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Given Microsoft's recent 'This is an Xbox' and 'Windows 11 will be the platform for gaming' messaging, and the demolishing of the Xbox division, this may be goo

Given Microsoft's recent 'This is an Xbox' and 'Windows 11 will be the platform for gaming' messaging, and the demolishing of the Xbox division, this may be good timing. Results like this may light a fire under MS to finally fix some deep problems in Windows' performance. At least, one can hope.

mlnj 1y ago
At this point, I've given up having hope for Windows to be actually a good experience for anything at all. Development has been a pain over the last decade. MacOS has it's rough-edges, but it has become a pleasure to code on. Normal everyday experience is just a pain with unintuitive settings pages, slow Files Explorer, and a horrendous start panel experience. Gaming seems to be the last thread my Windows machine is around for anymore. Although I have not tried moving to Linux for this, the gaming community seems to be happy enough for more and more games every week.
- BunsanSpace 1y ago
  > MacOS has it's rough-edges, but it has become a pleasure to code on Except when Apple deprecates APIs but the replacement doesn't have close to the same functionality (looking at you screen capture kit). Or when the documentation just doesn't explain anything and you have to reverse engineer the API to figure out what it does. or how there's a bunch of hidden APIs only certain vendors are told about so you can't even compete on an even playing field. And don't get me started on the C, C++, ObjectiveC and now Swift monstrosities. Having fun with your legacy project when the new APIs require swift, so you have to use the objectiveC bridge and the weird bugs that comes with it.
  - neuroelectron 1y ago
    Also Apple undercutting your business by turning your app in an OS feature. Or Apple deleting your app and account because of politics but they claim it's a policy violation. They just selectively enforce it. Or apple allowing foreign governments back doors.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      Because Microsoft never did any of those things...
      - neuroelectron 1y ago
        Certainly not in the way Apple does. Archive/zip integration into the file explorer is a great example. As apposed to F.lux, where Apple completely removed the API and app and made their own version of it.
  - bobbylarrybobby 1y ago
    macOS is great to code on, not to code for
  - pdpi 1y ago
    GP said that macOS is a pleasure to code on, you’re arguing that it is not a pleasure to code for. Both can be true at the same time!
- baq 1y ago
  > MacOS has it's rough-edges, but it has become a pleasure to code on. I don’t know what kind of projects are you working on, but it couldn’t be further from truth for me. WSL2 is so much better than docker on macOS it isn’t even funny. (Haven’t tried orbstack, heard good things; though fundamentally the problem of developing for linux on not-Linux can only be solved by actually running Linux.)
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    > (Haven’t tried orbstack, heard good things; though fundamentally the problem of developing for linux on not-Linux can only be solved by actually running Linux.) I really wish we could get back to true platform-agnostic development and away from shipping whole Linux-jungles containing the banana you actually want to ship. Effective hard-coupling isn’t a good thing isn’t my opinion, even when the platform being coupled to is FOSS.
    - thewebguyd 1y ago
      Agreed. Instead of solving "It runs on my machine" we just decided to ship the machine as part of the app and call it a day.
  - zanecodes 1y ago
    Docker on macOS also runs a Linux VM under the hood, just like WSL2 does, they're no different in that respect. WSL1 used the more exotic approach of translating Linux system calls to and from NT kernel system calls, but for various reasons (compatibility, performance, complexity) Microsoft abandoned that technique and adopted a Linux VM running under the Hyper-V hypervisor for WSL2.
    - WorldMaker 1y ago
