6 ms·

Opposite anecdata - I got a gaming PC and i migrated all my development to it and WSL(2) has been a godsend. VS Code has a "WSL Remote" mode that works really w

Opposite anecdata - I got a gaming PC and i migrated all my development to it and WSL(2) has been a godsend. VS Code has a "WSL Remote" mode that works really well (where a vscode server runs in Linux and the windows GUI access it "remotely"). I even use the Windows Github app for the occasional GUI-assisted commit, and apart from being slow its fine. I've had only two problems with this set up: - Occasionally VS Code Typescript features slow down, but it fixes itself a few days later (maybe after a restart). I presume this is due to the WSL Remote, but not certain. - The occasional line endings snafu, but this is more of a tooling issue.

deleted 6y ago
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gavinray 6y ago
Also opposite anecdote, I switched from Pop!_OS to Windows after getting into music production recently as a hobby (MIDI controller driver software doesn't always play well, even with WINE-devel) after over a decade on Linux. I expected to hate it, but I'm asking myself why I didn't do this sooner. It's the same sort of scenario as before -- I have Windows running the games I occasionally play, and music stuff, and I do all of my code stuff in WSL2/Ubuntu. But this way, I never have to fiddle with weird WINE patches or googling bugs, everything "just works". Asking myself why I didn't do this sooner to be honest. I had one big complaint which is that copying files from Windows to WSL2 would create ".ZoneInfo" file copies of every file, that was downloaded from the web, but they patched this recently too. With the support for Linux GUI apps that launched with Windows Insider Preview recently, I have a hard time making arguments against it now. The taste of crow is a little bitter, eh. Linux + WINE/Proton basically felt like shittier, more bug-ridden Windows + WSL2. With the one notable exception that as an OS/host, Windows 10 "feels" a bit slower in general.
- nijaru 6y ago
  I’ve always solved this issue by keeping windows on one drive and linux on another. It does have an upfront cost, but keeping my dev work / linux environment setup has always worked well for me. Lately I’ve thought of trying WSL, but I don’t see any real benefit over my current setup
  - kalium-xyz 6y ago
    IMHO dedicated environments encourage mindsets specific to those environments thus make you more productive. Would not switch to not having them.
- kalium-xyz 6y ago
  I've recently come across the same issue with DAWs. Settled on having multiple machines and switching the drives if I need to reuse a workstation for something else. Most of the time you can dedicate cheap systems to specific utilizations, it will save you time and effort. e.g. There is no reason for your DAW machine to also be your gaming machine as the hardware requirements are pretty different.
  - qppo 6y ago
    It seems fairly expensive to have different machines for gaming and music production/recording when the only substantial difference is relative investment into CPU and GPU cycles.
    - kalium-xyz 6y ago
      You dont need new computers for everything. Older machines are often super cheap and saving them from getting scrapped reduces ewaste.
  - iakov 6y ago
    There is no reason to have multiple computers, apart from a laptop and workstation for people who need to be able to work on the go. Not only upfront cost, but license costs, update management, hardware replacement and finally disposal and recycling are piling up. I fail to see the upside, honestly.
    - bashwizard 6y ago
      When you're starting out making music having just one computer for everything is fine but once you've reached the point where you spend a lot of your time on it, it quickly becomes a no brainer to at least have a dedicated computer for just that. It's about putting yourself in a productive setting where you only focus on creating and you have minimal distractions. Besides, a dedicated computer for music production has a low entry cost since you basically only need a decent amount of ram. My studio computer has an old i7, 32 GB ram and it doesn't even have a GPU and the price was less than $500 a few years ago. It's going to outlast my current gaming rig and probably my next one as well.
gavinray 6y ago
Oh you need to fucking disable Window's Defender though, or add exclusions for your Linux distro/WSL2 folder, because when installing "node_modules" it will attempt to do realtime scans for threat-protection which absolutely cripples the speed. https://www.cicoria.com/improving-windows-subsystem-for-linux-wsl-by-500-minutes-to-seconds/ https://www.cicoria.com/improving-windows-subsystem-for-linu... https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/eok776/has_anyone_experienced_slow_performance_when/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/eok7... "I noticed a significant performance difference after adding exclusions to the Windows Defender. My Rails server and NPM installs sped up dramatically (I mean like 4x faster, no joke)." Stupid.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  This is nothing specific to WSL though, Windows has always had this problem. I expect there are many Windows developers who have no idea how much time they spend waiting for their code to be virus scanned every day.
  - 0x138d5 6y ago
    Some IDEs have started warning about this performance hit. IntelliJ + Gradle for example, but I'm guessing other Jetbrains products do the same.
    - Roritharr 6y ago
      That's what made me aware of the problem. Now I need a comfortable gui for managing just those folders.
  - glandium 6y ago
    To give an idea how bad it is, building Firefox on a Threadripper 3970X on Windows takes slightly over 12 minutes if you don't disable Defender and somewhere around 7 minutes if you do.
    - samb1729 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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waheoo 6y ago
I don't really know if you can call running a remote vs code setup on localhost as opposite anecdata. Isn't that just more of the same bullshit hoop jumping? Everytime I hear about how great someone's wsl setup is I roll my eyes because it inevitably involves some rediculously convoluted wrangling to the nth level for something that is relatively basic on native Linux. And these people rarely have an excuse for why they prefer windows over say fedora which has been a better than windows windows experience since windows 8. Edit, wow even this thread people are suggesting the most drastic of things, let's run an entirely separate hard drive, oh but you need to fiddle with startup scripts because it couldn't be automatic.
- aksss 6y ago
  >> convoluted wrangling With good humor, his describes my experience with Linux distros since I first started using them. Doing just about anything seems to require some convoluted wrangling. :)
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  > Isn't that just more of the same bullshit hoop jumping? But it’s not jumping through hoops? I just either run `code .` (like I did on macOS) or select recent folder from within VS Code. It all just works fairly well, identical to ‘natively’ within Windows (except the occasional ts slowdown I mentioned before). > And these people rarely have an excuse for why they prefer windows Not that anyone needs an ‘excuse’ for their personal preference, but I would actually prefer macOS. But I got a Windows PC to use software that only runs on Windows (games) and then the whole wfh thing happened and here we are. I’m not interested in rebooting between different operating systems when I switch tasks, especially when they overlap (developing for games). Convince Bungie to port their game to macOS and I’ll buy a Mac Pro to be back home on a Mac full time :)
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    > Not that anyone needs an ‘excuse’ for their personal preference No kidding. But on this site I’ve been lectured about the “consequences” of my personal preferences (when they in no way make alternatives less viable) and told my conscious tradeoffs are actually ignorant of the things I’m trading off even after I explicitly stated them. Tech communities love to talk about choice and freedom and love to try to Jedi mind trick people out of it in the same breath.
mmgutz 6y ago
I also work mainly from a gaming desktop PC. WSL2 linux distros are not equal to bare metal linux distros. WSL2 Debian doesn't have systemd installed and what a fvckery it is trying to get it to work. That means sshd, docker, k3s don't work as expected on reboot. Some apps do not install properly becasue scripts expect systemd. Windows networking is PITA too just to do something simple like SSH into a WSL2 instance. I don't get why deep Windows integration is so important. It's not something I would use on a production box. I just want Hyper-V to work like VMware and VirtualBox. As you say, VSCode remote makes it all seamless anyway. I had to go back to VMware 15.5.2 (version before hyper-v layer) and disable hyper-v completely.
mkr-hn 6y ago
code . is some dark WSL magic that turned learning to develop on Windows from an endless headache to an intermittent headache. I always ran into some weird/inscrutable issue trying to follow tutorials with Windows ports of things.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gavinray 6y ago

