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Windows for Linux Nerds

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Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#371

Post by makecheck »

crowbahr wrote: post #201
rbanffy wrote: post #197

Correct me if I'm wrong, but WSL looks more like an attempt at stopping developers from moving to Macs in order to get a polished app environment with a Unix-like OS underneath and to keep them in the Windows ecosystem.

"a polished app environment" If you're meaning XCode then no. XCode is never going to draw in developers... or at least no developer I've ever talked to liked XCode. I changed from iOS to Android development because I couldn't stand XCode anymore. Constant crashing, walled garden bullshit where I couldn't even get plugins running every time they updated, inexplicable code changes to my apps which were un-diagnosable…

Xcode 3.x was nearly perfect. The Xcode UI went straight south in 4.x with this giant-window-always-the-wrong-size-for-everything design, that also sucked Interface Builder into the same app. That meant any crashy thing in IB took down your whole project, which never used to be an issue. If they back-ported LLVM to the Xcode 3.x GUI and restored IB as a separate app, I would be quite happy.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#372

Post by malkia »

pault wrote: post #356
a_e_k wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those doing games, yes. Those of us doing movies are mostly on Linux. Lots of sci-viz folks are also on Linux.

Really? I thought video/post-production people were mostly on Macs these days. What are the standard software stacks for doing FX?

No, everybody is on Amiga :)

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#373

Post by malkia »

Thank you for WSL! I've been using it to learn more about what it could be done with it, and at home have been trying to compile flutter (http://flutter.org) on it... Currently it gets stuck in the "pub upgrade" (the dart language packaging mechanism), as it runs several tar's to unpack packages.

If you just follow the simple:

bash.exe...:

  $ mkdir p; cd p

  $ git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter

  $ cd bin

  $ ./flutter doctor
it'll soon get up to speed, and eventually hang. Off course all this works on Windows, but I wanted to experiment with something as it encompasses several different things - language, environment, packages, jit-ing, etc.

Still pretty excited about the development!

Heh, one thing I've learned the hard way, I made a symlink on my /mnt/c/ as /mnt/c/something - and this was making several windows tools unhappy, had to deleted from WSL and now it's fine.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#374

Post by JoshMnem »

watwut wrote: post #338
JoshMnem wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to try color after color -- just find a theme you like and install it. It's very simple. :) Make a visit to any Linux user's group, and someone can help set it up. If you want to experiment with different kinds of windows managers (like xmonad or i3 for keyboard productivity), you have the option. With Windows or Mac, you lose many options. Linux often has desktop features far before Windows and Mac, f…

I guess it is hard to explain, but I don't mind not having those options - if in exchange I don't have to do what you suggest. It is an annoying chore and obstacle to me. Virtual desktops were available in previous Winows if you care to install app. I don't think it is terribly important, I used them but most people did not cared even if they knew about it. I know there are good friendly linux communities (and less g…

I installed the virtual desktop software on Windows XP and it was not really usable so I removed it. Linux's virtual desktops have been much more advanced for a long time.

I did like Mac's three-finger swipe at one point, but as soon as I discovered xmonad, I could see that there are faster ways than swiping. (press alt-n to go to desktop n) Also, I think OS X still limits the virtual desktops to one row, which is inefficient.

It comes down to personal choice, but for comparison, it can be a chore to learn new things when programming too, but learning those things can make using the computer better and easier in the end.

I'm not trying to convince you to switch -- just saying that Linux does have great-looking, very advanced UIs, that are not restrictive like on Windows or Mac. :)

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#375

Post by badminton1 »

pjmlp wrote: post #300
badminton1 wrote: post #167

It's hard for Windows to realistically compete with Linux as a developer environment. GNU/Linux and userland software is made by developers for developers, and a lot of it is open source. If you are a developer, on Linux sky is the limit. Everything can be played with. On Windows that's not the case. Many areas are off-limits and you don't get to see how they work, and you cannot change them if you need to. Then, Mic…

Only for developers that only care about writing CLI and web servers. For those of us that care about UI/UX, IDEs with nice graphical tooling, only macOS matches Windows, specially given the developer culture for such tooling.

That is a very pessimistic view. Many IDEs support Linux.

There are tools with interface builders on Linux. GTK, Qt, Android, Mono, etc...

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#376

Post by badminton1 »

romanovcode wrote: post #247
badminton1 wrote: post #167

It's hard for Windows to realistically compete with Linux as a developer environment. GNU/Linux and userland software is made by developers for developers, and a lot of it is open source. If you are a developer, on Linux sky is the limit. Everything can be played with. On Windows that's not the case. Many areas are off-limits and you don't get to see how they work, and you cannot change them if you need to. Then, Mic…

> It's hard for Windows to realistically compete with Linux as a developer environment. That's the whole point of WSL

The WSL is useful if you need Windows as a host system. That's not a universal need. Most of the software I use supports Linux.

Then there's is Wine and finally virtualization. I haven't needed the latter in years.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#377

Post by pjmlp »

badminton1 wrote: post #375
pjmlp wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only for developers that only care about writing CLI and web servers. For those of us that care about UI/UX, IDEs with nice graphical tooling, only macOS matches Windows, specially given the developer culture for such tooling.

That is a very pessimistic view. Many IDEs support Linux. There are tools with interface builders on Linux. GTK, Qt, Android, Mono, etc...

Yes there are, but as I mentioned the culture also matters, and the Linux culture worships CLI and window managers like xmonad, not graphical developer tools and UI/UX.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#378

Post by pjmlp »

wutbrodo wrote: post #366
pjmlp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some of us have been spoiled with development environments like Smalltalk, Common Lisp IDEs, Delphi, ... with Visual Studio being one of the best. I remember following KDevelop progress hoping that one day it could eventually match what I already had available in Borland and MS tools.

Thanks for the perspective: I haven't heard VS given as a reason before. It's probably a consequence of the bubbles I've been in, but for every dev I've ever met (incl everyone in my CS program), there wasn't any advantage to Windows for development and disadvantages everywhere you looked. This may be a consequence of the devs I know (esp the good ones) skewing towards having a CS background (though obviously most of…

I was on my 2nd CS year when Slackware 2.0 was released, and we had big boys UNIX on the department, like Aix and DG/UX.

Yet the majority of lab computers were running Windows 95/98.

UNIX was mostly used for the OS, compiler design and distributed computing classes.

Everything else, including graphics programming was on Windows.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#379

Post by badminton1 »

pjmlp wrote: post #377
badminton1 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very pessimistic view. Many IDEs support Linux. There are tools with interface builders on Linux. GTK, Qt, Android, Mono, etc...

Yes there are, but as I mentioned the culture also matters, and the Linux culture worships CLI and window managers like xmonad, not graphical developer tools and UI/UX.

I am pretty sure that xmonad, or tiling window managers in general, while popular are not the #1 in popularity on Linux so I will have to disagree with you again. You have many alternatives more featured than xmonad and I am very sure you know many of them already.

Going forward please keep those views to yourself. There are many developers putting a lot of effort, in many cases volunteer effort, to advance Linux on the desktop... which is already far better than many people care to admit.

Re: Windows for Linux Nerds

#380

Post by thomastjeffery »

lisnake wrote: post #254
jadbox wrote: post #147

i3 is simply amazing. I'd give up my Windows Desktop in an instant if I could use i3 to start Window apps within the manager.

Since you can start windows apps from WSL console, I bet something can be hacked to launch them from i3, though i haven't tried myself

i3 can only be run in a window that emulates Xorg. So, no.
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