22 ms·

From macOS to Windows and WSL

176 points by elithrar 8y ago

rbanffy 8y ago
> I respect those who’ve invested the time into maintaining & automating a full Linux environment they can use daily I can't imagine what he means by that. All my Macs and Linux boxes (from a dozen of RPi-like ARM boxes, to laptops, to big Xeon server) and even the OpenIndiana and FreeBSD machines all work without much effort. A `yum update` here, a `pkg update` there and nothing ever breaks. It's actually boring compared to 2004 or so, but we end up getting used to actually working.
- danieldk 8y ago
  Indeed. And on my NixOS machines I can even boot into any version of the OS that I haven't garbage collected. Also, I have found it easier to make reproducible environments everywhere in Unices. Nowadays, I just check out a git repo, run home-manager switch and all my software and configuration is there.
- larrik 8y ago
  Seriously, I spend WAY more time fussing with Windows than Linux on my dual boot machines. Windows has also destroyed the usability of their settings screens to the point that I find configuring Linux far far easier than Windows.
  - towndrunk 8y ago
    I wish windows would adopt something similar to chrome://flags for configuration. Easy to search and all in one place.
    - amyjess 8y ago
      Isn't that what the registry was supposed to be before it turned into a monster? Personally, though, I've always preferred Firefox's (and old Opera's) about:config instead. It's far more flexible than Chrome's flags.
      - rzzzt 8y ago
        Quite a few years back I got a book from a friend, summarizing new and noteworthy changes in Windows 95 (you could make a good drinking game from it if you took a sip each time you encountered the expression "32-bit", it was all the rage). The registry was indeed intended to serve as a central storage for configuration, replacing .ini files scattered all over the system.
        rbanffy 8y ago
        It could be easily replaced by a c:\Windows\etc folder full of .ini files and it'd be a vast improvement. I think Windows frowned upon lots of small files for performance and locking reasons - if some app decides to hold the file hostage, you'll end up needing to restart the system to be able to save a new version.
        rzzzt 8y ago
        C:\Windows\win.ini was a previous problem point, it had driver related settings, OS preferences and some non-MS applications added their own keys to the lot as well.
        rbanffy 8y ago
        Of course the win.ini (and system.ini) became a mess. They should be in a folder, with each application having their own file with their own settings. And reading the file and then CLOSING IT so others could to stuff to it.
        rzzzt 8y ago
        "Introducing Microsoft Windows 95" by Brent Ethington https://books.google.com/books/about/Introducing_Microsoft_Windows_95.html?id=biLYdV2Uj-MC https://books.google.com/books/about/Introducing_Microsoft_W...
    - shittyadmin 8y ago
      You might consider trying the "GodMode" trick - still works in Windows 10 and has quick access to settings all over the place. I just remembered it after posting about digging for the network dialog and sure enough, network settings are right there, easily accessible.
      - Jaruzel 8y ago
        GodMode Trick: Create a new folder and call it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} Under Windows 10, it will hide the name, but the Icon will change. Click on the icon for wonders. The GUID is the important bit, you can replace 'GodMode' with anything, but it can't be blank.
        mark212 8y ago
        that is excellent. Thanks for sharing
        shittyadmin 8y ago
        Yeah, seems the real name for this is supposed to be "All Tasks" as you can see by putting shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} in the run dialog or address bar of an explorer window. GodMode is just a nickname it got from some power users it seems.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - shittyadmin 8y ago
    Seriously, what a fucking mess they made with the new settings screens. I find myself clicking through 5 screens just to finally arrive at the old control panel for network interfaces to toggle my ethernet off.
    - pheouk 8y ago
      not defending one way or the other, but remember North Carolina, Pennsylvania ncpa.cpl is the old network view, still very useful if i'm not in the cli :)
      - shittyadmin 8y ago
        Thanks. Good thinking. That will almost certainly be my route in the future.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      It’s so bad it now requires search to find say, the mouse settings.
  - babypuncher 8y ago
    Meanwhile I can't even get sound to work properly in any Linux distro on my motherboard. Kubuntu 18.04 has a problem on both my laptop and desktop where a fresh install works fine until you run apt-get upgrade then kdm breaks and both machines boot to a black screen.
    - tapoxi 8y ago
      That's the caveat, you need to buy hardware that was designed with Linux in mind. Throwing it on hardware where the designers only thought about Windows will always be a bad experience.
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        I am glad to say it seems very hard to find hardware that doesn't work on Linux.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      Would you like to share some details? A lot of people that can help lurk around here and it could be a simple issue.
      - babypuncher 8y ago
        I've been using Linux since 2003, even though I'm a .NET engineer by trade. Most of the problems (except the audio problem on one particular motherboard) were relatively simple for me to fix. I imagine it would have been a nightmare if I didn't have 15 years of experience under my belt. My point was that this shouldn't have been a problem in the first place, and I've always found Windows to be much easier to get up and running. I've always had to live in both worlds, and they each have their fair share of pros and cons.
    - willtim 8y ago
      Make sure that Kubuntu is giving you a stable version of KDE. My issue with Ubuntu in the past has been that it too often takes unstable snapshots of upstream software in order to accommodate it's own self-imposed release schedule.
  - guhidalg 8y ago
    I think you have to remember that you are in the 1% of people that want MORE control over a computer. Most users out there want more simplicity and flashier UI. Microsoft cannot please everyone so they opt to please the average users and developers just need to adapt.
    - larrik 8y ago
      And yet, transferring files between my windows 10 computers feels like I need a network engineering degree. Half the time I need to fire up a Win7 VM and transfer from one to the other that way. Mac isn't better in that department, though (when talking to Windows, at least).
- WestCoastJustin 8y ago
  Suspect is highly depends on what you're doing. I used to run Linux for video editing with a Nvidia GPU. It was an extreme hassle anytime a new driver came out and blew away some config. Moving to Mac cleared all those issues up. I know this pain well when you have a deadline and are messing around with kernel configs and compiling. Many many hours wasted. Docker with ffmpeg has solved most of those issues now since you can basically have a custom toolchain totally isolated from your core operating system. So, it would likely work knowing what I know now (or with modern tools).
  - mixedCase 8y ago
    > It was an extreme hassle anytime a new driver came out and blew away some config. Your distro's fault. Never had such a problem with Arch but I remember I had it with Ubuntu, albeit so long ago I can't say it's still a problem.
  - larrik 8y ago
    How long ago was that? Valve spurred along a lot of progress in that area.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    Yes. The Nvidia GPU stuff is usually more painful. I tended to not update my kernel+drivers as much on those boxes. In the end, I moved to Intel GPUs, which are punier, but, at least, work.
    - boudin 8y ago
      AMD GPUs support is really good now too.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        Unless you have an older card.
        danieldk 8y ago
- elithrar 8y ago
  Author here: let me clarify further. I’m not just talking about the CLI experience, since WSL doesn’t bring you anything new there. It’s Ubuntu (by default), or whichever other distro you choose. When it comes to desktop applications (both in breadth & quality), video/GPU drivers, and (if it wasn’t clear already!) my preferences for a desktop experience, Ubuntu 18.04, Debian with XFCE, Fedora + KDE, etc - just don’t do it for me. And that’s OK, because what I prefer probably doesn’t do it for you.
  - setquk 8y ago
    I'll give you the desktop environments aren't very good. Gnome 2 was about the peak and it went a bit weird after that as they appeared to have an internal battle between making it look like MacOS and inventing something new while locked in a dungeon with a bong. xfce isn't quite polished enough even with a lot of configuration done.
    - intertextuality 8y ago
      That's why people don't even use a desktop environment. My setup for the past year and a half has only been: * xorg server * i3 tiling wm * rofi application launcher that's all one really needs.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      I'm kind of happy with Gnome 3. It's almost Mac-like in being opinionated, but steps out of the way most of the time. I'm using it with Fedora on a couple machines and it works great. I gave up on having my desktop looking like a futuristic sci-fi movie UI and that brought me a lot of peace (and free time). ;-)
      - rhinoceraptor 8y ago
        None of the desktops are any good at high DPI yet, and Gnome seems to have gone off the deep end in terms of killing useful features and settings (removing desktop and tray icons for example). It’s absurd to remove these things, and have the community re-implement core desktop feature as Javascript plugins without even a stable API between major versions.
