Ask HN: With Windows 10's Linux-like feats, do we need native Linux anymore? - simonebrunozzi
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mindcrime
I guess it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. From my perspective,
the question is, why do we need native Windows? Personally, I haven't needed
Windows for anything since about 2000. Linux has been sufficient for me for
the past 17 years.

I dunno... if you must run Windows for some reason, then having some linux-
like features is nice I guess. Certainly it would be nice to have a proper
shell. But why would you run Windows on a server or anything other than maybe
a gaming rig, if you play games that only run on Windows?

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savethefuture
I fixed the typo in your question: "With Linux, do we really need windows
anymore?"

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makecheck
I look at it more from a “what’s right” point of view. There is nothing
“right” about rewarding Microsoft for offering Linux compatibility in Windows.

Microsoft has billions of dollars that it _could_ have invested into its own
infrastructure all this time. Instead, they delivered essentially nothing: for
YEARS, it has been a pain in the ass to transform any Windows installation
into a barely-useful development machine. Oh, and even if you managed to do
it, you still had to hope that you wouldn’t encounter some OS-ruining problem
that required a full reinstall in 5 months.

Instead of creating decent software all these years and building real value,
now Microsoft is trying to shoehorn free software such as "bash" into Windows
and calling it a feature. To hell with them: not good enough, damn it! Anyone
who has been waiting for "bash" on Windows should have been investing in free
software projects instead, sending the money where it deserved to go.

Think about this: if you’ve given less than $100 to open software projects
over the past decade and you’re planning to hand EVEN MORE MONEY to Microsoft
over "bash", then you are rewarding the wrong people.

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blisterpeanuts
Long time OpenSuSE, Debian, and Ubuntu user since '98 or so, but I still have
two use cases for which Windows is the only choice:

1\. Toshiba portable document scanner - works beautifully in Windows, less
nicely in MacOS, doesn't work at all in Linux

2\. RFID tag programmer - I need it for my work and the only stack that
currently exists is the Eclipse JCOP debugger running in Windows. It's
orphaned software. I wish wish wish I had a Linux (or even MacOS) driver.

3\. Outlook Mail - for work. It runs on a Dell laptop stored on a bookshelf
that I occasionally access using VNC. Otherwise would have zero use for that
brick.

When equipped with LibreOffice, Eclipse, Android Studio, x11vnc, Emacs,
VirtualBox, Audacity, Gimp, and a few other niceties, Linux is virtually
unstoppable.

I'm having trouble thinking of things that Windows 10 can provide that Linux
doesn't already have in a lighter weight, easier to configure form. Perhaps
others can chime in here?

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DrScump
Do you then use 2 devices, 1 with dual-boot, or 1 with VM running the
alternate OS within VM?

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blisterpeanuts
several devices: MacOS, Linux, and an Intel NUC running Win7. Easier to just
have dedicated hardware for each OS for my purposes.

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simonebrunozzi
This is from the point of view of usability, hardware support, etc - a purely
technical angle.

I am not interested in philosophical implications (in this thread). Of course,
I don't want to prevent you from commenting on this aspect, too, if you still
feel this is the right place.

~~~
viraptor
How did you even get to that question? In the first sentence, you're assuming
that Linux is inferior regarding usability, hardware support, etc. That in its
own can be heavily disputed.

How about - with recent versions of Wine, do we even need Windows anymore?
(Most arguments will apply to both questions)

