4 ms·

Many companies, including the one I work for, have most development happening on Windows. It is far easier to manage for Enterprise use-cases, with all releva

Many companies, including the one I work for, have most development happening on Windows. It is far easier to manage for Enterprise use-cases, with all relevant services integrated and obtained from a single vendor. Not to mention that there are quite a few development environments for more obscure platforms that still only exist for Windows. Overall, since most development time is spent in an IDE, the OS is really of little relevance to software development. Sure, some people insist in using command line tools, and that is unlikely to be pleasant on Windows, but a lot of other developers don't, and we couldn't care whether we're running our Emacs on Linux or Windows or Genera or whatever.

larrik 6y ago
I disagree, Windows is very painful for me to use at a basic level compared to Linux. I would be very unlikely to take a job that forced me to develop under Windows.
- simiones 6y ago
  The same is mostly true for me when trying to use a Linux desktop. However, if I'm using IntelliJ or Emacs and Firefox, I don't really need to care what OS is running underneath too much. Edit: of course, Linux and Mac are available for devs that prefer them. It's still much easier for IT to manage 7000 Windows desktops and a couple hundred Linux ones than it would be to manage 7000 Linux desktops.
  - Icathian 6y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with that. 7k "normal" machines for any given value of "normal" seems like it would always be easier than 7k "normal" machines and 200 oddballs. Is the sysadmin tooling for Windows really that much better?
    - simiones 6y ago
      Are there even systems for managing many desktop machines running Linux? - Could you push a patch to Linux systems and have it install at the user's convenience (with some end date)? - Can you do that in waves without manually configuring things? - Can you remotely wipe a system if required? - Is there any popular anti-virus software for Linux, to protect company files in home folders from user mistakes? - Can you help users install some software without giving them full access, but also without requiring IT intervention for every installation?
  - toohotatopic 6y ago
    > It's still much easier for IT to manage 7000 Windows desktops and a couple hundred Linux ones than it would be to manage 7000 Linux desktops. Why? I have never seen Windows being managed entirely hands-off whereas Linux just works.
    - simiones 6y ago
      I don't understand what "being managed entirely hands-off" means. I can assure you there is no manual intervention from IT on every desktop system in the fleet, so I would call that exactly "being managed hands-off". I am certain there are always a few systems that do need some manual intervention for whatever reason, but that seems to just be the way with computers. It's not like Ubuntu updates never break, or no one ever gets to install a broken package before it is retracted.
      - toohotatopic 6y ago
        I mean with 'entirely hands-off' that the computer just keep on running. On Linux, most packages are part of the repository and update automatically. On Windows, those packages have to be updated manually. Even if everything is automated, the computer will have to be restarted quite regularly. At least to me, Windows seems to be more difficult, especially if you have a fleet of desktop systems that can be chosen to be perfectly Linux compatible. Where does the complexity on Linux come from that makes managing them more difficult?
        simiones 6y ago
        Even on Linux, you need restarts if you want the updates to shared libraries to actually happen. You can't just apply a critical security update to OpenSSL for example and hope that the user actually restarts their programs at some point - if you care about the update being applied, you need to know that by some date all of the programs on that system are actually restarted, and a scheduled reboot is by far the simplest way to do this. Then there's the question of pushing an update to all managed computers. Maybe it's not a package update, but you want to change some SELinux policy for all users, or update some DNS server or the default search domain and so on. Never mind the question of how you can instruct one of those Linux computers to delete all data it holds whenever it next connects to the internet (to handle the case of a stolen company laptop). There are so many things that you need in an enterprise setting that have common (though probably quite expensive) tools available for Windows. Maybe some of these exist for Linux as well (I would expect RedHat to have some), but I'm not sure. Linux admin is usually reserved for servers much more than desktop computers.
hart_russell 6y ago
I’ve programmed in a professional capacity on macos, windows, and linux. Windows used to be the worst, but with WSL and VSCode, i would say it has overtaken macos in my mind, because WSL is better than using brew
mcv 6y ago
Sure, companies may love it, but developers hate it. I use a Windows laptop at the company I currently work for, because everything is locked down and I wouldn't be able to get my own laptop connected to the network. (Or so I thought; I co-worker managed to use the Windows laptop as a bridge to his own Macbook.) Now you're right that as long as I stay in the IDE, it's not so bad. But every once in a while I need to do something outside the IDE, and I immediately get slapped in the face by how stupid some things are. And because it's an enterprise environment, some things are even worse than usual; opening a folder, or saving something, can be unreasonably slow because either it's a network drive or it needs to be checked for viruses and malware while I'm trying to use it. Or for some other reason. I don' t know, I just experience the extreme slowness. Also, on top of the old terrible DOS shell, there's now also a Power Shell that's supposed to be better. It apparently has some powerful features I don't really grasp, but it's still not remotely as good as bash. And sometimes the command line really is unavoidable. But the real pain is at home. When I activate Windows 10 on a new machine, I need to create a Microsoft account. I don't want one, but it takes serious determination to avoid it, because behind every message is another trick to sucker you into an MS account. When you finally do manage to create a local account, you're immediately expected to compromise your security with 3 insecurity questions, and no way to avoid it as far as I can tell. Previous versions of Windows did not have this stupidity. Also, somehow Windows keeps losing my mic, speakers or camera. Once I've found the right troubleshooter, it immediately figures out how to fix it, which is great, but it also keeps losing them again. And finding the right troubleshooter takes a couple of steps and a bit of searching. I feel like I need to pin several relevant troubleshooters to the taskbar. And then there's the total lack of access control. To install anything, you need to be admin. I gave my son a restricted account, but he can't do anything with it. I'd like to be able to create an account that can instal games, but can't compromise the system. No such option in Windows. If you can do anything, you can do everything. Unless you're in an enterprise environment, in which case you often still can't do anything. So I guess more detailed access control does exist, but only for enterprise users or something.
- simiones 6y ago
  You generally have some good points, and some points that have more to do with preferences, or luck with hardware. I would note that the lack of anti-virus software is one of the reasons a lot of companies don't want to run Linux on employee systems. Locked-in Windows systems at least have the advantage that even if you Run as Administrator some .exe that you got emailed, there is a good chance that your AV will not allow it to run; if you're running something as sudo on Linux... > And then there's the total lack of access control. To install anything, you need to be admin. I gave my son a restricted account, but he can't do anything with it. I'd like to be able to create an account that can instal games, but can't compromise the system. No such option in Windows. If you can do anything, you can do everything. Unless you're in an enterprise environment, in which case you often still can't do anything. So I guess more detailed access control does exist, but only for enterprise users or something. Here I never understand this point. You can't do anything on a Linux system if you don't have sudo access - it's not like apt or yum have any special magic to allow non-admin users to install stuff. And if you can install software on a system, you can already do anything else. Especially Games, which install drivers to perform DRM and anti-cheat bull. Now, if you want to look into it and waste quite a bit of time, Windows does allow you to configure access control at a very fine-grained level for access to non-system folders. But as long as the installers want to install things in system folders, there really isn't any solution.

