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I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we ge

I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. At the company I work for everything is native to Linux--I am floored by the number of interns we get who are using Windows (it's all of them). We have an intake script for getting them up on WSL2 with our stack on top but man these graduates are CompSci people and they did 4 plus years of CompSci using Windows? I can only imagine the pain. Or rather, I know the pain since I have occasionally dipped my toes back into that world of hurt. A non-WSL2 Windows person doesn't get the benefits of Nix, usually doesn't live life on the shell (since every Windows program is gui first), doesn't do dotfiles management (you can but paths for the git Atlassian method are non-obvious), ssh password protected keys are a PITA...good God I could go on ad nauseum. I work in this industry because I love computing. But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don't necessarily love computing? Or in the way that it's this mundane tool for the production of money-points that they can then exchange for money. I also am receiving the money-points and it is good. But lemme crack open your head and pour in the magic y'know?

dleslie 6y ago
Most of the world uses Windows. If you're building software targeted at most of the world it makes sense to use Windows.
- inertiatic 6y ago
  Most of the world uses Android to run their browsers, right? Should I develop on Android?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Actually according to Google own statistics, most of Android Studio users are on Windows.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    Are you suggesting that most of the existing Windows SW out there could be developed on Linux and would just run fine on Windows? Can MS reasonably develop MS Office on Linux? Can Adobe develop Lightroom on Linux and it'll just work on Windows? For most Windows SW, the answer is no. So the analogy with Android doesn't make much sense.
- csomar 6y ago
  Not really. Android, Web, Embedded, Networking can be done in Linux.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    I meant desktop software, but even so most Android users also use Windows, and pair Android with Windows. Most Android developers use Windows.
Filligree 6y ago
Speaking as someone who regularly attempts to switch back to Linux, I did that because the Windows desktop is a genuinely nicer experience. In no particular order... - The traditional start menu / taskbar is genuinely nicer than what Gnome attempts to force on me. OS X is also genuinely nicer than what Gnome attempts to force on me. I'd take either over Gnome. - The Linux desktop environment is laggy. This is difficult to measure objectively, but nothing moves smoothly and responsiveness is through the floor. I'm using a 144Hz screen; why can I see windows jerk from position to position when I drag them? The Zen kernel helps with some of that, bringing it about to the same responsiveness as Windows -- which is still well below OSX. No desktop environment provides it by default, and in most it's difficult to install. On NixOS it's just "boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_zen;", but it's still not the default. - nVidia's drivers are poor, and there are a lot of sharp edges. I'm using one of their GPUs. No, I can't switch to AMD; I need it for CUDA, and anyway GPUs aren't exactly cheap. - AMD's drivers are of inconsistent quality, and I couldn't buy a 6800XT even if I'm willing to sell my first-born. Ok, that's also true for nVidia's newest GPUs, and Zen 3, and... different rant entirely. - HDR basically doesn't work. - Mixed-DPI screens basically don't work. - HiDPI in general is glitchy. - kanjiTomo doesn't work on Wayland, because there's no solid story for the screen capture protocol. - Bluetooth audio basically doesn't work. ... Windows isn't perfect, but for me the Linux desktop died to a thousand paper cuts. Every two or three months I make another attempt at getting it up to the same standard I get from Windows, and every two or three months I fail. Does the above sound kind of entitled? It's not. I'm not demanding that anyone should make this work for free; I've never paid for the Linux desktop. The fact is, however, that it isn't good enough to use without unpleasant consequences, and I've spent far too much of my life fiddling with it already. At this stage I just want something that doesn't eat my evenings.
- tartoran 6y ago
  I use windows for work and as soon as im done I reboot on a linux partition. My daily driver is linux as I hate the lack of control I have and the insecurity (i feel that microsoft does whatever behind the scenes) i get on windows. For example after an update windows shoves me an edge icon on the desktop. I removed all the bloatware on the laptop and multiple times things are re-enabled after an update. I also cannot turn off updates if i want to. There are a few services for which I as an admin have no way of turning off or even change any settings. Wtf! I was able to gain some control of my machine with some registry settings but at the next update everything was overwritten. F that, i don’t wanna play whack-a-mole anymore. If i need to use some windows software i boot the windows partition, then when done boot up on linux. Ubuntu these days is low friction, most Hw works out of box, etc.
Ericson2314 6y ago
That's why I work at a place where devs are basically required to use Linux. It's a great filter and training mechanism.
- mbrodersen 6y ago
  I work at a place where developers have no problem switching between different OS’es. And I would not hire and prefer to not work with developers who refuse to work on anything but a specific OS.
  - eadmund 6y ago
    I could be wrong, but it seems like someone who is happy to frequently switch between macOS, Linux & Windows is probably not actually taking advantage of all the features of any of them, and hence is not actually terribly productive (assuming arguendo that those features actually aid productivity). For my part, I use emacs on Linux because I believe the power of computers is in crafting a personalised productivity enhancer. Free software which can be customised down to a very low level is part of that.
    - mbrodersen 6y ago
      > probably not actually taking advantage of all the features of any of them Yep they are probably too busy doing their job: creating value for customers. Instead of having fun fiddling with their OS.
spamizbad 6y ago
Having used all 3 major platforms, for me the developer experience in Linux really is the best. And I say this as someone currently trapped on MacOS. For personal hacking I use an older Dell XPS15 w/Ubuntu and it’s like a breath of fresh air every time I dig into a project. Containers just seem to work so much faster, there’s fewer weird things, no hiccups, and things like git and Emacs scream compared to Windows. I totally get why people prefer Mac and Windows outside of software development. But as a working developer it’s really worth the effort, if given the option, to invest in learning Linux and developing on it. Interns doing the whole WSL thing makes me cringe. Not great for your career IMO unless you plan on making a quick exit from the dev side of things. This might be a controversial take, but I feel like A “worse” developer with a solid workflow in Linux will appear more productive than a somewhat more skilled developer getting dragged down by WSLisms.
