7 ms·

The primary reason I even looked at a Mac, way back in the MacOS 10.2 days, was because there is a Unix underneath the pretty interface. I bought my first Mac

The primary reason I even looked at a Mac, way back in the MacOS 10.2 days, was because there is a Unix underneath the pretty interface. I bought my first Mac and never looked back. Stuff like this is making me look at Windows machines again.

corysama 9y ago
I'm betting this is the real end-goal of WSL. MacBooks were once expensive, but high-quality, grab-and-go unixy development machines. Now, they're mostly just expensive. When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine. It'll probably be easier and more reliable than installing Ubuntu directly! At that point, web and server devs will migrate en mass from Mac to Windows. Then they will discover Clang for Windows and that dev tools for Windows in general are actually pretty nice. And, since they are already running their server code on WSL, it becomes much easier and more interesting to get it running in Windows directly. Bang! Huge uptick in open-source server development on Windows.
- bauerd 9y ago
  I just set up a cheap Windows 10 laptop I bought for my mom. It was the first time I got in touch with Windows again since the XP days. Can't say I'm too intrigued, imho the UI is lacking in so many points. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of that Cortana-thing in the taskbar, every window is littered with ribbons, list goes on and on and on … I don't see why I would go for Windows + WSL when I can just slap a distro of choice on it? While I wish Apple got its shit together, I have 0 incentive to move to Windows as a developer. I'd have to find replacements for a lot of small utility apps I take for granted on OS X, and I'd have to cope with the stupid UI Windows shoves down my throat.
  - nailer 9y ago
    They're getting rid on the ribbon in Explorer, you can launch it with an in-beta modern UI since last month's Windows update. They'll probably complete it and make it official in the next big one.
    - mdekkers 9y ago
      For the curious: create a new shortcut with the following target: explorer shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App I think it is pretty "meh"
      - nailer 9y ago
        Well yes, I do too: it's massively incomplete.
- severino 9y ago
  > When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine Well, you know, they _already_ are. We don't have to wait for anything. And even cheaper, if you can avoid paying the windows tax ;)
  - posguy 9y ago
    Yeah, do we really want to run an open garbage fire of an OS that is known as Windows 10 for a daily driver? I know I'd get murdery if I lost all my hot corners, multi-desktop, etc cause that is what makes me productive. Other people who don't like Gnome 3 take pleasure in using i3 or AwesomeWM, which both are major steps up over Win10's UI. At this point, the Windows platform is a rotting cesspool, the devs focused on it know its growth has stopped (but often are clueless about how to move forward), package management is not a thing, and Microsoft has added so many anti-features that it is a pain in the ass to live with.
    - monkmartinez 9y ago
      What isn't a rotting cesspool in your opinion? iOS or Android?
      - posguy 9y ago
        Debian/Arch are both fairly lively, if you want something battle hardend you'll use SLES like Walmart, Kroger, Fred Meyers, Vons, <Fill in major retailer> uses. The desktop is in stasis though, and iOS as a platform is unlikely to grow massively over the next few years. Android is frankly another rotting cesspool of Google's making. Where Microsoft & Apple are able to provide years of updates to every model of phone their software runs on (with MS literally working with the same vendors as Google), Google has successfully ensured that outside of Nexus devices, updates occur rarely if ever.
        s3bast0m 9y ago
        It's easy to keep devices updated when you reset your platform 3 times (WP7 - WP8 - W10P - WOA)
- apardoe-MSFT 9y ago
