5 ms·

I went down that road and it's certainly not as comfortable as macOS. The biggest thing is that the Linux environment is more or less separated from the actual

I went down that road and it's certainly not as comfortable as macOS. The biggest thing is that the Linux environment is more or less separated from the actual desktop environment. For instance, if I install Atom on Windows, I can't just pop open my WSL terminal and install gulp or whatever and have Atom find it. On a Mac, it's as simple as a `brew install whatever` and then any GUI application can use the newly installed program. If Microsoft burned the Windows kernel to the ground and started with BSD or something so that Windows was actually Unix-y under the hood, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

terminalcommand 9y ago
On windows you could install msys and then use pacman -S whatever to install packages. Calling it from any editor could be as simple as changing the PATH. On the other hand, even without cygwin you could use a windows command line package manager such as chocolatey. Everything unix-y is not always good, Windows has some novel ideas too. The main difference is that Windows is more GUI oriented and Unix is text oriented. Windows has APIs and Objects, whereas in a perfect Unix unix world everything needs to be a text stream. I lived in the Unix world for a long time and I still use various BSDs and/or Linux. Yet after years preaching the Unix way, now I think one needs to choose the right tool for the job, there really is no silver bullet. In reality, app development with a real IDE such as Visual Studio or Jetbrains products is much more comfortable for me. It's true that these tools limit your expression, but they also alleviate a lot of mental burden. If I don't have to waste brain cycles on typing commands, flexing my fingers through various M-x C-x positions etc. I seem to be able to write faster and with greater ease. On the other hand the code I write in my text editor is usually very dense and more beautiful to look at. I sometimes compare the situation between living in the Unix world and Windows world with the two fractions in Game of Thrones. Unix people represent the Wildlings, they're brave, free, do not recognize authority, do everything by themselves, live in harsh conditions, yet they are happy because they live a straight-forward and free life. Microsoft people represent the other side of the wall, they're not free, but they have technology, civilization, more population. And there seems to be a great wall between these users.
teekert 9y ago
I agree, I'm hitting small annoyances for example using Git in VSCode, via Samba (mainly permissions problems). It would be nice if the whole stack would be Linux. So also atom and VSCode would be on WSL. Though I think that should be possible with an xserver on Windows come to think of it... The performance however... Not something to write home about. Wat is nice though is that the terminal in VSCode can be set to an Ubuntu terminal, I wish the entire Git stack could also be. And then, please also add sshfs... I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to Open Source software and Linux, but for a family computer on Windows 10, I can now have all my Linux stuff and my wife can have her Adobe suite and proprietary Photo printing software. recently there is also very decent hardware available like the Dell XPS 15 line. If my 15" 2011 MBP dies I don't think I'll go for a Mac again. I do feel sad, there are really only a couple of things holding me back from getting the whole family on Linux.
fetbaffe 9y ago
Interop to call linux commands from Windows https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/interop https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/interop > If Microsoft burned the Windows kernel to the ground and started with BSD or something so that Windows was actually Unix-y under the hood, I'd switch in a heartbeat. Sounds like a really bad idea. Windows NT kernel is far superior than the BSD kernel. Fact that WSL is a subsystem to NT kernel tells you that. If they need BSD support, they would implement that as well as a subsystem.
- teekert 9y ago
  It only tells us that Microsoft prefers for whatever reason their own NT kernel, "Fact that WSL is a subsystem to NT kernel" tells you nothing about the quality of the BSD kernel.
  - fetbaffe 9y ago
    Sure, the BSD kernel is good, better than the Linux kernel, however why limit your options when NT kernel can easily run any subsystem? Does not make any sense. When people complain about Windows, it is usually the win32 subsystem they complain about. That has nothing to do with the NT kernel. After last major update the interop for WSL works very well.

terminalcommand 9y ago

On windows you could install msys and then use pacman -S whatever to install packages. Calling it from any editor could be as simple as changing the PATH. On the other hand, even without cygwin you could use a windows command line package manager such as chocolatey. Everything unix-y is not always good, Windows has some novel ideas too. The main difference is that Windows is more GUI oriented and Unix is text oriented. Windows has APIs and Objects, whereas in a perfect Unix unix world everything needs to be a text stream. I lived in the Unix world for a long time and I still use various BSDs and/or Linux. Yet after years preaching the Unix way, now I think one needs to choose the right tool for the job, there really is no silver bullet. In reality, app development with a real IDE such as Visual Studio or Jetbrains products is much more comfortable for me. It's true that these tools limit your expression, but they also alleviate a lot of mental burden. If I don't have to waste brain cycles on typing commands, flexing my fingers through various M-x C-x positions etc. I seem to be able to write faster and with greater ease. On the other hand the code I write in my text editor is usually very dense and more beautiful to look at. I sometimes compare the situation between living in the Unix world and Windows world with the two fractions in Game of Thrones. Unix people represent the Wildlings, they're brave, free, do not recognize authority, do everything by themselves, live in harsh conditions, yet they are happy because they live a straight-forward and free life. Microsoft people represent the other side of the wall, they're not free, but they have technology, civilization, more population. And there seems to be a great wall between these users.

teekert 9y ago

I agree, I'm hitting small annoyances for example using Git in VSCode, via Samba (mainly permissions problems). It would be nice if the whole stack would be Linux. So also atom and VSCode would be on WSL. Though I think that should be possible with an xserver on Windows come to think of it... The performance however... Not something to write home about. Wat is nice though is that the terminal in VSCode can be set to an Ubuntu terminal, I wish the entire Git stack could also be. And then, please also add sshfs... I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to Open Source software and Linux, but for a family computer on Windows 10, I can now have all my Linux stuff and my wife can have her Adobe suite and proprietary Photo printing software. recently there is also very decent hardware available like the Dell XPS 15 line. If my 15" 2011 MBP dies I don't think I'll go for a Mac again. I do feel sad, there are really only a couple of things holding me back from getting the whole family on Linux.

fetbaffe 9y ago

Interop to call linux commands from Windows https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/interop https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/interop > If Microsoft burned the Windows kernel to the ground and started with BSD or something so that Windows was actually Unix-y under the hood, I'd switch in a heartbeat. Sounds like a really bad idea. Windows NT kernel is far superior than the BSD kernel. Fact that WSL is a subsystem to NT kernel tells you that. If they need BSD support, they would implement that as well as a subsystem.

teekert 9y ago
It only tells us that Microsoft prefers for whatever reason their own NT kernel, "Fact that WSL is a subsystem to NT kernel" tells you nothing about the quality of the BSD kernel.
- fetbaffe 9y ago
  Sure, the BSD kernel is good, better than the Linux kernel, however why limit your options when NT kernel can easily run any subsystem? Does not make any sense. When people complain about Windows, it is usually the win32 subsystem they complain about. That has nothing to do with the NT kernel. After last major update the interop for WSL works very well.