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Comment by exdsq | Hacker News Reader

+1 for WSL 2. I'm a huge advocate of it at work where people are very pro-Linux. I have noticed a few issues with it that don't make sense seeing as it's meant to have a full Linux Kernel (such as sockets not appearing) but that could be Ubuntu-20.04 being the one at fault to be fair :)

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-1 for WSL. If I need Linux, it will be obviously native.

Also WSL doesn't solve:

* forced Windows updates when you don't need them

* shitload of failed updates: bricked OS, deleted user data etc

* stupid non-uninstallable game icons in start menu, a lot of vendor-forever-locked garbage like cortana & one drive

* bad fs performance in general

That's harsh but I agree with those points, Windows is still a consumer oriented operating system at its core, which has a lot of undesirable features for a developer.

Like ?

You probably should be using a windows pro install and not one with crapware from the manufacturer

Until a feature update ago, I was quite disappointed with Win10 as a dev platform. I'm running Win 10 Pro. Especially Windows Update was just plain intolerable.

However some time the past months I realized I don't think about Windows much... which means it's no longer constantly annoying me.

There are still stupid things, like Apps display language not being tied to the OS display language setting (wtf?!), but I can live with that. On a day to day basis my machine stays on, is performant, and does what I ask it to.

My employer provided workstation ( which presumably uses Pro) is still always spamming me about Teams and OneDrive.

You can disable that with local admin.

The domain admin could too, but they're mostly just there to get their paycheck, not to improve your experience so they won't bother.

The argument is that you shouldn't have to disable it to begin with.

Referring https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23389595 for a list of undesirable features:

* forced Windows updates when you don't need them

* shitload of failed updates: bricked OS, deleted user data etc

* stupid non-uninstallable game icons in start menu, a lot of vendor-forever-locked garbage like cortana & one drive

* bad fs performance in general

I'll add a couple of my own (and be a more restrained in my opinions)

* Windows + WSL is a hybrid environment. Files are on different places depending on from where you are looking. It feels like developing within Docker containers, without the power and flexibility.

* Low observability: very few programs log things and, while there is excellent system wide plumbing for that, very few programs are using it.

* PowerShell makes some questionable choices. For instance, "curl" is a built-in command that has different switches from its Unix homonym. It'd cost absolutely nothing to have a different name for that.

I'm wondering is there a Live Tile use-case that improving developer productivity?

I usually Win+Q or pin to taskbar to run program, almost never look at the default Live Tile.

PowerShell's syntax make me mad too, some Office 365 enterprise management tools is only available in Windows PowerShell only (You cannot run it in PowerShell of MacOS or Linux), so wired.

I was considering moving back to Windows since the new MBP lineup is so disappointing, but no TimeMachine, too many useless feature (Live Tile and so on) made me stick on MacOS.

curl isn’t a built in command on Powershell. It used to be an alias for a different command “Invoke-RestMethod” I believe.

That was, of course, a really terrible idea considering how differently they worked so fortunately they’ve killed that in the latest versions of PoSH.

It was always possible to change those aliases in the old version of PoSH as well though.

Is macOS so different? You have to disable notifications manually every day to not have your developer workflow interrupted. The login screen is a 3D cube (weird, random and ugly). Icons in the dock wiggle. You delete applications by dragging them to trash bin. Maximizing Safari is impossible. The list goes on and on.

> stupid non-uninstallable games icons in start menu

You can remove them now. At least I was able to in the Windows 10 v.2004 update. Why Candy Crush is included with Windows 10 Pro however is beyond me.

Why was Solitaire bundled even with the NT (i.e. enterprise/business) versions of Windows? No one ever questioned that, but everybody takes issue with Candy Crush? Weird...

People see it as less analogous to Solitaire, and more analogous to the McAfee crapware you get bundled with cheap PCs.

And why is that? I never even once played Solitaire and uninstalled Candy Crush without even looking at it.

What's the deal with this sudden hatred towards nonsense that was installed 35 years ago as well and had a way bigger impact on system resources (in terms of disk space and screen real-estate) than Candy Crush?

Is it because it's a mobile port - too colourful and too in-your-face about it being a mindless pastime than a boomer-style virtual card game that even came with a "boss-key"?

Solitaire and the other games were included just as features. You had to seek them out, and they were there for you to enjoy if you wanted.

Candy Crush is given prime real estate in the start menu, and is a highly commercial game with in-app-purchases. It's a straight-up advert.

Solitaire is not asking you for money

Well, you are free to not start the app, unpin it from the start menu and even uninstall it, so what's the problem?

there have been reports of it appearing again, at least in W10's early days.

I believe it does now in its latest iteration. I bet it will also ask you to "rate" it in the store.

I always assumed Solitaire was included with Windows to help people learn how to use a mouse.

> Why was Solitaire bundled even with the NT (i.e. enterprise/business) versions of Windows?

