(interface) option with either ping or ping6 - setsockopt(SO_BINDTODEVICE): Protocol not available. (and you can't broadcast without that, because the broadcast address is the same on every interface, so it can't figure it out itself). Then I can't list my own IP address, either the new way (ip addr show - SO_SNDBUF: Invalid Argument) or the traditional way (ifconfig - /proc/net/dev doesn't exist), which was my script's other requirement - because if I broadcast on my own interfaces, I'll also reply to them, so I need to know my own address to exclude it from the replies. Most of this may be very situational, or may be me doing things the wrong way, and may not affect what you expect to run on a linux subsystem. But it did hammer home for me quite quickly, that this isn't a unix environment - it's a very shallow veneer.

makeset 10y ago

I'll say this: I switched to MacOS after smashing my last Windows (XP) laptop to pieces on the wall in a fit of rage ten years ago. Since then, I'd honestly completely forgotten how a computer could possibly drive a person to physical violence, until I bought a Windows (10) laptop recently just to play some games, and OH MY GOD. It is so, so unbelievably mindbogglingly fucking terrible.