- hazz99 6y ago
  I always felt that Mac struck a good balance between my programming productivity and “the rest”, because I could use some great applications that were otherwise unavailable on Linux, sadly. What pains did you have? Docker support was a big one for me, but otherwise I haven’t encountered anything too bad.
  - spamizbad 6y ago
    Docker and occasionally periodic sluggishness that includes my pointer skipping on some websites. Also, despite a faster CPU and an SSD at only 14% utilization things like emacs and Sublime seem more sluggish in terms of I/O. I would probably benefit from a reinstall of Big Sur: this machine has gone through 3 OS upgrades. What I really appreciate on Linux tho is workspace ordering and switching. Which I don’t think you can customize to the degree you can on Linux anymore in Big Sur.
pjmlp 6y ago
Back when I did my degree in the mid-90's, our labs were running a mix of LC III, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, the recent Windows 95 and terminals for the DG/UX server. The only classes using UNIX were the ones specific about UNIX content. A the end of the 5 years, the DG/UX server had been replaced by a Red-Hat one and most terminals, were dual booting between the university own distribution and Win95/95 OSR, some of us also had access to the freshly released Windows NT. The large majority of students was still only booting into GNU/Linux for the UNIX related labs. Anything related to graphics programming, Smalltalk, databases, AI, engineering tools (UML, Boochs, CASE), digital circuits, was done on Windows/Mac OS (System).
BeetleB 6y ago
> But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don't necessarily love computing? When I was younger, I wanted to work in places that had a passion for these types of things. Older me realized that was a bad idea. It inevitably seeps into things unrelated to doing the actual work (even performance reviews via 360 feedback). People are paid to do a job, and I've found that whether they love computing or not is mostly orthogonal. Sure, there are some that are wiz's because of it, but they're usually neutralized by those who become ideological and inflexible because of it. Tangentially related: I'm a Linux guy - it's been my primary OS for almost 20 years now. However, at my current company, I prefer roles that don't involve Linux. The reason is they typically will not give me my own machine - I'll merely get an account on some server, with a poor window manager, and missing a lot of the nicer tools I use on my home machine, and no superuser privileges. In the last job I had, their provided Emacs was a little too old for some of the features I used, and I had to compile my own Emacs from scratch (along with tens of other dependent packages). This was time wasted for me and the company. At least on my Windows machine at work, I have Admin privileges and can make things nicer. Paradoxically, it is because I'm a "hard core" Linux user that I prefer Windows for work. I've optimized my Linux workflow, and if my work cannot provide me my preferred tools/window managers, I might as well just use Windows. I don't even use WSL. I use xonsh, which works fairly well on Windows. I have multiple desktops on Windows. And most importantly, I live in Emacs which for the most part works just as it would in Linux :-) (And no, using/installing Emacs on Windows is not a pain, despite what you often hear - the last time I did it some months ago, it was literally "Download and unzip into directory and you're good to go.")
- monsieurbanana 6y ago
  What I often hear is more about Emacs on windows having performance issues in some areas, magit comes to mind. Did you run into any issues?
  - clankyclanker 6y ago
    There is one case I know of where Emacs (via Cygwin) has performance issues on Windows: listing directories in remote volumes. Per StackOverflow [0], dired is slow because `df` is slow on NTFS. So, you can eliminate df to speed up dired by a lot. `(setq directory-free-space-program nil)` 0: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26128693/emacs-dired-slow-on-cygwin#comment47148680_26128693 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26128693/emacs-dired-slo...
csomar 6y ago
That's what they teach them in University.
- rjbwork 6y ago
  It's really not. I was forced to do everything on *nix systems in university. I mostly work in C# on Windows in VS today, which is not something a single class in my university was taught in. We run our code on Linux, but I really don't need to interact with it much. We model everything in our stack using Terraform. I do use WSL-2 a bit when I need to, especially when interacting with the AWS Cli or Docker and similar. It's just a good desktop and dev environment that stays out of my way, has sensible defaults, and doesn't require endless twiddling to be productive in.
mbrodersen 6y ago
I use Linux at work for development (10+ years) but prefer Windows at home. I can’t stand any of the Linux desktops. And believe me I have tried hard to like them. I love programming and have been programming since I taught myself machine code programming when I was 11. I recommend not assuming that people who choose to use Windows somehow don’t get it or don’t see the “magic” of whatever you happen to like. People are different with different tastes and experiences.
dmitriid 6y ago
> I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. Which Linux? With Windows you can use the Home edition and still have a decent workhorse of a computer. > A non-WSL2 Windows person doesn't get the benefits of Nix You greatly overestimate the benefits of Nix to any person. Nix is a fringe on the margins on the footnotes of the world. Even among developers it's barely a curiosity. > I work in this industry because I love computing. But these Windows jockeys First thing you have to do is stop being dismissive of people for their choices.
hibbelig 6y ago
When I started the job, the little team I was on had a special deal that allowed them to use Linux; the rest of the company was on Windows. When I switched from Linux to Windows, it was partly due to outside pressure and partly due to a desire to help team members in India who did not have that special deal and were thus forced to use Windows. But a couple of years later, the special deal evaporated and everyone had to move to Windows... I suspect that it is still common to be forced to use Windows at $BIGCO.
brnt 6y ago
There's a whole galaxy of small and medium (and actually quite large) businesses automatizing the boring shit in a boring way. Its my experience these shops nearly always use Windows. Note that most regular people do as well, so there's a fertile ground. Think of how things like Embarcadero and Pascal survives.

