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Comment by tjpnz | Hacker News Reader

As a dev and Linux/OSX user I'm still struggling to see who exactly this is for. All of the tools I want to use are very well supported on OSX and I don't have much use for Microsoft software like Office these days with Google Sheets et cetera. Is this being geared more towards corporate customers who have chosen to standardise all of their IT on Microsoft products, but who need easier access to dev tools/environments?

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This is for me. I prefer Windows on the desktop, have a bunch of software that I use for my day to day that only exists on Windows, use a Linux VM for a portion of my dev work, employer is locked in on Windows, can't dual boot because of IT, etc...

The current WSL is pretty good, but version 2 is going to be a massive upgrade.

I also refuse to give Apple money for their overpriced garbage products.

I recently switched to Windows after 10 years of Macs, because I didn’t fee like forking out €3k for a decent 15” laptop. I switched to a Razer (€1700) which can actually game + with WSL I can actually do Rails development. After a month of using this machine, my carpal tunnel pains dropped off significantly (in part because I ditched the Magic Mouse for a Logitech MX) and my fingers don’t swell or hurt from bashing a non-existant keyboard on the MBP. So to me when it comes to computers, Apple is dead.

FWIW, when I switched from Mac to Windows, I was able to still do Rails development in Windows itself (I guess it ultimately depends on your Rails app complexity and the gems you rely on) and deploy my solutions to Linux servers. This was before WSL came out.

For sure, but it was pretty slow (every page reload took ages) and with WSL it is much faster.

Really? That's interesting.

I don't have that experience running Rails on Windows. Having said that, I do use thin for my development instance, so maybe that's why.

> As a dev and Linux/OSX user I'm still struggling to see who exactly this is for

It is for Windows users.

> All of the tools I want to use are very well supported on OSX and I don't have much use for Microsoft software like Office these days with Google Sheets et cetera.

Sure, OS X is a good solution for people or institutions who can afford those computers, who don't want to or can't use Linux, and don't mind paying that much.

> Is this being geared more towards corporate customers who have chosen to standardise all of their IT on Microsoft products, but who need easier access to dev tools/environments?

Yes, definitely, or just individual developers who want to use Windows. I don't know any devs who do this, but Kenneth Reitz was tweeting a lot about how much he was enjoying working on Windows and thought people's complaints about it were overblown.

That Kenneth Reitz comment reminded me of a drama in which he was accused of siphoning off money and buying new Mac from funds meant for some OSS development.

This is great for any developer who prefers the Windows desktop experience to linux/macOS. I'm primarily on a mac myself, but I've used the original WSL and it works quite well.

I'm not sure what Windows offer better in terms of third party tooling which is what matters more than OS itself.

I understand some need Windows only app to work but otherwise what does Windows offer better for third party apps that Mac doesn't for developers that WSL targets? I just can't think of one but I can think quite several the other way around.

Certianly aimed at me (non-corp) as I won't go near anything from Google. And while I've never had problems with them (worked there once), I'm amazingly pro Microsoft lately.

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