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Software development is a much better experience on Linux compared to Windows (unless you stay within Visual Studio). If you do tasks that are well supported b

Software development is a much better experience on Linux compared to Windows (unless you stay within Visual Studio). If you do tasks that are well supported by your OS, your experience will be mostly good. Don't run servers on MacOS, don't develop on Windows and don't game on Linux. Or do it anyway and deal with the unpolished aspects of it.

guhidalg 4y ago
Totally agree that development outside of Windows is better. However if a majority of your users are using Windows, shouldn't you, the developer, also use Windows? I think HN has a tired circle-jerk around hating Windows but ultimately most people use Windows for a reason, and it's not because it's a good development environment: it's because it just works and if you're a normal user you never have to open a command line.
- notatoad 4y ago
  if you're building desktop software for windows then yeah, you should use windows. but these days, most development isn't for windows.
- godshatter 4y ago
deltasevennine 4y ago
True, however user experience in windows is still superior.
- Andrex 4y ago
  Comparing Gnome to Windows 10/11? No way.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    I would pick the unholy abomination that is ExplorerMetroUWP in Windows 10/11 over GNOME any day of the week. GNOME is nigh unusable other than as an expensive piece of wall decor.
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      >GNOME is nigh unusable other than as an expensive piece of wall decor. Examples you can expand on?
      - Andrex 4y ago
        Not the user you're replying to, but some workflows just don't work well in Gnome (yet). But the combination of key shortcuts and mouse gestures makes it feel really nice to use in practice. Workspaces work like I'd expect, as do Alt+Tab and Alt+`. The built-in apps and settings have a level of consistency the Windows team could only dream of right now. Notifications in Gnome are fantastic. I could go on.
      - Dalewyn 4y ago
        Lack of customization for one, either I do things the GNOME way or the highway. Screw that, if I wanted that I would be using MacOS and/or iOS instead since Apple does that far better. Form factor dissonance for another. GNOME clearly targets the mobile form factor, and it fails me for all the reasons Metro in Windows 8 failed me because guess what: I'm using a desktop/laptop, not a tablet/phone.
        pmontra 4y ago
        About configurability, I installed more than a dozen shell extensions and my Gnome desktop looks like and behaves like what a desktop should be for me, quite distant from the ideas of Gnome's developers.
        furstenheim 4y ago
        Metacity works for me, nice standard look
  - onehair 4y ago
    Yes. The UX is much better. Linux customization capabilites are phenomenal I give you that, but it takes a very big amount of time if you want something specific for you, and when an update hits and things just break :-(
    - zelphirkalt 4y ago
      Use XFCE, put your panels however you want them, done. Haven't ever had any update break my arrangement.
      - onehair 4y ago
        I use Linux for my homeserver, and used to have it on my HTPC too. On the HTPC I only used openbox, so in a sense it's even less complicated than xfce. The trouble is with the software for the htpc stuff, like remote gaming, audio, videoplaying retrogames software and so on. The part that ruined my experience is the amount of configuration needed to get there, and updates that constantly broke either my video player, the audio or the remote gaming. Either a driver update with a breaking change, or the audio config that needed repair and stuff like this. Everytime I'd spend obscene amount of time to try to find what's the culprit, and it usually came down to updates breaking one thing or another. On windows it's seemless and in some ways with better performance and ease of installation. Up and running in 15 minutes and with total control to boot...