dleslie 6y ago

Most of the world uses Windows. If you're building software targeted at most of the world it makes sense to use Windows.

inertiatic 6y ago
Most of the world uses Android to run their browsers, right? Should I develop on Android?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Actually according to Google own statistics, most of Android Studio users are on Windows.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  Are you suggesting that most of the existing Windows SW out there could be developed on Linux and would just run fine on Windows? Can MS reasonably develop MS Office on Linux? Can Adobe develop Lightroom on Linux and it'll just work on Windows? For most Windows SW, the answer is no. So the analogy with Android doesn't make much sense.
csomar 6y ago
Not really. Android, Web, Embedded, Networking can be done in Linux.
- dleslie 6y ago
  I meant desktop software, but even so most Android users also use Windows, and pair Android with Windows. Most Android developers use Windows.

Filligree 6y ago

Speaking as someone who regularly attempts to switch back to Linux, I did that because the Windows desktop is a genuinely nicer experience. In no particular order... - The traditional start menu / taskbar is genuinely nicer than what Gnome attempts to force on me. OS X is also genuinely nicer than what Gnome attempts to force on me. I'd take either over Gnome. - The Linux desktop environment is laggy. This is difficult to measure objectively, but nothing moves smoothly and responsiveness is through the floor. I'm using a 144Hz screen; why can I see windows jerk from position to position when I drag them? The Zen kernel helps with some of that, bringing it about to the same responsiveness as Windows -- which is still well below OSX. No desktop environment provides it by default, and in most it's difficult to install. On NixOS it's just "boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_zen;", but it's still not the default. - nVidia's drivers are poor, and there are a lot of sharp edges. I'm using one of their GPUs. No, I can't switch to AMD; I need it for CUDA, and anyway GPUs aren't exactly cheap. - AMD's drivers are of inconsistent quality, and I couldn't buy a 6800XT even if I'm willing to sell my first-born. Ok, that's also true for nVidia's newest GPUs, and Zen 3, and... different rant entirely. - HDR basically doesn't work. - Mixed-DPI screens basically don't work. - HiDPI in general is glitchy. - kanjiTomo doesn't work on Wayland, because there's no solid story for the screen capture protocol. - Bluetooth audio basically doesn't work. ... Windows isn't perfect, but for me the Linux desktop died to a thousand paper cuts. Every two or three months I make another attempt at getting it up to the same standard I get from Windows, and every two or three months I fail. Does the above sound kind of entitled? It's not. I'm not demanding that anyone should make this work for free; I've never paid for the Linux desktop. The fact is, however, that it isn't good enough to use without unpleasant consequences, and I've spent far too much of my life fiddling with it already. At this stage I just want something that doesn't eat my evenings.

