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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Pity. CUDA was/is proof positive that Linux on the desktop is perfectly feasible and that you can use it to both do a UI and do meaningful computation on the same machine without getting tied down into all kinds of licensing schemes. Opening this further up to Windows gives fewer people a really good reason to try out Linux as their daily driver. I personally don't get why any developer would prefer Windows over Linux with its near infinite software repositories related to all things developers would like.

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> I personally don't get why any developer would prefer Windows over Linux

Because windows now literally has all the stuff Linux has plus a lot more.

The only reason for a well paid developer to prefer linux over windows for a desktop OS is that you don't need any of the extra stuff (a decent desktop experience, hardware support and a commercial end user software eco system) or that you have some fundamental objections concerning Microsoft's business practices. These are good reasons, but experience shows that most people don't care enough about things like privacy to give up convenience or shiny things.

Apple may be in for a tough awakening. They profited enormously from providing the desktop OS that a very large fraction of the technical elite has been using for a long time. MacOS still is still smoother than windows in some regards, but the writing is on the wall: linux completely dominates the server but is as hopeless as ever as a general purpose desktop OS, but windows no longer sucks for software development. It used to be that macs had the unique selling point of offering a nice desktop experience on good hardware coupled with something close enough to linux that you could use it for a very wide range of software development tasks. But new hardware is developer hostile and macOS drifts further and further away from linux (ever more lock-down that directly breaks developer workflows and tooling and ever more diverging user land with a mix of ancient GNU and irrelevant BSD tooling). By contrast windows now includes an ultra-high-fidelity linux layer with excellent tooling and integration to "core" windows and Microsoft also owns the world's most popular editor and code hosting solution.

I'm amazed how well Microsoft has managed to find back to its embrace, extend, extinguish roots. It is both a technical and a strategic marvel.

I hope they stop at extend this time.

I think "extend" is a good safety buffer / canary in the coal mine, so I'd be happier if they stuck to "embrace".

Spoiler: they don't.

Google is much further ahead with ChromeOS and Android.

> you don't need any of the extra stuff (a decent desktop experience ...)

I have a better experience on Linux now than I've had on Windows in the past.

According to the Stack Overflow survey, Linux Desktop marketshare for developer has been growing constantly over the years. 23% in 2018's "primary desktop OS" question, 26% in 2019, 27% in 2020. Prior to that the question was asked differently, allowing multiple choices, but Linux was even lower back then. WSL was released in 2016 so much of this growth has happened while it was out. There might be some delay in the effects though, and maybe it would have been a much faster trend had it not been for WSL.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016#technology-de...

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#technology-_-...

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de...

WSL2 came out (in non-preview version) last month and is a vital improvement. Windows Terminal is still pre-1.0 as is the CUDA and DirectX on Linux stuff. Then give it a bit of time to percolate through, technically and socially.

> Windows Terminal is still pre-1.0

Windows Terminal 1.0 has been out for a bit, the current version is 1.0.1401.0 [0]

[0]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/releases/tag/v1.0.1401...

Do you know when it’s supposed to become default terminal? I thought I heard it was coming eventually.

Disclaimer: Hazy memory about this, take it with a heap of salt.

I think there were being some problems with that. It is planned but still in the future, possibly only with another feature update.

I guess the writing’s on the wall now. The latest lines of Apple products have been all been disappointing to me: laptops and phones without ports, keyboards that break, silly gimmicks all about — and a smartwatch that I developed a skin rash from so bad I still have it now, four months after having stopped using the watch.

CUDA was always the big thing for me, I use CUDA and develop with it — AMD and Apple have missed their shot on this, in an absolutely massive way. Alienate developers with centralized app stores and huge fees, then alienate researchers by picking a fight with the biggest name in the GPU industry while providing no alternative. Silly.

I haven’t used Windows in years and it will be so so bittersweet the day I boot it up on a Dell laptop again.

I'm exactly the audience Microsoft is winning over. For the last 3-5 years, I've been an avid Mac user. The primary reason has always been the familiarity of the terminal.

Now, Apple is making a lot of hardware decisions that I don't like. Having used WSL daily for several months now, it's the game changer.

My next laptop will probably be a PC, and I can only say this because of WSL.

Your next laptop will be a personal computer?

I believe they meant PC as in PC (Windows) vs Mac. I've encountered a lot of people who use PC <-> Windows Machine interchangeably.

