6 ms·

Linux'izing your Windows PC into a dev machine – Part 2

30 points by MikusR 9y ago

MikusR 9y ago
Part 1 discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16351716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16351716
- ChopSticksPlz 9y ago
  Thanks for posting this.
sinh 9y ago
I still don't get why a developer would want to use Windows at all when he wants to use GNU/Linux tools. I don't know how to call it, but there is a mutant inner platform effect at work (or is it mutant outer platform?) . There is a lot of unnecessary friction and important things, such as git, work a lot slower. It is far easier to run a dedicated Linux machine, and install whatever is needed with a packet manager. After becoming used to work with tmux and i3, which allow nearly all work to be done without the hands leaving the keyboard, I also find using Window's window management unbearable slow. I also cringe every time I forgot that I can't use the Windows key. (By the way, I also don't get the affection to use dual-booting or virtual machines. Sure, if you are a poor student which which $300 is a lot of money, a VM might be worth the fuss. But in practically all other cases, it is far more effective to just set up another machine and use Samba or whatever to share some of the filesystem. Alone the time lost with Windows updates is a good reasons to quarantine Windows a bit.) Ah, and one thing that really helps for keeping the workflow unified is just to use Emacs on Windows - that makes it needless to do the mental switch to different keyboard shortcuts every time, and allows to consistently use powerful tools such as org-mode. And vim users probably have equivalent tricks. And apart from that, Windows is, specifically in forums and developers social media, massively advertised to to be associated with Linux. But advertising very much creates false connections, using a shell on Windows it not productive and no substitute for working with a free (as in libre) and open system which is controlled by the user. Linux is about freedom. Windows is not. Stallman might be annoying to some, but when you draw the balance, he is too damn right.
- ChopSticksPlz 9y ago
  Sorry I disagree, first many people who work in IT are _forced_ to use Windows as their primary host at work. Next, even if you install a Virtual Machine it might not work as seamless as having an Unix shell natively, thus some use Cygwin. Regarding poor students, would you prefer to commute daily with multiple laptops? One for Linux one for Windows? I doubt so. Other than that, if your work is not just coding but doing _anything_ apart from code itself, word processing, spreadsheets, graphic design, cad and you still need to run something from Linux ecosystem the WSL is currently probably your best option.
  - ChristianGeek 9y ago
    You would presumably remote in to the second computer. I do this from my MacBook Pro to my Windows desktop using TeamViewer, and also into native Linux boxes using ssh.
  - sinh 9y ago
    > Sorry I disagree, first many people who work in IT are _forced_ to use Windows as their primary host at work. I would consider it a bad use of my experience to develop on Windows. The market agrees with me, experienced Linux developers are much better paid. > Next, even if you install a Virtual Machine it might not work as seamless as having an Unix shell natively, thus some use Cygwin. I would not call cygwin a native Unix shell. > Regarding poor students, would you prefer to commute daily with multiple laptops? One for Linux one for Windows? I doubt so. I don't use Windows for personal stuff. Apart from that, VirtualBox would still be a better solution if it was necessary to use Windows. For example, updates on a Windows machine which is rarely used can easily take hours. One does not want to have his work machine blocked for so long. Apart from that, abandoning Windows is just a matter of leaving old habits. For me, using exclusively Linux for my personal stuff has worked excellently in the last 20 years. > Other than that, if your work is not just coding but doing _anything_ apart from code itself, word processing, spreadsheets, graphic design, cad and you still need to run something from Linux ecosystem the WSL is currently probably your best option. Libreoffice or Softmaker office is available, but LaTeX is much better for reports and articles, and wikis and Markdown is better for documentation. MS Word is a usability nightmare. Also, I do not use spreadsheets for myself, I use Python scripts - it's more efficient, and ledger-cli for accounting stuff. Inkscape is much better than MS Visio. I am physicist and developer, I do not use CAD, but if I had to use a CAD program on Windows, I would use a separate Windows machine, as explained before. You sound like you are just used to do everything with Windows and never have considered seriously to use Linux software, I guess you don't know most of what exists there. Also, I'd appreciate it if people would not call areas where some software vendors have managed to create a lock-in an "ecosystem". An ecosystem is a scientific concept from biology. Using that for proprietary software environments is simply marketing BS bingo.
Thisisrandom8 9y ago
Better to just drop another drive in and press f8
gt_ 9y ago
You can use Paragon Tools to mount HFS drives but I would advise against working on them this way; just copy and unplug one mirror at a time. I’ve been doing it for years and have seen a couple hiccups.
jamesmcintyre 9y ago
I'm a long-time osx user. Recently I bought a used Surface Book for testing out some of the touch and stylus functionality. Also I liked the idea of having a high-quality stylus functionality for Adobe applications. This set me on my own WSL journey which, long story short, ended with me realizing it's just not ready. - you're still forced to use windows apps for any gui (ie when you open atom from bash it'll launch windows atom) - there were numerous times when I npm i'd and it failed because some dependency was trying to do fancy things that WSL just didn't like - performance running builds with webpack seemed significantly worse. - i thought maybe windows 10 UI is up-to-par, even as a long-time mac user I thought maybe I could get down in Redmond town but... no... just no. It's the little things, the obvious things. You forget just how well thought, how precise, stable and intuitive osx's ui/ux is until you're thrown into Windows. Now, I still think windows touch and stylus integration is wonderful and I hope Apple finds a way to bring something like this to mac os. Also I understand that a mac user is naturally not going to feel at home with windows but I was on windows for probably a whole decade before I was on mac and so it's that it feels totally alien it's just... meh. So then began my journey to finding a way to dual boot Ubuntu on the Surface Book with as close as full-support for touch/stylus/trackpad as possible. Some angel made drivers/software to enable support for the various Surface hardware on Ubuntu (https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface) and so I went through the process of getting all that together. Also I tried a few different Ubuntu desktop environments including Deepin and Pantheon (Elementary OS UI) and: - wow, desktop linux has come a long way and chrome on ubuntu is almost 100% how you'd expect it to perform. - wow jakeday got the hardware support near perfect - wow, desktop linux has horrible support for touch/stylus as in... near zero. Sure the inputs work but there's no intuitive UX to support the inputs and in general it feels like a hack because of this. As a last resort I ran a osx image in vmware and unfortunately the graphics performance was not workable. The Surface Book's screen is so high resolution that you have to trick osx into scaling the UI for it which does solve the "everything's tiny" problem while keeping everything super crispy but then it seems vmware and hardware just can't keep up. OSX would likely feel super performant running native on this hardware, but via vmware- nope. So now I still casually use the Surface Book with Windows 10 but my late 2012 macbook pro is still my workhorse and it still feels as fast and capable as the day I got it. I have been predicting a sort of convergence of macbook and iPad (macOS and iOS) for a long time. I've always thought Apple would attempt to take it's arm chips to the macbook. I hope that however macOS evolves, alongside or in a convergence with iOS, it supports a sort of multi-modal type flexibility where you feel like you can stand up from your desk, walk away with a tablet/detachable-display/phone and seamlessly continue your session. I understand the wisdom of letting a desktop environment be a great desktop environment while letting a tablet UX be a great tablet UX but I still think the future has room for a seamless interplay and some more flexibility.

