11 ms·

I had to get a coworker set up under WSL because of a goofup with IT and instead of shipping a Mac this coworker ended up with a Windows machine and all of our

I had to get a coworker set up under WSL because of a goofup with IT and instead of shipping a Mac this coworker ended up with a Windows machine and all of our tooling was Unix based. I had had them setup with WSL as a way of moving forward, here's a few things I noticed: - different home directories, the different distros are accessed as network shares. It can get confusing where "Home" is unless you explicitly stumble a few times and verify always where files are. - Issues with CR/LF. You need to be careful using native windows tooling and having saved files in Windows line endings vs Unix. For non-savvy users the content looks correct but on Unix the tooling will fail in weird ways. - Visual Studio Code integration was actually excellent, my coworker ended up using VS Code to do Filesystem operations more so than using Windows Explorer. - The new Windows Terminal is fantastic, hopefully its bundled with Win 11. I'm really grateful for the technical capabilities that WSL brings out. I hope the dev teams are focused on fixing the subtle UX issues that trip up users.

zz865 5y ago
> Issues with CR/LF. Is this still really a thing? even notepad can handle LF. I guess the default could still be crlf for some apps.
- Mogzol 5y ago
  I think one of the main problems is that when you install git for windows, the default setting is to convert LF to CRLF when checking out code. This can cause a bunch of issues if you later try to work with those files within WSL (especially when doing any git-related stuff). I don't really understand why that's the default, or even why it's presented as an option during installation, it's been ages since I actually had issues reading/editing Unix-style files in Windows.
  - mey 5y ago
    It is insane to me that git doesn't checkout/in as-is by default on Windows.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      The biggest gotcha on Mac is using git on the default case-insensitive volume. I always create a separate case-sensitive APFS volume for all my git repos to avoid subtle mismatches between the filename git knows about and the filename macOS knows.
    - cerved 5y ago
      because of crap like notepad
      - stinos 5y ago
        I always wondered. Source?
        cerved 5y ago
        notepad is the default text editor in windows, it doesn't support Unix line endings until insider build whatever
        stinos 5y ago
        Sure, but is that really the reason why autocrlf is the default in git?
        cerved 5y ago
        it's the default in git-for-windows I see no other reason that maximum platform compatibility
        stinos 5y ago
        Would be weird if platfrom compatibility is measured by making sure once single program works, a program which most of the people using git probably don't even use
        zz865 5y ago
- int_19h 5y ago
  It's usually the other way around these days - most Windows apps can handle LF just fine, but Unix apps often cannot handle CR LF. So if you use Windows to generate a text file, things break when you try to use it from WSL.
fartcannon 5y ago
You needed a unix, so you tried WSL? You would have been much better served by Linux.
- tehbeard 5y ago
  > a goofup with IT and instead of shipping a Mac this coworker ended up with a Windows machine That kinda implies this isn't a small shop, so "breaking" a windows machine IT provisioned to put Linux onto it might be out of the question, both in terms of requisition, access to the UEFI, or even network configuration. Or said coworker is more familiar with Mac/Windows than <Insert Linux Distro and particular window manager here>, so this is best of a bad situation.
  - gerdesj 5y ago
    You can secure boot Linux with UEFI. For a laugh I do it on my Arch lappie but my Home Assistant Debians do it out of the box and so do my Ubuntu LTS servers. I gather that SuSE does too and probably many others. You can domain join via Winbind or SSSD. Exchange via Evolution or Kmail and other work arounds exist. TPM 2.0 has been supported for quite a while so all good for encryption and other attestation tasks. We have rather a lot of host based firewalls (sore point 8) but it looks like the latest effort might stick for a while longer than the past ones. ... Oh, you use that ... vendor ... SSL VPN. OK, can't do that and that's generally where it falls apart. We do have several. I can and do operate solely on Linux but I have the benefit of owning the company. Some of my customers insist on their gear/setup for their environment and that's fine: they get to buy it too.
    - tfigment 5y ago
      I think they meant bios/uefi is locked out by IT. That is case for me. Also TPM is only available on some distros. You can use linux as long as it is Ubuntu or RedHat and maybe Arch if you are lucky.
    - weikju 5y ago
      You'll be stopped long before SSL VPN. Right about the "you're running an unsupported/unauthorized OS on your company-owned laptop, send it back so we can restore to Windows"
tyingq 5y ago
Also BOM marks, which Powershell loves to output. Took a while for me to figure out what was putting 2 extra bytes into files. Edit: 3 bytes, not 2 (thanks!)
- ploxiln 5y ago
  The useless utf-8 BOM is 3 bytes ... were you also getting utf-16 encoded text?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - barosl 5y ago
    The UTF-8 BOM still has some uses, unfortunately. I had to convince Excel to parse a CSV file as UTF-8 and inserting a BOM at the beginning of the file was the easiest solution.
- ChrisSD 5y ago
  Powershell has stopped doing that in that newer version. I think since 6 or 7. On Windows 10 you do have to install it separately though.
- metaphor 5y ago
  If you think that's fun, just wait until you encounter the clowns who copy-paste random shit directly out of Word docs containing C1 control codes mascarading as "smart quotes" into your UTF-8 source.
  - GordonS 5y ago
    I've done that before, but copying from web pages that have randomly used smart quotes (or whatever they are actually called) in command line samples. Very annoying!
Notanothertoo 5y ago
I would not work until you got me a Mac. This poor soul.
smileybarry 5y ago
> - The new Windows Terminal is fantastic, hopefully its bundled with Win 11. It is, and it's even the default prompt in the Win+X menu

zz865 5y ago

> Issues with CR/LF. Is this still really a thing? even notepad can handle LF. I guess the default could still be crlf for some apps.