  You can already target Linux directly from Visual Studio using either WSL or a Linux machine as the target. It uses the compiler on the Linux machine. Details here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/11/linux-development-with-c-in-visual-studio/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/11/linux-dev... And, of course, VS offers Android and iOS targeting in both C++ and .NET. The C++ info is here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/18/android-and-ios-development-with-c-in-visual-studio/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/18/android-a...
  - quickben 9y ago
    These are still too new and have random problems associated with them: No partial compilation if you target Linux. Everything has to be sshed over every time and compiled from scratch. If you have a linker error,it's not displayed right away, you have to dig through files. These are painful to resolve. Lots of other problems too, not the least of if you need high performance disk access, you can forget about WSL. Don't get me started on debugging through rgdb + vs. After our evaluation, we simply got Linux machines and VMs (under Windows) for development. WSL and remote Linux for VS are a great idea, but it looks like they need few patch rounds to be Enterprise ready.
    - apardoe-MSFT 9y ago
      Great feedback, thank you! Linux targeting isn't my area, but I know the guy who owns it would love to chat with you. If you want to help us make this better, would you mind sending me an email at apardoe @ youknowthecompany.com? I totally understand if it's not worth your time. But thank you regardless!
- posguy 9y ago
  Huh? MacBooks are unlikely to disappear, companies love how slowly they depreciate (and are easily sellable), while it is by far the most optimized unix system out there. Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this. Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere? The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state. I just don't see why you'd choose a platform that does pants on head retarded shit like making wget open IE 11 rather than downloading the file at a given URL. This isn't rocket science here, I know all the MS people across the water in Redmond & Bellevue can fix this without much work, but apparently worse than non-existent is the best MS can do.
  - fsiefken 9y ago
    I did a wget -r -l3 in WSL just yesterday to download xconq documentation, worked perfectly.
  - riquito 9y ago
    > Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this. The repairable/upgradable thinkpads are probably better in this regard
    - derefr 9y ago
      Why would you want to repair/upgrade (and so pay the salaries of hardware IT staff) when you could get business-leased commodity computers with scheduled "upgrades" by return-for-replacement, for the same cost?
      - monkmartinez 9y ago
        I want to repair and upgrade my computer. I suspect there are many people like me that would like the option to upgrade components on my laptop as well. I used to be able to do that with a MBP (2012-ish), now I can't... The WSL is compelling and to be honest, one of the main reasons I switched to OSX was the command line. Now, I can have a command line and not have to run VM's for 3d stuff, games, and more. Pretty compelling...
foxhill 9y ago
i'm saying this now; POSIX will never be a first class citizen on windows - we might get shims in /proc and /dev, but windows will never run from POSIX. as long as Win32 exists (and lets face it, that's not going away for a long time), we're basically stuck with running a docker container with linux on it in windows. and that might be all you need. but for many *nix people, this is no where near enough.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Why would you want this, when the NT kernel is so much better architected than any extant Unix except for perhaps Solaris?
  - quickben 9y ago
    POSIX is a standard. Windows has yet to provide a consistent way how to obtain the OS version across releases. Then we can maybe talk about standardizing apps communications.
    - ralish 9y ago
      Uh, that may not be the best example. Are you aware of a reliable way to retrieve the OS version across all POSIX OSs? Because if you are, I would love to hear it.
      - quickben 9y ago
        Probably, but MS is a single vendor, with one (sort of) brand of an OS. They have full control over it.
- midnitewarrior 9y ago
  This is not a container implementation. Microsoft transcoded Linux system calls to Windows kernel calls. It runs efficiently and natively.
  - 9y ago