      There is a difference in Hyper-V itself. The Windows hypervisor is underappreciated as one of the better VM hypervisors in some scenarios, and WSL2 uses a few Hyper-V tricks [0] to really shine if your machine's Hyper-V isn't interfered with by other hypervisors. (Sadly not uncommon given how many us have things like old VirtualBox VMs that still need Hyper-V to run in a compatibility mode with Oracle-maintained hypervisors of the past.) (Also, WSL1 isn't as actively maintained as it was when WSA [Windows Subsystem for Android] was an active Windows 11 feature driving it, but it hasn't been entirely abandoned either and there is some community support ongoing [open source PRs].) [0] Among other things, Windows likes to run itself at all times as a guest in Hyper-V when Hyper-V is active (and other ancient hypervisors aren't interfering), making Hyper-V VMs like WSL2 "peers" with Windows itself for Hyper-V resources/attention. (It's one of the funnier things about Hyper-V being a "Pro" feature still today because even consumer-focused Windows Home is often still running in Hyper-V [because it's also sometimes a defense-in-depth security/sandboxing in some consumer use cases], it just won't let you configure other VMs in it than your main Windows OS.)
- vips7L 1y ago
  I genuinely enjoy programming on windows. Perhaps because I don’t try to force windows to be linux, but PowerShell is genuinely good. The only issues I face are when other developers do non-cross platform things. Like use bash for build scripts.
  - mtsr 1y ago
    Anything touching disk, such as reading a bunch of source files is just so much slower on windows right now. From what I hear it improves a little if you actually go through the Linux subsystem, but it just can’t touch native Linux performance. Just switching OS will seriously improve your DX because of the faster compiles.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Use a ReFS partition.
lupusreal 1y ago
I hope Microsoft stays complacent and ultimately loses the gamer market. With gamers out and most other casual consumers going mobile, Microsoft will be ever more relegated to office environments, making them even less cool and hopefully starting a snowball effect that really hurts them.
- whalesalad 1y ago
  Gonna be tough when they own literally all the gaming studios now
  - the_snooze 1y ago
    They own a bunch of AAA gaming studios, which have been producing flop after multimillion-dollar flop. All that while random indie darlings produce high quality cross-platform hits for a fraction of the budget.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      True, and while quite sad for everyone involved, they had one of the best years in gaming, with all their gaming divisions combined.
  - maxsilver 1y ago
    They just fired a lot of the gaming studios they used to own. (Tango, Arkane), and cancelled most of their major upcoming projects (Everwild, Perfect Dark, the new MMO, etc) And - while there are rare examples otherwise (like iD software), many of their studios haven't made a well received game in over a decade. It's not necessarily a great thing for the industry, but Microsoft leaving gaming entirely would not be that terribly tough. If anything, it would probably have the least amount of impact now, then it would have at any other time since 2001.
    - staticman2 1y ago
      Microsoft bought the Call of Duty studios for a lot of money and likes to say they are succeeding at video games by pointing to Call of Duty revenue in a vacuum without counting the cost to aquire Activision. They certainly aren't going to stop releasing Call of Duty games.
zamalek 1y ago
The problem is the bullet point features that Microsoft is adding to Windows (AI, ads, Xbox bar, etc.). The fastest line of code possible is the line of code that doesn't exist (look, this technically isn't true when considering data structures, but it's a good baseline). Microsoft would have to exercise discipline with Windows features, which is never going to happen: the very people pushing the garbage are using Macs and don't have to suffer it.
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  I'm not convinced those new features are adding any substantial overhead. From my understanding, most of the problems are at the low level - things like threading, kernel space operations, file writing, etc. Very stripped-down versions of Windows perform pretty much identically from what I last saw.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    I believe (speculating) that a big reason Windows underperforms in battery life is because of the "death by a thousand cuts" approach to network-connect background services. Linux desktops have very little background services that make constant network calls. But on Windows, there's hundreds. Every team thinks they need a little bit of telemetry or they need to grab an icon or something stupid, so nobody thinks twice. Same thing goes for logging. But when you add it all up, it ends up being expensive.

