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Comment by dal | Hacker News Reader

It does, if you use WSL you're OS is Windows.

But he's de facto developing on a Linux machine.

It's not a linux machine. The computer is booted and managed by Windows. Linux is an application running on the Windows machine.

The question is not about booting, it's about which OS is running the environment where development happens (writing code, compiling code, testing code, etc).

> Clarification: the operating system where e.g. your IDE runs on

If you're developing on a Linux VM that you connect to via a browser tab opened from your Windows laptop, you're developing on Linux for all intents and purposes.

That is, Windows was not doing enough for you so you switched to Linux for dev tasks.

By the same token, if your IDE is running in WSL, for all intents and purposes you're developing on Linux. A virtual machine, sure, but the virtualized OS is a Linux variant. Because installing the IDE on Windows itself was not doing enough for you.

WSL2 is a full blown Linux VM under the hood, running a real Linux distro and real Linux kernel. It's Linux in every way that matters.

Yes, but the poll is specifically about the system your IDE runs on. Most WSL users are running their IDE in Windows.

I wouldn't consider Chrome the "operating system" that I am primarily developing on, even though it is really the VM under the hood. Windows is really the one facilitating running the Chrome application, or the Linux WSL application.

To be way too pedantic, if WSL2 (and therefore Hyper-V) is enabled then Windows actually boots into bare-metal Hyper-V first, which then launches the Windows kernel as a VM under itself, side-by-side with the WSL2 VMs if any are installed, so if the lowest level facilitator is what counts then you're really developing "on Hyper-V". I don't think that's a very useful distinction though.

Well I'm extremely pedantic, so I'm going to say that UEFI is the real operating system!

Hyper-V is windows, just stripped down to be a supervisor OS, but same kernel bits. So, still Windows.

I mean, that's a debatable definition, one could agree or not.

I program on Windows + WSL 2 e.g. and I have no idea how to develop on windows and barely used powershell in my life, but I know the ins and outs of Linux.

I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right, I'm merely stating that we have different definitions and AFAICT there's no ISO standard saying what qualifies as developing on Linux and what not.

it is a Linux environment (Windows is just a host – could be anything, really)

I can't even imagine doing development in Windows without WSL anymore. I think Microsoft even requires it for some of their stuff.

I guess it depends on what you do. I do python, rust, and web frontend in Windows. I have a personal bias against Docker, which'd otherwise be the primary WSL draw for me since if I want/need Linux, I can SSH into the majority of the machines in my house.

I'll throw out my unpopular opinion/experience here, too: I haven't liked any "desktop experience" I've seen or used for a Linux distro, and they all look and feel very similar to me: foreign, basic, and difficult for me to tweak and produce with. I greatly dislike the React stuff both on the web and in Windows, and use Classic Shell, which I'm satisfied with. Windows is easy to customize and almost everything can be tailored without even needing a reboot, many even with registry options already made and just waiting for a bit to be flipped.

It helps my puny, smooth brain, too, to just think of Windows being graphical and Linux being text-based; helps me remember what I'm doing.

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