larrik 6y ago

I disagree, Windows is very painful for me to use at a basic level compared to Linux. I would be very unlikely to take a job that forced me to develop under Windows.

simiones 6y ago
The same is mostly true for me when trying to use a Linux desktop. However, if I'm using IntelliJ or Emacs and Firefox, I don't really need to care what OS is running underneath too much. Edit: of course, Linux and Mac are available for devs that prefer them. It's still much easier for IT to manage 7000 Windows desktops and a couple hundred Linux ones than it would be to manage 7000 Linux desktops.
- Icathian 6y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with that. 7k "normal" machines for any given value of "normal" seems like it would always be easier than 7k "normal" machines and 200 oddballs. Is the sysadmin tooling for Windows really that much better?
  - simiones 6y ago
    Are there even systems for managing many desktop machines running Linux? - Could you push a patch to Linux systems and have it install at the user's convenience (with some end date)? - Can you do that in waves without manually configuring things? - Can you remotely wipe a system if required? - Is there any popular anti-virus software for Linux, to protect company files in home folders from user mistakes? - Can you help users install some software without giving them full access, but also without requiring IT intervention for every installation?
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  > It's still much easier for IT to manage 7000 Windows desktops and a couple hundred Linux ones than it would be to manage 7000 Linux desktops. Why? I have never seen Windows being managed entirely hands-off whereas Linux just works.
  - simiones 6y ago
    I don't understand what "being managed entirely hands-off" means. I can assure you there is no manual intervention from IT on every desktop system in the fleet, so I would call that exactly "being managed hands-off". I am certain there are always a few systems that do need some manual intervention for whatever reason, but that seems to just be the way with computers. It's not like Ubuntu updates never break, or no one ever gets to install a broken package before it is retracted.
    - toohotatopic 6y ago
      I mean with 'entirely hands-off' that the computer just keep on running. On Linux, most packages are part of the repository and update automatically. On Windows, those packages have to be updated manually. Even if everything is automated, the computer will have to be restarted quite regularly. At least to me, Windows seems to be more difficult, especially if you have a fleet of desktop systems that can be chosen to be perfectly Linux compatible. Where does the complexity on Linux come from that makes managing them more difficult?
      - simiones 6y ago
        Even on Linux, you need restarts if you want the updates to shared libraries to actually happen. You can't just apply a critical security update to OpenSSL for example and hope that the user actually restarts their programs at some point - if you care about the update being applied, you need to know that by some date all of the programs on that system are actually restarted, and a scheduled reboot is by far the simplest way to do this. Then there's the question of pushing an update to all managed computers. Maybe it's not a package update, but you want to change some SELinux policy for all users, or update some DNS server or the default search domain and so on. Never mind the question of how you can instruct one of those Linux computers to delete all data it holds whenever it next connects to the internet (to handle the case of a stolen company laptop). There are so many things that you need in an enterprise setting that have common (though probably quite expensive) tools available for Windows. Maybe some of these exist for Linux as well (I would expect RedHat to have some), but I'm not sure. Linux admin is usually reserved for servers much more than desktop computers.

