131–140 of 231 posts
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I kind of agree, but feel a need to point out that the "absurd cash piles" are a byproduct of tax rules, not of (alleged) timidity on the part of Cook et al.
What tax rule are you talking about? The cash in the "absurd pile" has already been taxed as income.
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The question of why you would want to run your server code on Windows (aside from supporting legacy .NET apps) remains. Those same sysadmins can overwrite Windows with a BSD or Linux on those cheap laptops.
Because some of us prefer Windows to Linux on the desktop.
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Unless you're going to force your users to install WSL up front(which is a pretty poor first contact) I think you might be better served by keeping it around.
Honestly, Windows users should be accomodated for as little as possible. I don't want to write my software once for 12 operating systems and once again for one. WSL is the only reason my software runs on their shitty OS at all .
However if you're goal is to have an impact with your software then supporting win32 is a good bet since you're going to find an order of magnitude more users on win32. You'll also probably want iOS, Android and other platforms that aren't drop-in ports for POSIX if you want to provide a reasonable interface.
I really hope they make WSL's /home/. symlink to /mnt/c/users/. by default. What's the point of having a separate filesystem and home directory? I want native POSIX in Windows. The WSL implementation feels like... not that.
Just put symlinks to the relevant subfolders of /mnt/c/users/... in /home/..., and you can barely tell. I hardly touch /mnt/c. I like having separate filesystems so I can have both Windows and Linux versions of some things in the "same" place but not interfering.
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You are misunderstanding the point of WSL. It's not about writing software with Linux that users will run with Windows. Rather, it's about writing software on Windows that users will run on Linux. The target demographic is developers of Linux server software. A lot of those devs today run macOS
Oh no, I get that. The OP was making the assertion that open source doesn't need win32 portability. That's a huge pain in the ass for those of us who work in things that are tied to win32(graphics, gamedev tools, etc) we happily contribute back but ripping out a working port just seems petty.
I have to maintain a separate build system for Windows, all the win32 specific code, and also test under Windows... and most of this requires a Windows license
if I can rip all of that out by outsourcing the compatibility testing to Microsoft: all the better, even if I have to add a line to the documentation requiring users to check a checkbox once in some control panel somewhere
I hope my Macbook days would be over soon. After using Macbook Pro many years, I find good Windows machines are as reliable as Mac's ones. Apple products are usually overpriced, much less options for hardware accessories and upgrades, very expensive to fix. I have to keep running both Mac & Windows machines which is very inconvenient sometimes.
So is this complementary to the linux subsystem in windows, or a completely unrelated option?
I think you've fallen victim to Microsoft's somewhat awkward naming scheme - the Windows Subsystem for Linux is the name of the "linux subsystem in windows" that you're referring to. It's not complementary or unrelated, but the same thing.
I've actually heard this issue discussed by the Windows admins in my company, without them having first heard my own opinion on the matter.
"Why didn't they name it 'Linux services for Windows', or something sane?" My Exchange/storage admin asked. "Because that would make sense", our other Windows admin says.
The discussion moved on to how Microsoft was afraid of the very notion of a product name that made it clear that Linux was doing something useful on Windows. They had to make it seem that Windows was offering services to Linux, because Linux needed the help of Windows, not the other way around.
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Honestly, Windows users should be accomodated for as little as possible. I don't want to write my software once for 12 operating systems and once again for one. WSL is the only reason my software runs on their shitty OS at all .
If you're just looking to do open source for the fun of writing software then by all means ignore portability(which is a totally legit approach). However if you're goal is to have an impact with your software then supporting win32 is a good bet since you're going to find an order of magnitude more users on win32. You'll also probably want iOS, Android and other platforms that aren't drop-in ports for POSIX if you wan…
I hope my Macbook days would be over soon. After using Macbook Pro many years, I find good Windows machines are as reliable as Mac's ones. Apple products are usually overpriced, much less options for hardware accessories and upgrades, very expensive to fix. I have to keep running both Mac & Windows machines which is very inconvenient sometimes.
one thing I'd miss from Apple is service. Being ablr to walk into a store where they can fix simple things immediately is AFAIK unheard of with windows PCs.. maybe with MS Stores, but these are incredibly rare outside the US.