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Mutt on Windows Without WSL

blog.djhaskin.com

61–70 of 78 posts

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#61
post #43

Am I the only one who said screw it, I'm getting 64GB of ram? The amount of concern about ram, it's not that much more expensive atm to get double or 4x if your already buying a laptop.

This. It's not that expensive; it's not worth your time dancing around over time. I Know it's an entitled view point, but engineers are also generally entitled.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#62

Why not use a linux vm on windows? Using a shared folder mounted on the linux vm gets you file sharing, what else would you want that WSL gets you?

WSL2 is basically a lower-memory VM via containerization with auto-mounts of the host OS.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#63
post #30

> WSL is nice, but it takes up a lot of RAM on my system. I prefer to use MSYS2. That's why you trash WSL2 and just stick with WSL1. I'm surprised they didn't mention it at all. Keep MSYS2 around for where WSL1 doesn't suffice, but that should be fairly infrequent.

WSL1 just doesn't work well enough. I'd never recommend WSL1 for anything. The extra nines in compatibility matter in development work if you have any dependencies in your projects. WSL2 is also pretty good at giving RAM back to the host Windows. I guess you're really running thin on resources if this doesn't do enough.

WSL1 isn't the alternative to WSL2, it's the alternative to MSYS2. Surely you don't get more 9's with MSYS2.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#64
post #43

Am I the only one who said screw it, I'm getting 64GB of ram? The amount of concern about ram, it's not that much more expensive atm to get double or 4x if your already buying a laptop.

Yup. I've even debated 128. Though not because of WSL, i just do some work with high ram needs and having it for when i want it is worth it's cost, easily. Same for storage that isn't Apple based.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#65
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so that it will be possible to reuse the same code for both TUI and GUI clients. Why must a generaly good improvement these days always start on HN with "rewrite in rust" like it's the only language which still matters. Leave that up to the developer to what they prefer for the job.

> Why must a generaly good improvement these days always start on HN with "rewrite in rust" like it's the only language which still matters. I'm guessing so that its likely to 1) be safer by default, 2) likely to get more contributors, 3) more likely to work cross-platform, and 4) more likely to get attention and survive as a project.

"memory safe by default" but not necessarily "safer" by default. A code base that has been battle tested in production for decades will likely be safer in every other way than an entirely new project that has got thrown up on a git repo yesterday.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#66
post #45

> WSL is nice, but it takes up a lot of RAM on my system. I prefer to use MSYS2. That's why you trash WSL2 and just stick with WSL1. I'm surprised they didn't mention it at all. Keep MSYS2 around for where WSL1 doesn't suffice, but that should be fairly infrequent.

WSL1 was what made me stick to Windows at the time, when I had a new laptop and didn't want to mess much with it. WSL2 was what convinced me to switch back to Linux, since I felt that WSL1 was going to be abandoned. What is its current situation? Is it still maintained?

I've heard indirectly and off hand that some Microsoft PMs still regret calling it WSL1 and WSL2 instead of something like WSL-A and WSL-B.

My understanding from documentation is that WSL1 is "feature complete" but not "maintenance ended": they think they hit a strong Pareto Principal 80/20 for features in WSL1 and realize it won't support everything but often supports "enough" and any further compatibility issues are out of scope both because the tail is extremely long and the risk/reward of time invested into long tail issues are rarely worth it.

I don't think WSL1 will be "abandoned" any time soon, but the list of "Known Issues" will only continue to grow and a lot of people get pointed to WSL2 simply because the long-tail Kernel compatibility is hard to beat if you are directly running the Linux kernel.

But the many tools that work brilliantly in WSL1 still work brilliantly in WSL1 and there are still benefits to its barer/stranger metal approach.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#67
Busybox for Windows is a great shell for people who want Linux look and feel on Windows.

Chocolatey may also cover more stuff than scoop.

Most developers should also be using Windows 2022 with Desktop. What you trade in one time agitation with i210 drivers you gain forever in zero cruft, and maybe more with file deduplication.

In terms of exciting stuff to program, it would be nice if Triton supported Windows.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#69
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL1 just doesn't work well enough. I'd never recommend WSL1 for anything. The extra nines in compatibility matter in development work if you have any dependencies in your projects. WSL2 is also pretty good at giving RAM back to the host Windows. I guess you're really running thin on resources if this doesn't do enough.

WSL1 isn't the alternative to WSL2, it's the alternative to MSYS2. Surely you don't get more 9's with MSYS2.

Makes sense, though I’d consider neither for work nowadays.

I have fond memories of using msys2 for gcc but I’ve never used it for more than that.

Re: Mutt on Windows Without WSL

#70
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard about WinGet? It's the official package manager for Windows: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli

I tried WinGet out when it came out, but ended up sticking with scoop. What would you say are the advantages of WinGet over scoop?

The biggest advantage of WinGet is that it is installed out of the box with Windows 11, recent versions of Windows 10, and auto-installed into Windows 10 by update processes deeply back down (I think all the way back to the original Anniversary Edition).

A smaller advantage is WinGet's default installed sources use Microsoft CDNs for package metadata which are often whitelisted in firewalls or at least gentler in their MITM attacks, and WinGet's primary source (the "winget" source) uses canonical installer URLs rather than repackaging (pulls the same EXE/MSI installer that you would if you went to a download page manually). That combination of well known URL patterns generally means WinGet has a kinder experience with corporate firewalls and corporate anti-virus tools than scoop can provide.

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