It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.
It would be nice if they did something actually useful, like add native ext4 support.
• I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?), and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu. They pair only as headphones with no microphone. On Windows they work "out of the box".
• I use a triple-monitor configuration with three 4K displays: the ThinkPad's internal 15" display and two 24" externals. In Ubuntu I can only get two displays to work. (BTW one external display is in landscape mode above the ThinkPad, and the other is to the left in portrait mode. I highly recommend this configuration - the portrait mode display is great for reading docs and especially PDF files.)
• I run the external displays at 200% scaling and the internal at 300% to match the differing pixel density. I didn't see any way to support this configuration in Ubuntu, much less be able to move an app window between displays and have it automatically update its scaling factor to match the display. This works "out of the box" in Windows.
So I run Windows on the hardware and Ubuntu with my dev tools like PyCharm and SmartGit in a VMware VM. (VMware works a lot better for this than VirtualBox - the display response is much snappier.)
Of course these are my own needs, and I have no quarrel with anyone who has different preferences. But I welcome anything Microsoft can do to make this an even smoother experience than it already is.
I am using it on Archlinux without any problems whatsoever.
The problem with Ubuntu is - when it releases their latest version, it is already shipping a couple years old software versions.
And for pipewire, wayland, mesa and other desktop related things you want to run the latest version at all times. This is one of the major reasons why Valve chose Archlinux as a base for their new SteamOS version for Steam Deck.
> The problem with Ubuntu is - when it releases their latest version, it is already shipping a couple years old software versions.
That is quite a dramatic take and simply not true.It maybe fits somewhat for Debian Stable (that has a freeze of 4 to 6 months), but Ubuntu bases off Debian Unstable (sid) and sid is very close to the Arch experience - I know because I use both a lot. Granted, Ubuntu adds a bit of a delay due to QA and all that release fuzz a rolling release like Arch does not has to care for, but if an upstream software release happened one or two months before an Ubuntu release it's really likely to be included in that release.
> And for pipewire, wayland, mesa and other desktop related things you want to run the latest version at all times.
Meh, in general I agree with the sentiment, but there are also regressions that hurt running into, and if you have HW that was released over a year ago it may not matter that much. > This is one of the major reasons why Valve chose Archlinux as a base for their new SteamOS version for Steam Deck.
Not directly, they could have used Debian sid for that, and the fact that SteamOS 2.0 is still on Debian 8 (newest is 11) also shows that they did not try to go for the latest releases until now. I'm working on a Debian derivative and we just backport things ourself if really required, it is a bit of work but not that much (we're definitively orders of magnitudes smaller than Valve) - especially as the Debian unstable/sid repo is quite up-to-date and thus we often can just take it from there and base on that anyway.But actually Debian and Arch Linux are really close anyway, I do packaging for both (but neither a DM nor Arch trusted user) and if the software is not awful to package in general it's quite the bliss to do for both, there are also lots of parallels, even if often slightly hidden. So I won't care much; may even try out setting up Debian Sid once I get my Steam Deck :)
FYI: here's some good background read regarding all this from a Debian developer whom also works for Collabora on the Steam Runtime: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2021/07/msg00214.html
I still have some servers running Debian but I have migrated most to Ubuntu because of much simpler upgrade procedures between stable versions (basically I have enabled automatic upgrades with auto reboot on all of them).
I am an enthusiast but I like to have things running smoothly and even with Arch being rolling release, it has been working smoother for me than in my time prior with Debian.
Maybe it is because of the excellent documentation on Arch wiki, maybe it comes with experience. All of this is subjective anyway.
This works if you use Wayland rather than X11. I'm using a similar configuration today.
I've been running {KDE, Gnome} on Wayland + KMS on a box with a GTX1080 for a few months, and
- it is really laggy (sometimes the mouse cursor is choppy)
- fractional scaling is practically unusable due to all kinds of important apps (e.g. Chrome) not supporting it and just blurring the screen instead of properly scaling
Overall I can't recommend it to non-enthusiasts, unfortunately.
