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> Seems to me Windows is a perfectly open enough OS to act as a platform for tinkering and learning about computers. Maybe, but Linux just seems more convenien

> Seems to me Windows is a perfectly open enough OS to act as a platform for tinkering and learning about computers. Maybe, but Linux just seems more convenient. I mean, can you install gcc, golang, nodejs, python, ruby, ghc, lua (...) on windows with a single command? And all the other tools you might want to use, like editors, databases? And you will never know if they want to do kernel-level coding if they don't have access to the kernel.

watty 12y ago
I completely disagree. I used Ubuntu for a year and I spent more time fixing things or trying to do things in the OS than I have in all other operating systems combined. My nephew tried to install Ubuntu on his new build and hit brick wall after brick wall trying to install the OS and Minecraft. It simply hasn't gotten easy enough and I'm afraid it's too late now. I don't see a comeback for linux. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  I do: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=android http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=android
- nkuttler 12y ago
  It's unfortunate that you apparently had bad experiences with Ubuntu, but this thread is about development tools, not installing third party games from external sources. Yes, if you want to game, windows seems like a more convenient choice, nobody disputes that.
  - watty 12y ago
    Well I have a B+ and installed Raspbian for a little home energy project that reads from my smart meter over serial and pushes the data to the cloud. The programming was easy, I spent 5x as much time trying to get things installed. Finally got Cloud9 working, never was able to get InfluxDB installed, kind of got OrientDB installed (it crashes). I consider myself a technical person and while I think it's fun to use Linux, it's certainly not productive.
    - anom9999 12y ago
      > I consider myself a technical person and while I think it's fun to use Linux, it's certainly not productive. Should read: "...I'm certainly not productive." Just because you struggled with the Linux paradigm, it doesn't mean that it's an unproductive platform.
  - noselasd 12y ago
    This isn't just related to 3. party games. I've seen and helped people that hit these brick walls everywhere, whether it's installing the OS itself, a compiler, accessing a thumb drive, or whatever other task they want to accomplish. These are things that may be incredibly trivial for us that's comfortable in this environment, but a brick wall for others.
    - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      Linux OS installation used to be objectively difficult even for a reasonable computer user. That hasn't been true for more than a decade. IMO, the relative difficulty of getting the Windows vs Linux installed and nominally working inverted some years ago. Take a group of college freshmen who've never even seen Linux before and have them install both OS. Measure which of those tasks is completed first/correctly, and which takes more supervision.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    >Yes, if you want to game, windows seems like a more convenient choice, nobody disputes that. Gaben is closing that gap for us. Also, Minecraft runs fine on Linux. If GP poster had trouble, it's probably down to a video driver issue (which aren't unique to Linux, but are arguably more painful), or a new-environment-learning-curve thing.
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      I don't think Valve will doing for longer time if the studios don't care.
      - yellowapple 12y ago
        Sure they will. You wouldn't believe how many new games Steam is trying to throw at me on Linux. The big studios might not care too much (though even this isn't really universal, since there are plenty of big studios that do target Linux/SteamOS), but there's a lot of activity from indie developers, many of whom are targeting SteamOS before they even target OS X (though there still aren't any SteamOS exclusives that I know of).
      - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        I think that Valve has bet the farm on Linux. Gaben seems to think that Microsoft might build their own game marketplace and use it to push Valve out.
- harywilke 12y ago
  I'm not sure that Google Trends is a valid metric for this conclusion. It shows both Windows and MacOS X have declining trends as well. Apparently iOS is doing gangbusters in Cambodia and Android is all the rage in Indonesia.
- zxcvcxz 12y ago
  Well, using your logic, Linux has already surpassed OS X: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C OS X&cmpt=q&tz= Anyway, Ubuntu works fine on most laptops. We can safely say it works across more hardware than OS X. We can also buy an Ubuntu certified laptop/desktop and have excellent support. I wish Windows fan boys would stop pretending as if they never run into issues using Windows. I have to fix my dads computer once a week with windows. Windows 8.1 refused to wake from sleep on a brand new laptop that it came installed on and the wifi kept cutting in and out. I find my self having a more pleasant experience more and more on Linux and less and less on Windows.
  - gknoy 12y ago
    Oh god. I run 8.1 at home, and it randomly fails to "sleep" -- about half the time (or more), it will boot from scratch the next time I turn it on. I don't know if it's a problem with my hardware, or drivers, or what. Worst of all, the only sleep/hibernate related things I'vebeen able to find on the Windows help pages seem to be for people where it either always fails, or where they don't know how to turn it on. :-( The most frustrating thing is the mystery about what causes it, since I haven't been able to find errors that explain it in the system logs.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  Meh. Seems okay to me. I'm not convinced the chart really tells us anything at all. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C Microsoft
- trey-jones 12y ago
  I would say that spending that time fixing things and trying to do things in the OS really helps you to learn about how some of the parts of the OS actually work. If the point is to learn things, then maybe it's better if everything doesn't "just work".
