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This is really cool. Kudos to Microsoft for really getting open source lately. I wrote an app (which failed miserably) called zenaud.io . When I started writing

This is really cool. Kudos to Microsoft for really getting open source lately. I wrote an app (which failed miserably) called zenaud.io . When I started writing the app, Apple was hands-down a better developer experience. Now, it's the exact opposite -- MacOS is increasingly painful, throwing up more and more roadblocks and constricting their platform ever more. And Visual Studio is better than Xcode IMO. Also, as a C++/Python dev - it's increasingly hard not to notice the awesome momentum Rust has garnered.

bezout 6y ago
OT: I must agree about your comparison of macOS and Windows. IMO Microsoft is doing a lot to improve the developer experience. WSL2 is so freaking good. It has its quirks and it has issues with some workflows, but I’m thinking about moving out of macOS after having tried it. Apple may have the fastest processor, but Microsoft has the most comfortable tools. Both companies are not perfect, but if we must choose the lesser evil...
- seertaak 6y ago
  Indeed, WSL2 is pretty cool. Also, Windows Terminal is actually pretty sweet, and I even gave PowerShell a spin the other day. The crazy thing is you can basically use it as a bash shell, and it gets the job done. My developer experience right now consists of PowerShell, where I do all my regular directory jumping, editing (vim), etc., and a Developer Shell with god awful classic "terminal" which I only use to call conan/cmake/clang-windows. I have to add the following: MSVC supports clang on windows. And CMake - all within Visual Studio. And it works perfectly, with perfect support for C++17. Badass.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Visual Studio has supported Developer PowerShell for a while now, and it’s possible to load it into Windows Terminal. It’s just a set of arguments. This blog post explains them: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/say-hello-to-the-new-visual-studio-terminal/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/say-hello-to-the...
  - atonse 6y ago
    MS has always been solid with developer tools, documentation, and dev relations. Even though I prefer administering Linux servers any day over Windows servers, I find myself often missing PowerShell when I use bash. It has some quirks but some of the design decisions are exactly what you'd hope someone would make if they redesigned a command-line shell 40 years later. I still find it comical that we proudly paste around commands that just wrangle text no differently from what perl programmers did in the 90s, using sed, print, cut, etc, when things like PowerShell moved to piping objects between commands. It just removes a whole class of ambiguity.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      > 90s The paradigm of sending text in and out of pipes is ~20 years older than that.
      - atonse 6y ago
        I had actually written an earlier date but then I realized I was talking about Perl :) I think perl was created in the early 90s, correct?
        to11mtm 6y ago
        I believe the annals of history say 87 [0] "1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born." [0] - http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
        boogies 6y ago
        +1 for linking such beautiful annals
        908B64B197 6y ago
  - unnouinceput 6y ago
    Wait until you find out CygWin is a thing for decades and you could've used Linux style under Windows all this time
    - naikrovek 6y ago
      Not at all the same. Not at all.
      - girvo 6y ago
        I mean sure it’s not, but back in the late 2000s I did everything under it and it made for a great experience. It’s little package manager was handy, everything I needed was there, it worked surprisingly well.
        40four 6y ago
        I agree. I recently bailed on WSL because my poor crappy laptop was buckling under the weight of the extra resource demand. I’m not using Cygwin, but similarly, I decided to trick out my git bash with extra packages from MSYS2. I have all the Linux tools I need, been having a great experience with it. The amount of resources it takes to run WSL, or a virtual box on older hardware can be devastating. You don’t hear this mentioned much.
        naikrovek 6y ago
        WSL1 doesn't use a virtual machine, and only implements Linux syscalls as NT kernel syscalls. There's no VM or OS overhead; WSL1 is 100% userland software, except for the kernel translation stuff. You should not have any issues with WSL1 in terms of system load or "weight" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean in computer terms. This is used all the time and I've never once seen a definition for it. What is the unit of measurement? What's the border between "lightweight" and "not lightweight?" This industry as a whole ingests far too many hallucinogens. )
      - heresie-dabord 6y ago
  - jhoechtl 6y ago
    What is windows terminal? cmd?
    - bhauer 6y ago
      https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/
      - wayne 6y ago
        With its own commercial! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE
    - Kwpolska 6y ago
      No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Terminal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Terminal
    - mmgutz 6y ago
      It's like the the terminals found on Linux. I would give it a recommendation but I still encounter issues with tmux session and mouse (yes I have the latest from github installed). I recommend the terminal in VSCode which works as expected with ssh + tmux.
  - lokedhs 6y ago
    Windows Terminal is very difficult to work with if one has astigmatism that prevents working with dark background. I don't usually use Windows, so perhaps I didn't spend enough time on it, but I was unable to create a colourmap with white background that didn't look horrible with some software. No matter how much I changed the colours, there was always some combination that gave me light grey on white or something like that. If anyone has a colourmap I can use, that would be really appreciated.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - bezout 6y ago
      I guess it depends. I use the Windows Terminal, and I have high astigmatism and myopia. I find it very readable using the Cascadia Code font. Btw I agree about dark backgrounds being less readable but I can’t get away with light backgrounds because of eye floaters.
    - Kipters 6y ago
      I'm astigmatic but I never noticed any issue with dark backgrounds, not only in Windows Terminal, I didn't know it could happen
      - lokedhs 6y ago
        I don't think it happens to everybody with astigmatism. I cannot read any text with black background. After a very short amount of time I'm unable to read anything, and once I take my eyes off the screen it feels as though I've been staring into the sun. There used to be a great Firefox plugin that allowed me to change the colours of web pages that use black background, but it doesn't work anymore, and I haven't found a good replacement.
        prionassembly 6y ago
        This has to do with screen glare. A matte screen might treat you better.
- TheOperator 6y ago
  Buying Microsoft for it's OS and Apple for it's hardware? What is this opposite day?
- chx 6y ago
  > WSL2 is so freaking good. I am on WSL1 two things hold me back from upgrading 1. How's networking? I go on and off VPNs quite a bit. 2. How's cross system access to files especially performance wise? I edit with phpstorm for windows, I share the files with Slack also windows, I access the same files with WSL git, LAMP stack and more.
  - kyriakos 6y ago
    1. Just works. Only issue I found is that Wsl2 will not update its dns resolver IPs when connecting to the vpn. There's a workaround script. So it's either exit the terminal and re enter it or run the script to update them. 2. This is my current pain. Windows file system is slow already and accessing it from wsl adds an overhead. Ideally I keep projects in Wsl2 storage and IDEs in Windows. I searched a lot for a solution but haven't found one. On the other hand, Wsl2 Linux storage speed runs circles around wsl1.
    - peschkaj 6y ago
      I use X410 and run tools from inside of WSL2 by exporting the display. Works well for Emacs, JetBrains Rider, and every other GUI application I've tried so far.
      - naikrovek 6y ago
        Concur. X410 is great and survives where xming and vcxsrv both crash for me. It's not free but the "not crashing" feature makes it well worth the $10 I paid for it.
      - girvo 6y ago
        That sounds excellent: I’ll have to give it a shot. VSCode under WSL2 with its Docker support is neat, but can be slow due to the storage system overhead. This might solve that for my team!
    - mynameisash 6y ago
      I never had an issue with WSL1 until some bizarre bug that cropped up seemingly out of nowhere in which I would blue-screen during some Rust compilation. I didn't have the issue after maybe four or six months of using Rust in WSL1 until suddenly I did. Upgrading to WSL2 fixed the problem. Publishing Rust crates does require a workaround[0] in WSL2 if it's from a Windows directory. That's annoying but pretty infrequent (for me) and not a difficult workaround. Except for those two issues, I've not had any problems in either WSL version - certainly nothing that would give me pause to using either one. [0] https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/8439#issuecomment-660310563 https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/8439#issuecomment-...
- hctaw 6y ago
  > Apple may have the fastest processor, but Microsoft has the most comfortable tools. It doesn't matter how fast the M1 is if XCode can't keep up with modern development tools. I don't understand how Apple developers produce any software with it, the experience is truly awful compared to nearly every alternative. It's slow, buggy and inscrutable. How long does it take to onboard a fresh grad at Apple, I wonder?
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    I have an existing app in Swift and Interface Builder. I hate xCode. Simple things like deploying the app to a device is hit or miss (usually miss). Is there a development environment that I could use for my app which is better? Happy to use any platform (MacOS, Linux, Windows).
    - hctaw 6y ago