PC as in IBM PC compatible

Does that imply Windows?

From a historical branding perspective —- yes!

"Personal Computer" has long been specifically associated with Windows machines and specifically excludes Mac and Linux. It started with the "IBM Personal Computer" and its branding caused non-IBM machines (eg Macintosh) to use other branding ("a mac"). When IBM partnered with Microsoft to make home computers, this branding really solidified that "PC = Windows".

And then of course, there was the very successful advertising campaign from Apple where they specifically distinguish Macs from PCs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac

Essentially, Macs are "personal computers" but they aren't "Personal Computers", if you know what I mean.

I have been rather miffed that the lack of corporate branding/identity for Linux at the time when Macintosh decided to "distinguish" itself now means that GNU/Linux machines are apparently not "personal computers" anymore.

But if PC = IBM PC, and those basically always came with Microsoft software, I guess history supports that interpretation.

Apple spent a lot of money selling the idea the Mac was totally different to the PC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eEG5LVXdKo

A couple of big things still missing with WSL:

Direct rendering for X. This means the maximum OpenGL version that can be supported with hardware acceleration is 1.4, so many modern X program don't work or will use software rendering.

Multi-monitor support. Under X, windows are by default positioned and sized by the window manager and it's hard for application developers to screw it up, but under Windows each application developer has to be careful to make their program work well on multiple monitors. This shows, and event some built-in Windows applications get confused by multiple monitors, usually by having an action performed on one monitor open a window on a different monitor.

More like familiar experience. Most people don't care about things they have not experienced, Blub paradox.

It is amazing how Mac users stick with Apple through a lot of inconvenience - x86 transition, USB type C, adapters, no audio jack, touchbar, breaking updates, walled garden iPhone. But they also brought a lot to community - good chassis, quality touchpad, HiDPI, wide gamut, capacitive touchscreens with gorilla glass.

Microsoft users has no less inconvenience - ribbon, metro, viruses, ever changing frameworks, ever confusing names (winrt), wrecked settings, custom theme on every application. And community gains - Word, Excel, up to IE6 innovations, XBox, VS Code, language servers, maybe crossplatform .Net some day.

I do not want to wreck them, I want to be objective. Microsoft of 80s rocked, in 90s - big and everpresent. Today they excel in PR. Hell, they got package manager 20 years late.

> The only reason for a well paid developer to prefer linux that you don't need any of the extra stuff (a decent desktop experience, [...list of several more "linux sucks" opinions])

I think you'll find many Linux devs who have previously used or considered Windows have their own list of "windows sucks" reasons.

(By "Well paid", are you referring to people who are willing to spend money on big ticket desktop sw, or people who are in it for the money and don't have the curiosity or interest about how the system works? I think for most it's not about not being able to afford the SW.)

I simply meant that price can be another valid reason to prefer linux on the desktop, but not one that applies to most of the HN readership.

>The only reason for a well paid developer to prefer linux over windows for a desktop OS is that you don't need any of the extra stuff (a decent desktop experience, hardware support and a commercial end user software eco system) or that you have some fundamental objections concerning Microsoft's business practices. These are good reasons, but experience shows that most people don't care enough about things like privacy to give up convenience or shiny things.

Sometimes it is simply the problem of linux being utterly broken. Linux users wonder why people won't adopt linux, and it is because it is full of problems. I spent a full day this week trying to get an internet connection for my linux desktop working (sans ethernet cable) and was unable to. USB tethering was broken for unfixable reasons and wifi adapters are a nightmare with linux. So that drove me back to windows, I tried WSL, and now I probably just won't ever bother trying to run linux on desktop again. I didn't want to tinker with my software, I wanted to do my personal projects. Windows at least lets me get the job done.

Just a small correction, the only "developers" that find Apple's offerings hostile are those using macOS as Linux replacement instead of paying to Linux OEMs.

Developers targeting Apple platforms are doing just fine.

There's a lot more devs in the first category - mostly web stack.

Well, same could be said for Macs. I have both a Macbook and Surface. Windows has surpassed Mac at this point in dev friendliness due to WSL. I've got VS Code and Docker Desktop running remotely to WSL 2 and my Surface Pro is silent. Meanwhile, my Macbook's fan is raging right now with just a single VS Code window. That's very anecdotal, but I have a nice, native sandbox for all my work. It's honestly the best of both worlds. With Mac, every time I upgrade I have to re-install XCode just to compile some Node binaries and use Git. I could go on and on about how little Apple cares about devs, but we are clearly not the target audience. I haven't tried Linux in a while, but on its own it is still the worst of the three for everything that's not software development.