    - Andrex 4y ago
      Gnome actually has a different philosophy. There wasn't much customization offered at first, as the focus was on nailing a single set of UX and aesthetics. And I think the Gnome team succeeded, but the lack of customization is/was divisive.
- inetknght 4y ago
  Try Linux Mint. It uses Cinnamon and Cinnamon is very similar to Windows and without all of the baggage
  - deltasevennine 4y ago
    I'm a linux user. I use nixOS and Arch. I've also tried mint many times. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible. As good as linux is and as much improvements that have been made over the past decade or so, Windows and OSX still have the superior GUI. Just being honest about it.
    - zelphirkalt 4y ago
      Windows GUI still has the same bugs that it had in Windows XP. The whole system control panel has been dumbed down so much, that it actively tries to prevent the user from finding certain settings. The system still suffers from simply doing everything slower than GNU/Linux. After logging in, it acts as if all is loaded and ready, but when one wants to do something, things still get loaded and icons added "next to the clock". Right click in file browser still feels slugish. Windows stops me from doing the simplest things by asking me silly questions, of whether I want to do, what I just told the system to do. Very specific to my systems: The closed source graphics card driver crashes often, while the open source drivers have not a single time crashed noticably on GNU/Linux. On Windows this is noticable, because the whole screen freezes, until the driver has restarted. Never happened on any of my GNU/Linux systems. It is simply not funny or justifyable any more.
    - throwaway743 4y ago
      Ubuntu gui > windows by a large margin
- throwaway743 4y ago
  Ehh that's a big claim. As mainly a windows user (adobe software) both gui and env wise I way prefer Ubuntu over windows. It's so much clearer
beached_whale 4y ago
docker and clion is an amazing experience. One can change their toolchain very easily without worrying about interference from all the crap on my dev machine I have installed over time, or that one needs a different config all togethor. It's similar to clion with windows/mac but the experience deteriorates, but the VM for WSL is much better on windows(no need to allocate a huge chunk of ram) than macos for docker
yakubin 4y ago
As long as you don’t use debuggers.
richardlblair 4y ago
I kind of agree. Linux is still bit of a shit show.. my audio stack got completely fubar'd on my last linux box so back to Windows I went. WSL2 + Docker gets you really close to the development experience of Linux while maintaining your sanity.
dan_mctree 4y ago
As a lifelong windows dev, what exactly makes linux worth moving to? I understand that coming from a linux world, doing what you like doing in linux isn't always possible on windows. But I've never really found a use for any of that console magic linux devs seem to love. Pipe this into that and through seven pieces of software that sound like glibgcd, add 8 arcane flags and in the end you have some kind of textfile that would've just as easily been made in some handmade program? What exactly is the selling point for devs?
- pksebben 4y ago
  I'm not sure what a handmade program on windows looks like, so I could be wrong here, but writing shell scripts to do work takes a matter of minutes and creates composable, reliable stuff that vastly reduces the time to do other work. This means that as time goes on, more of my workflow becomes scripted and I very, very rarely work on the same problem twice. Then there's the filesystem. It just works. Permissions are easy to grok and (most) error messages are clear about what's wrong. Everything being a file also means I use the same tools to: - investigate bugs in source code - check what processes are using what ports, files, sockets, etc - find files - find things in files there's very little that can't be done easily with [grep, cat, ls, mv, cd, echo, curl]. Also, manpages are incredible. All my important documentation, right there where I'm doing my work. It's really less about what's possible on windows / Linux, and more about how Linux lets me do things my way, which means I can consistently improve my methods. Also, all the good Linux stuff is free. Both kinds, so not only can I use most of it without worrying about the cost, I can fix it when it goes wrong or modify it to be more like what I want. I could go on and bore you more, but those are the key points.
