6 ms·

I've been developing on macs for 10+ years. Recently got myself a Windows desktop for testing stuff, gaming etc. It turned into my main development machine than

by eknkc 6y ago

I've been developing on macs for 10+ years. Recently got myself a Windows desktop for testing stuff, gaming etc. It turned into my main development machine thanks to WSL2. Everything works better / more stable and this is extremely ironic given that I switched to mac a decade ago for the same reason. Also I have many more hardware options (which is overwhelming) Meanwhile, my MacBook Pro 16" has daily kernel panics when it is connected to an external display. It has been reported by many people on Macrumors forums and has been happening for months now. No fix...

josephg 6y ago
Has performance improved in wsl? I was playing around with it a few months ago and filesystem-intensive operations (like running npm install) were horrendously slow. Has that changed with wsl2? I’ve been considering picking up a ryzen laptop and running Linux on it, and trying that out as a daily driver. But I don’t have any patience these days for the hacky wifi driver installation dance. And I’m nervous after having a Linux laptop cook it’s own battery when it failed to sleep properly in my backpack. It’s been a couple decades - do Linux laptops just work yet?
- eknkc 6y ago
  I tried WSL a year ago. Filesystem was slow and it was slow everywhere. WSL2 improves that by offering fast fs on linux side. The boundary is still slow. For example, if you go into /mnt/c and use git status on a large repo it will need to go through the boundary. It is slow (not painful but not pleasant) My current setup has all my source code on the linux fs (/home/user) and I access them using VSCode remote extensions. The performance is fine. I can't really tell if native macos experience or this is faster. I also tried JB iDEA. It works across the filesystem boundary and even if the access is slow, it does not reflect to real world usage much. But you'll feel it if you look for it. Another option is to run GUI apps on Linux side and use an X11 server on Windows. This just works fine and they recently announced that the WSL will have built in support for Linux GUI apps.
- Maakuth 6y ago
  Yes indeed. WSL 2 launched a few weeks ago with the latest Windows 10 version, and it has different sort of filesystem setup. WSL 1 had a Linux-like view of some subdirectory of the host NTFS filesystem, so all the fs IO went through Windows kernel. In WSL 2, there's an ext4 image instead, so filesystem access is essentially as fast as with any Linux system in a virtual machine.
- RealStickman_ 6y ago
  Make sure to check how well supported your wifi card is. If you try something like Ubuntu drivers generally should be less of a problem. Though you may have to upgrade to the 5.7 kernel for better support of the cpu. I rarely sleep my laptop so I can't tell you anything about that, but general usage on my hp laptop (i5 7200u, intel igpu and intel wifi) has been working fine for me the last six months with Arcolinux on it.
  - qalmakka 6y ago
    You really have to have a super crappy card to have Wi-Fi issues on Linux. Nowadays laptops have mostly Intel, Qualcomm/Atheros or Broadcom chipsets which work flawlessly out of the box. The only problems I had in the last years were due to Killer WiFi cards or crappy Realtek-based USB dongles, both of which kinda sucked on Windows too in the first place.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  Try Manjaro Linux on your laptop. Last laptop I installed it on, everything just worked. And it's based on Arch, so you'll be able to take advantage of the excellent Arch software repo and wiki (if necessary).
- qalmakka 6y ago
  > do Linux laptops just work yet? Linux on laptops is fine nowadays. Recent versions of the kernel vastly improved battery life on Intel. It's much better than it was 10 years ago.
  - abrowne 6y ago
