Hacker News Reader

Comment by koalalorenzo | Hacker News Reader

100% agree with the video. I am a macOS user just to have some of the GNU tools and VMs or containers (Vagrant, and Docker for desktop) on the fly when I need to work and get shit done. I still believe that WSL is some sort of slimmed/powered down to nothing version of any gnu/linux distro, and after using it for a while I felt the pain of getting things done and went back to macOS and VMs. I still believe that Microsoft is improving, but I am not sure how it is helping with WSL...

View on HN

What I want to understand is why use Windows if you want to use Linux? Surely it's easier to just use Linux.

It's politics. A while ago I interviewed for a back end dev position at this "big" company and they wanted to give me an offer at which point I made some requirements such as couple of decent monitors and Ubuntu (WSL wasn't yet out then, but I wouldn't have considered it anyway). They said no, because they were constrained by their "IT department" which wanted to install all kinds of shitty spyware as I understood. They also admitted that they lost other good developers who made similar demands like working on Macs and such. Needless to say I too declined their offer, because I'm not interested in companies with developer-hostile policies.

Some are forced to use Windows eg in consulting

In UK many true consultants use their own hardware, in fact it is basically mandated by law (IR35). I have a state of the art Dell Precision 7750 running Ubuntu on it and I wouldn't ever consider a company who tried forcing me into Windows.

Should honestly stop working for companies that force Winblows. Might as well move rocks from one pile and back, because those jobs have little to no purpose than wasting your time when you could be doing important things with your life.

Or perhaps things are not so black and white.

I don't come into contact with Windows much, but had an ~18 month contract a few years ago. A Fortune 500 company, an interesting project. I ended up writing some important parts in software that has an actual positive real-world impact. During my work, I was of course given a Windows machine. I installed Cygwin and did the vast majority of work there. I'd drop back into Windows proper just for Outlook and to occasionally use an industry-specific tool.

Sure I would have preferred to work on a Linux machine, but having to use Windows doesn't mean that the work is pointless, or that I cannot put my best effort into it.

So you used Cygwin to do the work why? Is it because it was actually easier to make progress when it came to actual work (not just needing to use the corporate tools to communicate with coworkers or track your time)? From the sounds of it, Windows actually hindered you so you tried to find a way to use Linux tools so that you could make the most positive impact. That is exactly what I'm saying.. why make concessions and limit yourself.

Winblows? Are you 13 years old?

No I am not 13 years old and Windows does blow.

The wsl brings you the advantages of Linux without the disadvantages.

WSL is just horribly slow for me. So I use Linux exclusively at home, but my work mandates Windows (although we now allow Mac, and with my next hardware change I might just switch over to Mac). So to get into the comfort of my trusted toolchain I use WSL at work. Our company lags behind windows updates, since they only install "trusted" versions, whatever that means, and thus I still have WSL1. I heard WSL2 brings a lot of performance improvements. And I really hope it does, WSL1 is soooo slow. Especially compared to my home setups. The friction is just so high still. So I believe if you come from Windows and want use Linux tools with WSL, I think you might find it comfortable for some, but it's a horrible introduction to Linux, since a lot of it will be slow and you'd think "oh Linux is just as bad as Windows, I'd rather stick to my guns".

I remember trying to use wsl1 for WordPress development; it was so slow most pages would time out and I couldn't do anything.

I found that one of my Python programs, which performs heavy calculations, was actually faster in WSL 2 than when running natively in Windows.

I haven't tested it with WSL 1 though.

WSL2 is -significantly- faster for most dev flows.

Exactly the same outcome here.

The killer for me is friction and despite Microsoft’s best efforts, it’s always the most painful platform to work on. Nothing is finished, polished or reliable.

(I include WSL2 in that)

WSL is pretty good as long as you stick to the command line (and don't work with virtualization). I hear they are using a "proper" kernel with WSL2, so it probably got even better since i switched.

i do most of my work in WSL2 (with win terminal - which is quite good). even if its to just to jack into my headless linux servers via ssh. its just so much better than putty. but i also have vim and screen open all the time as well for some local dev stuff. which i refuse to do on win. pretty happy with it. without, i would not stick with win10 as my primary machine. there are still some annoyances though which ms will fix i hope.

granted mac osx does this still better. but i dont want to use mac anymore. did for 8+ years...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com