Also opposite anecdote, I switched from Pop!_OS to Windows after getting into music production recently as a hobby (MIDI controller driver software doesn't always play well, even with WINE-devel) after over a decade on Linux. I expected to hate it, but I'm asking myself why I didn't do this sooner. It's the same sort of scenario as before -- I have Windows running the games I occasionally play, and music stuff, and I do all of my code stuff in WSL2/Ubuntu. But this way, I never have to fiddle with weird WINE patches or googling bugs, everything "just works". Asking myself why I didn't do this sooner to be honest. I had one big complaint which is that copying files from Windows to WSL2 would create ".ZoneInfo" file copies of every file, that was downloaded from the web, but they patched this recently too. With the support for Linux GUI apps that launched with Windows Insider Preview recently, I have a hard time making arguments against it now. The taste of crow is a little bitter, eh. Linux + WINE/Proton basically felt like shittier, more bug-ridden Windows + WSL2. With the one notable exception that as an OS/host, Windows 10 "feels" a bit slower in general.

nijaru 6y ago
I’ve always solved this issue by keeping windows on one drive and linux on another. It does have an upfront cost, but keeping my dev work / linux environment setup has always worked well for me. Lately I’ve thought of trying WSL, but I don’t see any real benefit over my current setup
- kalium-xyz 6y ago
  IMHO dedicated environments encourage mindsets specific to those environments thus make you more productive. Would not switch to not having them.
kalium-xyz 6y ago
I've recently come across the same issue with DAWs. Settled on having multiple machines and switching the drives if I need to reuse a workstation for something else. Most of the time you can dedicate cheap systems to specific utilizations, it will save you time and effort. e.g. There is no reason for your DAW machine to also be your gaming machine as the hardware requirements are pretty different.
- qppo 6y ago
  It seems fairly expensive to have different machines for gaming and music production/recording when the only substantial difference is relative investment into CPU and GPU cycles.
  - kalium-xyz 6y ago
    You dont need new computers for everything. Older machines are often super cheap and saving them from getting scrapped reduces ewaste.
- iakov 6y ago
  There is no reason to have multiple computers, apart from a laptop and workstation for people who need to be able to work on the go. Not only upfront cost, but license costs, update management, hardware replacement and finally disposal and recycling are piling up. I fail to see the upside, honestly.
  - bashwizard 6y ago
    When you're starting out making music having just one computer for everything is fine but once you've reached the point where you spend a lot of your time on it, it quickly becomes a no brainer to at least have a dedicated computer for just that. It's about putting yourself in a productive setting where you only focus on creating and you have minimal distractions. Besides, a dedicated computer for music production has a low entry cost since you basically only need a decent amount of ram. My studio computer has an old i7, 32 GB ram and it doesn't even have a GPU and the price was less than $500 a few years ago. It's going to outlast my current gaming rig and probably my next one as well.