mlnj 1y ago

At this point, I've given up having hope for Windows to be actually a good experience for anything at all. Development has been a pain over the last decade. MacOS has it's rough-edges, but it has become a pleasure to code on. Normal everyday experience is just a pain with unintuitive settings pages, slow Files Explorer, and a horrendous start panel experience. Gaming seems to be the last thread my Windows machine is around for anymore. Although I have not tried moving to Linux for this, the gaming community seems to be happy enough for more and more games every week.

BunsanSpace 1y ago
> MacOS has it's rough-edges, but it has become a pleasure to code on Except when Apple deprecates APIs but the replacement doesn't have close to the same functionality (looking at you screen capture kit). Or when the documentation just doesn't explain anything and you have to reverse engineer the API to figure out what it does. or how there's a bunch of hidden APIs only certain vendors are told about so you can't even compete on an even playing field. And don't get me started on the C, C++, ObjectiveC and now Swift monstrosities. Having fun with your legacy project when the new APIs require swift, so you have to use the objectiveC bridge and the weird bugs that comes with it.
- neuroelectron 1y ago
  Also Apple undercutting your business by turning your app in an OS feature. Or Apple deleting your app and account because of politics but they claim it's a policy violation. They just selectively enforce it. Or apple allowing foreign governments back doors.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    Because Microsoft never did any of those things...
    - neuroelectron 1y ago
      Certainly not in the way Apple does. Archive/zip integration into the file explorer is a great example. As apposed to F.lux, where Apple completely removed the API and app and made their own version of it.
- bobbylarrybobby 1y ago
  macOS is great to code on, not to code for
- pdpi 1y ago
  GP said that macOS is a pleasure to code on, you’re arguing that it is not a pleasure to code for. Both can be true at the same time!
baq 1y ago
> MacOS has it's rough-edges, but it has become a pleasure to code on. I don’t know what kind of projects are you working on, but it couldn’t be further from truth for me. WSL2 is so much better than docker on macOS it isn’t even funny. (Haven’t tried orbstack, heard good things; though fundamentally the problem of developing for linux on not-Linux can only be solved by actually running Linux.)
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  > (Haven’t tried orbstack, heard good things; though fundamentally the problem of developing for linux on not-Linux can only be solved by actually running Linux.) I really wish we could get back to true platform-agnostic development and away from shipping whole Linux-jungles containing the banana you actually want to ship. Effective hard-coupling isn’t a good thing isn’t my opinion, even when the platform being coupled to is FOSS.
  - thewebguyd 1y ago
    Agreed. Instead of solving "It runs on my machine" we just decided to ship the machine as part of the app and call it a day.
- zanecodes 1y ago
  Docker on macOS also runs a Linux VM under the hood, just like WSL2 does, they're no different in that respect. WSL1 used the more exotic approach of translating Linux system calls to and from NT kernel system calls, but for various reasons (compatibility, performance, complexity) Microsoft abandoned that technique and adopted a Linux VM running under the Hyper-V hypervisor for WSL2.
  - WorldMaker 1y ago
    There is a difference in Hyper-V itself. The Windows hypervisor is underappreciated as one of the better VM hypervisors in some scenarios, and WSL2 uses a few Hyper-V tricks [0] to really shine if your machine's Hyper-V isn't interfered with by other hypervisors. (Sadly not uncommon given how many us have things like old VirtualBox VMs that still need Hyper-V to run in a compatibility mode with Oracle-maintained hypervisors of the past.) (Also, WSL1 isn't as actively maintained as it was when WSA [Windows Subsystem for Android] was an active Windows 11 feature driving it, but it hasn't been entirely abandoned either and there is some community support ongoing [open source PRs].) [0] Among other things, Windows likes to run itself at all times as a guest in Hyper-V when Hyper-V is active (and other ancient hypervisors aren't interfering), making Hyper-V VMs like WSL2 "peers" with Windows itself for Hyper-V resources/attention. (It's one of the funnier things about Hyper-V being a "Pro" feature still today because even consumer-focused Windows Home is often still running in Hyper-V [because it's also sometimes a defense-in-depth security/sandboxing in some consumer use cases], it just won't let you configure other VMs in it than your main Windows OS.)
vips7L 1y ago
I genuinely enjoy programming on windows. Perhaps because I don’t try to force windows to be linux, but PowerShell is genuinely good. The only issues I face are when other developers do non-cross platform things. Like use bash for build scripts.
- mtsr 1y ago
  Anything touching disk, such as reading a bunch of source files is just so much slower on windows right now. From what I hear it improves a little if you actually go through the Linux subsystem, but it just can’t touch native Linux performance. Just switching OS will seriously improve your DX because of the faster compiles.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Use a ReFS partition.

lupusreal 1y ago

I hope Microsoft stays complacent and ultimately loses the gamer market. With gamers out and most other casual consumers going mobile, Microsoft will be ever more relegated to office environments, making them even less cool and hopefully starting a snowball effect that really hurts them.

whalesalad 1y ago
Gonna be tough when they own literally all the gaming studios now
- the_snooze 1y ago
  They own a bunch of AAA gaming studios, which have been producing flop after multimillion-dollar flop. All that while random indie darlings produce high quality cross-platform hits for a fraction of the budget.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    True, and while quite sad for everyone involved, they had one of the best years in gaming, with all their gaming divisions combined.
- maxsilver 1y ago
  They just fired a lot of the gaming studios they used to own. (Tango, Arkane), and cancelled most of their major upcoming projects (Everwild, Perfect Dark, the new MMO, etc) And - while there are rare examples otherwise (like iD software), many of their studios haven't made a well received game in over a decade. It's not necessarily a great thing for the industry, but Microsoft leaving gaming entirely would not be that terribly tough. If anything, it would probably have the least amount of impact now, then it would have at any other time since 2001.
  - staticman2 1y ago
    Microsoft bought the Call of Duty studios for a lot of money and likes to say they are succeeding at video games by pointing to Call of Duty revenue in a vacuum without counting the cost to aquire Activision. They certainly aren't going to stop releasing Call of Duty games.

zamalek 1y ago

The problem is the bullet point features that Microsoft is adding to Windows (AI, ads, Xbox bar, etc.). The fastest line of code possible is the line of code that doesn't exist (look, this technically isn't true when considering data structures, but it's a good baseline). Microsoft would have to exercise discipline with Windows features, which is never going to happen: the very people pushing the garbage are using Macs and don't have to suffer it.

Night_Thastus 1y ago
I'm not convinced those new features are adding any substantial overhead. From my understanding, most of the problems are at the low level - things like threading, kernel space operations, file writing, etc. Very stripped-down versions of Windows perform pretty much identically from what I last saw.
- const_cast 1y ago
  I believe (speculating) that a big reason Windows underperforms in battery life is because of the "death by a thousand cuts" approach to network-connect background services. Linux desktops have very little background services that make constant network calls. But on Windows, there's hundreds. Every team thinks they need a little bit of telemetry or they need to grab an icon or something stupid, so nobody thinks twice. Same thing goes for logging. But when you add it all up, it ends up being expensive.