- grawprog 8y ago
  Ya about the last headache I had setting anything up in linux was getting Jack2 and pulseaudio set up for recording. That's about the last time I remember struggling to get something working on linux and that was...i'm not even sure hoe long ago. I had to do it again a couple years ago on a new machine and there were none of the issues I had the first time. I can't remember the last time I had a video card driver or other real hardware issue. Come to think of it I can't really remember the last time i've really had to do any kind of system manangment other than package updates. Oh...wait...I had to fuck around in grub a couple months ago when I lost power during a kernel update. That was about a half hour fix though.... I've lost power while windows was in the middle of updating before and it nearly killed my windows system. It was a few hours of booting into safe mode, figuring out what wasn't installed properly, fucking with the registry and windows update, manually comparing and replacing.dll and system files before finally getting it back up and running properly.
- setquk 8y ago
  Indeed. I don't wish to be rude to the original poster but I've managed large networks of Windows and Linux/OpenBSD/FreeBSD/Solaris machines for over 20 years. Windows is a joke and it hasn't got any better. I have actually also, unfortunately, spent a lot of time working with Windows Installer and Wix and that's a fine example if you ever get the experience to see eye gouging pain of the highest order.
- brightball 8y ago
  That was my experience also. I took it a step farther and invested some time in using Ansible to configure my laptop which has been great too.
insulanian 8y ago
Used Windows for years, from 3.11 to 7. Switched to Mac couple of years ago. I don't think I would consider using Windows ever again, unless they go back to 7 and create a new reasonable iteration out of it. Everything after 7 is just not worth the frustration.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I keep being tempted to go back to Macs - especially the new Mac Mini - now that most of my work is cross platform (.Net Core/Python/NodeJS) but I don't see any advantage just for that reason. I spend little time mucking with the OS. Most of my time is in VS Code/Visual Studio, Chrome and Notepad++. I don't see that changing. The rare occasion that I need Linux I use WSL locally.
setquk 8y ago
I genuinely don't get this. WSL's backing filesystem (NTFS) completely runs like ass. It's dire. 10x the latency on everything at least compared to Linux running natively on the same hardware. This is because all small writes end up in MFT contention and the entire of Unixy type things are based on lots of small writes. Plus on top of that, everything is rammed with telemetry on windows now, the QA has gone down the toilet leading to a hosed machine at least three times in the last two years for me and there is no clear direction they are going in other than "throw poo on everything and see where it sticks". Any bets you make are risky. And honestly when I read about powershell and chocolatey used there I laugh because a huge amount of friction for me came from that direction. powershell's principle is based on the principle of most surprise. Like when I tell it to download something, I don't expect to have to futz with IE browser settings (WTF?!?!). And chocolatey sucks - the repository it pulls from is full of abandoned and broken crap and missing packages (.net SDKs are my favourite pain point here) where people have thought "hey it'll be good to port this" and then leave it to rot. That's the status quo for me and I'm not happy. I'm going the other way to OSX. It mostly just works and that's all I want and there's a local support network for the hardware which is decent and doesn't involve me shipping it off to some third party and losing it for 2 weeks.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > powershell's principle is based on the principle of most surprise. I don't think that's true at all. Compare powershell command names to UNIX command names for example. You can rest assured that Get-X will not change things and that there is almost certainly a Set-X that will, for example. You can tab complete variable names, cmdlet names, cmdlet switches, etc. Additionally, by piping objects instead of text, you aren't caught off guard by things like spaces in a path name. > Like when I tell it to download something, I don't expect to have to futz with IE browser settings (WTF?!?!). It definitely does have some flaws though, I'll give you that. As an aside, you can use Invoke-WebRequest with the `-UseBasicParsing` switch to leave IE out of it. They definitely should have done that the other way around.
  - setquk 8y ago
    The last point is the point really. The entire objectivity of it is ruined by weird edge cases and knowledge. The car only goes straight if both rear windows are open. You have to say "beetlejuice" three times before putting it in reverse etc etc.
lostgame 8y ago
I always kinda chuckle at articles like this - for a creative individual such as myself that's very locked into Logic Pro X and Final Cut X, and a full-time iOS developer, ditching a Mac would mean losing ~15 years of backwards compatibility for my media, and being stuck with far less-than-ideal virtualization solutions for Xcode. Even with their pitiful current hardware offerings that almost seem like a direct insult to long-term dedicated fans, I'm still locked into their excellent software.
- elithrar 8y ago
  Author here: of course it’s not a fit for you! I qualified my “yes” with the primary uses for my computer, which doesn’t include any macOS specific software (Sketch was the most recent). If I was using FCPX, Logic or doing iOS development I wouldn’t have opened my editor to write the article ;)
- terramex 8y ago
  I can see myself switching from FCPX/Motion to Premiere/After Effects quite easily (Premiere is really great nowadays), but I just cannot find a good replacement for Logic Pro. It has it quirks and bugs, its performance is terrible on my 2013 MBP, but I just cannot find any other DAW that lets makes me feel as productive as Logic. Not just productive, it brought fun back to music production for me. Using FL Studio felt like a chore, even when I was quite experienced with it.
- vegasdew 8y ago
  You chuckle at articles because you are locked-in? Sure that chuckle ain't at your own expense.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
folkrav 8y ago
I really don't understand most of his arguments against switching to Linux. > I’ll keep this short: I still depend on Lightroom, writing tools (Notion, Evernote prior), a solid default desktop environment, first-party hardware support (be it a MacBook or Surface) & battery life, and most of all, my time. I respect those who’ve invested the time into maintaining & automating a full Linux environment they can use daily, but I just don’t have the time for that investment nor am I ready to make the trade-offs required for it. To each their own. - Software support, no problem, I can understand. I still have a Windows partition for audio production. - The "solid default desktop environment" is pretty much crap - both Gnome and KDE Plasma are far more solid DEs than Windows'. - First-party support I can't figure out what he means by that... - As for battery life, I have 10+ hours on my ZenBook running Arch. The battery life is actually better on Linux than on Windows on this laptop. - Windows has been a much higher time-sink than Linux or macOS for me. Sure, an Arch or Gentoo desktop would be higher maintenance than your average distro, but come on, Fedora and Ubuntu are _super_ easy to install these days, and the overwhelming majority of the time just work out of the box. It's 0 maintenance. My maintenance/automation scripts were like 80% ported straight from my old macOS scripts. I'm forced to use Windows on my work computer and it's IMHO terrible. Its virtual desktop feature are useless (really, switching desktops changes _all_ screens at once?), the shell is crap, WSL basically feels the same as running a VM and SSHing in, the DE is horrible.
- z3phyr 8y ago
  The (One of the) real reason(s) anybody even considers Windows is Visual Studio proper. Nothing comes close to it in proper IDE experience. It has (arguably) the best debugging facilities in common existence.
  - jhasse 8y ago
    Visual Studio Code with the right extensions comes pretty close :)
- wbkang 8y ago
  > - The "solid default desktop environment" is pretty much crap - both Gnome and KDE Plasma are far more solid DEs than Windows'. You are not telling us anything better than the author, one way or another.
kuroguro 8y ago
@terminals - consider ConEmu (wasn't listed) - it's fast (native) with unicode support and lots of configurability. https://conemu.github.io/ https://conemu.github.io/
- folkrav 8y ago
  He listed cmder, that is a ConEmu fork with some added goodies.
- _coveredInBees 8y ago
  I switched from ConEmu to wsltty. ConEmu is a decent resource hog and I've seen it use 3-5% CPU cycles all the time, even when idling. It also handles the rendering differently (can't remember technical details), which is why it has some great features, but is also more of a resource hog. Maybe this will change with the new API coming in Windows 10. By comparison Wsltty is much simpler, but works like a charm, and t-mux with mouse support is so liberating to use. Edit - Found the resources on ConEmu's site that mention the technical limitations https://conemu.github.io/en/CpuIoConsumption.html https://conemu.github.io/en/CpuIoConsumption.html https://conemu.github.io/en/RealConsole.html https://conemu.github.io/en/RealConsole.html
- elithrar 8y ago