gavinray 6y ago

Oh you need to fucking disable Window's Defender though, or add exclusions for your Linux distro/WSL2 folder, because when installing "node_modules" it will attempt to do realtime scans for threat-protection which absolutely cripples the speed. https://www.cicoria.com/improving-windows-subsystem-for-linux-wsl-by-500-minutes-to-seconds/ https://www.cicoria.com/improving-windows-subsystem-for-linu... https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/eok776/has_anyone_experienced_slow_performance_when/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/eok7... "I noticed a significant performance difference after adding exclusions to the Windows Defender. My Rails server and NPM installs sped up dramatically (I mean like 4x faster, no joke)." Stupid.

ubercow13 6y ago
This is nothing specific to WSL though, Windows has always had this problem. I expect there are many Windows developers who have no idea how much time they spend waiting for their code to be virus scanned every day.
- 0x138d5 6y ago
  Some IDEs have started warning about this performance hit. IntelliJ + Gradle for example, but I'm guessing other Jetbrains products do the same.
  - Roritharr 6y ago
    That's what made me aware of the problem. Now I need a comfortable gui for managing just those folders.
- glandium 6y ago
  To give an idea how bad it is, building Firefox on a Threadripper 3970X on Windows takes slightly over 12 minutes if you don't disable Defender and somewhere around 7 minutes if you do.
  - samb1729 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

waheoo 6y ago

I don't really know if you can call running a remote vs code setup on localhost as opposite anecdata. Isn't that just more of the same bullshit hoop jumping? Everytime I hear about how great someone's wsl setup is I roll my eyes because it inevitably involves some rediculously convoluted wrangling to the nth level for something that is relatively basic on native Linux. And these people rarely have an excuse for why they prefer windows over say fedora which has been a better than windows windows experience since windows 8. Edit, wow even this thread people are suggesting the most drastic of things, let's run an entirely separate hard drive, oh but you need to fiddle with startup scripts because it couldn't be automatic.

aksss 6y ago
>> convoluted wrangling With good humor, his describes my experience with Linux distros since I first started using them. Doing just about anything seems to require some convoluted wrangling. :)
madeofpalk 6y ago
> Isn't that just more of the same bullshit hoop jumping? But it’s not jumping through hoops? I just either run `code .` (like I did on macOS) or select recent folder from within VS Code. It all just works fairly well, identical to ‘natively’ within Windows (except the occasional ts slowdown I mentioned before). > And these people rarely have an excuse for why they prefer windows Not that anyone needs an ‘excuse’ for their personal preference, but I would actually prefer macOS. But I got a Windows PC to use software that only runs on Windows (games) and then the whole wfh thing happened and here we are. I’m not interested in rebooting between different operating systems when I switch tasks, especially when they overlap (developing for games). Convince Bungie to port their game to macOS and I’ll buy a Mac Pro to be back home on a Mac full time :)
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  > Not that anyone needs an ‘excuse’ for their personal preference No kidding. But on this site I’ve been lectured about the “consequences” of my personal preferences (when they in no way make alternatives less viable) and told my conscious tradeoffs are actually ignorant of the things I’m trading off even after I explicitly stated them. Tech communities love to talk about choice and freedom and love to try to Jedi mind trick people out of it in the same breath.

mmgutz 6y ago

I also work mainly from a gaming desktop PC. WSL2 linux distros are not equal to bare metal linux distros. WSL2 Debian doesn't have systemd installed and what a fvckery it is trying to get it to work. That means sshd, docker, k3s don't work as expected on reboot. Some apps do not install properly becasue scripts expect systemd. Windows networking is PITA too just to do something simple like SSH into a WSL2 instance. I don't get why deep Windows integration is so important. It's not something I would use on a production box. I just want Hyper-V to work like VMware and VirtualBox. As you say, VSCode remote makes it all seamless anyway. I had to go back to VMware 15.5.2 (version before hyper-v layer) and disable hyper-v completely.

mkr-hn 6y ago

code . is some dark WSL magic that turned learning to develop on Windows from an endless headache to an intermittent headache. I always ran into some weird/inscrutable issue trying to follow tutorials with Windows ports of things.