      App Code is probably the only thing worth checking out. Swift isn't a useful language outside of the Apple ecosystem and interface builders come and go, usually go (design in Figma/Adobe products, implement in Code rather than UI wysiwyg)
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    I think IDEs may be a bit more subjective than are often presented. Personally speaking, my experience with Xcode has been just ok (not amazing) while IntelliJ based IDEs have been clunky and arcane, with some of their "smarts" functioning in ways that aren't expected or intuitive at all. Both are functional if you let me pick which to spend a work day in, it'd probably be Xcode. What one is first exposed to and how they're exposed to it probably makes a big difference.
- cpeth 6y ago
  "Apple may have the fastest processor, but Microsoft has the most comfortable tools. Both companies are not perfect, but if we must choose the lesser evil..." It's very fast for a low power, laptop-focused processor and even then only truly excels at single-threaded workloads. It's out classed by AMD mobile offerings (4900HS and 4800U) in multi-threaded workloads on most tests[0]. If you step up to desktop processors, the top end processors like the AMD 5950X are in a different class of multi-threaded performance. Don't get me wrong, it's an exceptional processor and incredibly fast for its sub-25W TDP. [0] - https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
  - caycep 6y ago
    This is simply a matter of adding more cores...I mean, I would hope the 5950x with its 16 full strength cores would be better than an M1 with it's big/little design...
    - phendrenad2 6y ago
      I don't think it's as simple as adding more cores. Maybe the M1 doesn't scale up nicely.
      - MBCook 6y ago
        We’ll find out this year.
      - SekstiNi 6y ago
        Looking at the die shot [1], they have plenty of space for cores and cache if they remove the GPU. Surely it's not that simple, but I believe they should be able scale to at least 8+4 cores without large interconnect changes, and at that point they are already knocking on the 5900X's door. [1] - https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/M1.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/M1.png
        NewLogic 6y ago
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  Unleash all your handcuffs and move directly to Linux. It will be really refreshing!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- vijaybritto 6y ago
  Please know that networking in WSL2 is a nightmare if working in a VPN. We are currently staying in WSL1 because the internet wont work in WSL2 under the corporate VPN.
  - bezout 6y ago
    Did you try this https://esc.sh/blog/wsl2-no-internet-vpn/ https://esc.sh/blog/wsl2-no-internet-vpn/?
  - baq 6y ago
    cisco anyconnect is notorious for that. you have to bump its interface metric above a certain value so WSL2 network or whatever does the routing can do its work.
me551ah 6y ago
I agree with you. 1. I run Arch Linux on windows vis WSL which provides pacman as a package manager. Pacman is way better than homebrew. 2. Docker runs much faster on windows compared to Mac. 3. My Mac will freeze up at times, while ctrl+alt+del always works on windows. 4. I am no longer limited to the crappy gpu options on Mac and can actually do gaming on my laptop.
- seertaak 6y ago
  Agreed. BTW if you're looking for a apt/brew like experience on Windows proper, try chocolatey: https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/ (Obviously there's also the Windows store, which is not bad for GUI programs, but for more developer-type stuff - e.g. installing python - chocolatey is great.)
  - me551ah 6y ago
    I love chocolatey and use it quite a bit. But I like Arch Linux's AUR more because it contains way more packages. Though Microsoft also seems to be on their way to make their own https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-manager-preview/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-m...
    - reader_mode 6y ago
      It's a different use case - use Chocolatey to manage native windows installers - it's more like brew casks.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Hasn't WinGet superceded Choco of late?
    - mesaframe 6y ago
      WinGet isn't publicly available yet.
boogies 6y ago
What about GNU? It seems like most Windows-ₗusing devs use WSL2’s Linux VM. What advantages does that have over keeping the MS OS’s forced updates, BSODs, etc. in a VM, while keeping a free OS stably settled on bare metal? I can imagine drivers, but if you stick to only Dell Developer Edition, Lenovo Linux-certified, Purism Librem, System76, or similar (still significantly wider selection than Apple s̶h̶e̶e̶p̶ fans seem satisfied with) hardware, things should work more smoothly than with Windows (drivers are built into the kernel and update with the OS).
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It seems like most Windows users use WSL2’s Linux VM. Most Windows users haven't got a clue what Linux is let alone WSL2.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Or that Rust isn’t iron oxide. I’ve edited that line to be clearer, and I’ll link definitions for all the other words ~~if someone will show me a pastebin that will hold the 583732 byte file I’ve just created for shell (xargs & dict) practice for free~~ Edit: https://ghostbin.com/paste/kgwWc https://ghostbin.com/paste/kgwWc.