- rbanffy 12y ago
  My 79 year old mom uses Ubuntu and she loves it because it never breaks. I moved her to Linux because I was tired of fixing her Windows install (on the same machine). You and your nephew must be doing something very wrong.
  - zanny 12y ago
    I've moved my immediate family over to Suse and Ubuntu, but I've had about half of all my conversions "in the field" backfire - something little breaks, and then the echochamber of Windows mindshare around them make them demand I put them back on Windows because they "can't get this different thing". Then I get a dozen calls in the next six months about how completely broken something in 7 or 8 is, but they never consider switching back. I don't know how to fix that. They get it in their heads that Windows is right and everything else is wrong and the first sign of contention drives them to panic right back to the MS camp, where every day is contention with the viruses and spyware. Just an example, I had setup a small store with Ubuntu terminals. Six months later they wanted me to switch it all to Windows 8. For those six months the only service calls I got were software updates and general inqueries like "how do I download X?" or "how do I get flash?". Linking a one click Ubuntu install for Flash is insanely easy. But now its been over six months again since the Windows 8 switch back, and I'm in about once a month to remove systemic viruses and spyware from all the computers because they all get horribly infected and I make them change their passwords every time. They even had the store owners credit card info stolen once, but they would never fathom using anything else again. And they switched back because Office 2013 in Wine (because they could not stand LibreOffice) didn't interopt between each part properly - IE, trying to open an Access database as a form fill in Word never worked, and they didn't want me to just give them network disabled XP VMs to run Office in using all their old license keys because when they tried that the employees kept trying to use IE6 in the VM and complained it had no Internet connectivity.
    - rbanffy 12y ago
      I sincerely hope you, at least, are paid by the hour and by incident. It's depressing to read stories like these. I to do not know how to neutralize the peer pressure that seems to make people want to be constantly abused by their malware-infested Windows machines just because their friends are... One thing may help: interesting metaphors. When my mom once asked about viruses, I made her picture her computer as an SR-71 cruising at Mach 3.6, high above anti-aircraft fire directed towards Windows machines. Sticky images like this may help, but they may need occasional reinforcement. Every once and then she also forwards me a chain letter warning about the dangers of such-and-such e-mail scam that tricks people into download malware. I tell her to relax because the malware most likely will not be able run on her computer, much less compromise it.
dagw 12y ago
can you install gcc, golang, nodejs, python, ruby, ghc, lua (...) on windows with a single command Yes! Just install chocolaty and type cinst git cinst mingw cinst vim (and so on) Prior to Windows 10 it is a third party tool and not officially supported by windows. However starting with Windows 10 windows will ship with a version of this command called OneGet and it will be be officially part of windows.
- toni 12y ago
  I don't think you can call chocolaty a package manager as it does not (and, by the nature of Windows, can not) offer dependency resolutions in the way apt works. It might be better to call it a package downloader or a package installer.
  - dagw 12y ago
    it's not simply a downloader as it also does handles application level dependencies (as opposed to library level dependencies) as well as keeping track of versions and handling updates. Either way, while it is inferior to apt-get in many ways, it does fill the original posters brief in that it will let you install python,node,gcc,ghc,postgres etc. with a simple CLI command
  - jongalloway2 12y ago
    Can you explain what you mean here? Chocolatey is built on top of the NuGet package manager, which includes package level dependencies. A simple example is this ConEmuConfig package, which will install ConEmu if it's not already installed due to the dependency chain: https://chocolatey.org/packages/EthanBrown.ConEmuConfig https://chocolatey.org/packages/EthanBrown.ConEmuConfig Many Chocolatey packages I use have dependency chains, and I know some developers that build metapackages so installing one Chocolatey package installs and configures all the software on a new dev box or server.
trentnelson 12y ago
> And you will never know if they want to do kernel-level coding if they don't have access to the kernel. Windows actually has pretty phenomenal support for kernel driver development (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557573%28v=vs.85%29.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff...).
pmelendez 12y ago
> I mean, can you install gcc, golang, nodejs, python, ruby, ghc, lua (...) on windows with a single command? If you go the unofficial way you can use chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/). I am very happy with it ( so does it my 9 years old son) > And you will never know if they want to do kernel-level coding if they don't have access to the kernel. That depends on the personal curiosity of each person. In my case I have never have that itch and I have been using Linux since 97 when you had to partition your disk by hand.
- nkuttler 12y ago
  Chocolatey looks nice actually. I might have had more fun on windows when I used it in the 90s if that had existed. I will keep it in mind in case I ever see a need for it, I imagine I could suggest it to some windows users.
  - hirsin 12y ago
    Chocolatey/NuGet is great to use, and it's being added to Windows 10 by default. I use it pretty exclusively no for tool downloads.
pjmlp 12y ago
Try that in Slackware. Not all distributions have apt-get.
- yellowapple 12y ago
  sbopkg -i "node google-go-lang ghc ..." Granted, you have to install sbopkg, but it's still not that hard. And most of those tools (GCC, Ruby, etc., even Emacs!) already ship with Slackware anyway, so it's arguably easier than most GNU/Linux distros.