This is exactly what I have found. I know a bunch of developers (myself included) that went from Macs to Microsoft's surface line. WSL2 has been an absolute game changer, there's something liberating about being able to launch distros of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora etc all faster than the computer wakes up from sleep, it's literally as fast as opening the command line. Microsoft has been making big moves for developers over the past years through open source contributions, Apple literally does not care about them and this sentiment can be seen explicitly on their respective GitHub pages.

Well, CUDA is about the opposite of open source. It needs special hardware and a closed source driver.

CUDA on Windows was already a big deal in engineering. Scientists and academics preferred Linux (and python, and docker) and Windows is playing catch up there to become compatible with the tools that have grown in popularity over the last 5 years.

Personally, as an open source advocate, I think competition (even from MS) is healthy. It drives everyone to build a better product.

Yes, but that doesn't really contradict what I said. As long as manufacturers are willing to support Linux for their products even those that require special hardware, and in spite of having a closed driver this is possible and will work very well, so well that an entire profession can be better supported on Linux than on Windows. And that's very interesting, especially given that CUDA is an outflow of gaming hardware which was better supported on Windows.

Also Linux is becoming the new Windows, and is one of the reason I stopped using it. What is the point of using a system that on every release is more and more bloated and full of crap that it breaks?

Docker for example, I hate it, it serves no purpose beside wasting disk space and slowing down your machine. BTRFS is a bugged imitation of ZFS. Wayland not only is bugged but even does less things than Xorg.

Most scientists and academics then just don't know how to write software or administer operating systems, and if they program they write the worst crap of spaghetti code possible, no wonder they like Linux, Docker and python.

I use macOS, at least I have a system that has a decent user interface, and for my server I started using whenever I can FreeBSD, much more stable, much more simple, good documentation, a good operating system.

> Docker for example, I hate it, it serves no purpose beside wasting disk space and slowing down your machine.

Docker is a deployment tool and obviously needed by enterprises and I don't think anyone sane using it for their own localhost.

> BTRFS is a bugged imitation of ZFS.

You don't really have to use it though. ext works flawlessly.

> Wayland not only is bugged but even does less things than Xorg.

Check out this video from one of major X maintainer of the past:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44

> I don't think anyone sane using it for their own localhost

Today I learned me and a heap of web developers I know aren't sane.

Okay I guess I just need to sleep and had to make it somewhat more clear: I never seen anyone using docker for deployment of any software for Linux Desktop. There are superior channels formats for this purpose.

Web developers usually need docker on their localhost just so it's work the same way as production environment. Though when you compare Windows on desktop and Linux on desktop you not gonna use docker at all.

I do agree that Linux has been adding complexity at a good pace the last 10 years.

I disagree about Docker. It's a good tool for reproducible development and production environments. What else should we use? virtual machines?

Scientists and academics are not in general, professional software engineers. At least they are using open source tools! What you rather they write their spaghetti in? MATLAB?

FreeBSD does not have the mindshare and ecosystem that Linux does. That actually does matter.

> BTRFS is a bugged imitation of ZFS.

It has bugs, but at least it supports copy-on-write files and making snapshots writable.

It's funny that you list docker and wayland as linux bloat that freebsd doesn't have, when docker works just fine on freebsd and wayland support is also in the works.

Personally I use Ubuntu as a daily driver. No docker unless you install it and comes with Xorg (as well as wayland, but you're not forced to use it).

>when docker works just fine on freebsd

No, that's emulation. FreeBSD has something much better: jails.

I saw here people argue about DLL hell and static compilation [1], you clearly have a point.

Using Wayland... is it Ubuntu with their experiments?

It's fine you found FreeBSD, but your choices is not Linux fault.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453157

WSL2 and all these features don't have anything to do with open source either. It's basically a shim for communication of two proprietary bits of software on both sides. Fortunately all these graphics and compute shims will never get merged into upstream kernel so they'll be second-class citizens like forever.

Dave Airlie who is maintainer of Linux graphics subsystem will never allow to merge it since it's can only be used for proprietary software.

