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Comment by corysama | Hacker News Reader

I'm betting this is the real end-goal of WSL. MacBooks were once expensive, but high-quality, grab-and-go unixy development machines. Now, they're mostly just expensive.

When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine. It'll probably be easier and more reliable than installing Ubuntu directly! At that point, web and server devs will migrate en mass from Mac to Windows.

Then they will discover Clang for Windows and that dev tools for Windows in general are actually pretty nice. And, since they are already running their server code on WSL, it becomes much easier and more interesting to get it running in Windows directly. Bang! Huge uptick in open-source server development on Windows.

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You can already target Linux directly from Visual Studio using either WSL or a Linux machine as the target. It uses the compiler on the Linux machine. Details here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/11/linux-dev...

And, of course, VS offers Android and iOS targeting in both C++ and .NET. The C++ info is here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/04/18/android-a...

These are still too new and have random problems associated with them:

No partial compilation if you target Linux. Everything has to be sshed over every time and compiled from scratch.

If you have a linker error,it's not displayed right away, you have to dig through files. These are painful to resolve.

Lots of other problems too, not the least of if you need high performance disk access, you can forget about WSL.

Don't get me started on debugging through rgdb + vs.

After our evaluation, we simply got Linux machines and VMs (under Windows) for development.

WSL and remote Linux for VS are a great idea, but it looks like they need few patch rounds to be Enterprise ready.

Great feedback, thank you! Linux targeting isn't my area, but I know the guy who owns it would love to chat with you. If you want to help us make this better, would you mind sending me an email at apardoe @ youknowthecompany.com? I totally understand if it's not worth your time. But thank you regardless!

> When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab-and-go unixy dev machine

Well, you know, they _already_ are. We don't have to wait for anything. And even cheaper, if you can avoid paying the windows tax ;)

Yeah, do we really want to run an open garbage fire of an OS that is known as Windows 10 for a daily driver? I know I'd get murdery if I lost all my hot corners, multi-desktop, etc cause that is what makes me productive. Other people who don't like Gnome 3 take pleasure in using i3 or AwesomeWM, which both are major steps up over Win10's UI.

At this point, the Windows platform is a rotting cesspool, the devs focused on it know its growth has stopped (but often are clueless about how to move forward), package management is not a thing, and Microsoft has added so many anti-features that it is a pain in the ass to live with.

Multiple desktops are built in. If you spent any time on the platform you'd understand that Windows under Satya Nadella is good stuff. He is the anti-Ballmer.

What isn't a rotting cesspool in your opinion? iOS or Android?

Debian/Arch are both fairly lively, if you want something battle hardend you'll use SLES like Walmart, Kroger, Fred Meyers, Vons, <Fill in major retailer> uses. The desktop is in stasis though, and iOS as a platform is unlikely to grow massively over the next few years.

Android is frankly another rotting cesspool of Google's making. Where Microsoft & Apple are able to provide years of updates to every model of phone their software runs on (with MS literally working with the same vendors as Google), Google has successfully ensured that outside of Nexus devices, updates occur rarely if ever.

It's easy to keep devices updated when you reset your platform 3 times (WP7 - WP8 - W10P - WOA)

Sure, but even 2014 phones like the Lumia 830, 929, et all got upgraded to W10P, Microsoft has made much more of an effort than Google to support 3 year old hardware.

Windows 10 has multi-desktop support baked in. They keyboard shortcuts could be made better, but they're there too.

I just set up a cheap Windows 10 laptop I bought for my mom. It was the first time I got in touch with Windows again since the XP days. Can't say I'm too intrigued, imho the UI is lacking in so many points. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of that Cortana-thing in the taskbar, every window is littered with ribbons, list goes on and on and on … I don't see why I would go for Windows + WSL when I can just slap a distro of choice on it?

While I wish Apple got its shit together, I have 0 incentive to move to Windows as a developer. I'd have to find replacements for a lot of small utility apps I take for granted on OS X, and I'd have to cope with the stupid UI Windows shoves down my throat.