- lmm 6y ago
  > I can imagine drivers, but if you stick to only Dell Developer Edition, Lenovo Linux-certified, Purism Librem, System76, or similar (still significantly wider selection than Apple s̶h̶e̶e̶p̶ fans seem satisfied with) hardware I don't need a huge selection, but I do need polished hardware that I can walk into a store and try out before buying. Just things like the feel of the keyboard or the trackpad can make a system a nightmare to use if they're bad. I also need to be confident that I'm not going to get given the runaround if a piece of hardware (e.g. docking station or monitor) doesn't work with the machine. > things should work more smoothly than with Windows (drivers are built into the kernel and update with the OS). That's actually one of the things that worries me the most about Linux - I can't pin a driver to a version that's working, and if the kernel drops support for my hardware then I have to choose between losing support for my hardware or never upgrading my OS. I was excited for GNU/kFreeBSD up until the point where systemd arrived and destroyed all the advantages of free OSes.
entropy1111 6y ago
>This is really cool. Kudos to Microsoft for really getting open source lately If they get open source so much it means not open sourcing what really matters is intentional. And quite frankly getting rid of patents, their litigiousness and data collection. But I'm asking too much and I would settle for them to just stop suffocating competitors, innovation and stop with vendor lock in. Same deal for their competitors. Anything that really matters is just like the same old MS you know. DirectX, Office, Xbox, everything SaaS, IDE, compilers, debuggers, language servers, file formats, UI frameworks, UI patents, GitHub, Windows, Server, you'll find examples in every area. Practices like buying or killing competitors like Vulkan related acquisitions. I get it they are a company and need to maximize profits, so it's cool. Microsoft has so many quality projects and good people working for them, it's just so frustrating that it's still like this. This will only get worse as the exploitative behavior and business models of their competitors like Google force their hand to do the same.
- DennisP 6y ago
  "By joining the Open Invention Network, Microsoft is offering its entire patent portfolio to all of the open-source patent consortium's members." https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-entire-patent-portfolio/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-ent... Apple had "1,996 total patents granted between July 1, 2019 and June 1, 2020, more than any other company in Silicon Valley." https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/07/27/top-of-the-list-patent-recipients.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/07/27/top-of-t...
  - entropy1111 6y ago
    My recollection from previous OIN threads was that it came with a lot of caveats. I can't comment any further from lack of knowledge about patents and its subtleties. Would love to see an analysis of what really happened in practice since they did that.
- galgalesh 6y ago
  Microsoft joined the open invention network; a defensive patent pool protecting Linux (kernel and distributions). This directly cut into their patent revenue and removed some of their leverage towards Android OEM's. This matters a lot to the android and wider Linux ecosystem. Moreover, every single Microsoft patent will now be used to fight against any patent claim concerning Linux, related open source software, and a limited set of codecs. [0] Given the recent inclusion of an exFAT driver in Linux, this hurt MS's business even more. [0] https://openinventionnetwork.com/linux-system/ https://openinventionnetwork.com/linux-system/
nomel 6y ago
> throwing up more and more roadblocks and constricting their platform ever more Do you have any specific examples? From my perspective as an app user, rather than developer, the restrictions they've put in place seem to be beneficial to me. I like sandboxed apps, absolutely love that I can tell an app to bugger off when it tries to access some folder that it has no business reading.
blub 6y ago
Apple are throwing more roadblocks at least partly because developers are becoming more and more deplorable, trying to claw every penny they can by collecting and selling every bit of metadata (or even data) they can get their claws on. Microsoft aren't throwing similar roadblocks at least partly because they're one of the deplorables people need protection from. All big software corporations use open source strategically: keep the core money-makers closed, release tooling and other trinkets for developers so that they do some free advertising for the company. They also release expensive-to-develop software for free to destroy competitors and expand their influence.
girvo 6y ago
I am an Apple/Linux diehard, but Visual Studio has always been superior to Xcode imho.
globular-toast 6y ago
And meanwhile, GNU/Linux continues to be better than both. I love developing on a system made by developers.