  Cmder is a wrapper around ConEmu (mostly some settings), that launches ConEmu itself. It wasn’t handling the glyphs my shell uses for Git repo status, return status, etc - compared to other options I tried. If it worked well and line output didn’t break under tmux I would absolutely use it [until Alacritty improves].
ulzeraj 8y ago
Last time I've tried chocolatey there were lots of outdated packages and those applications keep pestering me to download the latest version through their updaters or manually. So what's the point. Besides I hate Powershell Long-Ass-Weird-Awkward-Cmdlets -force.
nailer 8y ago
> I’m using Terminus for now Completely agree. If you're on Windows and still using ConEmu give Terminus a try.
- EpicBlackCrayon 8y ago
  Yeah, thanks to OP for that. I was using Hyper before and the performance was abysmal. Terminus has the same great rendering and is much more performant. 100 MB one terminal with some work is still not amazing, but it sure as hell beats 300MB while just idling with Hyper and 5 second load times for a window. I think Electron apps are an order of magnitude slower in general, but the Hyper team really seem to have made some poor choices on top of that.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    My least favorite thing about Hyper was whenever you split a window horizontally you would lose your cursor because it would be hidden "behind" the split pane above it, and then you would have to hit CTRL+C like 20 times or force some output to the screen. I opened an issue for this 2 months ago[0] and the team hasn't responded yet. I'm about ready to call it quits with Hyper (ConEmu has its own set of even worse bugs). The problem with Terminus is it currently has no support for splitting windows, so if you want that behavior you would have to use tmux. Although now with Windows 18.03+ being out, tmux sessions persist after closing your terminal so maybe that's the best way to handle splitting windows. [0]: https://github.com/zeit/hyper/issues/3258 https://github.com/zeit/hyper/issues/3258
jo-wol 8y ago
How do they run tcpdump with WSL or anything related to network?
- runjake 8y ago
  They don't. Along with a bunch of other network socket stuff, such as many of the tools in Kali Linux, which they have published in the Windows Store. Nevermind that a significant chunk of Kali's tools do not work in WSL, at present.
- vasilia 8y ago
  tcpdump is a wrapper for RAW sockets and eBPF. You can use WinPCAP, but it's not possible to use something like fanout(It's possible to make multithreaded tcpdump for Linux) or you can't use interface "any"(it's a Linux specific layer). The worst thing is that you can't trace your kernel IP/TCP info, like sk_buff tracing in Linux.
_coveredInBees 8y ago
I'm somewhat on the other side of things where I've been using Windows exclusively on my work laptop for many years (I have a Linux box at work) and have been seriously considering switching to a Macbook Pro for over a year now, but I'm continuously frustrated by things on the Apple/Macbook side of things (my wife has a 2017 MBP). Apart from the annoyance of the keyboard on the MBP and my personal preference for physical Fn keys over a touchbar, it is simply amazing to me how bad the Macbook Pro is with playing with simple external peripherals like Docks and external monitors. I've tried using a USB3 based dock, as well as a thunderbolt dock to connect 2 external displays to a Macbook Pro and it's just been horrible. The former didn't even work, the latter only supported one monitor for whatever reason. I then tried using 2 simply USB-C to HDMI adapters to connect to the two monitors (hello dongle land!) and while both monitors are seen, OSX refuses to support 1920x1200 on my new Dell 2415 Monitor and ends up stretching a lower resolution across the monitor, making everything look like garbage. Occasionally, on reboots, it will work fine again, but it needs to be your lucky day. Why Apple won't make their own fucking dock so that I can pay them some extra Apple tax just for some sanity and peace of mind is beyond me. Meanwhile, my 2 year old Dell XPS (which I don't really love at all) has never had an issue with external monitors via any of these docks ever. So here I am using WSL on Windows 10, and you know what, it keeps getting better and better, and I might just end up sticking around with Windows.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  Hardware really is where windows shines. I connect a new laptop to two external monitors with different resolution and dpi and everything just works including dragging windows between them and rescaling for most apps. For some reason it feels like it even knows which monitor is placed where which would be more than creepy (I can’t imagine it does, so must be confirmation bias).
- dethac 8y ago
  It honestly feels like choosing a laptop today is trying to make the least bad choice. MacBook? Piss-poor keyboards and external device support. XPS? Poor support. ThinkPad? Windows 10. <Laptop> with Linux? X software is not available.
cube2222 8y ago
I'm at the point of considering a switch in the other direction. I love how seamlessly wsl works and gives you a real Linux environment. Writing on my screen (surface pro) is great too. However, I'm mad that I'm getting ads (preinstalled Candy crush) on a Windows pro machine. Also, os x is much more privacy oriented overall, and it's the de facto developer machine. The only reason I'm hesitating is that although osx is Unix, I'm scared I may miss a full Linux installation which you have with wsl.
- setquk 8y ago
  I tend to SSH into an AWS box most of the time or use a Linux installation inside a vagrant VM when I have to use something Linux. Both of these are much smoother than on WSL/Windows. However most of the built in packages and stuff that comes from brew is exactly the same as on Linux. Perhaps 99.999% of stuff is totally portable.
- pier25 8y ago
  I've been using macOS for the most part of the last decade. I also use Windows, but only for gaming. For me the BIG problem with macOS is actually the hardware. When Apple gets it right it's awesome, but this hasn't been the case for the last 5 or so years (with some exceptions). The fact that there is no competition for macOS hardware ends up in very surreal situations such as overpriced broken products or design decisions that make absolutely no sense. If I had to buy a new laptop now I'm not sure I'd buy an Apple product.
- andmarios 8y ago
  Same issue here. I'm a Linux user but recently got a new laptop and thought I should at least log in once to Windows before installing Linux. I was welcomed by candy crush tiles and other questionable stuff. It is totally incomprehensible to me how a machine that costs almost $2k has candy crush as the first tile the user ever sees. I don't think Microsoft cares anymore.
  - cube2222 8y ago
    I think it's just lack of communication/vision shared between departments. Everybody is trying to maximize their respective outcome without caring about the overall product. At least that's what it seems like to me.
PuffinBlue 8y ago
> I’ll keep this short: I still depend on Lightroom, writing tools (Notion, Evernote prior), a solid default desktop environment, first-party hardware support (be it a MacBook or Surface) & battery life, and most of all, my time. I respect those who’ve invested the time into maintaining & automating a full Linux environment they can use daily, but I just don’t have the time for that investment nor am I ready to make the trade-offs required for it. To each their own. Given the circuitous series of hoops the author goes through to get their WSL/Windows environment in something of a working configuration the above passage is kind of laughable. I too depend on Lightroom, but I've had to break that hold and just this week have gone the other way to a full Linux desktop. Windows breaks so often it's not workable for me. And LR classic has been nothing but a buggy, slow, bloated mess for me. Even just little things like opening the app paints the window over all other UI elements and you can't click to bring another app to the front before clicking/focusing into LR. Let alone the slow loading, painfully slow image viewing and stupid stuff like hiding the mouse pointer after creating a new folder. I intend to split RAW development and Digital Asset Management, which is what I should always have done, now that Lightroom is out of the way. RAWtherapee and Darktable to a great job (and I say that as a former pro photographer) for RAW development and easily enough for most pro work I did/do. The options for DAM are varied but even Digikam is pretty excellent for most things. Having just spent a year with Windows (having run Linux previously) Linux is, amazingly, progressing towards 'just working' for me. Especially with Flatpaks/Snaps (though developers need to get a grip of understanding 'filesystem=home' vs 'filesystem=host' and how this effects usability vs sandboxing) as well as appimage. When they become available on Debian natively it'll be kind of awesome to run a stable desktop with latest selection of certain apps you might need. It's true Nvidia support is bad. I did switch from Nvidia to AMD to make the move. Is that unreasonable to expect the user to do? Possibly. But doing that I get a hassle free 4k desktop, excellent stability (so far) and all the apps I need (so far). Being back in a terminal 'proper' again on the desktop is just fantastic. Not having things update on their own with my say is even more fantastic. And the fact it's not eating 12GB of RAM running LR and a browser is the icing on the cake.
- inferiorhuman 8y ago
