5 ms·

why do people still use windows? It's stupid and naive to ask that, but I keep wondering why devs aren't successful in getting changes made at their companies.

jrockway 7y ago
I use Windows because pretty much every program ever runs on Windows. Buy some weird device? Hey, it has drivers! Want to play the latest game? Hey, there's a Windows version! The same is simply not true of other platforms. The reality is that it's the most popular OS, so when someone can only write their computer program once, they do it for Windows. It sucks, but that's how it is. I use Linux for pretty much all my work, though, preferring a Linux VM to a Windows-native setup. I have tried to make Powershell usable, but the console is terrible (and the replacements are equally bad) and the language itself isn't that amazing. (Their "curl" equivalent requires you to open IE once to activate some setting, for example.) I also hate putty. Never in the history of computing has a program made it so difficult to use the same font for every server you connect to, or to talk to something on a serial port, etc. The way Windows deals with serial ports and the like is so silly that I just have an RPi on my desk for interacting with USB devices... I ssh to that, and then don't deal with Windows anymore.
- TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
  You may be interested in MobaXterm. Don't let the name fool you; it's a good SSH client for Windows. I spent 20 years or so hassling with PuTTY, and just discovered this a few months ago. More people should know about it. I still need pagent for git, and the like, but at least Moba solves the set-the-terminal-options-once-for-all-SSH-sessions problem.
maple3142 7y ago
Able to play many games without hassle?
- swiley 7y ago
  It's been a long time since I've run windows but I remember quite a lot of hassle playing games. With DRM being more common and all the crappy stuff that comes with "windows as a service" I doubt it's gotten better. Last year one of my friends had windows update remove their graphics drive so machine ran with vesa graphics. Their description of it was something along the lines of "everything is big and slow and I don't know why." You want to play games without hassle? Install arch and play the stuff in AUR. Honestly compiling everything is less hassle than dealing with the misbehaving blobs programmed by the changing whims of manipulative corporations.
1_player 7y ago
It's a stupid question to ask, yes. I work on macOS, but I have a Windows partition for gaming. Simple as that. Other people need it to work. You might not like it, but it's a perfectly productive environment.
cabaalis 7y ago
Visual Studio.
- Stiju 7y ago
  I've tried running Linux a couple of times before but Visual Studio is the reason I always go back to Windows. In my opinion there's no other IDE that's even close to VS.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Have you tried JetBrains Rider? I've been using Visual Studio for many years, but it still needs the ReSharper plugin to be truely great. As much as I love VS, I've always found it to be a little buggy, and I grew tired of listening to my laptop fans whining constantly. I switched to Rider, and I love it! It took a while to find a theme that worked for me, but I have it setup perfectly now. There is honestly very little it can't do that VS can, but that goes vice-versa too. I don't recall it crashing even once in all the time I've used it, and it uses far less CPU than VS.
lostmsu 7y ago
I don't know why people don't. I don't want Mac for I prefer cheaper handpicked hardware. I want to believe in Linux, so every now and then I get fresh Ubuntu installed. Now last time with 18.04 it would get blank screen immediately after logging in, which I was only able to fix by manually adding NVidia apt sources, and installing the latest driver from command line (which you have to google how to do on another device). Second thing I faced is trouble getting a tiling window manager (oh irony: I made my own for Windows after reading articles about Linux's ones). Turns out, when you are trying to use, say, Awesome, it replaces the whole desktop environment. Which in default configuration makes desktop work like shit (personal opinion): you are no longer able to use Win key to search like in Gnome, window buttons are non-existent or look terrible, and window managing is actually very much non-intuitive (if it supports mouse resizing/moving at all? you could not tell without reading manual). On Windows custom managers rarely replace the (perhaps not ideal but intuitive) default behavior completely, so are much easier to use. There was a mode of Awesome, which was supposed to replace only Gnome's WM with it, but I was unable to make it work, and gave up. Finally, JetBrains Rider still turned out to be worse, than Visual Studio for debugging. Which I could probably live without if not for the other two. Basically, I want to work, and not waste my time on debugging the OS core components.
detaro 7y ago
What kind of change would devs successfully push for?
nurettin 7y ago
I have windows 7 on virtualbox, because our software depends on a vendor who only provides a COM interface to their API. Thus we need some windows glue. Also, there is some really neat software built for windows and it comes pre-installed on virtually any computer you intend to buy for an office that people keep it as their main OS. So if you intend to write a service that runs on a client's computer, it almost certainly has to be usable on windows.
vips7L 7y ago
Developing on windows really isnt that bad. Install scoop. Learn powershell and youll be fine.
behnamoh 7y ago
For the same reason they kept using Windows in the first place: spreadsheets (read "business"). When most of the business world relies on Windows, more and more software gets developed for it which in turn encourages even more people to use that shit. Seriously, if you want to stop this madness (Windows), you should start at the top of the pyramid and persuade businesses to switch to something "sane".
Marsymars 7y ago
Well, I like Windows. I also like, and regularly use macOS, Android, iOS (well, iPadOS now) and Arch Linux. I don't have any interest in stopping my use of any of those operating systems.
CamperBob2 7y ago
why do people still use windows? Ask my mortgage company.
MaulingMonkey 7y ago
Both my previous linux install attempts resulted in effectively unusable machines. BIOS tweaks were required to even get usable software rendering on one, which didn't support my quad 4K monitor setup. Without the tweaks, I was dumped to a blank screen on boot. I might've been missing working audio drivers on the other - which I was using as a media PC. As a gamedev, for my actual work machines, I rely heavily on windows-only tools, and I want to debug on the actual target platform customers would use (so, windows again.) Gamedev generally uses windows for even it's build servers. Maybe with a token mostly ignored linux box. Or a couple of mac minis if dabbling in mobile.
vilts 7y ago
Adobe suite, Fusion360