corysama 9y ago

I'm betting this is the real end-goal of WSL. MacBooks were once expensive, but high-quality, grab-and-go unixy development machines. Now, they're mostly just expensive. When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine. It'll probably be easier and more reliable than installing Ubuntu directly! At that point, web and server devs will migrate en mass from Mac to Windows. Then they will discover Clang for Windows and that dev tools for Windows in general are actually pretty nice. And, since they are already running their server code on WSL, it becomes much easier and more interesting to get it running in Windows directly. Bang! Huge uptick in open-source server development on Windows.

bauerd 9y ago
I just set up a cheap Windows 10 laptop I bought for my mom. It was the first time I got in touch with Windows again since the XP days. Can't say I'm too intrigued, imho the UI is lacking in so many points. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of that Cortana-thing in the taskbar, every window is littered with ribbons, list goes on and on and on … I don't see why I would go for Windows + WSL when I can just slap a distro of choice on it? While I wish Apple got its shit together, I have 0 incentive to move to Windows as a developer. I'd have to find replacements for a lot of small utility apps I take for granted on OS X, and I'd have to cope with the stupid UI Windows shoves down my throat.
- nailer 9y ago
  They're getting rid on the ribbon in Explorer, you can launch it with an in-beta modern UI since last month's Windows update. They'll probably complete it and make it official in the next big one.
  - mdekkers 9y ago
    For the curious: create a new shortcut with the following target: explorer shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App I think it is pretty "meh"
    - nailer 9y ago
      Well yes, I do too: it's massively incomplete.
severino 9y ago
> When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine Well, you know, they _already_ are. We don't have to wait for anything. And even cheaper, if you can avoid paying the windows tax ;)
- posguy 9y ago
  Yeah, do we really want to run an open garbage fire of an OS that is known as Windows 10 for a daily driver? I know I'd get murdery if I lost all my hot corners, multi-desktop, etc cause that is what makes me productive. Other people who don't like Gnome 3 take pleasure in using i3 or AwesomeWM, which both are major steps up over Win10's UI. At this point, the Windows platform is a rotting cesspool, the devs focused on it know its growth has stopped (but often are clueless about how to move forward), package management is not a thing, and Microsoft has added so many anti-features that it is a pain in the ass to live with.
  - monkmartinez 9y ago
    What isn't a rotting cesspool in your opinion? iOS or Android?
    - posguy 9y ago
      Debian/Arch are both fairly lively, if you want something battle hardend you'll use SLES like Walmart, Kroger, Fred Meyers, Vons, <Fill in major retailer> uses. The desktop is in stasis though, and iOS as a platform is unlikely to grow massively over the next few years. Android is frankly another rotting cesspool of Google's making. Where Microsoft & Apple are able to provide years of updates to every model of phone their software runs on (with MS literally working with the same vendors as Google), Google has successfully ensured that outside of Nexus devices, updates occur rarely if ever.
      - s3bast0m 9y ago
        It's easy to keep devices updated when you reset your platform 3 times (WP7 - WP8 - W10P - WOA)
apardoe-MSFT 9y ago
You can already target Linux directly from Visual Studio using either WSL or a Linux machine as the target. It uses the compiler on the Linux machine. Details here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/11/linux-development-with-c-in-visual-studio/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/11/linux-dev... And, of course, VS offers Android and iOS targeting in both C++ and .NET. The C++ info is here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/18/android-and-ios-development-with-c-in-visual-studio/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/18/android-a...
- quickben 9y ago
  These are still too new and have random problems associated with them: No partial compilation if you target Linux. Everything has to be sshed over every time and compiled from scratch. If you have a linker error,it's not displayed right away, you have to dig through files. These are painful to resolve. Lots of other problems too, not the least of if you need high performance disk access, you can forget about WSL. Don't get me started on debugging through rgdb + vs. After our evaluation, we simply got Linux machines and VMs (under Windows) for development. WSL and remote Linux for VS are a great idea, but it looks like they need few patch rounds to be Enterprise ready.
  - apardoe-MSFT 9y ago
    Great feedback, thank you! Linux targeting isn't my area, but I know the guy who owns it would love to chat with you. If you want to help us make this better, would you mind sending me an email at apardoe @ youknowthecompany.com? I totally understand if it's not worth your time. But thank you regardless!
posguy 9y ago
Huh? MacBooks are unlikely to disappear, companies love how slowly they depreciate (and are easily sellable), while it is by far the most optimized unix system out there. Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this. Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere? The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state. I just don't see why you'd choose a platform that does pants on head retarded shit like making wget open IE 11 rather than downloading the file at a given URL. This isn't rocket science here, I know all the MS people across the water in Redmond & Bellevue can fix this without much work, but apparently worse than non-existent is the best MS can do.
- fsiefken 9y ago
  I did a wget -r -l3 in WSL just yesterday to download xconq documentation, worked perfectly.
- riquito 9y ago
  > Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this. The repairable/upgradable thinkpads are probably better in this regard
  - derefr 9y ago
    Why would you want to repair/upgrade (and so pay the salaries of hardware IT staff) when you could get business-leased commodity computers with scheduled "upgrades" by return-for-replacement, for the same cost?
    - monkmartinez 9y ago
      I want to repair and upgrade my computer. I suspect there are many people like me that would like the option to upgrade components on my laptop as well. I used to be able to do that with a MBP (2012-ish), now I can't... The WSL is compelling and to be honest, one of the main reasons I switched to OSX was the command line. Now, I can have a command line and not have to run VM's for 3d stuff, games, and more. Pretty compelling...

foxhill 9y ago

i'm saying this now; POSIX will never be a first class citizen on windows - we might get shims in /proc and /dev, but windows will never run from POSIX. as long as Win32 exists (and lets face it, that's not going away for a long time), we're basically stuck with running a docker container with linux on it in windows. and that might be all you need. but for many *nix people, this is no where near enough.

bitwize 9y ago
Why would you want this, when the NT kernel is so much better architected than any extant Unix except for perhaps Solaris?
- quickben 9y ago
  POSIX is a standard. Windows has yet to provide a consistent way how to obtain the OS version across releases. Then we can maybe talk about standardizing apps communications.
  - ralish 9y ago
    Uh, that may not be the best example. Are you aware of a reliable way to retrieve the OS version across all POSIX OSs? Because if you are, I would love to hear it.
    - quickben 9y ago
      Probably, but MS is a single vendor, with one (sort of) brand of an OS. They have full control over it.
midnitewarrior 9y ago
This is not a container implementation. Microsoft transcoded Linux system calls to Windows kernel calls. It runs efficiently and natively.
- 9y ago