30 points by MikusR 9y ago

MikusR 9y ago

Part 1 discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16351716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16351716

ChopSticksPlz 9y ago
Thanks for posting this.

sinh 9y ago

I still don't get why a developer would want to use Windows at all when he wants to use GNU/Linux tools. I don't know how to call it, but there is a mutant inner platform effect at work (or is it mutant outer platform?) . There is a lot of unnecessary friction and important things, such as git, work a lot slower. It is far easier to run a dedicated Linux machine, and install whatever is needed with a packet manager. After becoming used to work with tmux and i3, which allow nearly all work to be done without the hands leaving the keyboard, I also find using Window's window management unbearable slow. I also cringe every time I forgot that I can't use the Windows key. (By the way, I also don't get the affection to use dual-booting or virtual machines. Sure, if you are a poor student which which $300 is a lot of money, a VM might be worth the fuss. But in practically all other cases, it is far more effective to just set up another machine and use Samba or whatever to share some of the filesystem. Alone the time lost with Windows updates is a good reasons to quarantine Windows a bit.) Ah, and one thing that really helps for keeping the workflow unified is just to use Emacs on Windows - that makes it needless to do the mental switch to different keyboard shortcuts every time, and allows to consistently use powerful tools such as org-mode. And vim users probably have equivalent tricks. And apart from that, Windows is, specifically in forums and developers social media, massively advertised to to be associated with Linux. But advertising very much creates false connections, using a shell on Windows it not productive and no substitute for working with a free (as in libre) and open system which is controlled by the user. Linux is about freedom. Windows is not. Stallman might be annoying to some, but when you draw the balance, he is too damn right.