  - jon-wood 4y ago
    > writing shell scripts to do work takes a matter of minutes This is the core of it for me. Half the time I don’t even need to write a shell scrip, I just fling it straight onto the command line if I’m doing a quick one off task.
  - zeppelin101 4y ago
    I'd also add the "Googlability" factor to this. If you want to check how to do anything in bash, you will have your answer within seconds. Not so with PowerShell. It's a much newer system that doesn't have decades of history.
gregmac 4y ago
I've done lots of dev on both linux and Windows. Neither is "better" IMHO. I started on Linux, but today my main work and personal systems are both Win10. I also have a persoanl Linux laptop I use sometimes (currently Pop_OS, because I felt like trying that). There's certain things easier on one or the other, usually caused by silly hardcoding of paths (or other OS-specific assumptions). I've run into this with python packages on Windows for sure. My Windows dev is mostly limited to .net, and I've been writing cross-platform for years (first via Mono, now .net core / .net 6). Most challenges with cross-platform .net are caused by hardcoding Windows-specific paths and backslash (vs using Environment.* and Path.Combine()), and secondarily by using win32-specific things (eg: registry). Tip for Windows dev use: install Windows Terminal [1], scoop [2], oh-my-posh [3], and busybox [4]. Makes the cli so much more usable, at least for someone like me with linux CLI muscle memory (ls, grep, etc). I've found the combo of busybox utils and PowerShell is very productive. I nearly always have at least a couple terminal tabs open, and I'm nearly 50/50 of whether I use cli or explorer to browse or operate on files. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal https://github.com/microsoft/terminal [2] https://scoop.sh/ https://scoop.sh/ [3] https://ohmyposh.dev/ https://ohmyposh.dev/ [4] https://scoop.sh/#/apps?q=busybox&s=0&d=1&o=true https://scoop.sh/#/apps?q=busybox&s=0&d=1&o=true
- zeppelin101 4y ago
  Are you able to compare scoop to Chocolatey? I've stuck with choco for years now, because it has so many packages that I haven't wanted to try out scoop or WinGet. Regarding PowerShell, I've found that it has become incredibly customizable these days. For example, I just enabled Emacs keybindings for it a couple days ago. So it feels almost like a bash terminal.
  - mrpotato 4y ago
    Use both! I think one of the main differences is that scoop will install for the local user. Which means you don't have to install stuff from an admin console (I think you can do that with choco but its not the default). I also just checked to see what apps I've used in scoop vs choco and the only one that choco doesn't have (that scoop does) is wsl-ssh-agent. scoop had all the apps I install through choco. I'm sure theres more differences that go a little deeper, but as a simple end user, those are the only things I've noticed
ivank 4y ago
You can have the best of both worlds with `Visual Studio Code Remote - SSH` and a lot of mintty -> ssh user@host (to a VM, if needed).
wizofaus 4y ago
I wouldn't say the dev experience on Windows is "unpolished", but I agree it's better if you have access to linux-style command line tools (whether via WSL or even just git-bash). In principle PowerShell should be just as powerful but I don't know many devs who can throw together PS scripts the way most of us seem fine with bash etc.