And major problem that still persists with WSL is the NFTS mounts in Linux. At work we can’t have decent compile times on Windows because of the file system.
The amount of meetings I've had where the audio from the other end sounds like the BART announcements is too high...
That being said, I know what you mean. However, I'm actually rather annoyed at the headset microphone functionality on windows, because if anything starts using the microphone, it switches modes and the audio quality goes way, way down. Fine for a zoom call maybe, but having horrible audio in a video game is not fun. I constantly have to go to control panel to turns off hands-free telephony.
I do like having wireless headphones of one sort or another, so I can walk around while staying in the conversation.
Also, over-the-ear or in-the-ear (the kind that go into your ear canal) headphones don't work for me. The only kind I'm really comfortable with are the kind that sit lightly in my outer ear, e.g. AirPods and not AirPods Pro.
But in any case, I'm eager to hear about your setup. And I'm probably not the only one who would welcome better quality audio. Thanks!
As far as work goes, a few of my coworkers use RTX Voice to remove background noise since they use their gaming computers for work. For headphones, I personally like over-ear headphones and use wireless noise-cancelling headphones.
Funny, I don't see this on windows, which will leave the headphones at high quality (except for when I'm speaking, at which point I don't care that much about audio) - but on Linux I have to set the audio profile for the headset to low quality in order to enable the microphone at all - so all audio out is crap as long as I'm on a call/have the microphone enabled (even muted).
Still waiting for this to improve - but looks like it'll require new hw (new Bluetooth receiver and sender).
EDIT: It took me 5 minutes after reading the comment above to replace pulseaudio with pipewire on Ubuntu 20.04, now I have access to my earphones' high quality codecs too right from the Ubuntu sound control panel!
I used this[0] then this[1]
[0] https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/05/install-latest-...
[1] https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/05/enable-pipewire... - I only followed steps 1 and 4 and audio was switched instantly, earphones already paired. Now I have AAC, SBC, SBC-XQ...
EDIT2: Switching to/from my earphones and from 1 bud to 2 buds appears flawless so far, even for the Spotify desktop for Linux app which usually requires a `pulseaudio -k` to send the audio out of the right device usually, even if it's correctly selected in sound settings.
EDIT3: Don't forget to mask pulseaudio (yellow box, second link) or pulseaudio will load on reboot and break things, no amount of systemctl disable will stop it without masking.
EDIT4: Linked site has different theme on mobile so yellow box in EDIT3 isn't yellow.
PS: In the past, I've wrestled with PulseAudio & BT dongles and my JBL headsets on Ubuntu. Banging my head on a brick wall would have been more pleasurable than that.
PPS: and today we have Pipewire on the front page!
It was even easier to setup on my desktop (now running Manjaro rather than Ubuntu because of SteamPlay/Proton et al) and simply `sudo pacman -Sy manjaro-pipewire` followed by a reboot. If it complains about pulseaudio related conflicts, just `pacman -R` the packages it mentions then try manjaro-pipewire again, and then reboot and you're done.
Your comment made me go "huh! that's easy enough to finish off in 10 now" and provided the impetus I needed
> I spend a fair amount of time on Zoom calls (who doesn't?), and I like to use my Apple AirPods so I can move around while we talk. I was never was able to get these or any other Bluetooth headset to work on Ubuntu.
I do not want to be the cliché Linux user and recommend some config change and assert that would have been simple and helped 110%, but out of interest, did you also try something like > Set ControllerMode = bredr or ControllerMode = dual by editing
> /etc/bluetooth/main.conf file
> systemctl restart bluetooth
(paraphrased and s/sysv/systemd/ from https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-pairing-apple-airpods-as-h... )On windows, brand new Dell laptop for work, with an insanely locked down version of windows 10, zoom often crashes, especially when sharing my screen. This in turn takes down many other applications. Generally making the whole windows experience far from optimal.
