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Windows for Linux Nerds

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Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#271

Post by buckminster »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #262
throwaway613834 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what exactly the fundamental barrier to this is? I've always wondered. What's so different about Linux and Windows that Windows has to do so much more work for file creation/deletion? It seems to be half an NTFS issue and half a Windows issue, because even on Linux I'm pretty sure NTFS is noticeably slower than ext[234], but not as slow as on Windows.

I doubt there is any actual fundamental barrier, rather the reason is simply that the primary workload that Linus himself runs benefits greatly from faster metadata lookups, and therefore every nook and cranny of it has been optimized to as fast as possible. In contrast, while metadata performance is sluggish in NTFS, at least a few years ago there were ways to get better large transaction async file performance than…

Yes, SQL Server was that customer.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#272

Post by Keloran »

how is WSL any different to WISE ?

(a better explination of WISE than I could ever come up with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072143)

it sounds like microsoft up to its old tricks,

"look its really easy to develop for windows now you have done that, well now we have dropped that so guess your going to have to only develop for windows now"

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#273

Post by tobias3 »

ulyssesgrant wrote: post #173
blunte wrote: 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…

Yes! I primarily develop on Linux, but lately have been working on Windows porting. In many ways the WSL has been a massive savior. It makes developing on Windows at least possible for Linux users. But it's sooo slooow. The performance bottlenecks I hit seem to be disk i/o related. Things from path tab completion on the command line, to Vim's YouCompleteMe compiling code in the background, to a plain "git status", ar…

I'd say you pin can pin it down mostly to those reasons:

* Do you have active snapshots (vssadmin list shadows)? Halves random writes to disk in the worst case.

* Do you have USN journaling enabled (fsutil usn queryjournal c:)? Adds extra IO to meta-data operations.

* NTFS/FAT is optimized for fast directory listing speed so modifying files also modifies directory entries. Nothing one can do about that (except being aware of that and designing programs with this in mind).

* Windows doesn't keep as much dirty fs data in fs-cache. I know of no way to change that. One can probably, if one uses a Windows Server OS.

* Is a on-access Virus scanner active? If yes, one cannot compare performance to Linux. It's a massive bottleneck.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#275

Post by pjmlp »

newman8r wrote: post #202
pjmlp wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother, when in most countries they can just pirate it?

I find no need to pirate software using linux, everything I need is available for free. Pirated software that goes un-updated is a huge security issue anyway.

So around many universities around the globe, specially in poorer countries and see how many care about those security issues.

Or many street bazaars around the globe.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#276

Post by hueving »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #109
seiferteric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've got a good point. I believe personally that there are great people working at MS (because I know one or two... so I'll just take a leap and assume in general) -- so it seems like a problem of reining in the beast. Hell, Gates seems like a generally good person. It's the default nature of a corporation [read: monster] so large to consume as much as it can and become as powerful as it can. Such organizations are…

Good people work for Oracle as well, but that doesn't mean oracle isn't a destructive open source participant.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#277

Post by mysterydip »

latencyloser wrote: post #133
monkmartinez wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm in a similar predicament to OP. I prefer Linux in most cases, it's what I'm used to. But I need or would vastly prefer one or the other depending on what I'm doing. A VM is fine for just checking outlook..or using Skype for chat and things like that. But the second I need to use an IDE for Windows development, it's too slow to bear. Having better interchangeability between these two would make my life significant…

Not all VM host softwares are created equal. One of the other solutions out there may have higher performance for your needs. As a sibling comment said, there's ways to troubleshoot performance as well. With a modern system and the virtualization instructions baked into CPUs, most VMs should approach "near native" speeds.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#278

Post by executesorder66 »

shub wrote: post #150
cwyers wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing on desktop. Yeah, any decade now. There is of course a constituency of Linux Nerds primed to move to Windows: people who want to develop software for Linux servers but don't want to run Linux on the desktop. Many of those people are using OS X, which is POSIX enough to run some Linux software unmodified. WSL is a way to target those people, who may be being left behind by Apple's changing strategy in laptops (…

Yeah, that's me in a nutshell. My employer recently sent everyone new hardware and I was initially bummed about getting the just-before-Touch-Bar MBP. Then I saw how gimmicky and awful Touch Bar was for the "lucky" colleague stuck with it. I'm typing this on a five year old MBA that isn't quite up to scratch for work anymore. If Apple would take this case, stick updated hardware and a Retina display in it, I'd buy it…

> Desktop Linux, especially when your employer runs Exchange, is a barrel of pain

That's been me at my current employer. The whole dev team moved to linux, becuase it's just so much more productive. But the #1 pain point is Exchange.

I tried Evolution, which connected to Exchange without any issues, but the mail client itself was buggy as hell. I tried thunderbird with some plugins (can't remember which ones) and that didn't work at all. Then I found out about Hiri. I thought it would save me, but it couldn't connect to Exchange at all.

So our last resort was outlook webmail. What a fucking pile of garbage, but at least it "worked".

I lived with that pain for months until I discovered davmail [0]

I could easily connect thunderbird to exchange via davmail. I got all my email, contacts and calendar synced up nicely with exchange. I have had 0 issues fo far.

[0] http://davmail.sourceforge.net/

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#279

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pnutjam wrote: post #264
teekert wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS Office for Linux. That's all I need, that's all I would miss in my current work environment (in the browser is just not cutting it atm).

I'm running opensuse so I have my office 365 in a browser, :( As an aside, opensuse is a great linux for laptops. IMHO, it has better hardware support then Ubuntu and it's a more consistent experience moving between the console and different GUI's.

> more consistent experience moving between the console and different GUI's

What do you mean?

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#280

Post by blauditore »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #226
blauditore wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I don't understand the unix-like argument. I keep on hearing it from devs, but if your work happens mostly in IDEs and occasionally on the command line with tools like npm or gradle you never get in touch with potential "unix-ness" of your system. The reason why I switched to Linux for work is its focus on power users, e.g. great configurability or well thought-out command line applications, but not because…

"focus on power users, e.g. great configurability or well thought-out command line applications" Yeah, because it's an UNIX-like.

I'm not talking about command line languages or tools, but applications building an interface to it, like Terminal. It's much handier and more configurable than the built-in ones in Windows for cmd and PowerShell.
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