
Ask HN: Anyone Switch from Mac OS to WSL2? How Has the Experience Been? - gamesbrainiac
Hi there!<p>I am thinking of transitioning from Mac OS to Windows, because I have seen good things about WSL2. Has anyone made the switch, and if so, how is the experience compared to developing open source applications on Mac?
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codingslave
I love it. I ended up buying an Alienware that I got on sale, so my computer
has some amazing performance stats, but was very cheap. I think I got about 4x
for my money in terms of compute and build quality compared to a mac. 17 inch
screen, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB harddrive +256GB SSD, 1080 GPU, great keyboard and
build quality. The WSL is great, I have had no issues. I mostly do machine
learning and large compute related work, but develop APIs and such as well. I
have had no issues on WSL, but am also not an expert in how a regular linux
system should function. It just seems you get best of both worlds, microsoft
reliability, linux dev environment and tools. Working with python can be a bit
annoying, in the sense that tools like PyCharm expect to use the windows
interpreter, so it is the case that I have an interpreter that I use from the
command line and an interpreter that I use for IDEs. Other frustrations would
be installing things like CUDA on windows means that I need to run GPU related
programs on the windows interpreter, since I dont think CUDA built for linux
plays well with WSL. And if it does, its a huge hassle to figure out how to
get things to work. So sometimes you get locked into how you run software, or
having to use the windows version

There are a ton of complaints about Microsoft windows, but honestly, I love
it. I think the complaints about how terrible windows is come from the early
2000s - 2010. The idea that it has terrible UX is outdated, and in my belief,
is somewhat a result of apple branding than anything else. Microsoft is a
different company now, and puts out some great products.

For the record I've been writing software for about ten years

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Spooky23
It depends on how invested you are in Mac vs. using Mac as a friendly way to
get access to a Unix-like toolchain. I've always had my foot in both platforms
due to clients... it's generally not that big of a deal. But, I do most of my
open source toolchain work in Linux VMs. In that respect, the Windows 10
terminals have improved alot.

MacOS is, in my opinion, a neglected and quasi-orphaned platform, they are
keeping the lights on only and depending on the ecosystem/services friction to
keep the product going. My "daily driver" PC is a no-longer-mobile Macbook Pro
with an ancient Dell USB keyboard. But I invest as little time as possible
into anything that is Mac-only, as Apple is a harsh mistress.

The old reasons for using MacBooks are less relevant. The market is very
different than 2008-12, when Apple was 10x better at 1.5x the cost. Shitty
corporate laptops aside, if you look at some of the newer HP, Dell and
Microsoft devices that are in the $1,500-2,000 range, they are now meet or
exceed the Apple lineup from a quality and engineering perspective.

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aosaigh
I tried to do it the year before last. Bought a desktop and made an honest
attempt to switch. I sold the PC last month and am back solely on Mac.

I'm a web developer and found that the filesystem/IO performance on WSL was
woeful. An "npm install" that would take 20 seconds on Mac would take 2/3
minutes if not more on WSL. That on its own was a deal breaker. Other things
with regard to folder sharing across Windows/WSL was also a realy challenge.
Finally, the Windows experience itself I felt was poor. Many of the subtle
things I had become used to on Mac are completely missing (preview for
example)

~~~
cercatrova
WSL 2 has changed a lot, as it's now a native Linux container. The speed
therefore is also native. Be aware however that WSL 2 still requires Windows
Insider builds, although on the slow lane as of November.

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Nextgrid
I wouldn't even be concerned about WSL but about the Windows experience
itself.

You're trading a tool that's been designed to serve you well (although quality
it slipping lately) for a "tool" that's designed to waste your time with
advertisements and violate your privacy.

The first tool manufacturer's incentive is to make a product that works for
you so you keep giving them money (in the form of buying new machines and
their cloud services). The second manufacturer's incentive is to waste as much
of your time with ads and other crap they shove in your face since that's how
they want to make their money. The "tool" aspect of it is secondary and is
only there to make you stay on the platform, but since Windows 7 hasn't been
the primary objective.

But speaking of WSL itself, I have concerns regarding filesystem performance
on lots of small files (during Git clones, NPM install operations, etc). I
think it's a limitation of NTFS more than anything and I'm not sure if there's
an easy solution for them.