    Agreed. I only have experience with Intel graphics, but all the recent machines I've installed Ubuntu on have just been install and it works. If you pick a distro that doesn't include non-free drivers/firmware, you might have to do some more work to get wi-fi working.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    What about Nvidia drivers with Wayland? If I remember correctly Nvidia drivers don't work with Wayland and for touch gestures I need Wayland so because of the Nvidia and Wayland mess I can't have touch gestures which seems totally strange that they would be intertwined with touchpad.
    - qalmakka 6y ago
      Sadly, Nvidia has shown multiple times to be extremely user hostile and only concerned in keeping its hold on the computing space. There are I think almost no other reasons to refuse to write an open driver except to avoid to expose exactly how CUDA works, I think. AMD's new open source driver is plug and play, and a true joy to use. In general I avoid Nvidia as much as I can, especially on laptops where I honestly don't see the appeal of having a dedicated monster that wrecks your battery every time you power it on. New iGPUs are excellent, especially those from AMD, and for bigger tasks assembling a desktop computer gives you much more processing power for a way lower price.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
        I understand where you are coming from but at the end of the day it works flawlessly on Windows and not on Linux and to the user that's all that matters. I really don't care whose fault it is.
p_l 6y ago
I recently decided to try out coworker's TB3 5k display. Unfortunately, late-2018 MBP with 560X is apparently incapable of setting the right widescreen resolution (5160x2160 or so), an error that was reportedly "fixed" in 10.14.2 beta... yet here I am with 10.15.4 and nope, you either get everything scaled too big, or you get big black bars on the sides.
- ryall 6y ago
  Try installing SwitchResX. macOS hides resolution options from you, even though they're supported. I had an old 27" dell monitor that I thought was a blurry POS, until I plugged it into a Windows box and realised it was macOS that was the POS
  - p_l 6y ago
    The issue is that something is broken with handling of the display at driver level, and even if you use low-level APIs the native resolution simply does not show. AFAIK even SwitchResX (though I haven't tested specifically it, I tested other tools) won't be able to set the correct resolution.
S_A_P 6y ago
That was me after I got the iMac Pro. Daily kernel panics pointing at the T2 chip. It took about 6 months and they finally got it resolved, but that was the last Mac computer Ive been really happy with.
emsy 6y ago
I’d support windows in a heartbeat, if they would stop treating users as the product (by showing ads and tracking them). This even extends to the Pro version. Also, they should just remove the new settings UI. It’s confusing.
- eknkc 6y ago
  I haven’t seen any ads yet. Might be geographic though. Also setup asked about some tracking stuff and I said no but haven’t done any research to see how they treat it.
  - emsy 6y ago
    Usually you'll have ads for OneDrive (unless you already use it). And things like Candy Crush preinstalled.
    - Mandatum 6y ago
      https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ or https://wpd.app https://wpd.app or https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 Shutup10 is the best AIO, most tested tool I have found for Windows 10 that doesn't break stuff. There's also custom ISO's with binaries and entire product suites removed which may break some stuff that runs on Windows 10 (eg requiring the Store for some games) - but I'm not comfortable with the level of transparency custom ISO's offer, so I don't do this: https://ameliorated.info/ https://ameliorated.info/ My recommendations is to get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC (which doesn't include Candy Crush etc) and run shutup10 on it for your work environment. It's the least risky option for an every day driver.
      - emsy 6y ago
        Thanks for the recommendations. I used a similar tool when I first installed Win 10 and it worked well until one of the bigger updates got installed and removed most of my fixes.