  I still use the final version of the perpetually licensed Lightroom, and so far haven't found anything to replace it. Sometimes I use it in a Windows VM on FreeBSD sometimes I use it on a Mac. It largely just works, even with a catalog that I desperately need to pare down. Meanwhile Darktable is a pathological mess. I really want to like it. They even offer a Mac binary on their download page. Unfortunately, it turns out that the only first class platform is Linux. None of the core devs actually use a Mac so bug reports languish and users are told to simply compile DT and fix the bugs themselves. I'm working up to compiling DT, but the instructions are all built around MacPorts which I ran away from years ago. Yes, I'm aware that DT is an open source project maintained by volunteers but sometimes I want higher level packages to just work without a fight. If I want to import metadata from Lightroom I'm expected to export individual sidecar files and hack up a script to do the import (hint: this doesn't scale). The real deal breaker for me was that the latest version available on the DT site simply crashes for me while trying to import photos. But not every photo. I'm not particularly inclined to file a bug report because most Mac issues get put in the circular file. Once I got past that I found the interface to be… interesting. Despite the superficial similarities to Lightroom, DT is wildly different in practice and not all that intuitive to me (e.g. applying presets from the lighttable vs darkroom modules — also seriously those names: darktable, lighttable, darkroom are all far too similar regardless of whether or not they're based on photography terms). It's been a few years since I've tried RawTherapee but obviously that didn't stick either.
jaxondu 8y ago
Hoping MS will create a Azure Linux and a Windows desktop on top of it.
pkulak 8y ago
This sounds like a huge pain. Makes me wonder if Google's approach of just sticking the whole thing in a VM is the better way to go. They still have a LOT of issues to work through (graphics acceleration, USB support, etc), but if they can really nail that, it could be interesting in a year or two. Until then... I think I'll just stick with Mac.
vijaybritto 8y ago
My experience on WSL: very slow shells. Serious Web Dev work is not possible. So much catching up to do with Mac. Maybe MS should build that shell natively in windows with all those command programs
throwawaywhynot 8y ago
macOS is the buggiest os I've used in my life so I can't imagine how wsl can be worse. Unless the shell itself is clunky. macOS gui is a mess
- welly 8y ago
  Any examples of how the macos gui is a mess? Given that every other os is trying their hardest to emulate it.
- pier25 8y ago
  Yosemite and High Sierra have been the worst versions of macOS I've ever used.
DrTung 8y ago
Was on Windows from 1986-2010, Ubuntu 2010 - today, but will be switching to MacOS on a MacMini soon, and the reason: Apple's old filesystem HFS was slooow when grepping/compiling etc. but the new APFS is comparable to EXT4 in speed, makes all the difference.
lj3 8y ago
Have they fixed the git corruption issue yet? I switched from WSL to MacOS specifically because, if the computer blue screens while I'm working in WSL, something in the .git directory corrupts itself and I have to check out the repo again.
Aaronmacaron 8y ago
I use Windows + WSL on a daily basis for web development. This is what I did about the Terminal Problem: I installed XMing (an X-Server for Windows). Then I configured WSL to use the the X-Server installed on the host. This way I can use any Linux terminal emulator (actually any Linux GUI Application) on my Windows machine. This works surprisingly well for how much of a hack this is. I've been using this set up with gnome-terminal on a daily basis for over a year now. It'd still be great if there was a solid windows-native alternative.
- Koshkin 8y ago
  Cygwin has been working for me much better than WSL. Besides being a complete Linux-like environment, it is rather seamlessly integrated with Windows - which allows to take the full advantage of the software available on Linux when working with Windows files.
0x54D5 8y ago
VSCode with WSL with Nginx & PHP 7.1 only has one issue currently. A bug with fastcgi buffering which I have documented here: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/3687 https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/3687 Yes. It's a little bit slower but for development local environments it really does not matter. I actually set this up for the Windows devs at work but I still use a 2014 MBP. Our ionic app though is a huge pain in the ass that requires Visual Studio to setup a decent dev environment in native windows.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Whoa there, your script starts with "Disable UAC"! You might as well just traipse around the Internet with a Windows XP machine, clicking on every shady looking ad for good measure, with that take on security. UAC got some flak for compatibility issues when a lot of apps didn't support it yet, but today, UAC is well-supported by everything, and nobody should ever be turning it off.
Koshkin 8y ago
What does “Windows Services for Linux” even mean - given the conspicuous absence of what is being “served”?
- ld00d 8y ago
  do you mean "Windows Subsystem for Linux"?
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    I guess... In the past we had “Windows Services for UNIX” - which, by the way, was based on the actual POSIX subsystem rather than something that sits on top of Win32. Anyway, the point was, shouldn’t “for” in this context be understood as “instead of”?
    - ld00d 8y ago
      "Windows pretending to be Linux" doesn't have the same appeal.
    - bitwize 8y ago
      WSL is not based on Win32. It is a personality for the NT kernel, much like the POSIX subsystem was.
wnevets 8y ago
WSL has made it much easier for me to stay a windows user. However had the idea and got the thing launch deserves a promotion at microsoft.
stinos 8y ago
Wrt to the FS sharing, wouldn't it be possible to share the WSL root with samba and access it on Windows?
jmlucjav 8y ago
if somebody likes chocolatey/Boxstarter, have a look at https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script The three together work like a charm, though it does some things much better than Boxstarter imho
safgasCVS 8y ago
I am quite happy with WSL - I might not be the target audience as my needs are almost entirely for statistics but WSL beats a vm for rstudio server and awk. You’ll hear nothing but praise from me
vegasdew 8y ago
I am using mac from about 4 years, because it is standard at company. While hardware is decent (2015 Pro). I don't understand the fanboyism around OS. It's not keyboard friendly (e.g. can't quickly open menus without mouse), it force maximize to desktop, but multiple desktop support sucks. Multi monitor support is mediocre at best.
justinmchase 8y ago
WSL is great on windows but the situation with Docker is pretty bad still. Docker on windows needs to not require Hyper-V but to run as a kernel process like WSL does. Also the volume mounting straight up doesn't work on windows and if they can resolve those issues then suddenly a lot of things open up.
- radus 8y ago
  Not my experience with Docker on Windows - volume mounting works (and has worked) without issues. I remember at some point being prompted to share my drive so that Docker can access it - perhaps you need to flip this switch in the Docker settings?
  - GordonS 8y ago
    I think volume binding only works with Windows containers? I seem to recall trying it with Linux containers and immediately hitting permissions issues due to incompatibilities between Windows and Linux. I am at least able to bind individual files using Docker Compose's 'secrets' and 'configs'.
wemdyjreichert 8y ago
I've tried it; still like unix-likes better. No af_packet, no cuda, doesn't work for me.
nickjj 8y ago
I've been using WSL now as my primary dev environment for about a year now and it's really good. I use it for full time web development and creating video courses (which is why I'm not running native Linux). The WSL environment is very fast and reliable to the point where for the last year I've been 100% at peace with my dev environment. I would say in 20+ years of computing, this has been my favorite overall set up because you get a great dev set up, you can assemble your own computer part by part and you have excellent gaming support all without having to dual boot or run a Linux VM (which I did previously for ~5 years). I finally feel like I have 1 machine that does everything very well. A typical dev day for me involves running Dockerized web apps (mostly Flask, Rails and Phoenix apps with Webpack, etc.), tons of terminal usage, Ansible, VMs, etc.. Everything you would expect to run as a developer. If anyone is looking for a more step by step guide on how to get everything running, here's 2 posts I whipped up on getting everything you need installed on Windows[0] as well as getting Docker working flawlessly with WSL[1]. [0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/using-wsl-and-mobaxterm-to-create-a-linux-dev-environment-on-windows https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/using-wsl-and-mobaxterm-to-cr... [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows-and-wsl-to-work-flawlessly https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows...
shdh 8y ago
WSL is fine for dev. Performance is abysmal.
akulbe 8y ago
Can't help but feel a bit of vindication/validation after reading this. I've commented on the declining quality of Apple hardware and software, and switching to Windows 10 + WSL, several times on other posts. Like OP, this isn't a perfect experience. It felt like it was a very balanced treatment of the issues. There are still issues, for sure... but it's definitely passable, and improving. (At least for me.) As far as the slow I/O performance, I believe the heart of this is Windows Defender live scanning the FS where each WSL environment resides. If you exclude those in Defender, you see a significant increase in I/O performance. Side note: I wonder if Apple is observing this trend at all, and/or if they even care? They give lip service to the idea that they care about the Mac still... but the experience is still lackluster.