ChopSticksPlz 9y ago
Sorry I disagree, first many people who work in IT are _forced_ to use Windows as their primary host at work. Next, even if you install a Virtual Machine it might not work as seamless as having an Unix shell natively, thus some use Cygwin. Regarding poor students, would you prefer to commute daily with multiple laptops? One for Linux one for Windows? I doubt so. Other than that, if your work is not just coding but doing _anything_ apart from code itself, word processing, spreadsheets, graphic design, cad and you still need to run something from Linux ecosystem the WSL is currently probably your best option.
- ChristianGeek 9y ago
  You would presumably remote in to the second computer. I do this from my MacBook Pro to my Windows desktop using TeamViewer, and also into native Linux boxes using ssh.
- sinh 9y ago
  > Sorry I disagree, first many people who work in IT are _forced_ to use Windows as their primary host at work. I would consider it a bad use of my experience to develop on Windows. The market agrees with me, experienced Linux developers are much better paid. > Next, even if you install a Virtual Machine it might not work as seamless as having an Unix shell natively, thus some use Cygwin. I would not call cygwin a native Unix shell. > Regarding poor students, would you prefer to commute daily with multiple laptops? One for Linux one for Windows? I doubt so. I don't use Windows for personal stuff. Apart from that, VirtualBox would still be a better solution if it was necessary to use Windows. For example, updates on a Windows machine which is rarely used can easily take hours. One does not want to have his work machine blocked for so long. Apart from that, abandoning Windows is just a matter of leaving old habits. For me, using exclusively Linux for my personal stuff has worked excellently in the last 20 years. > Other than that, if your work is not just coding but doing _anything_ apart from code itself, word processing, spreadsheets, graphic design, cad and you still need to run something from Linux ecosystem the WSL is currently probably your best option. Libreoffice or Softmaker office is available, but LaTeX is much better for reports and articles, and wikis and Markdown is better for documentation. MS Word is a usability nightmare. Also, I do not use spreadsheets for myself, I use Python scripts - it's more efficient, and ledger-cli for accounting stuff. Inkscape is much better than MS Visio. I am physicist and developer, I do not use CAD, but if I had to use a CAD program on Windows, I would use a separate Windows machine, as explained before. You sound like you are just used to do everything with Windows and never have considered seriously to use Linux software, I guess you don't know most of what exists there. Also, I'd appreciate it if people would not call areas where some software vendors have managed to create a lock-in an "ecosystem". An ecosystem is a scientific concept from biology. Using that for proprietary software environments is simply marketing BS bingo.

Thisisrandom8 9y ago

Better to just drop another drive in and press f8

gt_ 9y ago

You can use Paragon Tools to mount HFS drives but I would advise against working on them this way; just copy and unplug one mirror at a time. I’ve been doing it for years and have seen a couple hiccups.

jamesmcintyre 9y ago

I'm a long-time osx user. Recently I bought a used Surface Book for testing out some of the touch and stylus functionality. Also I liked the idea of having a high-quality stylus functionality for Adobe applications. This set me on my own WSL journey which, long story short, ended with me realizing it's just not ready. - you're still forced to use windows apps for any gui (ie when you open atom from bash it'll launch windows atom) - there were numerous times when I npm i'd and it failed because some dependency was trying to do fancy things that WSL just didn't like - performance running builds with webpack seemed significantly worse. - i thought maybe windows 10 UI is up-to-par, even as a long-time mac user I thought maybe I could get down in Redmond town but... no... just no. It's the little things, the obvious things. You forget just how well thought, how precise, stable and intuitive osx's ui/ux is until you're thrown into Windows. Now, I still think windows touch and stylus integration is wonderful and I hope Apple finds a way to bring something like this to mac os. Also I understand that a mac user is naturally not going to feel at home with windows but I was on windows for probably a whole decade before I was on mac and so it's that it feels totally alien it's just... meh. So then began my journey to finding a way to dual boot Ubuntu on the Surface Book with as close as full-support for touch/stylus/trackpad as possible. Some angel made drivers/software to enable support for the various Surface hardware on Ubuntu (https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface) and so I went through the process of getting all that together. Also I tried a few different Ubuntu desktop environments including Deepin and Pantheon (Elementary OS UI) and: - wow, desktop linux has come a long way and chrome on ubuntu is almost 100% how you'd expect it to perform. - wow jakeday got the hardware support near perfect - wow, desktop linux has horrible support for touch/stylus as in... near zero. Sure the inputs work but there's no intuitive UX to support the inputs and in general it feels like a hack because of this. As a last resort I ran a osx image in vmware and unfortunately the graphics performance was not workable. The Surface Book's screen is so high resolution that you have to trick osx into scaling the UI for it which does solve the "everything's tiny" problem while keeping everything super crispy but then it seems vmware and hardware just can't keep up. OSX would likely feel super performant running native on this hardware, but via vmware- nope. So now I still casually use the Surface Book with Windows 10 but my late 2012 macbook pro is still my workhorse and it still feels as fast and capable as the day I got it. I have been predicting a sort of convergence of macbook and iPad (macOS and iOS) for a long time. I've always thought Apple would attempt to take it's arm chips to the macbook. I hope that however macOS evolves, alongside or in a convergence with iOS, it supports a sort of multi-modal type flexibility where you feel like you can stand up from your desk, walk away with a tablet/detachable-display/phone and seamlessly continue your session. I understand the wisdom of letting a desktop environment be a great desktop environment while letting a tablet UX be a great tablet UX but I still think the future has room for a seamless interplay and some more flexibility.