guhidalg 4y ago

Totally agree that development outside of Windows is better. However if a majority of your users are using Windows, shouldn't you, the developer, also use Windows? I think HN has a tired circle-jerk around hating Windows but ultimately most people use Windows for a reason, and it's not because it's a good development environment: it's because it just works and if you're a normal user you never have to open a command line.

notatoad 4y ago
if you're building desktop software for windows then yeah, you should use windows. but these days, most development isn't for windows.
godshatter 4y ago

deltasevennine 4y ago

True, however user experience in windows is still superior.

Andrex 4y ago
Comparing Gnome to Windows 10/11? No way.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  I would pick the unholy abomination that is ExplorerMetroUWP in Windows 10/11 over GNOME any day of the week. GNOME is nigh unusable other than as an expensive piece of wall decor.
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    >GNOME is nigh unusable other than as an expensive piece of wall decor. Examples you can expand on?
    - Andrex 4y ago
      Not the user you're replying to, but some workflows just don't work well in Gnome (yet). But the combination of key shortcuts and mouse gestures makes it feel really nice to use in practice. Workspaces work like I'd expect, as do Alt+Tab and Alt+`. The built-in apps and settings have a level of consistency the Windows team could only dream of right now. Notifications in Gnome are fantastic. I could go on.
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      Lack of customization for one, either I do things the GNOME way or the highway. Screw that, if I wanted that I would be using MacOS and/or iOS instead since Apple does that far better. Form factor dissonance for another. GNOME clearly targets the mobile form factor, and it fails me for all the reasons Metro in Windows 8 failed me because guess what: I'm using a desktop/laptop, not a tablet/phone.
      - pmontra 4y ago
        About configurability, I installed more than a dozen shell extensions and my Gnome desktop looks like and behaves like what a desktop should be for me, quite distant from the ideas of Gnome's developers.
        furstenheim 4y ago
        Metacity works for me, nice standard look
- onehair 4y ago
  Yes. The UX is much better. Linux customization capabilites are phenomenal I give you that, but it takes a very big amount of time if you want something specific for you, and when an update hits and things just break :-(
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    Use XFCE, put your panels however you want them, done. Haven't ever had any update break my arrangement.
    - onehair 4y ago
      I use Linux for my homeserver, and used to have it on my HTPC too. On the HTPC I only used openbox, so in a sense it's even less complicated than xfce. The trouble is with the software for the htpc stuff, like remote gaming, audio, videoplaying retrogames software and so on. The part that ruined my experience is the amount of configuration needed to get there, and updates that constantly broke either my video player, the audio or the remote gaming. Either a driver update with a breaking change, or the audio config that needed repair and stuff like this. Everytime I'd spend obscene amount of time to try to find what's the culprit, and it usually came down to updates breaking one thing or another. On windows it's seemless and in some ways with better performance and ease of installation. Up and running in 15 minutes and with total control to boot...
  - Andrex 4y ago
    Gnome actually has a different philosophy. There wasn't much customization offered at first, as the focus was on nailing a single set of UX and aesthetics. And I think the Gnome team succeeded, but the lack of customization is/was divisive.
inetknght 4y ago
Try Linux Mint. It uses Cinnamon and Cinnamon is very similar to Windows and without all of the baggage
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  I'm a linux user. I use nixOS and Arch. I've also tried mint many times. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible. As good as linux is and as much improvements that have been made over the past decade or so, Windows and OSX still have the superior GUI. Just being honest about it.
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    Windows GUI still has the same bugs that it had in Windows XP. The whole system control panel has been dumbed down so much, that it actively tries to prevent the user from finding certain settings. The system still suffers from simply doing everything slower than GNU/Linux. After logging in, it acts as if all is loaded and ready, but when one wants to do something, things still get loaded and icons added "next to the clock". Right click in file browser still feels slugish. Windows stops me from doing the simplest things by asking me silly questions, of whether I want to do, what I just told the system to do. Very specific to my systems: The closed source graphics card driver crashes often, while the open source drivers have not a single time crashed noticably on GNU/Linux. On Windows this is noticable, because the whole screen freezes, until the driver has restarted. Never happened on any of my GNU/Linux systems. It is simply not funny or justifyable any more.
  - throwaway743 4y ago
    Ubuntu gui > windows by a large margin
throwaway743 4y ago
Ehh that's a big claim. As mainly a windows user (adobe software) both gui and env wise I way prefer Ubuntu over windows. It's so much clearer

beached_whale 4y ago

docker and clion is an amazing experience. One can change their toolchain very easily without worrying about interference from all the crap on my dev machine I have installed over time, or that one needs a different config all togethor. It's similar to clion with windows/mac but the experience deteriorates, but the VM for WSL is much better on windows(no need to allocate a huge chunk of ram) than macos for docker

yakubin 4y ago

As long as you don’t use debuggers.

richardlblair 4y ago

I kind of agree. Linux is still bit of a shit show.. my audio stack got completely fubar'd on my last linux box so back to Windows I went. WSL2 + Docker gets you really close to the development experience of Linux while maintaining your sanity.

dan_mctree 4y ago

As a lifelong windows dev, what exactly makes linux worth moving to? I understand that coming from a linux world, doing what you like doing in linux isn't always possible on windows. But I've never really found a use for any of that console magic linux devs seem to love. Pipe this into that and through seven pieces of software that sound like glibgcd, add 8 arcane flags and in the end you have some kind of textfile that would've just as easily been made in some handmade program? What exactly is the selling point for devs?