hart_russell 6y ago

I’ve programmed in a professional capacity on macos, windows, and linux. Windows used to be the worst, but with WSL and VSCode, i would say it has overtaken macos in my mind, because WSL is better than using brew

mcv 6y ago

Sure, companies may love it, but developers hate it. I use a Windows laptop at the company I currently work for, because everything is locked down and I wouldn't be able to get my own laptop connected to the network. (Or so I thought; I co-worker managed to use the Windows laptop as a bridge to his own Macbook.) Now you're right that as long as I stay in the IDE, it's not so bad. But every once in a while I need to do something outside the IDE, and I immediately get slapped in the face by how stupid some things are. And because it's an enterprise environment, some things are even worse than usual; opening a folder, or saving something, can be unreasonably slow because either it's a network drive or it needs to be checked for viruses and malware while I'm trying to use it. Or for some other reason. I don' t know, I just experience the extreme slowness. Also, on top of the old terrible DOS shell, there's now also a Power Shell that's supposed to be better. It apparently has some powerful features I don't really grasp, but it's still not remotely as good as bash. And sometimes the command line really is unavoidable. But the real pain is at home. When I activate Windows 10 on a new machine, I need to create a Microsoft account. I don't want one, but it takes serious determination to avoid it, because behind every message is another trick to sucker you into an MS account. When you finally do manage to create a local account, you're immediately expected to compromise your security with 3 insecurity questions, and no way to avoid it as far as I can tell. Previous versions of Windows did not have this stupidity. Also, somehow Windows keeps losing my mic, speakers or camera. Once I've found the right troubleshooter, it immediately figures out how to fix it, which is great, but it also keeps losing them again. And finding the right troubleshooter takes a couple of steps and a bit of searching. I feel like I need to pin several relevant troubleshooters to the taskbar. And then there's the total lack of access control. To install anything, you need to be admin. I gave my son a restricted account, but he can't do anything with it. I'd like to be able to create an account that can instal games, but can't compromise the system. No such option in Windows. If you can do anything, you can do everything. Unless you're in an enterprise environment, in which case you often still can't do anything. So I guess more detailed access control does exist, but only for enterprise users or something.

simiones 6y ago
You generally have some good points, and some points that have more to do with preferences, or luck with hardware. I would note that the lack of anti-virus software is one of the reasons a lot of companies don't want to run Linux on employee systems. Locked-in Windows systems at least have the advantage that even if you Run as Administrator some .exe that you got emailed, there is a good chance that your AV will not allow it to run; if you're running something as sudo on Linux... > And then there's the total lack of access control. To install anything, you need to be admin. I gave my son a restricted account, but he can't do anything with it. I'd like to be able to create an account that can instal games, but can't compromise the system. No such option in Windows. If you can do anything, you can do everything. Unless you're in an enterprise environment, in which case you often still can't do anything. So I guess more detailed access control does exist, but only for enterprise users or something. Here I never understand this point. You can't do anything on a Linux system if you don't have sudo access - it's not like apt or yum have any special magic to allow non-admin users to install stuff. And if you can install software on a system, you can already do anything else. Especially Games, which install drivers to perform DRM and anti-cheat bull. Now, if you want to look into it and waste quite a bit of time, Windows does allow you to configure access control at a very fine-grained level for access to non-system folders. But as long as the installers want to install things in system folders, there really isn't any solution.