by eknkc 6y ago

josephg 6y ago

Has performance improved in wsl? I was playing around with it a few months ago and filesystem-intensive operations (like running npm install) were horrendously slow. Has that changed with wsl2? I’ve been considering picking up a ryzen laptop and running Linux on it, and trying that out as a daily driver. But I don’t have any patience these days for the hacky wifi driver installation dance. And I’m nervous after having a Linux laptop cook it’s own battery when it failed to sleep properly in my backpack. It’s been a couple decades - do Linux laptops just work yet?

eknkc 6y ago
I tried WSL a year ago. Filesystem was slow and it was slow everywhere. WSL2 improves that by offering fast fs on linux side. The boundary is still slow. For example, if you go into /mnt/c and use git status on a large repo it will need to go through the boundary. It is slow (not painful but not pleasant) My current setup has all my source code on the linux fs (/home/user) and I access them using VSCode remote extensions. The performance is fine. I can't really tell if native macos experience or this is faster. I also tried JB iDEA. It works across the filesystem boundary and even if the access is slow, it does not reflect to real world usage much. But you'll feel it if you look for it. Another option is to run GUI apps on Linux side and use an X11 server on Windows. This just works fine and they recently announced that the WSL will have built in support for Linux GUI apps.
Maakuth 6y ago
Yes indeed. WSL 2 launched a few weeks ago with the latest Windows 10 version, and it has different sort of filesystem setup. WSL 1 had a Linux-like view of some subdirectory of the host NTFS filesystem, so all the fs IO went through Windows kernel. In WSL 2, there's an ext4 image instead, so filesystem access is essentially as fast as with any Linux system in a virtual machine.
RealStickman_ 6y ago
Make sure to check how well supported your wifi card is. If you try something like Ubuntu drivers generally should be less of a problem. Though you may have to upgrade to the 5.7 kernel for better support of the cpu. I rarely sleep my laptop so I can't tell you anything about that, but general usage on my hp laptop (i5 7200u, intel igpu and intel wifi) has been working fine for me the last six months with Arcolinux on it.
- qalmakka 6y ago
  You really have to have a super crappy card to have Wi-Fi issues on Linux. Nowadays laptops have mostly Intel, Qualcomm/Atheros or Broadcom chipsets which work flawlessly out of the box. The only problems I had in the last years were due to Killer WiFi cards or crappy Realtek-based USB dongles, both of which kinda sucked on Windows too in the first place.
wayneftw 6y ago
Try Manjaro Linux on your laptop. Last laptop I installed it on, everything just worked. And it's based on Arch, so you'll be able to take advantage of the excellent Arch software repo and wiki (if necessary).
qalmakka 6y ago
> do Linux laptops just work yet? Linux on laptops is fine nowadays. Recent versions of the kernel vastly improved battery life on Intel. It's much better than it was 10 years ago.
- abrowne 6y ago
  Agreed. I only have experience with Intel graphics, but all the recent machines I've installed Ubuntu on have just been install and it works. If you pick a distro that doesn't include non-free drivers/firmware, you might have to do some more work to get wi-fi working.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  What about Nvidia drivers with Wayland? If I remember correctly Nvidia drivers don't work with Wayland and for touch gestures I need Wayland so because of the Nvidia and Wayland mess I can't have touch gestures which seems totally strange that they would be intertwined with touchpad.
  - qalmakka 6y ago
    Sadly, Nvidia has shown multiple times to be extremely user hostile and only concerned in keeping its hold on the computing space. There are I think almost no other reasons to refuse to write an open driver except to avoid to expose exactly how CUDA works, I think. AMD's new open source driver is plug and play, and a true joy to use. In general I avoid Nvidia as much as I can, especially on laptops where I honestly don't see the appeal of having a dedicated monster that wrecks your battery every time you power it on. New iGPUs are excellent, especially those from AMD, and for bigger tasks assembling a desktop computer gives you much more processing power for a way lower price.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
      I understand where you are coming from but at the end of the day it works flawlessly on Windows and not on Linux and to the user that's all that matters. I really don't care whose fault it is.

p_l 6y ago

I recently decided to try out coworker's TB3 5k display. Unfortunately, late-2018 MBP with 560X is apparently incapable of setting the right widescreen resolution (5160x2160 or so), an error that was reportedly "fixed" in 10.14.2 beta... yet here I am with 10.15.4 and nope, you either get everything scaled too big, or you get big black bars on the sides.

ryall 6y ago
Try installing SwitchResX. macOS hides resolution options from you, even though they're supported. I had an old 27" dell monitor that I thought was a blurry POS, until I plugged it into a Windows box and realised it was macOS that was the POS
- p_l 6y ago
  The issue is that something is broken with handling of the display at driver level, and even if you use low-level APIs the native resolution simply does not show. AFAIK even SwitchResX (though I haven't tested specifically it, I tested other tools) won't be able to set the correct resolution.

S_A_P 6y ago

That was me after I got the iMac Pro. Daily kernel panics pointing at the T2 chip. It took about 6 months and they finally got it resolved, but that was the last Mac computer Ive been really happy with.

emsy 6y ago

I’d support windows in a heartbeat, if they would stop treating users as the product (by showing ads and tracking them). This even extends to the Pro version. Also, they should just remove the new settings UI. It’s confusing.

eknkc 6y ago
I haven’t seen any ads yet. Might be geographic though. Also setup asked about some tracking stuff and I said no but haven’t done any research to see how they treat it.
- emsy 6y ago
  Usually you'll have ads for OneDrive (unless you already use it). And things like Candy Crush preinstalled.
  - Mandatum 6y ago
    https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ or https://wpd.app https://wpd.app or https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 Shutup10 is the best AIO, most tested tool I have found for Windows 10 that doesn't break stuff. There's also custom ISO's with binaries and entire product suites removed which may break some stuff that runs on Windows 10 (eg requiring the Store for some games) - but I'm not comfortable with the level of transparency custom ISO's offer, so I don't do this: https://ameliorated.info/ https://ameliorated.info/ My recommendations is to get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC (which doesn't include Candy Crush etc) and run shutup10 on it for your work environment. It's the least risky option for an every day driver.
    - emsy 6y ago
      Thanks for the recommendations. I used a similar tool when I first installed Win 10 and it worked well until one of the bigger updates got installed and removed most of my fixes.