Is this the wrong repository for what you are referring to, as this appear open source?

https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel

This custom kernel only contain shim that needed to pass commands from proprietary component on Linux to proprietary drivers on Windows.

When it's come to graphics drivers Linux upstream don't accept any code that can only be used for proprietary components. So all this Direct3D and CUDA shims never gonna be merged.

It's incredible that people like you are bitter because others are given a choice and they don't choose what you would want them to. And all in the name of freedom, no less.

I have no bitterness here, just facts. It's important to understand that none of these WSL features has anything to do with open source. It's exactly your standard "extend" stage.

See: proprietary hypervisor runs OS with a patched non-upstreamable Linux kernel and then there is proprietary userspace drivers and libraries that able to talk to their proprietary parts inside Windows.

Can any of it be used with different hypervisor? No.

Can it be used with open source drivers? Again, nope.

Of course it could, it's an open API. Others could use it if they wanted to.

If Microsoft or Nvidia wanted to use open APIs they would just support technologies that already exist, e.g there is GPU virtualization with Virgil 3D. There also VirtIO which is standard for all kind of virtualized interfaces, but again Microsoft only interested in using their proprietary tech.

Microsoft could also just use Vulkan instead of bringing proprietary Direct3D user pace to Linux. Or might be they could actually open source parts of their stack, but then it's will be against their vendor lock-in.

So Linux graphics subsystem has only support for MIAOW GPU?

The only proprietary part in AMD and Intel graphics stack is GPU firmware. Both companies have few closed-source components that might work on top of the same open-source kernel drivers, but they all have open source alternatives.

First a developer you don't do only programming: you maybe have to work with documents, do a presentation, a spreadsheet and thus use Office. You maybe have to make some icons or logos and thus you need Adobe Illustrator. You maybe need to connect to a printer like the one that we have at my office that good luck doing that on Linux. You maybe need a CAD software to designa PCB, you need whatever other software that is Windows-only.

Second there are situation where as a developer you are forced to use Windows. A lot of SDKs, compilers, debuggers, programmers for microcontrollers, FPGA, etc runs only on Windows, and if you have to do with firmware development you are basically forced to either use Windows or spend a week just to make a LED blink (if you manage to do that).

Same reason for using macOS: I use a Mac mainly because I need to make iOS software and the only way is to use a Mac. By the way macOS to me is a good compromise, you have all your UNIX tools in a system that you can use to run also proprietary software.

On my server I use Linux, even if recently I started using more and more FreeBSD and I'm liking it a lot (recently they added too much useless bloat in Linux like systemd and other crap, while on FreeBSD you have a simple system that is stable as a rock)

Just to add to this: Linux is happy to work in whatever way is convenient to you. WSL2 is case and point here. Windows is less flexible. If I can get everything I want out of one environment (stable gui, business software, and a native-like linux shell), that will save me the hassle of multiple machines, traditional VMs, or dual booting.

I don't think we will see the Linux Subsystem for Windows 2 ever. I also am not enamored with GUI side of the Linux world. WSL2 seems like a not bad place to land.

In my ideal world, Microsoft would base Windows on a mainline linux kernel. That would make me so happy.

The Linux Subsystem for Windows 1, on the other hand, is called Wine and works impressively well. Better than WSL1 did, at any rate.

Yeah LSW1 is better than WSL1 ever was IMO.

Surely wine is a windows subsystem for linux?

absolutely _nothing_ about the subsystem made by microsoft is "for linux".

I also still dont understand what you get for paying for a windows licence to run linux except more overhead and a total lack of a package manager.

WSL1 emulates linux's syscall interface. WSL2 is a lightweight vm. In either case you can run a regular distro, so not sure what you are on about a package manager.

I understand what they do. I just dont understand why you would do it.

What is the benefit compared to the much simpler, better performance and cheaper option of just running Linux proper and using wine for windows things.

Ok, think of your favorite Linux only application, then imagine running it through cygwin. Does that sound like a good time?

at least twice the fun of trying to get it stable on wsl.

> ... other software that is Windows-only.

So, I guess when I use Office365 on my linux laptop, which is connected to a HiDPI monitor, that I can't do what you say.

Ok.

Here's a bit of a reality check. You can do, with very limited corner cases, everything you want to do on windows, on linux (and Mac) today, via the web or similar clients.