pksebben 4y ago
I'm not sure what a handmade program on windows looks like, so I could be wrong here, but writing shell scripts to do work takes a matter of minutes and creates composable, reliable stuff that vastly reduces the time to do other work. This means that as time goes on, more of my workflow becomes scripted and I very, very rarely work on the same problem twice. Then there's the filesystem. It just works. Permissions are easy to grok and (most) error messages are clear about what's wrong. Everything being a file also means I use the same tools to: - investigate bugs in source code - check what processes are using what ports, files, sockets, etc - find files - find things in files there's very little that can't be done easily with [grep, cat, ls, mv, cd, echo, curl]. Also, manpages are incredible. All my important documentation, right there where I'm doing my work. It's really less about what's possible on windows / Linux, and more about how Linux lets me do things my way, which means I can consistently improve my methods. Also, all the good Linux stuff is free. Both kinds, so not only can I use most of it without worrying about the cost, I can fix it when it goes wrong or modify it to be more like what I want. I could go on and bore you more, but those are the key points.
- jon-wood 4y ago
  > writing shell scripts to do work takes a matter of minutes This is the core of it for me. Half the time I don’t even need to write a shell scrip, I just fling it straight onto the command line if I’m doing a quick one off task.
- zeppelin101 4y ago
  I'd also add the "Googlability" factor to this. If you want to check how to do anything in bash, you will have your answer within seconds. Not so with PowerShell. It's a much newer system that doesn't have decades of history.

gregmac 4y ago

I've done lots of dev on both linux and Windows. Neither is "better" IMHO. I started on Linux, but today my main work and personal systems are both Win10. I also have a persoanl Linux laptop I use sometimes (currently Pop_OS, because I felt like trying that). There's certain things easier on one or the other, usually caused by silly hardcoding of paths (or other OS-specific assumptions). I've run into this with python packages on Windows for sure. My Windows dev is mostly limited to .net, and I've been writing cross-platform for years (first via Mono, now .net core / .net 6). Most challenges with cross-platform .net are caused by hardcoding Windows-specific paths and backslash (vs using Environment.* and Path.Combine()), and secondarily by using win32-specific things (eg: registry). Tip for Windows dev use: install Windows Terminal [1], scoop [2], oh-my-posh [3], and busybox [4]. Makes the cli so much more usable, at least for someone like me with linux CLI muscle memory (ls, grep, etc). I've found the combo of busybox utils and PowerShell is very productive. I nearly always have at least a couple terminal tabs open, and I'm nearly 50/50 of whether I use cli or explorer to browse or operate on files. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal https://github.com/microsoft/terminal [2] https://scoop.sh/ https://scoop.sh/ [3] https://ohmyposh.dev/ https://ohmyposh.dev/ [4] https://scoop.sh/#/apps?q=busybox&s=0&d=1&o=true https://scoop.sh/#/apps?q=busybox&s=0&d=1&o=true

zeppelin101 4y ago
Are you able to compare scoop to Chocolatey? I've stuck with choco for years now, because it has so many packages that I haven't wanted to try out scoop or WinGet. Regarding PowerShell, I've found that it has become incredibly customizable these days. For example, I just enabled Emacs keybindings for it a couple days ago. So it feels almost like a bash terminal.
- mrpotato 4y ago
  Use both! I think one of the main differences is that scoop will install for the local user. Which means you don't have to install stuff from an admin console (I think you can do that with choco but its not the default). I also just checked to see what apps I've used in scoop vs choco and the only one that choco doesn't have (that scoop does) is wsl-ssh-agent. scoop had all the apps I install through choco. I'm sure theres more differences that go a little deeper, but as a simple end user, those are the only things I've noticed

ivank 4y ago

You can have the best of both worlds with `Visual Studio Code Remote - SSH` and a lot of mintty -> ssh user@host (to a VM, if needed).

wizofaus 4y ago

I wouldn't say the dev experience on Windows is "unpolished", but I agree it's better if you have access to linux-style command line tools (whether via WSL or even just git-bash). In principle PowerShell should be just as powerful but I don't know many devs who can throw together PS scripts the way most of us seem fine with bash etc.