I mean, everybody knows you’re supposed to sneak in a game or two in between spreadsheets.

WSL 2 does indeed solve the FS performance problem because you’d use the Linux VM’s block device, not the host fs (NTFS).

You can set windows not to update in core hours and even then you can decline the update.

I have never had a bricked OS from an windows update

You know you can unpin stuff from the start menu to get rid of clutter.

If you leave some task processing overnight, that's probably not your 'core hours', unless you set it that way and not in the day. But then what if all your work is lost when an update is installed in your lunch break? It's ridiculous that there is (or was? Not sure if it's changed) no way to never automatically install an update.

Remember when Windows 10 was released and there were reports that Windows 8 would literally automatically update to Windows 10 without user intervention [1]. My mother's laptop did that and it bricked her install.

The OS taking over control of updates is totally user-hostile. 'Core hours' is just giving a little bit of that control back, it's not a solution.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/15/windows-1...

I renerally assume that all work can suddenly dissapear unless saved to disk, duew to powercut or app crashing or whatever else. Autosave, etc.

If you do have some long task like rendering that takes hours, thats of-course trickier.

Yes of course - saving work regularly is good. However apart from long-running tasks you can still lose things like the current state of your desktop and applications. Consider if you were working on something involved and had many applications running all with some complex state set up. You might not lose any data but you have lost the 'working memory' of what you were doing.

There is a problem on Linux with some software not being available or not being as well tested. Despite all the problems with Windows this means that sometimes having it is helpful.

WSL2 is a Linux VM, what's your use-case for native over that?

- You can disable updates

- I'm on the insider version and this has never happened to me, let alone for 'normal' users.

- You can uninstall all of that stuff

- It's not that bad, I work on a decentralised database and we have similar performance across Windows and Linux. Windows was a bit tougher to do but it got there :)

I'm honestly baffled that you've never experienced an update that bricked your system - how long have you been using Windows?

Two years ago Microsoft released an update that killed Windows on my brand new (at the time) desktop (i7-8700k, gtx 1080). I thought "no big deal, I'll boot up my old desktop and deal with it later" but when I turned on that machine (i5-2500k, rx480), it applied the same update and also killed the Windows install. At that point I gave up on using a desktop for the day and booted up Windows on my laptop (i7-7700HQ, gtx 1050m), only to have that also install the update and kill the install.

I'd had Windows updates break before that, but always on one machine so it was easy to write off as some driver quirk or something weird I had installed.

Not the parent, but I've been running Windows for decades on multiple machines (4 different ones at this time) - never once had an update brick a system.

You seem to be assuming everyone else is frequently having a problem because you have had it. In reality, these events are rare, which the overwhelming majority of people not having any issue.

I’ve only worked in tech for six years but I started as a sysadmin and managed a network of ~50 windows computers for two years, and then worked in a windows dev shop for three years, and I’ve never once seen an update brick Windows.

I’ve bricked windows by being dumb but I’ve also bricked Linux by being dumb. Sometimes I feel like it’s cool to hate Windows, like it’s cool to hate Java.

Sometimes i read thing like this and I feel they are from a different universe.

I am the first port of call for IT issues of the whole family, including grandma. Like 10 people, and the last time we had issue caused by windows update was like 5 years ago when a laptop was trying to update to W10 from W8. That required a bit of manual intervention.

Game icons certainly arent there for me any more.

Whats the issue with Onedrive? I mean, its preinstalled, but you dont have to run it.

Lucky you! In the last 6 months Windows tried to install an upgrade, failing endlessly, on both my mother's and sister's laptops. It just tried to upgrade, failed during the reboot, reverted back and booted on the old version, just to start the whole process again after a few hours. And all the Microsoft Windows Update Assistant tools or whatever didn't work at all, so I just clean installed in frustration.

TBF though, my 2013 desktop never gave me a single issue on Windows..

Paradoxically, driver issues and update issues never show up on any desktops I had, they only show up on laptops with carefully selected and entirely manufacturer-controlled supply chain and parts.

In contrast to WSL1, WSL2 is a full-blown Linux virtual machine. It "just" has some tooling to make integration nicer.

So some awkwardness is to be expected.

It's really amazing. I don't know much about Linux, but whenever I need to use some Linux only tool(or works best on linux tool), I just use wsl. Tried using a couple of linux desktops but the user experience is just terrible compared to windows for day to day work and there aren't many softwares available.

What parts were terrible?

> +1 for WSL 2. I'm a huge advocate of it at work where people are very pro-Linux

So your co-workers already use Linux (for free, I guess), but now you're trying to convince them to use a restricted Linux version that also costs money. How's that?

We develop cross-platform projects in an environment where Windows is a second-class citizen but accounts for the vast majority of our user base. WSL2 is a really nice stepping stone towards having both operating systems treated equally.

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