bezout 6y ago

OT: I must agree about your comparison of macOS and Windows. IMO Microsoft is doing a lot to improve the developer experience. WSL2 is so freaking good. It has its quirks and it has issues with some workflows, but I’m thinking about moving out of macOS after having tried it. Apple may have the fastest processor, but Microsoft has the most comfortable tools. Both companies are not perfect, but if we must choose the lesser evil...

seertaak 6y ago
Indeed, WSL2 is pretty cool. Also, Windows Terminal is actually pretty sweet, and I even gave PowerShell a spin the other day. The crazy thing is you can basically use it as a bash shell, and it gets the job done. My developer experience right now consists of PowerShell, where I do all my regular directory jumping, editing (vim), etc., and a Developer Shell with god awful classic "terminal" which I only use to call conan/cmake/clang-windows. I have to add the following: MSVC supports clang on windows. And CMake - all within Visual Studio. And it works perfectly, with perfect support for C++17. Badass.
- jolux 6y ago
  Visual Studio has supported Developer PowerShell for a while now, and it’s possible to load it into Windows Terminal. It’s just a set of arguments. This blog post explains them: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/say-hello-to-the-new-visual-studio-terminal/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/say-hello-to-the...
- atonse 6y ago
  MS has always been solid with developer tools, documentation, and dev relations. Even though I prefer administering Linux servers any day over Windows servers, I find myself often missing PowerShell when I use bash. It has some quirks but some of the design decisions are exactly what you'd hope someone would make if they redesigned a command-line shell 40 years later. I still find it comical that we proudly paste around commands that just wrangle text no differently from what perl programmers did in the 90s, using sed, print, cut, etc, when things like PowerShell moved to piping objects between commands. It just removes a whole class of ambiguity.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > 90s The paradigm of sending text in and out of pipes is ~20 years older than that.
    - atonse 6y ago
      I had actually written an earlier date but then I realized I was talking about Perl :) I think perl was created in the early 90s, correct?
      - to11mtm 6y ago
        I believe the annals of history say 87 [0] "1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born." [0] - http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
        boogies 6y ago
        +1 for linking such beautiful annals
      - 908B64B197 6y ago
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Wait until you find out CygWin is a thing for decades and you could've used Linux style under Windows all this time
  - naikrovek 6y ago
    Not at all the same. Not at all.
    - girvo 6y ago
      I mean sure it’s not, but back in the late 2000s I did everything under it and it made for a great experience. It’s little package manager was handy, everything I needed was there, it worked surprisingly well.
      - 40four 6y ago
        I agree. I recently bailed on WSL because my poor crappy laptop was buckling under the weight of the extra resource demand. I’m not using Cygwin, but similarly, I decided to trick out my git bash with extra packages from MSYS2. I have all the Linux tools I need, been having a great experience with it. The amount of resources it takes to run WSL, or a virtual box on older hardware can be devastating. You don’t hear this mentioned much.
        naikrovek 6y ago
        WSL1 doesn't use a virtual machine, and only implements Linux syscalls as NT kernel syscalls. There's no VM or OS overhead; WSL1 is 100% userland software, except for the kernel translation stuff. You should not have any issues with WSL1 in terms of system load or "weight" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean in computer terms. This is used all the time and I've never once seen a definition for it. What is the unit of measurement? What's the border between "lightweight" and "not lightweight?" This industry as a whole ingests far too many hallucinogens. )
    - heresie-dabord 6y ago
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  What is windows terminal? cmd?
  - bhauer 6y ago
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/
    - wayne 6y ago
      With its own commercial! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE
  - Kwpolska 6y ago
    No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Terminal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Terminal
  - mmgutz 6y ago
    It's like the the terminals found on Linux. I would give it a recommendation but I still encounter issues with tmux session and mouse (yes I have the latest from github installed). I recommend the terminal in VSCode which works as expected with ssh + tmux.
- lokedhs 6y ago
  Windows Terminal is very difficult to work with if one has astigmatism that prevents working with dark background. I don't usually use Windows, so perhaps I didn't spend enough time on it, but I was unable to create a colourmap with white background that didn't look horrible with some software. No matter how much I changed the colours, there was always some combination that gave me light grey on white or something like that. If anyone has a colourmap I can use, that would be really appreciated.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bezout 6y ago
    I guess it depends. I use the Windows Terminal, and I have high astigmatism and myopia. I find it very readable using the Cascadia Code font. Btw I agree about dark backgrounds being less readable but I can’t get away with light backgrounds because of eye floaters.
  - Kipters 6y ago
    I'm astigmatic but I never noticed any issue with dark backgrounds, not only in Windows Terminal, I didn't know it could happen
    - lokedhs 6y ago
      I don't think it happens to everybody with astigmatism. I cannot read any text with black background. After a very short amount of time I'm unable to read anything, and once I take my eyes off the screen it feels as though I've been staring into the sun. There used to be a great Firefox plugin that allowed me to change the colours of web pages that use black background, but it doesn't work anymore, and I haven't found a good replacement.