176 points by elithrar 8y ago

> I respect those who’ve invested the time into maintaining & automating a full Linux environment they can use daily I can't imagine what he means by that. All my Macs and Linux boxes (from a dozen of RPi-like ARM boxes, to laptops, to big Xeon server) and even the OpenIndiana and FreeBSD machines all work without much effort. A `yum update` here, a `pkg update` there and nothing ever breaks. It's actually boring compared to 2004 or so, but we end up getting used to actually working.

danieldk 8y ago
Indeed. And on my NixOS machines I can even boot into any version of the OS that I haven't garbage collected. Also, I have found it easier to make reproducible environments everywhere in Unices. Nowadays, I just check out a git repo, run home-manager switch and all my software and configuration is there.
larrik 8y ago
Seriously, I spend WAY more time fussing with Windows than Linux on my dual boot machines. Windows has also destroyed the usability of their settings screens to the point that I find configuring Linux far far easier than Windows.
- towndrunk 8y ago
  I wish windows would adopt something similar to chrome://flags for configuration. Easy to search and all in one place.
  - amyjess 8y ago
    Isn't that what the registry was supposed to be before it turned into a monster? Personally, though, I've always preferred Firefox's (and old Opera's) about:config instead. It's far more flexible than Chrome's flags.
    - rzzzt 8y ago
      Quite a few years back I got a book from a friend, summarizing new and noteworthy changes in Windows 95 (you could make a good drinking game from it if you took a sip each time you encountered the expression "32-bit", it was all the rage). The registry was indeed intended to serve as a central storage for configuration, replacing .ini files scattered all over the system.
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        It could be easily replaced by a c:\Windows\etc folder full of .ini files and it'd be a vast improvement. I think Windows frowned upon lots of small files for performance and locking reasons - if some app decides to hold the file hostage, you'll end up needing to restart the system to be able to save a new version.
        rzzzt 8y ago
        C:\Windows\win.ini was a previous problem point, it had driver related settings, OS preferences and some non-MS applications added their own keys to the lot as well.
        rbanffy 8y ago
        Of course the win.ini (and system.ini) became a mess. They should be in a folder, with each application having their own file with their own settings. And reading the file and then CLOSING IT so others could to stuff to it.
      - rzzzt 8y ago
        "Introducing Microsoft Windows 95" by Brent Ethington https://books.google.com/books/about/Introducing_Microsoft_Windows_95.html?id=biLYdV2Uj-MC https://books.google.com/books/about/Introducing_Microsoft_W...
  - shittyadmin 8y ago
    You might consider trying the "GodMode" trick - still works in Windows 10 and has quick access to settings all over the place. I just remembered it after posting about digging for the network dialog and sure enough, network settings are right there, easily accessible.
    - Jaruzel 8y ago
      GodMode Trick: Create a new folder and call it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} Under Windows 10, it will hide the name, but the Icon will change. Click on the icon for wonders. The GUID is the important bit, you can replace 'GodMode' with anything, but it can't be blank.
      - mark212 8y ago
        that is excellent. Thanks for sharing
      - shittyadmin 8y ago
        Yeah, seems the real name for this is supposed to be "All Tasks" as you can see by putting shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} in the run dialog or address bar of an explorer window. GodMode is just a nickname it got from some power users it seems.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  Seriously, what a fucking mess they made with the new settings screens. I find myself clicking through 5 screens just to finally arrive at the old control panel for network interfaces to toggle my ethernet off.
  - pheouk 8y ago
    not defending one way or the other, but remember North Carolina, Pennsylvania ncpa.cpl is the old network view, still very useful if i'm not in the cli :)
    - shittyadmin 8y ago
      Thanks. Good thinking. That will almost certainly be my route in the future.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    It’s so bad it now requires search to find say, the mouse settings.
- babypuncher 8y ago
  Meanwhile I can't even get sound to work properly in any Linux distro on my motherboard. Kubuntu 18.04 has a problem on both my laptop and desktop where a fresh install works fine until you run apt-get upgrade then kdm breaks and both machines boot to a black screen.
  - tapoxi 8y ago
    That's the caveat, you need to buy hardware that was designed with Linux in mind. Throwing it on hardware where the designers only thought about Windows will always be a bad experience.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      I am glad to say it seems very hard to find hardware that doesn't work on Linux.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    Would you like to share some details? A lot of people that can help lurk around here and it could be a simple issue.
    - babypuncher 8y ago
      I've been using Linux since 2003, even though I'm a .NET engineer by trade. Most of the problems (except the audio problem on one particular motherboard) were relatively simple for me to fix. I imagine it would have been a nightmare if I didn't have 15 years of experience under my belt. My point was that this shouldn't have been a problem in the first place, and I've always found Windows to be much easier to get up and running. I've always had to live in both worlds, and they each have their fair share of pros and cons.
  - willtim 8y ago
    Make sure that Kubuntu is giving you a stable version of KDE. My issue with Ubuntu in the past has been that it too often takes unstable snapshots of upstream software in order to accommodate it's own self-imposed release schedule.
- guhidalg 8y ago
  I think you have to remember that you are in the 1% of people that want MORE control over a computer. Most users out there want more simplicity and flashier UI. Microsoft cannot please everyone so they opt to please the average users and developers just need to adapt.
  - larrik 8y ago
    And yet, transferring files between my windows 10 computers feels like I need a network engineering degree. Half the time I need to fire up a Win7 VM and transfer from one to the other that way. Mac isn't better in that department, though (when talking to Windows, at least).
WestCoastJustin 8y ago
Suspect is highly depends on what you're doing. I used to run Linux for video editing with a Nvidia GPU. It was an extreme hassle anytime a new driver came out and blew away some config. Moving to Mac cleared all those issues up. I know this pain well when you have a deadline and are messing around with kernel configs and compiling. Many many hours wasted. Docker with ffmpeg has solved most of those issues now since you can basically have a custom toolchain totally isolated from your core operating system. So, it would likely work knowing what I know now (or with modern tools).
- mixedCase 8y ago
  > It was an extreme hassle anytime a new driver came out and blew away some config. Your distro's fault. Never had such a problem with Arch but I remember I had it with Ubuntu, albeit so long ago I can't say it's still a problem.
- larrik 8y ago
  How long ago was that? Valve spurred along a lot of progress in that area.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  Yes. The Nvidia GPU stuff is usually more painful. I tended to not update my kernel+drivers as much on those boxes. In the end, I moved to Intel GPUs, which are punier, but, at least, work.
  - boudin 8y ago
    AMD GPUs support is really good now too.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Unless you have an older card.
      - danieldk 8y ago
elithrar 8y ago
Author here: let me clarify further. I’m not just talking about the CLI experience, since WSL doesn’t bring you anything new there. It’s Ubuntu (by default), or whichever other distro you choose. When it comes to desktop applications (both in breadth & quality), video/GPU drivers, and (if it wasn’t clear already!) my preferences for a desktop experience, Ubuntu 18.04, Debian with XFCE, Fedora + KDE, etc - just don’t do it for me. And that’s OK, because what I prefer probably doesn’t do it for you.
- setquk 8y ago
  I'll give you the desktop environments aren't very good. Gnome 2 was about the peak and it went a bit weird after that as they appeared to have an internal battle between making it look like MacOS and inventing something new while locked in a dungeon with a bong. xfce isn't quite polished enough even with a lot of configuration done.
  - intertextuality 8y ago
    That's why people don't even use a desktop environment. My setup for the past year and a half has only been: * xorg server * i3 tiling wm * rofi application launcher that's all one really needs.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    I'm kind of happy with Gnome 3. It's almost Mac-like in being opinionated, but steps out of the way most of the time. I'm using it with Fedora on a couple machines and it works great. I gave up on having my desktop looking like a futuristic sci-fi movie UI and that brought me a lot of peace (and free time). ;-)
    - rhinoceraptor 8y ago
      None of the desktops are any good at high DPI yet, and Gnome seems to have gone off the deep end in terms of killing useful features and settings (removing desktop and tray icons for example). It’s absurd to remove these things, and have the community re-implement core desktop feature as Javascript plugins without even a stable API between major versions.
grawprog 8y ago
Ya about the last headache I had setting anything up in linux was getting Jack2 and pulseaudio set up for recording. That's about the last time I remember struggling to get something working on linux and that was...i'm not even sure hoe long ago. I had to do it again a couple years ago on a new machine and there were none of the issues I had the first time. I can't remember the last time I had a video card driver or other real hardware issue. Come to think of it I can't really remember the last time i've really had to do any kind of system manangment other than package updates. Oh...wait...I had to fuck around in grub a couple months ago when I lost power during a kernel update. That was about a half hour fix though.... I've lost power while windows was in the middle of updating before and it nearly killed my windows system. It was a few hours of booting into safe mode, figuring out what wasn't installed properly, fucking with the registry and windows update, manually comparing and replacing.dll and system files before finally getting it back up and running properly.
setquk 8y ago
Indeed. I don't wish to be rude to the original poster but I've managed large networks of Windows and Linux/OpenBSD/FreeBSD/Solaris machines for over 20 years. Windows is a joke and it hasn't got any better. I have actually also, unfortunately, spent a lot of time working with Windows Installer and Wix and that's a fine example if you ever get the experience to see eye gouging pain of the highest order.
brightball 8y ago
That was my experience also. I took it a step farther and invested some time in using Ansible to configure my laptop which has been great too.