They're getting rid on the ribbon in Explorer, you can launch it with an in-beta modern UI since last month's Windows update. They'll probably complete it and make it official in the next big one.

For the curious: create a new shortcut with the following target:

  explorer shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App

I think it is pretty "meh"

Well yes, I do too: it's massively incomplete.

Huh? MacBooks are unlikely to disappear, companies love how slowly they depreciate (and are easily sellable), while it is by far the most optimized unix system out there. Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere? The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state.

I just don't see why you'd choose a platform that does pants on head retarded shit like making wget open IE 11 rather than downloading the file at a given URL. This isn't rocket science here, I know all the MS people across the water in Redmond & Bellevue can fix this without much work, but apparently worse than non-existent is the best MS can do.

> Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

There is no "Windows or linux laptop". There is a bunch of different brands with varying degree of quality. Macbook lasting more than a dell or an acer, maybe. More than a thinkpad or a surface ? Much less so.

And of course you forget about the desktops...Companies are still using a non negligible amount of those.

> Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere?

For the same reason people use a macbook, or virtualize linux (vmware) instead of native installation : Better hardware support, better battery life, better support from your enterprise IT etc... etc...

> The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state.

The thing was available about a years ago, why so much hate? I played with it and to be honest, as developer it already has 90 % of everything i need...

For all their fault and mistakes , one thing that the new Microsoft does really well is to adapt to the new development realities and propose simple and pragmatic solution : VS code , typescripts and now WSL...

> Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

The repairable/upgradable thinkpads are probably better in this regard

Why would you want to repair/upgrade (and so pay the salaries of hardware IT staff) when you could get business-leased commodity computers with scheduled "upgrades" by return-for-replacement, for the same cost?

I want to repair and upgrade my computer. I suspect there are many people like me that would like the option to upgrade components on my laptop as well. I used to be able to do that with a MBP (2012-ish), now I can't...

The WSL is compelling and to be honest, one of the main reasons I switched to OSX was the command line. Now, I can have a command line and not have to run VM's for 3d stuff, games, and more. Pretty compelling...

That's a personal desire. The context here was corporate buying and depreciation. Why would a corporation want to repair its computers, any more than it would want to repair e.g. its office furniture?

Because swapping a burned out power supply is 5min job while waiting for a [company] technician to bring that replacement computer can be a day+ several others to get the original back?

It boils down to how much the downtime costs. "Do it all in the Cloud" simply doesn't apply across the board.

Why wait? In most companies I've worked at (a few startups; IBM), if your computer isn't working, they take your current one and then hand you a spare out of a pile they have in a closet. The original gets sent for replacement, but you're already at your desk re-doing the documented onboarding process on the new machine.

How many large corporations buy macs for everyone in the company? Serious question... I have no idea. My hunch says; Not many.

Indeed. I've seen Macs as an option, and then you sort of get "developers can get Macs, VPs can get them, but others can't" as the TCO is - apparently - higher, and, let's not forget that, remote manageability is way harder than with Windows, which has stuff like group policies, AD integration, etcetera, all built in (the Macs I used at a previous big corp employer had some terribly hack-ish layered software to get to almost the same level).

With Win10 and WSL (which I've been actively testdriving on my personal hardware) I'd be totally fine to get a Lenovo from BigCorpEmployer. For private use, I won't buy any MBPs anymore anyway for the same reason.

Because Apple isn't immune to screwing up the 'commodity' and plenty of shops are holding off on the new mbp because of the unless touch bar, degraded keyboard, and poor choice of ports. This is a great time for MS to push for this audience and things like WSL are great foundations.

I like them better (and own multiple) but I do have to admit that MacBooks really do more with less. Still, I don't own one or plan to buy a MBP.

I did a wget -r -l3 in WSL just yesterday to download xconq documentation, worked perfectly.

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