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> With WSL2 there was never before LESS reason to switch away from Windows. Yes and no. WSL 2 provides a decent development environment (I've been using WSL 1

by nickjj 6y ago

> With WSL2 there was never before LESS reason to switch away from Windows. Yes and no. WSL 2 provides a decent development environment (I've been using WSL 1 and now 2 since it's been available), but there's still much to be desired. Such as not having horrendous file mount performance on Windows mounted drives, not having to worry about WSL 2's VM eating up and not reclaiming your disk space and memory. But let's ignore those things because IMO they will be fixed in due time. Windows is way behind the curve with tiled window managers vs native Linux and while technically you can run VcXsrv and run a tiled window manager through WSL 2, it totally fails on multiple monitors and also requires installing everything within WSL's file system. It just feels like you're battling 2 operating systems. Also from a "just let me use my own computer as I wish" perspective, Windows is still spying on you with telemetry even with basic mode and using Windows Pro and it forces updates on you. This likely will never change and if you lived in a world where you could run everything you wanted on either Windows or Linux, I think most people would probably opt to have the OS that doesn't spy on you and reboot on its own right? IMO native Linux is more than just features vs lack of features. It's a whole mindset shift on how everything works and how you can mold your dev environment to do exactly what you want instead of being forced on what to do by some company. I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware (a video editing tool that runs on Linux). Video editing is the only use case stopping me from switching.

ekianjo 6y ago
> I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware (a video editing tool that runs on Linux) On what kind of hardware are you right now?
- nickjj 6y ago
  An i5 4460 @ 3.2ghz, 16gb of RAM, SSD, GTX 750 from ~6 years ago. My exact hardware list is here[0]. Every time I export videos of any format with Resolve it adds weird black artifacts and audio pops to my videos. The audio pops happen in every video and it only happens in the exported video, it's fine in the timeline. I'm only dealing with 1080p 30 fps videos too. These issues happen on Windows too with Resolve where as video editing tools like Camtasia are super fast and I have no problems even after 400+ videos. I tried so hard to switch. Spent close to an entire week trying to debug everything and couldn't resolve it (pun intended). Besides that, the machine works really well for overall Dockerized Flask + Rails + Webpack development / ops work / recording screencast videos with OBS / video editing with Camtasia / 1080p gaming (although I have a 2560x1440 monitor) so I haven't really had a strong urge to retire this workstation and build a new one. [0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use#computer-desk-and-phone https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use#computer-desk...
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Have you reported your issues to Resolve? ANother thing, did you try on other distros, and did you get the exact same problems?
    - nickjj 6y ago
      I posted the details about what happened along with sample videos on the forums but it never got a response. Resolve doesn't offer email support for the free version and the paid version has no trial so I have no way to test if things would get fixed with the studio version. I tested it on Debian (unstable channel at the time), but the same problem happens on Windows too. If I were to try Linux again it would involve setting up a dual boot and maybe trying Arch, or at this point Debian stable maybe (when I tried unstable it was before Buster was available).
com2kid 6y ago
> Windows is way behind the curve with tiled window managers Just use one of the third party utilities. > it forces updates on you. Prior to this, Microsoft received over a decade of scorn for not forcing updates for 0-days and other RCEs. RCEs in the wild on Windows make the news. RCEs in the wild for months on end are bad for the entire world. Does no one remember the complete nightmare that was going to a relative's house and realizing they hadn't updating Windows in 1 year? From bot nets to hidden folders full of pirated files (or worse...), and an overall general expectation that all banking credentials ever entered on that machine are compromised. Yes mandatory reboots are irritating, yes it would be nice if Microsoft hired back the armies of QA people they got rid of years ago so that the updates were more reliable, but those updates serve a real purpose.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Does no one remember the complete nightmare that was going to a relative's house and realizing they hadn't updating Windows in 1 year? From bot nets to hidden folders full of pirated files (or worse...), and an overall general expectation that all banking credentials ever entered on that machine are compromised. When I go to my relatives for which i have installed a version of Linux, even though they don't update it very often it is never infected with anything. No malware, no virus, nothing. Always working exactly as I left it. That's one less headache when I deal with family members.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > When I go to my relatives for which i have installed a version of Linux, even though they don't update it very often it is never infected with anything. No malware, no virus, nothing. Always working exactly as I left it. If enough people do this for their family members, when the Linux malware comes, it will sweep like a wildfire on dry wood. A complacent attitude, being trained not to worry about updates or malware is likely setting people for a very unpleasant surprise down the road.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      Potentially. But the surface attack on UNIX-like systems is not the same as on Windows anyway.
cogman10 6y ago
> I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware I think this is the KEY reason why I'll probably be running windows forever. It's not that linux doesn't offer a bunch of benefits (indeed, that's why I use WSL heavily). It's that so much GUI software only really supports Windows or Mac. Linux is less than an afterthought most of the time.
- TheRealPomax 6y ago
  This, but even then: I also need an audio stack that (a) just works, you plug in the audio interfaces, the end, and (b) supports VST/AAX/AU plugins because fairlight without external plugins is a hard no.
httpsterio 6y ago
If you need to run dev stuff in a Linux box, why do you need a performant file system for WSL when using windows directories?
- nickjj 6y ago
  WSL 2's file system is running in a VM with limitations. I have ~200gb of files sitting on a non-SSD that contain things like videos and a bunch of other files that I don't want to put in WSL. I'd really like to be able to use tools like find, grep and friends to interact with those files. With painfully slow access to Windows mounted drives this makes using those tools not possible in practice. No one wants to wait 15 seconds to grep through a directory where the same operation finishes in 1 second in native Linux. This becomes a real nuisance with my backup script that rsyncs things from WSL 2's file system + Windows mounted drive onto an external drive. It takes rsync over 5 minutes (!) just to figure out what it needs to send over the wire because statting hundreds of thousands of files on a Windows mounted drive is ridiculously slow. With WSL 1 it used to take about 5 seconds to run rsync with that backup script to transfer a very small diff of files. I'm not exaggerating here either. It's literally 5 minutes vs 5 seconds and I'm sure native Linux would probably be 2-3 seconds.