insulanian 8y ago

Used Windows for years, from 3.11 to 7. Switched to Mac couple of years ago. I don't think I would consider using Windows ever again, unless they go back to 7 and create a new reasonable iteration out of it. Everything after 7 is just not worth the frustration.

scarface74 8y ago
I keep being tempted to go back to Macs - especially the new Mac Mini - now that most of my work is cross platform (.Net Core/Python/NodeJS) but I don't see any advantage just for that reason. I spend little time mucking with the OS. Most of my time is in VS Code/Visual Studio, Chrome and Notepad++. I don't see that changing. The rare occasion that I need Linux I use WSL locally.

setquk 8y ago

I genuinely don't get this. WSL's backing filesystem (NTFS) completely runs like ass. It's dire. 10x the latency on everything at least compared to Linux running natively on the same hardware. This is because all small writes end up in MFT contention and the entire of Unixy type things are based on lots of small writes. Plus on top of that, everything is rammed with telemetry on windows now, the QA has gone down the toilet leading to a hosed machine at least three times in the last two years for me and there is no clear direction they are going in other than "throw poo on everything and see where it sticks". Any bets you make are risky. And honestly when I read about powershell and chocolatey used there I laugh because a huge amount of friction for me came from that direction. powershell's principle is based on the principle of most surprise. Like when I tell it to download something, I don't expect to have to futz with IE browser settings (WTF?!?!). And chocolatey sucks - the repository it pulls from is full of abandoned and broken crap and missing packages (.net SDKs are my favourite pain point here) where people have thought "hey it'll be good to port this" and then leave it to rot. That's the status quo for me and I'm not happy. I'm going the other way to OSX. It mostly just works and that's all I want and there's a local support network for the hardware which is decent and doesn't involve me shipping it off to some third party and losing it for 2 weeks.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> powershell's principle is based on the principle of most surprise. I don't think that's true at all. Compare powershell command names to UNIX command names for example. You can rest assured that Get-X will not change things and that there is almost certainly a Set-X that will, for example. You can tab complete variable names, cmdlet names, cmdlet switches, etc. Additionally, by piping objects instead of text, you aren't caught off guard by things like spaces in a path name. > Like when I tell it to download something, I don't expect to have to futz with IE browser settings (WTF?!?!). It definitely does have some flaws though, I'll give you that. As an aside, you can use Invoke-WebRequest with the `-UseBasicParsing` switch to leave IE out of it. They definitely should have done that the other way around.
- setquk 8y ago
  The last point is the point really. The entire objectivity of it is ruined by weird edge cases and knowledge. The car only goes straight if both rear windows are open. You have to say "beetlejuice" three times before putting it in reverse etc etc.

lostgame 8y ago

I always kinda chuckle at articles like this - for a creative individual such as myself that's very locked into Logic Pro X and Final Cut X, and a full-time iOS developer, ditching a Mac would mean losing ~15 years of backwards compatibility for my media, and being stuck with far less-than-ideal virtualization solutions for Xcode. Even with their pitiful current hardware offerings that almost seem like a direct insult to long-term dedicated fans, I'm still locked into their excellent software.

elithrar 8y ago
Author here: of course it’s not a fit for you! I qualified my “yes” with the primary uses for my computer, which doesn’t include any macOS specific software (Sketch was the most recent). If I was using FCPX, Logic or doing iOS development I wouldn’t have opened my editor to write the article ;)
terramex 8y ago
I can see myself switching from FCPX/Motion to Premiere/After Effects quite easily (Premiere is really great nowadays), but I just cannot find a good replacement for Logic Pro. It has it quirks and bugs, its performance is terrible on my 2013 MBP, but I just cannot find any other DAW that lets makes me feel as productive as Logic. Not just productive, it brought fun back to music production for me. Using FL Studio felt like a chore, even when I was quite experienced with it.
vegasdew 8y ago
You chuckle at articles because you are locked-in? Sure that chuckle ain't at your own expense.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

folkrav 8y ago

I really don't understand most of his arguments against switching to Linux. > I’ll keep this short: I still depend on Lightroom, writing tools (Notion, Evernote prior), a solid default desktop environment, first-party hardware support (be it a MacBook or Surface) & battery life, and most of all, my time. I respect those who’ve invested the time into maintaining & automating a full Linux environment they can use daily, but I just don’t have the time for that investment nor am I ready to make the trade-offs required for it. To each their own. - Software support, no problem, I can understand. I still have a Windows partition for audio production. - The "solid default desktop environment" is pretty much crap - both Gnome and KDE Plasma are far more solid DEs than Windows'. - First-party support I can't figure out what he means by that... - As for battery life, I have 10+ hours on my ZenBook running Arch. The battery life is actually better on Linux than on Windows on this laptop. - Windows has been a much higher time-sink than Linux or macOS for me. Sure, an Arch or Gentoo desktop would be higher maintenance than your average distro, but come on, Fedora and Ubuntu are _super_ easy to install these days, and the overwhelming majority of the time just work out of the box. It's 0 maintenance. My maintenance/automation scripts were like 80% ported straight from my old macOS scripts. I'm forced to use Windows on my work computer and it's IMHO terrible. Its virtual desktop feature are useless (really, switching desktops changes _all_ screens at once?), the shell is crap, WSL basically feels the same as running a VM and SSHing in, the DE is horrible.

z3phyr 8y ago
The (One of the) real reason(s) anybody even considers Windows is Visual Studio proper. Nothing comes close to it in proper IDE experience. It has (arguably) the best debugging facilities in common existence.
- jhasse 8y ago
  Visual Studio Code with the right extensions comes pretty close :)
wbkang 8y ago
> - The "solid default desktop environment" is pretty much crap - both Gnome and KDE Plasma are far more solid DEs than Windows'. You are not telling us anything better than the author, one way or another.

kuroguro 8y ago

@terminals - consider ConEmu (wasn't listed) - it's fast (native) with unicode support and lots of configurability. https://conemu.github.io/ https://conemu.github.io/

folkrav 8y ago
He listed cmder, that is a ConEmu fork with some added goodies.
_coveredInBees 8y ago
I switched from ConEmu to wsltty. ConEmu is a decent resource hog and I've seen it use 3-5% CPU cycles all the time, even when idling. It also handles the rendering differently (can't remember technical details), which is why it has some great features, but is also more of a resource hog. Maybe this will change with the new API coming in Windows 10. By comparison Wsltty is much simpler, but works like a charm, and t-mux with mouse support is so liberating to use. Edit - Found the resources on ConEmu's site that mention the technical limitations https://conemu.github.io/en/CpuIoConsumption.html https://conemu.github.io/en/CpuIoConsumption.html https://conemu.github.io/en/RealConsole.html https://conemu.github.io/en/RealConsole.html
elithrar 8y ago
Cmder is a wrapper around ConEmu (mostly some settings), that launches ConEmu itself. It wasn’t handling the glyphs my shell uses for Git repo status, return status, etc - compared to other options I tried. If it worked well and line output didn’t break under tmux I would absolutely use it [until Alacritty improves].

ulzeraj 8y ago

Last time I've tried chocolatey there were lots of outdated packages and those applications keep pestering me to download the latest version through their updaters or manually. So what's the point. Besides I hate Powershell Long-Ass-Weird-Awkward-Cmdlets -force.

nailer 8y ago

> I’m using Terminus for now Completely agree. If you're on Windows and still using ConEmu give Terminus a try.