      - prionassembly 6y ago
        This has to do with screen glare. A matte screen might treat you better.
TheOperator 6y ago
Buying Microsoft for it's OS and Apple for it's hardware? What is this opposite day?
chx 6y ago
> WSL2 is so freaking good. I am on WSL1 two things hold me back from upgrading 1. How's networking? I go on and off VPNs quite a bit. 2. How's cross system access to files especially performance wise? I edit with phpstorm for windows, I share the files with Slack also windows, I access the same files with WSL git, LAMP stack and more.
- kyriakos 6y ago
  1. Just works. Only issue I found is that Wsl2 will not update its dns resolver IPs when connecting to the vpn. There's a workaround script. So it's either exit the terminal and re enter it or run the script to update them. 2. This is my current pain. Windows file system is slow already and accessing it from wsl adds an overhead. Ideally I keep projects in Wsl2 storage and IDEs in Windows. I searched a lot for a solution but haven't found one. On the other hand, Wsl2 Linux storage speed runs circles around wsl1.
  - peschkaj 6y ago
    I use X410 and run tools from inside of WSL2 by exporting the display. Works well for Emacs, JetBrains Rider, and every other GUI application I've tried so far.
    - naikrovek 6y ago
      Concur. X410 is great and survives where xming and vcxsrv both crash for me. It's not free but the "not crashing" feature makes it well worth the $10 I paid for it.
    - girvo 6y ago
      That sounds excellent: I’ll have to give it a shot. VSCode under WSL2 with its Docker support is neat, but can be slow due to the storage system overhead. This might solve that for my team!
  - mynameisash 6y ago
    I never had an issue with WSL1 until some bizarre bug that cropped up seemingly out of nowhere in which I would blue-screen during some Rust compilation. I didn't have the issue after maybe four or six months of using Rust in WSL1 until suddenly I did. Upgrading to WSL2 fixed the problem. Publishing Rust crates does require a workaround[0] in WSL2 if it's from a Windows directory. That's annoying but pretty infrequent (for me) and not a difficult workaround. Except for those two issues, I've not had any problems in either WSL version - certainly nothing that would give me pause to using either one. [0] https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/8439#issuecomment-660310563 https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/8439#issuecomment-...
hctaw 6y ago
> Apple may have the fastest processor, but Microsoft has the most comfortable tools. It doesn't matter how fast the M1 is if XCode can't keep up with modern development tools. I don't understand how Apple developers produce any software with it, the experience is truly awful compared to nearly every alternative. It's slow, buggy and inscrutable. How long does it take to onboard a fresh grad at Apple, I wonder?
- kenjackson 6y ago
  I have an existing app in Swift and Interface Builder. I hate xCode. Simple things like deploying the app to a device is hit or miss (usually miss). Is there a development environment that I could use for my app which is better? Happy to use any platform (MacOS, Linux, Windows).
  - hctaw 6y ago
    App Code is probably the only thing worth checking out. Swift isn't a useful language outside of the Apple ecosystem and interface builders come and go, usually go (design in Figma/Adobe products, implement in Code rather than UI wysiwyg)
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  I think IDEs may be a bit more subjective than are often presented. Personally speaking, my experience with Xcode has been just ok (not amazing) while IntelliJ based IDEs have been clunky and arcane, with some of their "smarts" functioning in ways that aren't expected or intuitive at all. Both are functional if you let me pick which to spend a work day in, it'd probably be Xcode. What one is first exposed to and how they're exposed to it probably makes a big difference.
cpeth 6y ago
"Apple may have the fastest processor, but Microsoft has the most comfortable tools. Both companies are not perfect, but if we must choose the lesser evil..." It's very fast for a low power, laptop-focused processor and even then only truly excels at single-threaded workloads. It's out classed by AMD mobile offerings (4900HS and 4800U) in multi-threaded workloads on most tests[0]. If you step up to desktop processors, the top end processors like the AMD 5950X are in a different class of multi-threaded performance. Don't get me wrong, it's an exceptional processor and incredibly fast for its sub-25W TDP. [0] - https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
- caycep 6y ago
  This is simply a matter of adding more cores...I mean, I would hope the 5950x with its 16 full strength cores would be better than an M1 with it's big/little design...
  - phendrenad2 6y ago
    I don't think it's as simple as adding more cores. Maybe the M1 doesn't scale up nicely.
    - MBCook 6y ago
      We’ll find out this year.
    - SekstiNi 6y ago
      Looking at the die shot [1], they have plenty of space for cores and cache if they remove the GPU. Surely it's not that simple, but I believe they should be able scale to at least 8+4 cores without large interconnect changes, and at that point they are already knocking on the 5900X's door. [1] - https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/M1.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/M1.png
      - NewLogic 6y ago
jhoechtl 6y ago
Unleash all your handcuffs and move directly to Linux. It will be really refreshing!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vijaybritto 6y ago
Please know that networking in WSL2 is a nightmare if working in a VPN. We are currently staying in WSL1 because the internet wont work in WSL2 under the corporate VPN.
- bezout 6y ago
  Did you try this https://esc.sh/blog/wsl2-no-internet-vpn/ https://esc.sh/blog/wsl2-no-internet-vpn/?
- baq 6y ago
  cisco anyconnect is notorious for that. you have to bump its interface metric above a certain value so WSL2 network or whatever does the routing can do its work.