by nickjj 6y ago

ekianjo 6y ago

> I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware (a video editing tool that runs on Linux) On what kind of hardware are you right now?

nickjj 6y ago
An i5 4460 @ 3.2ghz, 16gb of RAM, SSD, GTX 750 from ~6 years ago. My exact hardware list is here[0]. Every time I export videos of any format with Resolve it adds weird black artifacts and audio pops to my videos. The audio pops happen in every video and it only happens in the exported video, it's fine in the timeline. I'm only dealing with 1080p 30 fps videos too. These issues happen on Windows too with Resolve where as video editing tools like Camtasia are super fast and I have no problems even after 400+ videos. I tried so hard to switch. Spent close to an entire week trying to debug everything and couldn't resolve it (pun intended). Besides that, the machine works really well for overall Dockerized Flask + Rails + Webpack development / ops work / recording screencast videos with OBS / video editing with Camtasia / 1080p gaming (although I have a 2560x1440 monitor) so I haven't really had a strong urge to retire this workstation and build a new one. [0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use#computer-desk-and-phone https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use#computer-desk...
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Have you reported your issues to Resolve? ANother thing, did you try on other distros, and did you get the exact same problems?
  - nickjj 6y ago
    I posted the details about what happened along with sample videos on the forums but it never got a response. Resolve doesn't offer email support for the free version and the paid version has no trial so I have no way to test if things would get fixed with the studio version. I tested it on Debian (unstable channel at the time), but the same problem happens on Windows too. If I were to try Linux again it would involve setting up a dual boot and maybe trying Arch, or at this point Debian stable maybe (when I tried unstable it was before Buster was available).

com2kid 6y ago

> Windows is way behind the curve with tiled window managers Just use one of the third party utilities. > it forces updates on you. Prior to this, Microsoft received over a decade of scorn for not forcing updates for 0-days and other RCEs. RCEs in the wild on Windows make the news. RCEs in the wild for months on end are bad for the entire world. Does no one remember the complete nightmare that was going to a relative's house and realizing they hadn't updating Windows in 1 year? From bot nets to hidden folders full of pirated files (or worse...), and an overall general expectation that all banking credentials ever entered on that machine are compromised. Yes mandatory reboots are irritating, yes it would be nice if Microsoft hired back the armies of QA people they got rid of years ago so that the updates were more reliable, but those updates serve a real purpose.

ekianjo 6y ago
> Does no one remember the complete nightmare that was going to a relative's house and realizing they hadn't updating Windows in 1 year? From bot nets to hidden folders full of pirated files (or worse...), and an overall general expectation that all banking credentials ever entered on that machine are compromised. When I go to my relatives for which i have installed a version of Linux, even though they don't update it very often it is never infected with anything. No malware, no virus, nothing. Always working exactly as I left it. That's one less headache when I deal with family members.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  > When I go to my relatives for which i have installed a version of Linux, even though they don't update it very often it is never infected with anything. No malware, no virus, nothing. Always working exactly as I left it. If enough people do this for their family members, when the Linux malware comes, it will sweep like a wildfire on dry wood. A complacent attitude, being trained not to worry about updates or malware is likely setting people for a very unpleasant surprise down the road.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Potentially. But the surface attack on UNIX-like systems is not the same as on Windows anyway.

cogman10 6y ago

> I would switch to native Linux in a heartbeat if Davinci Resolve worked well on my hardware I think this is the KEY reason why I'll probably be running windows forever. It's not that linux doesn't offer a bunch of benefits (indeed, that's why I use WSL heavily). It's that so much GUI software only really supports Windows or Mac. Linux is less than an afterthought most of the time.

TheRealPomax 6y ago
This, but even then: I also need an audio stack that (a) just works, you plug in the audio interfaces, the end, and (b) supports VST/AAX/AU plugins because fairlight without external plugins is a hard no.

httpsterio 6y ago

If you need to run dev stuff in a Linux box, why do you need a performant file system for WSL when using windows directories?

nickjj 6y ago
WSL 2's file system is running in a VM with limitations. I have ~200gb of files sitting on a non-SSD that contain things like videos and a bunch of other files that I don't want to put in WSL. I'd really like to be able to use tools like find, grep and friends to interact with those files. With painfully slow access to Windows mounted drives this makes using those tools not possible in practice. No one wants to wait 15 seconds to grep through a directory where the same operation finishes in 1 second in native Linux. This becomes a real nuisance with my backup script that rsyncs things from WSL 2's file system + Windows mounted drive onto an external drive. It takes rsync over 5 minutes (!) just to figure out what it needs to send over the wire because statting hundreds of thousands of files on a Windows mounted drive is ridiculously slow. With WSL 1 it used to take about 5 seconds to run rsync with that backup script to transfer a very small diff of files. I'm not exaggerating here either. It's literally 5 minutes vs 5 seconds and I'm sure native Linux would probably be 2-3 seconds.