watty 12y ago

I completely disagree. I used Ubuntu for a year and I spent more time fixing things or trying to do things in the OS than I have in all other operating systems combined. My nephew tried to install Ubuntu on his new build and hit brick wall after brick wall trying to install the OS and Minecraft. It simply hasn't gotten easy enough and I'm afraid it's too late now. I don't see a comeback for linux. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux

throwawayaway 12y ago
I do: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=android http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=android
nkuttler 12y ago
It's unfortunate that you apparently had bad experiences with Ubuntu, but this thread is about development tools, not installing third party games from external sources. Yes, if you want to game, windows seems like a more convenient choice, nobody disputes that.
- watty 12y ago
  Well I have a B+ and installed Raspbian for a little home energy project that reads from my smart meter over serial and pushes the data to the cloud. The programming was easy, I spent 5x as much time trying to get things installed. Finally got Cloud9 working, never was able to get InfluxDB installed, kind of got OrientDB installed (it crashes). I consider myself a technical person and while I think it's fun to use Linux, it's certainly not productive.
  - anom9999 12y ago
    > I consider myself a technical person and while I think it's fun to use Linux, it's certainly not productive. Should read: "...I'm certainly not productive." Just because you struggled with the Linux paradigm, it doesn't mean that it's an unproductive platform.
- noselasd 12y ago
  This isn't just related to 3. party games. I've seen and helped people that hit these brick walls everywhere, whether it's installing the OS itself, a compiler, accessing a thumb drive, or whatever other task they want to accomplish. These are things that may be incredibly trivial for us that's comfortable in this environment, but a brick wall for others.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    Linux OS installation used to be objectively difficult even for a reasonable computer user. That hasn't been true for more than a decade. IMO, the relative difficulty of getting the Windows vs Linux installed and nominally working inverted some years ago. Take a group of college freshmen who've never even seen Linux before and have them install both OS. Measure which of those tasks is completed first/correctly, and which takes more supervision.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >Yes, if you want to game, windows seems like a more convenient choice, nobody disputes that. Gaben is closing that gap for us. Also, Minecraft runs fine on Linux. If GP poster had trouble, it's probably down to a video driver issue (which aren't unique to Linux, but are arguably more painful), or a new-environment-learning-curve thing.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    I don't think Valve will doing for longer time if the studios don't care.
    - yellowapple 12y ago
      Sure they will. You wouldn't believe how many new games Steam is trying to throw at me on Linux. The big studios might not care too much (though even this isn't really universal, since there are plenty of big studios that do target Linux/SteamOS), but there's a lot of activity from indie developers, many of whom are targeting SteamOS before they even target OS X (though there still aren't any SteamOS exclusives that I know of).
    - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      I think that Valve has bet the farm on Linux. Gaben seems to think that Microsoft might build their own game marketplace and use it to push Valve out.
harywilke 12y ago
I'm not sure that Google Trends is a valid metric for this conclusion. It shows both Windows and MacOS X have declining trends as well. Apparently iOS is doing gangbusters in Cambodia and Android is all the rage in Indonesia.
zxcvcxz 12y ago
Well, using your logic, Linux has already surpassed OS X: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C OS X&cmpt=q&tz= Anyway, Ubuntu works fine on most laptops. We can safely say it works across more hardware than OS X. We can also buy an Ubuntu certified laptop/desktop and have excellent support. I wish Windows fan boys would stop pretending as if they never run into issues using Windows. I have to fix my dads computer once a week with windows. Windows 8.1 refused to wake from sleep on a brand new laptop that it came installed on and the wifi kept cutting in and out. I find my self having a more pleasant experience more and more on Linux and less and less on Windows.