jrockway 7y ago

I use Windows because pretty much every program ever runs on Windows. Buy some weird device? Hey, it has drivers! Want to play the latest game? Hey, there's a Windows version! The same is simply not true of other platforms. The reality is that it's the most popular OS, so when someone can only write their computer program once, they do it for Windows. It sucks, but that's how it is. I use Linux for pretty much all my work, though, preferring a Linux VM to a Windows-native setup. I have tried to make Powershell usable, but the console is terrible (and the replacements are equally bad) and the language itself isn't that amazing. (Their "curl" equivalent requires you to open IE once to activate some setting, for example.) I also hate putty. Never in the history of computing has a program made it so difficult to use the same font for every server you connect to, or to talk to something on a serial port, etc. The way Windows deals with serial ports and the like is so silly that I just have an RPi on my desk for interacting with USB devices... I ssh to that, and then don't deal with Windows anymore.

TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
You may be interested in MobaXterm. Don't let the name fool you; it's a good SSH client for Windows. I spent 20 years or so hassling with PuTTY, and just discovered this a few months ago. More people should know about it. I still need pagent for git, and the like, but at least Moba solves the set-the-terminal-options-once-for-all-SSH-sessions problem.

maple3142 7y ago

Able to play many games without hassle?

swiley 7y ago
It's been a long time since I've run windows but I remember quite a lot of hassle playing games. With DRM being more common and all the crappy stuff that comes with "windows as a service" I doubt it's gotten better. Last year one of my friends had windows update remove their graphics drive so machine ran with vesa graphics. Their description of it was something along the lines of "everything is big and slow and I don't know why." You want to play games without hassle? Install arch and play the stuff in AUR. Honestly compiling everything is less hassle than dealing with the misbehaving blobs programmed by the changing whims of manipulative corporations.

1_player 7y ago

It's a stupid question to ask, yes. I work on macOS, but I have a Windows partition for gaming. Simple as that. Other people need it to work. You might not like it, but it's a perfectly productive environment.

cabaalis 7y ago

Visual Studio.

Stiju 7y ago
I've tried running Linux a couple of times before but Visual Studio is the reason I always go back to Windows. In my opinion there's no other IDE that's even close to VS.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Have you tried JetBrains Rider? I've been using Visual Studio for many years, but it still needs the ReSharper plugin to be truely great. As much as I love VS, I've always found it to be a little buggy, and I grew tired of listening to my laptop fans whining constantly. I switched to Rider, and I love it! It took a while to find a theme that worked for me, but I have it setup perfectly now. There is honestly very little it can't do that VS can, but that goes vice-versa too. I don't recall it crashing even once in all the time I've used it, and it uses far less CPU than VS.

lostmsu 7y ago

I don't know why people don't. I don't want Mac for I prefer cheaper handpicked hardware. I want to believe in Linux, so every now and then I get fresh Ubuntu installed. Now last time with 18.04 it would get blank screen immediately after logging in, which I was only able to fix by manually adding NVidia apt sources, and installing the latest driver from command line (which you have to google how to do on another device). Second thing I faced is trouble getting a tiling window manager (oh irony: I made my own for Windows after reading articles about Linux's ones). Turns out, when you are trying to use, say, Awesome, it replaces the whole desktop environment. Which in default configuration makes desktop work like shit (personal opinion): you are no longer able to use Win key to search like in Gnome, window buttons are non-existent or look terrible, and window managing is actually very much non-intuitive (if it supports mouse resizing/moving at all? you could not tell without reading manual). On Windows custom managers rarely replace the (perhaps not ideal but intuitive) default behavior completely, so are much easier to use. There was a mode of Awesome, which was supposed to replace only Gnome's WM with it, but I was unable to make it work, and gave up. Finally, JetBrains Rider still turned out to be worse, than Visual Studio for debugging. Which I could probably live without if not for the other two. Basically, I want to work, and not waste my time on debugging the OS core components.

detaro 7y ago

What kind of change would devs successfully push for?

nurettin 7y ago

I have windows 7 on virtualbox, because our software depends on a vendor who only provides a COM interface to their API. Thus we need some windows glue. Also, there is some really neat software built for windows and it comes pre-installed on virtually any computer you intend to buy for an office that people keep it as their main OS. So if you intend to write a service that runs on a client's computer, it almost certainly has to be usable on windows.

vips7L 7y ago

Developing on windows really isnt that bad. Install scoop. Learn powershell and youll be fine.

behnamoh 7y ago

For the same reason they kept using Windows in the first place: spreadsheets (read "business"). When most of the business world relies on Windows, more and more software gets developed for it which in turn encourages even more people to use that shit. Seriously, if you want to stop this madness (Windows), you should start at the top of the pyramid and persuade businesses to switch to something "sane".

Marsymars 7y ago

Well, I like Windows. I also like, and regularly use macOS, Android, iOS (well, iPadOS now) and Arch Linux. I don't have any interest in stopping my use of any of those operating systems.

CamperBob2 7y ago

why do people still use windows? Ask my mortgage company.

MaulingMonkey 7y ago

Both my previous linux install attempts resulted in effectively unusable machines. BIOS tweaks were required to even get usable software rendering on one, which didn't support my quad 4K monitor setup. Without the tweaks, I was dumped to a blank screen on boot. I might've been missing working audio drivers on the other - which I was using as a media PC. As a gamedev, for my actual work machines, I rely heavily on windows-only tools, and I want to debug on the actual target platform customers would use (so, windows again.) Gamedev generally uses windows for even it's build servers. Maybe with a token mostly ignored linux box. Or a couple of mac minis if dabbling in mobile.

vilts 7y ago

Adobe suite, Fusion360