My Sager Laptop a few years ago, and now my HP Omni (personal) laptop, I regularly drive 2 screens and the laptop display. Works. Out of the box. Work windows 10 laptop, its a crap shoot at best. And I can't use the NVidia card very much in windows 10, simply because the system is so locked down. Thus I'm stuck with an expensive and useless feature. One that works flawlessly in my locked down linux box.
On different scalings for different monitors, its built in to mint.
I'm guessing you are either running a very old version of Ubuntu (literally all the complaints you made are many years out of date, having been solved long ago), or you copy-pastaed from somewhere else. My priors on this are 60% the latter 40% the former.
On my linux laptop, I run windows the way it should be run (if you really need to run it). In a kvm instance. Never touching real hardware. And whats funny about this, is that the virtualized Win10 is faster than the far more expensive windows 10 work laptop right next to it.
Go figure.
FWIW, I've been using Linux on my desktop for 23 years, and as my primary OS on my desktop/laptop for 20 of those years. So ... YMMV.
I do remember at the time, windows didn't really work with those Bluetooth headphones, and I actually started bringing my own Linux laptop to work just so I could use my headphones.
When it comes to Zoom, I'd say the problem is having to use that crap and not the fact that they barely support Linux. MS Teams also won't work on Linux, but it's hard to claim it's an issue on Linux's side. I'd suggest looking at something like Jitsi, which is also encrypted and takes security into consideration.
Ubuntu is a pretty bad example for anything though: they're usually trying to reinvent the wheel and it's very common for things not to work there and work anywhere else. I personally have mixed feeling because they both make Lonux more popular and build good tools, but also give Linux a bad rep at the same time. Maybe give Fedora a shot?
Finally, per-display scaling works fine on Wayland, but won't work on Xorg. I believe Ubuntu still uses the latter.
But yes, it works as intended on Linux (I use the official snap with Wayland/Ubuntu and even screensharing works).
Jitsi is not as good as Zoom. Zoom seamlessly integrates with multiple monitors, and it provides a variety of tooling to rearrange your view of people and shared desktops. Just as an example last week I was helping two coworkers troubleshoot something, and I was able to have both of them share their desktops simultaneously. I had one on one monitor and one on the other. It was painless and instant. Maybe Jitsi supports such a thing somehow but it would have taken a minute or two to find the right buttons to press.
Also Zoom is encrypted. It has always been encrypted. Zoom lied about having E2E encryption and also weirdly had a lower-grade AES. Zoom is weird because while I 100% mistrust their motives in using weaker encryption, there are some legitimate tradeoffs between reliability and encryption - and it's actually pretty unlikely that they could implement E2E encryption without compromising video quality.
And ultimately especially with the pandemic and only being able to see people via video, even the smallest problems are potentially quite massive. I've used Jitsi a bit, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it would mean that I would have spent at least an extra hour a week during the pandemic troubleshooting video when I was trying to have a nice visit with friends or family. I'm not going to be an ideologue when I lose that kind of time.
For games, proton has come a long way. I don't find myself needing to boot out of Linux very often anymore.
I have a friend who uses Zoom a lot on her Windows laptop, and this "feature" of Zoom has messed her meetings up so many times!
Is this due to Apple having drivers for AirPods for Windows or Is Windows Bluetooth stack that good?
But manufacturers do test their devices with Windows Bluetooth stack (incl. Apple) as after all they hold the majority market share.
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/fixing-bluetooth-issues-on-raspbe...
macOS by itself wouldn't work for me, though. I would still need to run a Linux VM because of our very fussy build system. And besides, where would my beloved TrackPoint be? :-)
I'm way more productive with email and just a couple phone calls a week as needed.
In truth, I don't spend that much time on Zoom calls, and of the few that I have, many are no video, just substitutes for a phone call with better audio quality and the ability to share screens if needed.
When you consider that Edge is available for Linux, MS could very well be using WSLg to develop it.
So it seems to me that this just makes it easier to anything you need to do on Linux, “on” Windows.