tartoran 6y ago
I use windows for work and as soon as im done I reboot on a linux partition. My daily driver is linux as I hate the lack of control I have and the insecurity (i feel that microsoft does whatever behind the scenes) i get on windows. For example after an update windows shoves me an edge icon on the desktop. I removed all the bloatware on the laptop and multiple times things are re-enabled after an update. I also cannot turn off updates if i want to. There are a few services for which I as an admin have no way of turning off or even change any settings. Wtf! I was able to gain some control of my machine with some registry settings but at the next update everything was overwritten. F that, i don’t wanna play whack-a-mole anymore. If i need to use some windows software i boot the windows partition, then when done boot up on linux. Ubuntu these days is low friction, most Hw works out of box, etc.

Ericson2314 6y ago

That's why I work at a place where devs are basically required to use Linux. It's a great filter and training mechanism.

mbrodersen 6y ago
I work at a place where developers have no problem switching between different OS’es. And I would not hire and prefer to not work with developers who refuse to work on anything but a specific OS.
- eadmund 6y ago
  I could be wrong, but it seems like someone who is happy to frequently switch between macOS, Linux & Windows is probably not actually taking advantage of all the features of any of them, and hence is not actually terribly productive (assuming arguendo that those features actually aid productivity). For my part, I use emacs on Linux because I believe the power of computers is in crafting a personalised productivity enhancer. Free software which can be customised down to a very low level is part of that.
  - mbrodersen 6y ago
    > probably not actually taking advantage of all the features of any of them Yep they are probably too busy doing their job: creating value for customers. Instead of having fun fiddling with their OS.

spamizbad 6y ago

Having used all 3 major platforms, for me the developer experience in Linux really is the best. And I say this as someone currently trapped on MacOS. For personal hacking I use an older Dell XPS15 w/Ubuntu and it’s like a breath of fresh air every time I dig into a project. Containers just seem to work so much faster, there’s fewer weird things, no hiccups, and things like git and Emacs scream compared to Windows. I totally get why people prefer Mac and Windows outside of software development. But as a working developer it’s really worth the effort, if given the option, to invest in learning Linux and developing on it. Interns doing the whole WSL thing makes me cringe. Not great for your career IMO unless you plan on making a quick exit from the dev side of things. This might be a controversial take, but I feel like A “worse” developer with a solid workflow in Linux will appear more productive than a somewhat more skilled developer getting dragged down by WSLisms.

hazz99 6y ago
I always felt that Mac struck a good balance between my programming productivity and “the rest”, because I could use some great applications that were otherwise unavailable on Linux, sadly. What pains did you have? Docker support was a big one for me, but otherwise I haven’t encountered anything too bad.
- spamizbad 6y ago
  Docker and occasionally periodic sluggishness that includes my pointer skipping on some websites. Also, despite a faster CPU and an SSD at only 14% utilization things like emacs and Sublime seem more sluggish in terms of I/O. I would probably benefit from a reinstall of Big Sur: this machine has gone through 3 OS upgrades. What I really appreciate on Linux tho is workspace ordering and switching. Which I don’t think you can customize to the degree you can on Linux anymore in Big Sur.

pjmlp 6y ago

Back when I did my degree in the mid-90's, our labs were running a mix of LC III, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, the recent Windows 95 and terminals for the DG/UX server. The only classes using UNIX were the ones specific about UNIX content. A the end of the 5 years, the DG/UX server had been replaced by a Red-Hat one and most terminals, were dual booting between the university own distribution and Win95/95 OSR, some of us also had access to the freshly released Windows NT. The large majority of students was still only booting into GNU/Linux for the UNIX related labs. Anything related to graphics programming, Smalltalk, databases, AI, engineering tools (UML, Boochs, CASE), digital circuits, was done on Windows/Mac OS (System).