- gknoy 12y ago
  Oh god. I run 8.1 at home, and it randomly fails to "sleep" -- about half the time (or more), it will boot from scratch the next time I turn it on. I don't know if it's a problem with my hardware, or drivers, or what. Worst of all, the only sleep/hibernate related things I'vebeen able to find on the Windows help pages seem to be for people where it either always fails, or where they don't know how to turn it on. :-( The most frustrating thing is the mystery about what causes it, since I haven't been able to find errors that explain it in the system logs.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
Meh. Seems okay to me. I'm not convinced the chart really tells us anything at all. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C Microsoft
trey-jones 12y ago
I would say that spending that time fixing things and trying to do things in the OS really helps you to learn about how some of the parts of the OS actually work. If the point is to learn things, then maybe it's better if everything doesn't "just work".
rbanffy 12y ago
My 79 year old mom uses Ubuntu and she loves it because it never breaks. I moved her to Linux because I was tired of fixing her Windows install (on the same machine). You and your nephew must be doing something very wrong.
- zanny 12y ago
  I've moved my immediate family over to Suse and Ubuntu, but I've had about half of all my conversions "in the field" backfire - something little breaks, and then the echochamber of Windows mindshare around them make them demand I put them back on Windows because they "can't get this different thing". Then I get a dozen calls in the next six months about how completely broken something in 7 or 8 is, but they never consider switching back. I don't know how to fix that. They get it in their heads that Windows is right and everything else is wrong and the first sign of contention drives them to panic right back to the MS camp, where every day is contention with the viruses and spyware. Just an example, I had setup a small store with Ubuntu terminals. Six months later they wanted me to switch it all to Windows 8. For those six months the only service calls I got were software updates and general inqueries like "how do I download X?" or "how do I get flash?". Linking a one click Ubuntu install for Flash is insanely easy. But now its been over six months again since the Windows 8 switch back, and I'm in about once a month to remove systemic viruses and spyware from all the computers because they all get horribly infected and I make them change their passwords every time. They even had the store owners credit card info stolen once, but they would never fathom using anything else again. And they switched back because Office 2013 in Wine (because they could not stand LibreOffice) didn't interopt between each part properly - IE, trying to open an Access database as a form fill in Word never worked, and they didn't want me to just give them network disabled XP VMs to run Office in using all their old license keys because when they tried that the employees kept trying to use IE6 in the VM and complained it had no Internet connectivity.
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    I sincerely hope you, at least, are paid by the hour and by incident. It's depressing to read stories like these. I to do not know how to neutralize the peer pressure that seems to make people want to be constantly abused by their malware-infested Windows machines just because their friends are... One thing may help: interesting metaphors. When my mom once asked about viruses, I made her picture her computer as an SR-71 cruising at Mach 3.6, high above anti-aircraft fire directed towards Windows machines. Sticky images like this may help, but they may need occasional reinforcement. Every once and then she also forwards me a chain letter warning about the dangers of such-and-such e-mail scam that tricks people into download malware. I tell her to relax because the malware most likely will not be able run on her computer, much less compromise it.

