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Comment by omegalulw | Hacker News Reader

I don't get why you won't just use Ubuntu or dual boot. Why WSL?

I’m someone who generally doesn’t enjoy dual booting. I realize this is my specific preference rather than practicality, but I like being able to context switch without a reboot.

I also like that I can keep a lot of my development tools separated by WSL distro/container. A few weeks ago I found a video transcoding tool that needed a dependency from Ubuntu 18.04. I was using Ubuntu 20.04 in WSL at the time. So I just downloaded 18.04 from the Store, spun that up in a new terminal tab, and set up the transcoding tool there. I only access that version when I need to do certain transcoding and have preserved my 20.04 for everything else.

Because I do not care about Linux Desktop.

OP here.

Up until this point I've completely avoided Windows for work (for obvious reasons). I've exclusively used a Linux laptop for work.

I use Windows on my desktop as my home machine. WSL means I can train machine learning models in my time off, without stopping me chilling out with my buddies.

I have an opposite question: why not just use Windows?

What if you need to run word or Visio or a million other windows only apps?

Or what if you prefer the Windows desktop vs the Linux alternative, or if your laptop has some obscure driver issues on Linux that are making you miserable, or what if your org only issues Windows machines with the infra built around the Microsoft ecosystem (SharePoint, Office,etc) or a million other reasons why people use Windows.

Why do some people need to be so obnoxiously judgemental about other people's choice of OS?

Because it's adversarial. Your choice to use one OS makes it more difficult, in a tiny way, for me to use a different OS. You will write software for that OS. You will convince others to use that OS. You will tell your boss to get computers with that OS installed, and then other people at your job will have to deal with it. And every developer on that OS is one that isn't using, writing software, fixing problems etc on my OS. It's political. It's zero-sum. And Microsoft knows that all too well, and that is precisely the reason why WSL exists.

>Because it's adversarial. Your choice to use one OS makes it more difficult, in a tiny way, for me to use a different OS.

So I shouldn't be allowed to use a certain platform of my choice because you think this somehow impacts you?

Based on your logic how about you stop consuming water, oxygen, real-estate and food because it's making it more difficult for me, in a tiny way, to get those items.

>You will write software for that OS. You will convince others to use that OS. You will tell your boss to get computers with that OS installed

Please stop making false claims about me. You don't know me buddy.

Nobody said you shouldn't be allowed. But it does impact other people, and those people are also allowed to comment on it, or even put social pressure on you.

I'm not going to respond to the sentences you added after I posted this comment, because I don't think they add very much.

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