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Windows for Linux Nerds

blog.jessfraz.com

111–120 of 393 posts

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you no longer need Windows Insider preview for WSOL - its part of the creator's update. still has a beta tag but its available without having to use a full beta OS.

When did this change? as my home machine required me to move to insiders for WSL just on the weekend. (also the volume of spam they are sending to me now :|)

Creators update came out back in April. I think you need the Insiders Program right now to pick which Linux distro you want to install, normal way only gets you Ubuntu?

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#112
post #62

Linux on Windows 10 seems like a good thing. I plan to use it for testing a Node.js application developed on Windows

You're probably going to have a bad time. Some of the lower-level network APIs are pretty buggy last time I checked.

What does "lower-level" and "buggy" mean? I really doubt an HTTP server is going to have any troubles.

We are running game servers on WSL, where you can imagine we are using fairly to-the-metal socket work over UDP and no issues with libcurl or libopenssl for TCP sockets.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#114
I've been a Microsoft developer for a long time, but in recent years it's become increasingly hard to justify and the Linux subsystem hasn't helped. Not because it's not an interesting feature, but because my desktop has become even more useless as anything but development than it already was with Visual Studio infecting everything.

I'm sure it's a step in the right direction for a lot of people, but I bought an old 2015 MacBook and it's been a so much better experience than windows that I'm actually considering getting a ubuntu machine to see if it can work as my main machine. If this sounds odd to you, you haven't programmed on a MacBook with a Danish keyboard.

Honestly Microsoft does a lot of things right these days, but it all comes with terrible user experiences. .Net core is great, but the devops required to run it in production, frankly has us considering java spring.

Sorry about the rant, but the fact that you even needed to write this blog is a good illustration of what's wrong with Microsoft. Tech is supposed to run out of the box, with minimal effort required.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a generally valid concern, but I don't think I can see that ever really happening. It's really just a compatibility space, no? There is a bit of a contrarian culture here, lately. Some skepticism is healthy, but too much is toxic. As a general optimist and hopeful, I like to try and find good where I can without being suckered by hocus or sly marketing. Moving forward and growing outward should be a good thing…

I know what you mean, but you will never see MS contributing to Wine will you? Will we ever see office for linux? Why can't we get a proper POSIX layer for windows (like they used to offer)?

> you will never see MS contributing to Wine will you?

This is basically asking Microsoft to open source Windows.

> Will we ever see office for linux?

They already have Office for macOS, Android, and iOS. They also have SQL Server for Linux and .Net core. "Linux" isn't really a viable desktop operating system compared to the other operating systems mentioned.

> Why can't we get a proper POSIX layer for windows (like they used to offer)?

POSIX is dead. Linux compatibility is far more relevant to modern computing.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#116
Want to _really_ impress us, Microsoft? Give us a Windows Subsystem for Linux.

I chose a maxxed out Dell XPS15 laptop with Windows 10 to replace my 3 year old rMBP with the (foolish) expectation that it could replace my Mac. Apple had lost sight of what mattered to developers, and I was angry. But now, 2 months later, here I continue developing and existing on my old rMBP.

Bash in Windows is incredibly slow on some actions. I didn't document all my activities, so I can't point to which thing was slow. But for a developer using Python, Elixir, Node, Nginx, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Git! SSH! and some other smaller accessories, WSL was far less performant than a Linux VM on my Mac. And it was far, far less performant than on native Mac.

I very much appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. Perhaps in a generation or three they will finally leave behind most of their protectionist behaviors and embrace what works for them (for better or worse) - MS Office and the host of Windows apps that businesses depend on.

Apple is no saint or savior. But thankfully, some of what they did in the years past (dare I say during the reign of Jobs) is what has made them special. #1 - latency. My Macs work 99% of the time as expected. They run for weeks or months. My high end Android phone, even after factory reset, has occasional mind-boggling hangs (after which 1000 UI events register and take effect). The same applies to Windows 10! It works fine, sometimes, for a few things. Then it goes nuts. Wipe and reinstall (remove the Dell bloatware) and it's better. But it still lags so far behind macOS.

There is no utopia. There is only pain, frustration, and anger on the part of users. But please, give us developers (who practically _live_ in your environments) something.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#117

I really, really wish Microsoft would open up the Pico Process APIs to third-party driver developers. Right now, WSL is the only driver allowed to install Pico Process callbacks. It would be cool to implement a Darwin layer or a Classic Xbox emulator with that tech.

The Pico Process subsystem isn't fully baked yet -- in earlier talks Microsoft mentioned that while the API itself is pretty generic but the current implementation is just hacked together to support the Linux subsystem for now.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#119
post #116

Want to _really_ impress us, Microsoft? Give us a Windows Subsystem for Linux. I chose a maxxed out Dell XPS15 laptop with Windows 10 to replace my 3 year old rMBP with the (foolish) expectation that it could replace my Mac. Apple had lost sight of what mattered to developers, and I was angry. But now, 2 months later, here I continue developing and existing on my old rMBP. Bash in Windows is incredibly slow on some a…

Why not dual boot linux and windows 10 or use a Linux VM? It takes like 10-15 seconds to reboot a machine these days. I am about to take the plunge toward a ThinkPad after many years with OSX (I haven't upgraded my 2011 17" to macOS).

My plan is to try dual booting linux and/or using a Linux VM. I think the biggest hurdle will be changing my mindset. That is, looking for the OSX version of whatever it is I am looking for. Wrapping my mind around Linux... just Linux for as much as possible.

I am looking forward to using just Linux as time goes on. I need to ween myself off of a few things before I can make the switch completely... I did it when I went from win to mac.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#120
post #72

Why would you use WSL instead of straight VM for example (assuming you are somehow banned from running Linux proper directly on your hardware)? And I'm a bit confused about the benefit of launching PowerPoint from WSL, when you have the Windows host itself sitting there.

I'm uncertain if you're asking "Why use WSL vs VM" or "Why use WSL/Linux VM if you can run Linux directly". For the first: Unified filesystem, memory, processor resources. You don't need to have the extra overhead of running a VM. For the second: The reason to run Windows is the same as the reason to run MacOS - so you can run apps for those platforms. If you don't need to do that, then obviously there's little/no po…

Well, for running Windows applications on Linux we have Wine already. I'm not saying WSL isn't an interesting thing, but if I'd had such choice, I would have run Linux natively first, in VM as second best option, and WSL as last resort.
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