Of course making it easier for people on Windows to make software for Linux seems like a way to help Linux, which is a bit confusing to see MS do.
WSL2 is also a full VM
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-version...
As opposed to WSL1 where there's a wine-esque module in the windows kernel, and there is no linux kernel at all.
Anyway it's a cool feature, and I'd love to know more about how it works.
In any case, booting Linux (the kernel) is always incredibly fast, and booting to a tty, without all the systemd units that are generally loaded, is incredibly fast per se.
It would be more of a case of how well certain software works, or how well that software works together, than one of supporting Linux exclusive software. There have been a variety of ways to run Unix software under Windows for decades. Quite often, there are quirks to deal with unless considerable effort has also been put into the Windows native version. I doubt that WSL will actually appeal to many existing Linux users, but it will probably prevent the slow flow of people from Windows to Linux.
I agree that native ext4 support would be more useful for people who dual boot.
> The only reason I run windows in the first place is for a few apps, mostly games
Another reason to use windows is if you are on a laptop and care about battery life. Browsers on Linux still don't have hardware accelerated video playback.
That's just not true. Might be a problem with some GPUs but not with all. At least I got hardware accelerated video playback on Chromium with my AMD GPU.
I presume getting GUI working on top of those GPU APIs was a trivial task (and maybe done by one of their interns or during a hackathon).
Your interns must be rock stars on meth.
Edit: Seems people don't believe me, here's an article how to do it: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-dev-appconsul...
Windows adds support for running Linux apps, then spreads some FUD about Linux, and convinces companies they need to ban dual-booting and only allow Windows internally.
It certainly does _sound_ like MS.
It looks like using the method described in the link below it’s now possible to mount ext4 drives via WSL2 and even browse them in File Explorer:
https://superuser.com/a/1630438
It’s not clear if they are also writable or not, I’m off to try it!
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk
There is a guide here:
https://medium.com/geekculture/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-s...
However waiting for 21H2 is probably a lot easier.
VS Code brilliantly lets me develop on WSL2, IntelliJ is getting there but with these new developments it might become easier to run everything on Linux.
That said, IT at work not only tolerates Linux but actively support it so I might be back on Linux again very soon.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk
The other day I wanted to compare gitk on Windows with the same on Linux. But there was no Xserver installed, so the idea was dropped.
The whole reason was to see if gitk also had that annoying enumeration at startup in Linux.
I can't tell you how many people want to mess around with the robot operating system but don't want to dive head first into Linux. Hell, my very large robotics company won't even give you a linux machine. You're forced to use Mac or Windows or build it yourself.
But in general, I haven't dual-booted my main machine since WSL got good, and I'm a linxu-first kind of person with a penchant for windows gaming.
WSLg had an early demonstration of ROS simulations running, in fact. So I can double down on this being a use case.
And using them is an endless shuffle with fractured distribution and update. WSL gives you apt-get. And good luck when every port you use integrates with a different subset of the ca 5 SSH options that are in common use on Windows.
I think VirtualBox has a similar feature, but in my limited experience VB doesn't perform as well as VMware.
99% hardware support isn’t good enough. I want to make new software not troubleshoot other people’s.
Other way around. The Kernel getting real support for NTFS (was merged into Linus' tree a month ago [0]) there's hope to get native performance on WSL2.
Microsoft is building the dev environment for the next decade.
[0] https://www.linuxtoday.com/news/linux-kernel-5-15-will-have-...
can you explain a bit how this works?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/file-permission...
Big claim, most devs I've met either use Mac or Ubuntu. Can't remember anyone using Windows...
https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/#Main_on-whic...
Windows: 61% Linux: 47% macOS: 44%
No, really, when all of my development happens over SSH or inside Docker anyway, it doesn't really matter which is the "outer" OS. I'm happy with Windows.
I'd be onboard with Windows as a next-gen dev environment if it was compatible with more filesystems, had a more organized file structure, featured greater CPU compatibility, and eliminated the system registry altogether.