dagw 12y ago

can you install gcc, golang, nodejs, python, ruby, ghc, lua (...) on windows with a single command Yes! Just install chocolaty and type cinst git cinst mingw cinst vim (and so on) Prior to Windows 10 it is a third party tool and not officially supported by windows. However starting with Windows 10 windows will ship with a version of this command called OneGet and it will be be officially part of windows.

toni 12y ago
I don't think you can call chocolaty a package manager as it does not (and, by the nature of Windows, can not) offer dependency resolutions in the way apt works. It might be better to call it a package downloader or a package installer.
- dagw 12y ago
  it's not simply a downloader as it also does handles application level dependencies (as opposed to library level dependencies) as well as keeping track of versions and handling updates. Either way, while it is inferior to apt-get in many ways, it does fill the original posters brief in that it will let you install python,node,gcc,ghc,postgres etc. with a simple CLI command
- jongalloway2 12y ago
  Can you explain what you mean here? Chocolatey is built on top of the NuGet package manager, which includes package level dependencies. A simple example is this ConEmuConfig package, which will install ConEmu if it's not already installed due to the dependency chain: https://chocolatey.org/packages/EthanBrown.ConEmuConfig https://chocolatey.org/packages/EthanBrown.ConEmuConfig Many Chocolatey packages I use have dependency chains, and I know some developers that build metapackages so installing one Chocolatey package installs and configures all the software on a new dev box or server.

trentnelson 12y ago

> And you will never know if they want to do kernel-level coding if they don't have access to the kernel. Windows actually has pretty phenomenal support for kernel driver development (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557573%28v=vs.85%29.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff...).

pmelendez 12y ago

> I mean, can you install gcc, golang, nodejs, python, ruby, ghc, lua (...) on windows with a single command? If you go the unofficial way you can use chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/). I am very happy with it ( so does it my 9 years old son) > And you will never know if they want to do kernel-level coding if they don't have access to the kernel. That depends on the personal curiosity of each person. In my case I have never have that itch and I have been using Linux since 97 when you had to partition your disk by hand.

nkuttler 12y ago
Chocolatey looks nice actually. I might have had more fun on windows when I used it in the 90s if that had existed. I will keep it in mind in case I ever see a need for it, I imagine I could suggest it to some windows users.
- hirsin 12y ago
  Chocolatey/NuGet is great to use, and it's being added to Windows 10 by default. I use it pretty exclusively no for tool downloads.

pjmlp 12y ago

Try that in Slackware. Not all distributions have apt-get.

yellowapple 12y ago
sbopkg -i "node google-go-lang ghc ..." Granted, you have to install sbopkg, but it's still not that hard. And most of those tools (GCC, Ruby, etc., even Emacs!) already ship with Slackware anyway, so it's arguably easier than most GNU/Linux distros.