4 ms·

I see it a bit more simply: A lot of developers use MacOS, particularly web developers who are almost always deploying the server to a linux machine. With the

by ljm 6y ago

I see it a bit more simply: A lot of developers use MacOS, particularly web developers who are almost always deploying the server to a linux machine. With the Mac being BSD-flavoured, a lot of open source tooling works the same as it does on Linux. MacPorts and Homebrew have done a lot to drive that. The experience on Windows for this has been incredibly poor. There are solutions, but they're less integrated. WSL comes in, along with Windows Terminal, and now you can have a much nicer time with it all without dual booting or running a VM. Who knows where it'll be in a decade, but if anything, they're just making themselves a viable competitor to Apple by providing better development tools than they do.

wayneftw 6y ago
I used Windows for twenty years as a developer and macOS for ten. Once I got away from .Net and iOS development and into Node/React both of them just got in my way while providing nothing of value. (Actually macOS has always annoyed me in many ways, so mostly I only used it for iOS stuff.) Once I moved to Manjaro/XFCE a few years ago, all the problems disappeared. Docker just works. All the web dev tools are built for my platform and just work. There are no compatibility layers or emulation layers to worry about. I'm in charge of updates. I don't get nagged to do things at inopportune times. I'll never go back to either one of them full time. Windows for games, Macs for iOS/Xcode. That's it for me. Even for .Net and iOS now - I can do that too on Linux with .Net core and React Native.
apatheticonion 6y ago
Originally a Window dev, moved to Linux, eventually MacOS due to a lack of nice a DE on Linux and the nice UNIX base of MacOS. Before WSL1 I would run Linux inside a VM from Windows and use remote development tools (like VSCode via SSH, SSH tunnels for port sharing, etc). It was all pretty straight forward, stable and I had no issues. I used WSL1 when it launched and it was _incredible_. Bash actually on Windows. My workflow changed because of the level of integration I had with Windows. I could run browser automation tools against my Windows browsers, from Linux. I could run Windows programs from bash. WSL2 came on the scene and introduced a hypervisor layer and I essentially came full circle. Sure it has some smarts around memory VM allocation - but it doesn't always work right and you're never really certain it's not running, consuming memory. Network port mappings were automatically tunneled, but only in one direction and they would occasionally fail causing random issues that require a reboot to solve. Now GUI windows are shared with Windows via RDP, cool.. Ultimately, WSL2 is the attempt to take Linux VM and make it appear like it's not a VM. Maybe it'll get there one day, but due to the got-ya's it's not for me. I have since reverted back to using my choice of distro inside my choice of hypervisor, where I know what's going on and don't have to mentally reverse engineer the magic when it goes wrong.
- flukus 6y ago
  > I used WSL1 when it launched and it was _incredible_. Bash actually on Windows. My workflow changed because of the level of integration I had with Windows. I could run browser automation tools against my Windows browsers, from Linux. I could run Windows programs from bash. Cygwin has been able to do this for 2 decades, actual bash plus other unix tools compiled to actual windows exe's. You can even run some gui tools if you run an xserver on windows. Even WSL1 wasn't as good, there were too many issues like tail not working properly on windows files, issues with network shares, interop, etc. I pretty quickly reverted to cygwin.
  - bostonsre 6y ago
    WSL 1 was an ok attempt but yea, it had a lot of rough edges. From my experience WSL 2 is a bunch better and I definitely like it better than when I used cygwin (but that was 10 or so years ago). Cygwin is an ok shell, but being able to yum install stuff and run linux programs on wsl 2 has been awesome.
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      But msys2 does exactly the same without a VM
  - NavinF 6y ago
    Ugh. Cygwin was such a pain back when it was the only option. It was yet another ABI and had all the breakage that implies. Even today, so many open source projects are full of ifdefs for cygwin. I much prefer WSL1 and I've only run into a couple of issues over the last year (can't set Windows time from Linux and ssh-agent doesn't work out of the box) which is a significant improvement over cygwin or even a proper linux distro (which would occasionally boot to a black screen after updating anything related to X)
    - flukus 6y ago
      The same or similar patches exist for WSL. One of the examples I gave was tail not working on windows files, cygwin has had a patch for years so it just works, ubuntu had to add the same or a similar patch to work in wsl.

