6 ms·

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

bitwize 7y ago
Then explain all those "Windows with WSL is the only Linux desktop I'll ever use" posts.
- detaro 7y ago
  Not made by most people, and (anecdotally) often made by people for which the alternative to a "Linux desktop" is a Mac, not Windows.
HenryKissinger 7y ago
Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games, and given HN's userbase (mostly young men), I think a lot of people here use Windows.
- greggman2 7y ago
  Windows is also the arguably the domain of GPU related dev. I see lots of Razer laptops. They are small and same weight as a MBP but you can get a 2080 RTX (previously 1060 GTX). Even the newest MBA's GPU is not 1/2 as fast as the 3 year old Razer (and its peers)
  - bootlooped 7y ago
    Are people really using these for work instead of just spinning up a cloud instance or using a desktop? I've always thought they were a horrible deal for gaming, and it seems like they'd still be a horrible deal for ML work or whatever.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    That's right. We use Surface Book with NVIDIA for our laptops and Thinkmate / Supermicro PCs. All with NVIDIA. Our Hollywood clients need NVIDIA for video rendering and we write software in CUDA/C++. Windows 10 really does work great. Seriously!
- arvinsim 7y ago
  Windows is also the OS that doesn't require relatively expensive hardware(MacOS barring hackintosh) and doesn't require that much fiddling(Linux). It's basically the good enough option that most people would use.
  - sundvor 7y ago
    It also lets you build bloody good ones. The 3950X will be a ripper when it's out, couple that with a PCIE4 nvme, 3600 MHz DDR4 and you'll have screaming performance for a relatively modest budget that'd cost you a mortgage and a firstborn under Apple - if at all possible.
    - jhasse 7y ago
      It will also work with Linux though.
      - sundvor 7y ago
        Absolutely. I see a few people running Linux on their desktop, but the majority are on OSX. The Linux / Windows world offers more performance for significantly less money, if you're prepared to learn about hardware. I find it so much fun, although sometimes frustrating when things like bios bugs interfere with normal voltage levels - need to be more hands on these days than before.
- orangecat 7y ago
  Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games Steam's Proton is amazingly good. I recently switched from an iMac to a PC, and was expecting to use Windows for games and Linux for development, but Proton has run everything I've tried with excellent performance and stability.
  - alpaca128 7y ago
    Go install Linux on a laptop with Nvidia Optimus hardware and you'll see how "amazingly good" Linux gaming is on many devices. No, Linux won't come close for at least the next 10 years. It's much better now with Proton, yes, but still not nearly enough. Even on my machine with the more compatible hardware at least 50% of games crash with Proton before you even see a window.
- ulzeraj 7y ago
  I do but I don’t pay for it. I have a copy on boot camp and its been a while since the “Activate Windows” watermark stopped bothering me. It boots directly into Steam Big Picture. I know I know... but at least I’m not using malware infested solutions to keep it working.
- likeclockwork 7y ago
  Wine works pretty well and compatibility is increasingly all the time. Proton integrating wine with Steam is quite convenient. Sure, not everything works.. but then I'm not going to buy every console and handheld just so I can play their exclusives either. Everyone has their own values but... I have more games than I can reasonably play in months installed and available to me already, with more coming out all the time.. there's no one game that would make me compromise everything just for recreation.
nickjj 7y ago
You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available. 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%. I happen to have a few tech courses on programming and Docker and none of it requires writing Windows specific apps. Just general web apps. Over 50% of the people who take my courses are on Windows. Windows usage for Linux based development is real.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.
  - nickjj 7y ago
    I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be. In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available. As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more. For example I spent 95% of my time in WSL using tmux and terminal Vim to write code full time (with fzf and everything you would expect on the command line). It's really fast. The wsltty terminal has almost as low input latency as xterm on native Linux (which I run on my modified Chromebook). While developing all sorts of web apps (Flask, Phoenix, Rails, Webpack, etc.) inside of Docker the volume performance is fast enough where I never once had complaints even on 5 year old hardware. Then I'm a hotkey away from opening any program with command line launchers, switching virtual desktops with other hotkeys, running VMs for testing server deployments, recording and editing videos and playing any games I want without having to think twice about it or dual boot. Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates, Windows 10 Pro is not that bad from an all around "I use my computer to do stuff" perspective. I think that's ultimately why Windows is so popular. It also helps that you can put together a beast of a machine for about $750. But with that said I would instantly switch to Linux if all of my Linux problems were suddenly fixed. In the mean time, if anyone is interested, I have a bunch of blog posts and videos showing how I set everything up in Windows. It can all be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use
IAmGraydon 7y ago
Pretty sure you couldn’t be more wrong.
sundvor 7y ago
I for one am finding W10 with WSL, Docker and the new Console fantastic. Can't wait for WSL2 in 2020 with half second Docker starts++.
ryan-allen 7y ago
I am! I reckon it's a neat OS. They've improved it dramatically (except for that... Candy Crush auto install, that is annoying). I have used WSL a lot, and now I use VS Code Remote to develop on a Debian 10 VPS. It's glorious. Being able to build a custom computer that I can do work on, and that I can play games on, and that run the Adobe suite of software, and not pay through the nose for high specs is wonderful. After 10 year of using Apple and OS X, I felt patronised having to pay double the price for performance. The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store. Windows 10 updates are far more seamless.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store. They have moved away from that now, updates are managed through preferences again.
  - ryan-allen 7y ago
    It's too late for me my friend!
ColinWielga 7y ago
Quick poll: https://linkto.run/p/NGWCZJO1 https://linkto.run/p/NGWCZJO1
- fortran77 7y ago
  And your poll is showing most people here run Windows.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
    Currently the poll is 56%. It's barely a majority. My original commenting, say "many" don't use Windows, seems quite reasonable. Granted, this poll shouldn't be considered authoritative.
    - fortran77 7y ago
      The rest is split between two other operating systems. It's OK to admit you're wrong, you know.
shaklee3 7y ago
I use vscode on Windows with the remote ssh plugin. It's amazing, and I'd never go back. I can kick of compilations of large projects on an 80-core server instead of my laptop. When I need to, wsl works great for small compilations.
fortran77 7y ago
I run Windows 10. I'm running it now. It works well, and I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face by worrying about Satya Nadella seeing my internet searches. I'm not that important that I have to worry about these things. I tend to run it on the "Happy Path" only make a few changes to keep some notifications from bothering me. And I don't buy machines from vendors that try to "add value" by putting crapware or shovelware on the machine. (I buy Supermicro-based boxes from Thinkmate, and use Surface Book notebooks.) I write software all day long in Erlang, F#, and CUDA/C++ and have to write software that works with popular film and audio production software (which runs on Windows platforms)
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  > I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face I have trouble understanding this perspective since it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux. If they wouldn't be materially different experiences, the metaphor doesn't hold water.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    I can't run NVidia on Macs (Ok, some Mac true believer will tell me I can get an PCI-X external cage and run it over thunderbolt with crazy drivers) and I can't run Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Audition, etc, on a Linux machine.
    - angry_octet 7y ago
      It's one reason I gave up having a MacBook Pro, the hardware is underwhelming in so many ways. But my Mac Pro from 2010 still gets nvidia driver updates and cuda support. In the unlikely event someone will pay for a new Mac Pro for me I'll be able to stick a 2080 in it. You can stick an nvidia card in a PCI-e chassis and it will work on a laptop or Mac mini, but yes it isn't optimal.
      - fortran77 7y ago
        "isn't optimal" is an understatement. It's downright wonky!