me551ah 6y ago

I agree with you. 1. I run Arch Linux on windows vis WSL which provides pacman as a package manager. Pacman is way better than homebrew. 2. Docker runs much faster on windows compared to Mac. 3. My Mac will freeze up at times, while ctrl+alt+del always works on windows. 4. I am no longer limited to the crappy gpu options on Mac and can actually do gaming on my laptop.

seertaak 6y ago
Agreed. BTW if you're looking for a apt/brew like experience on Windows proper, try chocolatey: https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/ (Obviously there's also the Windows store, which is not bad for GUI programs, but for more developer-type stuff - e.g. installing python - chocolatey is great.)
- me551ah 6y ago
  I love chocolatey and use it quite a bit. But I like Arch Linux's AUR more because it contains way more packages. Though Microsoft also seems to be on their way to make their own https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-manager-preview/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-m...
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    It's a different use case - use Chocolatey to manage native windows installers - it's more like brew casks.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Hasn't WinGet superceded Choco of late?
  - mesaframe 6y ago
    WinGet isn't publicly available yet.

boogies 6y ago

What about GNU? It seems like most Windows-ₗusing devs use WSL2’s Linux VM. What advantages does that have over keeping the MS OS’s forced updates, BSODs, etc. in a VM, while keeping a free OS stably settled on bare metal? I can imagine drivers, but if you stick to only Dell Developer Edition, Lenovo Linux-certified, Purism Librem, System76, or similar (still significantly wider selection than Apple s̶h̶e̶e̶p̶ fans seem satisfied with) hardware, things should work more smoothly than with Windows (drivers are built into the kernel and update with the OS).