One exception to this is skype for business. Which is complete and utter trash anyway. But there is a commercial linux version, not by Microsoft, that works quite well for it. I have it and use it.

Teams for linux from Microsoft is in preview/beta. But, the port using electron was out first. And is fully operational.

For things that just absolutely require windows, I boot my licensed windows 10 home which was installed on a small SSD when I bought the laptop, in a qemu kvm window. Everything works on it.

I am amazed with all the hate on Linux desktops. I've been using Linux machines as my primary desktops, and linux laptops for more than 20 years. My current laptop is a Sager (Clevo) unit with 64 GB ram, 1.5TB SSD, GTX1060. Win10 was installed when I bought it, on an SSD. I changed boot order, installed Linux Mint 17.x at the time, and everything just worked.

Once I realized I could use windows from the qemu kvm session, I set that up. Took about 10 minutes.

Something I've learned from a long and painful life with windows, is that one should never let it touch real hardware. When you have to manage it versus fleets of linux machines, you understand why keeping it virtualized is the best option.

FWIW, I don't think WSL2 is going to change anyone's game. This is my opinion of course, but most of the developers I know are either on Mac books, or linux machines. About 60-40 split. In my field (HPC) its 25-75.

Microsoft's best play at this moment would be to buy Canonical, and offer that as MS Linux.

A very fair and practical judgement. May use a mac and remote to windows as some linux egpu has driver issues bout not windows. Remote vs code from mac?

>some icons or logos

Imagemagick and call it done. Now everyone likes minimalist shit, so here you have. Or Xfig, if you feel fancy.

>You maybe need to connect to a printer like the one that we have at my office that good luck doing that on Linux

CUPS has less issues on Unix than the Windows "today it prints, tomorrow I'll toss a coin and let the Universe decide".

I personally like systemd, and I wish FreeBSD will eventually have it.

You call it opening up to Windows, I call it the final word on the question of a proper Windows port. Once WSL is established as the one way to use a piece of software on Windows it stay in the half-world of WSL forever.

Perhaps WSL is a perfect tie in terms of user migration: for every person who decides that WSL is their most convenient way of using Linux there might be another who decides that if they are spending so much time in WSL anyways should better try shipping the surrounding Windows. And everybody wins, even pure Linux users who will over time use more software that isn't developed with the overhead of Windows port ifdefs.

That's quite funny sentiment: basically you are saying the only reason for some people to use Linux if they are forced to use it by some library. An operating system shouldn't rely on that, if it wants to be truly general purpose.

You can use those software repositories through WSL2, using apt as per usual. And Windows now has WinGet so you can install software just like you would with apt/yum/pacman etc.

It's definitely not as robust - you can't uninstall stuff using WinGet but the concept is there.

There’s a rapidly growing third-party ecosystem growing around WinGet, as well. It’s promising. Here’s an example of a WinGet webgui thingy: winstall.[1][2]

Do you or wider HN users have any picks for WSL/2 and/or WinGet tools?

[1] https://winstall.app

[2] https://github.com/MehediH/winstall

I get your sentiment, but I think it's a bit petty to wish windows wouldn't get better.

Competition is ultimately good, and we should promote Linux for the benefits it brings. Not hope windows will stagnate.

> I personally don't get why any developer would prefer Windows over Linux

I'll offer you one data point, for what it's worth.

We do multidisciplinary work on our workstations. That means electrical engineering (Altium Designer), mechanical engineering (Solidworks+CAM), embedded (Keil, Xilinx, Linux, NVidia Jetson, etc.), FEA (Solidworks Simulation), server-side development (Linux, Python, Django, etc.) and the myriad business documents that can go with all of that.

The traditional setup has been to custom build powerful Windows machines with as much memory as the mobo will support and half a dozen SSD's assigned to specific functions (system, data, library, hardware dev, software dev, virtual machines) and then build a bunch of task-specific virtual machines.

Using multiple (3+) monitors it is easy to live in this multi-OS/multi-paradigm world once you get it all setup.

Not quite using WSL yet but watching its development with great interest.

If all someone is doing is web development it used to be that either an Apple laptop or a dual-boot Windows/Linux machine was the top choice. WSL seems to be displacing Apple in this domain.

Because Linux is still crap regarding audio and 3D graphics programming, plus it has a culture of doing everything the PDP-11 way instead of embracing the desktop and GUI based workflows.

Developer != UNIX.

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