bitwize 7y ago

Then explain all those "Windows with WSL is the only Linux desktop I'll ever use" posts.

detaro 7y ago
Not made by most people, and (anecdotally) often made by people for which the alternative to a "Linux desktop" is a Mac, not Windows.

HenryKissinger 7y ago

Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games, and given HN's userbase (mostly young men), I think a lot of people here use Windows.

greggman2 7y ago
Windows is also the arguably the domain of GPU related dev. I see lots of Razer laptops. They are small and same weight as a MBP but you can get a 2080 RTX (previously 1060 GTX). Even the newest MBA's GPU is not 1/2 as fast as the 3 year old Razer (and its peers)
- bootlooped 7y ago
  Are people really using these for work instead of just spinning up a cloud instance or using a desktop? I've always thought they were a horrible deal for gaming, and it seems like they'd still be a horrible deal for ML work or whatever.
- fortran77 7y ago
  That's right. We use Surface Book with NVIDIA for our laptops and Thinkmate / Supermicro PCs. All with NVIDIA. Our Hollywood clients need NVIDIA for video rendering and we write software in CUDA/C++. Windows 10 really does work great. Seriously!
arvinsim 7y ago
Windows is also the OS that doesn't require relatively expensive hardware(MacOS barring hackintosh) and doesn't require that much fiddling(Linux). It's basically the good enough option that most people would use.
- sundvor 7y ago
  It also lets you build bloody good ones. The 3950X will be a ripper when it's out, couple that with a PCIE4 nvme, 3600 MHz DDR4 and you'll have screaming performance for a relatively modest budget that'd cost you a mortgage and a firstborn under Apple - if at all possible.
  - jhasse 7y ago
    It will also work with Linux though.
    - sundvor 7y ago
      Absolutely. I see a few people running Linux on their desktop, but the majority are on OSX. The Linux / Windows world offers more performance for significantly less money, if you're prepared to learn about hardware. I find it so much fun, although sometimes frustrating when things like bios bugs interfere with normal voltage levels - need to be more hands on these days than before.
orangecat 7y ago
Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games Steam's Proton is amazingly good. I recently switched from an iMac to a PC, and was expecting to use Windows for games and Linux for development, but Proton has run everything I've tried with excellent performance and stability.
- alpaca128 7y ago
  Go install Linux on a laptop with Nvidia Optimus hardware and you'll see how "amazingly good" Linux gaming is on many devices. No, Linux won't come close for at least the next 10 years. It's much better now with Proton, yes, but still not nearly enough. Even on my machine with the more compatible hardware at least 50% of games crash with Proton before you even see a window.
ulzeraj 7y ago
I do but I don’t pay for it. I have a copy on boot camp and its been a while since the “Activate Windows” watermark stopped bothering me. It boots directly into Steam Big Picture. I know I know... but at least I’m not using malware infested solutions to keep it working.
likeclockwork 7y ago
Wine works pretty well and compatibility is increasingly all the time. Proton integrating wine with Steam is quite convenient. Sure, not everything works.. but then I'm not going to buy every console and handheld just so I can play their exclusives either. Everyone has their own values but... I have more games than I can reasonably play in months installed and available to me already, with more coming out all the time.. there's no one game that would make me compromise everything just for recreation.