Mogzol 5y ago
I think one of the main problems is that when you install git for windows, the default setting is to convert LF to CRLF when checking out code. This can cause a bunch of issues if you later try to work with those files within WSL (especially when doing any git-related stuff). I don't really understand why that's the default, or even why it's presented as an option during installation, it's been ages since I actually had issues reading/editing Unix-style files in Windows.
- mey 5y ago
  It is insane to me that git doesn't checkout/in as-is by default on Windows.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    The biggest gotcha on Mac is using git on the default case-insensitive volume. I always create a separate case-sensitive APFS volume for all my git repos to avoid subtle mismatches between the filename git knows about and the filename macOS knows.
  - cerved 5y ago
    because of crap like notepad
    - stinos 5y ago
      I always wondered. Source?
      - cerved 5y ago
        notepad is the default text editor in windows, it doesn't support Unix line endings until insider build whatever
        stinos 5y ago
        Sure, but is that really the reason why autocrlf is the default in git?
        cerved 5y ago
        it's the default in git-for-windows I see no other reason that maximum platform compatibility
        stinos 5y ago
        Would be weird if platfrom compatibility is measured by making sure once single program works, a program which most of the people using git probably don't even use
        zz865 5y ago
int_19h 5y ago
It's usually the other way around these days - most Windows apps can handle LF just fine, but Unix apps often cannot handle CR LF. So if you use Windows to generate a text file, things break when you try to use it from WSL.

fartcannon 5y ago

You needed a unix, so you tried WSL? You would have been much better served by Linux.

tehbeard 5y ago
> a goofup with IT and instead of shipping a Mac this coworker ended up with a Windows machine That kinda implies this isn't a small shop, so "breaking" a windows machine IT provisioned to put Linux onto it might be out of the question, both in terms of requisition, access to the UEFI, or even network configuration. Or said coworker is more familiar with Mac/Windows than <Insert Linux Distro and particular window manager here>, so this is best of a bad situation.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  You can secure boot Linux with UEFI. For a laugh I do it on my Arch lappie but my Home Assistant Debians do it out of the box and so do my Ubuntu LTS servers. I gather that SuSE does too and probably many others. You can domain join via Winbind or SSSD. Exchange via Evolution or Kmail and other work arounds exist. TPM 2.0 has been supported for quite a while so all good for encryption and other attestation tasks. We have rather a lot of host based firewalls (sore point 8) but it looks like the latest effort might stick for a while longer than the past ones. ... Oh, you use that ... vendor ... SSL VPN. OK, can't do that and that's generally where it falls apart. We do have several. I can and do operate solely on Linux but I have the benefit of owning the company. Some of my customers insist on their gear/setup for their environment and that's fine: they get to buy it too.
  - tfigment 5y ago
    I think they meant bios/uefi is locked out by IT. That is case for me. Also TPM is only available on some distros. You can use linux as long as it is Ubuntu or RedHat and maybe Arch if you are lucky.
  - weikju 5y ago
    You'll be stopped long before SSL VPN. Right about the "you're running an unsupported/unauthorized OS on your company-owned laptop, send it back so we can restore to Windows"

tyingq 5y ago

Also BOM marks, which Powershell loves to output. Took a while for me to figure out what was putting 2 extra bytes into files. Edit: 3 bytes, not 2 (thanks!)

ploxiln 5y ago
The useless utf-8 BOM is 3 bytes ... were you also getting utf-16 encoded text?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- barosl 5y ago
  The UTF-8 BOM still has some uses, unfortunately. I had to convince Excel to parse a CSV file as UTF-8 and inserting a BOM at the beginning of the file was the easiest solution.
ChrisSD 5y ago
Powershell has stopped doing that in that newer version. I think since 6 or 7. On Windows 10 you do have to install it separately though.
metaphor 5y ago
If you think that's fun, just wait until you encounter the clowns who copy-paste random shit directly out of Word docs containing C1 control codes mascarading as "smart quotes" into your UTF-8 source.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I've done that before, but copying from web pages that have randomly used smart quotes (or whatever they are actually called) in command line samples. Very annoying!

Notanothertoo 5y ago

I would not work until you got me a Mac. This poor soul.

smileybarry 5y ago

> - The new Windows Terminal is fantastic, hopefully its bundled with Win 11. It is, and it's even the default prompt in the Win+X menu