BeetleB 6y ago

> But these Windows jockeys I dunno I get the feeling they don't necessarily love computing? When I was younger, I wanted to work in places that had a passion for these types of things. Older me realized that was a bad idea. It inevitably seeps into things unrelated to doing the actual work (even performance reviews via 360 feedback). People are paid to do a job, and I've found that whether they love computing or not is mostly orthogonal. Sure, there are some that are wiz's because of it, but they're usually neutralized by those who become ideological and inflexible because of it. Tangentially related: I'm a Linux guy - it's been my primary OS for almost 20 years now. However, at my current company, I prefer roles that don't involve Linux. The reason is they typically will not give me my own machine - I'll merely get an account on some server, with a poor window manager, and missing a lot of the nicer tools I use on my home machine, and no superuser privileges. In the last job I had, their provided Emacs was a little too old for some of the features I used, and I had to compile my own Emacs from scratch (along with tens of other dependent packages). This was time wasted for me and the company. At least on my Windows machine at work, I have Admin privileges and can make things nicer. Paradoxically, it is because I'm a "hard core" Linux user that I prefer Windows for work. I've optimized my Linux workflow, and if my work cannot provide me my preferred tools/window managers, I might as well just use Windows. I don't even use WSL. I use xonsh, which works fairly well on Windows. I have multiple desktops on Windows. And most importantly, I live in Emacs which for the most part works just as it would in Linux :-) (And no, using/installing Emacs on Windows is not a pain, despite what you often hear - the last time I did it some months ago, it was literally "Download and unzip into directory and you're good to go.")

monsieurbanana 6y ago
What I often hear is more about Emacs on windows having performance issues in some areas, magit comes to mind. Did you run into any issues?
- clankyclanker 6y ago
  There is one case I know of where Emacs (via Cygwin) has performance issues on Windows: listing directories in remote volumes. Per StackOverflow [0], dired is slow because `df` is slow on NTFS. So, you can eliminate df to speed up dired by a lot. `(setq directory-free-space-program nil)` 0: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26128693/emacs-dired-slow-on-cygwin#comment47148680_26128693 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26128693/emacs-dired-slo...

csomar 6y ago

That's what they teach them in University.

rjbwork 6y ago
It's really not. I was forced to do everything on *nix systems in university. I mostly work in C# on Windows in VS today, which is not something a single class in my university was taught in. We run our code on Linux, but I really don't need to interact with it much. We model everything in our stack using Terraform. I do use WSL-2 a bit when I need to, especially when interacting with the AWS Cli or Docker and similar. It's just a good desktop and dev environment that stays out of my way, has sensible defaults, and doesn't require endless twiddling to be productive in.

mbrodersen 6y ago

I use Linux at work for development (10+ years) but prefer Windows at home. I can’t stand any of the Linux desktops. And believe me I have tried hard to like them. I love programming and have been programming since I taught myself machine code programming when I was 11. I recommend not assuming that people who choose to use Windows somehow don’t get it or don’t see the “magic” of whatever you happen to like. People are different with different tastes and experiences.

dmitriid 6y ago

> I don't understand why people are moving Linux --> Windows. Which Linux? With Windows you can use the Home edition and still have a decent workhorse of a computer. > A non-WSL2 Windows person doesn't get the benefits of Nix You greatly overestimate the benefits of Nix to any person. Nix is a fringe on the margins on the footnotes of the world. Even among developers it's barely a curiosity. > I work in this industry because I love computing. But these Windows jockeys First thing you have to do is stop being dismissive of people for their choices.

hibbelig 6y ago

When I started the job, the little team I was on had a special deal that allowed them to use Linux; the rest of the company was on Windows. When I switched from Linux to Windows, it was partly due to outside pressure and partly due to a desire to help team members in India who did not have that special deal and were thus forced to use Windows. But a couple of years later, the special deal evaporated and everyone had to move to Windows... I suspect that it is still common to be forced to use Windows at $BIGCO.

brnt 6y ago

There's a whole galaxy of small and medium (and actually quite large) businesses automatizing the boring shit in a boring way. Its my experience these shops nearly always use Windows. Note that most regular people do as well, so there's a fertile ground. Think of how things like Embarcadero and Pascal survives.