nickjj 7y ago

You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available. 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%. I happen to have a few tech courses on programming and Docker and none of it requires writing Windows specific apps. Just general web apps. Over 50% of the people who take my courses are on Windows. Windows usage for Linux based development is real.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.
- nickjj 7y ago
  I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be. In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available. As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more. For example I spent 95% of my time in WSL using tmux and terminal Vim to write code full time (with fzf and everything you would expect on the command line). It's really fast. The wsltty terminal has almost as low input latency as xterm on native Linux (which I run on my modified Chromebook). While developing all sorts of web apps (Flask, Phoenix, Rails, Webpack, etc.) inside of Docker the volume performance is fast enough where I never once had complaints even on 5 year old hardware. Then I'm a hotkey away from opening any program with command line launchers, switching virtual desktops with other hotkeys, running VMs for testing server deployments, recording and editing videos and playing any games I want without having to think twice about it or dual boot. Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates, Windows 10 Pro is not that bad from an all around "I use my computer to do stuff" perspective. I think that's ultimately why Windows is so popular. It also helps that you can put together a beast of a machine for about $750. But with that said I would instantly switch to Linux if all of my Linux problems were suddenly fixed. In the mean time, if anyone is interested, I have a bunch of blog posts and videos showing how I set everything up in Windows. It can all be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use

IAmGraydon 7y ago

Pretty sure you couldn’t be more wrong.

sundvor 7y ago

I for one am finding W10 with WSL, Docker and the new Console fantastic. Can't wait for WSL2 in 2020 with half second Docker starts++.

ryan-allen 7y ago

I am! I reckon it's a neat OS. They've improved it dramatically (except for that... Candy Crush auto install, that is annoying). I have used WSL a lot, and now I use VS Code Remote to develop on a Debian 10 VPS. It's glorious. Being able to build a custom computer that I can do work on, and that I can play games on, and that run the Adobe suite of software, and not pay through the nose for high specs is wonderful. After 10 year of using Apple and OS X, I felt patronised having to pay double the price for performance. The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store. Windows 10 updates are far more seamless.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store. They have moved away from that now, updates are managed through preferences again.
- ryan-allen 7y ago
  It's too late for me my friend!

ColinWielga 7y ago

Quick poll: https://linkto.run/p/NGWCZJO1 https://linkto.run/p/NGWCZJO1

fortran77 7y ago
And your poll is showing most people here run Windows.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  Currently the poll is 56%. It's barely a majority. My original commenting, say "many" don't use Windows, seems quite reasonable. Granted, this poll shouldn't be considered authoritative.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    The rest is split between two other operating systems. It's OK to admit you're wrong, you know.

shaklee3 7y ago

I use vscode on Windows with the remote ssh plugin. It's amazing, and I'd never go back. I can kick of compilations of large projects on an 80-core server instead of my laptop. When I need to, wsl works great for small compilations.

fortran77 7y ago

I run Windows 10. I'm running it now. It works well, and I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face by worrying about Satya Nadella seeing my internet searches. I'm not that important that I have to worry about these things. I tend to run it on the "Happy Path" only make a few changes to keep some notifications from bothering me. And I don't buy machines from vendors that try to "add value" by putting crapware or shovelware on the machine. (I buy Supermicro-based boxes from Thinkmate, and use Surface Book notebooks.) I write software all day long in Erlang, F#, and CUDA/C++ and have to write software that works with popular film and audio production software (which runs on Windows platforms)

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
> I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face I have trouble understanding this perspective since it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux. If they wouldn't be materially different experiences, the metaphor doesn't hold water.
- fortran77 7y ago
  I can't run NVidia on Macs (Ok, some Mac true believer will tell me I can get an PCI-X external cage and run it over thunderbolt with crazy drivers) and I can't run Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Audition, etc, on a Linux machine.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    It's one reason I gave up having a MacBook Pro, the hardware is underwhelming in so many ways. But my Mac Pro from 2010 still gets nvidia driver updates and cuda support. In the unlikely event someone will pay for a new Mac Pro for me I'll be able to stick a 2080 in it. You can stick an nvidia card in a PCI-e chassis and it will work on a laptop or Mac mini, but yes it isn't optimal.
    - fortran77 7y ago
      "isn't optimal" is an understatement. It's downright wonky!