by ljm 6y ago

wayneftw 6y ago

I used Windows for twenty years as a developer and macOS for ten. Once I got away from .Net and iOS development and into Node/React both of them just got in my way while providing nothing of value. (Actually macOS has always annoyed me in many ways, so mostly I only used it for iOS stuff.) Once I moved to Manjaro/XFCE a few years ago, all the problems disappeared. Docker just works. All the web dev tools are built for my platform and just work. There are no compatibility layers or emulation layers to worry about. I'm in charge of updates. I don't get nagged to do things at inopportune times. I'll never go back to either one of them full time. Windows for games, Macs for iOS/Xcode. That's it for me. Even for .Net and iOS now - I can do that too on Linux with .Net core and React Native.

apatheticonion 6y ago

Originally a Window dev, moved to Linux, eventually MacOS due to a lack of nice a DE on Linux and the nice UNIX base of MacOS. Before WSL1 I would run Linux inside a VM from Windows and use remote development tools (like VSCode via SSH, SSH tunnels for port sharing, etc). It was all pretty straight forward, stable and I had no issues. I used WSL1 when it launched and it was _incredible_. Bash actually on Windows. My workflow changed because of the level of integration I had with Windows. I could run browser automation tools against my Windows browsers, from Linux. I could run Windows programs from bash. WSL2 came on the scene and introduced a hypervisor layer and I essentially came full circle. Sure it has some smarts around memory VM allocation - but it doesn't always work right and you're never really certain it's not running, consuming memory. Network port mappings were automatically tunneled, but only in one direction and they would occasionally fail causing random issues that require a reboot to solve. Now GUI windows are shared with Windows via RDP, cool.. Ultimately, WSL2 is the attempt to take Linux VM and make it appear like it's not a VM. Maybe it'll get there one day, but due to the got-ya's it's not for me. I have since reverted back to using my choice of distro inside my choice of hypervisor, where I know what's going on and don't have to mentally reverse engineer the magic when it goes wrong.

flukus 6y ago
> I used WSL1 when it launched and it was _incredible_. Bash actually on Windows. My workflow changed because of the level of integration I had with Windows. I could run browser automation tools against my Windows browsers, from Linux. I could run Windows programs from bash. Cygwin has been able to do this for 2 decades, actual bash plus other unix tools compiled to actual windows exe's. You can even run some gui tools if you run an xserver on windows. Even WSL1 wasn't as good, there were too many issues like tail not working properly on windows files, issues with network shares, interop, etc. I pretty quickly reverted to cygwin.
- bostonsre 6y ago
  WSL 1 was an ok attempt but yea, it had a lot of rough edges. From my experience WSL 2 is a bunch better and I definitely like it better than when I used cygwin (but that was 10 or so years ago). Cygwin is an ok shell, but being able to yum install stuff and run linux programs on wsl 2 has been awesome.
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    But msys2 does exactly the same without a VM
- NavinF 6y ago
  Ugh. Cygwin was such a pain back when it was the only option. It was yet another ABI and had all the breakage that implies. Even today, so many open source projects are full of ifdefs for cygwin. I much prefer WSL1 and I've only run into a couple of issues over the last year (can't set Windows time from Linux and ssh-agent doesn't work out of the box) which is a significant improvement over cygwin or even a proper linux distro (which would occasionally boot to a black screen after updating anything related to X)
  - flukus 6y ago
    The same or similar patches exist for WSL. One of the examples I gave was tail not working on windows files, cygwin has had a patch for years so it just works, ubuntu had to add the same or a similar patch to work in wsl.