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It seems like most Windows users use WSL2’s Linux VM. Most Windows users haven't got a clue what Linux is let alone WSL2.
- boogies 6y ago
  Or that Rust isn’t iron oxide. I’ve edited that line to be clearer, and I’ll link definitions for all the other words ~~if someone will show me a pastebin that will hold the 583732 byte file I’ve just created for shell (xargs & dict) practice for free~~ Edit: https://ghostbin.com/paste/kgwWc https://ghostbin.com/paste/kgwWc.
lmm 6y ago
> I can imagine drivers, but if you stick to only Dell Developer Edition, Lenovo Linux-certified, Purism Librem, System76, or similar (still significantly wider selection than Apple s̶h̶e̶e̶p̶ fans seem satisfied with) hardware I don't need a huge selection, but I do need polished hardware that I can walk into a store and try out before buying. Just things like the feel of the keyboard or the trackpad can make a system a nightmare to use if they're bad. I also need to be confident that I'm not going to get given the runaround if a piece of hardware (e.g. docking station or monitor) doesn't work with the machine. > things should work more smoothly than with Windows (drivers are built into the kernel and update with the OS). That's actually one of the things that worries me the most about Linux - I can't pin a driver to a version that's working, and if the kernel drops support for my hardware then I have to choose between losing support for my hardware or never upgrading my OS. I was excited for GNU/kFreeBSD up until the point where systemd arrived and destroyed all the advantages of free OSes.

entropy1111 6y ago

>This is really cool. Kudos to Microsoft for really getting open source lately If they get open source so much it means not open sourcing what really matters is intentional. And quite frankly getting rid of patents, their litigiousness and data collection. But I'm asking too much and I would settle for them to just stop suffocating competitors, innovation and stop with vendor lock in. Same deal for their competitors. Anything that really matters is just like the same old MS you know. DirectX, Office, Xbox, everything SaaS, IDE, compilers, debuggers, language servers, file formats, UI frameworks, UI patents, GitHub, Windows, Server, you'll find examples in every area. Practices like buying or killing competitors like Vulkan related acquisitions. I get it they are a company and need to maximize profits, so it's cool. Microsoft has so many quality projects and good people working for them, it's just so frustrating that it's still like this. This will only get worse as the exploitative behavior and business models of their competitors like Google force their hand to do the same.

DennisP 6y ago
"By joining the Open Invention Network, Microsoft is offering its entire patent portfolio to all of the open-source patent consortium's members." https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-entire-patent-portfolio/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-ent... Apple had "1,996 total patents granted between July 1, 2019 and June 1, 2020, more than any other company in Silicon Valley." https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/07/27/top-of-the-list-patent-recipients.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/07/27/top-of-t...
- entropy1111 6y ago
  My recollection from previous OIN threads was that it came with a lot of caveats. I can't comment any further from lack of knowledge about patents and its subtleties. Would love to see an analysis of what really happened in practice since they did that.
galgalesh 6y ago
Microsoft joined the open invention network; a defensive patent pool protecting Linux (kernel and distributions). This directly cut into their patent revenue and removed some of their leverage towards Android OEM's. This matters a lot to the android and wider Linux ecosystem. Moreover, every single Microsoft patent will now be used to fight against any patent claim concerning Linux, related open source software, and a limited set of codecs. [0] Given the recent inclusion of an exFAT driver in Linux, this hurt MS's business even more. [0] https://openinventionnetwork.com/linux-system/ https://openinventionnetwork.com/linux-system/

nomel 6y ago

> throwing up more and more roadblocks and constricting their platform ever more Do you have any specific examples? From my perspective as an app user, rather than developer, the restrictions they've put in place seem to be beneficial to me. I like sandboxed apps, absolutely love that I can tell an app to bugger off when it tries to access some folder that it has no business reading.

blub 6y ago

Apple are throwing more roadblocks at least partly because developers are becoming more and more deplorable, trying to claw every penny they can by collecting and selling every bit of metadata (or even data) they can get their claws on. Microsoft aren't throwing similar roadblocks at least partly because they're one of the deplorables people need protection from. All big software corporations use open source strategically: keep the core money-makers closed, release tooling and other trinkets for developers so that they do some free advertising for the company. They also release expensive-to-develop software for free to destroy competitors and expand their influence.

girvo 6y ago

I am an Apple/Linux diehard, but Visual Studio has always been superior to Xcode imho.

globular-toast 6y ago

And meanwhile, GNU/Linux continues to be better than both. I love developing on a system made by developers.