
Ask HN: What do you think of WSL? Would you switch to Windows? - tdom
For all the Linux&#x2F;Mac users out there, would you consider switching to Windows as your software development OS? Why?
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geophile
I eliminated Microsoft from my life nearly 20 years ago. While my impression
is that their software is less buggy and irritating in some ways now, I
haven't heard anything compelling to pull me back into that world.

Apple lost me a year ago. Their software design and implementation has been
declining for years, but it was the MBP keyboard fiasco that finally did it
for me. Observing what has happened with Catalina has affirmed my decision.

Meanwhile, the state of Linux as a daily driver has greatly improved. And far
more hardware just works with Linux. Right now, a System76 laptop running
PopOS is really great. Considering cost, such a setup is _far_ cheaper than a
Mac, and I'm guessing less than a Windows laptop (since you avoid the Windows
tax).

If you are comfortable developing in a Linux environment, and you don't _have_
to use MS (or Apple) systems (e.g. because you are developing for those
platforms), I can't imagine why you wouldn't use Linux right now.

~~~
tdom
See, I love the Linux environment. I've been using Arch for the past 6 months
and I absolutely love it.

I have problems with it though. Watching 4k (or even full hd) netflix on Linux
can be an absolute nightmare. I'm pretty sure that's just because of lack of
good hardware acceleration support on Linux because I tried everything. Also
the battery life isn't quite there yet on my machine :(.

I think I will be switching back to Linux soon, upgrade my ram and just run a
Windows VM for those rare occasions I need it.

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BracketMaster
So I've been programming since I was 7 and used dual boot until I was 15. At
15, I switched to WSL when it came out, and then when I was 19 I bought a Mac.

Mac hands down is just better for programming. Especially with its fantastic
touchpad support in my mind. WSL has some file system quirkiness that comes up
every once in a while.

Other than that, it's passable. The Mac Finder file browser is super advanced
and I use its column mode regularly. On top of that, dragging the current
finder folder to terminal changes me into that folder in terminal. Mac is full
of tricks like that which can be mapped to keyboard shortcuts. At the end of
the day, being the power user that I am, these things matter.

I mainly do RTL, kernel, and some webdev if that matters.

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karmakaze
I use a Mac for (backend dev for Linux) work, a Linux desktop at home, and a
Surface Go for carrying.

The Surface Go (8GB SSD, not eMMC) and WSL has been great. I'm surprised that
I can do just about everything but a bit slower which I don't mind when I'm
out--back when there we're places we could go. Even not in WSL, Android studio
built and ran an app I was playing with. Used my phone hardware, simulator
would have killed it.

I haven't switched to WSL 2 and I don't know it will be better for me.
Probably trading memory for I/O speed so it might depend.

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satvikpendem
I've been using Windows and before I'd get a Linux VM, but now I can just do
it through WSL. Yes, technically WSL and Windows itself runs on Hyper-V (a
type 1 hypervisor) as VMs, albeit with virtualized GPU passthrough. I use WSL
on my laptop, but on my desktop, I use Proxmox with Windows, macOS and Linux
VMs, each with their own GPU passed through with one for the host. Makes it
super nice to see all three OS on one ultrawide monitor, especially if I'm
testing desktop apps (usually written in Flutter).

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SamWhited
WSL is pretty neat, but I have literally no reason why I would ever switch to
Windows. All the day to day stuff is terrible, the internet login is terrible,
the UI is incredibly bloated and awful, etc. WSL makes things better, but
still not nearly as easy as using the same type of machine I deploy to. Not to
mention that Windows literally won't run on a lot of older hardware, where
Fedora or Arch or whatever is perfectly happy.

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aosaigh
I sincerely tried to switch from Mac to Windows for development (mainly web).
It was just too slow on IO. Installing NPM packages could take literally 10
minutes on WSL. This says as much about the state of JS dev as it does about
WSL but it was just not fast enough in general. Outside of WSL, Windows just
wasn’t intuitive enough either. Everything you take for granted on Mac is
missing from Windows.

~~~
tdom
The extremely slow IO has been fixed with WSL 2, with IO performance being
approx 8% slower than running Linux natively.

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non-entity
I'll probably keep switching between mac and windows perpetually, although I
may settle with windows at some point. Its crazy how software, even in the
domain of software are windows-exclusive (although it seems to be mostly
proprietary stuff)

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wprapido
Been using it since it was available only for developers / insiders. It
progressed from almost useless to perfectly usable Linux substitute.

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badpun
Cannot recommend WSL 1 for serious programming, it's just too buggy and
unstable. Haven't tried WSL 2 yet.

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rolph
NO! just look at MS and win it pwns user to serve them. "linux" is a tool for
users demands