EpicBlackCrayon 8y ago
Yeah, thanks to OP for that. I was using Hyper before and the performance was abysmal. Terminus has the same great rendering and is much more performant. 100 MB one terminal with some work is still not amazing, but it sure as hell beats 300MB while just idling with Hyper and 5 second load times for a window. I think Electron apps are an order of magnitude slower in general, but the Hyper team really seem to have made some poor choices on top of that.
- nickjj 8y ago
  My least favorite thing about Hyper was whenever you split a window horizontally you would lose your cursor because it would be hidden "behind" the split pane above it, and then you would have to hit CTRL+C like 20 times or force some output to the screen. I opened an issue for this 2 months ago[0] and the team hasn't responded yet. I'm about ready to call it quits with Hyper (ConEmu has its own set of even worse bugs). The problem with Terminus is it currently has no support for splitting windows, so if you want that behavior you would have to use tmux. Although now with Windows 18.03+ being out, tmux sessions persist after closing your terminal so maybe that's the best way to handle splitting windows. [0]: https://github.com/zeit/hyper/issues/3258 https://github.com/zeit/hyper/issues/3258

jo-wol 8y ago

How do they run tcpdump with WSL or anything related to network?

runjake 8y ago
They don't. Along with a bunch of other network socket stuff, such as many of the tools in Kali Linux, which they have published in the Windows Store. Nevermind that a significant chunk of Kali's tools do not work in WSL, at present.
vasilia 8y ago
tcpdump is a wrapper for RAW sockets and eBPF. You can use WinPCAP, but it's not possible to use something like fanout(It's possible to make multithreaded tcpdump for Linux) or you can't use interface "any"(it's a Linux specific layer). The worst thing is that you can't trace your kernel IP/TCP info, like sk_buff tracing in Linux.

_coveredInBees 8y ago

I'm somewhat on the other side of things where I've been using Windows exclusively on my work laptop for many years (I have a Linux box at work) and have been seriously considering switching to a Macbook Pro for over a year now, but I'm continuously frustrated by things on the Apple/Macbook side of things (my wife has a 2017 MBP). Apart from the annoyance of the keyboard on the MBP and my personal preference for physical Fn keys over a touchbar, it is simply amazing to me how bad the Macbook Pro is with playing with simple external peripherals like Docks and external monitors. I've tried using a USB3 based dock, as well as a thunderbolt dock to connect 2 external displays to a Macbook Pro and it's just been horrible. The former didn't even work, the latter only supported one monitor for whatever reason. I then tried using 2 simply USB-C to HDMI adapters to connect to the two monitors (hello dongle land!) and while both monitors are seen, OSX refuses to support 1920x1200 on my new Dell 2415 Monitor and ends up stretching a lower resolution across the monitor, making everything look like garbage. Occasionally, on reboots, it will work fine again, but it needs to be your lucky day. Why Apple won't make their own fucking dock so that I can pay them some extra Apple tax just for some sanity and peace of mind is beyond me. Meanwhile, my 2 year old Dell XPS (which I don't really love at all) has never had an issue with external monitors via any of these docks ever. So here I am using WSL on Windows 10, and you know what, it keeps getting better and better, and I might just end up sticking around with Windows.

alkonaut 8y ago
Hardware really is where windows shines. I connect a new laptop to two external monitors with different resolution and dpi and everything just works including dragging windows between them and rescaling for most apps. For some reason it feels like it even knows which monitor is placed where which would be more than creepy (I can’t imagine it does, so must be confirmation bias).
dethac 8y ago
It honestly feels like choosing a laptop today is trying to make the least bad choice. MacBook? Piss-poor keyboards and external device support. XPS? Poor support. ThinkPad? Windows 10. <Laptop> with Linux? X software is not available.

cube2222 8y ago

I'm at the point of considering a switch in the other direction. I love how seamlessly wsl works and gives you a real Linux environment. Writing on my screen (surface pro) is great too. However, I'm mad that I'm getting ads (preinstalled Candy crush) on a Windows pro machine. Also, os x is much more privacy oriented overall, and it's the de facto developer machine. The only reason I'm hesitating is that although osx is Unix, I'm scared I may miss a full Linux installation which you have with wsl.

setquk 8y ago
I tend to SSH into an AWS box most of the time or use a Linux installation inside a vagrant VM when I have to use something Linux. Both of these are much smoother than on WSL/Windows. However most of the built in packages and stuff that comes from brew is exactly the same as on Linux. Perhaps 99.999% of stuff is totally portable.
pier25 8y ago
I've been using macOS for the most part of the last decade. I also use Windows, but only for gaming. For me the BIG problem with macOS is actually the hardware. When Apple gets it right it's awesome, but this hasn't been the case for the last 5 or so years (with some exceptions). The fact that there is no competition for macOS hardware ends up in very surreal situations such as overpriced broken products or design decisions that make absolutely no sense. If I had to buy a new laptop now I'm not sure I'd buy an Apple product.
andmarios 8y ago
Same issue here. I'm a Linux user but recently got a new laptop and thought I should at least log in once to Windows before installing Linux. I was welcomed by candy crush tiles and other questionable stuff. It is totally incomprehensible to me how a machine that costs almost $2k has candy crush as the first tile the user ever sees. I don't think Microsoft cares anymore.
- cube2222 8y ago
  I think it's just lack of communication/vision shared between departments. Everybody is trying to maximize their respective outcome without caring about the overall product. At least that's what it seems like to me.

PuffinBlue 8y ago

> I’ll keep this short: I still depend on Lightroom, writing tools (Notion, Evernote prior), a solid default desktop environment, first-party hardware support (be it a MacBook or Surface) & battery life, and most of all, my time. I respect those who’ve invested the time into maintaining & automating a full Linux environment they can use daily, but I just don’t have the time for that investment nor am I ready to make the trade-offs required for it. To each their own. Given the circuitous series of hoops the author goes through to get their WSL/Windows environment in something of a working configuration the above passage is kind of laughable. I too depend on Lightroom, but I've had to break that hold and just this week have gone the other way to a full Linux desktop. Windows breaks so often it's not workable for me. And LR classic has been nothing but a buggy, slow, bloated mess for me. Even just little things like opening the app paints the window over all other UI elements and you can't click to bring another app to the front before clicking/focusing into LR. Let alone the slow loading, painfully slow image viewing and stupid stuff like hiding the mouse pointer after creating a new folder. I intend to split RAW development and Digital Asset Management, which is what I should always have done, now that Lightroom is out of the way. RAWtherapee and Darktable to a great job (and I say that as a former pro photographer) for RAW development and easily enough for most pro work I did/do. The options for DAM are varied but even Digikam is pretty excellent for most things. Having just spent a year with Windows (having run Linux previously) Linux is, amazingly, progressing towards 'just working' for me. Especially with Flatpaks/Snaps (though developers need to get a grip of understanding 'filesystem=home' vs 'filesystem=host' and how this effects usability vs sandboxing) as well as appimage. When they become available on Debian natively it'll be kind of awesome to run a stable desktop with latest selection of certain apps you might need. It's true Nvidia support is bad. I did switch from Nvidia to AMD to make the move. Is that unreasonable to expect the user to do? Possibly. But doing that I get a hassle free 4k desktop, excellent stability (so far) and all the apps I need (so far). Being back in a terminal 'proper' again on the desktop is just fantastic. Not having things update on their own with my say is even more fantastic. And the fact it's not eating 12GB of RAM running LR and a browser is the icing on the cake.

inferiorhuman 8y ago
I still use the final version of the perpetually licensed Lightroom, and so far haven't found anything to replace it. Sometimes I use it in a Windows VM on FreeBSD sometimes I use it on a Mac. It largely just works, even with a catalog that I desperately need to pare down. Meanwhile Darktable is a pathological mess. I really want to like it. They even offer a Mac binary on their download page. Unfortunately, it turns out that the only first class platform is Linux. None of the core devs actually use a Mac so bug reports languish and users are told to simply compile DT and fix the bugs themselves. I'm working up to compiling DT, but the instructions are all built around MacPorts which I ran away from years ago. Yes, I'm aware that DT is an open source project maintained by volunteers but sometimes I want higher level packages to just work without a fight. If I want to import metadata from Lightroom I'm expected to export individual sidecar files and hack up a script to do the import (hint: this doesn't scale). The real deal breaker for me was that the latest version available on the DT site simply crashes for me while trying to import photos. But not every photo. I'm not particularly inclined to file a bug report because most Mac issues get put in the circular file. Once I got past that I found the interface to be… interesting. Despite the superficial similarities to Lightroom, DT is wildly different in practice and not all that intuitive to me (e.g. applying presets from the lighttable vs darkroom modules — also seriously those names: darktable, lighttable, darkroom are all far too similar regardless of whether or not they're based on photography terms). It's been a few years since I've tried RawTherapee but obviously that didn't stick either.

jaxondu 8y ago

Hoping MS will create a Azure Linux and a Windows desktop on top of it.

pkulak 8y ago

This sounds like a huge pain. Makes me wonder if Google's approach of just sticking the whole thing in a VM is the better way to go. They still have a LOT of issues to work through (graphics acceleration, USB support, etc), but if they can really nail that, it could be interesting in a year or two. Until then... I think I'll just stick with Mac.

vijaybritto 8y ago

My experience on WSL: very slow shells. Serious Web Dev work is not possible. So much catching up to do with Mac. Maybe MS should build that shell natively in windows with all those command programs

throwawaywhynot 8y ago

macOS is the buggiest os I've used in my life so I can't imagine how wsl can be worse. Unless the shell itself is clunky. macOS gui is a mess

welly 8y ago
Any examples of how the macos gui is a mess? Given that every other os is trying their hardest to emulate it.
pier25 8y ago
Yosemite and High Sierra have been the worst versions of macOS I've ever used.

DrTung 8y ago

Was on Windows from 1986-2010, Ubuntu 2010 - today, but will be switching to MacOS on a MacMini soon, and the reason: Apple's old filesystem HFS was slooow when grepping/compiling etc. but the new APFS is comparable to EXT4 in speed, makes all the difference.

lj3 8y ago

Have they fixed the git corruption issue yet? I switched from WSL to MacOS specifically because, if the computer blue screens while I'm working in WSL, something in the .git directory corrupts itself and I have to check out the repo again.

Aaronmacaron 8y ago

I use Windows + WSL on a daily basis for web development. This is what I did about the Terminal Problem: I installed XMing (an X-Server for Windows). Then I configured WSL to use the the X-Server installed on the host. This way I can use any Linux terminal emulator (actually any Linux GUI Application) on my Windows machine. This works surprisingly well for how much of a hack this is. I've been using this set up with gnome-terminal on a daily basis for over a year now. It'd still be great if there was a solid windows-native alternative.

Koshkin 8y ago
Cygwin has been working for me much better than WSL. Besides being a complete Linux-like environment, it is rather seamlessly integrated with Windows - which allows to take the full advantage of the software available on Linux when working with Windows files.

0x54D5 8y ago

VSCode with WSL with Nginx & PHP 7.1 only has one issue currently. A bug with fastcgi buffering which I have documented here: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/3687 https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/3687 Yes. It's a little bit slower but for development local environments it really does not matter. I actually set this up for the Windows devs at work but I still use a 2014 MBP. Our ionic app though is a huge pain in the ass that requires Visual Studio to setup a decent dev environment in native windows.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Whoa there, your script starts with "Disable UAC"! You might as well just traipse around the Internet with a Windows XP machine, clicking on every shady looking ad for good measure, with that take on security. UAC got some flak for compatibility issues when a lot of apps didn't support it yet, but today, UAC is well-supported by everything, and nobody should ever be turning it off.

Koshkin 8y ago

What does “Windows Services for Linux” even mean - given the conspicuous absence of what is being “served”?

ld00d 8y ago
do you mean "Windows Subsystem for Linux"?
- Koshkin 8y ago
  I guess... In the past we had “Windows Services for UNIX” - which, by the way, was based on the actual POSIX subsystem rather than something that sits on top of Win32. Anyway, the point was, shouldn’t “for” in this context be understood as “instead of”?
  - ld00d 8y ago
    "Windows pretending to be Linux" doesn't have the same appeal.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    WSL is not based on Win32. It is a personality for the NT kernel, much like the POSIX subsystem was.

wnevets 8y ago

WSL has made it much easier for me to stay a windows user. However had the idea and got the thing launch deserves a promotion at microsoft.

stinos 8y ago

Wrt to the FS sharing, wouldn't it be possible to share the WSL root with samba and access it on Windows?

jmlucjav 8y ago

if somebody likes chocolatey/Boxstarter, have a look at https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script The three together work like a charm, though it does some things much better than Boxstarter imho

safgasCVS 8y ago

I am quite happy with WSL - I might not be the target audience as my needs are almost entirely for statistics but WSL beats a vm for rstudio server and awk. You’ll hear nothing but praise from me

vegasdew 8y ago

I am using mac from about 4 years, because it is standard at company. While hardware is decent (2015 Pro). I don't understand the fanboyism around OS. It's not keyboard friendly (e.g. can't quickly open menus without mouse), it force maximize to desktop, but multiple desktop support sucks. Multi monitor support is mediocre at best.

justinmchase 8y ago

WSL is great on windows but the situation with Docker is pretty bad still. Docker on windows needs to not require Hyper-V but to run as a kernel process like WSL does. Also the volume mounting straight up doesn't work on windows and if they can resolve those issues then suddenly a lot of things open up.

radus 8y ago
Not my experience with Docker on Windows - volume mounting works (and has worked) without issues. I remember at some point being prompted to share my drive so that Docker can access it - perhaps you need to flip this switch in the Docker settings?
- GordonS 8y ago
  I think volume binding only works with Windows containers? I seem to recall trying it with Linux containers and immediately hitting permissions issues due to incompatibilities between Windows and Linux. I am at least able to bind individual files using Docker Compose's 'secrets' and 'configs'.

wemdyjreichert 8y ago

I've tried it; still like unix-likes better. No af_packet, no cuda, doesn't work for me.

nickjj 8y ago

I've been using WSL now as my primary dev environment for about a year now and it's really good. I use it for full time web development and creating video courses (which is why I'm not running native Linux). The WSL environment is very fast and reliable to the point where for the last year I've been 100% at peace with my dev environment. I would say in 20+ years of computing, this has been my favorite overall set up because you get a great dev set up, you can assemble your own computer part by part and you have excellent gaming support all without having to dual boot or run a Linux VM (which I did previously for ~5 years). I finally feel like I have 1 machine that does everything very well. A typical dev day for me involves running Dockerized web apps (mostly Flask, Rails and Phoenix apps with Webpack, etc.), tons of terminal usage, Ansible, VMs, etc.. Everything you would expect to run as a developer. If anyone is looking for a more step by step guide on how to get everything running, here's 2 posts I whipped up on getting everything you need installed on Windows[0] as well as getting Docker working flawlessly with WSL[1]. [0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/using-wsl-and-mobaxterm-to-create-a-linux-dev-environment-on-windows https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/using-wsl-and-mobaxterm-to-cr... [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows-and-wsl-to-work-flawlessly https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows...

shdh 8y ago

WSL is fine for dev. Performance is abysmal.

akulbe 8y ago

Can't help but feel a bit of vindication/validation after reading this. I've commented on the declining quality of Apple hardware and software, and switching to Windows 10 + WSL, several times on other posts. Like OP, this isn't a perfect experience. It felt like it was a very balanced treatment of the issues. There are still issues, for sure... but it's definitely passable, and improving. (At least for me.) As far as the slow I/O performance, I believe the heart of this is Windows Defender live scanning the FS where each WSL environment resides. If you exclude those in Defender, you see a significant increase in I/O performance. Side note: I wonder if Apple is observing this trend at all, and/or if they even care? They give lip service to the idea that they care about the Mac still... but the experience is still lackluster.